At last it looked like the summit could be reached in no time. Although asleep, I still felt energy radiating through my system at this prospect.
As the sunshine pushed aside the clouds, we saw which way the last steps of our path lay. And as the murkiness and dark depression lifted, a curious scene met our eyes.
An old man sat on a rock just before the top. He looked harmless enough, but I held up my hand to signal the others to stop.
The old man was humming a tune I couldn’t identify. A small cat lay at his feet and seemed to be watching him, listening to the music.
I whispered to the others, “Is that the man?”
But, of course, I knew the answer. None of them had truly seen him.
Kimo said, “How can that be him? It’s just a little old man. And it’s a cat yes, but it’s not the big black cat.”
“Canna be him,” said Alta. “The guy look like one 95-pound weakling. No way he coulda pushed me up on top that rock.”
Steve-O added, “And I don’t see an ice cream truck.”
We crouched there watching him. After several minutes he stopped humming. Reaching into a shirt pocket, he took out a little white bag and what looked like an orange pack of chewing gum. He pulled a small white sheet out of the orange pack and began to roll a cigarette, carefully tapping tobacco out of the bag and producing a perfect tube.
Kimo said, “That’s no cigar, but he is rolling his own.”
This seemed so strange. Here, a few feet from finishing our climb up the mountain, we were seeing what we’d pieced together from our observations, but all in a watered-down version. A very small man with a little cat.
“You stay here,” I said. “I’m going to talk to him. If this is some kind of trap and he jumps me, you three maneuver around us to the top.”
The three nodded. “Okay, bruddah,” said Alta, “But I ain’t gonna like leaving you behind. If wasn’t for you, none of us would be here. Who knows when Gabe was going come for us?”
Both Kimo and Steve-O nodded their agreement.
Remembering Gabe’s death and how I could do nothing to prevent it, I said, “It’s been good to know you all, and I’m glad I was able to help. If something happens to me, you take off. Promise?”
They all agreed.
I crawled along a good little way so that if this were the man and the cat waiting to jump us, at least the maniac wouldn’t know the exact position of my friends. When I was a good 20 feet away from them, I stood up.
The man was smoking now, and he’d begun humming again. The cat lay there in rapt attention.
“Hello,” I said, coming to within maybe 10 feet away from him.
“Aloha,” said the old man. “How are you today?”
His smile appeared genuine, but I was skeptical.
“Good,” I said, “I’m doing well. And how about you?”
“Ah,” he said, exhaling a long stream of smoke, “I’ve seen better days. But I’ve lived a good, long life, so I’m not complaining.”
I nodded, searching the area for any kind of suspicious activity. “You live up here?” I asked.
“Yup. I live up here at the top of the mountain,” he said. “It’s sunny all the time. I feel younger just for sitting here.”
He nodded back down toward the valley. “If I’ve got to go some time, I’d rather go out on top. On top, get it? That’s death down there the hard way. Toxic. As I know you know.”
I gave him a quizzical look.
“You do know that, don’t you?” he asked.
“Well, yes, I do. But how do you know that I know?”
“Because you’re coming up from there. And you were one of the harder cases. At absolute rock bottom. As you know, not everyone ends up that far down. Depression hits some harder than others.”
I nodded. This I did know. And the four of us were perfect examples of that range. “But how did you know I was that bad off?”
“My brother tells me about the people down there. Where they are. He’s kind of like director of operations.”
“Your brother. Is he the one that people have trouble knowing? You know. They only see pieces of him if anything. He’s nasty.”
“Yup, you’re right about that,” said the old man. “He’s the blackest kind of black sheep. Horrible from the day he was born. And that cat of his. A bloodthirsty fiend.”
Speaking to the cat at his feet, he said, “ He’s no Marie kitty, is he, Marie kitty?” She purred and rolled over on her back.
“That brother of mine makes Darth Vader look like Mother Teresa.”
I chuckled when he said that.
“It’s good to have your sense of humor back, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Yes, yes it is, I’d lost it. I think I was having some kind of midlife crisis.”
“Oh no, Lanning, it was more than a midlife crisis. You were hurting badly. A midlife crisis, if that’s all it is, is a matter for joking about. Like you go out and buy a sexy car or get a hair transplant. Stuff like that. Genuine depression is a whole different animal.”
“It was pretty horrible,” I said, nodding.
“But now you’re feeling better, right? And when you wake up from this dream, you’re going to be making a spectacular leap right back into the land of the living and loving it.”
“Who is Gabe?” I asked.
“A special person. Not easy to find folks like him. Willing to help, you know?”
“And why is it that your brother tells people that they have to wait for Gabe to help them up the mountain?”
“Well, evil as he is, my brother had respect for Gabe. He figured anyone willing to risk his wrath to help people, well, that meant something, even to his twisted mind.”
“I suppose you know what happened to Gabe,” I said.
“Yes, that was a real shame. People like Gabe aren’t easy to find. It’s bad enough my brother’s cat makes people down there suffer so much. But now he kills a good man.”
“It’s weird,” I said. “Gabe told me he knew your brother’s cat. He said it was tame when you got to know it.”
The old man shook his head. “Gabe was special in that way as well.
He did get along with that cat. And up until the last moment he could control it.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know exactly. But I guess it was his time,” said the old man. “And now it’s yours.”
“Mine?”
“Yes, Lanning. You know how to get out now. And you’ve helped your three friends get out. Please call them over here.”
I trusted him. Turning, I signaled the others and signaled to them to come join us. I introduced them to the old man.
“I’m glad you all got out of there,” he said. “Depression, it’s no way to live. And if you can’t overcome it, you may not survive.”
I explained to my friends what I’d seen happen to Gabe.
“Oh man, Lanning,” said Kimo. “Then I would have been stuck in that cave forever.”
“And me on top that rock,” said Alta.
“And me in the tree,” said Steve-O.
“We owe you,” said Kimo.
Alta and Steve-O nodded their agreement.
“Friends,” I said, “you don’t owe me a thing. It was a group effort. All of us supporting each other.”
“Now you all take good care of yourselves,” said the old man.
They said they would do their best.
“Let’s go, Lanning,” said Kimo.
“I want ice cream,” said Steve-O.
“Yeah,” said Alta. “I could use a beer.”
I laughed. “Sorry, guys, but I can’t go with you.”
“Why?” asked Steve-O.
“Well, it looks like I’ve got a new job,” I said. “It seems I’ll be taking over for Gabe.”
“That’s right,” said the old man. “Lanning here is going to start work helping people find their way up the mountain.”
And when I awoke from that strange dream, that’s what I did, in a way. After I came out of the valley, I spent the last 24 years before I retired working as a counselor for students with disabilities at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Every time I could do something to make their lives a little better, easier, or happier, I felt I’d been able to help them out.
Lanning Lee 