Lights on the Mountain Read online

  Not from the day they’d got word of Walter. Not from the day of the accident.

  From the moment the light appeared above the valley.

  It was a mournful, mournful thought. Even as he had it, the moon appeared to dim, glowing softer, kinder, as if to say gently, compassionately, that Jess had finally got it right.

  The whole thing saddened him so much he wanted to cry.

  Sadder still was knowing he couldn’t.

  There had been times in the last five years when Jess had craved tears more powerfully than a poor man longs for wealth. Why they insisted on staying locked away, forever paining his tight, squeezed throat, he could not fathom. It seemed absurd to be dry-eyed with so much reason to weep. Peggy Badger, good woman, had assured him at the funeral, her thumb fruitlessly circling his cheek in search of a tear, that it was a known trait of Hazel men. They literally could not weep. At about eighteen, she insisted, or however old Jess was now, they lost the ability—the ducts grew over or something. Her words moved his heart. Jess was grateful, and yet hardly reassured. (Though, admittedly, he had never seen his father cry.) For Clyde was dead, having been the only full-grown Hazel man Jess had ever known. As it stood now, Jess could only take his own lack of tears to be proof that his theory was correct. He was evaporating. Would soon be as dry as an old husk. If, as he suspected, a secret, the secret, perhaps, deep and primeval, was being passed across the air tonight, if God had His lips to the ear of the moon, Jess intended to overhear it.

  Deep into the night, he waited, kneeling on the hard floor of the loft, staring down the moon. But aside from the distant bark of a fox, he heard nothing. And yet he lingered, staying until the cows began to low, signaling dawn. The day’s work began to shape up in his mind then, edging mystery out. But when the moon waxed full again, he returned. Inexplicably drawn. Vaguely hopeful. Until at last, one cold starless night, when the moon hung huge and low and soft in the sky, he gave up his quest.

  It was the moon’s nearness that did it. Remaining so aloof in such proximity, she seemed to gently mock. And with sudden, stunning clarity, he saw himself for exactly what he was—a fool. The only state worse than death, his father had believed. Jess didn’t need answers. There was no mystery. The moon still gazed down, but now her eyes were craters. Dark sterile pits, carved into the moon’s surface, probably by asteroids. He laughed mirthlessly, shaking his head at his own foolishness. And as he laughed, the sound echoing eerie and ghostlike around the loft, Jess found himself pulled in the direction of the loft door as if by a wire, long legs sliding across the barn floor, feet shuffling his body forward until the toes of his boots hung over the edge, until there was nothing between him and the sky, hard ground twenty feet below. The wires pulled once more and his arms stretched wide, stretched until his fingers touched the door frame on each side. And suddenly, Jess was leaning out. A great blue heron, ready for flight. Years passed. A thousand moons rose and set. Or so it seemed to him, as he hung over the darkness. Waiting. Wondering. Until at last he knew. In three swift motions he stepped back from the opening, closed the hay doors, and locked them tight, burying the loft in pitch blackness. In the whole of his life, Jess Hazel had never been, nor would he ever be again, so sure—so assured—as he was in that moment. With the slow, careful deliberation of the blind, he turned and felt his way back down the stairs.

  Now that he knew how it was a man should live, it was clear that it was no more than his lot to do so. He still grieved, still felt acutely the pain of his aloneness. But there was a great deal of solace, he found, in taking Clyde’s approach to existence. Acceptance had its own plain reward. To be sure, living in such a way, a man’s sense of wonder was muted. But so was his sense of tragedy. Jess did not pine now for the old joy or wish for knowledge beyond his ken. And except for that which he now put in himself, and that which ought to be placed (with caution) in his fellow man, he did not long for faith. He did not long at all. Or he did but did not know it. And then, while he was longing without being aware that he longed, Gracie came to him. In the cool of an evening. Almost as if she’d been sent. As if someone knew it was not good for man to be alone.

  PART TWO

  1

  HOWEVER FOOLISH IT SOUNDED, even to his own ears, whenever Jess said it out loud, it was true. Meeting Gracie was like a dream, the kind of dream you tried your best not to wake from, after all your haunted, fitful nights.

  How unreal it had all seemed.

  How mistrustful of the goodness he had been.

  It was, after all, a high school dance. And he had arrived out of sorts.

  Jess had always disliked crowds, especially young ones, where ill-mannered stares multiplied like rabbits. Cows and horses, whose company he would take any day over that of a high-schooler, had no measuring sticks. They couldn’t tell a giant from a dwarf. Also, he did not dance, and never had. He had to admit, though, that he was mostly sore at Mike Latona for what Jess felt was cheating, playing Rose Marie as his trump card.

  Jess had a soft spot for Mike’s younger sister, felt inexplicably tender toward her. From the first time he’d seen her, as a baby just three days old, and had been allowed to hold her in his arms, he had taken to Rose Marie as if she were his own small kin. And when in the year they turned thirteen, Mike got a temporary mean streak, during which he was either ignoring Rose Marie or teasing her unmercifully, Jess felt as if it were his own the hurt that showed in her quick black eyes. Eager to see their snap return, he had, on different occasions, taught her to make a grass blade whistle, to test out a grapevine before swinging on it, and to feel with her fingers in its mouth how hard a calf can suck. He had even, once, when her brother’s meanness had been enough to make her cry, sat her across Jake’s wide, patient old back for a quarter hour, which had pleased her so much it not only halted her tears but kept her from tattling on Mike.

  Rose Marie was grown now, or very nearly, but Jess still loved her like a sister, so when Mike said their father would not let Rose Marie go to the Knights of Columbus dance without a chaperone, and that he would not chaperone unless Jess came along, he had no choice but to agree to go, of course, but he was sore.

  And they were late. Mike’s thirsty old Packard had run out of gas, so they’d had to walk half a mile to Latona’s Deli to get his father’s gas can and then the two blocks to the filling station and another half mile back to the car. They’d had to return the gas can to the deli too, because that was the only way Pop would let them take it in the first place.

  “You’d think he’d be more grateful,” Mike grumbled, between breaths, trotting to keep up with Jess’s long stride as they were hustling from the deli back to his car. “We coulda left it at the curb.”

  Jess didn’t bother to reply. He had known Mike a long time. If there was a deficit of gratitude in the family, he knew it was not Pop Latona who was lacking.

  Inside the social hall, Jess stood awkwardly. He yanked at his tie and jerked at the sleeves of his coat, trying in vain to cover three inches of exposed bony wrist. He could not recall when he had last worn the suit. He only knew it had to have been before his last unwelcome spurt of growth, and that had been a little more than five years ago, just after his eighteenth birthday. Then it came to him. It was the funeral. A double funeral, it had been, so he had only needed it once. He scowled into the coatrack mirror, tossing back the rope of black hair he had pessimistically slathered with pomade, knowing at the time it would never stay put. Stooping to study his full reflection, he lost all hope of blending into the background. He glared, and the hayseed beanpole he saw in the glass glared back. He opened his jacket. There were half-moon stains under both arms. “What’s the matter, Jesse?” he could almost hear his mother asking, in her soft drawl, as she laid a cool hand on his neck, combing the hair at his nape with her fingers, the way she had always done when he got anxious. “Land, son,” she would say, lifting the damp strands, “you’re perspiring like a sinner at altar call.”

  Jess edged toward the
door. “I’ll be in the car.”

  “Oh, no you don’t.” Mike moved as if to block his exit, and Jess couldn’t help smiling. Mike stood five foot three with lifts in his shoes, and had to tilt his head back just to look Jess in the eye. “You’re not going anywhere,” Mike said, taking Jess by the coat sleeve, holding on to it while he glanced around the dance floor.

  Balloons and crepe-paper streamers obscured the action. But Mike’s eyes, almost as dark and shiny as his well-oiled hair, skimmed the hall with determination, searching for Rose Marie. He was doing a good deed, or so he seemed to think, by chaperoning her. But Jess knew the way his friend operated. Mike wasn’t one for laying up treasures. He intended to get something more of an earthly nature for his troubles, and the sooner he found his kid sister and then ditched her, the sooner he could start reaping his reward.

  The song was a popular one, judging by the crowd jamming the dance floor, but it came as no surprise to Jess that he’d never heard it. He got out very little. And the transistor radio in the barn had been hanging from a nail, silent as a stone, since the day Walter left. The song ground to a jerky halt then and the musicians, natty in slim suits and even slimmer ties, announced a break. During the interval, couples drifted over to the refreshment tables lining the walls, which opened the dance floor a little. Jess yawned. He looked at his watch. Then, like a nut-brown sprite conjured to relieve his boredom, Rose Marie appeared at his elbow in a swirl of scarlet, her arm around a thin, light-haired girl in pale green. The girl looked as regretful as Jess felt. Rose Marie flashed Jess a quick, sweet smile then turned to her brother with brown eyes snapping. She punched him on the arm, hard.

  “Some chaperone. The dance is half over. I could have met a fella and run off to Reno with him by now.”

  Mike grinned, rubbing his bicep. “You ain’t been too lucky that way so far. Anyhow, don’t work up a sweat. We’re here now, ain’t we?”

  He went back to scanning the room, only now he was looking for unescorted girls. His gaze lighted on a girl seated by herself on a chair against the far wall then, and he was gone, lost immediately in the crowd. A few seconds later he reappeared on the dance floor, cheek to cheek with the girl, the later willingness he hoped to inspire already showing in her grateful expression. Rose Marie rolled her eyes and turned to Jess.

  “Jess Hazel,” she said, “I’d like you to meet my new best friend, Galina Morozov. Everyone calls her Gracie. Dance with her, and you’ll soon see why.”

  Jess said, “Pleased,” though he wasn’t pleased at all, only felt more than ever like a sideshow freak. But he did force himself to look her in the eyes, bent his knees a little, and held out his hand. She took it, gazing right into his face. Her eyes were a shock, like none Jess had ever seen—whites of the purest white, the irises a deep warm gold. She held his gaze with an attitude so direct, so grave, it struck him deeper than any flirtatious gesture could have done. Then she smiled, and Jess felt a sudden peculiar ease, as if he had been journeying a long while and had just come in sight of the lit windows of home. How long he stood there, holding her hand and warming himself by the kind heat of that smile, he did not know. The band ended one song and began another, couples linked up, and still they stood, until a boy with a square jaw and a blond crew cut came and asked Rose Marie to dance.

  “You don’t mind if I dance with Skip?” Rose Marie asked, over her shoulder, though whether Gracie did mind hardly mattered because Rose Marie had already swung away, leaving her words to float on the air behind her.

  In a mute, stiff-jointed attempt at gallantry, Jess offered Gracie a chair. And when she was seated, he took the one next to her, nervously shifting his rangy length to fit the narrow space between rows. His legs had always been in the way unless he was standing on them. There were a few ways to cope. He could sit sideways on a chair, legs crossed, or he could slump and stow the fool things like oars under the seat in front of him. But he worried that crossed legs would seem girlish and slumping disrespectful, so he made a tent of his knees and rested his feet flat on the floor. He looked over at Gracie. She was watching, her face expressionless, an oval of calm. His own cheeks buzzed with heat, and he knew they had to be a bright red about now, declaring his discomfort. She bent her head and began rummaging through her little beaded clasp-bag, giving him time to gather his wits.

  Mousy. He was amazed at the way Mike had chosen to describe the Russki friend they would be chaperoning along with Rose Marie. Lord, he could not think of a description more unfit. Why, even in the dim light of the gymnasium, her hair shone like sunlight slanting through a jar of maple syrup. He watched, transfixed, as swallow-tail hands suddenly floated up to tuck a strand back into its pin. And scrawny? Jess wanted to laugh. He only wished himself more rounded in his reading, for there was surely some epic poem in which a slenderness like hers was described. Their eyes met, and he marveled at hers all over again, wondered why Mike had not mentioned them. They were remarkable, really, those lantern-lit eyes, the color of antique gold. He cleared his throat.

  “I can’t ask you to dance.”

  She raised her eyebrows, a movement so slight it was almost imperceptible.

  “Not that I wouldn’t like to,” Jess said, quickly. “It’s just that I’m generally either milking a cow or getting ready to. Not a lot of time in between there for dancing lessons. I’ve just never learned.”

  She looked amused, the corners of her mouth twitching. Jess began to despair. He was unexpectedly drawn to this strange, lovely girl, so plain-faced and uncontrived, and longed as he never had to be someone other than he was: a man whose tongue went lame when he most needed it to work. “You must think I have awful manners,” he said.

  “Oh, manners,” she said, waving her hand. “If you’re lacking there, please don’t worry. My father says good manners are like priest’s cassocks.” She thickened her accent then as she spoke, lowering her voice to imitate a deep, gruff bass, “‘Beware, Galya,’ he says, ‘for much evil and ugliness may be hiding underneath.’ Of course,” she laughed, “he is only paraphrasing Gogol, but I don’t tell him I know that. He’s a good papa and deserves to be wise.” She looked out to the dance floor then and gave a small shrug. “Pretty silly sort of dance anyway, don’t you think?

  “What is?”

  “The jitterbug.”

  He liked the way she pronounced the word jitterbug. Liked the way she stressed the t’s and rolled the r in her light and easy voice.

  “Huh,” he said, relaxing a little. “So that’s what it’s called.” He looked around the gym floor stacked with couples. Heads jerked and arms flailed. “Puts me in mind of a hen fight.”

  She laughed.

  Then, just to keep her talking, he asked, “Is there a dance you don’t think is silly?”

  “Of course. A waltz isn’t.”

  “I don’t know a lot about it. But I’m pretty sure they’re not going to play a waltz.”

  “I’m sure you’re right. And that’s why I usually don’t come to these things. Don’t look so worried.” She patted his shoulder. No more than a friendly gesture, just a light brush of her hand, but Jess felt the heat of blood rushing to his face all over again. “I’m just fine sitting out,” she added, quickly, seeing his face. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t even feel like dancing.” She laughed again, a bright, birdsong sound from high in her throat. “You don’t know how, and I don’t want to. Seems to me we ought to get along just fine.”

  They both laughed then, and this time when their eyes met, Jess saw that hers had changed. They were darker now, almost glowed, making him think of a fire at dusk.

  Gracie was right. They did get along. Just fine. It wasn’t until he was back at home, late that night, that Jess realized they had spent the entire evening sitting on hardwood-slatted folding chairs talking. And, as he remarked to Becky the next morning before he turned her out to graze, it was the craziest thing, but he couldn’t recall a smidgen of the conversation, so intoxicated had he been by Gracie�
��s amber eyes, her swooshing consonants and tilted vowels. “Couldn’t have been any drunker,” he said, “if some joker had doctored the punch.”

  2

  Kerry Mountain

  May 1, 1957

  THAT SPRING WHEN THE SWALLOWS came back to Kerry Mountain, as they did every spring, as they had done since long before the mountain had a name, they found Tsura growing up, growing tall.

  It was the first day of May. Eli stood at the bottom of the stairs, gazing through the doorway into the kitchen, watching her move quietly about the room, thinking that his time with her had passed up to now in a way that did not have much to do with months or years. Seasons came and went. The snow fell. The wind blew. The creek flowed. The birds sang. The sun shone. Aside from this day, the day of Tsura’s dawning, as Pat called that so-bright morning of her birth here on the peak, there had been little need to measure it any other way.

  “Wiselike,” Pat had also said, on the day she was born, and almost any day he had seen her since. And it was true. Her wide, dark eyes shined with something so old and odd it often worried Eli. Why it did, what it was he feared, he did not try to know. He would rather worry and let her be as she was than to know and act in some other way because of knowing.

  She was taller than usual for a little girl of five, he thought, watching her rise on tiptoe to fetch her tin cup down from the shelf and pump herself a drink. But maybe not. It had been too long since he was around his own little sisters. Also, he was short, and that made him a bad judge. It could be that her thin little legs only made her seem tall. Long as a pair of willow switches they were. That is what Pat said. Attached to her feet by sparrow’s ankles. He also claimed that angel’s hands had whittled her face, scooped the cleft in her chin, sunk the hollows in her cheeks. Such fancy speech. Pat never worried that his words were vain or unnatural. For a quiet man, he had never been slow to speak on the mountain. But this was all right with Eli. He had even come to welcome the old man’s talk. It made him to know that what was blown about in his own head when a storm was brewing might not be so crazy as he thought. He had no gift like Pat’s for speaking what was in his mind, but what they saw when looking at Tsura was the same. As to what to do about it, he was not sure. For now, it did not matter. They would go on as they had been. But he could not help wishing she could stay a child. A child does not mind that she is beautiful.