The Cross Dresser

Crossing on the ferry from Oban to Craignure I can see it, a swirling sea mist lifting from the lower fells, licking its way up the rugged, rose-pink granite face of Ben More mountain where it hangs like a shroud till noon. I grew up on the Isle of Mull, restricted in my youth, punished to live on one side of the island while the rest of human life lived on the other. Ours was the only farm on the western shoreline. On the east side, white cottages with chocolate box thatched roofs littered the fells inside a checker board of dry stone walls.

Of the thousands who came to the island, some were indifferent to the mountain. Never stared at it, never looked up or pointed toward its peak. For others, the mountain stirred in them deep primal emotions.

I realized it was impossible not to feel secure with the mountain in front of me. At the same time, nothing limited my imagination of the horizons more than this rising form of rock.

It’s not every day a thirteen-year-old boy finds a dead body, but that is what happened. It wasn’t a body lying in the snow of winter, nor motionless among the mountain flowers of spring; it hung in the wind from a lone branch that protruded from the rock face. At first, I thought it was a joke, someone playing a gag on me, but coming close it wasn’t funny.

I wasn’t afraid, strange as that might seem. Dad had warned me; it didn’t matter what came, who, or why, the mountain taught lessons, and some of those lessons were hard. Dad said city people didn’t understand its moods. ‘The mountain can hold you in strange ways,’ he said.

I scrambled down the mountain, stumbling, scraping my knees. I was breathing hard, and could smell the fresh cut hay in the fields below, see the cows and their broad backs, and thought about their calmness and the rhythm of their breathing. The mountain was steep and rocky, and I kept running, tripping, scrambling, until my feet sank into a bog and I fell head long, grazing raw the palms of my hands on the granite. I let out a growl, but still I ran, pulled down the mountain by the odor of milking on the evening air.

An hour later, I lead the mountain rescue team back up the mountain. They cut the girl free. I sat on a rock and waited for the men to strap the body into a stretcher. Down below, bright fires were sparkling through the windowpanes of farm homes. My hands were stinging, my knees scraped, and without notice I broke into floods of tears. It was the first time I was afraid of anything. One of the men came over to me, he said he was a doctor. He wiped my face, and bandaged my knee. He said that when people find a dead body, they suffer shock. I didn’t say anything to him. He said I was very brave.

My name was in the local paper that next Friday. It said the man found hanging on the side of the mountain was Trevor Johnson, 27. He was found wearing womens' clothes. The paper said it was a suicide, and a note was found in his bedroom. I asked dad about the woman I’d found. He said; son, the mountain can invite lonely people.

We never talked of it again.

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