Goat mountain

So I eased away from that tree and began falling again, frantically crabbing to the side to get in line with the next trunk. Dangling off the edge of the world, it felt like. A place my father would never have brought me before. All rules had changed.

I hit that next trunk and stood on it, lay back against the slope and closed my eyes, everything inside spi

I slid down to the next trunk, and the next, until I was in a chute of larger rocks, reddish and veined, and these I could climb down through carefully, the footholds solid. A river of rock in motion too slow to see. A river of flesh, dark red and marbled in white, muscle of this mountain exposed. This was not our land. I had never been here before, and I wanted to leave.

I could see my father at a wide boulder in the creek below, rifle out, elbows braced on the rock, sca

The weight of the slide above me, tension of each rock holding every other rock in place, flexing under strain, and I was in a mad rush to get out from under. Ru

Quiet, he said.

My breath shaking out of me, the canyon rims above seeming to pull inward, the sky receding, sucked away in a vacuum. Is this part of the ranch? I asked.

No.

My father concentrated as he sca

There’s no way out, my father said. Not this canyon, but what you’ve done. There’s no way out.

He shouldered his rifle and stepped down through the center of the canyon, from rock to rock at the water’s edge. I followed and couldn’t see what lay below us. Enormous rocks blocked our vision. Smaller stones and boulders rounded and smooth, but these great slabs of cliff had fallen and never been moved since. They’d taken trees and soil with them, some still fringed where the water couldn’t reach. We never visited in winter, when all was moved and shaped. We came in early fall, at the driest time, after the long hot summer, the water gone, difficult to understand the origin or shape of anything.

My father moving fast. I struggled to keep up. The slope gentle, but rocks everywhere. We came to the largest boulder yet, blocking the entire center of the gorge, small trees growing on top, and climbed along an edge and heard a crashing and snapping, a rush of sound too much to take in, a deer ripping out of branches and leaves on the other side. My father yelled and scrambled toward the top, his rifle up already, and there was a ricochet on the rock above him and the sound of the bullet slapping into the earth beside us and a puff of dust and then we heard the ti

Goddammit, my father yelled again, and he hid against that wall and grabbed for his rifle. More booms and pops, all sounds of the buck gone now, and my father climbed up and brought his rifle to his shoulder and was swinging the barrel back and forth, side to side, searching, but that was it. No more shots, no more hooves. Only the trickle of water on all sides.

You get him? my father yelled.

An echo, and they didn’t answer right away.

No, Tom finally yelled back.

Missed him, my grandfather yelled.

Nice work, my father said, but loud enough only for me to hear. He sat on a wide flat rock and inspected his rifle. I carry this for years, he said, here and in Nevada and Wyoming, in all kinds of weather, and I never get a single ding or spot of rust, and now it looks like I dragged it behind the truck.

The forward part of the stock, below the barrel, was darker wood, carved into a grip. Crushed now along the edge. The bluing of the barrel scratched, the bolt scratched, the scope dinged.

I’m so fucking angry, my father said, and then he stood and held his rifle high over his head in both hands and threw it down onto the rocks. This beautiful rifle that he loved. Crunching sound of wood and clattering and then it lay still, barrel angled upward, stock in the water.

My father breathing hard, arms hanging at his sides, looking down at his rifle. That gun is going to stay right fucking there. Don’t touch it.

Then he started up that slope, taking big steps and sliding back halfway on each, pulling at rock and weed with his hands. He didn’t look back, and I knew he wouldn’t care whether I made it out of there or not. His feet kicking into that mountain and hands ripping at everything above. This canyon the exposed flesh of the mountain, and he would punish.

I thought about picking up his rifle and slinging it over my shoulder, carrying it up to him. But he’d only be angry, even if that’s what he wanted. So I didn’t touch it. I followed and small rocks were flipping down the hill at me, kicked free by his boots, so I moved to the side and climbed my own path.

One hand holding my rifle and the other grabbing at dirt and rock and root. My chest against the ground, lying against the mountain as I climbed. Smell of dust and pine, the patches of needles so slick I had to keep traversing to find bare dirt and rock. Moving as fast as I could.

I didn’t look down, only at the wall of dirt in front of me, and I felt that I was tilting backward, that I would simply fall off the planet and keep falling and never hit ground again. I believed that what kept me from falling was only my own will, remade in every moment.

10

POX AND PLAGUES. THE GREAT FLOOD. LANGUAGE TURNED only to babbling. Humanity erased over and over. The Bible is about our fight against god. And somehow we’re more powerful, simply because of our will, because we’re persistent. We refuse to be erased.

It’s been a bitter fight. The great flood. Think of how many lost. Drowned like rats, no burials, no apologies, no reparations. God owes us. We have a long way to go to even the score. Imagine that wall of water coming over a hill, the sheep scattering, and you feel the cold breath of it, a thrill in that dry heat, the sudden change, and the sun is underwater, pale shafts of light reaching through the blue, and that can only be beautiful, the moments right before a

I had been to Sunday school since I could remember. My father’s one concession to religion. He didn’t go to church himself, only sent me, his only son sent in his name, ha ha.

My grandfather never spoke about religion, nor did Tom. Really they never spoke about anything except hunting and fishing.

I slithered my way up that steep canyon slope, my belly in the dirt, and I refused to be left behind. I did not pause or rest, and I kept that rifle clenched in my fist and wouldn’t let go. Taste of dirt, of all that has rotted and decayed and lain dormant, all that waits and then is released.