I had to go on, but where was I going?
An escarpment of boulders and loose rock lay ahead of me. At its zenith was a cliff that looked impassable. I forced my tears to stop, then cut diagonally and upwards towards where a large group of trees converged with the bottom of the precipice. I was thirsty and thought that was the most likely place to find water as well as a passageway over the crest of the ridge I was on.
By mid-afternoon, I entered into the wood, discovering a clear path along the base of the granite wall. A movement ahead startled me. A dark blue blur—with four eyes and black hair. It didn’t belong.
Who?
A woman and child, wide-eyed and fearful.
We looked at each other speechless for a long second before they turned and ran. My reaction was slowed in disbelief.
“No, wait. Don’t go. No.” I couldn’t think of the Spanish words for wait or help or stop. The desperation in my voice must have added to their fear of me. The little boy began to shriek uncontrollably, and the woman looked back at me with a menacing glare.
She reminded me of Nora. Not only did she have similar Andean Indian features, but I knew instantly she understood how to survive and navigate in these mountains, and she would fight if I caught up to her.
My left leg was numb, I was exhausted, and they knew the trail. I couldn’t keep up with them, though I tried—hobbling behind, hollering in English.
“Stop. I need help. Please come back. I won’t hurt you.” I caught glimpses of them, each time further away, but they followed a well-worn path, raising my hopes I would be led to safety.
“Please come back. Please.”
After twenty minutes, I gave up my pursuit. I took a short rest, then followed the trail, buoyed by the hope of further contact with people. Not too long afterwards, I came across a small burlap bag. I poked at it with my crutch. Satisfied nothing inside it was alive and ready to pounce out at me, I untied its loose knot and slowly dumped the contents. Like a gift, a few bunches of hard-skinned fruit, that Cecilia had introduced me to, tumbled out.
Mamones. Maybe the lady or her kid dropped them.
I bit through the skin and sucked the peach-colored fruit into my mouth. After clearing off the wet and sweet covering, I spit the large, hard seed out.
Mamones.
Cecilia and I had sucked them, laughing at the sexual connotations of the name, texture, and shape of the nut. Oh, it was a bittersweet moment, to be so lost and still find such pleasure in my mouth and in my memory.
Chapter 23
Near nightfall, I crossed over a lightly vegetated, rounded crest, looked down into another valley, and up another mountain. Off to where the sun set, a series of ridges and cliffs stepped upwards to a multitude of sharp, gargantuan peaks that eclipsed the tamer-looking surroundings I stood in.
The path was still clearly defined by wear, and I decided to stay right where I was until sunup. There was comfort in knowing human feet had tread upon it. The night was cold, the hillside bare of cover, my clothes damp, and the silhouette of a formidable range lay before me. Hours ago, I had been crying, beaten by circumstances, but now I’d suck a mamon dry, roll the grape-sized nut around in my mouth, spit it out, then repeat the process in a meditative ritual as I determinedly attempted to restore myself.
Humans use this trail. Little boys, women. There’s safety somewhere along it.
By dawn, I was still tired and worn but convinced the path knew its way around the blockade of high mountains.
Mid-morning, after traipsing across a sparse meadow, I entered a pine forest and came to an obvious fork in the trail. Earlier, despite a thick, heavy rain, I had caught glimpses of a long valley with barren, eroded hills but blessed with a lush river-bottom where a layer of blue smoke hugged the trees. I stuck to my path, thinking it would lead me to whoever was living out in this wilderness. When the way forward split, though both trails looked equally worn, I thought there was a good chance that a right hand turn would wind down into the valley and towards the smoke. I made the decision to return to the lower regions.
I had not taken three steps on the downward trail when I heard the unmistakeable grunting of a jaguar somewhere in front of me.
My entire body jerked with a spasm that ended with a stream of piss shooting down my leg. I turned up the other fork and limped away, too exhausted to run. Every movement of my head, each creak of my arms or legs, each thump of my heart proclaimed loudly where I was.
The animal was close. I could feel its eyes measuring distances, its claws tensing, its teeth tasting past kills.
I don’t know how I stopped myself from screaming out the scream that was inside me.
The path took me skyward. For hours, I hugged and climbed a steep trail, drenched in fear and sweat, with cold air descending on me and the man-eater’s grunt continuously repeating just behind me, until, surrounded by a barren slope of rocks, I started to wonder if the sound was real. It throbbed in my mind, but where was the cat? The land around me lay empty.
Then, as if conjured, a mist rose up rapidly, weaving itself around my feet. Unsure where to step, groping for a sane thought that wasn’t laced with fright, I wrapped my arms around a large stone and clung to it. I had ascended the path in a fog of fear and now found I was paralyzed by these clouds that maddeningly must have materialized from my mind.
The world had disappeared. The belief that I had been abandoned alone on earth cried through me, then metamorphosed into a surety that I was trapped between two dimensions, alive inside one of the wormholes Becky had theorized about. Were they meant to be travelled? What had happened to the world?
I didn’t move, convinced the trail would drop off into nothingness, and I’d disappear from the planet. But maybe that was the answer. Maybe that was better than what I had been living. Just one step could take me away from the constant fear and pain, the unrelenting wetness, and the chill that permeated every bone and squeezed at my heart.
Confused and lost. The last person on earth. Miserable and forgotten.
With nothing left, I felt cheated, and my fading will began to mutter protests that escalated into a challenge of the fates.
I dared the jaguar to find me in my hidden universe. I cursed God for any pain ever, then cowered, bargaining for a response—pleading, begging, promising, and scheming with invisibles who had no concern for my trials. I raved at an old, wild-haired man in baggy pants who told me the mountain I was lost on would disintegrate into sand in about forty million years.
“Like your Zobes, Deets. Remember?”
“I’ll wait it out, tippy-toe on that last grain, and jump off at the last second.” The old man disintegrated into the misty shroud, and I gripped the stone tighter. “I’ll survive this.”
A rumbling began beneath my feet. The earth shook. The air wavered. My knees bounced in opposite directions, one up—one down, as the shelf of rock I stood on turned to rubber. Pebbles struck my head, poured over my hands, tried to break my grip on the ragged mountainside. Tiny purple sparks danced in the mist as my hair stood on end and swirled with a wild crackling rhythm. Time was about to explode to pieces, or I was about to break through to another world.
A cry jumped from my soul, “Life, life. I’m still here.”
Suddenly, in my mind, Teresa was flicking on a light switch at the apartment above the store. She looked startled, then—as if I was in the room with her or she was on the mountain with me—grabbed my shoulders, pushed me forcefully to my knees, and began shrieking, “You fool, fool, fool.”
The surrounding air lit up and shattered. I sprawled flat, wrapping my hands over my head. Another blast of lightning cracked, enveloping my time tunnel, or wormhole, or wherever I was. A surge of electrical, metallic-tasting energy pierced my hands and travelled up my arms. My heart raced, my eyes went blind. A cannonade of thunder roared, devastating every cell inside me with the fur
y of a storm that had raged for an eternity.
But I was alive and able to see when the air finally calmed. Feebly, I wondered if I had been torn inside out or if I had survived passage through a Becky wormhole.
My thoughts faded, stilled from exhaustion. The night passed through me. From head to toe, I absorbed its darkness and became a shadow sitting next to my sleeping body. Feeling akin to the Shadow Creature, my right hand rested on my physical self, tingling. I watched the mists clear and longed to touch constellations of blue light that appeared above, below, and around me. High atop a mountain in South America, I had discovered a path of dreams that led to the edge of the universe. I wondered if the dreams were born, or if they died, there.
In the light of morning, I was still on earth, breathing.
I stood on a rocky wide ledge. Before me, the view of mountain piled upon mountain stretched to the horizon. To one side of me, a well-worn series of dug-out steps and handholds zigzagged their way up a tall cliff.
Must be about two hundred yards to the top.
My arm was no longer swollen and my knee felt more flexible—boosting my spirits and confidence. I wrung some moisture from my T-shirt into my mouth, popped in the last mamon, and began scaling the narrow, rough-hewn stairway.
Halfway up, my walking stick fell from where I had wedged it in my knapsack straps. The sound of it clattering down the dizzying face was disheartening, but I kept climbing upwards. Though steep, the ascent wasn’t difficult as long as I proceeded carefully, judging each footfall, testing each handgrip. Reaching the cliff’s summit, I hoped to have caught up with the woman and the child, but all that greeted me was a wide rolling landscape, void of life except for an occasional scrub bush. To my right, the cliff became part of a ragged granite slab that rocketed skywards a thousand feet.
Small, weathered rocks littered the barren area in front of me. Off in the distance, a foot-tall pile of the stones looked to be stacked by human hands. My lifeline of a trail continued in a straight line across the emptiness, distinguishable from its surroundings only by being a slightly lighter shade of dirt.
My plan was to follow the path, but move eastwards again if the chance arose. Not being able to get the chill out of my body, I wanted to make my way down to lower elevations. I thought it likely the worn pathway went from one inhabited valley to another, and this wasteland was a high pass along the ridge separating them.
As I made my way to the stone marker, I stopped, awareness creeping up my spine that there was no sound. Not a bird, not a rustle. Within that silence I sensed… something.
I wasn’t alone.
Then I saw it, just a flash of rusty orange. The jaguar was moving within a dry ravine. I could only see her shoulders, rocking as she paced, disappearing in depressions, then reappearing again—five feet, ten feet—further along. She was moving parallel to me with assurance. She knew where I stood and knew I had no chance of hiding on the wide, slightly undulating plane she had caught me on.
I backtracked to an upheaval of rock that snaked root-like from the crags and crevices of the nearby mountain escarpment. I hastily gathered an arsenal of stones and cursed myself for losing my walking stick, my best chance for a weapon.
Readying myself with a stone in each hand, I stood with my back to the outcropping.
When the cat appeared, I reacted instinctively, throwing a rock and yelling at her, “Go on, get out of here.” The projectile landed about five feet from where she stood and skidded past her. She jumped aside momentarily, then lowered her head and glued her eyes onto me. Her tail swayed slowly back and forth.
I didn’t have enough ammo to pepper her in the hopes of driving her away. I’d have to try and bash at her while she ripped at me with paws larger than any of the rocks I held. What could I do? She’d knock me down with one swipe, then go for my neck. I braced myself. There was nowhere to run.
Then events became confused, as things do when the gods decide to redirect their amusement, or anger, or whatever it is they’re up to. The jaguar sat back on her haunches, sniffed the air in one direction, then another, and stared me down for a few seconds. I swear her eyes were blue. She grunted lightly, stood, and turned away.
Was this some sort of cat and mouse game before the kill? Not hungry, save you for later.
Or maybe, I had been spared again for unknown reasons by unknown forces.
I whispered, “Holy God—”
The air exploded, and a puff of dirt kicked up next to the jaguar.
Rifle shot. Now what?
The cat dug her feet into the ground and pushed. Her tail flailed high, and she was gone, down the ravine. She reappeared, bounding up a series of ledges that were staggered above the lip of the cliff I had climbed. Another deafening boom and a chunk of stone splintered ten or fifteen feet behind her.
The cat glanced back at me, snarled once, then melted into the heights and mist and rugged terrain. I let the stones fall from my hand, then raised my arm, and in stunned disbelief, waved a slow goodbye.
I slumped back against the rock wall and waited to see who had rescued me. Rescued? That cat had looked as if it could have been leaving when the bullet had struck near her.
Someone yelled out to me something I couldn’t understand.
I yelled back, “Okay.”
A burly, gray-bearded man in a winter coat and a blue cowboy hat approached from the area of the pyramid of stones. He looked alert, ready to use his rifle again. His eyes narrowed with concern as he came closer.
He crouched in front of me, speaking rapidly in Spanish while pulling out a canteen and offering me a drink.
I guzzled.
He looked weatherworn—his face, hard and lined. The mountains had etched themselves into his skin. He stared off to where the tigre had fled, then turned his attention back to me. I didn’t know whether to trust him, but it was more than clear that I was weak and lost, and he was healthy and knew where he was. By his gestures, I knew he was talking about my ragged clothes and the cuts and bruises covering my face and hands. As he pointed off into the distance, the intonation of his voice lapsed into a thoughtful mutter. I made out the words dios and jungla. He was either asking me where I came from, or how in God’s name did I survive the jungles far below us.
I gulped more of the water, wiped away a dribble from my chin. “No hablo Español.” I pinched my thumb and index finger together, then slowly spread them slightly apart. “Poco.”
He frowned with his face contorted in puzzlement. “Gringo?”
“Si.”
He stared straight into my eyes, trying to dissect the mystery of my appearance on a remote mountain surrounded by tropical wilderness. Anger and suspicion played into his scrutiny before giving way to a grim smile. With an accent straight out of New York, he said, “American, huh? Well, I’ll be damned. You all right to hike for awhile? We’ve got to get you warm and do something about those infections on your face. Your feet are probably a mess too.”
I laughed, my head flying back as the irony of meeting another American on the top of the world in the middle of nowhere filled me with a near-maniacal hysteria. “Ha, ha. What is this? A reunion? Ha, ha. Oh god, this is too much. This isn’t really happening, is it? Man, ha ha.”
He snorted out a brief laugh, then offered me his hand, both in camaraderie and to help me up. “C’mon kid, I’m anxious to hear your story.”
“I’m not sure I even know how I got here or if I’m in the same world as I was a day ago.”
He looked at me thoughtfully. “The jungle below and these cold heights will take a lot out of you. You get some food and sleep, and things will start to sort themselves out.”
I introduced myself as he handed me a sack of raisins. When I asked him his name, he told me to call him Bronx.
We started walking in the direction he had come, passing the small pile of stones built up into a pyram
id shape. “What’s that?”
“Trail marker. Lot of thick clouds roll in at this altitude. The markers warn you to keep an eye out, or you’ll walk off a cliff.”
The bleak terrain stretched before us. “It’s like Mars up here.”
“Yeah.” He shifted his rifle and looked back behind us. “I’ve heard of big cats at these heights a few times, but it’s usually not a concern. Glad I had the gun though. That jag’s better off hunting down in the valley anyway.”
Turning around to see if I could follow where the cat might have gone, I staggered with the shock of what met my eyes. In an instant, I felt completely connected with all of existence. I held my breath as my brain seemed to whirl in a complete circle. When I finally exhaled, I was ecstatically baffled by the universe, life, and spirit.
It can’t be, but there it is.
Above the cliff I had climbed, above the ledges the jaguar had disappeared into, rose the snow-capped, blue-stained mountain I had seen the night I had massaged Teresa back in the motel in the Poconos.
The mountain was hypnotic, shimmering with secrets. Joyous voices radiated from its cold peak. Cries of sadness fused the rock and stone together. The mountain had assaulted me during the night. It had called me a year ago. Deep within it, a stern heart felt content that I had listened and answered.
Nothing made sense. Everything made sense. I felt exhilarated, confused, lost, found.
I didn’t want to leave. I would ride it down forty million years to its final nub of sand. When a mystery fills you, you are possessed by it forever.
Santa Pigeon had told me this trip wasn’t what it seemed, but even this remarkable vision didn’t clarify why I was here or why I had to go through what I had, to get here.
Magic (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 2) Page 14
