chapter 69

ZAVION

“That’s it, isn’t it?” asked Zavion.

“Yup. Mount Mansfield,” said Henry.

The mountain peak stretched across the golden horizon, long like Zavion’s new scarf.

“It’s such a long mountain range. I didn’t expect that.”

“The story goes,” said Henry, “that it used to have a taller peak, more like a normal old mountain, straight up and down, and Native Americans would climb it to find a private place to wait when they knew they were about to die.”

“You know the legend?” said Jake.

“You told it to me, Jake,” said Henry.

Jake laughed. “Right.”

“Like, a hundred times.”

“Okay, okay—”

“So one day,” said Henry, “a chief tried to make the journey to the top. He was hurt, though, and couldn’t really climb, and he died before he reached the summit. God carved his profile into the mountain. That’s why Mansfield looks like a face.”

A face—

“Grandmother Mountain has a face carved into it too,” Zavion said. He looked back at Papa. “We decided it did, anyway, didn’t we?” Papa nodded.

“What is Grandmother Mountain?” asked Henry.

“I’ve heard of Grandfather Mountain,” said Jake.

“They’re near each other,” said Papa. “Grandfather is part of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and Grandmother is across the valley. Pioneers thought they saw the face of an old man in one of the cliffs of Grandfather, and so they changed its Cherokee name, Tanawha, to Grandfather.”

“My mama told the story that Grandmother Mountain was a wanderer,” continued Zavion. “She never could settle, and moved from valley to valley, from river to stream, until she got lost one day, and she was scared. But in the morning, she saw a face come into focus as the sun came up, and she fell in love. It was Grandfather Mountain. And so she put down her roots and stayed forever.

“My mama was born near Grandmother Mountain,” finished Zavion. “And when Papa painted the mural of it in my room, he painted the face of a woman in its highest cliff.”

“An old grandma?” said Henry.

“No,” said Zavion. “He painted my mama’s face.”

The truck was quiet after that. Zavion studied Mount Mansfield. It did look like the face of a man. The long face of a man staring up into the sky. Zavion traced the trail lines on the map from the base to the different summit points, traced the veins of the man’s face. To the chin. To the nose. To the forehead. Up the winding line of one, then back down and up the line of another.

The truck mimicked his hand as it, too, wound up and down the dirt road, taking them into a new country.