Seven Days With The Mountain Man

A lost girl is trained by a Mountain Man to stand up to her abusive stepfather.

Darlene was once a little princess, ordained by the love of her parents. But a divorce and remarriage, began to wear at her tiara, tarnishing it with the rusted stains of abuse at the hands of her stepfather. Her little sister, Imogene, had it worse. He abused her too, but differently. Nowadays, the mother never seemed to notice or care.

So it was no shock to Darlene that they didn’t come looking for her immediately after she went missing. It was the summer of her thirteenth year and the stepdad had insisted on taking them high into the mountains on a camping trip. Darlene had wandered off and gotten lost. 

When she wasn’t back that night, her mother began to worry and the stepdad got angry. Miles away, Darlene bed down for the night in the soft newborn pine-needle bed beneath the bearer’s bough. But she did not sleep. She worried what fate awaited her little sister with her not there to distract him. She had never stood up to him. She could never do that.

Day one. As the mother and step-dad searched, talked with authorities and mounted the rescue effort, Darlene was making a mistake. Instead of heading downhill to the stream, which would lead her back to camp, she went upward, so as to get a better view of the landscape. She walked uphill for miles, the distance much greater than she thought before she began. Soon, she was out of the trees and climbing over jagged boulders. A fog was settling in around her, but she suddenly realized it wasn’t fog, but clouds. 

Back at the campground, a helicopter was lifting off to scan the area. It flew for miles back and forth across the mountainside upward toward the clouds. But once inside the fog, there was not enough visibility to warrant a search. 

As night settled, teams of flashlight-bearing volunteers combing the area near the campground, Darlene was discovering a shelter some fifteen miles away.

Day two. She woke up with a yawn and stretch. She had slept well. She had found an old cabin and took refuge there, sleeping on a bed of furs through the night. But as the sun crested over the eastern mountain ridge, she quickly realized the cabin was not abandoned. She jumped from the bed to survey her surroundings; a furnished living area, bed, food storage and eating area. This was someone’s home. She bolted through the front door and stumbled going down the step, falling at the feet of her host.

Meanwhile, her mother and stepdad, with little Imogene in tow, were speaking with the head of search and rescue, a man named Cruz.

“If she went up the mountain, she could have ended up at the mountain man’s cabin,” Cruz was telling them.

“Mountain Man?” the mother asked. Cruz nodded.

“He’s been up there for years, his father and grandfather before him too. If she went there, he will bring her back. It’s happened before. And that’s our best hope.”

That hope was true, but also false. Darlene had been granted another night’s stay at the home of the Mountain Man. But as it turned out, the more Darlene spoke to him, the less he cared to take her down the mountain to her mother and stepfather. He instead, had made her a soup, bundled her in his best furs and sat by the fire with her and listened as she told him all about her family. She told him about her stepdad, about how he hit her and even what he did to her sister.

“It’s not right,” the gruff man finally said when Darlene was finished. She nodded and sighed as she gazed into the fire. The Mountain Man continued.

“You need to stand up to him.”

“I can’t,” Darlene insisted. The Mountain Man got up from his chair, his oversized body slow beneath his bushy beard. He turned to the girl and offered her a goodnight.

“Sleep well tonight,” he had said. “We will start tomorrow.”

“Start what?” she asked. But the man was gone, out the front door with his rifle to run his traps in the night.

Day three. The Mountain Man woke Darlene before the sun and dressed her in doeskin boots he had just made that hour. She followed him out the door and down the backside of the mountain, into the boggy forest that was home to his traps.

“Today I’ll show you how to set traps,” the Mountain Man explained as they hiked down the hillside. Darlene did not argue, she thought of her sister, but still was not ready to be found. Not yet.

Day Four. As Cruz finished a relay through the walkie-talkie radio, he turned to Darlene’s mother and said, “She’s not at the Mountain Man’s cabin. But neither is he.”

“What does that mean?” asked the mother.

“It could mean she is with him somewhere,” Cruz said. “Or that she’s not there.”

Meanwhile, Darlene walked with the Mountain Man through the lush undergrowth of the forest as he scoured the brush in search of edibles.

“Today,” he said, “I will show you how to find the right plants.” Darlene smiled and together they gathered bindles of berries and foliage. When they had arrived back to the cabin to cook it up, the search and rescue team had already gone.

Day five. Darlene held a rifle, the Mountain Man behind her pointing out the deer she would harvest. She pulled the trigger and shot it down. As they walked to the kill, the Mountain Man said to her, “Today, I will show you how to kill and dress the animal.”

Her mother cried that night. She cried so much, she fell asleep at seven in the evening and was not witness to the atrocities committed on her youngest daughter by her husband. Darlene felt it too, even from her fur bed twenty miles and three-thousand vertical feet away. She thought about the deer.

Day Six. “Today I will show you how to chop the wood,” said the Mountain Man as he handed Darlene an axe. Together, they chopped logs to kindling and stacked it under the woodshed.

The rescue efforts were waning, the afternoon rains made it difficult. Darlene would not be found. But the Mountain Man said that morning, “Today, I will show you how to get home.” Darlene bowed to him and thanked him. 

She began the hike down the mountain, leaving the company of her teacher where the tree-line made his border to the outside world. She embraced him, thanked him. He gave her an antler-bone knife and let her keep the doeskin boots he’d made for her.

As she walked alone now, she thought of all she had learned and how she would use it to stand up to her stepfather.

Day Seven. Imogene was the first to see her arrive at the rescue headquarters. Darlene had appeared at one o’clock in the morning, out the plate-glass windows that fronted the quiet street. Her mother and sister embraced her at the sliding doors. They fell to the ground in a giant hug, tears and laughter emerging triumphant. 

Weeks later. When Darlene murdered her stepfather, it was no short task. First, she had taken him prisoner with his own hunting rifle, a clever trap she had set in the home-office where he had often taken Imogene. “Today,” she had said to him, “I will show you how to set traps.”

Then she poisoned him with just enough deadly foliage to keep him weak, sick and unable to retaliate. “Now,” she said, “I will show you how to find the right plants.”

Next, she shot him in the heart with the rifle. But not before saying, “I will show you how to kill and dress the animal.”

When she chopped his corpse into quarters she said, “Today, I will show you how to chop the wood.” 

And finally, when she had buried him in the ground, far from her home, Darlene offered only this simple eulogy, “Today, I will show you how to get home.”