Children of the New World: Stories (11 page)

ANGIE COMES IN
at ten to help me get set up for the lunch rush—which is a joke; there’s no rush, just the Little Eskimo Club wanting pizza and hot cocoa, followed by a few beginners and the ancient warriors who order wings, burgers, and fries. Angie takes drink orders while I work the grill.

“Hope you have a second keg ready for
the whiteout,
” she says as we watch the scattered groups eating beneath the dimmed lights. Yesterday we had another bunk report of a storm coming our way.

“Counting on that blizzard,” I say and wink.

“I’d be happy for six inches.”

“There I can help you.”

She leans her hip against the bar. “You wish,” she says, and throws an ice cube at me, which lands on the flattop and sizzles.

We’ve been flirting ever since she started two years ago. What I liked about Angie was she wasn’t a skier, just wanted to learn before it was all gone. When Rick introduced us, he said, “This here’s the great Ronnie Hawks,” and she just said
hey
and shook my hand, taking me for another ponytailed, tattooed washout—which I guess is close to the truth. Eventually, she found out about my history. You can’t pass a season of dead days at the bar, watching old X-Sports videos on our flat-screen, without seeing me in the powder. But she didn’t care much about that, only said to me one night, “Checked out your fall online, sorry about the wipeout.” We worked bar together her first season, and though she’s in her late thirties and I’m a decade younger, we hooked up that winter and passed a season together before our breakup.

“So, you figure out what you’re going to do when summer comes?” I ask her and drop in an order of fries.

“Probably go to Brazil. Help rebuild after the floods.”

“You’re really going to do that?”

“Sure, why not? People need help, they need homes. They’ll give me meals, a place to sleep—it’s not like I’ll earn anything, but hopefully I can do some good. You should think about volunteering.”

I shrug my shoulders. “Thanks, but I’ll probably just find a bartending gig in Ogden.”

In January, Rick told us the news that the mountain was closing. After seventy-eight years, this would be our last season. He shut the lifts early one Monday—there was no one on the mountain—and we sat in the cafeteria while he dropped the bomb. Zeke, an old wiry guy with a frost-white beard, who’s been here longer than all of us and boards like a monster, slammed his hat onto the table, got up, and left.

“Zeke, wait,” Rick said, but Zeke was gone. Rick turned back to us. “Well, I’m devastated, too.”

That was probably true. Our mountain had been a sleepy little place, run by locals, until it got discovered by a hedge fund exec who figured he’d make it the next Vail. He put in a bunch of lodges, some high-end boutiques, raised the ticket prices, and then the snow stopped. And here was Rick, who’d followed corporate’s orders as best he could, had listened to a kid who wore a collared shirt instead of a ski jacket, and now he was about to be laid off like the rest of us. “It sucks,” Rick admitted. “Totally
fucking
sucks, but what are we going to do? There’s no snow anymore. Just try to enjoy the last season.”

So that night, we all got sloshed, and Sunny and his band cranked up their guitars and rocked out till three in the morning, screaming into the microphone until they were hoarse, and it sounded like shit, but we didn’t care. We danced, and Angie and I made out behind the bar, and we tried to forget the blow of the bad news.

*   *   *

IN THE VIDEO
clip that plays on repeat at the lodge, I’m standing atop Alaska’s range, the helicopter lifting off-screen, and below me is untracked powder, line after perfect line, spines rising like a dragon’s back. You look down through my eyes, and all you can see are cornices and big air about to get stomped. It’s enough to make your heart stop. The copter’s gone, wind chill’s minus three, and I look down those spines, the holy grail of the Neacolas, and know I can mash it. Watch now as I set off, first turn a perfect carve, hit the lip and free-fall over two hundred feet, hurling carcass in a straight drop, land it flawless, sluff tumbling around me as I hit the next cliff. From the copter you see me nailing every turn along the razor-sharp spine, flying now, suspended above snow and mountain as I glide, then down again in an arc of snow, sunlight hitting me in late morning shine, everything perfect.

What I wanted was every mountain in the world geo-mapped into my brain and the ability to find a line through the sickest deathmakers. What I didn’t want: a low-octane life of draining jobs, counting the days till I’d have time to mow the lawn again, counting the weeks till I could afford some plastic, beach-chair vacation, counting the years till retirement when I’d be too old to enjoy it. I was from a place built off those blueprints, where sprinklers went off in the morning and whole neighborhoods became ghost towns during work hours. I’d look out at all those empty houses, the exhausted adults returning home, the whole sorry bunch living at low throttle, and it seemed like death. I wanted to see the stars over Kilimanjaro, the sunrise after sleeping at the base of a killer range, to breathe powder. You can stand on the peak of the world, knowing you’re about to drop into the mouth of a canyon sculpted by wind, and if you die, at least you die by your own rules. That’s why I gave my life to extreme sports.

When I broke it all down to Angie like that, the winter we were together, poured my heart out as we finished a bottle of Jameson, she’d looked at me with something far from compassion.

“Fuck you,” she finally said.

“What do you mean, ‘fuck you’?”

“So, you skied like a maniac—you were great—whatever, you were fucking incredible. So what? What have you ever added to the world? You know those people you don’t want to be like? All those people living their shitty, empty lives? Those are my parents you’re talking about. That’s me. That’s my sister. That’s most of the world. And maybe my parents aren’t climbing ice faces with clamp-ons to go pick lines in wherever-the-fuck Alaska, but they worked hard to give me and my sister a good life, be there for us, to make a family.”

“I’m not saying that isn’t important—”

“Yes, you are. You fucking are. I mean, what’s your life goal besides getting high and making out with me?”

Before my accident, my goal had been to ski until I died, or at least till my late thirties, then retire and spend my days signing merchandise contracts, and I’d never questioned staying viral on Third Eye. It was just something you did, a way to not be selfish. Kids in wheelchairs had tuned in to my contacts to see what it was like to mash the sweetest ranges in the world, and I shared the sunrises I witnessed rather than keeping them all for myself. Mostly I just wanted to find the courage to ski down a cliff face, catch it on Third Eye, have the video go viral and make me a celebrity again.

“I guess to shred a cliff again,” I finally admitted.

“You know what my goal is?” she said. “To have kids, raise a family, take them on those vacations you hate so much. And I don’t need to find the biggest wave, or the tallest peak, or whatever-the-fuck to feel alive. That’s juvenile.”

I knew I was drunk and I ought to be careful with my words, but when you were once the number-one freestyle skier in the world, it’s easy to believe you owed it to others to focus on yourself. I’d shredded the most beautiful mountains, smoked killer weed, had sex with gorgeous women who thought I was a god. I’m not saying I wasn’t a douche; I’m just saying that looking at my life, I couldn’t figure out what was so wrong with it. “Well, I do need that,” I said, “and all I’m doing is working at a fucking bar and stranded here with you.”

“Nice,” she said, and got up. “Actually, you’re stranded here alone.”

That was the end of us as a couple. We patched things up—what else can you do when you work bar shifts together five days a week—and we stayed friends, became ex-lovers who liked to flirt and hook up when we weren’t together with anyone, but whatever future we’d had was gone. It was only after she’d broken up with me that I realized being with her was actually the only really good thing I’d had in years.

*   *   *

IT’S NOT A
bad crowd for a Sunday night. Between the staff, the group of guys on their weeklong, and the day visitors, we’re probably thirty strong and people are ordering baskets of wings, fries, onion rings, keeping me busy. I’ve got my back to the counter, dropping basket after basket of mozzarella sticks while Angie’s punching in tabs, refilling pitchers, and leaning over the bar to get orders. Sunny and the Sunshine Band have set up in the corner and they’re blasting the place with retro hits; a couple folks are even up dancing.

“Is this what the old days were like?” Angie asks and slides a pint of Powder Pale Ale next to me.

“Nah,” I say and take a drink, looking out at the aging crowd. “It used to be wall-to-wall snowbunnies.”

The band takes a break and Sunny comes over. “Temperature’s dropping,” he says, and Angie pours him a pint. “Check it out.” He holds up his phone. It’s true, we’re at a steady 28, with reports of dropping lower. “They’re predicting snow … a big one.”

“You sound like a newbie,” I say. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“It’s snowing in Colorado,” a cute girl at the bar interrupts. She holds up her phone so I can see what she’s looking at. A park ranger in Mesa Verde is streaming video through his eyes, the flakes layering the cliff dwellings beneath a blanket of white. She blinks to another channel, and now there’s a meteorology student at Colorado University, broadcasting his own weather report of
The Last Storm,
claiming the blizzard’s moving toward Utah. She clicks off her phone and leans toward me. “I know you,” she says.

“Oh yeah?”

“Mmhm, you’re Ronnie Hawks. I used to watch you all the time.”

When, I wonder—when you were six? Instead I just say thanks.

“You were crazy,” she says. “Do you still ski like that?” I see Angie roll her eyes before she goes down the bar to refill a pitcher.

Her name’s Chloe, she’s from UC, and though it’s been forever since anyone wanted to flirt about skiing, it feels good. I lean over the bar and tell her about heli-skiing the Himalayas, what it was like to drop down the face of a deathmaker. And Angie, who knows I’ve been alone all season, decides not only to let me flirt, but also tells me she’ll close down tonight. “Go live out your never-ending adolescence,” she says.

Chloe’s staying at the Bear Creek Lodge with her folks, so we take the shuttle back to my apartment, which is a mess. The coffee table’s covered in vintage ski magazines, broken-up dope, my vaporizer, and empty bottles of microbrew.

“Sorry about the mess,” I say as she surveys the posters on the wall of snowboarders and half-pipes.

“It’s fine. Kinda looks like my little brother’s room.”

I roll a joint for us, and we smoke on the couch and start making out before the thing’s halfway burnt. Chloe’s body reminds me how it’d once been my dream to grow old but keep hooking up with young fans. I lift off my shirt and show her my scars. “God,” she says, “that’s hot.” Then she wraps her legs around me and I lift her off the couch, my back screaming, and carry her to the bedroom. She unbuckles my pants, kicks them down with her legs, and I strip off her tights.

“Hey,” she says, stroking me through my boxers, “I really want you to fuck me … but I’m just wondering … do you have—?”

“Totally,” I say. I reach over, open my drawer, and find a condom.

“Oh,” she says when she sees the foil wrapper. “I mean, that’s cool, but … actually … I was going to ask … do you have your contacts in?”

When I was running the circuit, girls always asked me to keep my contacts in so they could show their friends my feed the next day, prove they’d slept with me. But Angie hadn’t wanted my followers watching, so we’d made it a point to take them out before we’d have sex. I’d gotten used to Angie, but now I remember the way other girls liked it. “Totally,” I say, reaching for the contacts container next to my condoms. “I’ll put them in for you.”

“Um … I was kind of hoping you’d be up for wearing mine?”

“Huh?”

“I want to do a selfie. It’s kind of a way I make money. I’ve got a channel where guys can watch me get fucked. Don’t worry, it’s totally cool, you won’t be in it at all.” I take a deep breath, have to remind myself that it’s been a long time since I’ve been with a girl this young, before I agree. “Cool, thanks,” she says. She props herself onto her elbows and takes out her contacts, extends them to me on the tips of her fingers like a peace sign. I take the lenses, feel the weird intimacy of placing her contacts against my eyes, and then I’m in her feed, watching the comments scroll along my peripheral vision as I look at her.
You’re so fucking hot! God I’d fuck that ass. Hit me back *//bigdawg.

“Look at what I’m doing to you,” Chloe says as she pulls me from my boxers. And I do look for a second but then realize I’m on camera, so look back at her. “I’m going to fuck you so good,” she moans, and stares deep into my eyes as she pulls me toward her.

*   *   *

THE TEMPERATURE STAYS
low, and the next night Rick messages me:
Want to run blowers with Sunny tonight? Overtime pay.
Back in the day you had to be licensed to work the machines, but since the Thaw, working on a mountain means taking five jobs. I’m a bartender, line cook, blower mechanic, ski instructor, and a liftie when newbies don’t show. So after working bar, I head out with Sunny on snowmobiles to make sure the blowers are functional. Two pumps are flooded by Devil’s Ridge, and a blower at Lightning Bowl has a clogged nozzle. The pipeline corroded and flaked rust into the machine and there’s only so much we can do, but we clear it out and it’s shooting clean by the time we get it done.

It’s past midnight by the time we pull onto the peak over Hidden Valley and lie back against the seats, watching the machines spray mist into the air. Sunny’s brought a bowl, and we pass it back and forth, watching the water turn into snow below us. The sky’s patched with clouds, a gap of stars here and there, but they’re moving quickly, the air cold like I haven’t felt in a long time.