I ain’t no killer.
Yeah, I gave her the shove. But I ain’t no killer.
I’m just a man. Just like him. Just like you. Anyone woulda done what I done. Even you. Don’t believe me? They say don’t judge a book by its cover. Well, you shouldn’t judge a man ‘til you’ve heard his story. We don’t just end up where we end up in life. We get there one leap at a time. Like a bullfrog, jumping from one lily pad to the next. Ain’t no fair to judge a man on where he landed ‘less you know where he’s been. And boy, I tell ya. I been around this world.
I been on the mountain for twenty-nine summers. This one’ll make it thirty. And it’s a hard knock life up there, I tell ya. Hardscrabble, folks might say.
I reckon none of you yellow-bellied city slickers would last a week up there.
There ain’t no water, except what you carry from the river. And that’s a day’s walk at best.
Far as food, there ain’t much. A few patches of switchgrass and a scattering of gooseberries here and there.
There’s trout in the river, whatever the bears don’t eat. But when the creek dries up in summer, well, you’re mostly living on gopher and rattlesnakes ‘til springtime.
In the summer, the blackflies swarm so thick and fierce that you’d swear it was somethin’ personal. Then you have your coyotes. Mountain lions. Black bears. And those are just the big ones. But it’s the little ones that’ll get you. Gophers. Mice. Foxes. Bats. Owls. All trying to survive, just like us. But they’ll make your stash disappear faster than a snowball in July.
In the winter, it’s colder than a witch’s titty and twice as angry. When the wind howls through the valley and you feel it coming blowing in through the floorboards, you’d swear you was at the North Pole. But the mountain, she’s cruel.
Boy, I tell ya. She makes her own weather. She don’t listen to no highfalutin weatherman. It rains most days, even when the sun’s supposed to be shining. Most nights the fog comes in so thick you can’t even see your pecker when you’re taking a leak.
Now how’s that sound?
Any takers?
I can already hear you dialin’ the taxicab to take you back to your comfy little bed in your comfy little home. But me? I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Yessir, that’s the old home place. Mount Greylock. It mightn’t be for you, but everything ain’t supposed to be for everybody.
Like they said in Green Acres. You can keep Manhattan. Give me that good ole countryside. Fresh air. Blue skies smilin’ at me.
Some folks like the farm, others prefer the penthouse. Don’t mean one is better than the other. Same goes for people. Standin’ in church don’t make you a saint no more than dirty fingernails make you a gardener.
But in my experience, city folk are soft. They can’t help it. Life got too easy for ‘em. Indoor plumbin’. Tap water. Electricity. Air conditionin’. It’s easy livin’ in the city, ‘cept for the smog. But push come to shove? I’d take a hard-wearin’ farm girl over a ditzy debutante any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Anyway, what was I on about? Oh, right. Greylock. Yeah. That’s where I hang my hat. My little cabin on the cliffside is humble. But it’s got a roof overhead and a woodstove in the corner.
And boy, I tell you, that’s all I need.
I had my time in the big city, sure. And believe me, I could put ‘em away with the best of ‘em. I was a champion Pabst Blue Ribbon drinker who occasionally found himself at the bottom of a bottle. That’s part of why I had to get outta town. It ain’t no fun wakin’ up in the gutter with your pockets turned out not knowin’ how you got there.
Shit yeah, it’s hard out here sometimes. But life is hard all over. Ain’t that the truth?
And it’s hard out here in the wilderness, but it ain’t any harder than city living. And it’s good, clean livin’. Least for me. I just couldn’t stomach those big toothy smiles. Those slick-backed snake oil salesman lyin’ through their teeth. Trying to separate a fool from his money and for the most part doin’ just that.
There’s a certain correctitude about living out here with nature. Most things are trying to kill you, sure, but at least they have the decency to say so.
A black bear don’t pretend to be your buddy. He roars. He eats.
Simple as that.
So, anyway. That’s how I landed here. Portland to Mount Greylock with a short detour in Iwo Jima. Those are my lilypads.
As for Johnson? Damned if I know. He got his own story, but it looks like you won’t be hearin’ it anytime soon. He was my neighbor, sure, but it ain’t like you folks on your little cul-de-sac with your pool parties and your jello.
We don’t talk much on the mountain.
That’s why people move up here. You hear me?
We don’t much like other people sniffin’ around our business. I see him now and again, sure. Gettin’ water from the creek or haulin’ firewood. There’s only one road up the mountain, so you’re bound to see a body from time to time.
But we never shared anything more than a nod.
He didn’t have the girl with him. Not at first. For the first ten years or so, I only seen him alone. But last spring I seen this little chippy down by the river. She was a pitiful little thing, all knees and elbows, fishing for trout with a broken rig. I showed her how to tie a proper knot and cast a proper reel and sent her home with a creel full of two-pound rainbows. And like I said, that was springtime, when the trout was running. I ain’t heard hide nor hair since.
Until last night, that is. Boy, I tell ya.
I wake up and it’s full dark. The moon is high, but the fog crept in, and I can’t see my hand right in front of my face. The wind is whipping somethin’ fierce, whistlin’ through the woodstove like a church organ. But then I hear somethin’. Somebody wailin’ out in the fog. I creep outside, real quiet like, trying to see what there is to see, but like I said, the fog was thick enough to choke a horse.
Then comes this earsplitting sound, like a colicky baby. We got fisher cats round these parts, and they’ll have you jumpin’ out your skin the way they howl and scream. Once I damn near froze to death runnin’ out into a blizzard ‘cause one of them boys got caught up in a trap below my window.
Boy, I tell ya. I thought the devil himself was coming to collect his due. I couldn’t listen to that goddamn crying for a minute longer.
But this noise? This was different. I ain’t heard nothing like it before. The fisher cat scared the bejesus out of me, to be sure. But this was a few shades worse. This one gave me gooseflesh on top of gooseflesh. Felt my skin crawling like worms. I can still hear it now. But shit, I keep thinkin’ about it too long and hard, I just might lose my lunch.
So, there I am.
Staring out the window. Watching. Waiting. Seeing nothing but fog. Hearing nothing but these loud, raspy cries. And then she appears out of the darkness.
The little chippy. The one I showed how to fish. Except now? She’s torn and frayed. Limpin’ along like a ragdoll. Somebody roughed her up, and but good. She’s got streaks of dried blood caked in her hair like splatters of motor oil. There’s a shiner on her cheek swole up somethin’ fierce.
But worst of all? She ain’t wearing no shoes.
Boy, I tell ya. You know how hard it is to get up and down this rock without any goddamn shoes? I’d rather walk on a bed of coals.
Her feet look worst of all. Bruised and bloody. And out she walks. A broken angel floating through the fog. She’s only a dozen steps from the edge of the cliff when she collapses. She rolls once, then twice, and just when I thought she might tumble right off the goddamn cliffside, she stops.
And then she stops cryin’. It’s just the crickets and the wind in the willows. I’m still in my long johns. I figured this wasn’t the time for puttin’ on heirs. I toss on my boots and I’m out the door.
I run over to her and scoop her up. She’s cold. Ice cold. Whether it was the light of the moon or my overactive imagination I ain’t for sure, but I’ll be damned if she ain’t turnin’ blue right before my eyes.
It ain’t quite winter, but it sure as shit ain’t fall. Like I said, the mountain makes her own weather. And while the peaks of Mount Whitlock ain’t that snowy as of yet, us folks on the mountain have been waking up seeing our breath since the last full moon.
I lay the girl down on the table and toss a few more logs on the fire. And she’s breathing, but not by much.
I’ll be damned if the girl wasn’t in a nightgown. Just a little white cotton thing.
She’s shiverin’ like a bastard. I reckon she damn near froze half to death.
I gather up my blankets and my furs and pile em all on top of her, but she won’t stop shivering. I stoke the fire like a madman, loading the firebox until it’s packed with kindling like an overstuffed turkey.
I open the damper and start fanning the flames. Soon, the stovepipe is glowing bright red and there’s a low whooshing sound as the fire devours all the oxygen in the room.
It’s got to be an hour later, maybe. The place is hotter than hell.
I’m sweating like a bishop at a brothel. And little by little, she comes around.
I got a half-canteen of water, but she gulps long and hard and drains it in one go. I can’t blame her. It’s got to be at least two clicks to old man Johnson’s place. That’s over a mile in the freezing cold with no goddamn shoes.
Heck, I’d be thirstier than a desert cactus.
I let her come around. I sit myself in the corner, whittlin’. She starts weeping again. Bawling. But real quiet-like. I can see the pile of blankets tremblin’. Otherwise? Not a peep. I see tears drippin’ from the kitchen table and makin’ a small puddle on the floorboards.
I’m halfway through turning a knobby bit of oak into a soup spoon when she sits up and wraps the blanket around her shoulders. Her face looks like somebody pulled the plug and let all the color drain out like bathwater. She ain’t blue anymore. But she ain’t pink, neither.
She doesn’t say anything, just looks over at me. Not at me, I suppose, but my general direction. She’s just staring at nothin’. Woolgatherin’, I guess you’d say. I ain’t one to twist an arm for the sake of conversation, so I just nod and go back to my whittlin’.
I figure she’ll talk when she’s ready. Or she won’t. Either way. Ain’t my business.
Up here on the mountain, people’s business is their own. And other than lending a neighborly hand, her business sure ain’t none of mine. Gossip is for city folk. We got water to carry and food to catch. Out here, people keep to themselves. Nobody out here is borrowing a cup of sugar. Folks only ask for help if they don’t think they’ll last the winter.
All I know is the girl was in dire need of respite. Now, I’m no church-goin’ man, but that don’t mean there’s no room at the inn. I believe man should help his fellow man, especially if it’s no skin off his own ass. And if all this girl needed was a bit of water and a bit of firewood, well, if we’re not to help each other, what’s the point?
“Still thirsty?” I ask.
She looks at me with confused eyes like her brain can’t make out the words. I make a move with my hand like I’m drinking, and she understands. She nods.
I gather up my coat and boots and get ready to venture out into the night. I scoop up the canteen and as I’m heading for the door, she grabs my arm something fierce and looks up at me with these crazed eyes. She looks scared. But she doesn’t say anything. I can tell she doesn’t want me to go.
“You want water?” I say. “I gotta go get it.”
She digs her nails into my arm. She’s tremblin’ like a polecat in a rowboat. “It’ll be okay,” I tell her. “Nothin’s gonna hurt you in here.” But her eyes don’t believe me. I lead her over to the cot and tell her to lie down. “I’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”
She shakes her head no and digs her nails in again. I look down and see bright red half-moons etched in my forearm from her claws.
I gotta take her hand and pull it off my arm like it’s the first day of kindergarten. “I’ll be quick like a bunny rabbit,” I tell her. “I promise.”
I ease her slowly down on the cot until she’s lyin’ with her head on the bedroll. I pile the furs on top of her again, stoke the fire, and head out into the night.
It’s dark, but I don’t have far to go. I can’t make it to the stream for freshwater, not with the fog. Not unless I want to fall off the goddamn mountain. But I’ve got rainwater. I use it for cooking and washing up. And, when push comes to shove, drinkin’ water.
You’ve got to boil it first, which makes it taste like sucking on a metal rod, but it sure beats shitting yourself to death. And believe me, one bout with dysentery will have you think twice about dippin’ your hands into just any old puddle you come across.
I get back with the water and she’s passed out by the fire. There’s a small puddle of tears by the cot where she’s laying, slowly drying in the warmth of the fire.
I pull the blankets up to her chin and toss another log into the woodstove. I’ve chewed through a week’s worth of wood, but it seems like a good tradeoff. I can see the color startin’ to come back into her face.
I boil the water and fill the canteen. I use the rest to make coffee. It’s bitter. Acrid. I can tell the grounds have gone bad. It burns my tongue. But it’s still one of the best things I’ve had in weeks. That’s the thing about modern living. It sucks all the real pleasure out of life. We used to just enjoy the simple things. The thrill of catching a fish. The majesty of a fire. That feeling of crystal-clear snowmelt hittin’ your empty stomach after a day’s hike in the blistering sun. There’s not a book in the library, a show on Broadway, or a pill in the pharmacy that can match it.
But I find that folks prefer being unhappy in a comfortable life, to being happy in an uncomfortable one.
I sip my coffee and feel the rush of caffeine buzzing through my system. I been running on fresh air and spring water so long it’s like my body forgot about caffeine.
I don’t think I’ll be sleeping tonight. But I don’t mind really.
I like the night.
The girl stirs, then rolls over on the cot to face the wall. A minute later, she starts herself to snorin’. I swill the last of the coffee and go back to my whittlin’.
The time passes quickly. Just me and the coyotes howling in the night. Eventually the winds start to die down and I can hear creatures scuttering about. A gopher bumbles under the cabin, scraping its belly on the gravel as it scavenges for scraps. A hoot owl does his thing. A bat flaps by the window and swoops off the cliff into the moonlight. The fog starts to clear, and soon the stars are out in full bloom.
I’m putting the finishing touches on my spoon when the girl begins to stir. She tosses off the furs. Her neck is bright red now, flush and beaded with sweat. She wipes her face with her hands and winces. She reaches up and touches at her cheek, the shiner there now deep purple and black in some places. It’s all swole up and pushing her eye closed partway. My face hurts just lookin’ at her.
She sits up, resting her bare feet on the wooden floorboards. Her nightgown is stuck to her in sweaty patches here and there. In the firelight, I can see how bad it is. Either something caught her on the way back from the outhouse or old man Johnson, well, I don’t want to be speculating on people’s business that ain’t mine.
But she’s banged up somethin’ fierce. She looks like an apple left to rot.
As she collects herself, I stand up. I cross the room and she flinches, even though I’m not headed in her direction.
I grab the canteen from the front stoop, which serves as the icebox when the chilly winds rage. Feeling the cold metal of the canteen I knew it did the trick.
“It tastes like boiled pennies,” I tell her, holding it out. “But it’s cold.”
She reaches out slowly and takes it, yanking her arm back like I was fixin’ to gnaw it off.
“Don’t worry,” I tell her, “I don’t bite.” But the way she looks at me, I can tell she don’t believe me. She probably don’t believe much of anything at this point.
They say once bitten, twice shy. Boy, I tell ya.
That ain’t the half of it.
“I can see you been through hell,” I says. “Stay here long as you like. I’ll keep the canteen full, and in the morning, I’ll fry up some trout. If you need something in your belly, I got a tin of sardines around somewhere. Or I could make a stew. I got some dried beans and—”
“You got a shotgun or what?”
That was the first thing she said to me. Can you believe it? I swear.
Boy, I tell ya.
Felt like I was dreamin’. In fact, it still does. This whole thing feels like a goddamn fever dream.
“If my face looked like that, I’d probably be wonderin’ the same,” I tell her. “But why don’t we get you up on your feet first?”
She stands up. “Where’s it at?” She looks around but it’s too much too fast. The blood in her brain sloshes around like punch in a punchbowl. And before I could get across to catch her. THUD. She’s on the ground. I help her back onto the cot and hand over the canteen.
“Drink,” I tell her. “You need your strength.”
“Don’t tell me what I need.”
“Fine. Drink or don’t. No skin off my ass.” She stares daggers. “But stay put. I don’t want you falling into the fire.”
She looks at me for a minute. I can tell she’s giving me the rundown. She’s wondering if I’m the type of person to take advantage. And I can’t blame her. There’s all types of people out there in the world, to be sure. And for every good Samaritan there’s a coyote out for blood. I’ve seen more than my fair share.
War turns some men into heroes. Others into monsters.
Finally, she decides it’s better to be quenched and warm than thirsty and cold, regardless of the company. But she eyeballs me like she’s waitin’ for me to tell her what her little stay at the inn is gonna cost.
And I know I might not look like the compassionate type, but I’d never hurt a fly. I never hurt nobody that didn’t have it coming. You hit me and I’m gonna hit back. My mama didn’t raise no bullies, but she didn’t raise no fools, neither.
I pick up my whittling and go back to my spoon. The girl stops eyeballin’ me and starts drinkin’ again. She gulps down half of the canteen in one fell swoop, water dribblin’ down her chin. I can see the life returning to her face as her body soaks up the liquid like a sponge.
“That’s damn good,” she says. “Thank you.”
“Think nothing of it.” I keep whittling. I get the sense that looking at her is only gonna make things awkward. So long as I’m workin’ on my whittlin’, I’m not workin’ on her.
“What’s your name?” she says. “Never asked.”
I tell her my name.
“What’s yours?” I ask her.
“Sadie,” she says. She looks around. “Nice place.”’
“Works for me,” I say. “Hungry?”
“Did you say sardines?”
“Yes ma’am,” I tell her. “Give me a minute.” I rustle around in the cupboards until I find a dusty tin and an old sleeve of unopened crackers. The sardines are expired, but only just. I find a jar of peanut butter with a few scrapings left, so I bring that, too.
“Here you go,” I tell her. “It’s not much. But it’s what I got.”
She eats. First the sardines. She sandwiches two or three tiny fish in between crackers and tosses it into her mouth. One after another, she finishes the sardines then slurps the juice from the tin. She fishes the last of the peanut butter out of the jar with her fingers and washes it down with another handful of crackers. She keeps going back and forth between the crackers and the canteen until the well runs dry then finishes with a loud belch, like a punctuation mark at the end of a sentence.
“Glad to see you found your appetite,” I tell her.
“I’m famished,” she says. “It’s a long way from my place.”
“How are your feet?”
She seems to realize for the first time that her injuries aren’t limited to her face. She lifts her foot and inspects it, pulling out a small shard of rock and a sliver of wood. The other foot has less splinters, but a lot of dried blood.
I rustle around in the cabinet and find an old bandana. There’s more water left in the boiling pot, so I dunk it and hand it over.
“It’s about as sterile as it gets up here. I brought some vodka as a disinfectant, but that didn’t last the first winter.”
“Thanks.” She dabs at the blood on her feet. Then her arms. She’s covered in welts and scrapes from the pricker bushes dotting the mountainside.
“I don’t have much in the way of clothes,” I tell her. “But I might could rustle you up a pair of socks.”
“I’m okay,” she tells me. “You don’t have a mirror, do you?”
“Now that, I ain’t got. But I’ll do you one better.” I grab my shaving kit and pull out my straight razor. “Here.” I wipe it on my dungarees then hand it over. “See if you can see your reflection.”
She tilts the razor back and forth, exploring the minefield of her face one four-inch section at a time. When she comes across the shiner, she winces just at the sight of it, then reaches up to feel the lump. “Sweet baby Jesus.” She puts the canteen against her face, wincing at first, then sighing in relief as the cool metal helps ease the swellin’. “Shit, I’m a mess, ain’t I?”
“I’ve seen better,” I told her. “But I also seen worse.”
“So,” she said. “About that shotgun.”
My eyes go to the corner of the room where I keep my twelve gauge. I can’t help it.
Her eyes follow. “I’d like to borrow it for a spell.”
“Why do you need my shotgun?”
“That ain’t none of your business,” she says. “You gonna give it to me or not?”
“Supposin’ I do,” I says. “Then what?”
“Well, I go up the hill,” she says. “And tomorrow, I come back down.”
“And what about old man Johnson?”
“What about ‘em?”
“He wouldn’t be the one on the other end of that shotgun, would he?”
“So what if he is?”
“Well, I guess I’d say if he’s the one who did that to your face? He probably got it comin’.”
“It’s worse than that.”
“Worse how?”
She reaches down and touches her belly below her stomach.
She doesn’t say another word. Neither do I.
Like I said, I ain’t no killer. I didn’t dig the hole. I just gave her the shovel. But in any case, that’s how I ended up in the hangman’s noose.
I ain’t a killer.
But I ain’t innocent neither.
I suppose that’s for God to decide.
The rope tightens around my neck.
But boy, I tell ya.
I got no regrets.
Anyone would’ve done what I done.
Wouldn’t you?
