Surprise turned into a vast relief: he was gone. I imagined the conversation at home. Sorry, Cindy. Went hunting and lost your boss. No, I didn’t fire a shot—look, there’s still gun oil in my barrel. The wind just blew him off the mountain.
It was still blowing hard enough almost to believe it, pushing against the back of my parka like a giant hand. But the wind wasn’t blowing me off the mountain; it must have taken only the tent. So what happened to Davis? As I moved closer I saw an aluminum stake pulled out of the ground and the tent site churned by cloven hooves.
Looked like a herd of goats had… attacked the tent? I hadn’t heard a thing over the roar of the wind.
Tracking was tough on the spongy tundra, hard rock, and windswept patches of dirt, but I saw more objects, another tent stake, a flashlight, a sock snagged behind a rock, leading down the gradual slope to the west. A picture was forming of Davis, grabbing maybe his rifle, jacket, and boots, running out of the tent and dropping one boot before he could put it on.
Slowly, I covered a few hundred yards, here and there finding a broken patch of tundra, a few partial hoofprints. I straightened once to check the barren mountain top and determine the direction of travel. The trail angled toward the steep cliffs on the southern face. Running in the dark, Davis probably couldn’t tell where he was headed. Sure enough, the trail ended right at the edge.
Bad luck, Cindy. Your boyfriend got panicked by some goats and ran off a cliff.
I stuck my head over the edge and spotted him lying on a ledge maybe thirty feet down, the only thing that had kept him from falling further. He was alive and saw me, moved, and I caught the gleam of his scope as his rifle came up. I just stood there dumbfounded while he aimed and fired, but luckily he couldn’t shoot straight, lying on his back with the wind blowing his arms around. The bullet whapped air near my left ear, and I ducked back from the edge.
My God, there’s nothing like a bullet going by to get your blood pumping on a cold morning! When I calmed down, I called out for him to stop, but the wind snatched away my words as soon as they left my mouth. I chanced another peek. This time he had braced himself, and the bullet hit the edge next to my foot, sending rock fragments stinging into my face. He shouted; all I caught was my name.
Pretty clear he hadn’t mistaken me for a goat. But it was also clear, from the two glimpses I’d had, that he was badly hurt, lying in the rocks with his leg twisted and bent sharply at the wrong angle. No way to help him without drawing another bullet, though, even if I could get down that cliff. I walked back to camp and re-lit the stove, sitting on a mound of tundra.
Well, I wouldn’t be the first hunter whose partner fell off a cliff up here—just ask old Hayes down in that cave. All I had to do was get off the mountain and back to the boat. Downhill, I could probably make it by tomorrow evening if I started now. I thought about leaving Davis on that ledge. No way he could get down with a broken leg. No water or food, his sleeping bag blown away with the tent, and the temperature seemed to be dropping. And what about the goats who had chased him there? That didn’t make sense, unless they were disease-mad. Could goats get rabies? Would they come back?
Whatever, I’d walk down the mountain, back to the boat, and run across to Homer. When I got there, I’d have to report Davis. Just that he fell off a cliff—couldn’t mention the goats, they’d never believe it. I didn’t believe it myself. Maybe what actually happened was Davis got up to take a leak, the tent blew off, and he fell chasing it in the dark. The goats just wandered through later on. Anyway, that’s what I’d say I thought happened. They’d send out a rescue helicopter, me along to show where he was. Three days, he wouldn’t be alive. They’d investigate. So why hadn’t I been in the tent with him?
Yeah, officer, I guess I did know he was fucking my wife before I went hunting with him.
Then, to her: I’m sorry, your lover didn’t come back. Or: your boss—still ignorant-like. If I could still play it that way. Not a chance. Why didn’t he fall all the way down?
But he didn’t. I finished breakfast and packed my gear, dumping everything out of his pack except the canteen and that roll of nylon climbing ribbon. I tied his pack to the outside of mine and started down the mountain the way we’d come up.
I couldn’t see Davis because of a rocky outcropping between us, but when I figured I’d dropped below his position I angled in that direction. Pretty soon I needed all four limbs for finding a lateral route. Sometimes I would follow a ledge or crack for a few yards, then it would peter out and I’d be left to scramble with fingers and toes over the crumbly rock face.
The rock face grew smoother and steeper, until I came to a place where the rock was split by a wide vertical crack. As I searched for a way across I heard a shot, and flinched before I realized he wasn’t shooting at me. Cautiously, I moved forward, and spotted Davis’s position on the ledge, a few hundred yards further and slightly higher, from a flicker of movement as he lowered the rifle.
At the same time I saw the goats. Four, no five, standing on the nearvertical rock face, suspended as if defying gravity, in various positions around Davis, though concealed by the uneven rock to be out of gun-sight. As I watched, one of the goats shifted position, ambling as unconcernedly as a cow in a level field, only the rock fragments tumbling away from its hooves revealing any difference. Looking at them standing and moving like that made the cliff itself seem unreal, as if the rock weren’t really vertical at all, or the goats had turned it horizontal for only themselves.
But I wasn’t a goat. As I saw Davis and thought about what I was doing, the mountain seemed to tilt forward on me, leaning over, vertical then past vertical. I closed my eyes and hung on. The mountain only leaned further, and I could feel my hands and feet start to slip.
What a fool. Risking my life, so I could lose everything that mattered. Might as well let the mountain shake me free.
A memory came from years ago, shortly after we’d met, barely a year out of high schooclass="underline" riding my motorcycle on a Wisconsin country road. She sat behind me, and it began to rain, big warm summertime drops soaking us quickly, the steady hiss of the tire spray steaming on the engine’s hot pipes. I felt her hands clutching my chest, her body pressing firmly into my back, through the wet cloth of my shirt. I looked back once and she smiled under the helmet; and that was when I knew I’d always love her.
But now I saw that memory from outside myself, and the scene shrank away and began to spin, the two of us on that bike growing smaller on the wet country road, shrinking to a speck on a gray line in a sea of green. And, still spinning, my perspective rose higher; the whole earth fled away from me until it was just a ball, shining blue and brown, like pictures I’d seen taken from orbit. Then it too became a speck, and vanished, leaving only the wheel of stars in a great dark void.
My hands were slipping from the rock, when something snorted loudly right behind me. Startled, I jumped; opened my eyes and saw the rock on the other side of the crack coming at me.
I thought I’d make it, my foot found a toehold and one hand was securing a good grip, as I leaned forward into the rock. Then the barrel of my rifle, still lashed to the side of my pack and sticking overhead, slammed into the rock and broke my grip. For a wild second I hung on one toehold, arms churning to keep from overbalancing backward. Just as I felt my foot starting to slip, my right hand found a fissure, then my left another hold.
I hugged the rock, panting, and looked over my shoulder. A goat had come up right behind me and now stood just a few feet away, regarding me with those black marble eyes, his gleaming black horns sweeping up in a wide fork. His ears rotated forward, and his eyes looked almost sad.