Noticing a break in the closely packed forest at the foot of the slope, I reached into the cab, shut off the engine, and started toward the opening. In a few minutes I found myself completely surrounded by woods. What little light had been sifting out of the sky along the road was almost entirely shut off by the army of taller growth, the shadow of the small mountain. But I was able to see well enough to detect a trail strewn with forest debris. Without considering whether it was a good idea, I started following the trail, and only five minutes passed before I could feel the incline grow sharply steeper. As I followed the blurred outlines of the path I began to experience a sense of liberation — as if in climbing farther away from my truck, and from the road where the accident had occurred, I was becoming less responsible for what had happened. I had nothing with me to justify the hike — no canteen filled with water, no compass, no knife at my hip; no knapsack containing a trail bar, matches, extra socks, sweater. Not even a flashlight; nothing but me and the trail, under the dying sun.
As I ascended through the gray-black terrain I had the distinct sensation the forest was watching me, while its dormant yet living fabric crowded closer on all sides. After another fifteen minutes of steady climbing I could feel the energy draining out of my body. Before long I was reduced to moving from tree to tree, from stone to boulder, and soon I could hear the trickling of a stream not far off the trail. The way became increasingly interrupted by ruts, rocks, and broken branches, but the land beneath my feet continued to swell upward, drawing me higher. Until, at one point, I realized I was no longer following the trail so much as the sound of that stream.
Footholds kept surfacing, urging me to continue climbing higher. By now fewer trees seemed to be cluttering the terrain, mostly pine, making the way somewhat easier to negotiate despite the darkness. But I was straining for every step I took, the muscles stretched across my back beginning to ache. The previous night, as on so many nights over the past year, I’d slept only a couple of toss-and-turn hours, and the accumulated fatigue was sharpening the pain. The only comfort I could claim was that the headache that had been building up down below had stopped pressing against my skull. It was then that the question popped into my head: Had the boy been walking close to the edge of the road on purpose? Had he faked getting hit to lure a passing driver into the forest and up the side of this mountain? All those missing people we read about. Where had they gone?
If that was what was going on, I thought, I should’ve been able to find him. But he was nowhere, and I was nowhere too, and knew only, for reasons unknown, that it had become essential to me to reach the top of the mountain. I wondered, fleetingly, if this climb was an attempt to express my remorse for the man I’d become — or was it simply that, sometime or other in your life, you have to climb a mountain?
Before long I was leaning low and twisting and bending as I moved, grabbing hold of saplings, clutching earth-lodged rocks, pawing myself forward a yard at a time — ever more distant from my truck and the road that skirted the mountain. And as I climbed, the sound of the boy’s body thumping against my fender, the image of him sailing like a great injured vulture into the forest, came to me again, triggering another vision, of the miscarriage Hazel had suffered nearly a year ago.
Halting to rest for a few moments, wavering in the dark, I could feel the air growing increasingly heavy. I drew my army field jacket tighter around me, flipped up its collar, and started climbing again. As I gained two or three steps at a time, I could feel the mounting weight of my fatigue. I was bowing closer to the earth as the slope led me higher: The little mountain seemed to grow steeper the higher I climbed, making its pinnacle not closer with each yard I gained but farther away.
A sharp screech pierced the forest, and thoughts of the boy hiking along the road crowded my head again — under his backpack he’d been wearing a yellow slicker, its brightness supposed to protect him against the very thing that had happened. Somewhere beyond that road below a father and mother, a sister or brother, must’ve been talking about the boy’s journey at their kitchen table — the youngster had set off on an adventure to hike into the forest on his own, to set up his tent, gather wood for a fire, heat a can of beans for dinner, and crawl into his sleeping bag for a night’s sleep among the dying debris and awakening creatures. An initiation into manhood.
As I moved into an open area that permitted a smudge of black-blue sky to break through, I realized the place would’ve made a good campsite for the boy.
And then I saw him!
Sitting near his campfire, close to his tightly pitched tent. Smiling, a shank of dark hair falling over his eyes, the boy waved me into this sanctuary. Relief and wariness stirred within me. I hadn’t killed him, but if he’d lured me up the side of this mountain, could it be to my own death?
I stepped closer, and turned momentarily, looking for a rock or tree limb to rest on. And when I turned back an instant later, his campfire was extinguished, and he was gone. Disappeared into the forest mist!
For long moments I stood scanning the surrounding shadows — trees barely outlined in the dark — frozen in uncertainty and dread.
After a while I could no longer feel the raking cold against my face and hands, pinching my feet, clasping my chest. I had nothing left but a resolve to keep climbing, to reach the top.
I forced myself unsteadily up onto two legs, barely able to see five feet ahead, moving by my hands not my eyes, while seeing clearly in my head that I should never have left the place where my pickup had run down the boy. I should’ve pulled off the road at an angle and used my headlights to shine into the places where he might’ve been lying injured; or I could have stood in the middle of the road hoping for another vehicle to approach, waving it to a stop to get help finding what had become of him. But it was too late to turn back now. I continued moving higher, with only a faint sprinkle of light from the rising moon.
As I struggled on, it all began to seem like a dream — maybe I was actually stretched out on the sofa at the house, having fallen dead asleep after knocking down four whiskeys at Toby’s and finishing off a joint. Maybe I would wake up at any moment to the sound of Hazel pulling up in her CJ-5. Yeah, that had to be it! All this had just been a bitter dream, triggered by trapping too much bad smoke in my lungs, swallowing too much cheap whiskey, going without sleep too many nights. Once I was fully awake, everything would go back to the way it used to be: Hazel and I would be husband and wife again, she’d have forgiven me for filling her with bad seed, and we would soon be making love with a shared desire to bring new life into the world.
As I forced my legs to swing out before me, I could feel myself losing contact with the body I had dragged up the mountain. My limbs, my feet, my arms, my hands had become mechanical things as I clawed my way on toward the dark cape hanging over the mountain. Having used up every drop of energy I’d possessed, I was being carried forward not by sinews and muscle but by a head-strong determination to reach the peak.
No longer was I thinking about the boy, about my wife, but only about what might be awaiting me at the top: perhaps an eaglet nestled in an eagle’s nest, yowling into the night.
Bodiless, mindless, I tripped and fell forward, mashing my face against the hard earth. As I lay there, my entire being blunted by my fall, I thought I heard something in the surrounding woods. Painfully lifting my head off the bed of pebbles and needles, I couldn’t see anything except streaked shadows in the bleakness. I reached out and moved my hand until it came in contact with the stem of a sapling, and gripped it with the idea of pulling myself up off the ground. But I couldn’t do it. Again I thought I heard a faint shuffling through crumbling leaves, and in my mind the sound became a bear — thousands of them were out here, building up reserves of fat as winter approached.