CATAMOUNT
CHARLOTTE ISENBERG
The old hunter-green van rattled down the 105 as she whipped another corner, her tire just barely scraping the ridge. “What Are They Doing in Heaven Today?” crackled through the thick air as Doores and Twain fought the howl of the wind. “Peace be bound like a river, they say,” murmured the driver, eyes squinting against the static of fog. Her knuckles gripped the wheel, slim fingers picking absently at the decaying faux leather. Each pothole sent another knot to twisting up her guts.
She broke her iron fix on the road ahead to glance down at her thin wrist. On it, a flimsy hospital bracelet held tight. It announced her name, date of birth, and the time it had been roughly two hours prior. She let the words rip her back to the exam room and all that came with it.
She’d come in for stomach pains. She was sitting idly, warmly, cross-legged in her cowboy boots and sweatpants when she began to feel something push out of her. The consciousness of that feeling and the knowledge of her new pregnancy met in her mind, smacking up against each other with a barbed edge. Beads of dread dripped down her nose and cheeks. She was not a stupid woman.
When the doctor finally arrived, they danced the most Southern of waltzes. She let on about her cramps and bleeding, then offhandedly mentioned her missed period a few weeks prior. He caught up, meeting her with generic information about abdominal pain, nausea, and “menstrual issues.” Their gaze never broke. It was the first time she had seen a doctor act nervous.
“I have work in a few hours,” she ended, rising from the bed with her purse firmly clutched. “Need to be getting home.” He nodded. Before she could leave, the doctor gave a packaged speech about how he’d like to do more tests, making it clear for anyone listening that she was leaving against medical advice. She said she understood. He knew she did.
The driver snapped back to the road, forcing down her weary thoughts as she held fast to the yellow lines. The fog grew denser as she approached the gorge. She searched for fairy lights of reflective strips along the pavement, her gaze catching on limbs and signs that changed shape. She swerved to avoid what turned out to be a stick.
There had not been another car for the last ten miles, and she felt the weight of her isolation. She pictured her empty one-bedroom awaiting her, lights still warm, covers thrown back. Something about the black of the night and the thick of the trees could make a hollow feel like a portal, and she had the awful feeling she’d slipped to the wrong side.
She swung her van over the curve of the bridge, straining to hear the roar of the Watauga beneath a guardrail that slid close past her. She clicked off her brights. The fog cover made them useless. When her phone lost signal for the music, she began absently humming an old hymn through clenched teeth. Her boot tapped out a message for nobody.
Rounding the bend towards Hounds Ear, her eyes gave a flash of recognition as her bumper connected with a sudden figure. She flew towards the windshield, at once becoming conscious of the crack and shatter of splintering glass, the reel of her stomach acid, and the screech of her tires. She looked up, her mind taking a million pictures. The impact of the steering wheel pushed a fresh stream of blood from her stomach.
For a moment, for an hour, she lay slumped against the dashboard waiting for something greater to take control. The forest was silent. The broken engine groaned.
When she could move her legs, she pushed open her door and stumbled over her own shaking limbs. Fog mingled indiscernibly with smoke. She made out the shape of her hood, bent like a scrap of plastic, casting a shadow on the sheet of the scene. It reminded her of hand puppets and drywall. Her palms clasped her face cartoonishly, fingers creeping up to the brim of her watering eyes.
Before what was left of her car lay the body of a white-tailed deer. The animal’s neck was broken in at least one place, curved unnaturally to her back like a too-heavy tree limb. A rusty splotch of blood leaked over her bristled coat, darkening to black at the place where her winter fur met her soft, white belly. From where she stood, the driver could make out a rip in the deer’s seam at which viscera poured forth into the humid night.
The driver fell unevenly, catching herself on the wet pavement. In the blindness of her headlights, she gently cradled the deer’s neck, feeling the still-warm fur. She ventured a look into her eyes, but they had been emptied on impact. She clutched the deer to her chest as her vision blurred.
The driver opened herself into the darkness, mouth agape, throat burning with the force of something scorched and old and scorned. She rocked and was rocked by the trees, the wind, and the water, pushing against the pavement and feeling it push back. Her scream ripped through her chest in a line straight down ten layers of mountain shale.
She looked up through the haze all the while, lifting her head and the deer to the stars, to the heavens, to whatever god would put the blood back in the stomach. The only response was from the mountain as it echoed her howling back to her.
Fourteen miles away, U.S. Forest Service personnel in the Grandfather Ranger District made a stunning report. For the first time in over a hundred years, there was record of a catamount heard in Western North Carolina.