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THE LINK
On Mountains and Beasts Nicholas Dundorf
My dad was already married to the mountain when we arrived. The ceremony had occurred when he
was a child, after his beast of a father had hit him a little too long, a few too many times. The world was unkind, unstable, and the pine-peppered rock was consistent. It was consistent in the same way that the discourse of choke points and lines of sight would pervade our family dinners to come. The brutality and desolation of the winters on the mountain were legendary, but practical hardship was not a concern for my father. Even the local human dangers, a power-hungry sheriff or reports of armed-bandits-in-hiding only vindicated his worldview, our worldview. What terrified my father was our coming annihilation. This was a topic of frequent dinner table discussion.
The Bomb was coming any day became the computers would break; be-
came the plague is coming; became something just isn’t right; became MK ULTRA; became COINTELPRO; became what about the oil; became the sea levels rising; became that disease; became drone strikes; became lizard people; became there’s something just so sick about it all; became Any day now.
Any day I could ask myself why, despite my best efforts, firearms proliferat-
ed in my closet like the flowers of the potted plant on the windowsill. The guns sprout out of pots of ammunition until their trunks are obscured behind a now-too-baggy suit that I wore to my father’s second wedding. The guns were cousin to the two modest 55-gallon drums of rice and beans in the basement. In their company were sealed packages of space blankets, water filters, and medical equipment.
My mountain of supplies helps me sleep at night. When I wake up, get
ready for work, there’s only a tingle at the base of my neck. It turns to an itch as I get to the job, talking over the top of my screen to elderly women or technologically incompetent men who are too confident to let their wives know that they couldn’t find the ethernet port. I have mastered the customer service voice and the ability to smile. Smile, no matter what they spit in my face.
Now the khaki-clad manager occasionally slips by, and we discuss “the state of affairs.” We’re on the
same page, according to him. Barrels and packages rated for five-to-ten years are something we share in common. He confides and the itch becomes a sharpening, becomes a jolt of electricity from ass to neck. Something just isn’t right.
“It’s a long time coming,” he says. He says they’ve let too many Muslims over, that the liberals are going
to send the country into chaos. He says, when shit hits the fan, the liberals have it coming. He says, can you work through the weekend? Christmas is coming and we need all hands on deck. I take lunch in my car: a peanut butter sandwich, a tupperware of carrot sticks, and a plastic baggy of screaming into the steering wheel.
Photo Nicholas Dundorf T HEL INK NE W SPA P ER .C A
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