Heart Mountain

by Ehrlich, Gretel;

  Snuff nodded and looked at the baby. She opened her eyes for a moment, then shook her fists again and cried.

  “She’s hungry,” Carol said.

  “It’s a girl?”

  “Yes, I looked.”

  “I don’t have anything here to … I mean we can’t feed her whiskey.”

  “Call Ora Smith … tell her I need some formula and bottles and diapers,” Carol said over the child’s screams.

  Snuff went to the phone. Looking out the porthole window he could see the tracks of the car that had come and left, and as he watched Carol walk the baby around and around the dance floor, the shock of seeing her again and the added surprise of the foundling made his heart race. He had never succeeded at putting things together for himself and often wondered if it might not have been better to have become a priest, where one’s weaknesses and dependencies are subsumed by the larger order of the church. Yet he found that if he stayed in one place long enough, things came to him: a man fallen from a train, a lonely woman, a child at the door. The bounty, not taken but received, no longer surprised him.

  “She’s coming right up,” Snuff said, then emerged from behind the bar.

  Carol sat under the bent chandelier and rocked the child. Snuff pulled up a chair, but this time he looked at her instead of the baby.

  “You came back,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  Willard stumbled in from the back door, dragging his willow. When he saw the baby, his face brightened.

  “Look, Willard, it’s a baby girl.”

  Willard smiled, then leaned down to kiss the child on the cheek, and after, touched his fingers to his lips and laughed.

  Snuff brought another chair for Willard. “Do you know whose car came and went?”

  Carol looked at him. “I think so, don’t you?”

  “Is it who I’m thinking it is?” Snuff asked.

  “Yes. He came back by, too, while I was holding the baby.”

  “So he saw you with her?”

  “And kept driving,” she said. “Snuff … what are we going to do?”

  Snuff gazed at her. “You had your hair cut, didn’t you?”

  Carol smiled shyly. She touched the baby’s forehead. “What’s wrong with that man?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think he believes in anything anymore. He can only see what’s wrong and terrible in the world.”

  “He couldn’t see this?” Carol asked, looking at the baby.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “But he came back by—”

  Snuff nodded. “He’s not heartless.…”

  “Are you going to try to find him?”

  “I don’t know how.”

  The door opened slowly. Ora held a stack of diapers in one arm and a basket of formula and bottles in the other. She was a big woman, not fat, but tall and strong and rangy. She had raised eight children alone and had done ranch work with a team of white mules because her husband had died shortly after arriving in Wyoming by wagon from Utah.

  She gawked at the room, her eyes roving from the shelves lined with bottles, to the poker table in back, to the scarred dance floor, to the chandelier.

  “Come on in,” Snuff chirped. “Before the bishop sees you …,” he said, laughing.

  “I’ve never been in a bar in my whole life,” Ora exclaimed, dumbfounded.

  “Well, you’re in a real den of iniquity now, Ora,” Snuff joked as he took the basket from her arm.

  Her eyes caught Snuff’s. “It’s really not as bad as I thought it would be,” she said.

  They spread a blanket on the oak table and changed the baby’s diapers. Willard looked on with the same hooded stare he gave to his roosters and horse. Ora glanced at Carol.

  “That was a quick nine months,” she quipped.

  “We adopted her. She just came earlier than we expected.”

  Snuff smiled at Carol as Ora pinned on the clean diaper. A child wasn’t news to her, nor did she care how or why a baby came into the world. “A blessing is a blessing,” she said. “God doesn’t go by the calendar.”

  “How hot is this stuff supposed to get?” Snuff asked from behind the bar. He was boiling two bottles of formula and carried one to her. Ora touched the nipple to her wrist.

  “Just right, Snuff.” Then she handed the bottle to Carol. “It’s best if you feed her.”

  Carol took the baby in her arms, and when she put the bottle to the child’s mouth, Willard clapped his hands and squealed.

  “Ora, can I make you something?” Snuff called from behind the bar. “I mean, since you’re here, maybe you want to have the complete experience. I won’t tell the good bishop.”

  “I think I’ve had enough excitement for one day,” she said. “Well, I’ve got to get back. We’re having Relief Society tonight. You’re welcome any time,” she said breezily and walked out the door.

  When Ora was gone, Snuff quickly poured two small glasses of brandy and took them to the table. He looked at Carol pensively. “Did you come to stay?”

  His eyes caught hers. The baby grabbed his finger. “What shall we call her?”

  “Snuff … you don’t have to get involved in this if you don’t want to. I’ll take care of her.”

  He shot a look at Carol and his gray eyes narrowed. “I’m glad you came back.”

  Carol’s face softened. A car went by and they both looked, then Snuff touched the baby’s hair.

  “How about Venus for a name?” Carol asked.

  “Oh no … that wouldn’t be fair to the poor kid. Venus is a great old gal, but let’s not put that on someone just starting out.”

  “Then we’ll call her Lenny, no, L-E-N-I,” she said, spelling out the name.

  Snuff looked astonished. “I thought you hated that name.”

  “Just on him,” she said, looking from the baby to Snuff. “I can’t think of a name right now that would ever fit him.”

  “Leni?” Snuff said, looking into the baby’s dark eyes. “Hello.”

  The baby smiled, then shook her hands in the air.

  When the child had her fill of milk, Carol held her over one shoulder and walked the length of the bar. She heard Snuff talking on the phone. When she sat down again, he came back in and pulled up a chair close to hers. He looked excited and serious and a little scared.

  “You won’t ruin me, will you? At the last minute?” he asked.

  “Snuffy,” Carol said, moving her head close. “What are you talking about?”

  Snuff sat up straight and smiled. “Good,” he said, satisfied. “We’re going to town now.”

  Carol looked at him, baffled. Snuff stood before the back mirror and tied his bow tie and smoothed his hair. Then he turned and spoke again. “You know, most women wouldn’t do what you’ve done.”

  “You mean take in a baby?”

  “No, I mean come back.”

  The baby squirmed, and Carol shifted her to the other shoulder. Then her eyes met Snuff’s. “That’s false pride,” she said briskly. “We don’t have enough time left for that.”

  Snuff put on his suit coat.

  “Where are we going?” Carol asked.

  “We have an appointment … with the JP. I just called him. He’s even sober. I’ll hold Leni while you get ready.”

  Carol stood, stunned. “You’re not kidding, are you?” she said. “Are you sure? I mean, now, right now? Like this?”

  “Hell, Carol, we can’t have a baby if we’re not married,” he said, smiling, and took the baby from her arms.

  They found Willard curled up in the backseat of the black coupe when they were ready to go. Snuff let him hold the baby part of the way while Carol drove. Everyone knew that Snuff fell asleep at the wheel, so it wasn’t unusual to see him being chauffered, even to his own wedding, by his bride-to-be.

  Willard was the best man and the witness. He locked his soft arm in Carol’s until the justice of the peace told him he could let go. Then Willard saw Snuff kiss his mother, and
he laughed. The jailer, a gruff, stocky retired rancher they called “Hard Winter” because, the legend went, he was born in a snowbank during the hardest Wyoming winter on record, held the baby all during the ceremony. After, Willard signed his X on the marriage certificate, and Snuff slipped Frank a twenty-dollar bill and invited him up to the bar.

  Within an hour, news of the wedding spread through Luster and by the end of the day the speculation that there was a baby was confirmed, but they wondered why Carol had bothered to go away to have it.

  Cars poured into Snuff’s parking lot, and the sheepherder, who spoke no language, neither English nor Spanish, but some amalgam of the two with animal sounds punctuating each vowel, played the Jew’s harp and fiddle. Bottles of milk simmered on the stove, while Pinkey and McKay poured drinks. The miraculous presence of the child, who was passed from Carol to Snuff, to McKay, to Velma Vermeer, to Pinkey, to Madeleine, to Willard, and back to Carol again, mitigated the usual rowdiness, and the festivities were graced by a dignified glee.

  39

  McKay had two horses saddled and tied under a tree. It was June 1945 and already there had been a heat wave with temperatures well into the eighties. Mariko’s day-long pass had finally been approved and McKay was at the Camp’s sentry gate before breakfast. Since his mix-up with Harry, he no longer talked to the guards, but instead stood by his truck with one leg tucked up, leaning against the front fender. He heard the short blast of the siren for roll call, then the breakfast bell. The noise and smell of the Camp repelled him. He knew he should have gone in to visit Abe-san but he was impatient. It had been four months since he had seen Mariko.

  She strode down the dusty avenue. At the gate, she pulled out a cigarette and asked the guards for a light, taunting them. She showed her pass, then stepped through to temporary freedom.

  When McKay walked toward her she noticed his limp. It was always bad just before a rain. She searched the sky; to look directly at him now would be overwhelming, she thought. Her shoulders rose stiffly as he drew near, and she closed her eyes. When he took the cigarette from between her fingers she felt as if he were undressing her.

  “It’s going to rain, isn’t it, on our one day together?” she asked, peering up at his face. The skin under his left eye twitched and in the gold at his temples, she saw glistening strands of gray.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  Nothing seemed natural. The movement of the truck matched her roaring thoughts, if they could be called thoughts at all. The horizon slid—like lumber at a sawmill—and endless sagebrush bumped past, grazing her eyes. She felt carsick.

  She laid her head on McKay’s lap and he ran his hand through her long hair, twisting it into a loose knot around his knuckles, reentwining himself, gently invading her.

  As soon as they turned off the pavement he stopped the truck. Mariko sat up. The earth was still. It was the brutality of their separations and reunions that frightened her now.

  “Where are you?” she asked and pressed toward him.

  His chest seemed huge and she clung to him. He touched her nose to make her look up.

  “I’m here …,” he said, almost tentatively, and she marveled at how they seesawed between sureness, power, the unmistakable physical weld—and uncertainty. Uncertainty because there was no surfeit, no frame, no end point.

  “I don’t doubt you,” she said. “I doubt love.”

  She felt her heart cramp, then jerk into motion. There would be no end to wanting or loving him, yet she knew that nothing could ever meet the expectations of desire.

  They stood in the V where two creeks met. A kingfisher, perched on a branch, dove into the water and came out again as if untouched, unscathed. She looked at McKay. In his eyes, slabs of gray were cut into the blue. It’s the kind of imperfection Japanese love, a sign of beauty, she thought, smiling, and grabbed him around the waist.

  “Your bones are so light. I always forget that,” he said, touching her wrist. “Like a bird’s.”

  They heard flapping and laughed. Upstream and around a bend, a blue heron lifted into sight and flew behind a screen of willows.

  “We better go. I’ve got two horses waiting.” Mariko let herself be led back to the truck.

  As McKay drove, she kissed his hand on the steering wheel, then the cuff of his shirt and the sleeve and the seam at the shoulder and his neck. She thought of all the ways she would open herself to him, the way layers of self would drop away and burn like paper scraps. The thought did not frighten her, but the unquenchable longing did. Maybe there’s no stopping it, she thought, shuddering because it made a joke of love. She promised herself that at the moment of orgasm she would try to grasp some meaning—she would fashion it into a hook on which their two lives would swing. But to grasp at anything … how that would make Abe-san laugh. And to feel sadness in the attempt to join with anyone … that was laughable too because it was only something becoming empty, and the emptiness taking on form, and so on.…

  “I hate it,” she cried silently and pushed her hand under McKay’s shirt, sliding her fingers over his heart.

  They untied the horses and rode and when it started raining, they stopped in the breaks above the ranch and found shelter under a tree. The soft needles brushed her face, wetting it, and she inhaled the rain smell. He held her and his tenderness seemed to irrigate her bones. The scent of mountain mahogany sweetened the air. But it was too wet and cold to take off their clothes. McKay sat against the thin trunk of the white pine and held her with his legs. As he rolled his heels back and forth on the rowels of his spurs, she thought how desire, gone beyond knowing, ends up as nothingness. Perhaps it was tenderness that made up for loss. She liked being rocked between his knees.

  “If we were in Paris,” she began, and he listened, smiling. She told him about the café where she met with her friends in the afternoons, and a place called the Mermaid Tavern where musicians from the major orchestras—violinists and oboists and cellists—came to play chamber music on their free nights; she told him about Pablo Casals, and Pablo Picasso and another Pablo, who made love only to women’s feet; and about going to see racehorses warm up in the Bois de Boulogne on Sundays and about the trains you could catch in the middle of the night and find yourself in another country by morning.

  “But it’s like that here too—for me,” McKay said. “It’s just like that.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  When it stopped raining a mist rose from the ground. They stood up and looked out across the basin and everywhere the earth shimmered in steam. They left the horses tied and he took her hand.

  “I’ll show you,” he said, leading her downhill.

  His long strides broke into a run.

  Three sage hens lifted out of the sagebrush and he turned, thinking Mariko was behind him. Wind ruffled his blond hair. When Mariko caught up, he walked straight toward the ridge, and when he stopped once to inspect a tiny flower, his hand looked impossibly big. But how tenderly he touched things, she thought.

  From the top they could see down into a small canyon. “I want to show it to you,” he said, barely stopping long enough to catch his breath.

  The canyon was human-size, scaled to fit an animal. Runoff water had scoured sandstone into basins like baths. Rock walls the size of houses were nicked with shelves and nests, and here and there a thick juniper root split the rock like a hairy arm, twisting back in on itself.

  How different we are, Mariko thought. I look at all this but he is made of it. He is not separate from it as I am.

  After, they climbed up and out and across a sandy hill and down another canyon which they followed north. A wall of red rock rose out of the ground, its smooth side facing east.

  “Look,” McKay said, and pointed.

  Mariko squinted into the sun and stepped closer. Carved into the rock were images of elk at a run. She traced the lines with her fingers.

  “How old are these?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe ten thousand
years, maybe five hundred years.”

  They walked on. Up a ridge, down a steep slope, up through another set of breaks where blocks of sandstone had tumbled like boxcars. A trail wound through them. She had to catch her breath once, supporting herself on a jack pine. On top, she saw a low fence. She looked at McKay as they approached.

  “You mean you have your own graveyard?” she asked.

  “Yes. This is where my parents are buried.”

  She touched one headstone, then the other.

  “I planted blazing stars on my father’s grave—see?” he said and held the tightly closed blossom in his hand. “They only open up at night. My father was like that. He traveled like a ghost and whenever he went away from the ranch, he always left at night.”

  By his mother’s grave he had planted wild iris, small and brilliantly blue. He said, “They’re like her eyes; that’s why I put them here.”

  “What else?” Mariko asked, meaning about his mother.

  McKay knelt down at the head of the grave. “When Bobby came to the ranch she embarked on what she called her ‘Japanese studies.’ She was like that. She wanted to know who Bobby was because she had never known any Asians before. She used to read to me from Genji.…”

  Mariko smiled delightedly. “My prince …,” she said tenderly but with a wry smile.

  They walked back to the ridge above the house. The sky hazed over, yet there were no clouds, no front moving in.

  “I smell something,” Mariko said.

  “So do I,” McKay said, scanning the horizon.

  Mariko stood next to him. “Oh, McKay, look,” she said, pointing.

  A flame shot up from behind a ridge.

  They rode to the ranch.

  The fire was up behind cow camp, Bobby said, and helped McKay catch four more horses.

  “You coming or not?” McKay asked Mariko brusquely. “Because it’s going to be hell up there.”

  He fitted two horses with pack saddles and filled the panniers with water canteens, towels, gloves, a first-aid kit, and the sack lunches Bobby brought out. Then he top-packed them with shovels and axes.

  “I’ll come,” Mariko announced.

  McKay looked at her. “You’ll have to keep up.”