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.