Mountain
By Noo
- 512 reads
Front
West of here, the mountains rise, blocking out the land that lies beyond them. I know the earth extends past them; but sometimes it’s hard to believe it, no matter what anyone else tells you. These mountains are magicians, containing the land where we are as well as concealing all that’s yonder.
If you’ve got time to listen, I want to tell you about the Winters’ boy and what happened to him. How you choose to receive my story will be down to what you think about travelling and venturing away from what you know. And I can’t tell you what to think about that. Like most things in this world, it’s a question of perspective.
Even from being a small child, Jesse Winters had, what would you call it? Front, I suppose. He was a child not afraid of anything, always moving. Facing the world full on.
I knew his family over many years and while I was content with the rather solitary life I’d built for myself, the Winters’ family grew, cultivating more roots into the earth for when they’d gone. My roots stopped with me. Deep as far as I went, then cut off sharp; but I guess that’s just the way some things are.
I saw Jesse on church picnics over the years and while the other children were content to play whatever post-eating games there were – the hide and go seek, the throwing of a ball, or simply the lying on your side and watching the bugs in the grass – none of these games ever held Jesse.
His eyes would focus on the immediate for a few seconds and then he’d lift his head up, jut out his square, little chin and look over the mountains. No matter what the weather or the time of the year. In early blue spring days. In the hot grey of a summer storm, lightening forking over them like the devil’s tongue. It made no difference, Jesse would look over the mountains.
His frontier was different to others. It didn’t stop at the boundary of the kindergarten or later the school. Or even the frayed edges of our small town, where the woods begin to chew at it. His frontier was somewhere over the mountains and I’m not sure he even knew how far his eyes could see.
I remember a picnic in early May Jesse and his family attended when he was about fifteen. It was a miracle he still came with them, but on the surface they were still tight as a family. And small places always encourage normalcy.
We were sitting in the orchard, blossom drifting, wetness from the dew on the seats of our pants. Mrs. Lindhurst from the farm had brought a bowl of cherries and they were early season sour. The kids, older and younger, were picking them and popping them in their mouths, scrunching up faces and delighting at their purple tartness.
It was one of those moments when a physical feeling makes you know how alive you are. I happened to catch Jesse’s face though and I could see instantly he wasn’t in this moment. He was somewhere else, far over the mountains.
Then one day, a month or so after this, Jesse wasn’t there anymore. I saw his mom, dad, brother and sister and they were themselves but different. Like images in an old photo negative. There and not. When I asked after Jesse, they said he’d gone to make his fortune in the city. It sounded wrong and fake, like a warning in an old fairy story.
I guess the truth of it was, even a mother’s arms aren’t long enough to reach across the mountains.
*
Snow
I heard what happened to Jesse in the city from his dad. On a stilted afternoon in late October, when the sun was hotter than it had any right to be. When the crickets were tired of their own trilling and the world itself was pleading for its winter sleep. We sat on their stoop, watching the drowsy flies and he spoke to me slowly and precisely, like he didn’t want me to misinterpret anything.
Jesse had gone to stay with his cousin in the city and had got involved in a downtown street gang. He was a big boy and unknown to the police or other gangs in the city, so he was useful for the moving and distribution of the street drugs. “All that living to become an animal, a mule only”, his dad had said, shrugging.
He was caught on the corner of the street after a tip off and when the police cornered him, he threw the pack of cocaine into the air and it ripped, falling to the ground like snow. Or like blossom in an orchard on a spring picnic.
*
Ground
Jesse was lucky, I guess you could call it. He was seen as a child, one from a good family. A family who could set him straight and see him through. So on the condition of various courses and rehabilitations, he was allowed to go home to them. Back over the mountains where his roots ran deep and strong in the ground.
When he was back, he seemed more part of things. Perhaps more so than he ever had been. He met your eye and looked closely at the orange of the leaves on the trees by the church. He engaged with the detail of life. And I suppose what I felt was a kind of relief - an exoneration of the way we lived.
I felt different though when I saw the brutal tag around his leg and I wondered what kind of grounding this actually was. I noticed too he’d started looking over the mountains again with eyes as colourless and troubled as the sea in winter.
*
Fire
I didn’t need to hear the facts of what happened from Jesse’s father. I read those in the newspaper and I saw the result of them. But I did get Jesse’s mood and his feelings from his mom and dad; or from the ghost people they’d become.
They told me of the anger that slowly but with purpose began burning behind his eyes, turning their no colour to flickering red. They told me of the night he disappeared again, despite the tag, and of the revenge he intended to take on the men who betrayed him. Setting fire to their warehouse where they kept the cocaine, burning them alongside everything else in the small side room where they met and made plans.
*
Back
The shape of the mountains and the patterns of the woods form us and streams run deep in our blood. The land is what makes us and one way or another, that’s what we come back to.
Jesse was shot - hit in the back – before he could carry out his plan. He sits often now on the stoop, in his wheelchair, back with his family. When I visit with them, I notice the look of satisfaction on his mother’s face and an expression of fear (and is it distaste?) on his dad’s.
And what do I see on Jesse’s face? The closest I can call it is the look a cat has when it’s been trapped in the house too long because of bad weather. Although he can do, Jesse rarely speaks and when I sit next to him. I wonder whether the sunset over the mountains is view enough for him. I’m not even sure that’s what he does see. I think he sees a long, long way, but not over the mountains now. He knows too well what lies there.
Instead, I think what he’s looking at is not past the horizon, but above his head. No matter what time of the day it is, I think Jesse’s view is of a coal black, starless sky.
*
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Comments
Such a powerful piece. I
Such a powerful piece. I love the poetic language uses to describe the brutal situation. So visual and so poignant.
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Storytelling at its best;
Storytelling at its best; compelling, poetic in parts as PS has pointed out, and bordering on hynoptic, in a mesmerising sense, if you know what I mean. Anyway, what I'm really trying to say is, I so enjoyed this...powerful, yes, and so very poignant.
Tina
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