PICONCAGUA
A short story of 3400 words
© David Lowe, June 1993
Adam Tate was woken by the sound of a car crashing into a cow. He pulled on a pair of shorts and went to the verandah. A battered green ute was limping away down the road, camouflaged by a cloud of dust. The cow, one of his neighbours', had not come through so well.
Adam looked at his watch. 11.13am, New Year's Day.
He didn't know the ute. Whoever it had been, they'd certainly had a big one the night before. The cow had been hit at least fifteen feet from the edge of the road, and then thrown even further after the collision. Adam's old blue heeler cross, Fib, came with him as he went for a closer look.
She was lying twisted in a dry ditch. Fib sniffed at the carcase. Blood dribbled slowly from one nostril. The flies were already all over her. Good luck to them, Adam thought. It wasn't as though there was much to her anyway: the rest of the herd could scarcely stand up. Not after the last few seasons.
Adam stood for a moment in the hot, still morning air in his singlet and shorts. He squinted one way, towards the town, then the other. Dead flat. Not a proper corner for a hundred miles. Not a hill for God knows how far. Actually he did know. He knew exactly. It was 361 miles from Valentine to the edge of the Great Dividing Range.
Adam's empty house creaked in the fierce Queensland sun. With a sigh, the long, stooped young man began walking back, running a hand through his sandy mop. A pig scratched itself thoughtfully on the main street. Tentatively, the little town of Valentine peered out of its windows and wondered whether to face the new year.
New Year's Day.
Adam hated holidays. On holidays he had to think. Not like being asleep. For Adam, that was more like watching television. Except for him the program was always the same. Last night he'd dreamed of Kilimanjaro.
Glaciers. Straining porters. Air so cold and fine it hurt the lungs. Down below in the distance, coffee plantations in rows and rows. Sparkling lakes. Everything bright and sharp. The volcano seemed to speak through his feet as he climbed, but he couldn't quite make out the meaning. Perhaps if he climbed higher it would become clearer... Higher. Higher. Higher...
And then the bloody cow.
Sometimes it was Kosciusko, strewn with wildflowers. The Rocky Mountains. Matterhorn. The Karakoram range. Kongur. Nameless magical pinnacles. Everest. All the peaks ran together in a glorious geological parade, strung together with scraps of things he had heard and read.
Adam had told no one about the dreams for years. As a boy, he'd tried to tell his foster father, but the old man was already deaf and didn't seem to understand. Adam had never known his real parents. He'd been adopted by a childless couple and brought to Valentine as a baby. Even then his foster parents had seemed very old. He suspected they'd thought of him as a kind of hobby, something to keep them entertained in their retirement. And then, when he was seventeen, they'd died within days of each other, leaving him alone with old Fib in the big house, on the edge of a dying town, on the edge of the outback.
There was no milk in the fridge.
Adam put on his hat and walked into town. Fib trotted at his heels. Drunks still lay about here and there leaning on posts. Broken glass from the revelries of the night before crunched beneath his boots. The only trees in the dusty town grew by the Valentine River, which was more a creek really, even at the best of times. Lately it had been completely dry. The imposing bridge over the sludgy depression was like some kind of engineer's joke - the grandest structure in the town and the most useless.
It was said that the river had been named by an American prospector on Valentine's Day a hundred years ago. He'd found an emerald near the creek, then left mysteriously as promptly as he had come. Since then it had been cattle and sheep, sometimes cotton, but mostly just drought. Adam lived off odd jobs and what his parents had left him; always enough to get by, never enough to get away to the mountains of his dreams.
He walked past the cracked war memorial, with the soldier leaning sideways, to the Valentine Takeaway. Fib waited outside. The multi-coloured plastic braid at the entrance to the shop was frayed and torn. Inside there was no one around.
'Hallo?' Adam called. The only response was a cockatoo screeching somewhere out the back. He took a carton of milk from the fridge and left the money on the counter.
Back at his house there was a dusty trailbike parked outside. Adam knew no one with a bike. Anyway, all his friends had long since moved away.
The owner was inside the kitchen trying to fit a carton of beer into the fridge. Adam opened the door. A short, wiry young man with spiky black hair and a denim jacket grinned at him.
'Jeez, Adam, you live like a bloody monk. Lucky I came prepared.'
Oh no. Keith. Still, at least now he'd have someone to distract him from the silence.
Adam put the milk down on the table. 'What are you doing here?'
'Make yourself at home, mate, don't mind me.'
'I thought you were in the army or something?'
'Used to be. Not any more.' Keith pulled up his jean leg to reveal a scar. 'They've pensioned me off.'
'How'd it happen?'
'Target practice, I s'pose you'd call it. Anyway I'm heading through to the Territory on the bike. Didn't think I'd find you still hanging round here like a bad smell.'
'The bike's yours then?'
'What the fuck do you take me for mate? Course it's mine. With the payout I got, I could have got a fucking Ferrari.' Adam looked at him dubiously. 'Steering wheel at least.'
Keith burst out laughing. Adam smiled on one side of his mouth.
The two hadn't seen each other for five years. Keith was two years older. For a while, he'd been a sort of uncle to Adam. Then he'd run off to Brisbane with Adam's girlfriend Sarah, and that had been the end of that. Now Keith needed somewhere to stay 'for a couple of days.' Fib hid under the house.
That night Adam heated up a couple of pizzas from the freezer.
'So what's the story with your friend out the front?' asked Keith, around a mouthful.
Adam stared at him quizzically.
'The cow.'
'Oh, yeah. Some joker hit it with his car this morning. Woke me up.'
'Not planning a barbecue then?'
'No. No I don't think so.'
'Couldn't be worse than this stuff, eh?'
Adam didn't answer the question. He chewed silently for a moment, before asking a question of his own. 'So what happened to Sarah?'
'Sarah who? Oh yeah. That Sarah. Ran off with a restaurant critic. I thought he preferred blokes. Sure fooled me.'
Adam avoided his eyes. 'I bet.' He started picking up glasses and carrying them to the sink.
'So are you still having those dreams about mountains then?' asked Keith.
Adam stood at the sink with his back to the table. 'Nah, not any more. That was kid's stuff, you know.'
Keith slept on his roll mat on the verandah to keep cool. Adam didn't fall asleep until late, thoughts drifting through the past. When he did dream, the mountain was different to any he had dreamed in the past.
Lush jungle. Steep, tumbled, rocky slopes. Warm rain. Strange creatures scrambling away on the edge of his vision. Intense sounds and smells unlike any he could recognise. The summit was invisible, always lost in cloud or around the next bend. But there was hope in his step as he climbed. His legs were like pistons. Climb. His lungs seemed huge. Climb. Perhaps this time he would reach the top. Climb. Climb. Climb.
He woke like a child being torn from its mother, desperate to keep on climbing. Slowly, humid jungle was replaced by familiar dusty morning heat. Adam opened his eyes.
There, outside his window, was a mountain. THE mountain.
Adam blinked.
It was still there. The jungle mountain from his dream, rising out of the dry yellow plains, the top wreathed in cloud. Adam ran to the verandah tremendously excited. Keith was snoring, surrounded by empty tinnies.
'Keith!' he shouted. 'Look!'
'Piss off,' Keith grunted blearily, and turned over.
Adam ran outside. Fib barked excitedly. The mountain seemed almost close enough to touch, as alien and wondrous as a Martian volcano, and yet every tree, every ravine was familiar to him. Adam's smile grew wider and wider.
'Whoohoo!' he yelled. 'Yes!'
Without stopping to pick up his hat or shoes, he started running towards the mighty peak. Fib ambled after him. Then Adam had another thought. He ran back to Keith's trailbike and fired it up. With a spray of dirt from the back wheel, he set the bike on course for the mountain, bumping over the fenceless plains. Surely he'd be at the foothills in a few minutes.
Fib waited on the verandah, staring after his owner mournfully.
After an hour of constant riding, Adam was no closer to the mountain.
He couldn't understand it. It still looked no more than a mile away. He could practically smell its green flanks. And yet, try as he might, he could ride no closer. After another half hour the bike spluttered to a stop, out of petrol.
Adam had never been so frustrated in his life.
It would be dark in a few hours. He was miles from anywhere. Reluctantly, he began walking for home, pushing the bike, looking over his shoulder every so often to check that the mountain was still there.
Keith and the police found him two days later, face down in a muddy puddle, too weak from heat and thirst to drink. The trailbike was lying nearby. Adam's skin was burnt from the sun and his feet cut by rocks.
In the back of the police four wheel drive, Keith was sitting next to Adam when his friend came to. 'Did you see it, Keith?' said Adam, smiling weakly.
'See what?'
'The mountain.'
'What the fuck are you talking about Adam? What mountain? What the hell did you think you were doing, you crazy bugger?!'
But Adam had lapsed back into unconsciousness.
From his bed in the three ward Valentine Hospital, Adam could see the mountain through the window. He talked about it to anyone who would listen. The other four patients avoided him. When nurses began staring and whispering about him down the end of the ward, Adam decided to stop saying anything. It was their problem, not his.
Keith visited less and less often. 'I always knew you'd go mad if you stayed here too long,' he said. Soon after, Keith got on his bike and rode away.
Adam had already decided he would try to reach the mountain again as soon as he was well enough. Already he'd forgotten the disaster of days before. A little more time, that's all he needed. This time he would make it.
Adam told no one of his plans.
For the first time in his life, the dreams of mountains stopped. Adam slept restfully. Each dawn he awoke happily to see the sun's rays hit the jagged peak while the surrounding plains were still dark. At dusk he was always sure to watch his mountain's shadow lengthen to the horizon, and see the sun leave its flanks, before he closed his eyes and slept. Meanwhile Fib the blue heeler waited patiently on the steps of the hospital.
On Adam's last day under observation, four strange visitors arrived in Valentine. Three men of indeterminate age led a mule, upon which sat an ancient woman. They were short, sturdy people, with deep ebony eyes and faces lined like bark. Their hair was straight and black. Their skin was a pale delicate brown. Red paint was beneath the eyes of the men, who were beardless and carried vulture-feathered arrows across their backs. All wore hand-woven blanket cloaks of red and orange which fell below the knees, and round, tasselled hats. The old woman's lower lip was black, with dark, narrow lines painted from the edges of her mouth across her cheeks. On her feet were simple sandals. The men wore no shoes at all.
People stared as the strangers walked through the town. When they reached the hospital the old woman dismounted. One man remained outside with the mule as the others entered the building in single file. Fib woke up. He barked and wagged his tail. The nurses, mouths open, did not stop the strangers.
Into Adam's ward the brown-skinned people walked, speaking softly among themselves in a musical language that sounded like water over rocks. Was it a kind of Spanish? Adam did not know. They arranged themselves around his bed like visiting relatives. The old woman stood by Adam's head. Pointing out the window, she began to speak. In shock, Adam realised that she was pointing at the mountain. He too pointed.
'You can see it?' he asked breathlessly.
The old woman replied animatedly, clinking the necklace of beads around her neck. She seemed impatient, or angry, but Adam could not understand.
One of the men, who wore a narrow red headband, spoke slowly, choosing his words carefully. 'Este say of course she see him. All who see can see him.'
Adam could not place the accent. 'Who are you?' he asked.
Again the man translated. 'We are... the people of Piconcagua.'
'Piconcaga?'
'Piconcagua.' The man looked to the other two for assistance. He pointed again to the peak growing out of the plain. 'His name is Piconcagua. Our name also.'
Adam rolled the syllables softly across his tongue. Piconcagua. Yes, that was indeed the mountain's name. What else could it be called?
Earnestly, the woman Este began to speak again, waving her hands for emphasis. Once more her words were translated. 'We have come from beyond the water. For him.'
'Do you mean... me?'
'No, no. Piconcagua.' The man drew a triangle in the air with his fingers; the shape of the mountain. 'We are his.'
Now the old woman Este jabbed angrily at Adam as she spoke. Instinctively, he recoiled further up the bed.
'Este say you steal him from us.'
'But I've done nothing,' protested Adam.'How could I steal a mountain?!'
'She say... you think him here. In dream.'
At last Adam understood.
After a pause, he also spoke. 'I rode for hours. I couldn't get any closer to the mountain. I only wanted to climb it. That's all...' Adam trailed off.
'Why you want to climb him?' asked the second man, staring into his face. Two of the man's front teeth were missing.
'Well I... I don't know really,' Adam looked to the first man, and then the old woman. 'It's just something I've always wanted to do.'
The three brown-skinned people looked sharply at him and then conferred among themselves. The interpreter said,'You cannot ride to Piconcagua. You must walk. On feet.'
'On foot?'
'Yes. On feet.'
'Oh,' said Adam. 'I see.'
'He is leaving with the sun.'
Adam was becoming confused again. 'Who?'
'Piconcagua is leaving.'
'At sunset? I don't understand.'
'Piconcagua tell us to wait... until the sun leave this place.'
Adam's head was whirling. Through the confusion his mind grabbed at the only thing that still made sense to him. 'But can I climb it?... the mountain... Piconcagua?'
The interpreter looked to Este. A pause. The woman nodded.
The man with the missing teeth shrugged. 'Go,' he said.
Hardly believing his good fortune, Adam leapt out of bed and dressed. No one could stop him as he ran down the steps of the hospital and towards his house. The man minding the mule watched him gravely as he passed. From the step, Fib jumped up and ran after his owner.
Adam looked at his watch as Fib stared at him expectantly. It was just after noon; he had about seven hours to get up and back. After drinking deeply from the kitchen tap, Adam began to walk. Fib ran ahead.
The mountain loomed over the plains like a giant.
This time they were soon in the foothills. As Adam got closer it became cooler. Scrubby grass was replaced by strange vines and high leafy trees. There was no path, but the mountain seemed to guide Fib one way and then the other as Adam climbed after him.
Across a bubbling stream with bright glinting rocks. Beneath a canopy filled with tiny chirping birds. Higher and higher they climbed. All Adam's normal worries and frustrations seemed to fall away as he concentrated on finding the best path through the undergrowth. Bright, vibrantly coloured parrots flashed past. Beetles like jewels sat on huge leaves. Rich rotting smells and humidity gave way to foreign flowers and mist. Pebbles underfoot became tumbled granite boulders. Swirling cloud obscured the view below.
Now the path was slippery. Mosses and lichens covered everything. Fib waited impatiently as Adam found his own way, ducking beneath enormous spider webs which glistened with dew. Brightly coloured snakes watched from high, outflung branches as they passed. The mist forest became low, scrubby, windswept. It became colder. Now Adam took the lead. Tiny lizards darted ahead of his boots as he panted and climbed.
As the mist grew even thicker, the sunny day below was a distant memory. Then the scrubby trees disappeared. Even grass became rare as patches of ice crunched beneath the feet. Huge flecked boulders with snow between presented a new obstacle. Like an insect climbing a staircase, Adam pulled himself up, one by one, lifting Fib ahead of him. Despite the cold air he removed his shirt, sweating from the effort of the climb.
Adam felt incredibly alive; conscious of each bone and muscle, each nerve and neuron. Climb.
Time meant nothing. Climb.
He ceased to think of the future or the past. Climb.
Now was all there was. Now.
Pain began to take over his body. Still Adam climbed. At last, lungs raging, he could climb no more. Fib panted beside him, tongue lolling. Adam fell to his knees, defeated. When he looked up the mist had cleared.
He had reached the top.
Like a banshee Adam whooped for joy. He could see the little town where he'd spent his life, as insignificant as an oil stain on the plains below. He could see the highway, stretching in a straight line through the town to infinity in both directions. He could see the river's path, meandering across the plain like a serpent. And he could see the clouds. Adam lay on his back and smiled while Fib stood on his chest. The rock seemed to fit the curves of his body like a chair.
He'd made it.
But the sun was only a couple of hours above the horizon. Remembering Este's warning, Adam began his descent.
He went down fast, not looking back, every step well-placed and sure. Fib jumped from boulder to boulder in bounds. Through each layer of Piconcagua they descended. Branches became hand-holds, rocks became steps, vines became bannisters.
Near the base, Adam drank from the stream, then turned to see where he had come from while Fib drank. Above his level the mountain had disappeared. Where clouds and cliffs had been was only clear Australian sky, purple now at the close of the day.
Hanging above the horizon in the west was the sun, red and impatient to be gone. Adam smiled sadly, turned on his heel, and walked down to the dusty plain. Dead tired, Fib followed a few paces behind.
It was almost dark when they reached the edge of Valentine and Adam turned once more to look back. Where Piconcagua had been there were only dry empty paddocks. The entire mountain had vanished. Looking the other way, Adam could just make out four figures leaving the town. A few onlookers stared after them.
One of the figures was riding a mule. Fib barked and wagged his tail.© David Lowe, June 1993