David Vann - Goat Mountain

Each of us afraid to move. But my grandfather a force of his own, heavy sounds of rocking himself upward off that mattress, and then the vision of him standing in the trees, naked from the waist up, looking toward the body, ready for whatever might be. He and the dead man brought together here for battle, because my grandfather was close enough to being death itself, formless and without feeling, a weight that might fall in any direction, and always this, unchanging, only waiting.

The dead man had every advantage, though, in waiting. He lay on the ground in his sack and didn’t move.

I couldn’t remember seeing my grandfather’s naked back ever before, not even once. Blotchy red and white expanse, living flesh and blood, as featureless as his face, in shifting folds and creases, armored in fat. He stepped forward toward the body and the dead man did nothing.

My father rose also and walked slowly through the trees toward the sack, his hands at his sides in fists. My father become desperate, mouth open and grim, ready for anything. And then Tom, and then me, all four of us advancing on the dead man, who coiled inside that sack, hidden, and I held my rifle ready and so did Tom. The men advancing until they were within the length of a body and then they could go no closer, and I was farther out still, walking across that unsteady earth until I stood behind them.

The dead man’s boots were still hanging in chains from that meat hook. Yellow-brown work boots with their soles to the sky, hanging down perfectly in unison as if they still held him, and who could say they didn’t still hold something? I was creeped out enough to believe anything. The dead man below in his sack with his face and intentions hidden and only his socks and shins visible to us. White shin meat and bone.

Well we can’t leave him like that, Tom said.

No shit, my father said.

I’m not touching him, Tom said.

Another piece of fucking news, my father said.

My grandfather rolled his neck, eyes closed, rocked his head side to side, like a boxer warming up. Here, he said. Here we are.

More philosophy.

You’re not up to the test, my grandfather said. You think everything has funneled down to this, but in fact everything has become possible.

What the fuck does that mean?

You’re standing here at a moment when you could be anything.

Yeah, you’re right. This is freedom. A real gift.

It is, actually. You just don’t see it. This dead body doesn’t matter.

My grandfather stepped forward then and reached down for the dead man’s ankles and picked him up, the sack falling free, that white belly gone dark, a stiffness to his arms and legs.

Don’t touch him, my father said.

Tom was backing away with his rifle held before him, and I was doing the same. The dead man a darkened ghost, his head kinked, hands tied between his legs, looking at us from the tops of his eyes, vacant holes. My grandfather turning and swinging the body, turning like a shot putter, spinning, pulling that body in an arc and the dead man patient, holding on for the ride, his head and shoulders lifting higher above ground, levitating, and my grandfather at the center, this mound of living flesh. A hub of blood and the dead man become a putrid spoke and this wheel turned and my father backed away but not fast enough and my grandfather flung the body at my father.

The dead man lofted for a moment, an easy lift to his shoulders and his mouth open in pleasure as he sailed through warm air, the center of him still missing but that bullet hole become a second birth and this his childhood, playing on a sunny day, flung outward in pleasure but my father shrinking, caving backward, turning and his hands coming up to fend off, but the dead man collided with him, chest to chest, rolling up close to my father in an embrace, and the two of them fell back in a moment suspended forever in my mind, finally hitting ground and both shaken at impact.

My father screamed. Not something I’d ever heard from him before, but as he lay there on his back in the dirt, the rotting body on top of him, this was too much. He arched his neck and turned and threw that body off and rolled back fast away and was on his feet.

My father and grandfather with their arms curved out from their sides like wings, both ready, and I realized my rifle held low was pointing at my father, and Tom’s too. I had no idea what would happen next. Anything seemed possible.

My grandfather a mountain and without age. My father would have no chance against him, but they circled closer, arms out and ready, and my father had become desperate. His mouth contorted as if he were still screaming but no sound came out. His teeth showing as if he would snap and bite at my grandfather.

There are only two choices, my grandfather said as he circled, his voice calm, no fear at all. His knees were not bent. His legs like pencils beneath that bulk, stiff and ready to snap. He could seem fragile at times, always changing shape. You can honor the man who has been killed. You can say his death meant something, in which case we have to punish your son. I’ll help you put him in the sack right now, and we can do whatever we need to, beat him or burn him or shoot him and bury him, whatever we need to do to make it right and stop him. That’s one choice.

My father was beyond hearing. He was ready to lunge, waiting for an opening, an opportunity, circling in the pine needles near the hooks. The dead man behind me watching also. He could rise and join at any moment.

Or we can decide the man who has been shot is nothing. He was a poacher, he was breaking the law, but he doesn’t matter and the law doesn’t matter. We put ourselves first. The clan. We make our own rules. So we take his body and throw it out in the brush and don’t even bury it. We forget about him.

My father had circled all the way around to the dead man again, and he looked down at that body, and that’s when my grandfather charged. There was no sound, no warning. Only this frightening bulk moving fast and he just ran over my father. No hard impact, only a slap against that bare skin and my father curled like a child at his father’s naked breast, folded against him and then fell backward onto the dead man, a second horrifying embrace, and he rolled clear and knelt down with his palms flat on the ground in prostration. He caved forward and put his head to the ground between his palms.

My grandfather hadn’t even used his arms, hadn’t swung at my father, had only run over him. And he returned now for the dead man and untied both wrists. You won’t take any responsibility. You won’t do what you need to do, because you’re weak. So you’ve made your decision, and this man’s death means nothing.

He walked then toward the creek, dragging the body by one wrist. He passed beneath the log hung with hooks and chains and the empty pair of boots, and the dead man looked like a naughty child being dragged off to bed. His chin was stuck against his chest, frozen forever there, and so he looked penitent. He knew what he had done, and he understood being dragged away now.

My grandfather’s feet in only socks, no boots or moccasins, slopping into water and sand and rock with no care or hesitation, ripping through ferns, the dead man yanked and shaken and soaked and torn. The ferns lush, deep green and unlikely, unchanged for a hundred million years, and the dead man now like how many generations before him, dragged away, and my grandfather as terrifying as any beast the world had ever seen.

Then through pines and into sunlight, the meadow, dry yellow grass and shimmers of heat, a different world entirely, my grandfather luminous, a second sun brought close. All distance collapsed, each world brought next to every other and no gate at the boundary. My grandfather’s legs hidden by the high grass and so he seemed an orb that glided across that field, disconnected to the ground. The dead man leaving a wake of darker yellow, dull and not catching the light, a hollow that would not fill, and he gazed into this wake, would not lift his eyes to the sky, kept his chin pressed tight, intent.