story begins before the Old Hickory changed its name to the Old Colonel, before the gift shop was built...back when people still could have said, “That piece of real estate doesn’t belong here; how did it get here?” or even more astutely, “What should we do about it?”
When, in fact, somebody did say that...before ears started turning deaf.
Stokes was his name. B.F. Stokes. The B stood for Bartholomew. Nobody ever got out of him what the F stood for. For years he had been the History teacher at the High School, but recently had retired. He’d sat through every Homecoming game the school had had since the 1950's; he’d known most of the citizens of the town when they were pimply teenagers and knew what they’d subsequently made of themselves or failed to make of themselves and at what cost to others. Few of the adults in town had escaped his History classes. He knew the people of his community well, and it could be said that he loved them in his own peculiar way, which often came across to them as an irritating insistence that they be all that they could be. That love translated into an extraordinary and collective protectiveness of his community, and above all others, including the Mayor (who’d been quite a slacker in World History), he was alert to anything that might menace the populace. Perhaps that is why he was slower to lose his sense of oddness about the appearance of the mountain. In any event, he was the only one who up and did a little investigation of the matter. He spent many days in the town library, though he couldn’t seem to keep his mind on the job very well. Somehow between the time he’d find something in the computerized catalogue and the time he’d get to the stacks, he’d forget what he was looking for, or was diverted by some book whose title suddenly caught his eye as he approached his objective. One day he was diverted into reading an atlas, and, shifting to another atlas, he stumbled quite by accident upon the very thing that he was looking for. After a time he rose and marched across the street to the Mayor’s office.
Stokes looked Duffy in the eye, saying nothing, until Duffy had to beg the question.
“What?”
Stokes heaved a heavy, oversized book onto the desk of the younger, plumper man. It fell open to page 78, where he’d held it with two fingers. The breadth of it took up nearly the whole desk and completely obliterated the papers, pens and crossword puzzles underneath.
“See there?” said Stokes in a satisfied rasp.
Duffy looked down. It was an atlas obscuring his day’s chores and amusements, open to a portion of the northern Rocky Mountain states.
“See there?”
Duffy gazed at approximately 1,000 square miles of territory.
“What?” he asked.
“This is the Wyoming Territory, circa 1885.”
“So?”
“See there?” He placed his index finger firmly on a spot near the skinny end of a long, blue, wavy line - a river...in other words, near the start of the river.
“Mt. Aubrey,” he said firmly. “13,185 feet high.”
Duffy looked up at him.
“So?”
A trace of a smile skimmed Stokes’ upper lip. It was that same smile they saw when he used to advise students that something they’d just slept through was going to be on the next test. From behind his back he pulled out another atlas - not as hefty as the first. This one was smaller, thinner, and bound with vinyl, rather than leather. He laid it on top of the other one, opened to page 66, which was a map of Utah.
“This year’s atlas,” he said.
He pointed to a spot on the map. It was Fairfield. Just north of it was a set of geographical shadows indicating a mountain, with a tiny triangle at its apex and small letters reading: Mt. Boramon, 13,185 ft. From it flowed the Beaver River, down through Fairfield and off in a gentle curve around the base of the mountain to the northwest.
Duffy looked up uneasily.
“So?”
“So this.”
Stokes removed the newer, vinyl clad atlas and pointed to the older, leather bound one under it.
“Turn to page 81.”
Duffy, disliking Stokes more than usual, recalled those humiliating moments in History class when he didn’t know the answer and Stokes called on him deliberately, rubbing it in. He licked his thumb and forefinger and without breaking eye contact, turned two pages, exposing page 81.
Stokes said nothing, but flicked his eyes down to the page.
Duffy’s own followed reluctantly.
It was Utah Territory, circa 1885.
Fairfield was there. But there was no Mt. Boramon and no Beaver River. Instead, a creek flowed through the town that came from a mountain range some 120 miles to the southwest.
“So what? A misprint. Maps weren’t as accurate in those days,” growled Duffy.
Stokes came back defiantly: “You might think so, except for this...”
Duffy watched Stokes triumphantly return the second and newer atlas to its place atop the other, now open to page 70, a map of Wyoming. He silently pointed to the spot where he’d previously pointed out Mt. Aubrey.
It read, Williams Mesa, 6,475 ft. The blue line of the river that passed through Aubrey began some 100 miles away.
Duffy shook his head rapidly, like a dog shaking off water.
He moved back and forth between the two atlases, closely scouring the four pages, confirming it.
“You’re sure it’s not a misprint?”
“I’ve confirmed it in other atlases.”
Duffy swallowed hard.
“Do you know what this means?” asked Stokes, unable to hold back the smirk of victory.
Duffy looked at him helplessly.
“It moved here,” breathed Stokes as if he’d just announced a royal flush.
“I’m calling my wife,” said Duffy. “My kids are up there today...picnicking.”
That night the Duffy children were forbidden to play on the mountain anymore. No one understood why. Duffy tried to make it stick with a simple “Because I am your father and I say so,” but it only made the young ones cry, the wife criticize him for upsetting them, and the oldest one, Jeff, to silently resolve to break this new rule, though in secrecy, soon and often. He was old enough to hold his own in a family discussion for a while now, and his “But why, Dad?” got a beginning of an honest response from his father: “Because there’s something unnatural about that mountain...it didn’t always...it wasn’t...before, it....because it isn’t safe! You kids might hurt yourselves. That’s reason enough.” And Jeff could see that there was something behind his father’s halting worlds that he wasn’t saying. The world “unnatural” stuck with him, but he kept it to himself, looking for evidence to support it each time he snuck off and went back up the mountain.
Word got out among the adults and more and more kids suddenly found the mountain off limits to them. Of course this made them very upset and they held various private councils to determine the cause for this newest piece of grown-up idiocy. Only one of them had heard anything really useful - he’d stayed up late and snuck out of his room to listen in on a conversation his father, mother and uncle were having on that very subject.
“Surely the mountain is alive,” said uncle Jeremiah.
“Surely it is,” agreed his mother.
“Pshaw,” said his dad, but he listened to them all the same.
“There’s proof. We’ve seen it. Yes surely the mountain is alive.” Uncle Jeremiah lowered his voice until the boy could barely hear it: “And it wants something,” he breathed.
And this became the phrase that circulated among the children: The Mountain is alive and it wants something, though in their minds it got translated somehow into “There is something alive up there, and it wants something,” and rumors of a mysterious beast bloomed like mayflowers. Everyone wanted to be the first one to discover it. Every chance they got, they snuck off to the slopes, with a redoubled sense of excitement and danger. Not only were they breaking a taboo, they were entering supernatural territory, where anything could h
appen. They might see someone - hopefully their brother or sister - get snatched off to the mountain top by the creature in the woods.
Those who snuck out at night found the rumors easier to believe. They found evidence ready at hand: trees that took human shape, noises that sounded like voices, twigs that reached out and grabbed at them when they passed, and of course, the tall, menacing shape of the mountain itself towering over them. By day it was their secret playground, but by night it was a mysterious land with many dangers.
The game of dare grew in proportion to the size of the rumor. Would anybody - anybody -dare to stay the whole night on the mountain? Did anyone have that much courage? A few set out to try, but no one completed it. The bravest, a fourteen year old, stayed out only `til a quarter past midnight.
One particular Sunday a plan was hatched to cut Sunday school and spend a half an hour in the forbidden pines, then dash back to the church playground before the grownups got out of services. The Sunday school teachers, of course, noticed the big drop in attendance and were planning to say something to the parents as soon as the services were over, but they never got the chance. Along about two thirds of the way through the service, the mountain hiccupped.
Mouths opened, but no words came out. Eyes went up to the ceilings to make sure nothing was falling down on them. The preacher stopped in mid-sentence. The church bell began to ring of its own accord. Some loose gravel came spilling down a steep slope into the church yard.
And then services were