Savage Mountain

by John Smelcer

  “Nada. We have to ration the oatmeal,” replied Sebastian. “We’ll have it for lunch or linner.”

  “What the hell is linner?”

  “In between lunch and dinner . . . linner. You know . . . like brunch.”

  “So, this lousy cup of coffee is all we get?” asked James.

  “Unless you got some steak and eggs in your backpack, it is.”

  James pulled his pack closer and reached deep into a side pocket, pulling out a chocolate candy bar.

  “I’ve been saving this,” he said. “We can split it. At least it has some calories.”

  James opened the brown wrapper, broke the scored bar in two, and handed half to Sebastian.

  “Thanks.”

  After eating their meager breakfast, the boys broke camp and continued their descent. Gravity pulled them downhill. Several hours later, after making good time, they stopped for lunch. Still above the tree line, surrounded by snow and rock, Sebastian used the small cook stove to heat water for the oatmeal. The flame flickered and died just as the water came to a boil. They were out of food, out of sugar and powdered creamer for their coffee and oatmeal, out of clean clothes, and now they were even out of fuel to heat water. Sebastian scooped equal portions into two bowls, handing one to James.

  “Here. That’ll stick to your ribs,” he said.

  They ate their bland meal in silence.

  “So what are you gonna do when we get home?” asked James, using his spoon to scrape out every last bit of oatmeal.

  “What do ya mean?”

  “I mean about . . . us . . . life . . . Dad.”

  Sebastian thought about his response before answering.

  “I’m not sure, but I know one thing: I’m not gonna give the jerk the satisfaction of hurting me anymore. He can do his worst, but I’m not gonna let it get to me.”

  James nodded. “Yeah . . . Me, too.”

  Sebastian knew it would be more difficult for James to hold his tongue and tolerate their father’s abuse. It was just his nature.

  “I’ve been thinking about moving out,” Sebastian said matter-of-factly.

  “But you’re barely seventeen,” replied James.

  “I know. But I have a part-time job, saved up some money. I could rent a cheap place or split the rent with someone.”

  “What about school?” James asked.

  “I’d finish. I like school. I wanna go to college . . . become a teacher or a writer.”

  “So, you’re just gonna leave me alone with Dad?”

  “I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Maybe we could talk to someone,” said James. “A teacher like Mr. Betters.”

  “Everyone thinks Dad is so great,” replied Sebastian. No one’s going to help us.”

  “But there’s two of us,” said James. “If we stick together we could . . .”

  Sebastian shook his head.

  “Maybe I could live with you? Nah. That wouldn’t work. I know! We could off Dad instead. Push him off a cliff or boat or something . . . kick out the floor jack when he’s under the car changing the oil so it looks like an accident. Nah . . . That wouldn’t be right. Would it?” asked James, with a playful yet deadly serious tone.

  Sebastian didn’t reply.

  “Did you hear what I said? Would it be wrong to get rid of Dad? You know . . . a dirt nap?”

  “Hmm,” replied Sebastian, looking thoughtful. “I got nothing.”

  Late in the afternoon, with the sun perched on the craggy teeth of the mountain, the brothers made it back to the small alpine lake where they had camped on the way up, where they’d had the encounter with the grizzly bear in their tent. They stumbled upon a dead moose covered in dirt amid a thicket of alder bushes.

  The brothers knew what it was immediately.

  “Bear kill,” they both said, looking at the partially eaten carcass.

  Sebastian and James knew that a bear will eat however much it takes to fill its belly, cover the rest of the kill to stay cool and to keep away flies—a kind of natural bear pantry—and then come back later for more. Often, the bear lies nearby sleeping off its meal.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here,” James whispered, backing away from the kill.

  Sebastian started to follow his brother, but then stopped. He looked around.

  “What are you doing? C’mon!” whispered James.

  “Dinner,” said Sebastian, unsheathing his folding hunting knife on his belt.

  “Are you crazy? We gotta get outta here! That bear could be anywhere,” James said, his eyes darting anxiously across the alpine landscape.

  Sebastian knelt beside the moose, brushed away dirt and moss, and cut a roast-sized hunk of meat from the hindquarter. The meat was firm and cool to the touch, a sign that it hadn’t spoiled. Sebastian smelled it. It smelled fresh.

  “Okay. Let’s scram,” he said, holding up the chunk of red meat.

  Almost at a jog, the boys distanced themselves from the moose kill. All the while they blew their whistles hanging from their jacket zippers and sang a medley of songs from the movie Grease at the top of their lungs. They understood that when in bear country, it’s best to avoid close encounters. Let the bear know what and where you are. That’s the best policy.

  Well below the tree line, along the gravel bank of a clear brook, the brothers finally stopped, set up camp, built a blazing campfire, and roasted the moose meat on sticks held over the flames. That night, they slept restlessly, waking to every little sound, fearful that a bear was following their scent, planning its revenge.

  THE RECKONING

  Wednesday, July 9, 1980

  JAMES PUNCHED SEBASTIAN SEVERAL TIMES through his sleeping bag.

  “Wake Up . . . Bear,” he whispered anxiously.

  “What?”

  “Sshh . . . I think there’s a bear outside,” he said, putting his index finger to his lips and then pointing toward the front of the tent.

  The boys sat motionless, straining to hear even the smallest sound. Sebastian reached for his folding Buck knife and opened it smoothly until it clicked.

  “What are ya gonna do with that?” James remarked quietly.

  “Defend myself. What do ya think?”

  “You gonna fight a bear with a knife? Good luck with that,” replied James.

  “What do you think I should do,” asked Sebastian, still whispering.

  “Bend over and kiss your booty goodbye.”

  A rustling noise outside the tent, clearly audible to both boys, riveted their attention.

  “Did you hear that?” asked James, almost in a panic.

  Sebastian nodded and brandished his knife, ready to defend himself when the bear ripped open the tent.

  Terrified, James fumbled for his pants with his black leather knife sheath on the belt.

  “Be quiet,” said Sebastian. “It’ll hear you.”

  For the longest couple of minutes in history, the boys listened to the rustling and scratching sound outside, which was very close to the tent now. They could hear their own hearts beating.

  “Maybe it’ll go away,” said James, opening his hunting knife with trembling hands.

  Then they heard a crunching sound.

  “What the hell is it doing?” asked Sebastian.

  “I don’t know. We didn’t leave anything outside to eat. Maybe it can smell that we roasted the moose meat over the fire.”

  Sebastian slowly unzipped the tent door, trying to make as little noise as possible. James got up onto his knees, his knife-wielding hand at the ready. Sebastian pulled back the orange nylon door so they could see what the bear was doing. About ten feet away, sitting on a fallen log, a squirrel was eating seeds from a pinecone.

  The brothers burst into laughter. The terrified squirrel dropped its meal, scurried up a tree, an
d chattered at them angrily from the safety of a low branch.

  “Holy cow! I thought that was a bear for sure,” said James, closing his knife.

  Sebastian put away his knife as well.

  While breaking camp, the boys joked about the experience.

  “Remember the killer rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail?” asked Sebastian.

  James laughed. It was one of his favorite movies.

  “You know what a bear calls two boys in sleeping bags?” he asked.

  Sebastian shrugged.

  “Kids in a blanket . . . You get it? Like pigs in a blanket.”

  “Hardy-har-har,” replied Sebastian. “What a knucklehead.”

  A little while later, the brothers said farewell to their campsite.

  “Goodbye killer squirrel!” James proclaimed loudly to the forest.

  Without breakfast, they followed the creek down the mountain through trees and thick, almost impassable brush to the floodplain below. By then it was almost noon. At the confluence where the little creek merged with another clear creek, they saw that the water was almost choked with salmon, hundreds of them in a stream no wider than eight feet across and a foot deep.

  “Lunch!” declared Sebastian with a broad grin.

  After they removed their packs and their hiking boots and socks, and rolled up their jeans, James stepped into the icy water about fifty yards below where Sebastian stood—the school of unsuspecting salmon between them.

  “Damn, it’s cold!” said James.

  On signal, the brothers walked noisily toward one another, kicking and splashing and waving their arms madly. The frightened fish swarmed in every direction. Several shot right out of the creek and onto the gravel banks. James chased after one while Sebastian chased after another, but Sebastian lost his when it managed to flip itself back into the creek. But James caught his. They built a campfire, gutted the fish, and roasted it on a willow stick over the fire.

  “Delicious,” said James, savoring a bite of the reddish-orange meat.

  “I concur,” Sebastian said, using a fake British accent. “Let’s order up a bottle of wine. Shall we have red or white with salmon?”

  James laughed.

  “White, I think,” he said.

  After lunch, the brothers followed the creek to its confluence with the wide river they had crossed the afternoon they had arrived. But it no longer resembled the river they had easily forged, wading knee deep from sand bar to sand bar through gurgling riffles. The snowy blizzard high up on the mountain had produced rain storms and flashfloods below, and the warm summer sun had melted ice on the glacier. The river was swollen with water, threatening to flood its steep banks.

  Sebastian and James stood looking at the river, dumbfounded. They hadn’t expected this. It hadn’t even occurred to them. What had been merely an inconvenience eight days earlier was now downright dangerous. Trees raced by, swept downstream after root-clinging banks had been undercut by the swift, gouging current. Judging from the water level, Sebastian figured the river was ten feet deep—almost a million gallons of water racing by every minute.

  Sebastian sat down on a boulder. James sat down beside him, both facing the torrent.

  “How are we going to get across that?” asked James. “I sure the hell ain’t swimmin’ across!”

  “I have no idea,” replied Sebastian.

  For half an hour the brothers explored their options. Since they hadn’t told anyone where they were going, they couldn’t expect help to arrive. Few people traveled the rugged road to where they could see Sebastian’s small gray truck parked on the other side. They were out of food. They were out of coffee and tea. They were out of clean clothes. They couldn’t wait out the flood . . . it could take weeks for the water to go back down so they could safely wade across. And it might not go down at all with the July sun melting glaciers in the high country.

  Sebastian looked back at the mountain, which seemed less inhospitable from such a distance. Then he looked at his truck, parked only a few hundred yards away.

  “So close and yet so far,” he said, nodding his head.

  He opened his pack, dug out his blue parka, and fished out the photographs of him and James at the summit from an inside pocket.

  The brothers sat looking at the pictures, talking about their experience almost nostalgically, the way Sebastian had planned they would for the rest of their lives.

  Finally, James had an idea.

  “I know . . . we can make a raft, like Huckleberry Finn.”

  Sebastian stood up.

  “Now that’s a good idea!” he said, excitedly stuffing his parka back into his pack and shoving the photographs inside his jacket pocket.

  They decided their best plan was to go far up river to build their raft. They knew they couldn’t fight the current and paddle straight across. By starting upriver, they could work their way to the other side little by little, ending up near where the truck was parked.

  Congratulating themselves on their quick thinking, Sebastian and James followed the shoreline for half a mile or longer. They found a perfect place to build and launch their raft. It took only an hour to scrounge enough logs—each about five or six inches across—and drag them to the water’s edge, where they built an irregular-shaped platform secured with climbing rope. Although the raft was about five feet wide, without a saw, the length was composed of a variety of logs: eight-footers, some ten-footers, and a couple that were even close to twelve or thirteen feet long. The resulting craft was ungainly and shabby, but it would float. Their short snow shovels would have to serve as paddles.

  All in all, their plan seemed sound.

  Using stout poles as levers, the boys managed to heave the raft into the water. Sebastian held the short tie-off rope.

  “Jump on,” he said. “Let’s see how she floats with a load.”

  James stepped onto the unsteady raft, which appeared to support his weight. He got down on his knees in the middle.

  Sebastian handed him the shovel-paddles.

  “Here goes nothing,” he said, as he jumped onto the middle of the raft behind his brother and got down onto his knees as well.

  His added weight pressed the logs deeper into the river so that the entire raft was submerged under an inch of water. But it stayed afloat. At the same time, the current snatched the raft and sent it careening downriver, spinning slowly as it went.

  “Let’s straighten her out,” said Sebastian, using his makeshift paddle to turn the bow downstream.

  The current carried the raft faster than they had thought. The half-mile starting point seemed insufficient.

  “Paddle on the right side!” shouted Sebastian.

  Then a moment later, “Paddle on the left side! Harder!”

  The raft made slow headway against the powerful current. In the middle of the river, the raft began to come apart.

  “We’re not going to make it!” James yelled as the gap between the logs became wider, and one of the shorter logs worked itself loose of its lashing.

  “Faster! Paddle faster!” Sebastian shouted, digging the flat of his shovel deep into the water.

  Half the length of a football field from shore, the raft came apart, spilling the boys into the muddy river. The dirty clothes, insulated winter coat, and sleeping bag inside their backpacks instantly became waterlogged, dragging them beneath the surface. The current turned them every which way. In darkness, with their lungs bursting for air, Sebastian and James clawed for the surface, struggling to remove their packs.

  Finally, they emerged into the sunlight and gasped for air, choking and coughing. Sebastian swam to his brother about twenty feet away.

  “We need . . . to get . . . to shore . . . as fast . . . as we can,” he said, as waves splashed over his face.

  Both knew the danger they were in. The water was so cold that the
ir muscles would lock up in a matter of minutes and they would drown. Sebastian looked at the shore. They had already passed the spot where the truck was parked.

  “Swim for it. Stay close.” he said, his teeth already chattering.

  But when they were close to shore, Sebastian could no longer raise his arms. In cold water, his lack of body fat was a detriment, reducing his buoyancy and his body’s ability to stay warm.

  “I . . . I can’t . . . make . . . it,” he said, barely able to speak, his head going under.

  James wrapped his right arm around his brother’s neck and, using his left arm—his strong arm—he dog-paddled toward shore, the current sweeping them downriver at a runner’s pace. James swam with every bit of strength he had with his brother’s head tucked in the crook of his arm. Sebastian’s face was turned skyward, his eyes open, marveling at the quietude of the blue sky and drifting clouds. A curious raven flying overhead dipped to investigate. Finally, the brothers made it to the far bank. They slogged out of the river, bent double, barely able to stand, each with an arm around the other for support. Sebastian sat down to catch his breath, a puddle forming beneath him, the sun warming his trembling body. They had lost their packs with all their gear, but they were still alive.

  “Thanks,” said Sebastian. “We’re two-and-two.”

  James understood how hard it was for Sebastian to accept help from anyone.

  “You’d have done the same for me,” he said.

  Sebastian stood up, wiping dirt from the seat of his wet pants.

  “Let’s go home,” he said, sounding exhausted.

  In their squishing boots, the brothers trudged along the bank to the waiting truck, where Sebastian found the hidden keys where he had left them. He took off his sopping jacket, feeling something inside a pocket. He reached in and pulled out the few pictures he had taken at the summit. They were the only proof of their endeavor. The Polaroid camera, along with all the rest of the photographs, was inside his backpack at the bottom of the river.

  They climbed into the truck and closed the squeaky doors. Sebastian started the engine and slid the heater lever to high, placing the photographs on the dashboard to dry out beside the snapshot of the mountain he had taken the day they arrived.