Skidding versus Sliding

As Jake exits the ski lodge, the big, ancient one that sits around 6000 feet above sea level and has all of the finely lacquered wood sculptures of bears and wolves inside its cavernous halls, the first thing that catches his eye is the fray going full tilt, the one that explains the blood on the snow.

On the way up the mountain it had been snowing. Big, obscuring flakes that threw themselves under the tires and threatened to send the Saab wagon careening off a sharp turn and into the waiting arms of the firs below. Jake hated driving when it snowed like that; besides the fact that he had a number of certifiably terrible childhood associations with this sort of weather (delays; deaths; skinned knees), it also meant that the trip to the summit was shaping up the hours with each flake, falling like grains of sand in an hourglass. One of his friends had suggested they pull over and lace the wheels in chains, but they were almost there and chains were a royal pain in the ass to deal with, certain to give him grief, so in his passive aggressive manner he’d set a loaded question aloud about whether they really thought chains were necessary. The lodge was about six miles off the highway, on a 6 or 7 degree incline that would take about six minutes to ascend going the speed limit. Going twenty miles an hour it took the wagon the better part of twenty minutes to climb up there, the tires spinning whenever they took a turn and the prospect of sliding helplessly into a two story tall snowdrift gradually built up through months of snowy days very real.

The red of the blood looked very bright on the muted white on the fresh snow not yet packed by the meaty rubber tires that adorned the wheels of seemingly every auto in the lot save Jake’s. Kind of like a cherry snowcone, Jake thought. A crowd had gathered around the two flailing, slipping bodies with the smashing fists and smashed faces. Usually it happens that the onlookers have no stake in these public frays. But like a car wreck on a highway, maybe we’ve all got a stake, the blood and the flesh being rent before our eyes a part of us. One thing he’d noticed, and he admitted he hadn’t seen a lot of fights, but one thing he’d noticed about the ones he had was there was likely to be either a whole lot of talk, or none at all. No in between. Either both of the guys would be yapping, barking insults and the crowd jeering wordless cheers, and that meant they’d waste a lot of energy on fussing instead of fighting, and most of the fire would fad into the air. Or the other option, which was they wouldn’t say anything at all, the only sounds from bodies shuffling and two breathing souls pounding on one another, the soft noise muted on the folds of billowy snow.

He’d actually never skied much as a child, nothing substantial anyway. Most of the people he’d spent time with as an adult had, trips with their families to the mountain, and so it felt prudent to him to learn how to do so, otherwise he feared he might find himself alone in the city on winter weekend without anything to indicate that it was a weekend at all. Things like that didn’t come easy, the physical rhythm of it all: none of it was intuitive, and he was far from a born athlete. Him being full grown probably made the venture even tougher, trying to teach a body whose bones were set new tricks. He took a few bruises, but the spills were actually something he appreciated; little bumps and bruises to show he was trying, little merit badges writ on his body with authority- the legitimacy of scars.

Jake wasn’t sure if he had any stake in these two whipping at each other. He didn’t recognize either one. None of the people he come up the mountain with were there. Both of them were wearing the bulky pants and jackets meant to keep the cold and the wet out, doubling now as armor of another sort. He wondered if they’d purposely kept their jackets on, or if the thought wasn’t even there to consider, given the circumstances. The fight had definitely turned out to be one of those quiet kinds; neither of these guys looked like the talking type. Actually, who’s to say; it could be, you meet them at the bar they’d chat a blue streak, and maybe it was the setting that left them speechless. No need or want for words. When the odd chance happened, and one of them actually landed a fist to face, the pop crumpled out sound like the noise it made when Jake would hit the snow, tumbling after he slipped the learning curve and took a turn too tight, or caught an edge and gravity sent him down. He knew the two sensations must be worlds apart, but honestly he’d never taken one to the face, and knuckles were certainly packed tighter than snow.

He hadn’t wanted to screw with the chains; couldn’t somebody make those damn things any easier to work? So he blamed them for being so difficult when the tire hit a patch of ice and the wagon went floundering into a bluff. The tires were still spinning, and that sucked them into the drift like a vacuum, same sucking sound and everything. The whole right side of the car was tilted off lopsided, sunk in so you had to get out of the driver side doors, the others packed shut by the snow up to the windows.

It had seemed really daunting at first, and he didn’t feel confident in any way that he’d ever get any better. Seemed like a hopeless cause, to start so late in the game, years behind and everyone of those seasons that passed that he’d spent doing something else that didn’t do him any favors now were being called into question, an inquisition of the past by the present. But he’d done his best to see those types of things as sunk cost, wasn’t anything he could do about them, and dwelling on them only served to mire him down. He’d been feeling more inclined towards the power of positive thinking, and that sort of obsession with the past was worthless weight dragging on him. Every time he took the slopes a little faster and managed down on his feet without taking a snow bath, he’d swear that weight lifted a little. The gravity of going downhill was making him light, like the snow falling and covering the mountain, all the jagged rocks and the knots of trees sitting on the surface of the ground that would otherwise be exposed covered in the quiet powder. And when he did slip, the snow was forgiving. He’d almost relish the falls, the tumbles that kicked up the spray of flakes like a stone thrown into a still lake, skipping off the surface a few times before it settled. It was good to know what to expect when he fell. He skied a little faster every next time because of that knowledge.

The blood that had spilled out sank little furrows in the snow, the warmth the drops took with them as they left their bodies melting, mixing the water and the blood and diluting the red into a pale pink. When Jake stepped between the two of them in a break that opened just enough space for him to slide in he hadn’t thought about what he was doing. He’d been watching them for some time, and as he noticed the crowd his eyes naturally refocused from the fight itself to the break and contours of the different heads surrounding, the up and down of the varied heights making little crests and peaks of the bodies. A jagged range surrounding the scene. When he jumped in he put his arms out to make space, his palms open to distance the two. There was a moment when he thought it a very real possibility that one or both might turn their attention on him, bury their fight in the interloper. And while they did come at each other again, they didn’t swing, he didn’t take a sharp fist to his face for the first time, just pushed up against his outstretched arms like guardrails on the side of the road, and maybe they had wanted someone to step in, to call the fight off for them. He stood between them and they pushed on him, but they didn’t swing. And after a while, their arms became softer and their red in their faces drained out, and they leaned off him, and he didn’t move from that spot despite it, still standing their with his hands open where little flakes collected and melted against the warmth of his skin.

Walmart

Wal-Mart, for me as a child, was something like I imagine Santa’s Heaven to be like. Every time my sister and I, and often our cousins would be there too, to share in the festivities, would visit our Grandparents in Cleburne, Texas, we would visit the local temple to capitalism in its most prevalent form, consumerism. Oh, the excitement that began to bubble up from the nether regions of our little bodies at the mere mention of that Shangri-La that promised untold riches and personal satisfaction in the form of Ninja Turtle action figures and miscellanea and whatever it was that the female element of the grandchildren were enamored with, which, if the furnishings of the room I occupy at my Grandparents is any indicator, fixated heavily on various iterations of equine and princessly distractions displayed in a wide spectrum of pinks. One of the first signs of change I noticed as a child, an indication that one has seen enough and experienced enough to be able to recognize something that once was this way is now different, and therefore a sort of marker of time itself, was the conversion from the relatively modest Wal-Mart of my earliest youth, of the He-Man and Thundercat and Nintendo years, to the upgraded, next version, the evolved Super-Wal-Mart of Ninja Turtle and Super Nintendo era, as though this Wal-Mart was the next logical and superior iteration of the Wal-Mart genus- Neanderthal meet Homo Sapiens, if you will. That old Wal-Mart, the archeological remains of which still remain across the street from the next generation superstore, are to this day still intact, the façade of the store having been occupied by a non-apex scavenger, a Kroger’s supermarket. That old, antiquated Wal-Mart almost seems prosaic in the ether of my memory in comparison to its Super successor, like some sort of Mom and Pop Wal-Mart, as ludicrous as that seems.

The inevitable and keenly anticipated ritual trip to Wal-Mart was a childhood fantasy-rent-material. Nearly any toy or treat was available in its cavernous halls, the labyrinth of artificially low priced goods which would seem daunting to those unfamiliar with the undulating passages that led to the prime areas, a treasure map inscribed through countless excursions onto the cerebrums of my fellow children and I. This was a routine part of visiting Cleburne; it was part of my childhood. And it seems appropriate that my cousins, my sister, and myself wholly embraced this sort of unabashed, unalloyed, and unashamed materialism. Materialism is the heart of childhood; what child doesn’t have a mind absolutely receptive to the accumulation of more and varied loot. To a child, more is always better. It is only as we begin to gain a more nuanced appreciation for the world, for the concept of quality, for the immaterial and, to some, not entirely convincing concept of self deprivation, that we begin to realize that we have somewhere in the past segued from pure childhood to some degree of difference along what may be described as a linear chart of maturity, from the adult in mature body only to the ascetic, who reviles at the slightest hint of pleasure. And for a realization of cause and consequence of our actions. My own experiences lead me to wonder if Wal-Mart isn’t stuck in a state of arrested development as well, that the people who indulge in all of the rock-bottom prices and colossal volumes available at these warehouses of goods aren’t gently refusing to grow up a little themselves. Another part of me is quick to point out that I don’t fit the demographic of the typical Wal-Mart acolyte, and that it would quite disingenuous, as well as certainly quite elitist, for me to make any such assertions about the emotional maturity of the shoppers who spend their dollars at Wal-Mart. What I can say is that my own knowledge of Wal-Mart has expanded beyond what was once a sort of juvenile solipsism, an oblivious, blissful ignorance dedicated to the myriad joys of the splendor of Wal-Mart. I now know about the business strategies that the corporation employs when they enter a new community, like the thousands upon thousands of American ones they have already entered. I also know about the ways in which the nations largest private employer treats its enormous workforce, the methods the company utilizes to reduce the amount of health insurance and overtime pay it is obligated by federal law to provide for full time employees. All of these interests and methods are wholly in line with what I expect a business in a capitalist country to do, precisely the sort of behavior the Wal-Mart stockholders hold the management accountable for, indeed, demand of them. I admit this, and don’t vilify them for it. I can also say, however, that I feel a distinctly different emotion when I approach Wal-Mart in Cleburne today. I cannot deny that there is still a strong nostalgic pull towards the hallowed land it occupies, so familiar to me over the years and seasons of my life. I don’t resist going there, afraid that my reticence born of insight might jeopardize one of the precious last vestiges of a very fond and cherished childhood I enjoyed with my parents and Grandmother, as nearly all of these features have disappeared now, fallen by the wayside along with my interest in Ninja Turtles and full days spent watching Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. What I can promise is that it is very unlikely that my children will have the same experience with Wal-Mart as I did as a child, and will never look upon one of those behemoths with the same bittersweet eyes as their father.