David Vann - Goat Mountain

I was looking for bucks again, along every edge. Approaching the line of brush and trees that divided the two glades, I slowed and crouched and kept my rifle low. The shadows stretching toward me, a thin ruff of cover. I ducked beneath branches of small gray pines and found Tom sitting against a trunk, hidden in shadow.

No sign of a buck, he whispered.

I sat against a trunk ten feet away. Our rifles across our thighs. A few more trees in front of us and then the bright yellow of the enormous glade below, large enough to be its own region. A ridge in the center with rock outcrops. A fold to the left that fell down into a large stand of sugar pines. Wide arcs of open field to either side, and a line of brush high on the right, a fire road hidden behind it.

Breezy here, cooler in the shade, cicadas pulsing. Large dragonflies cruising the margins. A few small white butterflies in their jagged flights just above the tips of the dry grasses.

I was there the day you were born, Tom said. There was no sign.

Sign of what?

Nothing to warn us. If anything, you seemed like nothing. I had a beer, I got bored, and I left.

What was my mother like?

Ask your dad.

He never says.

Well.

The lower glade a great burning disk, and we rode an edge of it, tilting higher. The heat of it.

It’s not just that you’ve done one thing, Tom said.

What’s that?

The problem is that you’re never going to follow any rule, ever.

What does that mean?

It means nothing. That’s the problem. There’s nothing left to hold anything together.

I didn’t understand what Tom was saying. I do understand now. And I wish I could talk with him now. He was my best chance. My father and grandfather too distorted. But at the time, I said nothing. I only looked at him, this familiar face, eyes floating somewhere behind his glasses, this face like a boy’s.

I would help, he said. You know that. If there were anything I could do for your family, I would help.

Thank you.

Well enjoy your last freedom. You’ll be sitting here like this, but the tree trunks will be bars and the wind will smell like piss and shit and sweat and puke and your butt will be on concrete. You won’t be holding a rifle. No one could have seen what you are, but they’ll all find out when we get back. And from then on, every time anyone looks at you, you’ll see what they think of you.

I looked out at that burning plain and the rock outcrops in the center, heaved up and broken. Scattered remnants fallen to both sides, broken long enough ago they were covered in lichen. But of course that’s how I see it now. At the time, I saw the glade, the outcrop of rock, and I thought nothing of it, had no sense of nostalgia or time or ruin that could make broken rock the scattered remnants, had no more thought than any lizard during moments like this that might have held a key. All wasted on my younger self, and I wish I could remember exactly what Tom said, because there might have been something more, something that would help now, but what I remember most is what he said next.

You’ll rot for thirty years. And when you get out, I’ll be waiting. You’ll feel it before you hear it, the rifle slug in your back. Just remember, when you get out, that’s what’s coming.

I remember that clearly because of the shock of it, because it was not like Tom, didn’t fit with any other memory of him.

Tom walked into the glade, into the heat and sun and grasses, and angled off to the left, downhill. Camouflaged T-shirt and jeans, crouched, moving carefully, returning to the hunt.

And so I hunted too. What I was born for. Emerged in the light and followed the edge of brush uphill, remained close and hidden against it, my right arm scraped at by spines and thorns. The lower glade an arena, and the two of us circling along its edges in opposite directions.

Tom working his way toward that stand of sugar pines at the bottom, but I could see nothing there except shade and more of the cones that appeared giant even from a distance. Tom become smaller and nearly invisible against the dark brush, known only by his movement. What we expected to find was unclear. We could already see the entire glade, and there was plenty of space under those trees, no place for a buck to hide. We were circling a great emptiness.

I was close to the fire road hidden somewhere behind this brush, and then I was pushing through, leaving the glade and Tom, trying to become thin as the branches clung. Stepping sideways, rifle out front in my left hand. The scratches along my arm a pleasure, a relief from the itching welts and boils of poison oak, and then an ache. I could feel it spreading and growing in this heat, taking over more and more of my skin. Welling along my belly and sides, scraped at also as my T-shirt rode up, a pleasure and pain surging. Dry, everything dry, and I hadn’t had water in hours. Dizzy and the top of my head wavering. And I wondered if I was off course and the fire road not here at all, just wading into dry brush that would never end.

The brush became only thicker and more difficult, as it always does. And I thought of rattlesnakes, of course, beginning to panic. Trapped and held in place, trying to ram myself through, head yanking around to look in every direction at once, skin on fire from the oak, the sun burning down and no air to breathe. Where my feet stepped, I couldn’t see.

Duration. What nature offers us is duration, the promise that when we panic and are trapped and want to be anywhere else, that moment will extend and continue and grow and become only worse. This world invented for reasons that didn’t take us into account, but we forget that and so we underestimate.

I panicked and reversed direction, as we do. Tried to go back the way I had come, dragging the rifle behind me now. But what I had passed through had become more impassable, each branch and thorn accelerated in its growth, and before long I had veered off and was on no path and no longer sure of direction.

No compass in fear. The world spins and tilts and cannot be held constant. Trapped and also lost, and snakes everywhere. Our first fear, the serpent, with us from the beginning, the source of dread, the external form of what we feel writhing in our hearts.

I reversed direction again, lunging for the fire road, veering and lost in new brush, pushing through with my rifle. Scratched and raw and consumed in heat and fright until my hand with the rifle hit open air and I pumped my legs and pushed through and was born onto the fire road, released.

I felt the buck before I saw him, felt the recognition and charging of every muscle, and I was already pushing down on the bale, levering a shell. He was sideways to me, no more than a hundred feet away up the road, rear haunches compressing and head going low for the spring, the sun behind me and every hair on his gray-brown hide visible in this late light. A big three-pointer lit up in the sun, just as I had imagined the day before, become real now, thick horns undeniable, large black eyes and a soul.

His eyes looking at me for only an instant then turning and he threw himself forward into air and brush, thin lower legs and hooves angled back, rippling of muscle, a beautiful symmetry and power, and my rifle was already up at my shoulder and I aimed without the sight, aimed only by feel and pulled the trigger without any decision as he dissolved into brush and only the back half of him remained and the rifle kicked against me, an explosion and smell of sulfur and some great shock to the rear half of him like the hand of god, some terrible blow that swept his haunches sideways and pulled him back from the brush and flattened muscle and shattered bone. The back half of him thrown down into the dirt, and the rest of him came after, screaming. No different from a human voice. Screaming and his head back, voice raised to the heavens in pain and confusion and rage. High-pitched, no beast, no bellowing, but human and frightened.