David Vann - Goat Mountain

I pulled on a new T-shirt and underwear and jeans, found my clean pair of socks and knocked my boots together to remove most of the mud. I didn’t have another jacket, so I whipped it against the bed of the pickup, small shards of mud flying off.

Lunch was ready now, the men at the table with their knives. My father and grandfather on the uphill side, not looking at one another. I climbed in next to Tom and kept my rifle away.

Lighter-colored, Tom was saying. Almost gray. Silvery. Like an older buck, but I only saw forks.

Three-pointer, my grandfather said.

I didn’t see that, Tom said. I only saw forks. But he was light, almost the same color as the rock. I must have looked right at him when he was standing there and not even seen him.

You’d have noticed him, my grandfather said.

No, I don’t think so. I think I looked right at him and didn’t see him. I think if he had just stayed still, none of us would have seen him.

In another minute, I would have been standing next to him, my father said.

Even then, Tom said. I don’t think you would have seen him.

That’s just stupid.

No. You never saw him, so you don’t know. Think about this for a minute. He didn’t jump until you were right on him, but you know he must have heard you coming, and smelled you, and he didn’t move. So that means he decided to wait. He was going to hide and wait it out. He made a decision, but then he just got jumpy.

He didn’t make a decision.

He made a decision.

Well. My father rubbed at his forehead with both palms, down over his eyes and cheeks.

He almost had us, Tom said. He grabbed two more pieces of bread and went for the deviled ham, smearing it across both sides, a kind of pink froth.

Not just almost, my father finally said. I don’t see a buck hanging over there.

Springing around in those rocks, darting this way and that. It’s only luck if you hit one in that situation.

That situation, my father said. Trapped in a narrow canyon, shooters on both ridges, crossfire from above. Be a real miracle to hit anything then.

Well, Tom said. No point in talking.

Harder to hit the buck, though, if you’re way the fuck off and almost hit the people in the canyon.

You can fuck off, Tom said.

You’re an eagle eye. A real sharpshooter.

Look, Tom said. That buck knew what he was doing.

No buck knows anything.

You don’t know anything.

Just go back to your sandwich.

You go back to your sandwich.

We listened to the water in the basin then, a rushing sound so urgent at times you could hardly stand it. At times it seemed like it would wash us away. And it could never be shut off. There was no faucet, no way to hold it back. Only the sound and force of it increasing, magnified in that basin. Water from seams of rock deep inside the mountain. Water that fell as rain a thousand years ago and had lived in pressure ever since, released only now and what was to keep it from doubling in pressure and doubling again under the weight of all that rock.

I felt panic, my heart yanking and no room for breath. That water could rip the earth open right here beneath us. And my own blood was the same, pumping and pressurizing and no holding it back. I panicked like this all the time as a kid, my dreams all of pressure and panic, and even remembering now my breath is short. And each time, I didn’t believe I would survive. I didn’t know how to get through those times. My father and grandfather across from me unbearable presences. Their side of the table higher, and they could fall against me at any moment.

Time never did move again. That’s what it felt like. A moment an eternity. In memory, now, I can say we finished that lunch and got up from the table, but at the time, we were lost indefinitely and it was nothing less than that, and my father weighed a thousand pounds and my grandfather ten times that, and they were crushing me, the pressure of the water building behind them.

But the men did finish chewing their sandwiches, and I didn’t eat but I couldn’t, and my father was the first to rise and walk away toward his bedroll, and I could breathe again, and Tom left, also, and my grandfather had me pinned there still, his face a mountain rising in folds and crevices, white granite with dark grains and veins, and he swiveled his legs and rose and fell across that ground toward his mattress and I was released.

I walked carefully and stayed far away from that basin and from the mattress of my grandfather, and as I walked, the air began to thin, finally, the pressure easing and pulling back to where? Where does that go? The air normalizing, sound normalizing and making everything a lie, a dream, and yet only a few minutes before my heart had been made of stone.

My bedroll hidden behind deadfall, tucked in against the mountain, and I looked over my shoulder as I neared, made sure no one was watching. Then I hopped over that trunk and disappeared down low, safe in my hollow. I rolled out my sleeping bag and lay back to watch the sky above and the needles of the pines perfectly etched, each of them sharp against the blue, real and undeniable, individual, but thousands of them gathered together spiking the air. To think of how many in just the ring of trees above me and then our camp and up the hillside and across to other mountains and extending for hundreds of miles, this was a different kind of panic, not one of pressure but of vanishing outward and thinning and dissipating and this was the other panic I felt all the time back then, not of being crushed but of vanishing, pulled into vast empty space, and the two were equally terrifying and equally without source.

I closed my eyes and curled into a ball and waited, smelled the woodsmoke in the sleeping bag, soaked into it over the years, a comfort, and the smell, also, of sweat and the blood of animals of all kinds, and I was just heading toward sleep when I heard a heavy thump and knew exactly what it was. The dead man fallen.

WE ALL WAITED, I THINK. I DON’T BELIEVE ANYONE ROSE immediately. And this was because the dead man was capable of anything. If he had fallen, who knew what he might do next? He had no insides, no center, so the heavy sound of that thump, the enormous weight of it, had to be his invention. His head no longer pinned against his chest, his limbs free to move, his head back laughing and he could be up and dancing any moment. He had no blood and so he followed no rules.

Like Jesus from the grave, able to claim anything afterward and who would dare not believe? The only trick that matters, cheating death, because death is the only true god.

I opened my eyes half believing I’d find his face above me, his breath that would hold no air and eyes that would fall inward and keep falling, that look on his face of wanting more. But there was only sky above, and all those needles of the pines bunched and etched and at no distance that could be known, moving closer or farther at will.

I sat up and peered over the fallen tree that protected me, and no one had risen. The camp empty, no sound of another being, sound only of that water that would never cease.

The mountain rupturing everywhere around us but making no sound. A cataclysm held back by holding my breath. And this was what death would be like, I knew. My dreams of pressure and panic were dreams of death. Forever held at the moment when all was about to rupture. The body fallen, the dead man’s or our own, and the impact of that a shock driven through the center, but for one moment all still holds and it’s the middle of a bright day, a time meant to be safe, only this premonition inside, these two feelings at once, of being crushed and also of being pulled into vastness.