Shadows on the Mountain

Illustration by Laurie Harden

We can get back in there, kill a couple, then come out in a week, ten days at most,” Davis said. His map was spread between us, at lunch in a restaurant on the ground floor of a downtown Anchorage hotel. It covered the whole table, dangling almost to my lap. Davis’s arms pinned it down; his hands lay across my side of the table. I leaned back with my arms crossed.

It was driving the waiter crazy, that map. He’d brought the bread basket and butter dish, waiting pointedly for us to make enough space to set them down. Davis lifted one arm and shoved the map over with the other, clearing maybe four inches on the table edge. He looked tired, like he’d been out late.

The waiter looked toward the front register; a corner of his mouth twitched. Davis didn’t budge further or even look up. Finally the waiter set down the basket and dish and pushed gingerly into the map. When he let go the map recoiled, shoving the basket to the edge. The waiter and I watched, expecting to see it fall. Davis just continued his spiel.

“No one’s hunted back there for years. Too much of a hike, and the weather off the glacier keeps those mountains too socked in most of the time to fly. Believe me, this is the place to go for a record-book billy.”

I sat there with my arms crossed and barely nodded. Cindy was right—no way he was going to let me out of it, after we’d drawn those Fish and Game permits.

“Strange goats though,” he went on. “Atypical trophies, because of their head shape. I saw one of the few ever taken out of there on an old guide’s wall, and he had a tall tale to go with it. Claimed the goat was charging him when he shot it.”

The waiter stood to take our lunch orders, his mouth trying not to twitch. Davis finally folded up the map. We finished eating and argued briefly over the check, but he paid.

“You look beat, Bruce,” he said, when we went out on the street. “You’re in good shape, right? ’Cause this is going to be one tough mother of a hunt. We’ve got to carry all our gear and food on our backs, plus the meat and capes coming out.”

“I don’t go to a health club, Rick, but I work on my feet all day.” As soon as I spoke I realized that my last remaining bit of pride had just foreclosed a possible way out.

“I’ll see you at my place, Saturday morning at seven.”

I watched him cross the street to go back to his office, and he and the crosswalk began to tilt. It happened as the crosswalk sign started blinking red, “DON’T WALK.” Everything kept tilting to the left, the crosswalk, street, and Davis going vertical on me, the ground turning into a wall for at least the dozenth time in the past week. I held myself against the side of the hotel to keep from flying down the street, maybe all the way into Cook Inlet. Watching Davis grow smaller, shoulders held back and hands swinging free from his sides in that weightlifter’s walk.

What was wrong with me? The doctor I’d seen that morning couldn’t find anything physical, and ended up asking if I was under stress and how I had been sleeping lately. Sleeping?—I’d almost laughed. But he was just a GP, and maybe he’d missed it, some obscure disorder like a brain tumor maybe, that was sending warning signals before it killed me.

I slumped against the building and closed my eyes, and when at last the world swung back as it was supposed to be I was lying there with my legs out on the sidewalk, like a street drunk. Why hadn’t I left my hand sticking out too?—maybe I would have collected a few bucks. Maybe enough to pay my parking ticket.

Kachemak Bay lay flat as a mirror under motionless low clouds all the way across from Homer. Davis cut the outboard at the end of the long cove and let the swells of our wake overtake us, rocking the bow of his Zodiac onto the beach. We raised the outboard, dropped the transom wheels, and dragged the boat up the beach, which was made of flat stones, mostly shale, worn smooth by the tides. The stones clattered and crunched as we dug in, pulling the boat.

In a hundred yards the beach ended at the exposed roots of giant spruce trees. I heard an eagle cry, taking flight, but I missed seeing him before he was gone into the clouds. We were completely alone; no fishing boats worked the water, and we’d passed the last cabin out near the entrance to the cove. The air was still and the only sound came from our boat’s final swells dying on the beach. I watched Davis tie the boat to a huge old spruce, maybe six feet in diameter at the trunk.

“We’re making good time, so far,” he said.

I lifted my pack, rifle lashed to one side, out of the boat. “Let’s go bag those goats and get out of here.”

“A11 I want is a snow-white ten-incher.” He laughed. “Of course, that’s what she said.”

“Who?” I hadn’t meant to say it so sharply, or even to ask it at all.

He looked away. “My wife. When she married me.” I could feel his eyes come back as I shifted my pack higher and adjusted the straps. “Lighten up, Bruce. Let’s have some fun here.”

We started into the old-growth forest. Davis had a new pair of plastic mountaineering boots that squeaked as he walked. For the first mile we followed a bear trail along a small, twisting stream that emptied into the cove. When the trail ran out, we sought clearings and game trails where we could, and otherwise thrashed through spruce, alder, and devil’s club thickets.

Davis liked to lead. When he picked a bad route I found my own for a while, but had to fall in behind him soon enough, the way his long, powerful legs covered ground. After a few hours I just trudged along and watched his back. Thrashing through alders, watching his back. Crossing streams, climbing gullies, watching his back. What if I tripped? Another hunter accidentally shot by his partner. Gun just went off…

“You’ve got to go,” she’d told me. “You committed to it months ago, and the mountains are too dangerous for him to go by himself.” She was touching up her eyelashes at her vanity mirror in our bathroom. “He is my boss.”

I had committed months ago, when I knew nothing. I’d gone after work to meet her and some people from her office in a downtown bar. I felt out of place as I approached their table, with the other men in their suits and blow-dried hair. She sat against the wall beside Rick Davis, investment banker, one of the bank’s vice-presidents. The others greeted me politely, and Davis was friendly, effusive. I put my hand on Cindy’s arm and leaned forward for a kiss. She laughed and shied away, letting me peck her on the cheek, looking down at my hands and checking her blouse sleeve.

I worked as a house painter. I could never clean it all off after a day’s work; there were always stains left under the nails and in the lines of my hands. And Cindy seemed to be checking my hands a lot lately.

I had a beer. Rick kept ordering pepper vodka martinis and buying rounds for the group. I dug out a twenty, but he wouldn’t let me buy. He started talking about big game, and Cindy mentioned that I liked to hunt.

“Well, you may be in luck, Bruce.” His face was flushed by then. “I’ve lined up a killer goat hunt, and need a partner. What’re you doing the last week of September?”

I shrugged. Painting work usually slacked off around then, when the weather started to go rainy and cold. But Alaskan hunting was expensive, not like the deer hunting I’d grown up with in Wisconsin.

“We don’t even have to pay an air taxi. We can get there in my boat.” Like he’d read my mind. “We’ve got to apply by tomorrow—it’s a drawing permit area. Odds aren’t good, but I’ll pay the application fee. All you’ve got to do is sign the form.”

We got drawn. And now she was in the bathroom, putting on makeup, saying, brightly, “Oh, just go! You’ll have a good time.” She came into our bedroom, wearing her best sweater and jeans, and a pearl necklace I’d never seen before, looking so good I could die.

The floor started to tilt, going vertical on me, and I leaned back against the wall. I couldn’t tell her why I didn’t want to go on the hunt, because everything would come apart.

“I’m going out with Carol, probably won’t be back ’til late. Don’t worry, we’ll take a cab if we drink too much.” She kissed me deeply and held me close. “What’s the matter, honey, still don’t feel good? Why don’t you see a doctor?”

From the window I watched her get in the car. She looked happy. When she’d driven off, I measured away from the window frame along the wall. Then I punched it as hard as I could, breaking through the sheetrock. My hand came out still in a fist, dragging chunks of plaster that fell to the carpet. I licked the re-opened cut on my big knuckle and gradually released the fist. It hurt good. But one of these times my luck would run out, and I’d hit a stud behind the sheetrock.

I patched the hole with joint tape and compound, waited until it dried, and painted it to match the wall. I knew my work; I could hardly find the other places in the walls myself. The vacuum picked up the plaster fragments from the carpet, and the open window let out the latex fumes. Maybe that was why the floor was tilting on me—all those years of breathing paint and clean-up fumes. I decided to see the doctor tomorrow morning; maybe he’d say I was too sick to go hunting.

If not, at noon I’d go meet Davis in the restaurant, to make our plans. If I did go hunting, at least I’d know where he was. As long as I didn’t open it up and could keep patching, it might all hold together. And maybe one time when I checked it wouldn’t be there, like a dream. Be like it was before, with Cindy and I.

Or maybe one of us wouldn’t come back from the hunt.

We camped the first night near a small lake about five miles from the coast. Davis had brought a tent, but I said I wanted to sleep under the stars. The night was cold and clear, and I lay in the bag watching my breath plume toward the sky. I had been born with perfect vision, and spent many a summer night as a kid on our lawn in that Madison suburb looking for constellations and the early satellites. Now, far from any interference from city lights, I could see the universe with clarity and depth. To the north and west the aurora trickled pale green streamers overhead, and in other directions I found familiar constellations as well as star clusters I had never seen. I fell asleep counting satellites passing overhead.

Traveling was easier the second day, further from the coastal underbrush, and after the first good night’s sleep I’d had in days. We skirted the north end of the lake and came to a broad, rocky streambed coming down the valley. The glacier-tinged stream ran low, banks scattered with rotting pink salmon carcasses. We made good time staying on the streambed.

The mountains ahead, which from the sea had looked low and gentle, grew steep and imposing, rising straight out of the valley without foothills. We came within half a mile of the mountain to the south when I spotted white specks in a patch of green, high up.

“Aren’t those goats?”

Davis looked up and I could tell from his silence I was right. A flash of what looked like disappointment crossed his face: that I had been the first to spot game. He reached over his shoulder, unzipped a pack pocket, and took out his binoculars.

“Yeah, but they’re not ours,” he said, after studying them a moment. “I don’t see any real good horns up there.”

“If they’re legal, why go any further?” I wanted to get this over with.

“That’s what everyone else says, so these goats here get picked over every year. The ones we want are back in, near the glacier to the north there.” He pointed to the edge of blue-tinged ice showing from the head of the valley.

Clouds covered the sun by noon. We had made a few miles up the valley, and were looking for a place to climb. Davis kept walking slower, studying the mountain to the north. The glacier at the head of the valley grew larger, filling the top of the steep bowl ahead. If we kept following the stream we’d have no choice but to climb straight up to that mass of ice. Davis finally stopped.

“God, we’d need rock gear for most of this, and all I brought was a hundred feet of climbing ribbon. But it looks like we might be able to walk up here.”

I’d never tried to climb such an abrupt mountain. It started at about forty degrees right out of the stream bank and only seemed to get steeper above the alders. Most of it showed sheer rock face, but the stretch above us held the green of vegetation going up out of sight. A tiny spring ran out of the mountain’s base there, so I filled my water bottle.

“Why bother?’ Davis said. “There’s a snowfield just over the top, according to the map. We should make it before dark.”

I wasn’t so sure, but his canteen was his business. We started up, fighting for a route through the alders.

Just above the trees, below a huge rock sticking like a wart out of the grassy slope, we found the crypt. What I saw, first, was a tattered strip of faded tarp hanging over a low cave at the base of the rock. Stooping carefully under the weight of my pack, I looked inside. A corroded pack-frame lay near the entrance of the shallow cave. As my eyes adjusted, I saw a human skull and bones lying in the back.

“Jesus—” I started to say.

“God, look at those horns!” Davis shook loose of his pack and crawled into the cave. He came out just as quickly, dragging something. “This ain’t a goat, it’s a damned African oryx!”

I didn’t know much about goats, but this one’s horns and skull looked huge, and oddly misshapen; instead of running straight back from the nose, the cranium bulged behind the horns, canting them forward slightly.

“Can I pick a hunting spot, or what?” Davis said.

“There’s a dead man back there, Rick.” Reluctantly, I shed my own pack and crawled in, careful of where I placed my hands. There’s something disturbing about touching an old animal bone, as if your skin fears the contagion of death; I knew human bones would be worse. Less than half the man’s skeleton was there, the rest probably scattered by animals. A few rusted camping implements lay in the leaves and debris on the floor, but every bit of fabric must have rotted away or been taken by ground squirrels to line their nests. The air smelled dank and musty, and I wanted out of there very badly.

I was backing away when I noticed the scratching on the rock face above the skull. I rubbed away the lichen cover until I could read:

“Hayes was a guide,” Davis said, when I was back outside. “I think I read about him. He disappeared with a client in his Super Cub. Everyone figured it was just another plane crash no one would ever find.”

“What do you think he meant about ‘devils’?”

“He must have fallen on this trophy he took, and got delirious before he died. A gut wound like that would cause a raging infection. What a way to go.”

“We’d better get out of here and report this.”

“Hell, we can do that after the hunt. He’s been here twenty-five years, another week won’t hurt him.”

I now had a good reason to call off the hunt, and we argued for some time. But Davis was unrelenting, and eventually I gave up; we shouldered our packs and continued the climb.

I didn’t look at him or think about anything but the steady toil, where I’d next put my feet or hands. We had trouble getting toeholds in the slick grass, and whenever I slipped I usually wound up grabbing hold of a thorn bush. By late afternoon the air grew still under the clouds, and we were attacked by small biting flies, red bodies showing like dull rubies under flat wings. The only way to swat them, hanging on to the mountain, trying to climb, was to wait until several started feasting on my hand, then smash them against my forehead. The flies stayed with us until the temperature dropped at dusk.

A mountain, I learned, only seems to grow as you climb it; when you think the top is where the mountain disappears above, you find it is only the next crest; and when at last you see the true summit ending in a jagged line in the sky, it is still farther than it looks. Darkness fell, and we finally came to a narrow shelf formed at the base of two marmot holes, and set up the tent with two corners hanging steeply downslope. A coin flip left me with the downhill side.

We had been sweating hard all afternoon and hadn’t crossed a spring or patch of snow since starting up. I took a long drink from my water bottle, and saw him trying not to look.

“Didn’t you bring any water, Rick?” I said. “Do you need some of mine?”

He wanted to say no, but I held out the open bottle and he finally took it. He wasn’t greedy, but between the two of us the bottle was almost empty when he handed it back. Without enough water to cook, we ate dried fruit and candy bars for dinner.

In the tent, the mountain fell away from the narrow shelf right at the middle of my back. I fought that slope to stay in place, hearing him breathe deeper into sleep. And it was like trying to sleep next to her at home, only worse. I tried not to think, but it was too late and I started to. If she heard him breathe like that—did they ever sleep? Next to him—where?

He was six or seven years older than me, around forty, but they say women like older men. I thought how nice it would be to punch him in the nose, make the blood and tears run out of him. But he had three inches and thirty pounds on me; I’d probably regret it. Probably worth it though. He couldn’t mess me up too bad, or he’d have to carry me out of here. Sure put a quick end to this damned hunt.

My mind kept thinking and I couldn’t turn it off. Then I could feel it start to go back home, to our home, getting even worse, so I stopped and brought it back onto the mountain. I tried to think about the stars, imagining I could see them above my face, right through the tent and cloud cover. After a long time it began to rain lightly. I could hear the little drops patting the nylon and I tried to think of the drops as stars, that I was flying through them so fast they blurred like rain.

And a little later, early in the morning, the mountain seemed to tilt back the other way, grew level, and I fell asleep.

We were in the seedy little office I worked out of in south Anchorage, and she was arguing with Dick Miller about me. I was hanging back, just wanting to get in the truck and go to a job. But she was arguing, saying I’d worked for him eleven years now, that I handled most of the tough jobs myself, that my work made the company’s reputation. She was saying I deserved a share of the business, that he should make me a partner. That I wasn’t going to settle for being just a house-painter, working for someone else, the rest of my life.

She had never actually said those things, even to me. But it came to me in a dream that night.

In the morning the most important thing was that a small quantity of rainwater had collected uphill in a fold in the tent. We drank every drop, and climbed that morning sipping from tiny pools on flat rocks, never mind the dirt, until they all evaporated. Now and then we passed ripe blueberries, and I’d pop them and burst them in my mouth, savoring the single tinted drop. The blueberries were probably what kept me going.

Above the bush-line, where the only vegetation left was alpine tundra, we saw the goats. Scattered all across the mountain—white shapes that weren’t there, then suddenly were the next time we looked up. We counted them: eleven, twelve, fourteen. Davis put the glasses on them and grew excited.

“A couple look as good as that one Hayes got!” He let me look and I checked the goats, one by one.

“They’ve spotted us. Aren’t we going to spook them?”

“Goats don’t spook like sheep. They’ll get out of our way, but they shouldn’t go too far.”

There was something about the scene that was spooking me. Every one I put the glasses on was looking straight back, standing or lying immobile among the rocks, eyes glinting like black marbles. The strangest thing was how they had all sprung up at once, in scattered ones or twos across nearly a mile of mountain peaks, all watching us. By the time we reached the top that afternoon they had disappeared.

“Where’s the snowfield?” I asked, as we crossed over to look down at the northern face. All I could see was rock, dirt, and scattered dull patches of two-inch tundra.

“I don’t know.. It should be here.” We re-checked our position against the map. Sure enough, it showed a permanent snowfield filling the ravine below us. Now bone dry. We pitched camp there on the ridge, beside a rock outcropping.

“I bet it was that volcano that erupted last spring,” I said. “It dumped ash all around here. The ash probably absorbed the sun all summer, and melted away the snowfield.”

“Maybe. We can’t be on the wrong damn mountain.”

Neither of us wanted to eat. When you’re real thirsty you can no more think of swallowing food than sand, your tongue feels like a piece of tree bark stuck in your mouth, and your head grows very light. We had to find water before dark, and decided to split up, Davis going west and I east along the ridge.

As I skirted the top of the ravine I saw something out of place below: a twisted hunk of metal that had to be a plane crash. Wings and tail gone, so a bad one. Alaska’s wilderness hides many secrets, some old and some new, more than a few involving aircraft fallen from the sky. It couldn’t be Hayes’s Super Cub, because his note said that it had blown onto the glacier. Maybe someone else’s bones still lay in what was left of the cabin. I was too tired and dehydrated to climb down there to check.

I walked slowly under my near-empty pack so I wouldn’t sweat away more water. The south face we’d climbed began falling off in sheer rocky cliffs. Far below, the stream ran foaming white and cool. Ahead the glacier filled half the horizon, but on the other side of a drop almost as steep. I could see a few waterfalls cascading down the surrounding mountains, but they were even more distant.

As I walked the ridge narrowed, until the north and south mountain faces were separated by less than fifty feet. Water was the only thing on my mind, when I saw a goat standing on the ridge three hundred yards ahead, looking at me. He was in range, but all I could think was that he might lead me to water.

Both of us froze, and as I waited an image sprang into my mind, of a shadowy mountain slope dropping to a wide valley. And a snowfield in a steep ravine just below. The image faded as the goat moved, disappearing over the edge of the mountain’s southern face. When I reached that spot I saw a cliff of ragged, crumbly rock, so steep that if I jumped I wouldn’t have hit anything for five hundred feet. But no sign of the goat, not even, as I half-expected, a white shape smashed in the rocks below.

I looked around, trying to find a scene that matched the image of the snowfield that had filled my head moments ago. I didn’t know if ESP was real, but I’d had hunches that came true. The sun was setting to the southwest, brightly lighting this rocky face, so none of it seemed right. I crossed the ridge to the other side and knew it had to be this way. Though not as steep, shadows covered the mountain’s northern face; but the scene still didn’t quite match that image. A little further—I moved up the ridge until I saw the snow-filled ravine several hundred feet below.

The top of the ravine was covered with fine scree and dirt, growing rockier further down. I followed a rough trail cut by many hooves. When I reached the snow I lit my white gas stove and opened my aluminum kettle. The narrow snowfield ran from a few inches at the top to many feet thick further down, where the ravine grew deeper and less exposed to the sun. The snow, I found as I tried to scoop it up, was actually hard, milky ice, granular and sun-rotted only on the top surface. I broke chunks free with a rock and let them melt on the stove. My hands, swollen by flies and thorns, stung from handhng the sharp, cold pieces of ice.

I drank the kettle dry and melted more ice, throwing the larger chunks in my pack. When I had enough water to fill my bottle, I struggled into the pack. Chmbing was hard up the soft, yielding scree, so I angled across the slope toward camp. The heavy load of ice dragged on my shoulders, and chilly meltwater began to drip under my wool pants. I rounded the mountain into a sharp wind and immediately saw the blue tent on the ridgeline, higher up and a thousand yards off. The most direct approach took me across and up the broad ravine, near the wreck, and curiosity made me stop, despite the darkening sky.

The metal hulk was about the size of a small plane, though unrecognizable as any aircraft, its surface weathered the same dull gray as the rocks, no breaks or tears showing where wings or tail had ripped off. No scattered bits of metal or debris as usually accompanied a plane wreck. The thing lay intact—crumpled and flattened, but in one piece, and there was no sign of any windows, doors, or openings. When I touched it I found it was not aluminum, for its surface was as hard and unyielding as the rocks too. I couldn’t scratch it, but it made a dull hollow sound when struck. I realized that, where it lay, it must have been scoured and crushed by the normal snowfield for a long time. It made no sense, being there like that, whatever it was.

When I reached camp, I dumped the ice in a plastic garbage bag. No sign of Davis and it was almost dark. Some big mountain hunter, needing me to find water. It was pretty hard to get lost or miss someone on the bare mountain, and I decided to go tell him he could stop looking.

I found him only a short distance west, where the mountain slanted down toward the coast, stooped over a white blotch in the darkness. He’d made a kill.

“Eleven and a half inches,” he said. “Unbelievable, for a nanny.” It was legal to shoot either sex, but he sounded disappointed he hadn’t shot a billy goat.

“I didn’t even hear the shot. I must have been pounding on the ice then.”

He looked at me, started to lick his lips, then stopped.

“Need some water, Rick?” I asked.

“God, I’m so thirsty I thought I would drink her blood.” There was a dark bloody patch near his mouth, but he may have just wiped it there with his hand. I gave him the bottle and he drank half, then looked at me.

“Go ahead. I found enough for camp.”

The goat scent was musky and strong, overpowering even the smell of the opened body cavity, as I helped him finish boning the meat. He had already removed the cape and head.

“She was crossing the ridge, maybe four hundred yards ahead, and just stopped to look at me,” he said. “Lucky for me—mountain goats can climb anything, and you usually have to shoot them off a cliff. I didn’t cape her all the way, ’cause my taxidermist will have to see that skull to believe it.” By the time we reached camp we were struggling through night, into the teeth of a strong, cold headwind. We found shelter behind the outcropping to cook our freeze-dried dinners. We both felt good to be warm, filled, and watered, and Davis brought out a flask of single malt whiskey. I mentioned the strange wreck I’d found in the ravine, and he speculated that it might be something military. After a while he made a comment about his wife, so I asked how long they’d been married.

“Fifteen years.” He laughed into the dark, cloudy sky; the whiskey, taking hold. “Hard to believe.”

“Got any kids?”

“Three. All girls.”

From our campsite the mountain dropped gradually to the west, and I could see the lights of Homer running out in a narrow, crooked line on the long spit across the bay. The lights twinkled from the distance. A nearly full moon hung just above the mountain to the south. I handed back his flask.

“Must be hard, leaving them to come out here like this.”

“Oh, I don’t know. The girls are big now. They don’t run into my arms when I come home anymore, just sit there in front of the TV.”

“What about your wife—don’t you miss her?”

He tilted back the flask, then wiped his mouth. “Isn’t like it used to be. I don’t think couples are necessarily supposed to stay together their whole lives. Serial monogamy, that’s the natural way. Sometimes people just outgrow each other, you know?”

My mouth was as dry as before the water, but something—maybe it was the whiskey or maybe it was always having to give him water—wouldn’t let me stop. “You sound like you’re thinking about a divorce.”

“Yeah, I think that’s actually in the cards. The girls are old enough to handle it, and I’d pay support and go for joint custody.” He hid his eyes behind another tilt of the flask. “How’re you and Cindy doing?”

Right then it all flooded in, through a dam that failed without warning: fragments and phrases of the telephone message I had been blocking for almost two weeks—his voice, speaking in close, intimate terms—how great last night had been, something about finding a house for them to live in.

I had no idea they were doing it until I came home early from a weekend fishing trip and heard the message on the machine. And now, sitting on the moonlit mountain with the wind moaning over the rocks and the clouds rushing close overhead, he saw it, the knowledge, written in my devastated face or maybe the slump of my shoulders or the wrack of my whole body.

He was stunned. They must have talked about it before the hunt, she must have told him I hadn’t a clue. No other way would he have put himself way back on this mountain, alone with me.

“Are you sure you came out here to kill a goat, Bruce?” For the first time, I heard a quaver in his voice and saw a trace of uncertainty, if not fear, on his face. I remained silent, wondering what else I might see. He put the flask away and dragged his gun into the tent behind him. I could hear the double metal clink of the bolt chambering a round.

“You going to sleep under the stars?” The false security of the tent must have brought the confident tone back in his voice.

“I guess.” There were no stars, only clouds scudding low overhead. I moved my gear up the mountain, behind the next outcropping, better sheltered and out of hearing of his tent flapping in the wind. The ground tilted vertical, then further, and I wanted to be sick, as the moment’s satisfaction gave way to the abiding knowledge of his confirmation.

They were really doing it, it was really true then.

And now that I had done it, brought it out in the open and was sure not to get any sleep, would the ground stay tilted all the time? How could I make it down the mountain if it did? Maybe it didn’t matter anymore.

All night the wind attacked in rushes down the ridgeline. I could hear the fiercer onslaughts coming before they hit, roaring down the mountain from the glacier, then suddenly upon me, swirling gusts that pierced my bag through the zipper and seams. Near morning scattered drops of rain came flying with the wind. I lay huddled in the damp bag, waiting for the sky to show a light enough gray to get up.

The stove lit reluctantly in the cold wind, but I was finally able to warm my fingers and set the kettle to boil. When I stood up toward the camp, the tent was gone. No sign of Davis except his pack, where he’d left it behind a rock, and one of those green plastic boots sticking out on the duller tundra, twenty yards further down the ridge.

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 school: 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.

“So, did you lose something too?” Now I was talking to a goat, and I realized there were tears running down my face.

I don’t know whether the goat understood my question, felt my pain, or had somehow shared my memory. But suddenly an image formed in my mind: of rushing through the stars, like running into a multitude of gleaming raindrops. The image changed and I saw a world, shining in colors against the darkness. The world grew—then something was wrong. The image was spinning, as if in reverse of my own imagined memory, only instead of that Wisconsin road, it was these snow-covered mountains coming closer….

A time of waiting, attempting self-repairs. I had the impression they were something formless then. Then the moment of realization: all that was known was lost.

The image changed again, and I had the sense of walking, admiring the strangeness of my feet… shiny black hooves, below the long white hair. Clumping metallically across the deck and out into the cold gas that burned inside the first breath, then clicking softer across the rocks. Learning to feed on the tundra, grasses, and lichens, to avoid or kill the predators, the four-legged and the two. Living in this icy, vertical world, and always, always looking up at the sky, to the stars. Waiting…

Waiting for what? I thought. The goat cocked his head, but the images came confused, as if he didn’t know or had forgotten.

“What are you waiting for?” Maybe Davis had caught spillover of the images, but his shout broke the mind connection, or spell—whatever it was. The goat and I both moved, I trying to find a safer position, the goat walking up the smooth rock like a spider until he disappeared somewhere above. I started again toward Davis.

“Don’t shoot, Rick!” I called. “I’m coming to help.”

“You’re an idiot, Carlson,” he yelled, hoarsely, as I drew near. “So eager to finish me, you just passed up a point-blank shot at the world record billy!” He was lying weakly with his back against the cliff face as I finally clambered onto the ledge, watching me but at least not pointing the gun.

“Pretty neat way to bump a guy, stampeding those goats over me last night. I got bruises from their damn hooves.”

“I didn’t do it.” I shed the pack carefully on the ledge. “Those aren’t normal goats.”

“That’s for sure. Every one’s a God-damn trophy. And you passed up the biggest.” He watched without movement as I jacked the bolt of his rifle; but there were no cartridges left.

“I’ve got to try to set that leg,” I said. “Maybe I can use your rifle for a splint.”

“I shouldn’t have wasted my last shot at those goats,” he said. “Why didn’t you shoot back? I know I’m a goner. If I can’t take you along, then the only thing I’ve got left is to hope they find one of your bullets in me.”

“Shut up, and have some water,” I said.

He closed his eyes. “If you’re not going to shoot that billy, let me. You can claim the one I shot yesterday.”

I figured he was half-crazy from the pain and cold, or else just talking to keep up his nerve, and let him go on. I gave him some aspirin with the water. I had never set a bone, but could feel the broken edge low on his right femur, just under the skin. He cried out and cursed me, but eventually I realized I couldn’t do it without hurting him. Too bad.

His face went white as I felt the bone grating together, and sweat beaded on his forehead, but he never passed out or stopped cursing me. When I thought I had his leg lined up as straight as I could get it, I lashed the rifle alongside with some cord from my pack.

Now all I had to do was get him off that ledge. I thought about staying put and trying to signal a plane; except we hadn’t seen one since leaving the coast. Or maybe I should make him as comfortable as possible, and walk out for help; except he’d be dead by the time we could get here with a helicopter, if the weather even allowed for flying.

I kept telling myself I didn’t care whether the son of a bitch died, I just didn’t want to have to explain it, especially to Cindy.

Sixty or seventy feet down, the rock leveled a bit, in a short stretch of loose boulders and scree that angled toward the easier route we had climbed. I told Davis that if he could help with his hands, I was going to try to lower him there with the climbing ribbon. I tied it under his arms, then wound the ribbon around a point of solid rock that jutted out of the ledge.

“You’re going to drop it, aren’t you, Carlson? Make it look like you tried to rescue me, huh?” But he was game, and helped me lower him over the edge. The ribbon burned my hands as I let it slide a foot at a time, the rock frayed the ribbon, and if the loop crept any higher it would slip free of the rock and we’d both go down. But finally the weight was gone, and I looked to see Davis parked securely below. I tied the line off on the rock, wished myself luck, and climbed down slowly and carefully.

“Okay, so now what?” he whispered weakly. He must have realized then that I wasn’t going to kill him; his body relaxed and his eyes closed.

“Good question,” I said, mostly to myself. “Only four thousand vertical feet to go.”

And it was starting to snow.

The descent blurs together as a series of painful, tedious moments. The last thing I remember clearly before we reached the base of the mountain on the second day was turning for one last look at the goats, but seeing an impenetrable wall of falling snow, winter’s first assault on their mountain. I imagined how they might still see us, two dark forms in that sea of white.

I once read that adaptability is a trait of intelligence, and that humans are the most adaptable creature on earth. I knew that last part wasn’t true. They had come long ago, so adaptable they had become the one creature fit to survive in that vertical world where they had crashed. And they spent the centuries or millennia surviving, eating, reproducing, just like real mountain goats, and all the time waiting. For reinforcements? Rescue?

But it was their adaptability that fascinated me, the will, the struggle to survive, one day at a time. Somehow, we did the same. At first I lashed our two pack frames together into a kind of sled for Davis and, with it tied by the ribbon to my waist, we slipped and fell downward, huddling together under my bag at night, eating and drinking a few crumbs and drops when we had the chance. The snowfall eventually turned to cold rain as we lost altitude.

Davis stayed unconscious most of the time. His leg looked pretty bad, even though I loosened the bindings to help circulation whenever I could. I never did get to tell him I’d left his cape and horns lying on top of the mountain. To be covered by the snow, that would also cover, maybe for another century, that metal craft in the ravine.

When we reached the flat stream bottom, I cut two young birch, stripped them into poles, and made a travois to haul Davis. Somehow we made it to the boat the following evening, and the motor started on the second pull—miraculously, since outboards had always given me trouble in the past.

The doctor in Homer took one look and ordered Davis flown to an Anchorage hospital. He said Davis would live, but looked pretty grim when he mentioned the leg. Somewhere in between that and giving a report to the police, I called Cindy.

I had to drive Davis’s car and trailer home, my body one-half step from complete exhaustion, but mind working clearly as I rehearsed. Still one thing, the worst thing left to do—what I had been hiding from ever since the phone message. When I reached town, I parked his rig in his driveway and left the keys under the door mat. His wife and kids were gone, probably to see him at the hospital. I started my own car and went home.

She was still crying, up in our bedroom, five hours after my call. She looked up and tried to smile. On the way home I’d figured out that she wouldn’t give him up, even if he did lose the leg, because sympathy would just be thrown in on top of everything else she felt for him. I probably would have to talk to Miller about a piece of the business, just to keep up the house payments. She’d go live with him, but maybe they’d outgrow each other after a time. Maybe she’d want to come back. I’d probably want her. But maybe I wouldn’t by then. Or maybe, if I was growing a brain tumor, I’d be dead. One day at a time. Maybe I could learn to live in a world turned on its side.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Thanks a lot for asking,” I said, standing firm in case the floor became the wall.