Wild Mountain

by Nancy Kilgore

  Luke turned to face her. “No. I talked to those kids, Grace and Robbie, and it didn’t take long to find out. Not only were they smoking marijuana, but they had alcohol and crack. They dropped a cigarette and that’s what started the fire. And then Robbie, with his rattled brain, decided it would be fun to stoke the fire with gas. That kid is a menace.”

  “So is he going to jail?”

  “Naw. Community service. Those two will spend their summer cleaning toilets in state parks and rest stops.

  Mona harumphed. “They should have gone to jail. But this is Vermont, with its liberal everything, so they only get community service.” She shrugged. “At least they’ll have to do something besides sit around consuming various substances.”

  Luke nodded, then meandered back down the driveway and toward the store, where his truck was parked.

  She should have been happy, gratified for this outcome. But today, none of it seemed satisfying. Again, this morning, that pang had arisen, that empty place, the place that blindsided her like a freight train out of hell, that vacuum where her mother was, that place of picking up the phone and calling. Just any old time. She plucked a drooping tulip head and picked the petals off one by one, dropping them on the walk. Who could she talk to?

  Clouds like feathers hung in the bright sky, nothing moving but the water in the river splashing in the distance, like a rhythm in the back of her mind.

  “Mind if I join you?” Alice, looking cool in a pale green tunic and pink flip-flops, appeared in front of her, then sat down beside her.

  Mona sighed and stared at the petals forming a pattern on the walk.

  “Anything wrong?” Alice asked.

  Mona looked up. Did Alice really care, or was this just her professional stance? “It’s just that everything is so topsy-turvy. You can’t count on anything anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, this place, this town. First the bridge fell, and then everything else seemed to go like dominos. Roz and Heather getting abused by half the town, their farm stand burned, Johnny showing up, Gus dying—” She bent over, touched the pavement with her fingers, and, one by one, swept the fading petals—violet, plum, pink—into a circle. “When we were up on the mountain, it felt like it was all resolved. With the ceremony, the prayers, the sunrise. Everything was suddenly so clear. And I felt a deep relief. Peace.”

  “The mountaintop experience.”

  Mona nodded. “But now it’s become murky again.”

  “Murky?”

  “When I got divorced and came back here, I bought the store, and I liked being at the center of the community, the still point in the storm. I’d just have my friends, I thought, and wouldn’t ever have to deal with relationships.” She searched Alice’s brown eyes, their warmth and depth. Alice was listening. “But nothing stays the same, does it?”

  “The only thing that doesn’t change is change itself.” “I just wanted to be here, to be stable. Then Frank came along, and another domino fell, and now I’m on such shaky ground, I don’t know what to do.”

  Alice leaned over and picked the head off another frazzled tulip, then turned to her again. “What’s going on with Frank?”

  Mona shook her head. Alice, the one person she wouldn’t have confided in two days ago, was now the first person she wanted to tell. “He wants us to move in together.”

  Alice smiled a puzzled smile. “And that’s a bad thing?”

  “That is terrifying.”

  Alice reached over and put her arm around her. She smelled like lavender and mud. Mona let her head drop onto Alice’s shoulder. “Do you love him?” Alice asked.

  Mona smiled. A seagull swooped overhead, squawking its way down to the river.

  “Hi ho! Hi ho!” Roz’s hearty greeting sounded as she marched up the driveway, Heather by her side. Roz, in her John Deere cap and a pair of denim overalls, was beaming in delight, while Heather, in a pale T-shirt with attached pastel ribbons that billowed around her, seemed to be floating.

  “Mutt and Jeff,” Alice whispered.

  Roz stopped in front of them and spread her arms out wide. “Big news!” she bellowed. Heather was grinning from ear to ear.

  “Not to rain on your parade, but you already told me,” Mona said. “I know you got re-elected.”

  “Oh, that’s not it,” Heather said.

  “WE,” Roz proclaimed, “are getting married!”

  “And we want you to be the first to know,” Heather exclaimed. Mona stared. “But they won’t even vote on the gay marriage bill ’til next spring.”

  “We’re going to Massachusetts,” said Roz. “To a justice of the peace, and then we’ll have a big party back here.”

  Alice jumped up and was hugging both of them, while Mona tried to take it all in. “Well.” She stood up and took a deep breath.

  Alice brought her hands together in prayer position. “‘Love is the perfect stillness, and the greatest excitement, and the most profound act.’ Rabia. She was talking about God, but I think it’s about human love, too.”

  The sky shrieked sun and blueness into the purity of a June day in the mountains of Vermont, and the river crashed over the rocks. In her mind’s eye, Mona could see the covered bridge. She saw all of its struts and planks and lattices newly placed, its paint a bright red, the swallows soaring and diving around its peak. Someone was walking out of it, walking toward her. It was Frank.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to friends and colleagues who supported the writing of Wild Mountain: writing partner Ruth Linnaea Whitney; my Upper Valley writing group: Tania Aebi, Anne Bergeron, Rebecca Buchanan, Chery Fish, Mary Hays, Miranda Moody, and Lora Nielsen; Burlington writers Kristabeth Atwood, Barbara Benton, Sarah Chamberlain, Karen Edwards, Debbie Ingram, Morgan Kelner, Andrea O’Connor, and Sandy Henneberger; pastoral counselor/writers Thea Crites, Laura Delaplain, Susan Eenigenburg, Meg Hess, and Henrietta Lavengood; writers of the Burlington Writers Workshop and the Vermont Studio Center.

  Thanks also to my Wild Mountain patrons: Robert Kilgore, Jim Morel, Liz Frost, Elaine Peterson, Stephanie Ellis, Bob Gunn, Sandra Moskowitz, Gail Kuhl, Becky Luce, Francis Abueg, Andrew Kilgore, Rebecca Buchanan, Elaine Hubert, Bill Harwood, Eleanor Lowenthal, Brandon Ayre, Robert Leighton, Cori Cost, and Greg Knox.

  Thanks to Dede Cummings, publisher, and editors Danelle McCafferty and Catherine Lykes, for good work and enthusiastic support.

  For grants to afford time and space for writing, I am grateful to the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Turkey Land Cove Foundation

  As always, thanks to my husband Jess Kilgore for his love, support, undying belief in my writing, and for doing the dishes.