Going to the Sun Read online

  He knew what he must do. And now he could move again. Carefully he walked down the Knife Rim into the forest. There he opened his stride and ran down the mountain. He sped around corners and cut through switchbacks. Faster and faster he ran, leaping from rock to turn, skittering over ravines on logs. He ran in grief and in terror.

  In two hours he reached the road. The black macadam highway was deserted. He glanced up at the Jaw. Frosted aspens waved eerily in the wind. Mist rose from a canyon, and for a moment he thought he had only dreamed that Will Morgan had fallen off the Knife Rim.

  Then he felt his blood-caked jaw and swollen cheek. He turned and ran toward the village of Hungry Bear.

  Half an hour later a truck stopped beside him.

  “Want a ride?” called Potter Dorst, the rural mailman from Hungry Bear.

  “Yes!” Marcus gasped and opened the door. “Will Morgan fell off the Knife Rim. Take me to my father, please.”

  A vein in Potter Dorst’s neck throbbed as he shifted gear and sped toward Hungry Bear. Marcus suspected what he was thinking.

  “I did not push him,” he sobbed. “I did not.”

  “I didn’t say you did,” Potter said.

  At the town crossroad Marcus leaped out of the mail truck and ran up the steps to his father’s office. The door was locked, but a light shone under the crack. He pounded with both fists, then clung to the door, his face streaked with tears and sweat.

  “Who’s there?”

  “Me, Dad. Marcus.”

  His father threw open the door and looked into his face. “What’s the matter?” he gasped. Marcus had no voice with which to answer.

  “Did you shoot someone accidentally?” His father’s hands shook on his shoulders, his eyes pried into his.

  Marcus concentrated on his father’s face and his voice returned.

  “Will Morgan fell off the Knife Rim when I tried to pass him.” His father drew back. Marcus came through the door and slumped into the big leather chair.

  He watched his father walk slowly to the telephone and dial. “Let me speak to Sheriff Burnes,” he said. When he had reported the accident he walked out the door. Marcus followed him down the steps to the family truck.

  “Will said dirty things about you,” Marcus said. “He called you dumb. But I didn’t push him over. He hit me, then I socked him...and he staggered and fell.”

  “I believe you.”

  “Will I go to prison?”

  “No, it was an accident. The mountains take their quota of hunters.”

  A rescue party of nine arrived at the head of the trail at sundown. Marcus took the lead. Tom Morgan, Will’s father, followed next. Ed Kulick walked at the end of the line. Marcus wondered what they were thinking. Both had been present when he had told the story of the Knife Rim, his hand on the Bible, in the sheriff’s office. They had stood across the room from each other while Marcus spoke. Then they had turned and walked away without words.

  Around one o’clock in the morning the party found Will. He lay beneath the steely wall of the Knife Rim. Marcus glanced at Will, then quickly up at the Jaw. The night was fresh and clear. Silver constellations sparkled around the massive black peak. Marcus shuddered and watched the doctor slowly cover Will as if he were spinning him into a cocoon that would awaken in the spring.

  A rustle in the darkness caught Marcus’s attention. Ignatius White Falls, a Blackfoot Indian who lived not far from Marcus, had joined the party. He walked off a few steps and faced the Jaw.

  “Oh Great Goat, father of the mountain,” he incanted. “Great Goat, you who are the son of a rock and an avalanche, you who were cradled in a womb of ice, listen to me, your brother of the valley. Release the spirit of the boy and take him to the sun.”

  Slowly Ignatius lowered his hands as if they held magic totems. He bowed his head, then returned to the party. Marcus knew the old Indians considered the goats mystical and other-worldly but he was surprised that Ignatius, a mechanic and welder, still held to the old beliefs.

  But the strange words brought a serenity to Marcus and he watched Ignatius lean down and pick up Will’s torn pack. The man shouldered it slowly, and the black horns of the bodiless goat glittered in the flash of a searcher’s light. No one spoke.

  At the road Marcus felt the strain of the day. He slumped against his father’s car and wept. His tears gushed uncontrollably. Tom Morgan approached Marcus and put his hand on his shoulder.

  “Don’t touch my boy,” Ed Kulick snapped. “Don’t put your hands on him.”

  “Please, Ed,” Tom Morgan said. “We both have suffered enough. You forgive me. I forgive your son.”

  “Forgive my son? You heard what happened. Your son hit first. But my son was strong. He didn’t fall.”

  “We will never know who hit first, will we, Ed? There is only one witness. Your son.” The hefty rancher pulled on the lapels of his leather jacket. “Let us forgive this night.” He seemed close to tears. Ed Kulick’s shoulders slumped at the sight of the wretched man who had lost his son. For an instant he put himself in his place. Suppose it had been Marcus who had fallen to his death? His stomach sickened.

  “Let me think,” Ed said to Tom Morgan. “Maybe there is some forgiving to be done.”

  “Sure, there is,” Tom Morgan replied softly and rested his hand on the side of the Kulick truck. A diamond set in a thick band of gold glittered in the rescue lights, and Ed Kulick hardened. That ring might be on his own finger had it not been for this man who was now seeking forgiveness. Ed ordered Marcus into the car, swung into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. He drove off.

  “Why should I forgive?” he asked. “Why should I? I was cheated and tricked, and you defended yourself. If you had not been so well coordinated, it might have been you at the bottom of the Knife Rim.” He sped down the highway.

  Marcus dropped his head wearily against the window as they came into Hungry Bear, a crossroad village with a gas station, three shops, a restaurant, post office, hotel, feed company and an old Indian Mission. A few houses scattered out from the crossroad made up the town. This night, the street lights seemed icy as they drove through the crossroad, and the beautiful Mission Mountains looked like huge black clinkers tossed up from the prehistoric furnace of the earth. They were, to Marcus, stage sets in a tragic drama.

  Ed Kulick drove the truck onto the dusty road that crossed the North Fork River. As they rumbled over the bridge, Marcus dropped his head and closed his eyes. If there had ever been any hope for him and Melissa it was dead now. “Melissa, Melissa,” he cried inside himself. “I’ll never see you again.”

  They sped through moonlit dust to the gate of the Kulick home, a large ranch house that had once seen better days. With leaden movements Marcus climbed out of the truck and went into the house.

  Two days later Marcus entered the old Mission to attend the funeral services for Will Morgan. He walked past banks of flowers and rows of wooden saints carved long ago by Indian artists. The soft colors and expressions brought peace to his mind. Then the eyes of the mourners pierced into his head as if to find some image upon his brain that would show that he, Marcus, had hit first. Disturbed by the accusing eyes, Marcus sat down quickly, placed his hands on his knees and adjusted the sleeves of his dark blue suit. His beard was shaven, his black curls plastered down with water.

  He lowered his head, then nervously glanced to his left. Ignatius White Falls sat next to him. He was staring at the window above the altar and whispering to the mountain framed there. Marcus looked up and pushed Will out of his mind with thoughts of the legendary goat on that white peak in the window. When he felt calm, he dared to look at the bowed heads in the front row of the church. On one side of Tom Morgan sat Melissa. Marcus’s heart raced furiously. Melissa looked tense, even from the back; the warm shoulders that he had so often held were now high and rigid. She must be suffering. He longed to go to her and tell her that he had not killed her brother, that it truly had been an accident; but he could not. She proba
bly hated him and would do so for the rest of her life. That was best. Now they would never have to face their parents and tell them that they were in love. The Jaw and the goat had ended their covert life together.

  Marcus closed his eyes and did not open them until the voice of the priest had stopped and the services were over. Then, eyes on his boot tips, Marcus listened to the sound of feet filing out of the church. When they had died away he arose and stepped into the aisle. At the end of the dark room the sun shone through the door.

  He dashed into the light but it did not change the mood of the funeral. Discouraged, he pressed his forehead against the door frame. A hand touched his sleeve. Marcus turned and looked into Melissa’s beautiful face. He had not seen her since that day in the forest two years ago. She was now fourteen. Her lips were full and her cheeks were firm and hollow. Marcus drew in his breath. Her golden-red curls were threads of light, her body supple. A pulse beat at his temple. The blood that had felt so stagnant in his arms and legs since Will had died, suddenly raced joyously through his body. Always beautiful, Melissa was now breathtaking. Her dark blue dress was simple and rich. A tiny gold pendant hung at her neck. Marcus stared at her. He wanted her against his chest forever.

  “You must not feel guilty,” she said. Her eyes were purple-blue like the high country pools.

  “Melissa, do you hate me? Do you?”

  She ran her fingers over his lips. “Ssh,” she said. “I love you. I will always love you no matter what.”

  “Melissa!” her mother called urgently. The woman saw Marcus and her face hardened. “Melissa, come here this minute,” she screamed.

  Melissa ran down the Mission steps. She followed her mother into a black limousine and closed the door.

  Marcus jumped down the stairs and chased the car to the crossroad. It gained speed slowly, then traveled toward the burial grounds.

  “Melissa,” he called. “I love you. I love you too. I’ll tell them. I’ll tell them all—the whole world!”

  Marcus waved. Then, in outrageous happiness, he jumped a brick wall, ran past the hotel and sprinted through the gas station. At the corner he leaped into the air, clicked his heels and made a right-angle turn. Arms stretched out, he sped like a deer past the restaurant and post office, the Indian trading store, the market. Now he was on the long, dusty road home. He passed the sagging wooden homes of the Indians and the painted ones of the merchants. All were sparkling castles. The weedy, blue wake-robin flowers were orchids. The dusty range was a bowl of gold; the irrigation ditch, a ribbon of azure. Marcus ran all the way home through a world transformed by the durability of Melissa’s love.

  At the edge of his property he leaped to the top of the rail fence and walked it to the gate. There he paused at last. The fence enclosed about an acre of land, the land his father’s house was on. Around it lay one hundred acres Tom Morgan had taken in the foreclosure. Marcus studied the stolen land. The sheep that were once his father’s were now Tom Morgan’s.

  He shook his head. He must not love Melissa. The very sight of the fence gave his father pain, although to Marcus it was the end of the range country and the beginning of the aspens, willows, and western yellow pines—the river bed. And the river bed was his childhood playground, a happy land one sprint away from his log-and-shingle house that faced the Mission Mountains and the Jaw. And that same river had sung under a bridge when he was twelve and love had come to his life.

  Marcus stood on the fence thinking about Melissa and back further to the canoe trips he had taken down the river. He remembered the deer and pheasants that he had hunted along the North Fork with his older brother, Harry. Harry had married after graduating from high school and was living in California. Once Marcus had written him about his love for Melissa and how he was looking forward to high school graduation and marriage. Harry had answered: “Are you mad? Melissa Morgan? There are many nice girls. Come live with Mary and me for a while. We’ll introduce you to some.”

  Marcus leaped from the fence and ran past the rifle range, the stone wall, the barn. Once it had held seven horses, four for the family and three for the cowboys that worked for his father in the good years. Now it held one.

  Marcus threw open the house door and stepped into the kitchen. His mother was not there. He raced into the great hall. Bear and elk rugs covered the floor, and massive log chairs and couches encircled the enormous fireplace. The heads of moose and elk, deer and goats hung along the walls.

  “Mom, where are you?” he shouted. “Mom? I’m in love.”

  “That’s nice,” she called from her bedroom. The door opened and she walked into the hall still fastening her earrings.

  “Who’s the lucky girl?” She paused and stared at him suspiciously. “Who is she, Marcus?”

  “Melissa.” He came toward her testily. “Melissa, Mom, Melissa.” She peered into his eyes, to the very cells of his brain, it seemed.

  “Just so it’s not Melissa Morgan,” she said. Marcus could not prevent his eyes from softening at the mention of her name.

  “It is Melissa Morgan,” she snapped, her narrow face tightening. “Are you crazy? How could you even think of her?” She grabbed his collar and shook him.

  “I love her,” he said. “I’ve loved her for four years.”

  “Marcus,” she snapped, “you’re leaving tomorrow for Missoula. You’ll stay with Grandma until school starts. She’ll put some sense in your head.” She turned away, then faced him again. “Don’t let your father hear you say that. Ever.”

  Marcus leaped to the back of the log couch, walked a few steps and sprung lightly into the air. He caught the rafter above the table and swung over her head.

  “She loves me too,” he called. “She loves me even after all that’s happened. Melissa, Melissa, I love you.”

  Amanda Kulick sighed. Marcus always swung from the rafters when he was feeling reckless and headstrong.

  “Marcus, I’m driving you to Missoula tomorrow. We’ll hear no more of this. No more.”

  She walked to the pine couch and picked up a book. “Pack your clothes,” she said.

  “My goat,” he snapped back. “I have to get my goat.”

  “You are getting mine,” his mother said. “Pack your clothes. You’re going to Grandma’s tomorrow. Forget that girl.” The finality in her voice alarmed Marcus and he walked slowly to his room.

  “I’ll go,” he said, “but I won’t change.”

  3

  ENCOUNTER

  The school year passed. The high school graduation was over. Marcus ran out of the auditorium, down the hall and into the principal’s office. He took off his cap and gown and threw them on the pile of discarded garments. The gown billowed, slipped, then fell off the table. Marcus thought of Will. He shuddered and ran out the front door. The sun was shining, the day was clear. He closed his eyes and pushed Will out of his mind. When he opened them he saw the roof of the school gym. With a leap from the steps he ran to the building, climbed the rain spout and stood on the top of the wall that edged the roof. This was the route to the parking lot that most of the boys took for cheers and horseplay. Marcus ran it lightly. With a whoop to his friends below he turned a cartwheel, a flip, and stopped inches from the edge of the building. Then he let himself down the wall and dropped lightly to the ground, where his mother and grandmother were waiting.

  “I’ll be glad to see you at hard labor,” the rotund little woman said. Marcus grinned and pulled a pink slip from his pocket.

  “A miracle,” he said. “I drew another lucky number in the goat lottery.” He thrust the paper at his mother and took his grandmother’s arm.

  “Granny,” he said, “I’m going to spend the summer in the mountains. I’ll work hard. I’m going to learn everything there is to know about Old Gore. I’ll find out where he goes, whom he sees, how he moves. I’ll think like he thinks. I’ll become a goat; and then, when the hunting season opens...” He lined up an imaginary rifle. “Zing. Pow. I’ll have the great trophy of the West.�
�� He held one hand triumphantly above his head. “And,” he looked at his mother, “I’ll be rich and famous.”

  “Did you apply to college?”

  “Naw,” Marcus said.

  “I thought you wanted to be a wildlife biologist. You need college for that.” She opened the door of the pick-up and told him to drive the truck home. “I’m spending the night with Grandma. I’ll come back on the bus,” she said.

  Marcus hugged them, jumped into the driver’s seat and waved to his friends. He gunned the engine and sped out of the parking lot to cheers and shouts and laughter.

  “Good-bye books, hello mountains,” he said as he honked farewell to school.

  Marcus turned on the tape deck when the Mission Mountains came into view. Oh, how glad he was to see them! They hugged the slim highway and made the valley seem fragile and small. Although it was the end of May, the peaks were still white with snow. Only the south-facing slopes below timberline were green. Marcus whistled; he would soon be up there among the firs and ice, hunting out his goat. He would go immediately. Only last week a friend said Melissa’s mother had found Marcus’s letters and Melissa had been sent to Europe again.

  Marcus would kill Old Gore on September 15, opening day, sell his goat—a goat head was worth about eight hundred dollars—and go to Europe to find her.

  An hour and a half north of Missoula, Marcus turned off the main highway and drove east into Bear Valley, rich ranch country deep in the Mission Mountains. Speeding into town in good spirits, he stopped for a red light at the crossroads. He glanced down Main Street toward the distant Morgan ranch with its swimming pool and riding ring, and wondered how Melissa liked Europe. His heart raced at the thought of her and he put his head down on the wheel. He had not seen her since Will’s funeral.

  Suddenly he had an inspiration. Perhaps there was a note under the stone telling him where she was and how to get there.

  The light changed, he threw the truck into gear, shot across the street and parked by the post office. There, indeed, under the steps was a flat white stone and a letter.