David Vann: Goat Mountain

Eleven years old, Tom said. He’s eleven years old. This is unbelievable. My daughter is eleven years old.

My father was studying me. The sun so bright I was squinting, having to blink, but his gaze was steady. The buzzing a thousand voices, high and insistent, making each moment a panic.

You’ve ruined the rest of your life, my father told me. Are you old enough to understand that? You may live another eighty years, and every one of those years is destroyed by this.

His eyes a light blue, clear as water, unable to see outward. Sinkholes.

You’ve ruined my life too, he said.

My father could no longer reach me. He was the one person in this world to hold me in place, but he was powerless. I smiled. It was not something I planned, and it was only a bit of a smile, but there it was.

My father was very fast. I turned and ran, but in a few steps his hand was on my shoulder and he threw me down. Hard earth packed and dry. The small velvet eyes of manzanita leaves. He punched me and did not hold back. For the first time in my life, I felt what he could really do. His fists slapping into me as I curled, covering my head. He was swinging with both arms.

The fist in my back frightening. His knuckles hitting spine, waves of nausea, and I could hear his breath, leaning close over me. If you saw this from far enough away, you might think he was picking me up to hold in his arms, Madonna and child. Saving me from the wolves. But there was no danger from outside, nothing he could protect me against. What we had to fear was inside me, and he was not able to reach that. His fists did nothing. And I think he knew.

My father stopped and lay back in the dirt beside me. I could hear him panting. My body a confusion of pain, my brain unable to sort out where to focus. The air itself hurt. I knew at least not to do anything, not to say anything.

The flies a sound that could not be endured for long, the curve of each flight a distortion of sound, the tone gone lower, and hundreds or thousands of these Dopplers combined made a maw of the air, a growling that came from inside our own ears, without source, and I think it was this that made my father rise from the ground and walk over to the body. I uncurled and saw my father lean down to take this man’s hands and his rifle, and he began to drag him down that hillside.

WE THINK OF CAIN AS THE ONE WHO KILLED HIS BROTHER, but who else was around to kill? They were the first two born. Cain killed what was available. The story has nothing to do with brothers.

My father struggled with that body. What to do with it. None of us came close. My father alone pulling dead weight through brush and scrub, over dry ground, walking backward downhill at an impossible angle, hung out over the warp of the earth, held by a counterweight. He paused only long enough to flip the man’s rifle into the brush, then pulled the body again.

It’s your crime now, my grandfather said. Throwing away his rifle, moving the body. You should have left it like I said.

My grandfather was fifty feet away from my father and not looking at him. Talking as if to the sky.

The flies held still to that cave, erupting at each bump and jolt and settling again. The man facedown, arms held high in worship, head hung low in meekness before his god. Legs trailing behind, slow crawl of a penitent.

You’re going to be carrying that body farther than the truck, my grandfather said. You’re going to carry that body the rest of your life. It will never leave you. You should have left it like I said.

My father having to lunge backward through thick brush, yanking the body. Snap of dry branches and twigs, and the penitent always close behind, following, head lolling, arms raised toward my father and that open blue sky.

All I could do was follow. I followed those tracks exactly. And behind me, Tom.

Only a fool picks up what’s laid before him, my grandfather said. Only a fool.

My grandfather had grown up on a farm, told stories of peeling potatoes and adding a bit of extra protein when he scraped a finger. He ran traplines for meat and hides. Even as a kid I had a sense that he had picked up only what was laid before him.

Dragging that body down through manzanita, my father was struggling. I could see he wanted to quit. The flies a berserk horde. The sun directly overhead and his face formed in shadow, dark sockets for eyes, lines in his cheeks, his mouth another shadow. No longer cut out from the earth, no longer the same presence, diminished by this task, the edges of him connected now to air and brush and ground, made real.

I could grab his legs, I said.

Don’t touch him, my father said.

Why?

But my father wouldn’t answer. He only kept stepping backward down that slope until he hit pine and the body slid easily through needles and the growth was thin, and then he stepped faster, hurrying that body to its conclusion. A kind of sled made of the man, slurring down toward the road. When the slope dove more steeply, my father stepped to the side, swung with all his might, and the body tumbled the rest of the way, rag doll with the stuffing out.

At the road, my father looked toward the gate, but no one had come. Tom helped him now. They each grabbed a wrist and walked toward the truck, dragging the body between them. The man still facedown, the crater in his back still oriented to the sky. He could have been a drunk being dragged home by friends, but metaphor had become literal, the center blown out of him.

Pine-softened road, but at the bend it became rockier, and the man and his clothing were snagged and torn and covered in a white powdery dust. My father and Tom heaved him onto the mattress, swinging him like a hammock, Tom holding the feet. He landed without sound, and I climbed the tailgate to join.

We had to wait for my grandfather. Tom and my father in the cab of the truck, not speaking. The body stretched out behind me, lying across the bed faceup now.

Face of a ghost, white-dusted and bloodless, blue-lipped even in this heat. Eyes gone opaque from dust. Sideburns and hair different than on a living man, become distinct, unrelated to flesh. Mouth open. He could have been sleeping except for those open eyes, the open-eyed sleep of the dead.

I was losing my indifference. I sat back against the cab, but he was only a few feet from me, and he was nothing like an animal. Even in death, his expression was one of wanting more. A disbelief at being ended.

In the center of his chest was one small disruption, a rough dark entry point and a caving from gravity, all the backing gone.

His arms flung above his head, hands open. Shirt and vest dark and jeans dark and legs unstrung. A presence that would stay among us.

My grandfather appeared on the road. Heavy steps, never looking down. A thing that could topple at any moment, but he never looked where he stepped, only gazed blankly ahead, always unconnected to the ground. And this made any end possible.

No glance as he passed me. No glance at the body. Opened the cab door and heaved himself inside, the bed tilting beneath us and springs adjusting.

Then my father started the engine and we rolled forward as if this were any other trip, same as any other year. Up through a draw and then around a bend and the world opened up again. A long thin ridge fell off behind us to the left, steep slope of pines growing at a sharp angle to the land. A place too steep to hunt. Gray rock and slides of scree among the green, and the bottom of that place gone from view.

The road ahead traversing the mountain. I was on my knees and looking upslope to the right, not wanting to look at the dead man. Wind in my face, my hands low, the top of the cab too hot to touch. I had no rifle, but I looked for bucks anyway, something automatic in me.