Goat Mountain Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.

3
    W E 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