Heart Mountain

by Ehrlich, Gretel;

  “Look at them,” Carol whispered, but the sound of her voice frightened them away.

  Willard pulled the willow out of the rain. “Tree of life,” Carol thought. She had not seen the severed heads that time, but actual birds, and felt relieved. The front porch of the summer house where she had met Willard’s father was similar, though much grander in scale, and at the time she had allowed herself to imagine watching the rain on that porch, with him, for many years. It was not happiness she had expected, but a purpose in life—a nest with many children and the hard work that goes with ranching. There was no work she felt was beneath her. She would have done anything.

  Willard turned to her and held out the willow between them until the feathery branches touched her face. She grabbed his arm, wrenching the tree to one side so she could see his face.

  “Willard … talk to me. Please, Willard, can’t you talk?”

  Willard looked frightened. He stepped back and one shoulder twitched. He lifted the willow again and held it out to her, this time as an offering.

  “No, Willard, that’s not what I want,” she cried, grabbing his arm again.

  Willard took her hand from his arm and, smiling, wrapped her fingers around the trunk. The branch made Carol’s hand wet and she was afraid it would fill up with heads again, instead of birds.

  When one of Mañuel’s roosters crowed, Willard backed away, to the fence between the two yards, and peered into the cages. The brown cock with green and black neck feathers strutted, stretching his neck. He turned back to his mother, exuberant, and crowed.

  On Sunday, Carol took off early, leaving Willard behind. It had been raining almost continuously. Where the railroad tracks crossed the river, wind lifted sprays of water and blew them against the green cliff. She liked driving in the rain because she thought no one could see her. Since she had revealed her secret to Madeleine—her secret and her lie—she felt horribly exposed, as if the sanctity of that night with Carter Heaney had been broken.

  As she drove through town she saw Snuff’s truck parked in front of the Catholic church. The thought of him there made her smile. She went in, and stood at the back by the font. Plain on the outside, the interior was fashioned after a mission-style church with white plaster walls, vigas, and a hand-tinted photograph of the Pope, much enlarged, attached to an oversized easel with two clothespins. Snuff stood at the altar in purple robes. Under them, she could see his cowboy boots. After the priest poured wine and water into the chalice, the two men turned and the congregation came forward silently, kneeling at the altar rail.

  “This is the bread of …”

  Carol walked outside. She didn’t believe in that god or any god, but she had a certain feeling about things … like the willow branch and the heads … that there were more than simple, literal truths.…

  “What am I going to do?” she said aloud to herself. Her hands touched the cold steering wheel.

  She drove to Madeleine’s ranch prepared to tell the truth this time—the truth being that Carter Heaney, not Henry, was Willard’s father—but Madeleine wasn’t there. She left a note: “There’s been a misunderstanding. Please call. Carol Lyman,” then continued on, north across Alkali Creek and Eagle Nest Creek toward the bar.

  As she drove, the hood of her coupe shone like black patent leather. She opened a box of fudge and bit into a dark square. Ten in the morning, eating fudge. She preferred to eat alone like a wild animal. If only I could live without the need for another human … without all these entanglements, she mused. She was a continual disappointment to herself. Yet she had begged Willard to talk to her the night before. I’ve gotten quite out of control, she said, cautioning herself. The fudge melted in her mouth and she wondered if pleasure couldn’t also be bitter, like the news about Henry who was alive but not free, who lived close but was almost a stranger. She opened the window and let rain hit her face.

  The door to the bar was locked and she fumbled inside her purse for the keys. Inside, gray light funneled through the porthole window and the flannel curtains sagged heavily as if the rifles pictured on them were actually loaded. She put her purse on a bar stool whose leather seat was torn. A single car passed and the whine of its tires on wet pavement entered the room like screams. She knelt on the dance floor. Lifting her hand, she crossed herself as she had seen Snuff do, though she didn’t know what it meant.

  “Forgive me,” she said. Then the telephone rang.

  When Snuff came back from church, Carol did not mention that she had seen him.

  “Guess who I ran into,” he said, carrying a load of groceries.

  “Who?”

  “The Wild Man. He’s got problems.”

  “He’s the strangest man I’ve ever heard of … driving around in that big yellow car with the top down … like royalty.…”

  “He’s got two girls in trouble,” Snuff said.

  “Two?” She switched on the radio.

  “I sent him up to Venus, in Butte … she’ll help him,” he said, disappearing into the storeroom.

  After talking to Madeleine, Carol had felt relieved. She had leaned the ladder against the side windows and took the curtains down. Up close, the duck hunters on flannel didn’t look like men at all. She soaked them in a big tub in the middle of the floor—right where she had kneeled, under the bent chandelier that gave out no light.

  Now she laid the curtains on the backs of three chairs to dry.

  When the news came on, she heard about another local boy who was taken prisoner of war in the Philippines; how magpies were bringing a bounty of one cent apiece and that 1,650 of them had been killed by youngsters so far. There was a report on the nearby POW camp for Nazis—they had gone on strike—and that the basic diet of the American soldier in German camps was largely potatoes, cabbage, and fish. A local woman shot a black bear while panning for gold with her father, sugar for home canning was being made available without deduction of blue point stamps from War Ration Book Two, that the disallowance of weather broadcasts would continue indefinitely; a Presbyterian minister from the Heart Mountain Relocation Camp would speak in town Wednesday night; there were 17,083 American POWs residing in enemy countries. “And Henry is one of them,” she thought.

  After the news, “String of Pearls” and “At Last” played. She couldn’t help thinking that the last item of the broadcast was just for her. “Henry … Madeleine’s Henry,” she thought a little enviously.

  Snuff came in and stood beside Carol. “You washed the curtains.”

  “He’s got two girls in trouble?” Carol asked again.

  “Yes.

  “Once he told me his name was Mutt,” Carol said.

  “No one’s name is Mutt.”

  “No one’s name is the Wild Man either.”

  “It’s Lenny Weinstein.”

  “Who?”

  “The Wild Man.”

  “Really?” Carol said.

  “One’s the banker’s daughter, too,” Snuff said.

  “Oh my goodness.”

  Snuff continued: “Lenny’s brother is some kind of physicist, a genius they say, doing something for the war effort. The Wild Man’s completely opposed, of course.”

  “You mean he’s for Hitler?” Carol said.

  Snuff poked her chin. “No … he’s not for Hitler, or Mussolini either,” he said, laughing.

  “I think whatever is going on he does the opposite; that’s all,” Carol said as she walked behind the bar and poured two cups of coffee.

  Snuff sat on a stool. His bow tie hung straight down and his shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow.

  “Remember when that dog of his died?”

  “Whose, Lenny’s?”

  “Do we have to call him Lenny now?” Carol asked.

  Snuff grinned. “No—”

  She looked away. “I saw you in church today.”

  He gave her a surprised look. “I didn’t see you.”

  “I only stood at the back.”

  “You could have come in.…�
��

  “I know.”

  He looked at her. “What’s wrong?”

  “I did something terrible.”

  “Tell me.”

  “To Madeleine … I told her—”

  “Shhh …” Snuff put his finger to his lips. “Listen.”

  They heard the whine of an air-raid siren.

  “Oh no,” she cried. “Not again.”

  Snuff caught her hand.

  “Maybe it’s for real this time,” she said.

  “Maybe so …”

  When the whistle sounded an all-clear, Carol slumped back against the bar. She watched as Snuff went to the window and looked out. The rain had let up and in the west, a band of blue could be seen.

  A roar woke McKay, and Bobby, and Pinkey as he lay in his bunk at cow camp, as well as Madeleine, who had dreamt that Henry was climbing down from a tall building on vines. The deep, persistent sound made her sit up in bed, and immediately upon waking she knew two things, or thought she knew: that Henry was alive and that the sound wasn’t wind but water.

  When she phoned McKay he was already dressed. They agreed to check three headgates, then meet halfway between the two ranches. It had been raining for four days. In Luster, a small tornado spirited a pig shed straight into the air like an upturned ship and three weiner pigs fell out of the sky. What Madeleine and McKay both heard was a wall of orange mud breaking loose from the top of Heart Mountain.

  The ground was slick on the sidehills, but when the sun came out it dried quickly. Madeleine hadn’t felt well the night before, and she still had cramps, but she rode at a good pace because there was a lot of country to cover.

  She saw where the flood had taken out the first headgate. Orange mud covered the slope and buried the grass. Whole trees, carried down from the mountain, lay scattered above and below the ditch. She rode on.

  When she arrived at the creek that divided McKay’s ranch from the Camp, she saw that water had taken out part of the fence. The sun shone brightly now and already the streets between the Camp buildings had turned dusty. Up above, at the flank of the mountain, the irrigation boxes had been torn in half. She stepped off her horse to see whether they could be repaired, and when she tried to get back on, her legs went out from under her with pain. She lay in the grass holding her horse’s rein. The cramps came in waves. She could see the tall smokestack of the Camp hospital, and near her head, sego lilies opened wide, exposing the magenta cross in the center. She unbuttoned her jeans. The sun felt warm against her abdomen. Once the cramps came so hard she yelled out, not from pain, but from a despair she could not name.

  McKay rode quickly from headgate to headgate. They would all have to be rebuilt. It had been dry and he was glad it had rained anyway. He rode through the last gate and looked for Madeleine. It was three in the afternoon and he had had trouble catching his horse, which should have put him behind her. He waited and rode in her direction for a mile, then turned and rode home.

  She had called. “Tell McKay I wasn’t feeling so good and I turned back early,” she reported to Bobby. When McKay came into the house the phone rang again.

  “Madeleine?” he said.

  There was a brief silence. “It’s Mariko.”

  McKay dropped his hat on a chair as he listened.

  “I’m in Cody. We’re printing the paper tonight, and we have two hours before we can start folding. Can you come in? I’ll be outside the Mayflower Café. I want to see you,” she said quickly.

  He put the phone down, took his hat, and started out the door.

  “Where you go now?” Bobby asked.

  McKay turned. “Cody.”

  “What for? Too much work here.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Where you go?” Bobby asked again, following McKay outside.

  “To see someone.”

  “Her?” he asked again, following McKay outside.

  McKay lay on his back under the truck and fastened the chains. Bobby went down too.

  “Better stay home. Too muddy. You get stuck.”

  McKay came up with mud on his face. “I have to go.”

  “Madeleine called. She sick, I think.”

  “I’ll call her in the morning. I got that headgate fixed anyway.…”

  Bobby stood with his arms crossed defiantly. “Better you stay home.”

  “Bobby, for God’s sake, I’m not a kid.…”

  “No. You just crazy all the time now; that’s all …,” Bobby yelled as McKay turned the key on and clattered out of the yard.

  Mariko was waiting when he pulled up. He’d had to take the chains off at the highway and the chassis had shimmied because he had driven very fast. She was there, leaning back against the wall in wool trousers, boots, Will’s black leather jacket, and her hair tied on top of her head.

  McKay opened the door. The seat cover was torn where the working dogs had tried to scratch a warm nest and mud caked the steering wheel, floorboard, and gearshift knob.

  She hid her head. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Through the steamed windows of the café, McKay saw Kai watching. He made a gesture—thumbs up, palms up. McKay couldn’t be sure, but Kai smiled when they pulled away.

  “We’re almost out of town,” he said, stroking Mariko’s hair.

  She smiled. “I feel like Al Capone.”

  “You look beautiful.”

  They drove west, following the river toward the dam. In the long, narrow tunnel blasted out of rock, Mariko slipped her hand behind McKay’s head and kissed him half on the mouth.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  The rain made the rock black. A wind hit them on the other side of the tunnel and studded the lake with whitecaps. McKay pulled down where there were trees and a tiny beach. He turned in the driver’s seat. She caught his hand in hers, then his eyes. The trance was like a river, holding them under its tight surface.

  “Let’s go for a walk. Do you want to?” he asked.

  “Yes, but we don’t have much time.”

  “I know,” he said.

  She slid out on his side of the truck. The wind came in fat gusts, shaking the trees. They could hear water hitting rock somewhere, and at their feet tiny waves collapsed. He held her and put his nose against the roll of black hair on top of her head, and her hands, strong as ever, pressed against him; he kept forgetting to breathe.

  “I don’t want to move,” she said.

  “I don’t either.”

  There had been a half-moon, but the edge of the front moving in overtook it, though from time to time a portion of it shone through. McKay ran his fingers across her face. Her cheekbones seemed to absorb the moonlight and he wondered whether she were silver all the way down to the marrow.

  When they walked, the wind pushed at them. Once, she turned her head and he saw her mouth a word but the wind took the sound away and he put his mouth over her soundless one and felt the smile. The strip of beach ended in rock. A branch snapped. When they looked up into the tree, rain hit them. Mariko rubbed the wetness over her face, then held her arms up to welcome more and it came.

  They used a piece of canvas to shelter them and lay on blankets in the bed of the stock truck. The rain tapped all over the cloth.

  “You don’t hate me anymore, do you?” he asked.

  “It’s different here … away from all that.”

  “I know.”

  “Let’s never go back.…”

  “Let’s not …,” he said.

  “For a long time I didn’t trust you.”

  “I know,” he said, “but you can now.…”

  She unbuttoned his long underwear and he found his way through her outer layer of clothes until their skin touched and he felt a burning sensation go through him and wondered if he went in deeply enough and reached her center, whether the errant bomb that had been following him since the beginning of the war would go away.

  Finally she
spoke.

  “How did you learn to be so loving … way out here?”

  McKay laughed shyly.

  “I’ve never felt this way.…”

  “Like what?” he asked.

  “So loved.”

  “What did you expect?”

  She touched his face. “You’re not in love with anyone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who? Or should I ask?”

  “You.”

  Mariko laughed.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Why does that make you laugh?”

  “I’m not used to it,” she said. “But are there others?”

  “No more than usual.”

  “What’s usual for you?”

  “The impossible ones … the ones who don’t love me, or can’t, or are dead.”

  She looked down. “I’m married.”

  “I know.”

  “But not really.”

  “How do you manage that?”

  “It’s just an arrangement.”

  “But wouldn’t he still be jealous?”

  “He doesn’t think along those lines these days.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “Nothing.”

  Then he held her tightly again until he found his way into her. Her hair looked like part of the sky but inside, he came to a brightness. “I can’t help it,” he kept saying, “I can’t help it.…”

  By the time the rain let up the blankets they were lying on were wet.

  “How much time do we have?” she asked.

  McKay took his watch from his pocket. “Forty minutes.”

  She pulled the canvas all the way back and touched his face.

  “Let’s sit in the truck,” he said.

  “There isn’t enough time for anything,” she said as she gathered up her clothes and climbed down to the wet ground.

  The sky had cleared in the west. McKay helped her into the truck. For a while she lay with her head on his lap, then sat up and held both his hands.

  “I can’t stop thinking of the minutes ticking away,” she said. “It’s like being in a taxi when you can’t pay.”

  “When are they going to issue passes again?” he asked.