Goat Mountain Read Free Page B

held still.
    A slow exhale, careful, as I’d been taught, and I tightened slowly on the trigger. There was no thought. I’m sure of that. There was only my own nature, who I am, beyond understanding.
    The world itself detonated from some core and I was flung through the air, landing in the dirt. The aftersound in my ears and pumping of blood. My heart jackhammering. The rifle beside me in the dirt, my right hand still on the grip.
    My father lifted me by my shirtfront and threw me backward and I did not hit ground where ground was supposed to be. I’d been lofted past the edge of the road and the earth fell away and I kept falling, hit from behind by a tree trunk or branch and another and another, still falling through air, twisting, and a rush of shadow from the right was all I saw before my right shoulder hit hard in dirt and leaves and I cartwheeled and slammed a trunk with my left leg and was spun around to hit ground with my head and neck and then upright, seeing straight ahead as if I were running down this slope, and I threw my arms out from instinct and flinched sideways to catch the next trunk on a shoulder and was flung beyond bearing until I skittered through leaves and finally lay still, not knowing how I was possible or what would be.

2
    I T’S RARE THE WORLD IS EVER TRULY NEW. RARE, ALSO, THAT we find ourselves at the center. But all had realigned at that moment. When we kill, all that is orients itself to us.
    Cain was the first son. The first born of Adam and Eve. Cain is how we began, all who didn’t get to start in paradise.
    Everything hurt, but it seemed I was only sore, nothing broken. Dark dirt and leaves damp and decaying. Dry on the surface, but I had disrupted the surface. My head was downhill, so I pulled my legs around until I was sitting, and all seemed to work. Legs and back and arms. My right shoulder and legs battered, neck stiff.
    A new forest, all trunks very small, nothing old, and that was why I wasn’t broken.
    Got lucky, I said.
    The canopy forming a parallel slope above, just as steep. I was caught between these two planes, the ground that was and the slope above that. A shaftway heading down, a place always in shadow, the sun only a rumored brightness beyond.
    The power of that rifle. My legs not braced well enough. It had blown me flat. I wouldn’t let that happen again. That was the way I was thinking. A child’s brain is a different thing entirely. What I can’t recover is how that brain created a sense of the inevitable, how it connected each thought and movement smoothly, as if they all fit together.
    I hiked back up that slope, stiff and sore but still functional. Climbing my way through the trees, each one a handhold and every step of my boots leaving a dark scar in the hillside, the slope that steep that no step held. And when I reached the lip, I found my father and Tom aiming their rifles up at where the poacher had been. My father’s elbows on the hood, Tom braced in the passenger door. My grandfather held his rifle, also, standing at the tailgate, guarding the road behind.
    What are you doing? I asked.
    Waiting to see if someone comes looking, my father said.
    You piece of shit, Tom said. You fucking piece of shit. He sounded like he was going to cry. He sounded weak.
    I had no scope, no binoculars, so I couldn’t see anything up the ridge. It was quiet. Only insects, nothing else. No birds, no wind. The air hot even in shade. My father’s white T-shirt wet all down his back and sides and sticking to him.
    I saw my rifle on the driver’s seat. I was reaching in when my father kicked the door closed. I yanked my hand away just in time.
    You’ll never touch a gun again, my father said.
    Yeah I will. I’m killing my first buck this weekend.
    My father was very fast. The butt of his .300 magnum heading straight for my chest, but I jumped back out of reach.
    What are you, he said.
    We have to get out of here, Tom said.