Autumn 2007. Terrence Green was at the foot of a mountain, of Wy’east, Mt. Hood. He was approaching the trail his ancestors had used for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years to pray, make offerings and do ceremony. He had not understood when he set out running from the office and jumping into his truck, taking off without a suitcase, what was driving him. He had his wallet, boots, moccasins, down vest, sweater, jacket, sunglasses. He did not take his computer. He had a pen and paper. He had his cell phone but turned it off. He had wanted to leave it behind but he didn’t have absolute confidence in his vehicle. He was not naked but close enough by contemporary standards. He had an early copy of the IPCC report that had disturbed him so.

He had begun to read the report at home and then continued in his office. He came to a small paragraph among the more than 2,000 pages of the report and he stopped reading for a while and then continued to the end – altered. But it was not sufficient; he had to read that paragraph away from his office, away from brick, glass and steel. He had to read it on the land in order to absorb its implications. The content was not surprising, its inclusion was.

He read, “9.6.2 Indigenous knowledge systems. The term ‘indigenous knowledge’ is used to describe the knowledge systems developed by a community as opposed to the scientific knowledge that is generally referred to as ‘modern’ knowledge (Ajibade, 2003). Indigenous knowledge is the basis for local level decision making in many rural communities. It has value not only for the culture in which it evolves, but also for scientists and planners striving to improve conditions in rural localities. Incorporating Indigenous knowledge into climate change policies can lead to the development of effective adaptation strategies that are cost-effective, participatory and sustainable. (Robinson and Herbert, 2001).”

Without planning, he had come to this Mountain. Because it was a sacred place.

He had to read it as an Indigenous man, not as a scientist. He had never expected to find these references in an IPPC Assessment Report. Two worlds, the one into which he had been born, and the one that opposed it, but had kidnapped him, slammed into each other. He stood very still for a long time and then he began running, but not as a man running away, though he was running from his office, from the building, from a way of thinking and acting that he’d had to take on and fit into, from a mind and a style that had penetrated into his core like a poison, the way its poisoned breath, acid rain, penetrated into the leaves and roots of living beings who, unable to escape, tried to open to it even more in order to take in and separate its elements, in order to return it to its formerly neutral elements. 

He was moving fast and steadily, as he had learned as a child. Running was memory. It was so steady, it could go on for hours or even days. The Earth turned and the people ran on it, turning with it. He almost ran past his truck, which he chose to park in the furthest outside lot avoiding the fumes of the parking structures. If he were not in an urban area, he might have deluded himself that it was possible to run from where he was to where he needed to go now. Then he was on the road, driving as if he were running. He did not call anyone to say he would be gone. He did not call Sandra from the road. He just went.

At home, Sandra had watched him carefully as he was first reading the report. He paled, his eyes filled, he bit his lip. They had both known what would be in it, as well as how extremely it would be tempered to make it acceptable, having several colleagues who were working on various United Nations committees: Climate change is real and humans are responsible. Beneath the neutral and formal scientific language was another message that he and Sandra and certainly many others recognized. Our situation is grave. The damage is most probably irreversible. Unless … all life is doomed.

The goal of the report was to confirm what was obvious in order to inform those, particularly in government, who needed such confirmation to enact change, and those who would not encompass the new reality without such evidence, and to challenge the willfully ignorant but powerful who were devoted only to pursuing their own financial goals. At the same time it was necessary to prevent worldwide panic.

Terrence’s people were familiar with meeting the worst contingencies in council and so with awareness. He did not find this resilience outside Indigenous communities in part, he thought, because non-Indigenous people were no longer living in vital and interdependent communities. The global transition from we to I was almost complete. The world to which he had been exiled was based on maintaining a state of fear and its members were constrained from acting together on their own behalf. He understood that despite being marginalized, Indigenous people had the ability and willingness to assess the world situation precisely – they were also the ones no one heeded. Instead, they would learn from the news that what they had long known was happening had been confirmed by science. Despite having been ignored, they would still retreat to the long house, pray through the night, and sit in council in the day. What new role might open to them on behalf of the Earth?

Terrence imagined trying to call such a council at the university. The dean would have to consider a budget. Why did he need a budget and administrative approval to take an action on behalf of the planet? It was all hopeless. Hopeless, Terrence realized, should not be in his vocabulary. Hopeless was not a word his grandfather would use. Hopeless does not coexist with the spirits. Nor does hopeful. Hope in any form turns us toward ourselves. “You do what you are called to do,” his grandfather had instructed him. “Those other folk are always thinking about what they are going to get out of it.”

Not hopeless, but still aware the world could end. Terrence struggled against the vortex of emptiness that was threatening to draw him down into parallel dimensions of subterranean oceans and fires. He could drown or burn. He preferred the exquisite pain of the auto-da-fé. He did not intend to privilege his own death. If the Earth was going to burn, he would burn with her.

Glancing over at Sandra, he saw the set of her jaw, her fingers trembling slightly as she turned the pages. They were a council of two. It would have to be sufficient.

Terrence had to read every word in order to fulfill his academic responsibilities and between every line to know what he had to know. Sandra was freer to choose which of the various panels she would read. They sat down to their tasks while each knew that the abstract filter of scientific language would not be sufficient to remove the implicit anguish and horror of knowing they were, humanity was, bringing the great and wild beauty that is planet Earth to an end. There had never been an evil as great as that which has been attacking all the living beings of Earth, and the two knew, that if only by the lives they lived, they were complicit. Their eyes continued to meet over the texts, then they lowered them and turned the pages.

He read as long as he could. Toward dawn he sat down in the north, hoping the ancestors would speak to him. They didn’t. Then he got up and went to the office. He stood still looking out the window. This was not unusual for him, except he was standing there a very long time. Then he ran. Then he fled. Then he went forward.

In his tradition, in the past, one did not have to “telephone” and say one was going on a journey. The community would have known when the person knew. One did not need to send a runner. One did not need to send out emails. One did not need to leave a vacation message on a phone machine. He would be gone and the community would understand that he had left to find what could only be found alone and they would wait patiently for his return, praying for him. Recognizing he had to leave was a simultaneous event for the person and the community. That is just the way it was. Not fleeing. No foul play. A mission. Going on one’s way. Halfway to his destination, he understood what he was doing differently. He was running away from the world he had inhabited and he was running toward.

He did not turn on the radio as he drove. Words repeated in his head and he couldn’t clear them.

“Traditional Indigenous Knowledge.

“Traditional Indigenous Knowledge and Wisdom.

“Traditional Indigenous Knowledge.

“Traditional Indigenous Knowledge and Wisdom.

“Traditional Indigenous ….”

They repeated, a chant, until he could no longer understand the words or how the world was vanishing, was going extinct. And so much beauty and wisdom with it.

And so he went on. Miles and miles. Light fell and night rose and light rose and night fell. As he had been trained, he went without sleep. Then he was at the river. Then he turned south again and east.

“Volcano,” he murmured at the very first glimpse of the mountain from the twisting road, as if he could erase the feelings that were rising in him, churning the way the concealed molten rock was churning under the Earth, and replace them with facts and information, as if lecturing to undergraduate students in Geology 101. He had taught such a course several times even though it was not his field, filling in for another professor. But the words defining and describing a volcano that would have followed in a class didn’t follow.

Reducing it as science does would be a violation. He came to the place he intended to leave his truck. The truck would be visible but not prominent. He could disappear without vanishing entirely.

Then he walked. He did not allow himself to describe the path even to himself. His steps had to be invisible so there would be no chance of the way being known by anyone except his Grandfather and Grand Uncle who were on the other side.

Finally, he was at the foot of the mountain having come here like a man on fire, exploring. Then, like a man emerging from a fog, remembering.

He came to the place of vision that he recognized, that he had known as a young boy, and so he stopped.

“Snow” and “Fire,” he whispered to himself as he looked at the mountain he was remembering from childhood. “Mountain.” He corrected himself, “Mountain.” Yes, he had come here as a boy with his grandfather and his father’s uncle. His grandfather had not spoken of Terrence’s father, had not spoken of his own son then. Too many young Native men had died young or disappeared or suffered unbearable distortions of body and soul in the dark times. Still, the line of fathers behind Terrence, straight as the cedars from which they carved the guardian spirits of the land, was coming into focus. And, maybe, his own father, so long on the other side, was standing with them.

“Never forget this,” his father’s uncle had said, but his grandfather had said nothing, knowing the boy would have to forget because he would be sent away on behalf of the people. Would this moment come back to him at a critical point in his life? Whether Terrence would recognize it and remember would matter.

Only the Mountain itself, its presence on the landscape, that moment with Grandfather and Uncle on the mountain, the living imprint of ceremony performed upon Wy’east for thousands of years, was given to him to treasure and protect. Had he remembered? He had repressed it. It had slipped out of sight and was buried under the field of rubble formed by the debris and preoccupations of the dominant culture that had been claiming him.

If he were fortunate, if he had, wittingly or unwittingly prepared for this moment, if he was remembering, then it was like the sharpened bone with which a man would pierce his own flesh so that he could hang from the tree of the world and gain … what would he gain? Gain was not the issue. What would be the offering? In his mind, he thrust the bone of memory through his chest wall and wisdom and despair poured through him like blood.

His grandfather had known that they were entering into the darkest time of forgetting, erasure and eradication. Genocide of body, mind and soul. His grandfather had known the great pain. Foreknowledge did not prevent disaster. Understanding did not diminish the agony. They had fought for their land and lost. Losing was not the tragedy, losing to the ways of the white men was the tragedy. Had they lost the land to another tribe, it would not have destroyed their ways of life, would not have damaged the Earth. But having to fight the white men for the land was defeat from the beginning. Having to use weapons that were not their own, that were not coordinated with their sacred lives, undermined them and damaged the Earth beyond redemption. Having to fight, having to fight in the way they were required to fight, for the reasons they had to fight, being forced by war to think of land as property that could be stolen or conquered, was an anathema, but they fought anyway because they had to stand for the land. “I left my land on my own,” he told Mountain as he stood at its feet. “They didn’t have to come and get me by force. I went on my own.

“I was asked to go, it was assumed it would be of benefit, and I agreed. My acquiescence became my agreement, my choice.”

He lowered his eyes, but truth required him to look forward.

He wanted to speak truthfully aloud. Without planning, he had come to this Mountain. Because it was a sacred place. Because he would know what had to be known here. An urgency such as he had never known had brought him.

He had his braid. He still had that, though he had been accused of sentimentality or display for keeping it. It had become his silent mnemonic. Once Sandra had offered to braid it for him and the chill of the forbidden went through him though her intentions were only loving. She had not understood the grimace of violation or loathing that had transformed his face beyond his own recognition. He had turned away from her, gone outside, relocated himself in his own heart and slowly, carefully, twisted red cloth into so tight a braid that he was aware of the pull on his scalp each time he moved his head.

He and she understood afterwards that like so many Indigenous peoples, he lived within a system of holy taboos that provided order in a chaotic world. For some members of Western culture, breaking taboos was exhilarating. He felt the wisdom of acquiescing.

“Mountain,” he repeated, not in English, but in his original language. He spoke the sacred name as if he had never seen such a phenomenon before and also as if he remembered every detail of the time he had been brought here. Then he was on his knees, the lifeblood pounding heatedly in his body as his legs chilled from the frozen earth. He was on his knees, he was prone, his head was on the ground, he was weeping. Then he stood up as he had been taught, barefoot now. He looked around him and found stones and piled them up so he would remember that he had been here. As he remembered what his elders had known, he straightened up and looked Mountain in the eye. Steady. Steady ….

He had left all his identification in the truck. It would not be appropriate to come to this place with the dog tags of the alien world in which he lived. He had been recruited to live among the enemy on behalf of the land. Coming home to the Mountain, he had to return as himself. With every step, he had stripped himself of the acquired identity. What his Grandfather had thought might come to be; Terrence knew this as he revealed his face before the Mountain.

Afternoon. Sunset. Night. Moon rise. Starlight reflecting off the snowy peak. The Mountain saw him and he continued standing, looking at the Mountain.

He was in sacred time and sacred space. Even history ceased to exist. Everyone and everything vanished from his sight. Finally, he had arrived.

Sandra stirred restlessly in the tent when Terrence did not return from the University. His teaching assistant checked and saw Terrence’s truck was not in its usual space and a parking attendant searched the area and attested that it was not in the lot or anywhere on campus.

They had both been reading the IPCC report and he had taken his volume with him when he went to the University. She could imagine that he had gone off to mourn and to pray. To honor that possibility, she stayed in the tent and read the report in more detail than she might have otherwise. She needed to share his ordeal. His ordeal? She was embarrassed to have thought she wasn’t completely responsible. Let the ordeal be her form of prayer. 

After two days, she lost the connection with him. Then she was a stranger in the tent, an intruder.

She was of the people who had created the Anthropocene, which some dated from the Industrial Revolution, and others calculated it from the Holocene, the Neolithic, the start of agriculture. Agriculture meant stores and property. Stores and property created power. Power meant fortification. Fortifications meant hierarchy. Property, power, fortification, hierarchy, conquest, war – the present.

Or it was dated differently: to the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the moment of James Watt’s newly invented steam engine and the enormous expansion in the use of fossil fuels. No matter the cause or the time. It was here with its consequences.

She knew her people were culpable while his people and the Earth were among the victims. Now he had bonded with her, the other. He was carrying her within him, the way, inevitably, he carried his mother inside. He could not refuse them though it might also be a betrayal of history and his entire life to be one with them. Terrence and Sandra carried the same grief for the Earth and these times; they were both reeling from it. And they each carried different grief. The first had bonded them until this moment and now it seemed it was tearing them apart.

She couldn’t stay here a moment longer. Looking around at her things so carefully placed in the space, she shuddered as if they had been strewn. Her thoughts stormed in her mind, the winds of doubt blasted her. She gathered up as much as she could in her arms and fled also.

When she arrived at her house, she brought everything inside, including her pail of earth, as if she would settle down here again, to fit into an old life as if she had never left. She opened all the windows. She still owned the house. She had not prepared it for sale. It had been their intention to sell – certainly they did not need so many houses, though they were concerned that the land would fall victim to developers. They were considering the options, how to restore the land to its own autonomy but neither she nor he had wanted to be preoccupied with real estate when they were just beginning to know each other. So as it was still hers, she could slip in as if returning from an assignment, from the Arctic or Africa. Or something more casual, a site visit to the development where she was consulting.

But she no longer belonged in this house. She was in limbo. It was not that she had been away, it was that she had entered another life. The house did not belong to her anymore or, rather, she did not belong to it. She was from somewhere else that was disappearing too. She paced the circular deck looking in the windows. Then she came into the house and circumambulated it similarly from within. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been here recently, she had, but like a sojourner to an outpost. Now, supposedly, she was home again. The furniture was unfamiliar. She examined the curved andirons that were still in the fireplace, the fireplace tools that seemed ornate now, the bellows, the carved box that held firewood. They had been created with fashion in mind, with appearance. She had wanted a house that looked simple, not a simple dwelling.

Terrence had used a wood bench when he sat and stared into the fire. Terrence had thrown a blanket across a wood box so she could sit down next to him and stare into the fire. That had become natural and comfortable while the artifacts, the appliances that furnished her house, all seemed alien. They seemed to have a will of their own, calling attention to themselves. The house was declaring itself to her as worthy of a magazine display on simplicity. Four dimensions folded into two. She was being pressed into a given shape by the corners and angles of her possessions. Possessions. In the last months, the idea of possessions had left her. The spaces in between took her attention, as if she could see both time and space without concern for the events or objects that might occupy them. Earth had been her element, but Terrence had introduced her to motion, the elements of wind, water and fire. She had once wanted a solid house, a well-built house, dependable. A signature house. A house with things. Not many things, but things nevertheless. Signature things.

That was before she met Terrence. Thoughts of him began to assault her and she forced them away. She was not to fix him, to capture him, even in her mind. Now she was in the dissolve, the way one dimension morphs into another. Terrence had disappeared. Maybe he had shapeshifted. Maybe he had become wind. Maybe he had never been anything else. A storm had come and blown away her life. She turned and turned in the circle, but when she realized she was spiraling down into dread and fear, she stopped in her office, picked up the phone and called her father. It would not take him long to join her; he’d had no need to ask any questions over the phone.

While waiting for him to join her, Sandra went onto the roof and then onto the land. There, finally, among the trees, she settled down. Walking, well, not really walking, but pacing and then slowing down, then sliding down against a tree looking north because she felt he had gone in the direction of his people, land and ancestors, she found calm within herself. There was still a thread between them, thin though it was. She imagined what it might feel like for a spider to spin silk from the spinnerets on her abdomen and to let the thread waft in the faintest breeze, just a hint of wind, to attach where it must, there, wherever he was.

The palms of her hands flat on the Earth, looking up at the trees she had known so well, she was filled with the mystery of here and there. Had she abandoned this land in her rush to be with a human? This land and the land where she had been with Terrence, and Terrence, wherever he was, the thin silk of being emerging from her, honing in and attaching to him so the web could be woven that connected them. Crows flew into the pine and cawed. She had forgotten them. Her neighbors. She had been confused by notions of roads, miles, boundaries, highway markers, zones and designations, houses, property, real estate, but the true connections had never been interrupted or severed. The crows did not live in the bounded world. Her connection was with a terrain not a parcel and she shared that terrain with others. Then a raven entered the field uttering the round sound and hollow mating call that assured her that there would be others. The land enhanced and maintained by the presence of all the others; it could not exist without them.

Threads emerged from her abdomen and fluttered in the currents as they connected here and there, the web illuminated by the sun, flickered in and out of visibility as it stretched from a sycamore in the streamed by their tent to the branches above Sandra’s head to Terrence wherever he was now. The tires from John’s car crunched over the gravel in front of the house. Sandra got up so carefully not to impair the weaving that had gathered her in.

Dawn. 

Terrence Green turned around to walk the seven miles back to his truck. 

Terrence walked back from the Mountain with the same care with which he had approached the place of ceremony. His steps were heavy; he was carrying the Mountain with him. Until this moment, he had been a man of wind. It had allowed him to move the way he had, to leave one place for another. To be fleet footed. But now he, as others before him, would have to carry more than one spirit. Sometimes when his people were being initiated, they would be asked to carry the world. When one is asked, one cannot refuse. He remembered that Mountain had come when he was caring for Sandra.

She and Mountain joined in his mind. He was weary. Her presence assisted him.

One slow, deliberate step after another. It was hard to stay erect, to keep from falling and tumbling down. A ponderous descent.

He was almost at the trailhead, not far from where he had hidden his truck, when he collapsed.

When her father arrived they repeated the pattern of standing and circling. First they stood helplessly in her house, then began moving from room to room, window to window, not knowing what to do, repeating the pattern. Sandra wanted to pace outside but she began to be afraid when night fell. She was not afraid of what might be in the dark. She was afraid of the inside of the house that was completely transparent to her from the outside.

Sandra answered the phone on the first ring. The woman said, “He told me to call you at this number, your home number. Yes, he was clear about it. He said, you would be home. He said, your father would be with you. He said, ‘Drive.’ He was adamant about this though speaking was difficult. He said, ‘Set out going north.’ He said, ‘Tell her, no matter what, go north.’ He asked us to call you again on your cell phone when we know where he will be taken. He said, he knew it would take you many hours. He said, you will have enough time. He made sure I understood. Again, he was certain but I am not sure I understand what he means.”

“Anything else, did Terrence say anything else?” Sandra asked.

“No, but I think this is serious. He isn’t conscious now.”

When John Birdswell’s wife, her mother, Samantha Crow, had died in the hospital, there had been no lack of enforced activities and then there was the baby to hold who was suddenly his entirely. As if from one belly to another, the child had disappeared into his great arms folded around her tiny body that immediately became the stake upon which he rested the rest of his life. Now he had to hold her up, but he had never seen her lean on anyone or anything but herself.

“We’re cursed!” he bellowed as if the extent of his pain would be a sign of strength.

Unexpectedly, Sandra rebuked him but without knowing the source of her optimism, only its necessity. “He will be OK. That’s what his message says.” She had not expected such certainty to emerge from her. But in the moment, she was recognizing that “He will be OK,” was part of holding a field of possibility within which recovery lived.

“You believe in possibility, don’t you?” she dared him, certain that her faith was necessary and that their interaction could also make a difference.

“Yes,” John murmured. “I believe in possibility.” He said it quietly, a throwback to the years he’d had to modify his behavior on behalf of a child who was often asleep in his arms, slung across his shoulder, her mouth slightly open, fully, completely, absolutely, unconditionally trusting him. Now, as if compensating for the quiet days, he often bellowed around her, if not around his patients. His bedside manner was exuberant. His patients were reassured by his confidence in the medicine he offered and his simple love for anyone that came to him for treatment.

This was different. He recognized this immediately from Sandra’s response. The tables were turned and he would have to follow her lead. He stepped back to look at her as she leaned on the counter. This was not a time for reflexive behavior. He took in her stance, her long, confident body so like his own. This was his daughter. He knew her as well as he knew anyone in this life. But at this moment, he didn’t know her at all.

“He will be OK.” These were not the words he had expected to hear. He echoed the words, reaching to copy the exact inflection so that he could incorporate its precise and profound meaning. More than understanding in its usual sense was implied though he had never considered understanding outside of language. He had to slow the phrase down because the words were like a moving car that were taking him somewhere he had never been, where, it seemed, his daughter, unbeknownst to him, had started to live. Not only new territory, distinct territory.

He stopped reviewing the few details that passed for medical information. He was not to consider worst and best scenarios. He was not to review the literature now or later. He was traveling, traveling down, descending into a terrain he had never traversed before. There was an enormous stillness around and within him. As if the entrance of any habitual thought would demolish this experience. Everything he was experiencing was wordless and he was required to keep it so. Thank God for meditation; he could do that, and realizing this, was quieted.

He had expected her to continue to pace wildly as she began to do for the first minutes after the phone call; such had always been her way when she was upset but then she stopped abruptly and meticulously filled her suitcase. Now she was still, a different person. Considering. Did she have what they needed? He did not recognize the stillness that was in her. In the hospital, no one was ever still during an emergency and there were always emergencies. The hospital was a field of frantic energies. Because she was not frenetic, he was not frenetic. It was as if she was filled with a power he did not recognize and it was ballast. He was contemplating his daughter as if she were a new patient, assembling signs without interpreting them. The aggregate simply was. A presence. There were no words for this in English. He wasn’t sure there were words in any language. He was reminded of the posture Hosteen sometimes assumed in urgent situations, but not with intention. It came over him without his awareness. As if he were an eagle, a bear, a horse – that confident. It was a way of standing that was motionless despite others’ external frenzy and chaos so it seemed that movement and gravity were creating a single arena of infinite being and Hosteen was of it. Now Sandra was subsumed in it and maybe, he, John, was entering it as well. For Hosteen, his dear friend, it was an energy that could be used. For Sandra, he didn’t know, but she was, he thought, inhabiting another understanding. While for himself? He was only at the very edge of recognizing where he was. He could feel it but it was a foreign country still.

“He will be OK.” Recognition not reassurance.

He didn’t know how close his perceptions were to what was occurring within his daughter. Curiosity, his faithful ally, a family quality, led him to look more closely at her. He trusted himself not to be intrusive or manipulative. Unlike so many, their relationship was dependable as, he thought, such relationships should be. What he saw, what he thought he saw, astounded him. Like a wooden post, that armature within her … was Terrence Green. Terrence was present with them even if he was also on his way to a hospital bed somewhere in Oregon or Washington. Sandra was leaning on Terrence as he, though perhaps unconscious, was holding her up. Inexplicable. Terrence was present here even though he was outside a language and a territory either of them knew.

Terrence would be OK because he knew things they couldn’t know, might never know. He knew why he was called to live and so he knew what this illness or injury meant and what might have caused it, or contributed to this dangerous condition. He knew where the breakdown would take him and why he had to suffer it. He was at a threshold; he could only cross it on his knees. He had been found by two hikers who had, inexplicably, gone off trail. They never did that, they asserted. Something impelled them, they tried to explain. The man went speedily to get help and the woman stayed with Terrence.

“My husband is a runner,” the woman had said on the phone.

“So is my daughter,” John Birdswell added quickly as if the declaration would support the only runner who mattered in the moment. As if they were at a support site, waiting for him with ice, drinks and ace bandages.

There was a pause on the phone. “Terrence? Is that his name? He has no ID on him. We put in a call for help, but Grayson decided to run to the ranger station. He gave us his car keys. And your phone number. We’re not quite sure where we are. He will bring help back. Grayson agreed your friend would be safe with me.”

John Birdswell thought he was seeing the two of them. Terrence on the ground. The woman seated next to him, her legs folded to the side, holding his hand. Khaki pants. A brown blouse. A black down jacket. Her hand was square, soft and warm. Comforting.

“What’s your name?” he asked, meaning somehow to buttress her. As soon as he asked, he knew it wasn’t necessary. She had already crossed the line from stranger to friend and the usual exchanges unnecessary. Though he knew she was holding her phone, that isn’t what he saw. He saw her focused on Terrence, the intimacy of her narrow feet in white socks, her boots by the tree that shaded the two of them, her broad, freckled hand very still on Terrence’s arm. The jacket now folded under his head.

“Charity,” the woman said. “It’s a silly name to have for a moment like this. But it is my name.”

The response was obvious and so he said nothing. John said, “Thank you, Charity. We will finish packing and you can reach us as we drive.” She hung up.

When the helicopter arrived, circling and coming in lower and circling and descending until a landing was possible, they were already in the car. Sandra answered the second call as she had the first. Terrence had come back to consciousness, circling up one vortex calling forth another, if only for a moment. “I am going to be OK,” he had said, using the phone belonging to the medic. “It will take a while. I don’t know where they are taking me. It is a bleed. An aneurism.” There were long spaces between sentences filled with his jagged breath.

John Birdswell and Sandra had the phone on speaker and were listening intently.

“Anything else?”

“I’m very cold. Like the mountain. We’re kin.”

“Why do you think it is a bleed?” John asked.

“I can taste the blood coming through the roof of my mouth.”

“You wouldn’t taste …”

“I know,” Terrence said, “and John, I know.”

Once again, John Birdswell understood all his particular knowledge, training and experience, was irrelevant. As if he was a doc on the reservation again, he didn’t have the last word. He looked at Sandra in the dark car. Terrence was going in and out of consciousness and Sandra was going in and out of stillness. It was night and they were speeding north on US 5. The Medic took his phone back and said he’d call them from Portland or wherever he would finally take him. “Be ready to travel,” he said. “We’re in the car,” she said. “I packed quickly. And my father always has a suitcase with a change of clothes in the car. He’s a country doc.”

Then the medic gave the phone to Terrence again. “Be very brief,” he said.

Terrence was broken. But all the pieces were laid out, as they might be, if an old pot or body was to be reconstructed from shards.

“I will be OK,” Terrence repeated as if he were giving an order.

“I am here, Terrence,” she said, meaning so many different things.

Then the medic disconnected the phone, or Terrence lost connection, or both.