How Far the Mountain. Robert K. Swisher Jr.
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strong shoulders with a slight gut, but he was in good shape and kept his weight at one hundred and seventy five. Even with his last two years of idleness his hands were still calloused with large swollen knuckles and fingers. His black hair, crew cut, was beginning to show white. He wore faded Levi’s, held up by a leather belt, with a silver buckle from his rodeo days, a white western shirt with snaps, and he tucked his pant legs into tall, brown, leather cowboy boots with riding heels.
Bill looked through his reflection into the backyard. Two young robins were beneath the apple tree, reminding him of miniature clowns, but he did not smile. The mother robin, acting as if she did not see her children, was standing as still as a statue while her eyes waited patiently for the scurrying of a bug, or the slithering of an earthworm through the jungle of grass. The mother, suddenly tigress, taking three purposeful bounds stabbed an earthworm with her rapier beak. Bill imagined the terror filled cries of the worm as it writhed with all its might to try to escape and regain the safety of the warm, dark earth. The two young robins, alerted by their mother’s quick movements, and seeing the worm thrashing from her beak, darted at her with pleading, gaping mouths. Their mother gobbled down the worm and gazed disdainfully over the heads of her astonished youngsters before resuming her solitary hunt. The two young robins chirped pitifully in their bewilderment. “You will learn,” Bill said to the baby robins, who were now chasing frantically after their mother.
“After a few days of going hungry, you will learn. And after you have learned, you will forget your teacher,” Bill said, as though his words would comfort the two young robins.
Stepping back from the window Bill tried to ignore the cinder in his heart. “I am tired and weary. I must go back. I must go back to the mountain,” he said, as if his words were pleas.
“I must touch the bones,” he added with little conviction.
After two attempts, one of the young robins captured a pale purple beetle. The other youngster rushed greedily to try and steal the doomed bug. Seeing the determined dash of his now rival, the young robin gulped down the beetle. The mother robin observed the conquest, and the victory, and the cornerstone of self, and with neither love nor remorse flew away. The two young robins did not see her go—they went off in different directions, both eyeing the ground in search of their own survival.
Bill poured himself a cup of coffee. Sipping the coffee, he closed the kitchen curtain, shutting out all but one sliver of light that sliced through the room, exposing in its radiance millions of dust particles.
Sitting in a wooden chair he placed his cup on a square wooden table that was covered with scars from years of cups and plates. A thin beam of sunshine hit Bill on the forehead. He raised his head until the ray bore directly in his eyes. His vision melted into the light and the small swirling worlds of dust. “Yes,” he said forcefully, feeling the heat from the cinder in his heart. “I will go to the mountain. I will go to the mountain and I will touch the bones.”
Shutting his eyes, a vision of the mountain swirled in the red spots on the back of his eyelids, and he was afraid.
The Woman The Cemetery
“Happy Birthday,” Sheila said to herself as she got out of bed, not really happy but strangely content.
“Another year older, girl,” she said to her reflection in the full-length mirror attached to the front of her bedroom door. Slipping out of the pink, knee length, imitation silk nightgown she tossed it on the bed. “Not too bad for forty-two,” she said, examining her naked body.
Sheila made a cheesecake pose, put her right hand behind her head, bent her knees slightly, and opened her mouth like a centerfold. The open mouth bit had always made her laugh. Straightening up, she turned sideways and tilted her head to get a better view of her profile. She had a fine, well-proportioned athletic body and an impish face that made people feel like they could talk to her. She wore her auburn hair short, but long enough to bounce when she walked. She knew men glanced at her a lot. She was not model-beautiful but she was sexy and bubbly like a young schoolteacher.
“I need a man like I need cellulite,” she laughed to her reflection.
She tried to laugh as much as possible, it seemed to help, and it kept her sadness partially at bay.
Leaning closer to the mirror she scrutinized the tiny crow’s feet in the corners of her soft green eyes. “Experience,” she said, making a haughty face and pushing his touch from her mind.
Dressing, she put on a pair of loose fitting faded Levi’s, a gray sweatshirt and tennis shoes. By noon she had finished her normal Saturday routine. The house was clean. The plants hanging in every window were watered and all the dead leaves picked off. The washing machine was churning away with all her respectable work clothes as she called them, those that did not have to go to the dry cleaners. At one time she wished she could have worn Levi’s or sweats to sell real estate, but she had gotten over it after her first big sale. Now, with her own company, she wore her business suits and matching outfits as more of her personal joke on the world. “Hell,” she told herself one day, “nobody has to know I’m an old hippie at heart.”
Now, nobody really knew what or who she was. He had known her as much as another person possibly could. She tried to tell herself it really did not matter, but she knew it was a lie, wanting desperately for someone to know her and share with her.
After the dryer was going, she brushed her hair, drank two glasses of orange juice and left the house. It was a beautiful day. Several neighbors were mowing their yards. She did not wave to them as she drove by in her new light blue Chevy four door.
Entering the cemetery she tried not to be depressed. She always liked cemeteries, but that was before his death. As a young girl she and her aunt would go to cemeteries and read the headstones. There was something peaceful and timeless in a cemetery then. Everything was in order. Everything neat and tidy like a little boy sitting in church with his hair slicked down and his shoes shined.
Driving slowly through the older part of the cemetery the headstones had a fearless and brave dignity that embraced death—the huge cottonwoods and oaks spreading like wise and ancient prophets over the headstones.
The newer stones were like all the newer houses she sold, too plain, too identical, too conforming, too everything. “We are all individuals of sameness,” she thought, without being bitter or sad.
The trees in the newer part of the cemetery were infants. Anywhere else Sheila would have liked the young trees. But, here they bothered her. Death was not new, was not an infant. Death deserved shade and majesty.
Parking the car, Sheila turned off the ignition and sat for several moments staring at a hill of dirt from a freshly dug grave. Two starlings perched on the top of the pile of dirt. For an instant she imagined a crying widow standing by the coffin. “No,” she commanded herself. “No.”
Going to the grave a man and woman were praying solemnly at another headstone while, not far away, a young boy and girl played.
By the grave Sheila forced a small smile over her thin lips. “I still have a great body, good legs, flat stomach, and my boobs don’t sag,” she said to the grave.
A slight breeze kicked, carrying the sound of children’s laughter like the tinkle of far away silver bells to her ears. She sat down next to the grave as if by sitting she would be closer to what had been. “You know I only come here on my birthday,” she said distantly.
She did not see the man and the woman glance over at her.
“It’s been two years and I’m still not in love. Can you imagine?”
Her bravery began cracking like the delicate milky porcelain on an antique doll.
The man called to the children who ran to him. Putting his hand on the boy’s head he said, “You must be quiet, there’s a lady over there and we don’t want to disturb her.”
The two children did not say anything to each other.
“I’ve met lots of