Chapter 8
“What losers.” Russ kicked at a dome of blue ice below a dripping icicle. “ ‘Oooh, we’re explorers, oooh we’re so tough!’ When really they’re, like”—Russ pretended to hold and sip at a teacup, gloved pinkie stuck prissily heavenward before rolling his eyes. “Please.”
Zach gaped at Russ. Yes, the door had closed. Bram couldn’t have overheard.
Steve chuckled. “I’ve got a daughter about your age. You remind me of her.”
“I mean come on,” Russ said. “Comparing themselves to, like, pioneers or whatever? When they’ve got you here doing everything for them?”
The guide gave Russ a good-natured fist to the shoulder. “Eh, give your old man a break. And—Jon Hensley? Dude’s a legend. What’s he like?”
Russ shrugged. “Met him when you did.”
“The guys were freaking out about Arlo Oliver being on this trip, but Hensley? They’re going to lose their minds.” Steve shook his head, amazed.
“My dad and Arlo are friends,” Russ said.
“Believe me, you’re not missing anything.
He’s ancient, and so boring. Always going on about how sometimes he wants to get off the treadmill, be a normal person or whatever—exactly those words, every time—as if being a billionaire is some horrible burden, like he’s so special and his life is so tough no one can possibly understand, boo-hoo.
But it’s all so that everyone is like, ‘Oh, Arlo, you’re so humble, your company couldn’t do it without you, everyone needs you! ’ ” Russ mimed vomiting. “It’s gross.”
“Well,” Steve said, “it’s gotta be pretty isolating, all that money. You’d always think people want something from you.”
Russ scoffed and gestured behind them toward the hut. “Please. You think they care if people like them for their money? That’s all they care about, so it’s all that makes sense to them.”
Zach nodded, respect for Russ, a kinship, ballooning in him at hearing this truth spoken aloud.
Everything in Bram’s life was tallied, compared, a record burned into his brain that scored each favor, every act and gesture, big or small, good or bad, and all of it, ultimately, measured in possible dollar outcome.
Because all things in their house came from Bram, Zach, Bonnie, and their mother were required to perform absolute appreciation and intense gratefulness, yet could never pay Bram back using the only metric he valued.
It all transformed anything bought and paid for into a hollow burden, until the very idea of toys, trips, gifts knotted Zach’s stomach.
He knew his mother felt the same, careful with what little cash Bram allowed her, trying to carve out pockets of her own money here and there to avoid the devotions he expected.
Yet Zach’s friends, their parents, his father, appeared to have an insatiable thirst for things and more things.
He watched as Bram, as other grown-ups, marveled at anyone whose numbers were uncountable, as if by hoarding and devouring such vastness these others had gained the sheen of gods.
So many adults seemed to believe, like his father, that if they got close enough to people like Arlo Oliver, their nervous worship might cause some of that money to rub off; might even grant them some edge of immortality.
Steve shrugged. “Hey, not my world and all. But they seem like good-enough guys.”
“Right, sure. Super nice, cool guys who care about other people.” Russ sighed. “This is so stupid. What are we even supposed to do out here?”
“Build a snowman?” Steve offered.
“We’re not five,” Russ said.
Steve grinned. “Hey, why was the snowman looking through the bag of carrots?”
Both boys stared at him.
“He was picking his nose,” Steve said, deadpan.
Zach giggled, covering his mouth with a hand to hide it. A flicker of a smile played across Russ before he rolled his eyes.
“What’d the snowman say after losing an arm?” Steve asked.
Russ shook his head down at his feet, as if embarrassed on Steve’s behalf.
“I’m never playing fetch again.”
“Ugh, stop,” Russ said, but fully smiling now, his ever-present eye roll turned good-natured.
“I got a million of ’em. You let me know whenever you want more awesome, not at all old-man jokes, okay?” Steve glanced at his watch. “It’s already four. Want something to snack on? I’m going to hit up the outdoor pantry before splitting some wood.”
The boys shook their heads.
“All right. I brought s’mores, brownies, like, three different types of chips if you’re more of a salt-type guy. So. Think about it. Be back here by five thirty. And yell if you need anything.”
“Sure, man,” Russ said.
Zach said nothing, distractedly wondering how much dessert he’d be able to have.
Bram didn’t like enforcing his “no-sugar” rule in front of other people, preferring to appear beneficent, even indulgent, so long as he didn’t deem Zach too publicly greedy.
His mother, though, had frequently found ways to sneak Zach and Bonnie treats.
“How about we go to the bank?” she’d say with a wink.
They’d walk from where they’d parked at the grocery store, and all three would suck on free lollipops from the teller’s desk as their mother pulled cash from her pocket, counted it out, deposited it.
The last time they’d been, and the last time Zach had eaten candy, was close to Halloween.
The teller had let them take handfuls of mini chocolate bars and candy corn from an enormous bowl, so much they’d had to throw some in the trash because they wouldn’t be able to eat it before arriving home.
“What a nerd,” Russ said affectionately as the boys watched Steve walk away. “Ugh, like an hour to kill? This sucks.”
Zach recalled his father’s admonition that it was his job to entertain Russ. “We could play Gray Rabbit?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s like hide-and-seek combined with tag? Someone’s the Wolf, and he, like, looks for the person who hides? The person who hides is the Rabbit. But if the Wolf finds the Rabbit, the Rabbit can run away and hide again, if the Wolf doesn’t tag him. We play it—played it—on hut trips sometimes.”
“How can you even hide in the snow? There’s tracks.”
Zach, excited to share what he’d learned over the course of endless rounds of the game, explained, “If your boots are waterproof you can walk up a stream. Or if the snow’s deep, you can double back in your own tracks, then jump away far enough the person doesn’t realize?
If you can jump off, like, a little ledge, or get under a tree?
That’s the best. Or like, out here, there’s so many tracks already, you can hide your tracks kind of in others. ”
Russ gave him a glazed look. “Sounds like it would be better with a big group.”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess we did always play it in teams.” Zach’s mind ran over past hut activities with other kids.
“We could, um, build a snow fort?” Cringing over the childishness of the words, he edited himself.
“I mean, not a fort, more like a snow shelter. My mom showed me how. It’s an outdoor survival thing.
There’s a tree over there we used to build under.
It gets a big tree well around it.” At Russ’s blank look, Zach said, “That’s basically when the tree branches catch the snow, so the snow’s kind of hollowed out underneath.
They can be dangerous if you’re skiing or whatever and fall in, because the snow around the hollow part can collapse on you.
People even die and stuff, falling in.” At this Russ began to look interested.
“But if you know it’s there, tree wells make it pretty easy to dig for a shelter because the hole’s kind of already started.
You can even light a fire in there? If you do it right. ”
Russ shrugged. “I guess we can try. Not like there’s anything else to do.”
Large shovels for digging paths to the outhouse or clearing the stairs after big snows leaned against the hut’s exterior.
The boys each took one and put on skis. Zach led Russ across the heavily tracked field toward the enormous blue spruce about two hundred feet from the hut, scanning the newly wakened menace of the woods.
But as they moved away from the windowed gaze of the hut Zach’s back straightened, his body lifted.
Maybe because every step took him farther away from his father’s watchfulness.
Maybe because Russ was beside him prattling about video games, about how much he hated high school at his mom’s in Florida, about how he wished his dad would move to his place here in town full time instead of Russ having to visit him in Denver, Billings, or Houston, which were boring.
“You like skiing?” Zach asked.
“I like it better when I can take a lift up. All this skiing uphill sucks. I’m sure I’ll be the worst one tomorrow by a lot.
” Russ assessed Zach as if only just realizing that might not be the case, given Zach’s age.
“How about you? Living here and all I bet you’re pretty good.
And you’re, like, almost as tall as me.”
Zach shrugged, dismissing his twice-weekly ski team practices, his weekends in the backcountry or spent competing in ski races and competitions.
Shrugged away his work and sweat and training and euphoria, his podiums, the way his mother had driven him and Bonnie hours away, sometimes into other states to compete in Downhill, Super G, Slalom, Moguls, Big Mountain, leaving him spent by the time school started Monday.
Dismissed it all because he was probably falling behind now that Bram didn’t want to pay for the travel, and he was only going to the local races.
And because he was good, but not good enough.
Not the best, which was all that really mattered.
“It’d be so cool to be like that Jon guy, you know?” Russ said. “Ski for a job? Instead of sitting on your butt at a desk, like my dad.”
They stopped at the tree, surveying it. Zach pushed branches aside. Showed Russ the protected, hollow area underneath.
“Okay, okay, this could be cool.” Russ wiped the fog from his glasses with his sleeve.
Together, they dug. Russ’s chatter slowed then stopped, both boys breathing heavily as they worked to core a space around the trunk. At last they clambered in, verified the line of the snow was over their heads, then dragged broken boughs overhead to further disguise the pit.
Sitting in semidarkness, they grinned at each other.
“This is actually all right,” Russ said. “Hidden. We could, like, sleep in here if we needed to! I think it’s warmer than outside.”
It was not at all warmer.
“My mom says you have to be careful not to get too warm and sweaty if you’re actually lost and have to build something. Because of hypothermia? Sweat can make you get cold really quick once you aren’t moving.”
Russ tilted his head. “So, your mom was pretty into this stuff, huh?”
How many times had he mentioned his mother?
Baby. Mama’s boy.
“Yeah.”
“Sounds like she was cool,” Russ put his hands behind his head, leaning back against the wall of the pit and staring up at the canopy of pine boughs. “Was she a good skier?”
Was, was, was.
“Yeah. She like, worked for Mountain Rescue? Before she met my dad, I mean. She quit once they got married. He thought it was too dangerous or whatever. And then she had me, so.”
“That’s how she knew all this stuff?”
“Yeah. We’d come up here a lot. Or to other huts. And she volunteers at school, teaching avalanche safety and rescue things.” Zach looked away from Russ. “Or, she did, I mean. She used to.”
“See, that is so sick. My mom is completely useless. She won’t leave Miami from, like, September until June she hates the cold so bad.
And my new stepmom can’t even ski. She just rides the gondola and prances around at the top of Ajax with her friends, or like, takes the lift to drink at Cloud 9.
They literally tan at the Sundeck in bikinis.
It’s embarrassing, all of them like, ‘Look at me, look at me,’ you know?
” Russ made a mocking, mincing motion with his hands, as if he were holding up an imaginary petticoat that he then dropped in disgust. “Even though they’re old. Like almost thirty.”
When kids Zach’s age talked about their families, it was always to brag about whose dad was taller, whose brother was star of the hockey team.
Zach tried to imagine spreading out his family’s inner workings under the light, under the eyes of a stranger the way Russ had just done, and had to clear his throat to stop the sense he was choking.
“My old stepmom was okay, I guess,” Russ went on. “She’d go skiing with me. She was even kind of good at the terrain park.” Russ’s voice had lost its scorn, turning wistful.
“Do you still hang out?”
Russ wiped his glasses with his sleeve again, purposefully focusing on the task and avoiding Zach’s gaze.
“Nah. She got tired of smiling and nodding, smiling and nodding. That’s all my dad wants, you know?
A, like, bobblehead. My dad goes on and on about how this stepmom is a model, like she’s a new car or something. ”
“My mom was a model, too,” Zach said, “For a little while. Before she got married.”
Russ waved this off. “They all are, man. I mean, maybe your mom really was? But this one just puts pictures of herself online. My other stepmom was a doctor, and I swear my dad was, like, jealous. He pretended it was his idea to divorce her, but no way. She’s in LA now.
With my half brother. He’s only three. But he’s awesome.
” Russ put his glasses back on, eyes going to middle distance as if his old life hovered there, projected against the blank, snowy wall of the shelter.
Wanting to show he was a member of Russ’s club, the complicated family club, Zach heard himself blurt, “My dad was married before, too. Before I was born.”
“Divorced,” Russ said knowingly.
Now it was Zach’s turn to look askance at nothing as he muttered, “Nah. She died.”