Within moments, though, the tide of luminosity returned and blanketed the darkness and with it, the despair. I realized then, as if in some drug-induced anesthetic twilight sleep, that the surge of light against dark was nothing so dramatic as a spiritual battle or otherworldly clash, it was simply my own attempt at opening my eyes, separating my top eyelid from the bottom. But I couldn’t. Like a sea scallop opening the halves of its shell, revealing its legion of black eyes, the lids covering my orbs opened only a fraction to allow the ebb of light to wash through the vitreous humor and bring the cascade of light onto my beach of gloom.
Within seconds, or maybe minutes or hours, a voice joined the light. A male’s voice, deep, strong, clear. Familiar. It enunciated my name perfectly, over-accenting the first syllable.
I tried to focus on the voice, but it was too far in the distance, maybe a half-mile, across open field, but on the down side of a sloping hill.
I tried to force my lids apart again while a wave of light rushed in, but quickly receded and surrendered to the darkness once more.
My face felt warm, flushed.
Other than hearing the voice, seeing the occasional wave of brilliance, and feeling the odd warmth on my face, none of my other senses worked. I felt as though I were floating in a jelly-like substance temperatured at exactly 98.6 degrees. Absent the burden of gravity, and if I could move my limbs, I might have been able to free myself from the gelatinous substance, flap my arms, and rise into the atmosphere.
Again, seconds, minutes, or hours later I discovered another sense, another neural pathway that remained intact—pain. I tried to swallow, just a feeble contracting of the esophageal muscles, and was unmercifully scolded by the sensation of swallowed shards of glass in my throat.
The voice came again, riding on a wave of white-hot light, saying my name. I tried to respond, tried to initiate the cords of my larynx but was once again rebuked by a stab of raw pain. I tried to respond by lifting an arm, a finger, turning my head, puckering my lips, twitching my nose, but nothing worked. Like a severed electrical cord still plugged into the wall outlet, the power was there, but the circuitry was disconnected.
Then the darkness overwhelmed the light, engulfed it whole and swallowed it in one elephantine gulp, and I drifted off on a sea of ebony, that, for all I knew, was a sea of iniquity and would carry me to the shores of Hades.
* * *
Movement. Weight. My stomach churned, my throat burned. A chill ran through my body, coursing along contracted muscles and tingling along the surface of my skin. I rolled my head to the side and pried open my eyes. Light blinded me and washed everything in dazzling luster. When the haze of brilliance cleared, a tangle of wooden arms, coated in leaves, stretched above me, protecting me, shielding me from the vast expanse of nothingness above them. Aged sentries stood guard, stoic, immobile, loyal.
The voice was there again, too. Broken in pieces, like a radio program heard on some foreign station too far away for good reception, I heard only fragments. “It’s okay . . . Billy . . . get . . . out of here . . . dad . . . safe.”
Dad. At the sound of the word dad fear overtook me, and I opened my mouth to scream but the pain in my throat, those shards of glass I couldn’t swallow, was simply too much. I tried to cry, wanted to cry, because crying meant I was still alive, could still feel and emote. Crying was life. But the tears wouldn’t come; the faucet had been shut off.
The ground under me bounced and jostled, but I was floating, moving.
I looked around for the source of the voice which this time sounded closer, just feet away but my eyelids were heavy, tugged down by weights beyond my control.
Again, darkness, gloom, the absence of light, crowded in and pulled me under.
* * *
The scrape of metal, the squeak of a wheel begging for oil, the whisper of clothing, the hush of voices. Slowly my surroundings developed, still shrouded in blackness. I was lying in a bed—my bed at home, in my room? People were in my room. I couldn’t see them as my eyes were once again fused shut, but I could hear them, their voices, the swish of their clothes as they moved, the tap of their shoes on the floorboards, a cough here, a sniff there. Sounds from outside filtered in through . . . an open window? More people talking, metallic sounds, dry gears, whining wheels. Confusing sounds, misplaced, from another era, another location. Had I been dreaming? Was I still dreaming, trying desperately to climb out of a nightmare that had captured me body and soul?
I had no memory of anything, no recollection of past events, even the ones most recent. Had I gone to bed the previous night, rested my head on my pillow like any other night? Had I failed to awaken at first light?
I fought against the despair that enveloped me like a dense fog. I wanted to wake up. I had to wake up. Dad and Mom and Henry needed me. Aaron needed me. Pop needed me.
Sudden realization was like a lightning bolt through my bones. Dad. Pop. Henry. They were in danger, nearing death, walking a precipice overlooking the bottomless pit where doomed souls are banished for eternity. They need me. They need me.
Panic, alarm, anxiety swelled in my chest and crowded my internal organs. My stomach knotted, nerve endings tingled, muscles cramped.
A word, like a tiny mustard seed, slipped into the darkness and burrowed into my mind. Rapidly, as if it had undergone some miraculous transformation, it grew, developed, matured, from a jumble of five letters to an idea, to a thought, to a principle, to an ideal, to a promise: Trust.
* * *
My mother’s voice drifted to me like a bottle on a calm sea. I was now in my own room, in my own home, on my own farm. I knew it, could feel it and smell the familiar aromas. Though my eyes were still closed, I could see my room as if I were sitting up in bed, wide-eyed at high noon. My dresser was to my right. On it sat a brass lamp with a faded white shade. Next to the dresser was my bookshelf, chock full of the classic works of Dickens and London and Cooper and Stevenson, textbooks covering everything from mathematics to astronomy to biology to history, Bibles, commentaries, collections of sermons, and a myriad of other theological writings.
To my left sat my mother—Mom—on the wooden spindle chair that was usually positioned in the corner of my room. Her hand, warm and soft, caressed my forehead, then my cheek, then back to my forehead, smoothing back my hair with the tenderness only a mother could show.
All at once, like a great tidal force, the memories of the past three days flooded my brain. The hunting trip. The cabin. Pop missing. Dad injured. Henry beaten. Nazis. Germans. Peter. The hanging.
I sat straight up in bed and jerked my eyes open. Light blinded me for an instant but when the starbursts cleared I saw Mom sitting right where I had imagined her, shock stretching her face into a look of almost-horror, as if she’d taken me for dead and was traumatized by my sudden resurrection.
I looked at her. She looked at me. Beads of sweat popped out across my forehead. My pulse galloped like a runaway steed.
I opened my mouth and tried to say something but my throat wouldn’t cooperate. Grimacing, grabbing handfuls of bed linen, bracing myself for the searing pain, I swallowed past the glass shards and forced words from my mouth. “Dad. Henry.”
Mom stroked my hair, her hand as gentle as I’d ever felt it, as if she thought to apply more pressure would be to push me away and lose me forever. “They’re both okay, honey. Alive. Pop, too.”
I rolled my eyes around the room, taking in the familiarity of the scene and letting it comfort me. When I reached Mom’s soft face, tears welled in my eyes and blurred her smile. At forty-five she looked more like fifty-five. She’d aged at least ten years in the past few days. I could only imagine the grief she’d suffered and the thought of continuing on with life minus all three of her sons and her husband. I reached out my hand and took hers, tried a weak smile.
“How? What?” I croaked. My voice was hoarse and dry and every syllable sent a fresh scratch of pain down my throat.
Mom squeezed my hand. “Uncle Will an
d a search team found you.” She wiped my tears with her free hand, and I noticed she had tears of her own puddling in her eyes.
“Nazis?” I asked, half-afraid they’d escaped and would return to haunt us and finish the job, half-afraid they were just a figment of my overactive imagination.
Mom nodded and a tear spilled from her eye and drew a silver streak down her cheek. “They found four. Two dead in the woods. Two unconscious near where they found you. Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. What you must have gone through up there on that mountain.”
I opened my mouth to talk. I wanted to ask what happened, why I hadn’t died of hanging, but knew she wouldn’t have answers. She couldn’t. I had endured that nightmare alone. Only I would remember the horrors that had taken place on Bear Mountain. I was sure Dad and Henry were too incoherent to remember anything and Pop’s Alzheimer’s would prove to be a blessing, blocking any memory of the ordeal from his mind, like a broom sweeping away evidence of a crime.
Mom shushed me and, knowing my insatiable curiosity, continued. “When they found you, you were on the ground with a rope around your neck.” She paused and put a hand to her mouth, holding back a sob. “Uncle Will . . . he thought . . . he thought you were dead. The branch had broken, struck by lightning. The German soldiers were unconscious. Oh Billy, I’m so sorry. My baby, I’m sorry.”
The tears came freely then, sliding down her cheeks in streams of salty joy and grief. Sniffling, she took my hand in both of hers and rubbed it.
I swallowed again and winced. “Peter.”
“Who’s Peter, darling?” She must have been able to read the look on my face; Mom always understood me the best, could see right through my exterior and interpret the language of my heart. “There was no one else, dear. Just you, Henry, Daddy, Pop, and the four German men. The soldiers.”
Letting go of my hand and reaching for something on the floor, she held up a newspaper, folded into thirds. “Here’s a photo taken at the scene where they found you. It was in today’s newspaper.”
Today. I looked at the date in the upper right hand corner. I’d been out nearly three days. Three days since the rescue. Dropping my eyes down the page, I read the headline—Search Ends In Surprise—then studied the grainy black and white picture. Uncle Will was there, facing Chief Macky. In the foreground, kneeling on one knee, bent over Dad, was Doc Wilson. Behind Uncle Will were four other men, members of the search party. Two wore uniforms of some sort, maybe military, large men with broad shoulders and thick necks and short-cropped hair. Of the other two, one was Luke Wilson, wearing his trademark coonskin cap. And the other was a dark-haired man I didn’t recognize at first. He looked at something to his right, hands in his pockets, a soft smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. His black trousers were hiked high, held up by suspenders, and his white shirt was wrinkled but clean. His face was familiar though, gradual lines framing an almost child-like innocence. I knew him from somewhere . . .
My heart thudded and thumped like a misfiring engine. Gripping the paper tighter, I brought it to within inches of my nose and studied the familiar face. Heat broke out on my forehead and neck, and my jaw line tingled. There, in the black and white photo, was a face I would never forget. I did know him.
It was Peter.
Suddenly, it all made sense. The glowing, the pyro-skills, the healing, the Franciscan way with animals, the strange knowledge. The innocence. The sacrifice.
Words from Scripture, ancient words, seeped into my mind and lingered like morning dew in April.
. . . some have entertained angels unawares.
Peter wasn’t a Nazi, wasn’t even German, wasn’t even mortal.
I closed my eyes and let the paper slip from my hands. I heard it slide off the bed and land on the floor with papery quietness. I heard myself exhale, heard Mom say, “Billy, what’s wrong, dear? Billy?”
Tears rose behind my closed eyes and squeezed out between the lids. I heard myself choke out a sob, then utter a two-word prayer: “I trust.”
41
Some say that people never change. Not really. They may try to change and make quite a good run at it, but in the end we are what we are. From the time we’re born, and probably even before, our personality, likes, dislikes, tastes, and distastes are already decided for us. Fate, like a painter with a palette full of pre-chosen colors, paints the picture of our life. To some extent we have a say over how the circumstances of life play out, but our pre-determined array of colors ordains how we respond to those circumstances. The palette contains our personality, our heart, our soul. Some are blessed with a palette of amusing, bright-as-a-summer-day, circus-colors, some are guaranteed a life of ease with colors befitting royalty and luxury, and still some are cursed with a palette full of browns, blacks, and grays. And try as we may to change our colors, to trade black for blue or gray for green, in the end it is a fruitless endeavor. We’re given what we’re given, and we are what we are.
I say that is mostly rubbish.
Six weeks after the “incident on Bear Mountain”—that’s what the newspapers were calling it—I shuffled down our concrete sidewalk, smelling of barley and dust, hands shoved into the pockets of my overalls, ball cap sitting cockeyed atop my head, and stepped up onto our front porch. My back ached, my feet felt three boot-sizes larger, my hands were as rough as old leather, and sweat glued my shirt to my chest and back.
Reclined in a wicker rocking chair, swaying slowly as if blown by a gentle breeze, Dad tilted his head to one side and folded the newspaper on his lap. One leg was bent at the knee, foot resting on the worn boards of the porch, the other leg, casted to just below the knee, was propped on a stool. The ankle had been sprained and the foot broken in two places.
Still not used to seeing my dad as an invalid, I diverted my eyes and glanced at Henry, sitting in a rocker beside Dad, jaw wired shut, right arm suspended in a sling, loose shirt hiding the bandages that encased the better part of his torso. His face still bore the muted bruising from the beating he’d endured, and his left eye sagged at the corner as if it were melting. On a small table between Dad and Henry sat two half-empty glasses of iced tea (Henry’s with a straw) and a Bible. Dad had taken to reading from the Bible every day and, when Henry accompanied him on the porch, would read it aloud.
“I fed and watered the cows in the north field, and Uncle Will helped me bail the barley,” I said, wiping a steady flow of perspiration from my forehead. Since the “incident” the brunt of the farm work, of keeping the animals fed and watered, their stalls clean, and the fields ready for winter, had fallen to me.
Dad played general from the porch, directing me with wheres and hows and whys and I carried out the orders like a dutiful soldier.
Doc Wilson said it’d be another six to eight weeks before Henry would be well enough to take the lead. And as for Dad, it all depended on how well that ankle and foot healed and how quickly the muscles could recover.
As for me? Doc Wilson suggested I see a psychologist to talk about the ordeal I’d suffered. I didn’t want to at first but after some thought saw the benefit in conversing with someone who was paid to listen and be indifferent. Non-judgmental. I hadn’t told anyone but my family and Doc Wilson about Peter. I’m not sure if they believed me or agreed with my hypothesis about who he was but they sure didn’t disagree.
The psychologist, Doctor Ingrid, suggested that Peter was berthed by my subconscious mind as a way of dealing with the stress of the moment. In short, he was merely a figment of my imagination, some alter ego I’d created to be everything I was not. Peter was wise, he was brave, he had a plan, he could start fires with his bare hands. He was what I could not be. But in the end, Doctor Ingrid said Peter was not real.
I could see his point; Peter was an imaginary companion. And I would have been inclined to entertain the thought if not for that photo in the newspaper. A week after my first session with Doctor Ingrid I visited Luke Wilson and asked him about that man. Luke said the man’s name was Max Abrahamsen, a Norwegi
an who had recently moved to Maine, heard about the search, and joined in at the last moment. I tried to track down Mr. Abrahamsen but have had no luck. Go figure.
I saw Doctor Ingrid for two more sessions then informed him that I would no longer be in need of his ear. If I wanted someone to talk to I would just dream up an imaginary psychologist and bend his ear in every direction. Actually, I never said that second part but thought it plenty of times.
Funny thing, in the few short weeks I’d been working the farm, I’d actually grown to enjoy the labor, the cool air in my lungs, the muscle-burn of exertion, the sweat of accomplishment. I knew what Dad meant when he said that hard work pushed someone a little closer to God. Using the body He’d given me and working the land He’d created was a spiritual experience like I’d never known.
Dad smiled at me and nodded. “Good job, son.” Then, turning his head toward Henry, he said, “What do you think, Henry, think he’s got potential?”
Henry nodded and smiled and winked at me. Doc Wilson said Henry had suffered two broken ribs, a busted jaw, fractured cheekbone, and a concussion.
“So what’s next?” I asked.
Dad pulled himself up straight in the chair and motioned toward the remaining empty rocker. “Next you sit for a spell and rest. I got something here that will interest you.”
Just then Mom pushed open the screen door, a tall glass of iced tea in her hand. “For you, Billy,” she said, handing me the glass.
I took the glass, thanked her, planted my seat in the rocker, and drained half the tea with one long swig. If I’d never made it off that mountain, if I’d ended up in the hands of the Nazis, shipped back to Germany, if I’d found myself imprisoned in a concentration camp, one of the things I would have missed most about life on the farm was Mom’s extra-sweet iced tea.
While I wiped my mouth with the sleeve of my flannel shirt, Dad tapped the newspaper. “Says here Army intelligence found four more cells of Nazis up North. Two near Moosehead, two around Caribou. Four men to a cell. Says they were on their way to rendezvous with a U-boat just off the coast of Maine. Only thing is, there was no U-boat. War’s over and those Krauts didn’t even know they were on the losing side.”
Fear Mountain Page 20
