Mandell's Mountain

(Cat Mandell, the main character, went out to look at the land he inherited from his grandmother, with two old men, a lawyer and a banker, who did not tell him his name was on the deed. Cat is angry about that, then he gets angrier when he sees the land!)

Following Norbert's directions, Cat drove east on the main road passing motels, trailer parks, and cabin type houses on each side of the road. As they continued, the country became wilder and wilder. The three men were silent. The asphalt ended at a well graded dirt road.

Cat drove on, slowing down on the dirt road, a cloud of dust billowing up after the car. They continued along the dirt road for almost a mile to another dirt road that ran south into even wilder country. Cat turned right into the dirt road at Norbert's directions. In the distance he could see the bulk of a hill rising above the generally flat ground. He didn't pay any attention to the hill.

The dirt road ran down the center of a little valley of almost level ground, each side of the valley rising gently to hills on either side. The land was overgrown with trees and brush.

Without warning, the dirt road dead ended at a clearing full of tree stumps and thick brush. Beyond, the hill rose in a sort of ragged, barren, eroded, ugly grandeur. Gullies of all sizes furrowed the slope of the hill facing the three men. Scattered trees towered above thick brush on the slope of the ugly, deeply eroded hill.

The dirt road continued through the tree stumps in a wide turn-around circle. Cat stopped, looking around a little uncertainly, then at Norbert beside him. Norbert, looking out of his side window said, "Well, this is it."

"What!?" Cat exclaimed in amazement. He had seldom seen such an unattractive piece of property, and he had seen some real junk land from the seat of a bulldozer.

Norbert turned to Cat with a doubtful, uncertain look on his clean shaven lawyer's face. "Your land starts about here, Mr. Mandell, an' continues on either side, includes that hill and extends beyond it. The four sections are roughly mile squares with the hill just about in the center of the four sections."

Cat sat silently in stunned astonishment. The land he could see was nothing but a wasteland of erosion, gullies, scrub brush and trees. Gritting his teeth to control his rising fury, Cat asked, "Can we get closer to the hill?"

"Yes," Norbert replied, staring out of his window again. "There's a rough dirt road just ahead, to the right."

Cat drove slowly on, around the turn-around circle to two pot-hole filled tracks in the dirt. Turning into the tracks, he drove slowly forward, the big car bouncing up and down and sideways, throwing the three men about.

Creeping along at five miles an hour, Cat followed the two tracks through the tree stumps to the edge of a cliff where the tracks turned left along the edge of the cliff. Cat stopped, set the car's brake and, leaving the engine running, got out and walked to the edge of the cliff where he looked down at a deep, water filled hole that seemed to circle the hill, left and right, like an ugly, big moat. The cliff edge he was standing on, and the slope of the hill across the slimy, water filled ditch was deeply furrowed with ugly gashes of erosion. Except for the trees, brush, and slimy water, the scene before Cat was a moonscape without a moonscape's awesome beauty. Household trash of all kinds, and old, rusted cars were scatted all over the area. The scene was repellant and an affront to the eyes to such a degree that it enraged Cat. He had seen some unlovely country in his time, but this was as bad as he had ever looked at.

When he got back in the car Cat's face was white with anger. He didn't trust himself to speak, so he drove slowly on along the bumpy tracks, following the cliff's edge for a mile or more where the cliff ended. The tracks continued across a land bridge in the slimy water, to the base of the hill, then on around the hill to the left and right. Cat crossed the land bridge then turned right and drove slowly around the base of the hill, a drive that took almost an hour because of the bumpy car tracks in the dirt. The land was just as ugly on the other side of the hill: nothing but gaping, eroded gullies, scattered trees, and thick brush. The deep, stagnant-water filled pit extended across the base of the hill for about three hundred feet on each side of the land bridge.

Cat couldn't tell how high the hill was, but it looked awful high to him, rounding up in a smooth curve to a projection on top.

The land surrounding the hill was mostly level, thickly overgrown with trees and brush, and rose gently on all sides to the higher hills of the walls of the little valley. The panorama beyond the eroded, ugly hill Cat now owned, was splendid, scenic land and as lovely and as beautiful as any land Cat had ever seen. His land was a desolate, repulsive sore on the gorgeous skin of earth. Beyond, on every side of the ugly hill, as far as Cat could see, the trees had been logged off, leaving unsightly tree stumps and thick brush showing through the second growth trees.

Cat felt sad, enraged, bitter, and thoroughly depressed. He couldn't imagine how Ma Allard could have bought such worthless, ugly, blighted land even for one hundred dollars an acre? He couldn't imagine either, why Sewell would want to take such an eyesore back?

Stopping the car, Cat got out and climbed the gentle slope of the hill for a ways, where he stopped and looked around. He was too sick, mad, and bitter to notice much, his eyes were turned inward searching for an answer to why Ma Allard would want to keep such an utterly worthless, repulsive, piece of land?