The Mountain Can Wait by Sarah Leipciger

little behind her, watched as she flipped off the safety, brought the gun up to her face. It looked bulky in her arms, almost funny, and Curtis wanted to laugh but didn’t dare. And she held it with confidence; she held it steady. Curtis watched his dad watching Erin, Erin watching the goat. Nobody said anything. The wind blew against his neck, sweaty from the hike, and he shivered. When the billy finally stood, Erin rose up taller and lifted the rifle, secured it in her arms, and then settled into a solid squat. Curtis’s dad watched her go through each step, nodding.
    “Bring the scope to your eye,” he whispered. “Don’t lean into it.”
    She did this and pointed the barrel up the cliff, her other eye squeezed tight. Curtis stood back, looking from the goat to his sister and back to the goat.
    The shot popped cleanly through the air, and almost at the same time a cloud of white dust burst from the rock under the goat’s feet. The billy took off and so did the doe, and another doe came bounding from behind an outcrop, and before Erin had the safety back on, they were all gone.
    “That sucked,” she said. A crescent of blood was welling on the inside curve of her right brow.
    Curtis pointed at her eye, a smile tripping across his face.
    “What?” She touched the cut and then looked at the blood on her fingers.
    “You scoped yourself,” he said.
      
    Two days later, their last day on the mountain, they still hadn’t shot anything. They were on the same cliff, at a higher elevation, stalking the same billy. This time Curtis held the scope to his eye and watched the goat through it. The billy stood on a rock two hundred meters above Curtis’s position, the bulk of his body turned stubbornly away. Curtis would kill this animal. He would. Would cut its heart out and eat it, if that’s what it took to belong. The billy stood motionless. Today the sky was blue and there was little wind, and they’d hiked with their shirtsleeves rolled up. The billy turned to the side and Curtis pictured the trajectory of the bullet and he squeezed the trigger, and for a moment after the rifle recoiled into his shoulder he heard nothing. There was a puff of fur and the billy fell onto his back and rolled from the rock, all four legs in the air. He teetered on the precipice of the next outcrop down and then dropped and landed on the shelf below, and fell again from that one and gained momentum as his limp body flopped mercilessly down the cliff, dropping farther and farther until it looked as though he was going to fall off the edge of the world. He seemed to come to rest at last but then rolled and fell again, the blood patch from the gunshot wound growing bigger across his fur as his beaten body tumbled. Curtis looked away.
    “Great shot,” their dad said, suddenly close and slapping him on the back. “Perfect shot.”
    “Lucky shot,” said Erin.
    “Come on,” said their dad. He picked up the bags and the rifle. “Let’s go get him. Did you pack your knife?”
    Curtis shook his head. “I can’t.”
    “You can’t what?”
    “Rip his skin off and cut him all up. I don’t want to see it.” Blank eyes like holes, tongue hanging out between worn yellow teeth.
    His dad looked confused. “You’ve done this before.”
    “Didn’t you see the way he fell?”
    “He was already dead. You shot him right.”
    “I don’t want to hack at him and rip his guts out. You guys go.”
    Now his dad was angry. “That’s not the deal here, Curt. Kill the animal, quarter it in the field, carry the meat home, and eat it. You don’t leave it on the side of the mountain to rot.”
    “I wouldn’t want to take the pleasure away from you.”
    “We’re going to make sausages,” Erin said.
    “Shut up,” said Curtis. He sat down and folded his arms over his bag.
    His dad stood over him. “You really going to just sit there?” he said. He waited for an answer, and when none came, he looked out across the valley, chewing on his top