Goat Mountain by David Vann Page B

gazing down at the wood, not really looking at anything.
    I grabbed my spare clothing from the cab, stripped off layers of caked mud until I stood bare and naked on the pine needles and kept my rifle close. The dead man in his sack directly behind me, watching always. My white skin with dark smears of mud and small island chains of red welt. The poison oak across my belly and on my privates from when I peed. Anything you touched became the property of the oak. And if you scratched, the islands grew and formed continents, entire regions of angry red and white bubbles edged by smaller darker welts, as if your skin could boil.
    I pulled on a new T-shirt and underwear and jeans, found my clean pair of socks and knocked my boots together to remove most of the mud. I didn’t have another jacket, so I whipped it against the bed of the pickup, small shards of mud flying off.
    Lunch was ready now, the men at the table with their knives. My father and grandfather on the uphill side, not looking at one another. I climbed in next to Tom and kept my rifle away.
    Lighter-colored, Tom was saying. Almost gray. Silvery. Like an older buck, but I only saw forks.
    Three-pointer, my grandfather said.
    I didn’t see that, Tom said. I only saw forks. But he was light, almost the same color as the rock. I must have looked right at him when he was standing there and not even seen him.
    You’d have noticed him, my grandfather said.
    No, I don’t think so. I think I looked right at him and didn’t see him. I think if he had just stayed still, none of us would have seen him.
    In another minute, I would have been standing next to him, my father said.
    Even then, Tom said. I don’t think you would have seen him.
    That’s just stupid.
    No. You never saw him, so you don’t know. Think about this for a minute. He didn’t jump until you were right on him, but you know he must have heard you coming, and smelled you, and he didn’t move. So that means he decided to wait. He was going to hide and wait it out. He made a decision, but then he just got jumpy.
    He didn’t make a decision.
    He made a decision.
    Well. My father rubbed at his forehead with both palms, down over his eyes and cheeks.
    He almost had us, Tom said. He grabbed two more pieces of bread and went for the deviled ham, smearing it across both sides, a kind of pink froth.
    Not just almost, my father finally said. I don’t see a buck hanging over there.
    Springing around in those rocks, darting this way and that. It’s only luck if you hit one in that situation.
    That situation, my father said. Trapped in a narrow canyon, shooters on both ridges, crossfire from above. Be a real miracle to hit anything then.
    Well, Tom said. No point in talking.
    Harder to hit the buck, though, if you’re way the fuck off and almost hit the people in the canyon.
    You can fuck off, Tom said.
    You’re an eagle eye. A real sharpshooter.
    Look, Tom said. That buck knew what he was doing.
    No buck knows anything.
    You don’t know anything.
    Just go back to your sandwich.
    You go back to your sandwich.
    We listened to the water in the basin then, a rushing sound so urgent at times you could hardly stand it. At times it seemed like it would wash us away. And it could never be shut off. There was no faucet, no way to hold it back. Only the sound and force of it increasing, magnified in that basin. Water from seams of rock deep inside the mountain. Water that fell as rain a thousand years ago and had lived in pressure ever since, released only now and what was to keep it from doubling in pressure and doubling again under the weight of all that rock.
    I felt panic, my heart yanking and no room for breath. That water could rip the earth open right here beneath us. And my own blood was the same, pumping and pressurizing and no holding it back. I panicked like this all the time as a kid, my dreams all of pressure and panic, and even remembering now my breath is