Bull Mountain(2)

“Yessir.” Gareth took the spoon back and did as he was shown.

Cooper fried some fatback and bacon in a cast-iron skillet and then served it up to his son and brother as if that pissing contest outside hadn’t just happened. That’s the way brothers do things. Gareth was the first to speak.

“Deddy said you killed a grizzly out by this ridge back in the day.”

“He said that, did he?” Rye looked at his brother, who sat shoveling eggs and fried meat into his mouth.

“Well, your deddy ain’t right. It wasn’t no grizzly. It was a brown bear.”

“Deddy said you killed it with one shot. He said nobody else could’a done that.”

“Well, I don’t reckon that’s true. You could’a took it down just the same.”

“How come you don’t got the head hanging up in here? That would sure be something to see.”

Rye waited for Cooper to answer that, but he didn’t look up from his food.

“Gareth, listen to me real good. That bear? I didn’t want to kill it. I didn’t do it to have something to see, or a story to tell. I killed it so we could make it through the winter. If you kill something on this mountain, you better have a damn good reason. We hunt for necessity up here. Fools hunt for sport. That bear kept us warm and fed us for months. I owed it that much. You understand what I mean by ‘I owed it’?”

“I think so.”

“I mean that I would have dishonored the life it led if I killed it just to have a trophy on that wall. That ain’t our way. We used every bit of it.”

“Even the head?”

“Even the head.”

Cooper piped up. “You hearing what your uncle is telling you, boy?”

Gareth nodded at his pa. “Yessir.”

“Good, ’cause that’s a lesson worth learnin’. Now, enough talking. Eat your breakfast so we can get on with it.”

They finished the rest of the meal in silence. As they ate, Rye studied Gareth’s face. It was perfectly round, with cheeks that stayed rosy no matter the weather, peppered with freckles. His eyes were set deep and narrow like his father’s. He’d have to open them real wide just for someone to tell the color. They were Cooper’s eyes. It was Cooper’s face, without the calico beard, or the grit . . . or the anger. Rye remembered when his brother looked like that. It felt like a hundred years ago.

When their bellies were full, the two older men grabbed their rifles and stretched cold-morning muscles. Cooper leaned down and adjusted the wool cap on his son’s head to cover the boy’s ears.

“You stay warm, and you stay close,” he said. “You get sick on me, your mama will have my ass in a sling.”

The boy nodded, but his excitement was setting in and his eyes were fixed on the long guns. His father had let him practice with the .22, to get used to the recoil and feel of the scope, but he wanted to carry a man’s gun.

“Do I get to carry a rifle, Deddy?” he said, scratching at the wool cap where his father had pulled at it.

“Well, I don’t reckon you can shoot anything without one,” Cooper said, and lifted a .30-30 rifle down from the stone mantel. The gun wasn’t new, but it was heavy and solid. Gareth took the weapon and inspected it like his father had taught him. He made a show of it to prove the lessons had stuck.

“Let’s go,” he said, and the three of them took to the woods.

4.

Cold dirt. That’s what morning smelled like on the mountain. The air was so thick with the smell of wet earth, it clogged Gareth’s nose. He tried breathing through his mouth, but within minutes he was licking grit off his teeth.

“Here,” Cooper said, and handed his son a blue bandana. “Tie this around your face, and breathe through it.”

Gareth took it and did as he was told, and they walked.

“I’m not gonna let you do it, Rye,” Cooper said, shifting gears from Gareth to his brother. “And before you start carrying on, don’t try to give me your normal line of shit about it being what’s best for the family. Mama or some of these young punks around here might buy into that nonsense, but you’re not about to convince me what you’re wanting to do here is right. It’s not. It’s the goddamn opposite of right.”

Gareth listened but played deaf.

Rye was prepared and well rehearsed; he’d practiced this sparring session all morning to an audience of trees from that squeaky rocking chair.

“Anything that takes the worry out of having to put food on the table is the right thing to do, Coop. It’s in our best interest to—”

“Oh, stop that shit, right now,” Cooper said. “You best have something better than that. We eat just fine around here. There ain’t nobody on this mountain starving. You sure as hell ain’t.” Cooper motioned to Rye’s belly.

Gareth let out a small chuckle and his father gave him a sharp smack to the back of the head. “You mind your business, boy.” Gareth went back to acting deaf and Cooper returned his attention to Rye. “The trees on this mountain have done right by our family for fifty years. Fifty years, Rye. I would think respecting that—protecting that—is what’s in our best interest. The idea that you done lost sight of that pains me deeply. You actually think selling off timber rights to land you were born on, to a bunch of goddamn bankers, is good for us? Well, that breaks my heart, Riley. What the hell happened to you? I don’t even recognize you anymore.”