Before the Light

He looked at the tree-covered mountains, worn down and rounded over millions of years. In one of the valleys was the house. He could not remember when he had last been there. His mother never spoke of the place. It existed on the receding edge of recollection. He did not know if the old house was even standing. His feelings, however, were another thing. They were sure.

“Caleb, if I’m reading this map right, the house should be in the valley on the other side of this ridge.”

The early autumn air was brisk and the wind prickled goosebumps on any exposed skin.

“Let me see, Ruth.” Caleb looked at the map and returned it to his sister. From his pocket, he took the copy of the information from the plat book and the directions the old-timer had given them in town.

“The path should be below us,” he said and started down the slope.

Ruth followed. Both slipped and slid down the slope, sometimes holding onto the pines to check their descent, until they arrived at the valley floor. The mountain’s arms, the ridges cradling the valley, and the trees blocked the sun. The sky was but a ribbon of blue. Caleb and Ruth were bathed in twilight.

Ruth looked around. “It’s kind of spooky down here. How far do we have to go?”

“A couple miles. We’d better get a move on it.”

“Why are we doing this? You never mentioned this until Mom died.”

“To you.”

“So why am I here?”

“Because you’re all the family I have.”

Caleb took off and Ruth followed.

The trees were old, their trunks broad, their limbs gnarled. Leaves were turning from green to yellow, crimson, and brown. In another month or two, they’d all be on the ground, and the trees would be naked skeletons. And come spring, there might be somewhere the sap would no longer flow, winter’s icy hand having taken away the life.

Caleb had no recollections of the forest, only those vague shadow-memories of the house, and the knowledge that his mother never talked about it. Ever. Neither did he have any memory of his father; his mother never talked about him, either. He only knew Ruth’s father. When he looked in the mirror, he saw nothing of his mother. He could only assume he was looking at some semblance of his father.

Even though she never spoke of him, Caleb had a feeling his mother had loved him at some point. For he’d often caught her looking at him, and the look was soft and tender.

But his mother was gone now, and Caleb was free to explore his past. That was why he was in the forgotten valley searching for a house lingering on the edge of memory.

“I envy you, Ruth.”

“Why?”

“Because there are no secrets.”

She nodded her head. After a time, she said, “Must be tough. Not knowing.”

“Yeah. It’s like not knowing who I am.”

“How’s finding this house going to change anything?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if it will change anything.”

“Well, I hope you will still be you.”

Caleb smiled and put his arm around her, giving her a sideways hug.

“Seriously, Caleb, what will knowing the past do? It can’t change anything. What is, is.”

“I have to see. I have to find out what I can. It’s like there’s this big hole. It’s like those old maps where the western United States or the middle of Africa was left blank. There’s a blank spot in my life. I need to fill it in.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know that feeling. I just hope you don’t change.”

“I won’t.”

“But you don’t know that. What if you learn something really awful? Something you can’t live with,” Ruth said.

Caleb hadn’t thought of that. So intently was he focused on knowing, he’d never thought he wouldn’t want to know--that he might be sorry he’d dug up the past.

“You know what Gram always said.”

“Yeah. You look long enough, you’ll find a horse thief, and who wants to know that?” Ruth said, giggling.

“The difference is I have to know.”

“For your sake, I hope what you find is good.”

Caleb never thought it would be bad. He’d always assumed it would be good. What if it wasn’t? What if, as Ruth was saying, it was something he didn’t want to know? Something his mother had protected him from for his own good?

The narrow valley floor was darker now. The sun was beginning its descent towards evening and then the night. Ruth took out a flashlight from her backpack. It made little impact on the dusky gloom.

“It needs to get darker before the light can make a difference.”

The path rounded the end of the mountain’s arm. They were entering the valley where, according to the plat book and the map, the house should be.

This valley was wider and the light was brighter here. Caleb thought of the psalm with its valley of the shadow of death. Answers. Soon. He’d have them soon.

The valley was something like a box canyon. Up against the mountain was a grove of trees. Caleb looked around, but there was no sign of a house anywhere.

Ruth pointed. “Must be in those trees.”

They walked to the grove and entered it. In the center, Caleb found stones, barely visible, laid out in a square. There lay what was left of a fading memory. In the silence of the stones, lay his answers.

“No,” he whispered, and ran to where the house had been. Caleb turned in circles, arms outstretched, as if to touch what was no more, then fell to his knees.

Ruth kneeled next to him and put her arm around him.

He looked at her, his eyes wet. “Now I’ll never know.”

“There’s nothing here for you. Maybe there never was.” After a time, she said, “Let’s go home.”

Written by: CW Hawes

Photograph by: Samuel Zeller

East

Read the rest of the "West" saga: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9

Chris reached the top of the peak and looked east. He saw clouds passing, obscuring his view, then clearing away. Trees, wild and unfettered, without the usual corridors for cell phone towers. The lake down below, for which the mountain had been named.

This was almost everything he’d had in mind.

He wished he could distract himself, think of anything but his original vision of being here with Dena. But he’d cut himself off. His usual distractions--the scrolling pictures, the flashing lights, the texts--were gone. He’d called his father from the AT&T customer service desk after having his cell phone shut off.

“I just wanted to let you know my phone got stolen,” he lied. “I know...yeah, I’ll be reachable soon, but we’re going to be in a national park in a couple of days, and I doubt there will be any service anyway...I just didn’t want you to worry…”

Lex, the AT&T employee who’d disconnected his phone, grinned at him when he hung up.

“Going off the grid, dude?”

“Just...taking a break,” Chris had said.

At first, he’d hoped that taking a break would be enough for him and Dena, too. Getting out of town. Reinventing themselves on the road. Dena had been through a lot. She’d suffered more in the past six months than he had in his life. What bad thing had ever happened to him?

His parents’ divorce, after which they both became better, happier people? Getting busted for carrying drugs one, isolated time--then getting off with a stern warning?

When your life diverges from another person’s--theirs into misery, yours into happiness--what do you have? Dena sat right beside him as they drove, but she was still miles away. He couldn’t change her. He couldn’t even heal her.

He retrieved the Chinook keys from the pocket of his corduroy jacket. Dena had given him the keychain--a flat rubber raccoon advertising Ricky’s Recycling Service, Macon, Georgia.

“Sorry, pal,” Chris said.

He hurled the keys over the side of the mountain, closing his eyes as they flew through the air so he couldn’t see where they landed.

“That was dramatic,” a voice said.

“Huh?”

Chris turned around to see a man standing behind him. He was older than Chris, maybe mid-forties, and wearing a backpack.

“How are you going to get home?” the man asked.

“I’m kind of in transition right now.”

“Oh, one of those.”

“What do you mean?”

The man unclipped a water bottle from his pack.

“You know. Finding yourself in the great outdoors, or whatever. Quarter-life crisis. I get it, I really do.”

“I don’t need to be patronized right now, okay?” Chris said.

“Nah, I didn’t mean it like that. Just--I’ve been there.”

“Are all the people in your life shit?” Chris muttered.

“We’re all shit, man,” he said.

Chris and the hiker stood in silence, looking at the lake, until the hiker’s phone buzzed. Chris reached for his pocket out of habit, then laughed as a wave of lightness washed over him.

“Sorry,” the man said. “It’s my store.”

As the hiker stepped away to talk on the phone, Chris tried to burn an image of this place into his memory.

Skinny pines. Grey rocks. Algae and reflections creeping around the borders of the lake, making it look like the flecked iris of a human eye. This place was made for Instagram. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was made for this moment only--for Chris’s deliberate efforts to really see it.

Maybe Lake Peak didn’t need the likes. Mountains are above validation. Mountains don’t give a fuck.

“I have got to get someone who can make a decision,” the hiker laughed, sliding his phone back into his pocket.

“So you have a store?” Chris asked.

“Camping supplies. Over on the other side of the National Forest. A new shipment just came in, and my assistant manager is brain dead.”

“You need a new one?”

“A brain? God, yes. Please.”

“An assistant manager.”

“Now that’s a thought,” the man said.

                                                                                                      ***

In the final montage of their story, a Bob Dylan song would play on the radio station for the brief moment before the three cars passed out of range. The first car, Drew’s old Toyota, would be the only one still headed west. He would pour a package of peanuts into a plastic bottle of Coke, and dream of a place where he could play ping-pong on his lunch break. Where his desk chair would be a stability ball.

In the second car: Chris, riding shotgun, his new boss driving east as they wound their way out of the Santa Fe National Forest.

“Let me get your number, and I’ll call to let you know what time to come in,” the hiker would say. Chris would just smile.

The last car would be the hot-wired Chinook re-routing its path back to Austin. Dena would reach for Jennifer’s hand, but she’d pull away.

“Let’s go slow, okay?”

Dena would nod.

“Yeah,” she’d say. “We’ll go slow.”

In the last moments of the story, the chorus of the Dylan song would swell, guitars jangling as the radio flickered in and out. The invisible triangle connecting the three vehicles would grow larger and larger, stretching until it was too faint to imagine, until everyone had landed on a different frequency. The sun would drop away in the west, headed for the ocean.

But this was not a story. Truly, there is no such thing.


Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Luke Pamer

Junum the Young

Junum the Young was the last of the Cloud People. All the others from his tribe had disappeared one by one, wandering off into the fog when their time came. The Cloud People were quiet; they kept to themselves living in the crags and caves of the tallest mountain peaks.

At just over 7 feet tall, Junum was small for his kind. His long, thin limbs were coated in fine white hair. The fur sprouting from his grey skin grew chaotically, fanning out in all directions. It grew thickest on his head where it matted together, and if you saw him through the fog, you would see what looked like the distorted silhouette of a man. But you would never see Junum the Young, or any of his kind. They lived in small family groupings, hidden in quiet caves, melting silently into the mountaintops.

The skies were clear and crisp, and the clouds hung low in the world, hugging the barren rocks. Junum scrambled up the mountain using his strong hands to cling to the narrow ledges and heave himself along on his wide, sturdy feet. He was returning home after weeks out scouring the nearby mountains. He was returning alone, unsuccessful in his search. Junum had not found a companion.

For years he had searched the surrounding terrain for any other Cloud People. He had wandered until the rocks turned to grass and the clouds were high above. He traveled until the plants towered over his head. The world became flat and the air smelled of earth and flowers and other strange things he could not name. Junum was disappointed, for once again he had been unable to find any other creatures like himself.

As he crested the lip of the ridge and the ground opened up to reveal the mouth of his familiar cave, Junum caught the scent of something on the wind. It was the smell of meat, urine and salt, a smell his mother had told him belonged to man. The smell he had been taught to always avoid. There was something else, a foreign smell, both sweet and smoky. The strange aromas were coming from within his home. Junum knew he should disappear back over the ridge, he should blend into the fog and disappear before the man caught sight of him, but years of loneliness overruled his natural inclination for timidity, and Junum entered the cave.

The man was small. It sat unmoving with its legs folded and its hands resting palm up on its knees. Eyes closed it did not see Junum, and he was able to approach the creature and examine its strange appearance.

The man-thing was wrapped in skins that hung loosely from its body, obscuring its shape. The skins were unlike any pelt Junum had ever seen. They were the bright colour of summer berries and looked as soft as grass, as though they could be ruffled by the slightest breeze. The man-thing had no fur on its head, its pale skin was smooth and shiny. It held a collection of pebbles in its hands; each one perfectly round, and pierced through the centre. The pebbles had been strung along a piece of sinew. Junum watched as the man-thing mumbled strange sounds, sliding the pebbles along the sinew, passing them from one hand to the next.

The cave was filled with the same sweetly scented smoke, which had caught his nose outside. The smoke seemed to be coming from a small, solitary stick that had been stuck in the ground. Junum decided to approach, intending to extinguish the ember. The smoke caught in his nostril and stung his gentle grey eyes.

As Junum knelt in front of the man-thing, its eyes suddenly popped open. Its mumbles gave way to a shriek so shrill it seemed to have come from a bird. Junum stumbled back, and in an instant the man-thing rose to its feet. Fear ran swift and thick through Junum, coupled with regret. He knew he should not have entered the cave. Junum reached out to push the man-thing aside, intending to run away and disappear into the mountains. But the creature shoved him hard to the ground. Junum raised his hands to shield himself from the monster but its eyes were full of panic and rage. It grabbed a rock from the floor of the cave and slammed it into Junum’s head.

The impact shook Junum, and he fell to his knees in front of the howling creature. He felt blood oozing from his scalp. He looked up just as the rock came crashing down a second time against his skull. This time, Junum sprawled to the ground, immobilised by the impact. The third thud of rock against skull stole Junum’s vision, and as the world turned black around him, he knew the next blow would take his life.

Junum closed his eyes and thought of the others who had been gone for so long. He thought of his mother with her gentle hands and his father leading them through the hidden mountain paths that had been their home. Junum thought of the smell of the wind, the songs of the birds and the feel of cool mountain streams in spring. He thought of the taste of summer berries, sweet and vibrant. He did not think of the man-thing and his skins of the same colour. He did not think of his lonely years after the others had gone. He thought only of his home and the good things he had loved. Then, when the final blow fell, Junum the Young thought no more.


Written by: Sarah Scott
Photograph by: Rob Gregory