PINNACLE (1991)

The graveyard was so choked with weeds that only the tops of the faded ivory tombstones could be seen from the road. Daniel realized that many people passed by without even realizing that others were buried there, that long lives had come to their final resting places just yards away from the dirt road where they walked. He stepped through the gate, also so coated with weeds that the passerby would have missed it, not touching its rusted iron grating for fear it would break. The stones that once held the gate on either side had long since been chipped away by vandals and time, leaving the gate standing with only its iron supports to hold it upright. As he stepped over this threshold, the wind started to pick up, sending greeting waves across the tops of the weeds toward him, as if the ancient ground were bidding him welcome. I have finally come home, he thought.

In the years since he had last visited his father, he had changed much. This could not be said for the graveyard, however. He checked the sun, saw that he had a little more than four hours of light left. The field was completely devoid of trees, so he would receive the full benefit of the light until the sun sank past the horizon; the distant mountain thrusting itself up from the plain was the only obstruction. Out of all the things he missed about the old countryside he had grown up in, the long days were what he remembered most fondly.

He stepped lightly over the ground, being careful not to disturb the slumber of those who rested there alongside his father. He didn’t have to look down through the waist-high foliage to avoid tripping on the lower stones; he remembered their placement like the freckles on his arm. Fondness bred familiarity.

His father’s gravesite was at the very back of the area, where the weeds gave way to more weeds, even thicker than those just inside the boundary. The air, in anticipation of the evening, picked up a momentary chill and presented it to him. He shivered slightly in friendly response, and stood before his father’s grave.

The stone was not the fanciest on the lot, but each groove of the filigreed stone had taken a part of him with it. He still bore the scar that had resulted from a slip of the chisel. He could see the imperfect serif where the accident occurred, remembered the pain with nostalgia instead of anger.

He had carved the monument out of a chunk of living rock he had pulled down from the mountain behind his father’s house. It was strange, he thought, how he always thought of the mountain as having been behind the house, rather that the house resting on the foothills of the mountain. It was as if his father had owned it. The older man had climbed its many faces enough to know its constantly changing dangers and moods.

He read the inscription for the thousandth time: The Son of the Mountain Rests Here. That made him the grandson. The epitaph was of its user’s creation, spoken in one of the times after his father had stated that he had finally become one with the wilderness, part of its infinite machine.

The wind picked up, blew through him easily, cooling the warmth that his body had adapted along with its nervousness about visiting the site again. He let his arms relax, dropped his hands to his sides. He let his head loll back heavily on his neck, closed his eyes. He could feel the sun warming the sensitive skin of his eyelids.

He did not need to speak, or even form his thoughts into cohesive packages. He simply let his emotions come forth, the sorrow and loss the visit had rekindled, mingled with the overwhelming pride he felt to be the son of the man in the ground before him. Thoughts swam in the front of his mind, arranging themselves into swirls of memory, and he let them spin free, free to meet with the spirit of he who had passed on.

His father had always told him that death was not the end, but the end of the beginning. During the course of his education that phrase, which had thoroughly put his mind at ease when he was younger, had become shallower through infinite repetition in the lessons of the various religions of the world. Now, standing before his father’s grave, long since closed, he could feel the truth in himself, as sure as he could feel the path of birds circling in the painless blue sky through his eyelids. The wind ruffled his hair. The only way to defeat death was to let its dark bulk claim you. He somehow longed for the day when he would discover what lay in its echoing depths, to see what his father was now seeing.

He found a shred of doubt in the feelings he was sending forth, and it took him several moments of contemplation to discover its origin. Why had the Son of the Mountain chosen this open field to be buried in? Would it not be more fitting to have himself placed at the foot of the giant he had, by conquering, become the son of?

Then he remember how, years ago, he had found his father’s will while rooting through the cedar closet for the ghost of a half-remembered sweater. He had read it fearfully, noticing the where the old man had chosen to be buried. He had placed it before his father and asked the same question he was asking now. His father had looked out the window, and spoke gruffly at the landscape, even though his voice was clearly directed at his son. “Anyone can conquer a mountain, Daniel. Human ambition has never found a task it couldn’t master. Physical abilities fade, but the ambition stays constant. You will conquer the mountain someday… just as I will.” His gaze had then fixed upon his son. “But to conquer a plain, that’s something else. To understand the blind reasoning behind its flatness, the footsteps of the glaciers that created it, the patterns that are woven by the machinations of nature. Never underestimate them, son. Nature is never something to be fought, but to accept.”

Daniel knew that his father had never relinquished his power to anything, but from the way he had spoken of nature, Daniel knew that this was something altogether different. “There are always things life is best lived without,” his father had said, “disease, hunger, these are things you can resist. But never try to resist the madness of nature, the chaos that rules us on the most basic level. Never take your life for granted, son, or you’ll find yourself pinned down in the basement by a storm, or hear the roof separate from the house in a cyclone, or feel the ground shrug with tremors. Then you will know how fragile you are. How truly fragile.”

He remembered where he was, felt the ground back beneath his feet, and raised his head up straight. He knew that his mind had wandered, but he was sure in knowing that this flow of memories of the lessons his father had taught him, the things that had governed his life ever since he had heard them, were a most fitting gift for the dead.

He turned slowly, savoring the warmth of the sun as it draped across his strong shoulders. He opened his eyes, stared out across the plain that his father now knew every square inch of, and looked back down at the stone. It was exactly the same. He saw chips along the edge, ones that he knew from memory, how the stone had split and fallen under his chisel in the particular way he had hoped it would. He knew the stone. That was the first step. He would soon know the mountain it came from.

He never should have left all those years ago. Circumstances were different then, and with hindsight he saw what he could have done to prevent that final day when he walked away from the mountain, from his father. But would he be here now, he wondered, enjoying the sun and the loved dirt under his feet if he hadn’t left? There were so many question that would never be answered. His father had said, a question that has no answer is just wind. Pay it no mind. He didn’t.

He knelt on the rusty earth, felt the shallow rise of the ground through the well-worn soles of his shoes, the gentle hill formed by the dirt his father’s coffin had displaced. He leaned forward, placing his palms against the ground, pressed his lips to the ground between them. Again, he did not speak.

He knew what had to be done, what task he came here to finish in his father’s stead. He stood, turned toward the giant on the horizon, the one that would steal a whole hour and a half of the day’s sunlight later in the evening, and started walking toward it steadily. He would not slacken his pace until he reached the house.

He cut across the field and the several roads that ran past, making a direct line toward the mountain. He would show that it held no fear for him anymore, no longer could it frighten the little boy who had heard the rumbling and felt the wind shearing down its sides during dark autumn storms. Then he had hidden under his bed, but there was no protection now. Not even any trees to hide behind. The winds had long since claimed them all, and now the slopes stood near-bare, the menace of its granite badly masked by numerous green patches, like an ill-covered skeleton.

He reached the house a little over an hour later, although he had seen it in the distance after a quarter of that time. It grew steadily in his vision, taking up more and more room, and as it filled his eyes it filled his mind, making him feel so much younger. The paint, which had needed refinishing the last time he had been there, had faded to the point of making the house near invisible. Like the graveyard, a person casually strolling by probably would not have seen it. He smiled. Let them not see it. He though, it is important to have some things that can be strictly called one’s own, even though there are out under the sky for everyone to see.

The sun was heading for the southern slope of the mountain, giving no sign that its light was soon to be swallowed up. That was something else that had scared him as a child. When the sun went down on the horizon, it gave warning, changing to deep oranges and reds, bottom-lighting the clouds with pinks and purples like a promise that it would return. When it set behind the mountain, it was just suddenly gone. He was not afraid now, he actually preferred to make the climb in darkness and silence, to prove to the rock that he didn’t need help to scale it.

He passed the house, only glancing once at it as he passed. He could not see past the curtain sin the window, but he didn’t need to. Memory illuminated the entire interior of the structure, laid it wide open like a split orange. He knew every board into he floor, one of which surely still hid underneath it a small parcel with a crude pocketknife in it which had once felt so strong in his hand; not because it was made of wood, but because his father had carved it meticulously. Perhaps he would return for it later. Perhaps not. He did not deceive himself about the dangers the mountain held.

He recalled the views from every window, founded remembering them east. One of the ways he had realized that he was growing up had occurred at one of those window. He had stood in front of it, looking out at the mountain, and then realized that the glass was not tall enough to see the entire view. He had to lean close to the glass and look up, where in his shorter days the low angle had offered him the whole scene from the spot where he stood. That was first of the many wonderful, aching lessons he was taught about growing.

Then there was the porch swing, a crude but sturdy contraption built by his father. From there, you could look down the shallow slope to the village below, its narrow streets busy with the usual bustle of people in the midst of their lives. He enjoyed the atmosphere of the village himself, but found it very comforting sometimes to sit and watch the hundreds of others travel, shop and work in the valley. Sometimes he pretended he was a small god, ruling over his one domain, this tiny village, and loving each member as one of is own children. It took him much time to accept the fact that God offered no protection from the storms, the tremors, the lighting, the funnel clouds that roared by overhead, or if there indeed was a God, he had enough confidence in his creation to let it run with no restraints.

The sun went out before its time. A bank of clouds boiled up from behind the giant stone and blotted it out. So much the better, he thought. It’s really a test now. The ground began to lift under his feet, and he rode it upwards unwaveringly.

The shadow of the clouds fell across him. He chose to see this as a good omen, as the climb would be hard and he needed as much coolness as was available. He reached the point where the grass gave up and let the rock rise unhindered. He slowed a bit, conserving his strength as he had been taught to always do, in times of either physical or emotional stress. He now felt both. He reached up to grab hold of a young sapling, pushing out of a crack in the rock. He used it to haul himself a few feet higher, and then felt the wind.

As in his youth, the faces of the mountain forced it down the sides, so he was now climbing into the breath of the storm. He thought for a moment about going back, but as he steeled himself against the cold, which had become more of a bitter hindrance, he knew he had the determination to make it. This spirit had been bestowed upon him this afternoon by his father’s memory, and there was no way he could turn back.

For ours he climbed, the wind gradually whipping its way through his skin, until his bones were chilled as well. He was nearing the top, and had begun to choose his path very selectively, making sure that there would be more handholds and footholds ahead to continue on. He noted that there was little choice as to the direction he had to climb in, and wondered if this was the same path his father had taken many years before, son following father not in choice, but in the necessity of nature. If so, had his father’s failure been inevitable? Was the mountain truly an impossibility? Perhaps his own failure, too, was unavoidable. The cold worm of doubt began creeping across his mind, and he fought against it from overtaking him more than he fought for his purchase on the mountainside. The holds he searched for on the rock seemed to fade, as if the notches and ledges were slowly being drawn back into the rock. The terrain was becoming perceptibly smoother.

He paused for a moment, let his clothes swarm around him in the wind, trying to get the itch of doubt to pass. But the thought remained: was his path that of free will? Or was it lack of choice in disguise, forcing him onto one particular path? What if his father had simply been wrong? What if his death had not been of his own error, but of the simple fact that there was no way to the top?

His father had taught him of the danger of the game of What If years ago. So many men, great empires, he said, were ruined because of those two words. Madness lay in many directions, but the widest path began with the words What If.

Daniel knew he could not fall prey to it. He was almost to the top, ready to reach for the last handhold, just inches beyond his fingers, and then he saw it. His father’s hat, thrashing about in the wind, pinned tight in a cleft between the rocks. It was faded, torn almost to dust, but he recognized it nonetheless. This was his father’s path.

With new sureness of hands, mind, and feet, he passed the point where his father had failed. Then the ground turned abruptly horizontal against his feet and he was at the top, the whole of Creation spread out below him in all directions, the ceiling of seething storm clouds just above his head.

The view was spectacular. The world was laid out like a dark, completed puzzle beneath him. A raised jutting of rock at the very top was worn smooth by eons of wind and rain, and he sat on top of it regally. After so many years, so many problems solved, he had taken his place between earth and heaven, and drew from the wisdom his father had drawn so deeply upon. That knowledge had no limits, and neither did the night-shrouded world below him. He began to laugh as the first warm raindrops splashed against his cheeks.