CHASE SCENE

by Brady Hammes

Julia can’t sleep. She’s been trying for hours but it won’t come. She wonders if she’s trying too hard. Perhaps she’s over-thinking it, which is possible because she tends to over-think almost everything. And all this thinking about over-thinking is exactly what she’s thinking is the problem. “Stop,” she whispers. “No more.”

She takes a deep breath and waits for her mind to spin down. She turns onto her side and flips the pillow. Now she’s worried. Every minute of non-sleep is one minute less of good sleep, should it ever come. And even if she fell asleep right now, she’d still get less than four hours and would likely be in a foul-ass mood the next day. Or worse, she’d miss the shuttle and then her flight, thereby throwing into an irreversible tailspin the plan to find her husband and return him home. She rolls onto her back and slaps her palms against the mattress. “Damnit,” she says to the ceiling. “Go to sleep.”

She misses him terribly.

She would like to hold his head under water.

Tyson takes the stairs in three quick strides, landing with a soft thud in the gathering snow. He pulls a wool hat over his head, shoves his hands in his pockets and looks both directions, trying to recall the route. He’s been once before, while drunk, and was certain he would remember how to get back, though now, sober, he isn’t so sure. Everything in reverse, he reasoned at the time. It seemed simple enough. But now it’s so hard to tell, he thinks, everything looking so similar in a way and me not knowing what I’m looking for, what the fuck I’m doing here. He steps to the side of this disconnect, though he knows sooner or later a decision will come due. But right now, on this cold night in January, high in the Rockies, he is bored and thirsty and very cold, so how to get back to the bar, the route, is really the thing, right now at least.

Tyson enters the bar brushing snow from his jacket. It’s dark and smoky and decorated with banners for domestic beer. This is not a bar for the tourists or the ski bums or the college kids on spring break. It’s for the ranchers, the cowboys, the men who’ve lived here all their lives, and Tyson looks out of place. He spots Theodore and approaches. “I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to find my way back,” he says.

“You did,” Theodore says.

Theodore is sixty years old, with a field of white hair and a face like a rotten pepper. His has been a life lived outdoors, under a dry sun, in the company of cattle. After forty years of ranching, Theodore sold his land and now spends his days moving the wealthy into opulent log cabins. At night he sits at the bar, sipping scotch and playing bad pool.

“I’ve got a four bedroom at the base of the mountain if you’re interested,” Theodore says.

“I don’t know,” Tyson says.

“Your loss,” Theodore says. “Rich folks. Big tippers, I imagine.”

“Buy me a beer and I’ll think about it.”

Tyson arrived in town a week ago, after a blow up with his wife that ended with her suggesting he go to hell and Tyson setting off early the next morning. He’d read about this place in a magazine. It looked peaceful, with snow falling against a concrete sky and smiling couples with Chocolate Labs. It seemed like a patient little ski town, the kind of place where he could wipe his mind clean and chart a new course. He isn’t sure where that course begins or how he will even recognize it, but hopes against hope that it originates somewhere in this canyon and not some other place he will never think to look.

Tyson has fallen into a comfortable groove since he arrived, skiing in the mornings and moving furniture with Theodore in the afternoons. He found an old motel a few miles outside town, where the owner agreed to a reasonable rate so long as Tyson cleaned it himself and kept the noise to a minimum. He met Theodore through the job center. Their first gig together was moving an armoire up two flights of stairs. Tyson dropped his end half way up and bruised the shit out of his left foot.

“My youngest ran away once,” Theodore says. “He was eight. I found him sleeping next to a bull a half-mile from home. Know what I did?”

Tyson senses a lecture coming but takes the bait anyway. “What did you do?”

“I dragged him home by his shirt collar.”

Tyson finishes his beer, shaking the last drops into his mouth. “Are you trying to tell me something?”

“I’m telling you to go home.”

Tyson rolls his eyes and looks to the cowboys shooting pool in the corner. He feels an itch in his nose and lets out a high-pitched sneeze. All the cowboys turn and look.

Tyson shuffles along the shoulder of the icy highway, the wind cutting sharply against his back, causing him to tense and contract, like a hunchback on skates. He’s drunk now. He wasn’t two hours ago but he is now, and he feels both invincible and vulnerable. He walks with his head down, charging at the passing snowplows. He imagines lying in the highway and waiting for a plow to come and scoop him away. He pictures himself sliding down the mountain road, hovering on the churning snow, trying to stand. After a moment, he snaps out of it and scolds himself for having such inane and reckless thoughts. He needs to get it together.

“I’ll start in the morning,” he says to no one in particular, to the mountains standing over him. “I’ll start with a square breakfast and a jog.”

The jog doesn’t happen. What happens is this: Tyson sleeps until noon and then spends the next five hours curled up in bed. At sundown he puts on his coat and boots, and goes searching for food. He checks the time on his cell phone and considers calling his wife. He can predict how the conversation will go, so instead keeps walking, pushing her a little further into the untended corner of his mind. At the market, he buys a bag of frozen French fries and twelve beers. The plan is to return to his motel room, slam a couple beers, eat a fuck ton of those French fries, and reassess the situation, try and figure out what exactly he’s trying to accomplish here.

On the walk home, Tyson spots two dogs wandering off-leash. They appear friendly so he extends his hand for inspection. The dogs give him a little sniff and decide he’s decent enough. The larger of the two, whose nametag reads, Miller, has an under bite that terminates in two yellow-orange fangs protruding from his mouth like candy corn. His wife is smaller and enormously pregnant. She waddles over to Tyson and licks his hand. “You guys are some seriously lost dogs,” he says, giving her a little chuck behind the ear. He slides her collar over and inspects the tag. Her name is Lucy, and there’s a phone number. He dials. There’s no answer, so he leaves a message with his name and a vague description of the dogs and a number where he can be reached. “Lucy! Miller!” he says, and claps three times quickly. “Come here, guys!”

Back at his motel room, Tyson searches for a water dish for his new houseguests. He has only one bowl and he’ll need it for cereal in the morning, so instead he dumps a bucket of ice in the bathtub and fills it with cold water. He constructs a whelping box and lines it with bath towels, something he saw on TV. He cooks the French fries and dumps them in a pile on the carpet. Miller eats the fries and Lucy curls up in the box and Tyson sits on his bed, watching and smiling and trying to think of fun things they can do in the morning.

Julia spent the first day of Tyson’s absence awaiting his return and subsequent apology. Day two was spent filling his voicemail with threats and accusations. On the third day she kicked a hole in the living room wall. She started drinking on day four and continued until day six, when worry set in and her thoughts were overtaken by the image of her husband face down in a muddy field. It wasn’t until day seven, having been thoroughly worked-over, emotionally pummeled and drubbed, that she finally logged into his e-mail account and found the airline confirmation for a one-way ticket to a small town in southwestern Colorado. It was an obvious place to look and part of her wondered if perhaps it was intentional, a hint so obvious as to beg for retrieval. She decided it was and booked a flight for the next day.

When Julia arrives, the town is covered in snow so deep she has trouble believing it to be real. Walls ten feet high line the roads. She’s only seen snow once in her life, at age fourteen, when her parents drove the family an hour north of L.A. so the kids could play in the few inches that had accumulated along the highway. They spent the day pelting each other with muddy balls of slush and building little brown snowmen that vanished upon completion. Julia wasn’t much interested in snow after that, thought it sort of messy and unpleasant. But this is different, she thinks, scooping a handful of soft powder off the hood of a parked car. This is quite nice.

At the hotel, the receptionist informs Julia that her room isn’t quite ready and asks if she wouldn’t mind waiting thirty minutes. Julia notices two teenage girls with static hair and matching fleece jackets sitting by the fireplace. The smaller girl tends to a cut on the other’s forehead, blotting the wound with a wad of toilet paper. The injured girl looks off into the distance, her forehead bleeding and blooming purple. Julia approaches. “Are you okay?” she asks.

“She cut her head,” the smaller one says.

“I fell and my ski went flying,” the injured girl says, laughing almost. “Smacked me right in the head. I really suck.”

“You don’t suck,” her friend says, folding the tissue over to a clean spot and pressing it against the cut. “You just ate major shit.”

“No, I suck,” the injured girl says emphatically.

“Was it your first time?” Julia asks.

“Second,” the injured girl says. “I went once in Wisconsin, but it was nothing like this place. This place is crazy. Have you been up yet?”

“No.”

“Are you going tomorrow?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You aren’t here to ski?”

“Not really.”

“Huh…” the injured girl says, skimming her toe across a puddle of melted snow.

The smaller one removes the toilet paper and inspects the wound, which has stopped bleeding. She throws the tissue in the fireplace. “Where are you from?” she asks.

“Los Angeles,” Julia says.

“You came all the way from L.A. and you aren’t even gonna try it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“What are you doing here then? There isn’t much to do if you don’t ski.”

“I’m looking for someone,” Julia says, wishing she could drag the words back into her mouth. Before the girl has a chance to go any further, she redirects the conversation. “Why? Is it fun?”

“Hell yes,” the injured girl says. “It’s super fun. Just don’t go down anything other than the greens. You get off the greens, and you’ll seriously hate life.”

“Oh yeah?”

“No joke,” she says, pointing to her forehead.

Julia wakes the next morning and opens her curtains to a splatter of colored dots sliding down a white canvas. She thinks maybe the girls were right, maybe she should give it a try. She exits the hotel and walks through the village. Outside, it’s cold and the air bites at her cheeks like rubbing alcohol. She doesn’t normally enjoy cold weather, but this doesn’t bother her, not with this alpine sun overhead, a sun that is considerably more intense than the one in Southern California, the distance collapsed, as if inching closer to a fire. It’s what she heard someone in the hotel refer to as a bluebird day, and she likes this description very much. She passes people with skis hoisted over their shoulders. She studies the faces half-hidden by layers of fleece and wool, and then, not seeing her husband, wonders if she has made a mistake in coming here.

They married young in Las Vegas. It was a pretend marriage that turned into a real marriage that now resembles a collapsing marriage. It was Julia’s twenty-fourth birthday, and they were driving back to L.A. from Tyson’s parents’ house in Chicago. Their pupils were dilated from the black desert driving, and the lights of Las Vegas spread before them like a burning blanket. Electronic music was playing and they were a little stoned and their love seemed unalloyed and absolute, something to be observed from a distance. Conversation came effortlessly, each topic giving birth to some new idea, some other memory or aspiration that hadn’t yet been shared. They listened to each other the way a patient parent listens to a stuttering child recount in exacting detail the contents of his day. It was completely genuine and the closest Julia had ever felt to permanence. She smiles, remembering it fondly. She wants it back.

But it’s been four years now, and things are not going according to plan. In the fall Julia started law school and time together became something scheduled, lunch between classes and trips to the market. She made new friends, classmates who joked about tort law and professors Tyson had never met. A movement was taking place, a slow fade, and neither knew how to bridge the gap.

Tyson wakes to Lucy giving birth at the foot of his bed, the puppies sliding from her like oiled pears. He runs to the bathroom and realizes there’s nothing he can do, so instead stands watching as she licks each one dry.

The owner still hasn’t called, so Tyson dials and gets the answering machine once again. He tells them their dogs are multiplying and asks what they would like to do about that. He leaves the address of the motel and his phone number for the second time. “Call me,” he says, slapping the phone shut.

Julia stares at the rows of skis lining the walls of The Alpine Haus. She picks one up and studies it, bends it a little as if she knows what she’s checking for. The ski shop is lined with photos from the seventies and smells strongly of hot wax and feet. Young men with unwashed hair move quickly around the store, adjusting bindings and fitting people into boots. Julia senses a complexity to this activity for which she feels unprepared, but before she can change her mind an employee approaches and asks how he can help.

“Well…” Julia says, running her thumb down the metal edge of a ski. “How does this all work?”

There’s a knock at Tyson’s door. He opens it to find a woman and her two children, young boys, standing outside. “Hi,” the woman says. “I think you may have found our dogs.”

Tyson invites them inside and the kids blow past him, throwing their arms around their pets. The woman introduces herself as Jean and apologizes for not getting back to him sooner. She says they spent the morning at the pound and just now got his messages. She says the last couple days have been rough, the children hanging posters during the day and crying themselves to sleep at night. “I can’t thank you enough,” she says.

“They’re sweet dogs,” Tyson says. “I’m glad I could help.”

“Look, Mom!” the younger one says, pointing to the puppies curled up next to their mother.

“I know,” Jean says. “Little Lucys.”

“All they’ve had to eat are French fries,” Tyson says. “I didn’t have any dog food.”

“It’s fine,” Jean says. “We’re just so happy you found them.”

The younger boy pulls at Tyson’s shirt. “Thanks for finding our dogs, mister,” he says in a way that touches Tyson like he hasn’t been in some time.

“You’re very welcome,” Tyson says.

Jean leashes the dogs and hands one to each boy. She picks up the box of puppies and walks to the door. “Come on, guys” she says. “Let’s go home.”

With the dogs safely home, Tyson decides to head to the mountain for some morning turns. He thinks about his wife on the walk to the slopes. He remembers her in the beginning. They were a force when together, a gust of running children. He really liked that part, but now there are all these new parts, these unexpected growths, and he isn’t sure how they fit together, if they’re even meant to. He thinks about what he’s doing here, how nothing is happening, how he has gained no insight or perspective by coming to this place. He knows there is nothing noble or daring about him, only cowardice and selfishness and the embarrassing realization that he will have to return at some point and explain his adventure.

Julia skis inelegantly, picking up speed as she approaches the lift line. Unable to slow herself, she plows into the backside of a snowboarder, falling and wrapping her arms around him like a wounded lover.

“What the fuck, lady?” the snowboarder says.

“I’m so sorry,” Julia says, trying to stand. “It’s my first time.”

“No shit?”

Julia is already regretting this, but a line has now formed behind her and she knows trying to leave will only complicate matters. She wonders where all the other beginners are, why she’s the only one who looks so lost. Everyone else is in such control, their skis natural extensions of their legs, whereas hers seem to have a mind of their own, like a wildly gesticulating orchestra conductor.

A skier slides up next to her. “Single?” he asks.

“Excuse me?”

“Are you a single?”

Julia says nothing.

The snowboarder turns around. “He wants to know if you’re by yourself,” he says impatiently. “For the lift.”

“Oh,” Julia says. “Yeah, I’m single.”

The man smiles and slides up next to her.

Julia watches those ahead of her board the chairlift. One group departs and then another, and before long she slides into position. “I may need a little help,” she says to the man next to her, but before he can respond the lift arrives and kicks her in the back of the legs, causing her knees to buckle and her ass to fall hard into the crook of the chair.

When Julia reaches the top she studies the wooden trail signs, none of which point to the greens the girls at the hotel had told her about. If there is an easy way down this mountain, she doesn’t see it. There’s a trail that winds through a field of moguls and one that cuts through the trees and another that drops straight to the parking lot. None of them interest her, and she’s angry with herself for ending up in this position: alone atop a mountain she is incapable of descending. She’s supposed to be looking for her husband, not learning sports she is doomed to fail. She is not a skier. She is not an athlete or an adventurer or a woman of nature. She is a law student, an Angeleno, a woman chasing a cut balloon, and to pretend at anything else is delusional. She realizes now the futility in coming here, in searching for someone who has no interest in being found. She turns and poles back to the chairlift. “I shouldn’t be here,” she says to the lift attendant. “How do I get down?”

Tyson boards the chairlift up as Julia heads back to the base. On the mountain below them, snowboarders launch themselves off a small cliff. They leap like bullfrogs, landing in a pillow of snow, then popping to their feet and congregating at the bottom. The last one in the group stands alone atop the cliff. He looks at the landing, then to his friends below, and finally to Julia and Tyson floating high above, their chairs quietly passing, each headed to a place the other would never visit.

by Brady Hammes