The Mountain Between Us

by Charles Martin

  I was smiling.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  You remember the turtles? I wonder how they’re all doing. Where they are? How far did they swim? Did they ever make it to Australia? Especially your little friend.

  You tapped me on the shoulder and said, “What’s that sound?” Seems we found the female just as she was starting to build her nest. We climbed the dune, lay down, and watched her dig a hole. She was huge and dug a long time. Then she started laying eggs. Like she went into a trance or something. Must have laid a hundred eggs. When she finished, she covered the hole, crawled to the water’s edge, and disappeared into the black water.

  We slid down the dune and stared at the mound. It was one of the biggest we’d ever found. We carefully drove the spikes in a triangle, hung a line of pink surveyor’s tape around the tips, and then you made me cut little flags to make sure that every beachcomber for a mile could see it.

  Planes flying overhead could see that nest.

  Then you started counting the days. Like a kid at Christmas. Marking the days on a calendar. I took a week’s vacation, and at fifty-five days, we started camping out.

  “Well, they don’t know they’re supposed to hatch at sixty days. What if they come early?”

  We spread a blanket atop the dune, and you wore a flashlight on a strap around your head. Looked like a misguided coal miner. I tried to climb inside your sleeping bag, but you zipped up and pointed a finger at me. “Nope. Not now. What if they start hatching?”

  Honey, when you get focused on something you are a piece of work.

  So, we lay there. Watching the shadow of the moon cross the tape line. The beach was warm that night. A cool breeze came up out of the southwest, so the ocean was more of a lake than a raging torrent. Then came the fifty-ninth day. You were asleep. Drooling on your sleeping bag. I tapped you on the shoulder, and we hung our noses over the edge of the dune and watched the first baby shake the sand off his back and trek to the water. Wasn’t long before the beach was crawling with loggerheads.

  You were so excited. Counting quietly. Pointing at each one like you knew them by name. I remember you shaking your head. “How do they know which way to go? How come they don’t get lost?”

  “They have this internal compass inside. Tells them where the water is.”

  Then came our little friend. He crawled out, but unlike his one hundred and seventeen brothers and sisters, he headed the wrong way. Up the dune, toward us. He made it a few feet, then bogged down. Burrowing himself. The wrinkle grew on your forehead as you watched him dig his own grave.

  “He’s going the wrong way. He’ll never make it.” You climbed out, slid down the dune, scooped him up with two hands, and carried him to the water’s edge. You set him down, he found his sea legs, and the first wave scooped him up. You gave him a little push. “There you go, little guy. All the way to Australia.”

  We watched as the moon shone down on his shell, making him look like a floating black diamond. The breeze was blowing your hair across your face. You were smiling. I think we stood there a long time, not saying much, just watching him swim out to sea. He was a good swimmer, too.

  That was when you saw it. You turned around, stared at the dune where we’d been hiding, and the scrub oaks and wire grass. A FOR SALE sign stood at the highest point, so folks could see it driving up or down A1A. You said, “Who owns that?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “How much do you think they want?”

  “Probably a good bit. It’s been for sale awhile.”

  “It’s a strange size lot. Be difficult to put a big house on it. The area where you can build is rather small, while the protected dunes are big. Might have a hundred feet of frontage on A1, and 800 feet of dune. Like a squashed triangle.”

  “Yep. And you’re surrounded by state park on either side, so there are probably restrictions on what kind of house you can build, how big a footprint, et cetera. Most folks who spend a million dollars on a lot want to be able to build what they want.”

  You waved your hands across the sand. “Must be ten nests right here. There’s enough pink surveyor’s tape out there to mark the outline of a new subdivision. With all this activity, why doesn’t the state buy it?”

  I shrugged. “Money, I suppose.”

  You nodded. “We should buy it.”

  “What?”

  You began walking up the dune. Studying the layout. “We don’t need a big house. We could put it right over here. A beach house, back off the ocean. And we could build it with big glass windows where we could sit at night and watch the nests.”

  I pointed back down the beach. “Honey, we have a perfectly good condo right down there. We can walk down here anytime we like.”

  “I know, but the next person to come along might not like the turtles digging up their front yard. We do. We should buy it.”

  A week passed. I was back in the grind of work. I walked in, threw my stuff on the couch, and saw that the sliding glass door was open. I walked out and found you standing on the beach. The sun had gone down. It was my favorite time. That cool bluish light that falls before the darkness comes. You were standing there, a white sarong blowing in the breeze. You waved. You were so tan. Had tan lines drawn from your eye to your ear from wearing sunglasses so much.

  I put on some shorts, grabbed my folder, and walked out. You were wearing a smile and holding a small wrapped box. You handed it to me. The breeze had turned and was pulling at your hair again. Streaking it across your cheek and through your lips. When I kissed it, you pulled it aside with your finger.

  I opened the card. It read: SO YOU CAN FIND YOUR WAY BACK TO ME. I opened the box. It was a lensatic compass. You said, “Read the back.” I turned it over. It was engraved. MY TRUE NORTH. You hung it around my neck and whispered, “Without you, I’d be lost.”

  “I got you something too.”

  She put her hands behind her back, turning side to side. “Yeah?”

  I handed you the folder. You opened it, rifled through the pages. Looked like you were reading Greek. Your eyes narrowed. “Honey…what is this?”

  “That is a land survey. And this…is a contract on a piece of property.”

  “What piece? We don’t have the…” You stopped, stared at the survey, turning it sideways, then stared down the beach.

  “You didn’t.”

  “It’s just an offer. Doesn’t mean they’ll accept it. I lowballed them.”

  You tackled me. An Officer and a Gentleman right there in south Ponte Vedra Beach. You were laughing and screaming. “I can’t believe you did that!”

  “Well…we don’t know if they’ll accept the offer. The property has some strong covenants and restrictions. There’s a lot we can’t put there. It’s surrounded by state park, so…”

  “Can we build a small house?”

  “We don’t own the property yet.”

  “Yeah, but we might, and when we do, can we build a small house with a glass front where we can watch the sun and moon rise over the beach?”

  I nodded.

  “How much is it?”

  “A lot. We’re not going to be able to build right away. It’ll have to sit a few years.”

  “I can wait.”

  I loved giving you that piece of property.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Grover deserved a proper burial. I studied the landscape, and just above him sat a rock outcropping. I climbed it, and the view stretched out for miles. Given his love of heights, he’d have liked it. I kicked away the snow, went back to the plane, pulled off a piece of the tail flap, and used it like a shovel. I dug a hole, which was more pushing stuff out of the way than digging through the frozen ground. I climbed back down, lifted Grover over my shoulder, and wound back up and through the rocks. I laid him in the hole and began collecting rocks the size of softballs.

  I emptied his pockets and tried to take off his wedding ring, but it wouldn’t budge. I unhooked his pocket watch and zipped all of that loose stuff
into the pocket inside my jacket. Then I unlaced his boots, putting his laces in my pocket, pulled off his wool socks, and slid his belt out of the loops in his pants. Lastly, I took his denim jacket.

  I stacked rocks under a cold sun that fell, turned a deep orange and then crimson. When finished, I stood up. Stood back. It was a good place. The wind had picked up. I supposed it would always be breezy up here. Maybe that was good. Maybe he’d feel like he was flying.

  I took the wool beanie off my head. “Grover…I’m sorry I got you into this mess. Guess if I hadn’t hired you to fly me out here, you’d be home with your wife. I imagine you’re in angel training right now. Make a good one, too. Probably on the fast track to getting your wings. Hope you get assigned to your wife, I imagine she needs you about now. If and when we get out of here, I’ll go see her. Tell her what happened. Take your things to her.” I turned my hat in my hands. “I don’t know if I ought to be apologizing to you.” I tried to laugh. “To be just gut-level honest, you did stick us out here in the middle of nowhere.”

  The wind blew hard against my face. “Unless God wants two more dead people up here, we’re going to need a change in the weather. Blue skies and warmer temperatures would be nice. And since I don’t know where we’re going, we could use some help there, too. Maybe you could put in a word for us.”

  The world, blanketed in white, stretched forty miles one way and sixty in another. “I think Ashley would like to wear white, walk the aisle, get married. She’s young. Whole life in front of her. She deserves to wear white.”

  The light faded, giving way to a cloudless, cold sky. A gray ceiling settled in. Stars started poking through. Overhead, maybe 40,000 feet in the air, a jet airliner flew southeast—a long white tail in its wake. “If that’s your sense of humor, I don’t think it’s all that funny right now.”

  A second plane crisscrossed the exhaust of the first. “Or that. By the way…I’m lost, and since I’m lost, we’re lost. Won’t take much to kill us out here. We’re circling the drain now. That big cat nearly did us in. You should know, you were dancing with it. I guess the rub is, if I die, she dies. Not to mention your dog…whose name I can’t remember.”

  A cold wind cut through me, and I zipped up my jacket. “I’m not pretending to be more important than I am, but I’m not asking for me. I’m asking for that girl in there with the broken leg and the slowly breaking spirit. She thinks she’s hiding it, but she’s not. She’s tough, but this up here…this’ll break anybody.” I looked around. “This is…a tough place. It’ll strip your hope fast.” A tear broke loose and fell down my face. My hands were cut, scabbed and cracking. I shook my head, my lip trembling. “You and I…we never really finished our conversation, but I can tell you this…living with a broken heart is living half dead, and that doesn’t mean you’re half alive. It means you’re half dead. And…that’s no way to live.”

  The mountains rose up around us, jagged, cold, unforgiving, throwing shadows. Grover lay beneath me, covered in stones and ice. “Once a heart breaks…it doesn’t just grow back. It’s not a lizard’s tail. It’s more like a huge stained glass that shattered into a million pieces, and it’s not going back together. Least not the way it was. You can mush it all into one piece, but that doesn’t make it a window. That makes it a pile of broken colored glass. Shattered hearts don’t mend and they don’t heal. They just don’t work that way. Maybe I’m telling you something you already know. Maybe not. I just know that when half dies, the whole thing still hurts. So you get twice the pain and half of everything else. You can spend the rest of your life trying to put that stained glass back together, but it won’t go. There’s nothing to hold the pieces together.”

  I put my hat on, only to quickly pull it off again. “That’s all I wanted to say.” I held the compass, letting the needle spin and settle. “I need to know which way to go.”

  The two planes crossed and disappeared. Their exhaust caught my eye. I corkscrewed my head. The intersection of the two created an arrow, pointing southeast. One hundred and twenty-five, maybe a hundred and thirty degrees.

  I nodded. “Given the fact that I don’t have a better option…that’ll do.”

  I WALKED BACK INTO the cave and slipped Grover’s socks on her feet. They were medium weight wool. She looked at me with suspicion. “Where’d you get those?”

  “Walmart.”

  “That’s good to know. I thought you were going to say they belonged to Grover, and if I thought that, well…that might just gross me out.”

  She drifted off. Somewhere near midnight she caught me staring at the compass face. The tritium dots on the dial glowed neon green. “How do you know which way to go?”

  “You don’t.”

  “What if you choose the wrong direction?”

  “You, me, and Napoleon will be the only ones who ever know it.”

  She closed her eyes, pulled the bag up over her shoulders. “Take your time…and choose wisely.”

  “Thanks, that’s very helpful.”

  “Don’t get me started on what would be helpful at this moment.”

  “Good point.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It’s almost morning. We’re heading out in a few minutes. Least, we’re going to try. Don’t know how far we’ll get, but staying here is getting us nowhere.

  I’ve packed up everything I can. I don’t know how far we’ll get, but I’m pretty sure every bump and jolt is going to be rough on Ashley. I hate to move her, but I can’t leave her here. I don’t know how long I’d be gone, and I’m pretty sure she’d be dead by the time I got back. Hope goes a long way toward keeping somebody alive. And…if I’m not here, I’m afraid her hope will fade. The longer I stick with her, the longer she’ll make it.

  Grover’s resting in a good spot. He can watch the sun rise and set, which I think he’ll like. I tried to say some kind words over him. He deserves better, but you of all people should know that verbal communication is not my strong suit. I told him I’d go see his wife if we got out of here. I think God should go ahead and make him an angel. He’d make a good one. He loves to fly, and he could watch over his wife. She’s going to need him.

  I spent much of last night staring at the compass, ’cause I know I don’t need to tell you that a wrong heading could cost us. I know we’re sitting in roughly sixty miles of wilderness. We might be thirty miles from the nearest town, but thirty miles as a crow flies is real different from thirty miles up and down mountains pulling a hurt woman. One’s possible. The other is not.

  I guess if we got close and could see something, a trickle of smoke, a lightbulb in the distance at night, I could take off and bring back help, but every time I think about that, I remember when you and I watched The English Patient. You kept shaking your head and pointing your finger at the TV and saying, “Don’t leave her. Don’t leave her. You’re going to regret that.” And you were right. They both paid the price. ’Course, the whole adultery thing didn’t help much either. But leaving the girl…that’s always bad.

  I’d better get going. Sun’s cracking the skyline. It’ll be a long day. We’ll talk tonight. I hope.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Ashley was grinding her teeth when I shook her. “You ready?”

  She nodded, sat up. “Any coffee?”

  I handed her a mug of fluid that looked more like weak tea. “Go easy. That’s the last of it.”

  “It’s already a bad day, and we haven’t even started yet.”

  “Think of it this way…every step away from this place is one step closer to a cappuccino at Starbucks.”

  She licked her lips. “I love it when you talk dirty to me.”

  I sat next to her. We took care of the whole bathroom thing and got her dressed. She zipped up her jacket. “I like all this personal service, but I have to say I am really looking forward to the day I can do all this by myself.”

  I emptied the Nalgene bottle. “Me too.”

  She crossed her arms. “Listen, I don’t mean to ov
ershare, but until now things have been okay as long as I’ve had to go number one. But that’s soon to change.”

  I shook my head. “You’ve already done that.”

  “I have?”

  “Twice. Once when I set your leg and later, when you were unconscious.”

  She looked embarrassed. “That explains a lot.”

  “Like?”

  “Like why I haven’t needed to ‘go’ in like a week.”

  “Oh…” I smiled. “You’ve ‘gone.’”

  “Well…back to my original question.”

  “Don’t worry. Just give me a heads-up. We’ll work it out.”

  “Not to beat a dead horse, but I seem much more freaked out by this than you.”

  “I was a first-year med student. Midnight shift. Changing bedpans. For eight months. I was having a difficult time, really complaining. Had a bit of a lip about it, when Rachel got my attention. Told me that if I wasn’t willing to do the dirty work, I’d better find another profession. That what folks need is a doctor who’s willing to get his hands dirty and still look at them with compassion and dignity. You might say that ‘attitude adjustment’ became the basis of my bedside manner. Made me consider what people need versus what I, in my ivory tower, wanted to give them.”

  I shrugged. “Rachel tore down my tower. Made me set up shop down in the trenches where it didn’t smell too rosy and people were suffering. So…while this may freak you out, cause you some discomfort, may even make you blush…it’s what you need. And for lack of a better option, or even a second opinion, I’m your doctor. So…I’ll tell you the same thing my wife told me when I tried to protest.”

  She raised both eyebrows. Waiting.

  “Get over it.”