The Mountain Pass
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About this ebook
The trials and tribulations of settling the western half of America over a hundred and fifty years ago are legendary. With the numerous mountain ranges came the inevitable need for the settlers to cross them. This premise is what prompted Zimbell House to create this anthology.
The Mountain Pass tells twelve such tales from the perspective of eleven new writers. Some are heart-wrenching, and others are humorous, but all give a glimpse of the courage and perseverance it took for these brave souls to make it through the mountain pass.
Zimbell House Publishing
Zimbell House Publishing is dedicated to promoting new writers. To enable us to do this, we create themed anthologies and send out a call for submissions. These calls are updated monthly, typically we have at least four months worth on our website at any given time. To see what we are working on next, please paste this link into your browser and save it to your bookmarks: http://zimbellhousepublishing.com/contest-submissions/ All submissions are vetted by our acquisitions team. By developing these anthologies, we can promote new writers to readers across the globe. We hope we've helped you find a new favorite to follow! Are you interested in helping a particular writer's career? Write a review and mention them by name. You can post reviews on our website, or through any retailer you purchased from. Interested in becoming a published author? Check out our website for a look behind the scenes of what it takes to bring a manuscript to a published book. http://zimbellhousepublishing.com/publishing-services/process-behind-scenes/ We hope to hear from you soon.
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The Mountain Pass - Zimbell House Publishing
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. All characters appearing in this work are the product of the individual author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the written permission of the publisher.
For permission requests, write to the publisher:
Attention: Permissions Coordinator
Zimbell House Publishing, LLC
PO Box 1172
Union Lake, Michigan 48387
mail to: [email protected]
© 2017 Zimbell House Publishing, LLC
Published in the United States by Zimbell House Publishing
http://www.ZimbellHousePublishing.com
All Rights Reserved
Trade Paper ISBN: 978-1-945967-11-5
Digital ISBN: 978-1-945967-21-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017904252
First Edition: April/2017
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3
Acknowledgements
Zimbell House Publishing would like to thank all those that contributed to this anthology. We chose to showcase eleven new voices that best represented our vision for this work.
We would also like to thank our Zimbell House team for all their hard work and dedication to these projects.
Across Lots
Samantha Lucero
My daughter died last night in the unmerciful, silvery arms of winter. I can think of no other more dire way to perish.
I remember the day that she was born into my colorless world, trees like bare arms in double-jointed positions, bone-white, stripped of the oily colors of their summer skin, autumn and its fresh bonfire smell rolling down the hills like a child. The fragmented sediment of the defunct, ruby and amber leaves coating the ground in a fine powder on the pathways, here and there the stubborn remnant of a triangle, a final fallen leaf that had struggled until winter elbowed through.
From all of our many, leisurely walks in those woods covered in itchy wool to remain warm, those leaves got in all kinds of places. How the earth invited itself in, stowing away on my heels, clutching onto the trailing hems of my long skirts, and never did the mess seem to be fully swept up in the corners of our small home.
The pain was like a hand that reaches through, the architecture of a pincer, pulling down, dragging the agony out, sputtering it back. It went on like this for hours, a perfect circle. She was stuck. She almost didn’t make it; I almost didn’t make it. The blood site still haunts the empty bed in my flashing dreams, the howling battleground, and the chill wooden floor in its silence, thrilling the memories a bright black. Somewhere, where our old life exists beyond this mountain pass, the memory has stayed behind, but its phantom and its hex has followed.
When she came, I waited for the sound all mothers long to hear at the birth of their baby, that primordial sound, the echo of creation. My uncomfortable instinct to hear it hiked the jagged edges of my breath, stuffed it down, blanched me, and dried my mouth out. It took the pain away from me when I listened and waited for what seemed like years for her.
I needed to hear the first galvanic wail, as ovals of sweat burned through my eyelashes, my humming, weakening body. And then it arrived, and she was well and whole, and she was beautiful. She nestled on my chest calmly, I having done most of the work, but she’d been touched by the battle too. Her eye was a little swollen from the feud it took for her to be born, the tug-o-war, but she was there, tamed and breathing, there against my skin.
I see that cozy memory now, thawing behind my eyes.
I stared as if I’d never seen anything like her before, and I knew then what they mean when they tell you time sometimes stops, times like these. If every terror that's befallen me, every wrongful, baleful thing, every humor, every happiness, lead me to know her then it was all worth it. I’d do it over and over again to meet her in that exact moment.
Nothing had ever felt more right than her in my arms, and now, the sickening recollection of how her body felt without breath against me will haunt me for the rest of my days. It will sting me at night even when I shut my eyes. It will call—remembering me—and so perhaps I, remembering it.
My daughter died last night after only five months of living in this cruel world, my little love, my little everything, dying of the cold and because we’ve all starved. I failed her because my milk had left. I shivered and tried, really tried hard. I even attempted bits of snow, keep her hydrated with me, but in the end nothing, no avail. I couldn’t believe it. I refused to. I wanted to stay there and die with her, and I almost did. Eventually, something made me get up. There I am, standing, this ragged, and red-faced girl sick with weeping, blotched, and scratched on the face by my own hands. In the madness of my mourning, I had clawed at myself like an animal, demented with longing. I feel now as if I’m trapped in an out of body experience, wondering if I am alive at all.
My husband died the night before my daughter did. Frozen, injured, malnourished like her. Stranded in the slithering hewn of this fated mountain pass where we nearly all passed together. The snow seemed to have sprouted overnight, and over the course of a few days it piled worse than recent years, to the point that the wagon spokes did not turn; the horses could not drag us away, even with their strong legs. He died with his large, dark eyes opened, whitening like filthy fragments of ice chips. Frost biting his brows like dragon scales. I stared long at his sightless eyes, unbelieving, this man who held together the world with his calloused hands succumbing to an unbefitting death. He was such a good man that his kindness was like a badge on his shoulder, a bright red stain, his streaming heart. He would speak of the Baltic Sea, how it sweats tourmaline and wet souls, the white salt on the upper lip and moist whispers of mornings, electric ice and snakeskin. Sometimes in his eyes, you could see the dusty fingerprints of old gods. Sometimes when he smiled, I really thought my whole life would be seamless.
I get up because somebody needs to survive this. I get up because of a nameless push compelling me to. If I don’t make it, I’ll die away from my family, and if I do make it, I will anyway. Anywhere we are, no matter what, we all die alone.
I wrap my pointed boots in torn clothes, I wear every layer, every glove, and I listen to my stomach howl a chorus like the wind did last night, for sustenance, for deliverance. I put my daughter's little body against my husbands’ big chest. I leave a thick blanket over them, even if they no longer need it. It could be my last way to care for them. I have already failed them both in being unable to keep them alive.
The air is sharp when I part the curtains, pelts my skin. It hurts the flesh of my face as I begin to leave behind the bodies—it isn’t them anymore—I have to keep assuring myself. I wonder why I’m unable to shed any more tears. Perhaps, they all fled last night, the night before. Along with everything I’ve ever loved.
I am a speck out here in this blinding place, a mote of vapor, my eyes watering, burning, wanting to shut them for good. I must seem a long, faded navy wrinkle on the pale face of the icy fabric of the ground that I can’t even feel beneath me. I sink halfway up my calves and know soon, no matter how dense, the cloth soaks through. I sludge as best I can, a snail's pace with a broken stem. The only sound I can hear is that of my own breath, trembling against the scarf I’ve enveloped my face with, teeth clattering.
Time crawls. Dithering in and smoothing out in fumes. The glaring sun prowls, fixed in the bleary clouds like a filthy glass eye.
Pine trees puncture the undulating mounds of snow here and there. Spreading out before me like dashes on a treasure map. They lead to nothing but circles and the same trees. No new snow has fallen yet. If I’m lucky, I’ll find shelter. If I’m not, I can always go back and die with those whom I belong with.
I hear something, perhaps only a fantasy. The grind of snow far off, somebody else, I don’t have enough faith in it to look around for the source.
I reach one of the pines and in famished desperation tear a handful of needles off, diving them into my dry mouth. I was informed long ago that they are edible. I’d heard tell over hot buttered rum on a Christmas Eve not long passed by my brother, who’d said they could be used for cooking fish, like rosemary. Their edges pierce my gums, and the corners of my teeth hurt, having not been used in days.
It’s not long after that I see the cabin, that I hear something aside from the choppy grime of my shriveled breath.
It’s the distinct snort of a horse. I hadn’t noticed the noise covering the vast distance in its approach, how swift they’d come up on me. The fatigue has left me feeling as if I am navigating underneath the weight of water. The horse’s hair is dull instead of glinting in the matte effects of winter lights, a raven black. Atop is a man clad in a significant uniform, a badge that reads sheriff over his heart.
How long have I traveled? Would I even know my way back? I want to weep with joy, but my soul has died back there, it flew over one of those snowy fields of nightmares, and I know I’ll never know true happiness again. In an old wagon, two nights in a row, I lost myself. I was rendered. I don’t even know how to speak; it’s as if I’ve forgotten how too. My teeth clink, clamber and hit until I grind them together to stop them, squinting up to the dim figure in the blinding light, my lips splitting. He sees the strewn together cold weather improvisation of an outfit I’ve made, the maniacal image of a castaway. He knows untimely travesty when he sees it looming over somebody. Thus, he speaks gently, slow.
What’re you doin’ out here all alone, ma’am?
he drawls with a stark southern lilt. You’ll catch your death. Not just that, a criminal’s out here somewhere’s. Afoot not far yonder I’m thinkin’.
His face is like a portrait, unrealistic to me. I haven’t seen someone alive in so long. To me, it's unbelievable that anyone else is left alive. I thought that I would desire to speak, to hear someone else's voice, but I find myself in fear of it. So much so, that my stomach feels another sensation aside from emptiness, the familiar bluster of anxiety. My teeth mull with my unspoken words in the vault of my mouth, and silence weaves between us. The agony in my eyes speaks its own, primitive language.
There’s a cabin not far off.
He speaks with surrender, accustomed to situations such as this perhaps in his sort of profession. Come on.
And there’s his hand, wrapped and calloused, leather glove. I see my husbands hand last winter after he’d chopped wood, splinters in the palms of his hands, don’t leave the gloves on the kitchen counter. I roll bread there; I don’t want the splinters in the bake. I shudder and take his offer, and he assists me up with chevalier ease.
The cold has impeded my thoughts. My losses have sunk me. I’m the rib of a lost world piercing out of the sand at the bottom of the ocean. I feel hopeless, heavy on this horse as if I’m weighing both of them down into the ground. My feet, my hands, they’re so numb, so without feeling that I nearly perceive them as not my own. I’m just the shell of who I was, echoing life the way a shell does. Hold me up to your ear, or you’ll miss it. A little song I repeat over and over again inside the empty space of myself, the names of family.
We speak nothing as we travel. The weather is offensive, but it steadily has given up on killing me. Perhaps it’s tired, it knows it’s beaten me. Made its point.
I hardly recall dismounting, being stewarded into the womb of the cabin where I can be reborn. I feel warm air for the first time in days; even my breath has grown cold until I am a walking filament of winter. It isn’t even warm in here. It’s just a sturdier shelter than that feeble wagon.
I’ll make a fire,
he says, content with my quiet.
I stand like a statue in a frozen garden. Shocked to stiffness. Thawing, unfurling, waking up. This is how a spooked animal must feel as it gets consumed by a predator in a nightmare, at peace, watching its life uncurl, watching itself getting eaten by nothing but ghosts.
The white light of the wolf moon shaves the darkness. Full and nosy, peeking through opened curtains that he unearths dust from as he splits. The dust tickles my nose, and I challenge myself to hold in sneezing. The force would only pain my ribs.
What happened to you? Why were you alone out there? You a mute?
Had I saliva to swallow I could coax my vocal chords into summoning a voice. Instead, I crackle like a dying fire, hoarse as a skeleton.
Something bad I guess, you and me both. You hungry?
My eyes peel, they’re wide, and I feel them swell and burn, the begging posture of my brows furrowing. The hunch I have, I’m pleading inside, I could weep. I want to eat. I could eat the worms from graves, the legs of crickets, a line of ants, dirt. I imagine everything he could have to give me. To share with this disheveled casualty, this smeared girl. Smudge of a wife, blemish of a mother. I begin to weep considering food as if he’s just asking as a cruel joke. And this is all a dream, and I am in hell now for not saving my baby. I’m back there where I should’ve died, and this is my soul lingering, weighing its worth, and torturing itself in purgatory until I pay.
No need for that. I’m plenty full. You can have all mine. No crying, you hear?
Here’s bread,
he hands it to me like a lion tamer at a zoo, with ease and caution, here’s an apple, here’s a scatter of raisins.
I hold out my hands like a beggar, begging, shaking, fear and cold, fear of the cold, the cold half fearing me.
His hand circles my wrist, entirely, he stops the shaking, and I attempt to still the trembling as I stare down. The echoing movements haunt a little before they stop. I finally still myself and peer up, see him, really see him. Never seen anyone look so worried. No one but my husband the day he died. He had the words on his tongue like a taste; telling me he isn’t going to make it. Whispered it like a secret. Instead, silence and chattering teeth, too weak for one more I love you. He knows I knew.
You’ll be all right now. You must’ve had something bad happened to you. Out here alone, starvin’.
He takes out some water, he warns with his fingers. It’s wine.
I take the bread, this alien texture, this alien sight, the glowing fruit, these two things in my hands, what do I do with them? My life’s a questions mark, my mouth forgets how to chew. My heart forgets desire.
He breaks a small piece off, Start small.
I listen to the advice—I start small, chew the lump—and I swallow the sand. The wine sears my throat.
My wife used to like that wine. She’d always have a lil’ nightcap before bed, helped her sleep some. She’d kiss our boy goodnight and come in with her cold feet and her glass o’ wine.
Shades wearing shadows point a flexure over him, rebelling against what decrepit light crawls to his features. I see him now, snipped hair under a dark-brimmed hat and unshaven. Eyes melting into the blue bags they carry, like the moon into the ocean at night, glinting like ghosts with knives. He is forlorn and emptied out. It’s obvious now. Being in such a state as I’m in intimates me with death, with pain, and I see it. I see him.
I lost ‘em recently. A man who I worked with, another lawman, he, well, people who work the law think they can get away with things, think people won’t know. Won’t find out. But I knew right away... here.
He breaks off another sandpaper piece, crumbs pattering quietly on the dusty floor. He lets me have the whole. Makes his way to the fireplace with caution like a man showing an animal he means it no harm, slaps his hands together, rubs them for warmth as he kneels with knees creaking in front of it.
They got a few logs in here. Probably dry enough. I’ll try’n build a fire.
I cut through the darkness with the razor of myself. I cut through it slowly. I know I’m imagining things. It’s the cold, the deprivation. I perch on the hard arm of a flimsy chair, watching him work as if I’ve never seen a man build a fire.
Christmas. Pine scent hanging on my cheeks and woven in my hair, breaking bread crumbs all over the counter, tearing apart parsley, heavy whipping cream and brown sugar, chicory coffee, flour and butter, make the gravy. Grinning like a wolf. Steal me a kiss, your mustache bristles rapture me. Now my stomach knows pine needles, snow, dirt, and the crumbs of a stranger, the wine of a stranger’s wife. Let me wander longer on this earth, till I find my solace with you two. Bury me in these thoughts of you eternally. A long life of continuous lament.
I’ll be able to take you home in the morning. It’ll be too cold tonight. I reckon there’s a lock on that door yonder, there, that room. You sleep there so you can feel safe till then, lock it up behind you. You know which way your home is?
My home is within me and without me. It’s a horror display in a wagon, a frozen illustration in an old book. It’s a booby-trapped trail of tears, a vision that strangles my neck forever in the urge to cry. Cry for my own mother. Waxy dolls and eyes shut, safe in my own bed before being grown. I must look lost in thought, thinking about my old dolls I’d play with, just drowning in inconsolable mire. He appears concerned, wondering if I’m a madwoman or just a woman driven mad by catastrophe.
We’ll find it.
He says.
The darkness doesn’t shed. Instead, it permeates, makes it darker than I thought. My eyes must be failing me. He’s striking matches while shivering trying to mask his human weakness to the cold by stiffening himself, clearing his throat, hiding his human nature that is succumbing to the cold. I see the side of his face, his beard and shoulders working at making a fire in the damp matchwood.
And here I am in the silence.
I've often felt that life is an elaborate hoax. And the darkness, the roaring quiet of my wooden room at night, when I'm by myself, I know myself more than I do in the day and more than anyone else ever will. I feel like this is where I came from; this is where I’ll go back. The quiet, the dark, the endless thoughts colliding into one another, and that that's all I am. All we are. Our thoughts... and somehow they got dragged into a body, a body that just falls apart because of it’s thoughts. They say miracles is all thought, nothin’ but.
I close my eyes a moment and imagine death and quiet, darkness, the scenario he’s fantasized of. Just immortal thoughts together at war, maybe sometimes at peace. I even hold my breath. I imagine what it might have been like for my husband and my daughter to slip breathlessly into the other world, alone, but by my side, as I remained alive.
There we go,
and he sighs. The sound of it wavers like a surrendering flag, and he rises swiping off match dust from his thighs and palms. The fire takes its time gathering deeper heaves of air until finally, it palpitates stronger. It comes to life mechanically, as if it were a toy. I haven’t seen color like this, color that’s its own entity, alive, in