Savage Mountain

by John Smelcer

  The long drive home was quiet. Within minutes, James fell asleep with his head against the window, lost in the bliss of deep sleep. Stupefied with weariness, Sebastian found it almost impossible to stay awake. Several times he dozed off momentarily, awakened brusquely by the loud rumbling of the tires driving over the drunk-bumps embedded along the edge of the road. At such times, he swerved sharply back into his lane.

  “Stay awake,” he’d say, slapping himself in the face. “Just a little further.”

  All the way home, Sebastian imagined the conversation they’d have with their father as they told him about their adventure and showed him the pictures.

  Things are going to be different from now on, he thought, trying to keep his eyes open.

  Sebastian and James could see their father’s head through the living room window when they pulled into the driveway. He looked out when he heard the truck doors close. Dog-tired, the brothers dragged themselves up the carpeted stairs, each clutching a photograph of himself standing on the summit. Their father was sitting in his recliner reading the newspaper. The Jeffersons was on television. He didn’t even look up when they came into the living room and stood before him.

  Sebastian cleared his throat to announce they were home.

  “How was Girl Scout Camp? You candy-asses learn how to knit and sew?” he chuckled, without looking up from the paper and without commenting that they were home a day early.

  “It was okay,” Sebastian replied. “We wanted to show you some . . .”

  “I want you sissies to mow the lawn tomorrow and sweep out the garage,” the father interrupted, without looking at his sons.

  Both boys stared at him incredulously. There they stood, exhausted, hungry, and disheveled, bruised and battered, their faces raw from wind and sunburn, their noses and their lips chapped and peeling. Neither had combed his hair in over a week. Sebastian was sporting a scruffy full-faced beard.

  “Sure, Dad,” replied Sebastian, holding out his photograph, “but we wanted to . . .”

  “Did you hear what I said?” the father barked. “And there’s a pile of firewood out back by the gate. Stack it up and do it right or I’ll make you do it again like last time.”

  Now both boys were trembling with anger. Twice they had braved the icy river. Twice they had traversed the perilous glacier. They had survived a blizzard, an avalanche, frostbite, hypothermia, drowning, a bear encounter, and even a death-defying free fall into thin air. Through hard work and sheer willpower, they had conquered the mountain, risking their lives over and over again. And now their father wasn’t even giving them the chance to tell him about it or show him the pictures.

  “And go take showers! I can smell you two losers from here.”

  James clenched his fist and stepped toward his father sitting behind the obscuring newspaper, but Sebastian pulled him back. James yanked his arm free and glared at his brother. Sebastian shook his head slowly and smiled. James relaxed, smiled back, and nodded in sudden understanding. They had conquered the mountain, but their father and the world they had returned to was much the same. Day by day, they would have the same challenges they had faced before. In the years to come, people would ask them why they had climbed the mountain, and the truth was they had done it for reasons they did not fully understand themselves. But this much they knew. Somewhere up there among the snow and ice and clouds something had happened to them. Somehow they had changed, even if the world hadn’t changed with them.

  With pictures in hand, Sebastian and James turned and walked down the hall toward their bedrooms. From behind them they could hear the rustle of newspaper as their father turned the page and shook the obedient paper flat.

  “Lazy punks will never be half the man I am,” he muttered, loud enough for them to hear.

  From down the hall came laughter followed by the sound of closing doors.

  Looking up from his newspaper, their father wondered what the hell the boys were laughing about now.

  For almost a million years the mountain had resisted the forces endeavoring to destroy it: slow-moving glaciers gouging and scarring its bedrock, frost crumbling its crags and cliffs into dust, winter-lashing blizzards raging against its summit, and flash floods scouring the steep valleys and dales, washing its foundation to the sea. But no matter how harshly the world assailed it, the indomitable mountain persevered, resolute, able to withstand every abuse hurled against it.

  Some sons are like a mountain.

  Questions for Discussion

  1.Describe the relationship between James and Sebastian at the beginning of the novel. How does their relationship change throughout the story?

  2.How are Sebastian and James different from each other? Is James really as tough as he pretends to be? In what ways are you different from your brothers or sisters?

  3.Mr. Savage always belittles Sebastian’s blinking, mumbling, and stuttering, calling him an imbecile. Why do you think Sebastian only does these things whenever he’s around his father?

  4.Describe the relationship between the brothers and their father. In what ways is it abusive? Describe their relationship with their mother. Why doesn’t she help her sons more?

  5.Discuss the brothers’ decision to climb the mountain. Does it seem incredulous? Would you agree that most children desire attention and love from their parents? What have you done to gain positive attention from your parents? How do you feel when they praise you? How do feel when they ignore or demean you?

  6.Discuss the irony of how other people in town view Mr. Savage as a pillar of the community—a man’s man—and the way he treats Sebastian and James.

  7.At the end of their harrowing adventure, having risked their lives many times to prove themselves to their father, the boys didn’t even get a chance to tell him what they had accomplished or to show him the proving photographs. Do you think it would have made a difference in their relationship if they had? Why did the brothers laugh at the end?

  8.Some readers may question why the father is portrayed so flatly. Would making his character more complex have served a purpose? Can there be anything in his past—in any abuser’s past—that excuses or pardons the abuse of others?

  9.How does the book’s title reflect the problems of the novel?

  The Author

  As a teenager, John Smelcer learned to mountain climb at the U.S. Army’s Black Rapids Mountaineering School and at Outward Bound wilderness and climbing schools. He and his brother, James, climbed many of Alaska’s peaks.

  John is the author of over forty books. His first novel, The Trap, hailed as “a small masterpiece,” was an American Library Association BBYA Top Ten Pick, a VOYA Top Shelf Selection, and a New York Public Library Notable Book. Listed among the greatest children’s adventure stories of all time, The Great Death was short-listed for the 2011-2012 William Allen White Awards, one of the oldest awards in America for children’s literature. Edge of Nowhere was named one of the “Best Teen Novels of 2010” in the United Kingdom. The US edition (Leapfrog Press, 2014) was highlighted by School Library Journal’s Spotlight on Diverse Books. Lone Wolves (Leapfrog Press, 2013) has been hailed as one of the greatest adventure books for young readers and was a winner of the American Library Association’s Amelia Bloomer Award for feminist literature. His collection of short stories, Alaskan, received a gold medal in the 2011 international eLit Book Awards. Part of this novel was written in Talkeetna, the climbing capitol of Alaska.

  Learn more at www.johnsmelcer.com.

  Lone Wolves

  John Smelcer

  Deneena Yazzie isn’t like other 16-year-old girls in her village. Her love of the woods and trail come from her grandfather, who teaches her the all-but-vanished Native Alaskan language and customs. While her peers lose hope, trapped between the old and the modern cultures, Denny and her mysterious lead dog, a blue-eyed wolf, train for the Great Race—a thousand
-mile test of courage and endurance through the vast Alaskan wilderness. Denny learns the value of intergenerational friendships, of maintaining connections to her heritage, and of being true to herself, and in her strength she gives her village a new pride and hope.

  “A beautiful and moving story of courage and love.”

  —Ray Bradbury

  “With this inspiring young adult novel, Smelcer promises to further solidify his status as ‘Alaska’s modern-day Jack London.’”

  —Mushing magazine, Suzanne Steinert

  “Powerful, eloquent, and fascinating, showcasing a vanishing way of life in rich detail.”

  —Kirkus

  “An engaging tale of survival, love, and courage.”

  —School Library Journal

  Amelia Bloomer List of recommended feminist literature

  (American Library Association)

  Edge of Nowhere

  John Smelcer

  Sixteen-year-old Seth and his dog fall off his father’s commercial fishing boat in Prince William Sound. They struggle to survive off land and sea as they work their way home from island to island in a three-month journey. The isolation allows Seth to understand his father’s love, accept his Native Alaskan heritage, and accept his grief over his mother’s death.

  “Smelcer’s prose is lyrical, straightforward, and brilliant . . . authentic Native Alaskan storytelling at its best.”

  —School Library Journal, starred review

  “A spare tale of courage, love and terrible obstacles . . . may have special appeal to teens who like to wonder how they would do if they had to survive in the wild.”

  —Wall Street Journal

  “Brief, thoughtful, and often lyrical, this is a quick pick for young teens who have the good sense not to confuse a short book with a shallow book.”

  —Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

  “More psychological depth than Robinson Crusoe.”

  —Frank McCourt

  Chosen for the 2014 Battle of the Books by the

  Alaska Association of School Libraries

  An American Booksellers Association

  ABC Best Books for Children title

  Stealing Indians

  a novel by

  John Smelcer

  Available Spring 2016

  Excerpt from Chapter 1

  Simon Lone Fight was running across an arid desert, dodging rattlesnakes and scorpions, jumping over tumbleweeds spinning across the red earth.

  Simon was always running.

  He ran to and from everything—from the grocery store to the service station where his uncle worked, from his ramshackle home to the community hall where everyone played bingo on Fridays and Saturday nights, from the future and toward the past. He ran all day across his reservation, which was so destitute that even the few small streams winding across the arid landscape were almost always empty-pocketed and bone-dry.

  Simon ran across the hot, red desert, through its echoing canyons and arroyos, over buttes and mesas, jumping over boulders and tumbleweeds, startling jackrabbits and lizards, his long black hair shining in the sun.

  No one on his reservation could keep up with him.

  Even his shadow had to stop to rest, bent double under a high sun, winded, gray shadow-sweat dripping on the thirsty earth. No one had ever seen anything like him. He’d run up and down the highway, waving at cars and smiling the whole time. His mother used to joke that Simon went straight from crawling to running—just grabbed his milk bottle one day and took off running out the front door, his little, chubby baby legs carrying him all the way to the edge of the reservation before his father caught up with him in a pickup truck.

  And he’d been running ever since.

  Simon’s parents died on his thirteenth birthday. Both of them, father and mother in a car crash going around Dead Man’s Bend coming home from a funeral. When a drunk driver swerves toward you on a narrow turn with a 240-foot drop, there’s no place to go, no place to run or hide, no safe space in all the world.

  After his parents’ funeral, Simon returned to his mobile home resting on cement blocks, changed out of his secondhand black suit and tie, which he had borrowed from his cousin who was several inches taller and more than a dozen pounds heavier, drank a glass of cold water in one long, breathless series of gulps, ate a bologna-and-cheese sandwich with pickles and sliced green tomatoes, and went out for a run.

  He was gone for three days.

  No one knew what had happened to Simon. The whole reservation heard about his disappearance. Men and women, boys and girls from all over went out looking for him. Twenty-seven pickups—all with mismatched tires and expired license plates—left the parking lot at Fat Mabel’s Bar & Grill, each driver assigned a specific area to search. The congregation of the First Baptist Church of Indian Conversion cooked up a giant batch of fry bread to feed all the searchers. The police put out an all-points bulletin. Fliers were printed and circulated all over the reservation, stapled to utility poles, to storefronts, and duct-taped to abandoned trucks and empty fuel barrels rusting in fields. Someone even stapled signs at all five holes of Big Red Chief’s Mini-Golf.

  Even Simon’s dog, Tonto, went out looking for him. They named the dog that because he followed the boy everywhere, like a faithful side-kick who couldn’t speak a word of English.

  Luckily, his second cousin on his father’s side, Norman Fury, found him running along a backcountry road five towns over. He saw Simon at first from a distance, bouncing slightly with each jogging stride, saw him through heat waves writhing up from the melting, black asphalt, like an apparition only partly of this world.

  The boy almost made it to the state line.

  During the next year, Simon was passed from relative to relative, from one cramped house of poverty to another. No one even knew that his fourteenth birthday had come and gone. In all of his many moves he never once had a room of his own. Each time he moved, Tonto went with him. They were inseparable.

  One day, Tonto, looking down the one lane dirt road, began to bark at a growing black dot on the burning horizon, a cloud of dust building behind it. Simon didn’t know why he felt suddenly afraid of the black dot. He crept behind a corner of the house and watched as the approaching dot turned into a car. When it turned down their driveway, Simon and his dog scooted off, staying low and hiding behind the leaning outhouse—both trying not to breathe as they watched. From his crouching position, the boy saw two white men in dark suits with dark briefcases step out of the black, high-roofed automobile. His grandparents came out from their house to speak to the men. Simon couldn’t hear a word they said, but it was clear that his grandfather was arguing with the men. After a while, his grandfather sat down on a small stool and dropped his head low, while his grandmother went inside the house, calling for Simon.

  When she came out alone, the men went inside to search the house. By the time they started checking the yard and the outhouse, Simon was already a mile back in the canyons, running faster than he had ever run before, the panic swirling inside him, pushing him along like a hard wind.

  The men came for him three more times that month, but Simon was always gone before they even turned off the heavy engine inside the chest of the big, black car.

  One day at the end of summer, his grandparents told him they were going into town to sell hay. They asked Simon to come along, promising him ice cream if he helped unload the heavy bales. The cramped cab of the old truck allowed for only two, so Simon and Tonto jumped into the back and sat atop of the small cluster of bales. They loved riding in the open bed, the cooling rush of wind pouring over them as the truck sped down the road, jack rabbits jumping from the gravel shoulders.

  Dark clouds were building on the horizon. A storm was approaching. Simon was worried that it would rain before they returned home.

  But befor
e they arrived in town, the truck turned on a road leading to a small train station at the edge of town, more whistle stop than station. Simon recognized the place. It was where ranchers sold their livestock for immediate loading on freight trains. His grandfather shut off the engine, climbed out from the cab, and closed the creaking door. His grandmother waited inside.

  “Come on down from there, boy,” he said, lowering the tailgate.

  Simon and Tonto jumped down from the bed, kicking up dust as they landed.

  “You gonna load these bales on the train, Grandpa?” Simon asked, confused because he had never known the old man to sell hay to anyone but locals. Besides, the dozen-or-so bales on the truck hardly made up a load worth shipping on a train.

  His grandfather didn’t answer but looked at his pocket watch instead.

  “Five minutes,” he said, as he slid the watch back into his pocket.

  While they waited, Simon tossed sticks for Tonto to fetch. They were out in the nearby fields playing when the train whistled its arrival. Simon ran back, ready to help his grandfather. The locomotive engine was so loud that the boy didn’t hear the high-roofed black car pulling up next to the old truck. Two men slid out like snakes and grabbed the boy from behind.

  Simon struggled to break away, screaming. His dog barked and bit the leg of one of the men. His grandmother covered her eyes with her hands and wept inside the cab, the sun scorched the parched landscape, a lizard darted beneath a rock, and his grandfather stood by sullenly watching the whole thing, squeezing and squeezing his empty hands inside his empty pockets.