The Mountain

I wrote this piece for a creative non-fiction class the first time I tried the whole college thing.  We were required to choose a piece from the class to submit for publication, and I chose this one.  I didn’t really know where to send it, so I sent it to the New Yorker.  I received a very nice rejection letter.

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     The mountain is passing slowly along on the left.  The ground next to the car is moving quickly, but the mountain is not.  It never does.  It stands there with its scarred, wind-torn face diligently withstanding whatever cruel games nature plays with it.  Slowly, inevitably, it will be worn away.  A good part of it is already sandy, but still it stands.
     I look away from the mountain and watch the road slipping underneath the car.  I try not to move much.  It hurts to move.  Besides, moving too much might upset Dad.
     He’s talking.  I try to listen.  The pain gets in the way.  I catch pieces of what he’s saying.
     “Everything will be fine…….don’t tell….can’t tell……they’ll take you away…..split up the family….secret…..you’re all right……you want a Happy Meal?”
     I nod my head.  I’m entranced by the road.  Spacing out.  It hurts to think.
     There’s a faint touch of bile at the back of my throat.  Food doesn’t sound good.  I can’t disagree, though.  That would be bad.  I’ve agreed with everything else.  Disagreeing would only cause problems.
     The car pulls into the McDonald’s drive-thru.  Two Happy Meals; my brother and I.  One Big Mac; Dad.  Three cokes.  Large fries.  Nine fifteen.  Come around to the first window.
     The food is bland.  My tongue feels like it doesn’t fit in my mouth.  I eat quickly, because Dad doesn’t like it when I chew long.  I try to forget.  That’s what’s best.

     In the end, I didn’t forget.  I don’t think it would have been possible to forget even if I’d really wanted to.  I knew better, though.  I hurt because I forgot.  It was a little thing, bringing in the trash cans from the curb, but I still forgot, and I still hurt.
     Of course, life wasn’t all bad.  Dad and I had good times, too.

     Dad picked me up from school today.  We’re going to hang out with his friends for a while.  He’s in a good mood.
     Inside the restaurant, there are a few tables and a bar.  In the corner is an arcade, with pinball and table soccer and pool and Donkey Kong.  Dad buys me a Sprite and I wander over to the corner with the games.  Soon, he’s there with me, too, a glass in hand.
     A waitress is playing the pinball game.  She’s very good.  Her score is somewhere up in the twenty-millions and a lot of people are cheering her on.
     “I remember when getting a million points was a big deal,” Dad says.  “It used to be real tough to get that high a score and only the really good players made it.  I used to be pretty good.  I’d always piss off my friends because I’d make a last-second save when I shouldn’t have been able to.  Clark’s luck, they’d call it.”
     The woman is good, but eventually she drops her last ball.  She gets the high score and a replay.  The replay she gives to me.  I don’t do as well as she did, but, as Dad said, “Not bad for a ten year old.
     I finish my Sprite, and Dad gets me another.  His glass is full again as well.
     Several games, several filled glasses and a couple of trips to the bathroom later, we leave.
     That night, my parents argue.  Screaming, pounding, thumping.  I call the police.  Mom takes us away for the night.  We get to stay in a hotel and swim in the pool, so it isn’t all bad.

      A couple of days after I got my bland Happy Meal, the principal asked me if everything was all right at home.  She was very kind about it, concerned, and I tried to be honest.  I didn’t want her to have my mom taken away for something she didn’t do.  I told her that Dad got angry at me sometimes and poked me in the chest.  I was honest about that.  I told her that it wasn’t a big deal.  That nothing else happened.  

     It was a good game.  My neighbor friend, Charlie, came with us.  Dad had one of his friends along as well.  It was a baseball game, mid-summer.  The Denver Zephyrs were playing, but I can’t recall who they were playing.  The Zephyrs won.  We almost caught a foul ball.  Charlie and I stuffed ourselves with hot dogs and popcorn.  Dad and his friend stuffed themselves with beer.
     In the car, the two adults decide to cruise Colfax.  The windows are down and they’re whistling and hooting out them, asking for prices.  Neither Charlie nor I understand, but we know it involves women, and that married people shouldn’t really be doing it.  Neither of us are comfortable.  We stay quiet.
     On the long ride home, Dad tells us that that was something to be kept just between the guys.  “Nothing really happened, so nothing really needs to be said about it.”  I didn’t say anything for a long time, and I never heard anything about it from Charlie, either.

     Dad was a tall, gaunt man.  Nervous, and picky, he never seemed to be really happy.  An alcoholic, but not a friendly one.  A smoker, never without his Camel Lights.  He smoked constantly.  Almost a chain smoker.  He tried to live by the motto, “He who dies with the most toys wins.”  We always had the newest gadgets, the biggest stereos, the latest video game systems.  He bought a car with four-wheel drive so he could off-road, but he was too vain to dirty the paint.  He was a hypocrite of the worst kind: one who hated hypocrites.

     It was just there.  What other reason does an eleven-year-old kid need?  The string was lying there, and I went with it.
     I stand at the foot of the basement stairs, admiring my handiwork.  The big ball of string is almost empty in my hand.  The rest of the string is strung all throughout the basement.  I have wrapped it around chairs, around desk legs, behind bookshelves and over lamps.  I tied up the big room first, then the little one and then came back to the first.  I went halfway up the banister, and back down.  The cat wouldn’t sit still for me, or else he’d be there too.
     Eventually, my parents discover my little project.  I am called from my room where I have gone to read.  They ask me who tied up the basement.  “I don’t know.  Ask Tim.  I’ve been reading,” is my response.  Tim is my little brother, and a trouble-maker from birth.  Tim, of course, doesn’t know and says so.  My parents tell him that I also don’t know.  “Maybe the cat did it,” he says.  They laugh and tell him to clean up his mess.
     I felt a little bit proud that my parents trusted me enough to just assume Tim was in the wrong.  I was also a little disappointed that he didn’t get in more trouble.

     My parents are fighting again.  Doors slam.  Objects are thrown.  Screams and shouts are unintelligible.  I am nine, a few months away from my not-so-Happy Meal, downstairs, right below them.  I get on my knees and say my last prayer. 
     “Please Jehovah.  Please.  If you are as good, as just and as wise as everyone says you are, you’ll end this.  Please stop him.  Please let Mom divorce him.  Please send him away.  Please don’t let him hurt her anymore.”
     Five years later, they divorced.  Five years and one affair later, they divorced.  Five years and several beatings later (one for me, one for my brother, the rest for mom), they divorced. 

     I’ve been back, driven by that same mountain.  It still stands there, still faces the elements.  There are new scars.  Some are brand new, some simply additions to the old.  I’m sure it will still be there years from now, when my children are old enough to ask, “Why?”  I don’t know what I will answer.   When they’re old enough, I may take them to see the mountain.  They may understand.