“She must have glimpsed something slithering in the weeds,” Mother would say when she told the story, “because she chucked Grandpa clean off.” There was an old set of harrows behind him. Grandpa flew into them and a disc caved in his forehead.
“她一定是瞥见野草丛里有什么东西在动，”母亲讲起这个故事时说，“因为她把爷爷甩了下来。”爷爷身后有一把旧耙子，他扑了上去，前额因此留下了一个圆凹印。
When Grandpa was a younger man, he had spent a hot summer on the mountain, riding the white mare he used for cowboy work. She was a tall horse, calmed with age. To hear Mother tell it that mare was steady as a rock, and Grandpa didn’t pay much attention when he rode her. He’d drop the knotted reins if he felt like it, maybe to pick a burr out of his boot or sweep off his red cap and wipe his face with his shirtsleeve. The mare stood still. But tranquil as she was, she was terrified of snakes.
当爷爷还是个年轻的小伙子时，他曾骑着牛仔放牧专用的白色母马，在山上度过了一个炎热的夏天。那匹马很高大，上了年纪，性情日渐温顺。听母亲说那匹母马稳如磐石，爷爷骑她的时候也不太注意。如果他愿意，他会放下打结的缰绳，从靴子里挑出毛刺，或者摘掉红帽子，用衬衫袖子擦脸。母马会站着一动不动。尽管她如此平静，却很害怕蛇。
What exactly it was that shattered Grandpa’s skull changed every time I heard the story. In some tellings it was harrows, but in others it was a rock. I suspect nobody knows for sure. There weren’t any witnesses. The blow rendered Grandpa unconscious, and he doesn’t remember much until Grandma found him on the porch, soaked to his boots in blood.
到底是什么东西撞破了爷爷的头，每次我听到的版本都不一样。有人说是耙子，有人说是石头。我想没有谁确切知道，也没有谁亲眼看见。这一击使爷爷不省人事，之后发生了什么他一概不知，直到奶奶发现他浑身是血躺在门廊上。
There’s a story I was told when I was young, told so many times and from such an early age, I can’t remember who told it to me first. It was about Grandpa-down-the-hill and how he got the dent above his right temple.
小时候我曾多次听人讲过一个故事，那时我尚年幼，不记得是谁先给我讲的。故事与山下爷爷右太阳穴上的凹痕有关。
Nobody knows how he came to be on that porch.
没人知道他是怎么来到门廊的。
From the upper pasture to the house is a distance of a mile — rocky terrain with steep, unforgiving hills, which Grandpa could not have managed in his condition. But there he was. Grandma heard a faint scratching at the door, and when she opened it there was Grandpa, lying in a heap, his brains dripping out of his head. She rushed him to town and they fitted him with a metal plate.
从山上的牧场到家有一英里的距离——岩石地形，山丘陡峭无情——在爷爷当时的状态下不可能办到。但他办到了。奶奶听到一阵微弱的抓门声，当她打开门，爷爷蜷缩成一团躺在那里，他的脑浆正从脑袋里滴出来。她急忙把他送到镇上，他们给他安装了一块金属板。
After Grandpa was home and recovering, Grandma went looking for the white mare. She walked all over the mountain but found her tied to the fence behind the corral, tethered with an intricate knot that nobody used except her father, Lott.
爷爷回家养病后，奶奶去寻找那匹白色母马。她翻山越岭，却发现马就拴在畜栏后面的篱笆上，还打了一个复杂的结。除了她的父亲洛特，没人会打这样的结。
Sometimes, when I was at Grandma’s eating the forbidden cornflakes and milk, I’d ask Grandpa to tell me how he got off the mountain. He always said he didn’t know. Then he’d take a deep breath — long and slow, like he was settling into a mood rather than a story — and he’d tell the whole tale from start to finish. Grandpa was a quiet man, near silent. You could pass a whole afternoon clearing fields with him and never hear ten words strung together. Just “Yep” and “Not that one” and “I reckon so.”
有时我去奶奶家吃在我们家属于禁忌食品的玉米片和牛奶，便会让爷爷讲讲他是怎么下山的。他总是说不知道，然后慢慢深吸一口长气——像是在酝酿情绪，而不是讲故事——从头到尾把整个故事讲一遍。爷爷是个安静的人，沉默寡言。和他一起清理田地共度一个下午，你也从来听不到他连续说十个词。他只会说“是的”“不是那个”“我想是的”。
But ask how he got down the mountain that day and he’d talk for ten minutes, even though all he remembered was lying in the field, unable to open his eyes, while the hot sun dried the blood on his face.
但如果问他那天是怎么下山的，他会说上十分钟。尽管他只记得自己躺在田野里，眼睛睁不开，火辣辣的太阳把他脸上的血都晒干了。
“But I tell you this,” Grandpa would say, taking off his hat and running his fingers over the dent in his skull. “I heard things while I was lyin’ in them weeds. Voices, and they was talking. I recognized one, because it was Grandpa Lott. He was a tellin’ somebody that Albert’s son was in trouble. It was Lott sayin’ that, I know it sure as I know I’m standing here.” Grandpa’s eyes would shine a bit, then he’d say, “Only thing is, Lott had been dead near ten years.”
“但我告诉你，”爷爷会这样说，摘下帽子，用手指摩挲着脑袋上的凹陷，“我躺在杂草丛中时，听到了一些东西。人的声音，他们在交谈。我认出其中一个人的声音，因为那是你的曾外祖父洛特。他正在告诉别人，说阿尔伯特的儿子遇到麻烦了。说话的人正是洛特，这个我敢百分百肯定。”爷爷的眼睛会一亮，接着说，“可是，洛特已经去世快十年了。”
The dent was unsightly, a two-inch crater in his forehead. As a child, when I looked at it, sometimes I imagined a tall doctor in a white coat banging on a sheet of metal with a hammer. In my imagination the doctor used the same corrugated sheets of tin that Dad used to roof hay sheds.
凹痕很难看，在他前额留下了一个两英寸深的坑。小时候我看着它，有时会想象一个穿白大褂的高个子医生拿锤子敲打一块金属板。在我的想象中，医生用的是和爸爸盖干草棚屋顶一样的瓦楞铁皮。
This part of the story called for reverence. Mother and Grandma both loved to tell it but I liked Mother’s telling best. Her voice hushed in the right places. It was angels, she would say, a small tear falling to the corner of her smile. Your great-grandpa Lott sent them, and they carried Grandpa down the mountain.
故事的这一部分让人心生敬意。母亲和奶奶都喜欢讲，但我喜欢听母亲的讲述。她的声音会在适当的地方低下来。那是天使，她会这样说，一滴泪珠滑落到她微笑的嘴角上，是你曾外祖父洛特派来的天使，将你的爷爷送下山来。
The car crusher was coming. I suppose he wanted to remove that last fuel tank, but I can’t imagine what possessed him to light his torch without first draining the fuel. I don’t know how far he got, how many of the iron belts he managed to sever, before a spark from the torch made it into the tank. But I know Dad was standing next to the car, his body pressed against the frame, when the tank exploded.
汽车粉碎机来了。我猜他是想将最后一个汽油箱取出来，但我无法想象，他为何没等抽干汽油就点燃了割炬。我不知道他干了多少活，割断了多少根铁箍，直到割炬的火花迸入了油箱。但是我知道，油箱爆炸时，爸爸正站在车旁，身体紧靠着车架。
I don’t know why Dad was alone on the mountain that day.
我不知道那天爸爸为什么独自在山上。
But that was only sometimes. Usually I saw something else. Proof that my ancestors walked that peak, watching and waiting, angels at their command.
但我只是偶尔会看到这些。通常我会看到别的，看到一些证据，证明我的祖先曾走过山顶，守候着，等待着，众天使听候他们的派遣。
He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, leather gloves and a welding shield. His face and fingers took the brunt of the blast. The heat from the explosion melted through the shield as if it were a plastic spoon. The lower half of his face liquefied: the fire consumed plastic, then skin, then muscle. The same process was repeated with his fingers — the leather gloves were no match for the inferno that passed over and through them — then tongues of flame licked across his shoulders and chest. When he crawled away from the flaming wreckage, I imagine he looked more like a corpse than a living man.
他穿着长袖衬衫，戴着皮手套和焊接防护罩。他的脸和手指在爆炸中首当其冲。爆炸产生的热量让防护罩像塑料勺一样熔化了。他的下半张脸液化了：火先吞噬了塑料，接着是皮肤，然后是肌肉。手指也一样——皮手套根本抵挡不住吞噬一切的地狱之火——火舌舔过他的肩膀和胸膛。当他从燃烧的残骸中爬出来时，我猜他看起来更像一具尸体，而不是一个活人。
It is unfathomable to me that he was able to move, let alone drag himself a quarter mile through fields and over ditches. If ever a man needed angels, it was that man. But against all reason he did it, and — as his father had years before — huddled outside his wife’s door, unable to knock.
在我看来，他能活动已经不可思议，更不必说拖着身体穿过田野和沟渠，走了四分之一英里的路。如果有谁需要天使，那就是他了。尽管一切违背常理，他还是做到了——和他父亲多年前一样——蜷缩在妻子的门外，无法敲门。
My cousin Kylie was working for my mother that day, filling vials of essential oil. A few other women worked nearby, weighing dried leaves or straining tinctures. Kylie heard a soft tap on the back door, as if someone was bumping it with their elbow. She opened it but has no memory of what was on the other side. “I’ve blocked it out,” she would later tell me. “I can’t remember what I saw. I only remember what I thought, which was, He has no skin.”
那天，我的表妹凯莉在帮母亲干活，将精油装入小瓶。附近还有几个妇女在工作，给干树叶称重，过滤酊剂。凯莉听到后门传来一阵轻微的敲击声，好像有人在用胳膊肘撞门。她打开了后门，但已经不记得门外的情景。“我封锁了这段记忆，”她后来告诉我说，“我不记得自己看到了什么。我只记得当时心想，他没有皮肤。”
My father was carried to the couch. Rescue Remedy — the homeopathic for shock — was poured into the lipless cavity that had been his mouth. They gave him lobelia and skullcap for the pain, the same mixture Mother had given Luke years before. Dad choked on the medicine. He couldn’t swallow. He’d inhaled the fiery blast, and his insides were charred.
父亲被抬到沙发上。急救药物——针对休克的顺势疗法——被灌进他嘴唇都烧没了的嘴里。和多年前给卢克治疗烧伤一样，母亲给他用半边莲和美黄芩止痛。爸爸被药噎住了。他无法下咽。他吸进了炽热的火焰，内脏也被烧焦了。
Mother tried to take him to the hospital, but between rasping breaths he whispered that he’d rather die than see a doctor. The authority of the man was such that she gave way.
母亲想送他去医院，但在急促的呼吸间隙，他低声说宁愿死也不去看医生。那个男人的权威如此之大，让她屈服了。
They nearly lost him many times that first night. His breathing would slow, then stop, and my mother — and the heavenly host of women who worked for her — would fly about, adjusting chakras and tapping pressure points, anything to coax his brittle lungs to resume their rattle.
第一晚，好几次他差点就不行了。他的呼吸会放缓，然后骤停，而我的母亲——还有那些为她工作的妇女——忙得团团转，调整脉轮，敲击穴位，用尽一切办法让他脆弱的肺恢复空气的进出。
The dead skin was gently cut away and he was slathered in salve — the same salve Mother had used on Luke’s leg years before — from his waist to the tip of his head, then bandaged. Mother gave him ice cubes to suck on, hoping to hydrate him, but the inside of his mouth and throat were so badly burned, they absorbed no liquid, and without lips or muscles he couldn’t hold the ice in his mouth. It would slide down his throat and choke him.
死皮被轻轻地切掉，他从腰部到头顶被涂上厚厚的药膏——和多年前母亲涂在卢克腿上的药膏一样——然后包扎好。母亲给他冰块让他含着，希望能给他补充水分，但他的嘴巴和喉咙内部严重烧伤，无法吸收液体，而且没有了嘴唇和肌肉，他含不住冰块。冰块会滑下他的喉咙，让他窒息。
That morning was when Audrey called me. His heart had stopped twice during the night, she told me. It would probably be his heart that killed him, assuming his lungs didn’t give out first. Either way, Audrey was sure he’d be dead by midday.
奥黛丽就是那天早上打电话给我的。她告诉我，他的心脏曾在夜里两次停止跳动。即便肺部没有衰竭，心脏也可能会让他没命。不管怎样，奥黛丽确信他挺不过中午了。
I called Nick. I told him I had to go to Idaho for a few days, for a family thing, nothing serious. He knew I wasn’t telling him something — I could hear the hurt in his voice that I wouldn’t confide in him — but I put him out of my mind the moment I hung up the phone.
我打电话给尼克，告诉他家里有事，我需要回爱达荷州待几天，也不是什么大事。他知道我没有告诉他实情——我能从他的声音里听出来，因为我不信任他，他很受伤——但一挂上电话，我便不再考虑他的事了。
“You should come home,” she said, and her voice broke. “I don’t think the strep will matter tomorrow.”
“你应该回家，”她说，声音哽咽，“到明天我觉得链球菌也不重要了。”
I don’t recall the scenery from the drive. My eyes barely registered the patchwork of corn and potato fields, or the dark hills covered in pine. Instead I saw my father, the way he’d looked the last time I’d seen him, that twisted expression. I remembered the searing pitch of my voice as I’d screamed at him.
我记不得开车时的景色了。我的眼睛几乎无法注意到一片片错落有致的玉米地和土豆田，也看不见松林覆盖的黝黑的群山。我看到的是父亲，他还是一副上次见面时扭曲的表情。我想起朝他高声尖叫时我刺耳的声音。
I stood, keys in hand, hand on the doorknob, and hesitated. The strep. What if I gave it to Dad? I had been taking the penicillin for nearly three days. The doctor had said that after twenty-four hours I would no longer be contagious, but then he was a doctor, and I didn’t trust him.
我站在那里，手拿车钥匙，握着门把手，犹豫着。链球菌，万一我把它传染给爸爸怎么办？我已经服用青霉素将近三天了。医生说，二十四小时后我就不会传染别人了，但他是个医生，我不相信他。
I waited a day. I took several times the prescribed dose of penicillin, then called Mother and asked what I should do.
我等了一天。我服用了处方剂量几倍的青霉素，然后打电话给母亲，问我该怎么办。
Like Kylie, I don’t remember what I saw when I first looked at my father. I know that when Mother had removed the gauze that morning, she’d found that his ears were so burned, the skin so glutinous, they had fused to the syrupy tissue behind them. When I walked through the back door, the first thing I saw was Mother grasping a butter knife, which she was using to pry my father’s ears from his skull. I can still picture her gripping the knife, her eyes fixed, focused, but where my father should be, there’s an aperture in my memory.
和凯莉一样，我也不记得第一眼见到父亲时的情景了。我知道那天早上母亲摘下纱布时，发现他的耳朵烧伤严重，皮肤很黏，已经和后面的糖浆状组织粘在了一起。当我走进后门，首先映入眼帘的是母亲手拿一把黄油刀，正用它把父亲的耳朵从头骨里撬出来。我仍清楚地记得她手握刀子两眼专注的样子，但关于我父亲的样子，我的记忆出现了一个空洞。
The smell in the room was powerful — of charred flesh, and of comfrey, mullein and plantain. I watched Mother and Audrey change his remaining bandages. They began with his hands. His fingers were slimy, coated in a pale ooze that was either melted skin or pus. His arms were not burned and neither were his shoulders or back, but a thick swath of gauze ran over his stomach and chest. When they removed it, I was pleased to see large patches of raw, angry skin. There were a few craters from where the flames must have concentrated in jets. They gave off a pungent smell, like meat gone to rot, and were filled with white pools.
房间里气味浓烈——烧焦的肉、紫草、毛蕊花和车前草的气味混合在一起。我看着母亲和奥黛丽给他换剩余的绷带。她们从他的手开始。他的手指黏糊糊的，裹着一层灰白的泥状物，不是熔化的皮肤就是脓。他的手臂没有烧伤，肩膀和背部也没事，但腹部和胸部裹了厚厚一层纱布。她们把纱布拿掉时，我很欣慰地看到里面还有大片粗糙发红的皮肤。那里有几个火山口样的伤口，一定是火苗集中燃烧的地方。它们散发出一股刺鼻的气味，就像腐烂的肉，里面全是白色的脓水。
Dad hadn’t swallowed anything — no food, no water — for nearly three days. Mother called a hospital in Utah and begged them to give her an IV. “I need to hydrate him,” she said. “He’ll die if he doesn’t get water.”
三天以来，爸爸滴水未进——没吃东西，也没喝水。母亲打电话给犹他州的一家医院，请求他们给她一套静脉注射器。“我需要给他补水，”她说，“没有水，他会死的。”
Mother was beside herself. In a final, desperate act, she gave Dad an enema, pushing the tube in as far as she dared, trying to flush enough liquid through his rectum to keep him alive. She had no idea if it would work — if there was even an organ in that part of the body to absorb the water — but it was the only orifice that hadn’t been scorched.
母亲快疯了。最后，绝望中，她给爸爸灌肠，尽力将管子插进去，试图把足够多的液体灌进他的直肠，让他活命。她不知道这么做有没有用——不知道那部分身体有没有能吸收水分的器官——但那是他全身唯一没有被烧焦的入口了。
But it was his face that visited my dreams that night. He still had a forehead and nose. The skin around his eyes and partway down his cheeks was pink and healthy. But below his nose, nothing was where it should be. Red, mangled, sagging, it looked like a plastic drama mask that had been held too close to a candle.
但那天晚上我梦见了他的脸。他还有前额和鼻子，眼睛周围的皮肤和脸颊下半部分还呈健康的粉红色。但是鼻子下面该有的一切都没有了。红红的，支离破碎，下垂着，看起来像一个离蜡烛太近的塑料假面。
The doctor said he would send a chopper that very minute but Mother said no. “Then I can’t help you,” the doctor said. “You’re going to kill him, and I want no part of it.”
医生说他马上派直升机过来接病人，但母亲不答应。“那我帮不了你，”医生说，“你这样他会没命的，我可不想为此负责。”
I slept on the living room floor that night so I could be there, in the room, when we lost him. I awoke several times to gasps and flights of movements and murmurs that it had happened again, he’d stopped breathing.
那天晚上我睡在起居室的地板上，万一他不行了，我就在房间里，可以第一时间出现在他身边。夜里我几次醒来，被喘息、四处奔忙和嘀嘀咕咕的动静惊醒：又来了，他停止了呼吸。
Once, an hour before dawn, his breath left him and I was sure it was the end: he was dead and would not be raised. I rested my hand on a small patch of bandages while Audrey and Mother rushed around me, chanting and tapping. The room was not at peace, or maybe it’s just that I wasn’t. For years my father and I had been locked in conflict, an endless battle of wills. I thought I had accepted it, accepted our relationship for what it was. But in that moment, I realized how much I’d been counting on that conflict coming to an end, how deeply I believed in a future in which we would be a father and daughter at peace.
黎明前一小时，他又停止了呼吸，我确信这次结束了：他死了，不会再活过来了。我将手放在他身上的一小块绷带上，奥黛丽和母亲在我身边跑来跑去，阵阵吟诵，敲敲打打。房间里一点也不安宁，也许只是我心神不宁。多年来，我和父亲一直冲突不断，进行着永无休止的意志的较量。我以为我已经接受这一点，接受了我们那样的关系。但那一刻，我意识到我多么期望能结束我们之间的冲突，多么坚信将来我们会成为一对和平相处的父女。
I watched his chest, prayed for him to breathe, but he didn’t. Then too much time had passed. I was preparing to move away, to let my mother and sister say goodbye, when he coughed — a brittle, rasping hack that sounded like crepe paper being crinkled. Then, like Lazarus reanimated, his chest began to rise and fall.
我看着他的胸膛，祈祷他能再次呼吸，但他没有。很长时间过去了，我正准备离开，让母亲和姐姐前来告别，这时他咳嗽了一声——一声沙哑、粗涩的轻咳，听上去像绉纸被弄皱的声音。接着，像拉撒路[15]复活一样，他的胸部开始起伏。【注：[15]Lazarus，《圣经·约翰福音》中记载的人物，他病危时没等到耶稣的救治就死了，但耶稣断言他将复活。四天后拉撒路果然从山洞里走出来，证明了耶稣的神迹。】
Tyler flew in from Purdue. He took over for Mother, changing the bandages on Dad’s fingers every morning, scraping away the layers of skin and muscle that had necrotized during the night. It didn’t hurt. The nerves were dead. “I scraped off so many layers,” Tyler told me, “I was sure that one morning I’d hit bone.”
泰勒从普渡坐飞机赶来。他接替了母亲的工作，每天早上给爸爸的手指换绷带，刮掉夜里坏死的皮肤和肌肉。神经已经坏死，并不疼。“我刮掉了那么多层，”泰勒告诉我说，“某天早上肯定会刮到骨头。”
I told Mother I was leaving. Dad might survive, I said. And if he does, strep can’t be what kills him.
我对母亲说我得走了。爸爸会活下来，我说。如果他活下来，不能让链球菌再害死他。
Dad’s fingers began to bow, bending unnaturally backward at the joint. This was because the tendons had begun to shrivel and contract. Tyler tried to curl Dad’s fingers, to elongate the tendons and prevent the deformity from becoming permanent, but Dad couldn’t bear the pain.
爸爸的手指开始扭曲，关节处不自然地向后弯。这是因为肌腱开始萎缩。泰勒试着卷曲爸爸的手指，以拉伸肌腱，防止永久性畸形，但爸爸忍受不了疼痛。
Mother’s business came to a halt. The women who worked for her stopped concocting tinctures and bottling oils and instead made vats of salve — a new recipe, of comfrey, lobelia and plantain, that Mother had concocted specifically for my father. Mother smeared the salve over Dad’s upper body twice a day. I don’t remember what other treatments they used, and I don’t know enough about the energy work to give an account. I know they went through seventeen gallons of salve in the first two weeks, and that Mother was ordering gauze in bulk.
母亲的生意陷入停顿。为她工作的妇女不再调制酊剂、给精油装瓶，转而制作桶装药膏——母亲专门为父亲调制的一种新配方，由紫草、半边莲和车前草制成。母亲每日两次用药膏涂满爸爸的上半身。我不记得她们是否还用过其他疗法，我对能量疗法也不够了解，无法给出解释。我只知道她们在前两周就用掉了十七加仑的药膏，母亲还订购了大批纱布。
I came back to Buck’s Peak when I was sure the strep was gone. I sat by Dad’s bed, dripping teaspoons of water into his mouth with a medical dropper and feeding him pureed vegetables as if he were a toddler. He rarely spoke. The pain made it difficult for him to focus; he could hardly get through a sentence before his mind surrendered to it. Mother offered to buy him pharmaceuticals, the strongest analgesics she could get her hands on, but he declined them. This was the Lord’s pain, he said, and he would feel every part of it.
在确信链球菌已经消失后，我又回到了巴克峰。我坐在爸爸的床边，用滴管将几茶匙水滴到他嘴里，喂他吃蔬菜泥，仿佛他还是个蹒跚学步的孩子。他很少说话。疼痛使他难以集中注意力；不等他说完一句话，他的脑子就让步了。母亲提议去给他买药，买她能买到的最强劲的止痛药，但他拒绝了。这是上帝的痛苦，他说，他要全部感受到。
While I was away, I had scoured every video store within a hundred miles until I’d found the complete box set of The Honeymooners. I held it up for Dad. He blinked to show me he’d seen it. I asked if he wanted to watch an episode. He blinked again. I pushed the first tape into the VCR and sat beside him, searching his warped face, listening to his soft whimpers, while on the screen Alice Kramden outfoxed her husband again and again.
不在家时，我搜遍了方圆一百英里内的所有音像店，终于找到了全套的《蜜月期》。我举起它给爸爸看。他眨眨眼示意看到了。我问他是否想看一集。他又眨了眨眼。我将第一盘录像带塞进录像机，坐在他旁边，打量着他那张扭曲的脸，听着他轻柔的呜咽。与此同时，屏幕上的爱丽丝·卡拉门登一次又一次智胜了丈夫。
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