Heart Mountain

by Ehrlich, Gretel;

  He saddled two more horses, and while Bobby opened the gates, he grabbed the pack string and led off at a trot with Mariko following.

  It was not a big fire yet. Riding out through the sagebrush, he gauged the wind and tried to think about how the fire would burn if it took off.

  At the river he saw tracks: elk, deer, cattle. He let the horses drink, then turned north, up the trail to cow camp. He wondered if Pinkey was up there, turning the cattle for home. When they emerged from a patch of timber, he saw elk. They weren’t grazing. They were on the move. The air was thick with smoke, and as he pulled off the trail so they could pass, he saw there were cattle with them.

  Mariko watched McKay from behind. She thought she could see his thinking by the way he moved with his horse. His mind ran fast and fluid.… When they reached the camp, Pinkey’s mare was gone. McKay turned to Mariko.

  “Pinkey must be turning down those cattle … the ones we passed.” He made a twisting motion with his wrist and thumb. Then his face lit up and he smiled at her. “You’re beautiful,” he said and rode on up the hill.

  He could see where the fire had burned across the top of the mesa a few miles away. Now it was in the trees and the tops of tall lodgepole pines burned like torches, single flames going up into the air.

  “I think we better dig a trench here,” he said, pulling the shovels from under the lash ropes. He tied the horses. The wind blew in sharp gusts, and each time the fire brightened. McKay loosened the hard ground and Mariko dug after him. The ditch was a foot wide. When they hit boulders, they dug around them. Sometimes they stopped and drank water from the canteen, then continued their work. When he saw that she was tiring, he told her to check the horses, and she did, and by nightfall the trench was dug.

  The air didn’t cool down with darkness. Now, when the wind fanned the smoke into flames, they could see sprays of sparks cascading and the burning grass crept toward them. They stopped once, sat by the tiny creek.

  McKay handed Mariko a sandwich. “We better eat while we can,” he said.

  Her hand was black with dirt. They ate without talking. When she finished the first sandwich, McKay handed her another one, and after they drank from the stream. The smoke was thick and it made McKay cough.

  “When you were sick, you coughed like that.…”

  “Did you really come to see me?”

  “Yes. Pinkey came to the Camp. He said you were about dead—”

  “I don’t remember—” he said.

  The air grew hotter. McKay led the horses out from the trees and they rode higher. In a coulee, he found four head of cattle and pushed them on down toward Pinkey’s cabin. He wondered where Pinkey was and how soon they would run into Madeleine.

  The wind shifted in their favor—that is, away from the cabin—then it came around and blew from the northwest again. They rode up and down the fire line, putting out small blazes. McKay thought he saw someone at the top of the ridge and called out, but there was no reply. It must have been a falling branch, he told Mariko.

  They worked through the night. Mariko’s eyes took on a wide dry look he had not seen before and her delicate, pale skin blackened with soot. Wind shook flames into the trees and balls of fire jumped from treetop to treetop. Then they heard thunder. McKay looked up from his shovel work at Mariko. She held out her hand, and a raindrop flattened itself on her palm. The tree flames caved in first, burst sideways, then dissolved into smoke, and the trenches filled with water. McKay caught Mariko by the shoulder and turned her to face him.

  “We’ve got her licked,” he yelled, then picked her up and let her down against him.

  They rode to the wide bowl rimmed by the lacelike remnants of a cornice. Ahead, in a clump of aspen, McKay thought he saw something again. The rain didn’t let up. It came in undulating waves. As they approached, he saw a horse lying on its side.

  “Pinkey!” McKay ran to the old cowboy. Pinkey’s mare, Eleanor, was down.

  “She broke down on me …,” Pinkey mumbled, “my mare broke down …,” he said, leaning against her and looking up with glazed eyes.

  “Are you okay?” McKay asked.

  Pinkey looked at him uncomprehendingly.

  “Is the mare’s leg broke?” McKay asked, running his hand down her back leg.

  “I don’t know,” Pinkey said. “I can’t find my gun.”

  “Can you stand up, Pinkey?”

  Pinkey got to his feet slowly, obediently.

  McKay looked the mare over. She lifted her head once and eyed him imploringly. Pinkey slumped beside her again.

  “I don’t feel a break, Pinkey … did she fall?”

  Pinkey laid his head on the mare’s neck.

  “Pinkey?”

  “You old broke-down mare …,” Pinkey said, stroking her neck.

  “Why don’t we ride to the cabin, then I’ll come back and see what needs to be done,” McKay said.

  Pinkey didn’t move.

  “For God’s sake, Pinkey … come on.”

  Mariko helped McKay lift Pinkey onto a horse. The rain came in soft gusts that made the fire twitch and there were no flames.

  As they rode to the cabin another figure came out of the dark.

  “McKay?” the voice said. The rain had misted into a steady drizzle when Madeleine met Mariko on the trail. The two women stared at each other without moving. Mariko’s hair was wet and it hung in strings down her soot-blackened face.

  “Hello,” Madeleine said. “Where’s McKay?”

  “He’s coming. He’s got Pinkey with him. Pinkey’s horse is hurt.”

  McKay and Pinkey, riding double, came around the bend. The mist, mixed with smoke, made it hard to see.

  “Is that ridge out now?” Madeleine called ahead.

  “Yep,” McKay answered. He looked at the two women. “Madeleine, this is Mariko,” he said.

  Madeleine smiled. “That horse treating you okay?” she asked Mariko.

  “Fine, thanks.”

  “I’ll bring the rest of the cattle on down and pick up anything I see on the way,” Madeleine began.

  “Eleanor’s broke down,” Pinkey said in a weak voice.

  “How bad, Pinkey?”

  “She’s just broke down.…”

  Madeleine gave McKay a knowing look.

  “A horse as ugly as that is hard to hurt,” Madeleine said.

  “Just went down on her knees, sudden-like. She’s never done that before …,” Pinkey droned.

  Madeleine picked up the bridle reins and backed her horse so the others could pass. “Nice to meet you,” she said to Mariko.

  When McKay passed, she grabbed his hand as if to signal both understanding and dismay. Then she continued on down the trail.

  The cabin was dark when the trio rode in. Pinkey slid off the back of McKay’s horse and stumbled lifelessly to the door. When McKay and Mariko walked in, they found him sitting in the dark. McKay lit a lamp and when the room lightened he saw Pinkey’s desperate eyes.

  “You’ve just been waiting to shoot my mare,” Pinkey yelled, standing. He grabbed the salt shaker and threw it against the wall.

  “Oh, quit it, Pinkey,” McKay growled.

  Pinkey sat down, quieted. He looked frail suddenly.

  “We’ll grain these horses and let them rest a little bit, then I’ll go back and see what I can do for her,” McKay said, putting coffee on. “Okay?” he asked the old cowboy.

  After taking care of their saddle horses, McKay and Mariko walked toward the creek. It had stopped raining and the sky cleared to its former haze.

  “Let’s clean up a little,” McKay said and nudged Mariko toward the water.

  She sat at the edge of the creek, then slipped in, trying to wash the soot from her face. McKay crouched, facing her. He cupped his hands and brought water to his mouth, then took off his hat and doused his hair. She laughed when she saw him drip.

  He thought about the two women meeting on the dark trail. They were like negatives of each other: blond and
black, physical and cerebral, companionable and passionate. But there was no question of choosing.

  He rose up suddenly like a bear: “For God’s sake, Mariko, don’t leave me,” he cried.

  When McKay went to shoot Pinkey’s mare he found the horse at the bottom of the hill, alive and unharmed, and grazing, and up above, the ridge of charred lodgepole pines smoldered.

  40

  High water came and stayed through the first week of July that year and even in August, during cloudbursts, the creeks rose suddenly and overflowed. McKay rode the colt on a ten-mile circle every day and never went the same way twice, so the colt could see as much of the world as possible. He rode to the waterholes where the ducklings hatched; rode through the bonsai field; rode the ridges above the Camp and the ranch where the clouds blew through and around him; rode through plowed fields, circled the Camp in the evening when the lights went on; rode the highway to Snuff’s, rode the pastures where the elk were; kicked him up through bogs and over ice, through deep mud, along steep sidehills; and showed him all kinds of weather except heat, which was still to come.

  The day McKay rode the colt to the river was the day—August 6, 1945—a solar eclipse occurred.

  Pinkey had ridden from cow camp before dawn. He rode north against the flank of Heart Mountain, saw that the bulls were in with the cows, checked for pinkeye and hoof rot, then traversed a long point of land to its end, from which he could see the two-thousand-acre pastures below. The sun had just risen when the eclipse began. Pinkey thought it was his eyes. His friend Dutch, who had had a cerebral hemorrhage once, described the way black blotches came over your eyes and the world dimmed. Pinkey tried to look directly at the sun but couldn’t, yet he knew the darkness—Vincent’s shadow—was coming again. The sun looked big on the horizon but by the time it lifted completely above the ridge, Pinkey couldn’t tell if the sun was blowing up, or becoming lost. Then the whole center went black, and the last Pinkey saw, a bright halo flared out from behind it. “I’ll never get out from under you …,” he mumbled, meaning Vincent’s shadow. The eclipse was like a foot on his heart. Below, in the valley, he could hear roosters crowing because they thought it was night again, and east of the ridge, a band of sheep bedded down halfway up a hill. How long did the darkness last? Pinkey couldn’t tell. He leaned forward in the saddle: “The days get shorter and shorter,” he said to his mare. “Are we dead now?”

  After, moist Pacific air brought snow squalls, as if someone were puffing smoke, and McKay rode the blue colt to the river. The wind came in three directions at once: on the north side of the ranch it snowed, on the south end the sun shone, then for a moment it rained. The river was high. It had brought down whole trees, which caught in jams along the banks, and the water whirled under them. The gravel bar had been reduced to the size of a coffin. Only the high part, where the tall bunchgrass grew, was visible.

  In his pocket he carried the letter he had received from Champ. “I didn’t even know he could write,” he had told Bobby jokingly. The letter had said:

  McKay—

  Our brother has been busted up pretty bad—I guess his ship got the hell torpedoed out of it. He lost blood and a little of his skull. He said they gave him forty units of plasma. They found him topside—he struggled because he thought the ship was sinking, just like the time he fell out of bed during a nightmare and we had to pounce on him. Squirrelly older brother, huh. Some dumb newspaper man who was on the ship stumbled on this scene and wrote: JUNIOR MEDICAL OFFICER FIGHTING TO SAVE LIVES OF MEN. Ted said it made the front page of The New York Times. So don’t believe a damn thing you read about this war. If any of us do anything heroic, it’s only because we’ve gotten the shit scared out of us and we’ve lost control. Anyway, Ted’s being transferred from a hospital ship by DC-3 to good old dry ground. Expect a call. I’m off to do battle. We’re being moved to a forward area tonight. Squeeze a girl for me.

  Champ

  When McKay looked down at the river again, the rocky banks were submerged and the turquoise pools with the cool gravel bottoms were muddied.

  He hadn’t been thinking about Mariko—yet no thought arose in his mind that didn’t have something of her in it. It didn’t matter that he had tried to stop seeing her. His edict rid him of nothing, but only acted as a further link, a kind of negative bond. Nor did it matter that he would lose her. He knew she would not, could not stay on the ranch and marry him. He’d had no experience with a woman whose life could not be grafted onto his, and the impossibility of their love strengthened his feelings for her. Yet he had not expected her to take such a hold.

  He moved the colt up to the edge of the river. The river was fast, and a twig, floating by on the surface, made the colt balk. McKay let him turn, then took him back the other way to the water. The horse put his head down, touching his muzzle to the current, and blew air, then tucked his rump to run. McKay pulled the colt’s head around sharply and let him trot up river, then turned him, up and down. His father always told him to make a good situation out of a bad one: if a colt balks, use it as an opportunity to teach him to turn.

  The colt stopped suddenly and pawed the water. McKay talked softly, then made a forward movement with his hips in the saddle to urge the colt on. The horse pawed and snorted and pawed. McKay felt the muscles in his rump tuck and picked up on the bridle reins, but not soon enough. The colt bolted into the water, bucked, and fell.

  When McKay went out of his body, he was lifted by the thermal of Mariko. Lifted and dropped and lifted again. It was neither hot nor cold and he couldn’t tell if he was moving. For a moment, the water cleared and he could see: the thick carpet of sedge leading up to the rock and the rock itself looked like mere casings—for something else.

  Water rushed against him, into him, tinged white and blue. The rapture worked its way down from McKay’s head into his body. One hand rose limply and one foot pushed out in spasm against a tree trunk, then a rock. He remembered wiping sweat from his face. Was it sweat? Then he saw Mariko, saw the heat rise in her cheeks. He was damp under the arms and the water worked in his lungs like fear.

  McKay’s head broke through the windshield of water and a piece of grass unwound itself from his neck and let go. His mother’s dead face came down on him … he gasped for air. Something caught in his side when he breathed. He looked up: Heart Mountain’s tusk loomed and he felt as if he had been gored. He gasped again. The colt had fallen backward and was righting himself. One rein undulated toward him, just below the surface like a watersnake, then sank.

  “Mariko …,” McKay cried out. He touched the side of his head and his hand came back with blood on it, staining the water pink.

  At that moment she went from him. The rapture worked its sweetness all the way through his body. Breathing was hard. He had broken ribs. Then he felt light-headed and the double, embattled constraints of desire and solitude floated.…

  He laid his face on the water, on her, on the place where the pink stain had been, and cried out for her again. “Foolish me,” he thought. For a moment Heart Mountain shimmied at his waist, then the horse, clambering onto the bank, shattered the reflection.

  Out of the water, McKay lay on gravel. The big colt grunted as he shook. McKay rolled on his back and opened his eyes. There was no place the sky stopped when he looked and the water roared and there was no other sound.

  41

  July 1945. The “Powell War Dads”—a group of men from the nearby town—have signed a petition asking that when the war ends we promise to leave the state of Wyoming. In addition, they requested that in the meantime, our passes be suspended. The Camp director retorted that 748 boys from the Heart Mountain Camp are also fighting and are as dear to their “war dads” as the boys from Powell.

  We were pushed into the interior deserts by racism in 1942; now we’re being pushed back out.

  Later. No farming this year. Seems strange. We’re simply waiting for the end, but when will that come? In the meantime there’s talk of home—Califor
nia—for the first time: Guadalupe, Santa Maria, Terminal Island, Lompoc, Hollister, Salinas, Oxnard, San Jose, Gardena … Will the Buddhist temple near my father’s hardware store still be there? Will they be able to lease their lettuce farm again? Will the art goods store in Little Tokyo be reopened? Will they have time to plant winter crops if the war ends, say in October? Will they be able to find a place to live?

  Will the old neighborhoods have changed? Will we be shot down on the streets? Will we be able to get bank loans, buy a car, go to public schools? Will our belongings in storage be made available to us? “After Camp,” that’s what everyone’s talking about these days.…

  Saturday. A letter from Emi arrived. They went back to Los Angeles and found strangers living in their house and the strangers have refused to leave. Her father has had to take a job washing dishes in a skid row restaurant … he used to be a prosperous strawberry farmer. Her mother works as a cook at a farm labor camp, so Emi went to live with her. She says, “If you come back, expect nothing. Love Emi.”

  July 7. Tanabata again. Mom wrote out another wish on a streamer of white paper and gave one to Mariko, too. I remember how upset she was when she learned it was Mariko I had my eyes on, not Emi. Now, since Pop has become so difficult, almost impossible to live with, she has taken a kindly attitude toward Abe-san. “He’s a hotoko no yo na hito,” she said, “a man just like a Buddha.”

  Later, I went with Mariko to the big bonfire where some old Issei men were reciting Tanabata poems. We lay in the grass. The day before there had been a dust storm—just like the one that had hit the afternoon we first arrived here and the grass was gritty with dirt. Mariko lay on her back and looked at the stars as the poems began.

  We had finally convinced the administration to turn out the guard tower lights for Tanabata. It was wonderful to be able to view that thick bright ceiling. The Milky Way twisted over us.…

  I held Mariko’s hand and she turned to me.

  “I’ve grown so used to you. What will I do without you?” she said, then rose up on her elbow to listen to the old men.