Wild Mountain

by Nancy Kilgore

  “What?” she shouted, almost at her tipping point. “Are you saying Roz deserved to have her property torched? How could you be so heartless?”

  “Now, I didn’t say that. It’s just that she doesn’t know how to keep a lid on. Pushing on the bridge issue, so we all have to go bankrupt, and then flashing her lesbian ideas all around, what do you expect? She’s a troublemaker, and troublemakers get into trouble.” Mona bit her lip and glanced at her phone, lying there in its red-and-silver shame, emitting toxins of loneliness. Charlie walked away to find his Hormel chili and Miller Lite.

  As the day drew to a close, Mona found herself scurrying back and forth in meaningless tasks, snapping at Sierra for not cleaning up the deli counter, going out to the porch bench for endless breaks, not being able to sit still on the bench, and coming back in, the image of Johnny at the hotel looming in her mind all the while. And Frank, who still hadn’t called. Maybe she should call him. At five-thirty, just before closing, Mona picked up the phone and dialed his number. One ring, two rings, three, five, seven rings. No answer. Where could he be? And, actually, what did she know about his life, his daily life and habits? Nothing, really.

  Should she go and meet Johnny? At least to tell him to back off? No—any response from her would only encourage him more. She went home as usual, ate and watched TV, and took Boris out; an uneventful evening. Seven o’clock came and went, with no communication from Johnny, and still, Frank didn’t call. She called him again. No answer again. But there were no knocks on the door, no phone calls from Johnny or anyone else. Good. Hopefully, he’d gotten the message. She went to bed.

  23

  MAY

  FRANK DIDN’T CALL THE NEXT DAY. Or the next. She tried calling him again; but again, no answer. She left messages, tentative, neutral kinds of messages, trying not to presume too much intimacy, and asking him to call back.

  Johnny appeared in the store again, smiling that smile that used to go right to her gut, the smile that had transported her to a place where reason and rational thought were nowhere to be found, a place where she would smile back and they would move as one, like dancers, people of earth, sky, fire. But now his face was lined, ravaged; and though the charisma was still present, it was diminished, and she didn’t feel that tug at all. She just felt nervous.

  He stood just inside the doorway in a purple shirt, holding that rifle, the buckle on his leather belt gleaming silver. He didn’t mention the letter.

  He was smiling.

  “It’s Mayday, Mona,” he said. “Are you still dancing?”

  The dance. In the almost-light, and on the wet of the earth as it heaved itself into the almost-spring, Mona paused with her ragtag group and bowed. They bowed and stood, stepping high to the bell, the pipes, the steady drums; and their breath made little clouds, flurries of air around their heads. It was the first of May.

  At the edge of the green, the audience huddled in blankets and parkas and shawls and caps. Was Johnny among them?

  Mona stomped her feet and thumped the earth, and Wild Mountain loomed indifferent, black beneath a sky of gray, then pink, then dazzling gold, while down below, the dancers jiggled and shook to rouse the world. They called up the morning, called forth the spring, called forth Vermont on the first of May.

  In the audience were Bea Vargas, all silver and sleek at the age of eighty-two, and beside her, Gus Throckmorton, with his inscrutable smile, and Leo, the new postmaster, and a couple of teenagers with jewels in their ears and beads in their hair, and children tugging at their mothers’ legs.

  But where was handsome, winsome Johnny?

  Mona jumped and turned, faster and faster to the clack of the sticks, the whistle of the pipes, and waved her scarf like a flag in battle. Her heart on her sleeve, the dance in her heart; the faster she spun, the less she thought.

  The drumbeat slowed and a cowbell clanked, and the dancers paused, all in white.

  And into the cool of the silent dawn, the bell resounded. The dance was done.

  Mona tipped and swayed in a numinous space, this new medium, this place without music, like standing on land after living at sea. The audience clapped and slowly drifted away. Little mounds of snow, black with dirt and grit, dotted the ground in pathetic humps, reminders that still, it was only the first of May.

  Their second wedding anniversary.

  Mona rubbed her shoulder, sore again, wiped the sweat from her forehead, and took the elastic out of her hair, which fell in a damp, frizzy mass down her back.

  Johnny believed that women should have long hair, and could quote chapter and verse to prove it. He was a devout Christian fundamentalist, at least then—and, because she had fallen so madly for him, she’d gone along with it. She wasn’t such a strong believer, as he called himself, but she went with him to his church, the Church of the LifeSpring. How could it hurt, she reasoned, to believe in something good?

  He was also a dedicated cyclist, and for their honeymoon, they had gone cycling in the Champlain Islands, stopping in Burlington for a few days, where, as they strolled down a street in the Old North End, Johnny pointed to some Nepalese women talking and laughing and swishing their red-and-purple saris. Why, he asked, couldn’t she be more like them? Mona laughed. She couldn’t be less like them, she’d said, towering above them with her pale face and her hair springing out in messy clumps instead of lying smooth and black and shiny like theirs. But no, he meant their temperaments. They were happy and cheerful most of the time, and they never criticized their husbands. How did he know, she asked, what they said in the privacy of their homes?

  Bea’s tiny voice wafted across the green as she came gliding over. “Wicked awesome,” she said, giving Mona a hug. In her eighties, Bea had started using words like awesome and wicked and flipped out.

  “Morris dancing,” boomed Gus, coming up behind her, looking dignified in spite of his blue stocking cap. “Very cool pagan ritual. Rites of spring and all.”

  “It was Christian, too,” Mona said, and explained that Morris dancing was part of the Christian church’s celebration of spring in the Middle Ages.

  “Well, then.” Gus dunked a sugar-covered doughnut into his coffee cup.

  Bea was smiling her broad, intelligent smile.

  “Seen Johnny?” Mona asked softly.

  Bea’s eyes shifted to the right, and she gestured with her thumb.

  “The town hall?” Mona turned to peer across the green.

  Bea shrugged her shoulders and brought two fingers to her mouth, in a mime of smoking.

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” Why would Johnny be smoking a joint at this hour of the morning? In fact, why would he be smoking a joint at all? He’d said he was quitting.

  He had started on their honeymoon, at a rock concert in Burlington. He had somehow found a connection who had hash that was glorious, and with the wedding money they’d gotten from relatives, he bought enough to keep himself high for two weeks. She smoked a little, too, but when she learned that the hash was opiated, she tried to convince him to throw it out. He wouldn’t do that, of course, but he promised that when they came back and he began medical school, he would quit. And she was appeased. Because he was going to be a doctor. He would be a brilliant doctor.

  There he was, across the green, standing in the morning sun, shit-faced.

  Beside her, Gus was telling a story. “…an island in Scotland,” he was saying, “a place of legend and lore, as islands in Scotland tend to be, but…” He lowered his voice, and his eyes gleamed. “…on this island, there was a fairy mound.”

  “A fairy mound?” Bea laughed.

  “A magical hill where the fairies danced when the moon was full.” He raised an eyebrow at Mona. “The island was pagan, Celtic. But in the sixth century, a Christian monk came over from Ireland. He had a mission—to save the pagan souls of Scotland.”

  Gus gestured with the last bite of his sugar doughnut and took a gulp of coffee. “One day, he climbed up on this little protrusion that the natives called
the fairy mound, and sat down to pray.”

  “Did he see the fairies?” Bea winked at Mona.

  Johnny was beginning to stroll across the green. Had he seen her? He stopped to talk with someone, his smile lighting the very air around him, and catching her heart again. The first time she’d seen Johnny, it had been that smile. That smile had drawn her in, to a place where magic collides with heaven.

  “He didn’t know about the fairies,” Gus said. “But it was there, on the fairy mound, that he had his vision. A vision of angels.” He paused for effect, and looked around at the two other women who had drifted over to hear the story. “Angels descending from heaven and surrounding him.”

  Mona turned to face Gus. “But he was Christian?”

  “Yes, and he gave the fairy mound a new name: The Hill of the Angels. He brought his monks over from Ireland, and they built the monastery, and he converted the natives. Iona became the first place in Scotland to become Christian.”

  “No more fairies?” Bea asked.

  “There were still stories.”

  Johnny was chatting with Luke Spinelli, the fire chief, and she could see that Luke was captivated. Johnny had this effect on people—his charm like a wand of fire. She hugged herself, and winced as she felt the bruise on her arm. On the tender underside, of course, where it didn’t show.

  “What kind of stories?” a thin woman wearing a profusion of turquoise jewelry asked.

  Gus lifted his chest and raised his voice. “In the 1940s, there was a woman who lived near the fairy mound, so close she could see it from her bedroom window. When the moon was full, she would wake up in the middle of the night and see a glow, a light, coming from the mound. She heard beautiful music. And she could see the fairies dancing.”

  Now Johnny was coming her way, the sticky, sweet, enticing lump of tall, handsome, dark-haired, dark-eyed Johnny, graceful still when drunk or high, and smiling with his dimpled chin, a lover come to win her back.

  “She had an overwhelming desire to dance with the fairies, though people warned her that they were dangerous.”

  “What was so dangerous about the fairies?” the thin woman asked.

  “It was said that if they got you into their ring, they would never let you go.”

  “Hello, sugarplum,” Johnny said, with that smile and a shuffle. “Would you like some roasted vittles, a libation?”

  “A libation?” Mona asked. “At seven in the morning?”

  “The keg has been popped, and spring has sprung, so let us commence the celebration.” He didn’t remember that today was their anniversary. Otherwise, he’d have used that as an excuse to drink.

  “Did you see the Morris Dance, Johnny?” If only he could watch her dance, that’s where she was in her glory.

  “Part of it.”

  Her shoulders dropped. He must have crossed the green and glanced at her on his way to the grove of trees behind town hall.

  They walked to the tables in the center of the green, his arm around her, the picture of a happy couple—then he headed straight for the keg, where he was greeted with grunts and shouts from the men standing around it. Mona slipped out of his grasp and went to the table. She heaped a paper plate with scrambled eggs, roasted potatoes, melon pieces, and a bagel, poured herself coffee, and sat in an empty chair near Gus and Bea.

  “What happened to the woman who wanted to dance with the fairies?” The thin woman was laughing, flirting with Gus.

  “She couldn’t resist the beautiful light and the magic and the urge to dance.” Gus drained his coffee cup. “At the next full moon, she stripped off her clothes and walked across the field to the mound.” He heaved a dramatic sigh. “The fairies were dancing, and she stepped onto the mound and into the circle. The dance was ecstasy, the most rapturous thing she’d ever experienced. She got tired, but then she couldn’t stop. She had to keep dancing.”

  Johnny was back at the keg, refilling his cup and laughing with the guys. He looked at Mona, and gave her a smile that warmed her from the inside out. They would move to Rutland, she thought; he could go to medical school at Dartmouth, and everything would be fine.

  “They found her the next morning,” said Gus, “lying on the mound, naked, her feet worn to the bone. She was dead.”

  Johnny left the store without another word.

  24

  FRANK SAT IN HIS CABIN IN HIS ROCKING CHAIR, reading Off the Grid, a how-to book about alternative energy sources, while Erica and Jake sprawled on the sofa, Jake’s backpack spilling out papers, books, and rocks onto the sofa and floor.

  He’d intended to call Mona from Mexico, but one thing had led to another. Artie Platt had called at the last minute and asked him to come down. Should I accept this job? he wondered. Leave Wild Mountain at this delicate moment, and go to Mexico City for three weeks? Leave Mona? It was part of the Feral Journeys project, so it made sense for him to go, especially since Artie wanted to use the MacFarland model, his baby. That was the place where all his skills came together: organizing, group psychology, bringing social justice into the business world, and showing people a way to spread that outward. If anything, this was a mission.

  And besides, he could use the money. He’d called Erica and told her he was leaving, but she was back in Boston, “tying up loose ends.” Should he be checking in with Mona, he wondered, or was it too soon to make that assumption? Was he at that stage of the relationship? That place on the mountain where you take out the carabineers and the crampons and prepare for the hard climbing ahead?

  He’d tried her number at the store. The line was busy. He’d packed his bag, not much except dirty laundry, stepped out onto the porch into a brilliant blue-sky day, the snow-capped top of Wild Mountain soaring like an alpine wonder, gotten into the BMW, and gunned it down the driveway before he had a chance to linger and change his mind. He’d call Mona from New York.

  He just happened to have an old Aerosmith CD in the glove box, and put that in the player. “Sweet Emotion” rumbled and rolled him down the driveway, out River Road and back onto Route 100. Singing along, he imagined Mona as a rock star babe, bop-ping to the music, her long hair brown before it had turned gray, long, dangly earrings and skinny black tights, and those sexy eyes with the eyelashes he’d kissed just yesterday, her small, firm breasts bouncing.

  By the time he’d reached his apartment in New York, he’d imagined a full-fledged scenario, a wedding beside the river in the spring, a farmhouse with windmills and solar panels, another dog to keep Boris company, and Mona in the kitchen, serving up clam chowder, crusty bread, and maple pumpkin pie. And sex, of course, every morning, just like yesterday.

  The fantasy continued as the plane took off. He was almost reluctant to call her and bump himself out of this lovely dream. He gazed at the clouds beneath the plane, and between them, glimpses of the city below. New York without the World Trade Towers still triggered a jolt of surprise.

  But when he’d arrived at the hotel in Mexico City, it was eleven, and too late to call, since that meant twelve in Vermont; and the next day, he’d slept late, and then had to hurry to meet with Artie and the management group.

  In the evening, he sat with Artie at a café on the Plaza Garibaldi, a noisy jumble of restaurants, tourists, young people, and almost deafening music. But he’d left his phone at the hotel, so he badgered Artie, with shouts and sign language, to borrow his—and since Artie’s email was open, he sent Mona an email from Artie’s address.

  Back in Vermont, Frank watched a deer prance across the lawn outside the cabin window and thought about solar panels, while Jake sorted and rearranged his rocks. Rocks? Why did Jake have all these rocks?

  Erica had cut her hair into a startling new style that made her look like a tufted titmouse, and Frank tried not to stare. The two young people had been talking about going for a hike, and Frank hoped they’d go soon. The cabin was so small that with three people in it, there was no place to read and be alone.

  He placed his finger on a paragraph in his
book and looked up, gazing out the window into the spring sun, and thought about a windmill. He took a sip of beer from a garish yellow mug he’d gotten at Oktoberfest in Munich two years ago, and realized that he could place the windmill there, on the hill behind the cabin. He wouldn’t have to rely on the power company, and he would be able to chop all his own wood himself. He would cut down on living expenses and be self-sufficient. Maybe he’d add a solar panel, too, and have more light in the cabin.

  “But I can’t just quit my job,” said Erica, à propos of nothing. She was bending over the wood stove, poking at the burning logs.

  “What is this, the Middle Ages?” Jake exclaimed, looking up from his laptop, his long legs sprawled across the futon sofa. “Dial-up Internet, for Chrissake! It’s taking five minutes to send one email.”

  Erica squatted back on her haunches and gazed up at the ceiling, her silver earrings tinkling. “…though I have been thinking about it,” she said. She glanced down at the log basket beside the stove, and frowned at Frank. “Dad, we’re almost out of wood. If you hadn’t come back early, what was I supposed to do? Chop down a tree?”

  “People do,” said Frank, thinking of his list for the windmill: a generator, a base, blades, a tower.

  “I can chop down a tree.” Jake closed his laptop.

  Erica smiled with pride and addressed Frank. “Did you know Jake spent a year hiking the Appalachian Trail?”

  “No, I didn’t.” Frank added an item to his list: cable.

  Erica sat down beside Jake. “I could live up here and do online tutoring.” She cocked her head, musing. “I’d be wasting my social work degree, but at least it would give me an income for a while.” She picked up her tofu burger from the coffee table, placed a pickle inside the bun, and took a big bite. “Of course, with the slow Internet connection…” she mumbled with her mouth full.

  “Do you have a chainsaw?” Jake asked Frank.