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Authors: Sarah Leipciger

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BOOK: The Mountain Can Wait
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The slope flattened and he followed the undulation to a lichen-covered boulder, where he stopped to rest. He took off his fleece, rolled it into a ball, and stuffed it into his pack. Mosquitoes bounced off him languidly—so many more now because he wasn't moving—and he puffed them away from his face, swished his hand above his head like the tail of a horse. Mosquitoes drove some people to tear at their own hair, run in circles swearing, taking it personally—but it was no use getting worked up about it. They were a fixture in all this and it was only blood they wanted, and it would always be this way. He watched one of them deftly work its probe under the skin of his forearm, its abdomen swelling a deep burgundy as it drank.

Fragments of thought lit up and then were gone, like fireflies: The Erin dream. Curtis telling him about this new girl. Beer bottles in the dirt. The last time he saw Carolina, disappointed, her face surrounded by sky. Nix stretching her arms above her head.

He ate half an apple and moved farther up the mountain. Sweat dampened his hair, salted his skin, and the effort of the climb bit chunks out of the things that were bothering him. The breeze off the lake blew softly through the pines, the fir, the gentle sound brushing, muffling everything. Far off, the hollow echo of the woodpecker's knock; in Tom's ear, his own breath and the constant hum of mosquito. There were signs of animals that kept well hidden: bear scat, fox prints, the
chit chit chit
of some tree-dwelling vermin. He concentrated on the terrain under his feet, anticipated the peak. He stopped and turned to see if there was a view of the lake, if he could gauge how far he had gone in—what was it, an hour? Two hours? The bush—mainly pine but dotted with mountain hemlock and spruce—was too dense to see anything other than the far-off glint of sunshine on water. He leaned against pitted stone and opened his water bottle, took a long swig, and screwed the cap back on. He snorted at mosquitoes, pincered a fat one, and rolled its sticky carcass into a ball, his own blood left on his fingers. The alpine couldn't be too far off now. The trees were sparse there and he would be able to see right across the water to camp. But the going was rough. His boots often got caught in the scrub. Branches and irksome thornbushes hooked his bootlaces and his jeans. He hadn't worked his body this hard in a long time and he welcomed the burning tug along the muscles of his arms and legs.

A vein of moisture—slimy rock and moss—cut across his path and he followed it until he came to water trickling over a deep stone groove. He followed the trickle until it widened to a brook running fast and white, the last of the spring runoff. He drank, splashing the ice-cold water over his neck and face. This mountain water was like blood in the body, nourishing the body, flushing it out. This was something he would mention to Carolina. She might really dig that. Or not: she might think he was trying too hard.

Soon enough the trees began to thin and the ground became clear of low-lying plants and shrubs. The pitch leveled off and eventually Tom was scrambling across a plateau of dry, thin dirt and lichen and rock. Patches of purple and pink, yellow and white alpine flowers grew in hardy little clumps between the seams of silvery-green rock. Whitebark pine and larch trees clung to life here too, tenacious on the rocky slopes, with tough, withered roots bent like fingers gripping a ledge. He looked out across the lake and could see his camp, the cream-white mess tent.

From here the peak was less than an hour's climb. He drank some of the water from his bottle and stood facing the wind. His skin was soon dry and his wet t-shirt cold; he pulled his fleece back on and scrambled the rest of the way to the top.

  

The peak was a bald, rocky flat that sloped down to bowl toward the west side of the mountain. To the north the ridge dipped and flattened to form a carpeted valley with the next peak, and to the south it dropped dramatically into a series of steep draws. There were blackflies and noseeums, but other than that, there was only the wind. Because this was just the right kind of place to run into a grizzly—good roaming territory and few bloodsuckers—he whooped and whistled to announce his presence, avoid a surprise meeting. He sat down and relaxed his arms across his knees, threw back his head, and closed his eyes. He tried to think of nothing but the wind, and of the air filling his lungs, and of the blood keeping him warm. He ached a little, felt a little bit old. The skin on his knuckles and at the base of his fingernails had been scraped back by rocks. His fingernails were full of earth. He inspected the deep lines of his palms and the tanned, roughened, marked backs of his hands, and considered how he had come to
this
place. Powered here under his own engine, with his own fuel. The people he had allowed to enter him. And his children. His children? Like letting his heart and his lungs go walking off without him. Couldn't quit them, even if he wanted to. And sometimes he wanted to. More than anything. He looked out across the lake to the camp and the old mountains rolling away like a song beyond it. It's good to be here, he thought.

  

His knees objected with cautious, wobbly jolts on the descent. When clear spots opened up in the trees, giving sight to landmarks across the water, he took compass readings and kept himself generally on a course that would lead back to the canoe. The descent took an hour, and when the lake came into view at level ground, he was not at the little beach where he'd left the canoe. He edged through a tightly packed clump of alders, ferns, and huckleberry onto a thin band of dark mud at the water's edge. Leaning out, he looked to the north and south but couldn't see the boat. He shrugged his bag off his shoulders and hung it from a branch, and then stripped down entirely and walked out until the water reached his knees. His feet sank into mud; he thought briefly of leeches. He did a shallow dive into the dark, lapping water, and the cold took his breath away. A burn tingled across his collarbone, licked down his arms and legs. When he surfaced he called out a loud whoop that echoed in the forest. With his head up, he took several hard strokes into deeper water so he could get a wider view of the shore. He dove deeply and opened his eyes to a reddish murk, pulled hard breaststrokes, spun around, and surfaced again to face the shore. From here he could see that the little beach with the canoe was only a few hundred meters to the north. He coasted out deeper into the lake, taking mouthfuls of the mineral-rich water and spraying it out again. It tasted like pine, like iron, a little like blood. Relishing the silky freedom of being naked, he spun and did somersaults and shot down as deep as he could to where it was darker and colder and the pressure on his ears made them tick. He spun and spun and his stomach flopped so much that it brought a laugh from his belly to his lips.

  

That night, Roland and Matt and Sweet built a bonfire next to the lake and fed it until it raged, and all the planters gathered around and watched as the smoke billowed and blacked out the stars. Tom held a mug of black coffee and watched the flames from the steps of his trailer, and he watched Nix walk across the clearing toward him. Without a word, she sat next to him and passed him a plastic container full of berries she'd gathered from the side of the road. Soft, red-capped thimbleberries, blueberries, sweet strawberries no bigger than a thumbnail. Sweet threw strips of wax-coated cardboard from the seedling boxes into the fire, which would ignite with white flame, then send shreds of black drift into the air, landing like fallout. Tom thought about Nix's leg next to his, the bounce of firelight in her face.

And later on, while he hunched toward the mirror in his trailer, working a strawberry seed out of his back teeth with his tongue, someone knocked lightly at his door. He knew it was her. He opened the door and looked past her to the fire that by this time had died down, the silhouettes of a dozen bodies around it still. A banjo sounded, and faraway laughter. Nix put her hand on his chest and pushed him back, ducked into the trailer, and slid onto the long seat. She brought with her the smell of the fire, and drummed her fingers on the table, the tips pink from picking berries.

He leaned against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest.

“Look at this,” she said, holding both wrists out to him, belly white and marked with burns. “Oven scars. It's that tiny hovel you make me work in.”

“You should be more careful.”

She looked around the small space, picked up a short spirit level from the table, and turned it in her hands. “What do you need this for out here?” She held the small green window of liquid up to her eye.

“I don't.”

“So why do you have it?”

“It was in my toolbox.”

She lined the spirit level against the wall. “Your trailer is uneven.”

“There something you needed?” he asked.

“What is it with you, chief? This whole wolf thing you do.”

He shook his head and laughed.

“You just…disappear, and then you show up, and then, poof, gone again. You're always alone.”

“I'm hardly ever alone.”

“But you'd like to be.”

He shrugged, fiddled with the stub of a pencil in his pocket, a box of matches on the counter. He strung together some other words but his voice sounded as if it were coming out of someone else's mouth.

She awkwardly pushed herself up from the table, struggling to swing her knees out, and came around to where he was and kissed him. She was a good shot. With one hand she cupped his jaw; the other was on the back of his head. Physically, she was different from Carolina in every way. Where Carolina was soft, Nix was hard. Where Carolina's body swooped or gave, Nix's angled, pushed. He stopped thinking about Carolina and moved to the weight of Nix's small tits in his mouth, the strength in her arms, her legs, the mechanics of her ribs rolling under her skin, her clit like a thimbleberry. He thought about the heat coming off her, even after it was over and he was wondering how he was going to get her to leave.

The old,
boxy diesel train, comprised of one small coach and two flatbeds loaded with seedling boxes, departed early in the morning from the Takla Landing outpost and chugged slowly up the lake's eastern shore. The train meandered past the northern tip of the lake and along the wide valley floor of the Driftwood River, heading north until the tracks wound their way westward past mountains whose names Tom didn't know, Tatlatui Provincial Park somewhere to the east, the bush so dense and untraveled that the open windows of the coach caught the odd tree branch, snapping the brittle ones off. The loudest sound was the rolling
cachungcachung
of the train's weight going over the ties, like the heartbeat of some sleeping bull moose.

A few days had passed since the night in the trailer with Nix, and Tom, Matt, and Matt's crew were cramped together in the coach; the planters were at the windows, staring into the heart of the bush and joking about losing their minds the deeper they went. Their destination was a logging camp in the seat of the mountains, where the only roads were the potholed dirt tracks that led from the small camp to the cutblocks, and the felled trees were lifted out by helicopter. They would be there for a week.

Dozing, Tom thought about Erin and the steam train. This was in the time after Elka left, when he still believed he might find her and bring her home; when, for the sake of his kids, he wanted so much to see her that he mistook strangers for his wife. Erin was two years old and the fair was in town. A kiddie train steamed and whistled round and round a track by the riverbank for fifty cents a go, and he and Erin sat in the caboose, his knees up to his chin. The wind was up, and as they were coming past the small wooden platform of the station for the second or third time, he watched a folding chair tumble past the hot dog stand, past the candy floss drum that spun rags of pink sugar into the wind. The chair came to rest at the feet of a woman who, for one glance, was Elka. Slim, with dark waist-length hair that blew across her face. She wore a red skirt that was blowing too, and as she bent over to right the chair, he turned in the small awkward seat and strained his neck to see her, but the little train continued its cycle and he was looking at the river. When they came around once more, the train stopped at the platform and Erin said, “Again.” Tom passed two more quarters to the conductor and settled into his knees and didn't look for the woman in the red skirt because damned if he was going to be fooled by need.

Now the diesel train wound down, shuddered, and stopped. Tom and Matt woke up those who were sleeping. The planters climbed wearily off the train and threw their bags clear of the tracks. They spent the next two hours unloading the seedlings and covering the cache securely with tarps. The conductor popped the whistle and wished them good luck, and as the train grumbled away they shouldered their bags and humped the few hundred meters into Camp Minaret.

The logging camp, in a dusty, rocky clearing, was small and functional; five long boxcars coupled together in a row, elevated on concrete blocks. A mesh steel gangway ran the length of the boxcars, accessed by a set of stairs at each end, with another set midway. From the other side of the cars came the powerful hum of a large generator. No one came to greet them. Accustomed to waiting, the planters dropped their bags to the ground, sat against them, and smoked. Someone strummed a guitar. Three mud-splattered trucks pulled into camp and parked side by side. These were the loggers, back from a day of felling on the high slopes of the mountain. With heavy boots they climbed down from the cabs and the flatbeds and crossed the clearing to the boxcars, glancing at the planters without much interest. They clanged up the stairs to the gangway and headed to their bunks, the showers. Tom climbed the stairs after them and walked toward the front car, past yellow bunk doors, the shower and toilet block, the mess. He found the manager's office, a stuffy room off the back of the kitchen, with a small window that looked to the rear of camp and, beyond that, a gentle, snow-brushed peak. From here he could see the manager standing by the tree line, hands on his hips, peering into the bush.

  

Small and sinewy, the manager smoked hard on a roll-up and spit into the dirt as Tom approached him. He looked at Tom and then looked back into the trees.

“I thought,” he said, squinting into the green, “that you guys were coming two days ago. Don't know why I expected things to go as planned, but there you go. I've got thirteen steaks that need to be eaten tonight before they turn. I hope your tree huggers eat meat.”

“Most of them do and they'll be glad to eat the share of those who don't,” said Tom.

The manager cocked his head and put up his palm for silence. He and Tom listened. The manager ran a ropey hand through his hair, through to the ducktail at the back—molded most likely from decades of wearing a cap. His blue eyes were smiling even though his mouth wasn't.

“What's going on?” asked Tom, his voice low.

“Gray water,” the manager said. He gestured for Tom to follow him and they walked to the back of the mess car, where in the dirt was a large puddle, a skin of grease on its surface pocked with gobs of food and dish soap. The puddle was fed by a plastic pipe coming from the kitchen.

“Can't you cover it?” asked Tom. “Barrel it?”

The manager rubbed his stubbled chin. “We covered it with sheet metal, weighted it with breeze blocks, and she tore that off like it was paper. We could barrel it, but then where do we empty the barrel? Thing is, it hasn't really been a problem so we just let her eat as much as she wanted. Bear's been coming early in the morning and then again after dinner. The boys call her Old Mrs. They stand out there on the gangway after dinner and watch her through the couplings. Few days ago, though, one of the boys opens his door up first thing, up there at the far end of the bunks, and Old Mrs. nearly falls into his room. She must've climbed them steps looking for more food and got comfortable and fell asleep right there against the door. Made herself right at home. She took off pretty quick but then she came back and pulled the same stunt this morning. She skedaddled again but not before she hissed at him for a good long while.”

“She's getting too comfortable.”

“Fucken right she is. No one here's got a bear tag. They're telling me we're going to have to helicopter someone in.”

“I've got one,” said Tom. “Didn't apply for it but I got it in the lottery with my deer tag.”

The manager smiled broadly. “Well isn't that tidy? You can shoot her for us tomorrow.”

“What kind of hardware have you got?”

“Ruger M77 okay?”

“That's all you've got?”

“That's it.”

  

The manager assigned their rooms and then they gathered in the mess car to eat. The loggers filled half the tables, talking quietly over steaks and boiled vegetables and coffee. By their elbows were stacks of white sliced bread on plates, dishes of butter. Powdery gray pepper in plastic shakers.

Word of the bear had gotten around, and when they finished eating, the planters went outside to watch for her, or they crowded the windows of the rec car, where there was a mini pool table and a shelf of old puzzles and board games. A television that received four stormy channels.

Tom's small box room was exactly like the one he'd stayed in when he logged. Fabricated white board walls, a desk and chair, a mirror. One very small window, a thin yellow curtain on a plastic rail. He took off his watch and put it on the shelf under the mirror, unrolled his sleeping bag, and laid it on the cot. He sat on the edge of the cot and stretched his neck and rubbed his hands up and down the back of it. From outside came the vibrations of people walking up and down the gangway, the sound of heavy boots on the mesh. He shifted back and leaned against the cold wall, closed his eyes to the room, and saw again small details of Nix: scabbed blackfly bites on her neck and the backs of her knees, the burns on the insides of her wrists, the fine hair on her legs. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the cot, and held his head in his hands. There was no real need for him to be here. He pinched the bottom edge of the thin curtain and held it up, peered out the window. A half-moon shone brilliantly out of a clear evening sky, darkening blue.

Since it was too early to sleep, he left his small room and went down the gangway. Matt was there with some of the planters, watching the bear as she lapped at the grease in the puddle. Her coat was light brown and mangy. She was skinny, which explained her daring, her desperation for food. She looked old. Aware of the people watching her, and completely uninterested, she tongued up gulps of the rank water, swinging her great head and eyeing them occasionally down her long, dripping snout.

None of this was her fault; he didn't want to kill her.

One of the planters frowned. “He looks depressed,” he said.

“It's a she,” Tom said.

“Can't they just fly it somewhere?”

“She's no fool,” he said. “She'd find her way back.”

BOOK: The Mountain Can Wait
2.94Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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