Free Graphic the Valley by Peter Brown Hoffmeister Page A

Berkeley and Stanford medical students. A medical student came out to meet me, her clothes bright and clean.
    She said, “Come here often?” She smiled. She was a little older than me but young. Pale and blue-eyed.
    I tried to smile back. “No,” I said. My hand looked like meat turning rancid, purpled and gray.
    She saw the hand and my small bone poking through the skin, pushed out again by the pressure of the swelling. She said, “Well, that doesn’t look good at all.”
    “No,” I said. “It was a lion.” I picked at the bone, touching where it stuck out. I traced the dark purple circle around the puncture.
    “I don’t understand,” she said. “A mountain lion?”
    I nodded. “Last night near Bridalveil Creek.”
    She tucked her blond hair behind her ear, then called back to the aid station. She said, “Guys, I think you’d better come see this.”
    As she examined my hand, the other medical students asked me to explain what happened. I told the story from when I first saw the lion above me on the rock. I told about rolling downhill, the fight, how the lion choked on my fist.
    One of the students kicked at a hill of dirt. Another squinted his face and shook his head. I knew they didn’t believe me.
    The young woman who was inspecting my hand said, “Can a man really kill a mountain lion with his fist?” She looked at the other medical students.
    No one said anything, but they all shook their heads.
    She said, “If you wait until this afternoon, we’ll have an orthopedic resident come in. He’ll be able to reset your hand and cast you if it doesn’t need surgery.”
    “Thanks,” I said.
    “No problem. Why don’t you come in here and we’ll make you more comfortable?”
    I followed her into the medical tent. She pointed to a cot draped with a white sheet. “You can lie down there.”
    She left and came back a couple minutes later. She had a little white cup in one hand, two pills inside, and a Dixie cup of water.
    I swallowed both pills. Drank the water.
    She said, “That’ll keep the pain down. You’ll feel a little loopy, dreamy, but it’ll help a lot.”
    I said, “Thank you,” again. My hand felt like I was holding it in a fire.
    “All right,” she said, “I’ll go see about some food for you.”
    The pills hit and my head floated. I lay back on the cot. Watched the tent’s ceiling drop toward me and back up. When a wind gust came, the tent shivered like my father when he washed himself in Ribbon Creek.
    I closed my eyes.
    • • •
    Following my father. Sneaking tree to tree, far enough back not to be noticed. Following him to the pool just down the creek from our camp. When he gets there, he takes off all his clothes and walks into the waist-deep water. Then he squats down and washes his armpits. Dunks and washes his hair as well, using the silt from the bottom of the creek near the bank.
    When he comes up from rinsing, I think he’s shivering from the cold water, like normal, but he’s not shivering. The night is too hot, 80 degrees, and the water is only cool this time of year, not cold. Summer heat hangs above the surface.
    My father has his hands over his face and he’s rubbing his eyes. I watch his body shake.
    • • •
    I opened my eyes in the medical tent. Blinked. The girl doctor there. Her hand on my thigh. She says, “A mountain lion?”
    “Yes.”
    She leans over and kisses me. Tongue like mint.
    The lion’s jaws on my hand. Crushing. The tight, wet slick of its throat. The weight of the whole animal again.
    Her blond hair. Breath. Eyes pale as the tourists’ bottled water.
    She’s not there or I’m not. An empty tent. And the flapping sound like birds’ wings overhead.
    “This should help,” she said.
    • • •
    The pills died. The medical student came back again with soup, saltines, Sprite in a plastic bottle. More pills. She said, “I heard the orthopod’s driving into the park soon. Here’s two more Percocet.”
    I sat up. “Okay,” I said.