Hometown Tales Redux

Did I ever tell you about the time that I went skiing?

I was sixteen, maybe seventeen. I wanted to try a snowboard but my dad wouldn't let me.

"Snowboarders are evil! They're of the very devil himself!" my dad shouted, his eyes wide with rage. "Did I ever tell you about the time I killed a snowboarder in 'Nam? It was 1968, and I was..."

"You were fifteen years old in '68, Dad," I budged in. "Also, you never went to Vietnam. Give me a goddamn break."

Holy crap, that night he beat me within an inch of my life. The last thing I remember was being shoved through a tire swing as he recited Paul's epistle to the Colossians. It was raining. I've never told anybody about that.

But this isn't about that. This is about the next week, when we went skiing. I was mostly healed up from the beating, and really excited to get out in the snow. I spent the first day taking lessons, and falling down quite a bit. The instructor was very jovial, and used to kids who didn't know what they were doing. But I was terrified of authority figures, and kept apologizing and saying "Don't hit me don't hit me don't hit me!" whenever I fell. He would just laugh, help me up, and tell me to try again. Say that I was doing my best. Say that he was proud of me. I didn't really know how to react to such constructive criticism. I was used to being yelled at, and shoved through tire swings. In fact, every time I fell down, the instructor (his name was Keith) would laugh, and help me up, and my dad would ski by at top speed looking at me like I was such a disappoint and yell epithets at me. Keith told me that maybe what I needed was to stand up to him. I told Keith to mind his business, and walked away. But maybe, just maybe, he had been right.

Anyway, on the second day, sitting over a breakfast of eggs benedict for me and Jack Daniels for pops, he looks at me with his bloodshot eyes and mutters something about being a pussy and trying the diamond slope. I decided Keith was right. I stood up and told my father that I was as much a man as he was, and I could damn well ski the diamond slope better than he could. He asked if that was a challenge, and I said: yes. Yes it was.

We got suited up. Strapped on the skis. Rode up the ski-lift together, staring at each other with fury. Well, I stared at him and he tried to stare back but he couldn't focus very well at this point, what with the liquor. We got to the very top of the diamond slope. It was the middle of a blizzard, too. Visibility was ten, maybe twelve feet. He started to say something about how he knew I would chicken out, but I was already on my way down. Truthfully, I had meant to stand there and issue a clever retort, but I didn't really know how to ski. Keith was a great guy, but a really shitty skiing instructor. Before I knew which way was down, I was off down the hill.

I didn't know what the hell was going on. I couldn't see shit. About seven seconds later, I see Dad fly by me, and all I get is his wicked laugh Doppler-ing past me into the blizzard. "You son of a bitch!" I started to yell, but before I could finish I was suddenly fucking airborne. That's because I went over a goddamn cliff. Here's a quick approximation of what that sounded like:

"You son of a AHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHOLYSHITAAAAH HHHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHH"
BAM!

The "bam" was because I'd landed. Landed on some sort of a deer. Maybe a moose. An elk? Same thing. I landed on a mammalian quadruped. Killed that fucker, but the cushioning of his body saved my life. Made his insides burst open, though. I was just lying there, next to this mammal, his stomach burst open from my impact. In a blizzard. It was below freezing, and I was certainly going to die. Only one thing to do. I'd seen Empire Strikes Back. So I pulled out as much of his entrails as I could, and I crawled inside to wait for rescue.

Lying in there, I had visions. I had dreams. I saw the two paths my life could take. The first path ended there, that night, with me freezing to death inside the carcass of a mule. The second possible path was my rescue, my return to civilization, leaving my father's house forever. I knew at that moment that life would go only one of two ways.

Well, that's before the third path opened to me. When I looked up inside my mammalian prison and realized that all I had to do was hotwire this fucker and I was going to get out of there easy as pie. So I hotwired him. I reached up into his cranial cavity, squeezed his brain with both my hands, pumped until I felt the electricity return to it, and then I worked it like a Dual Shock. That fucking donkey stood right up, and I pumped my hands left-right-left-right and started him walking down the hill. I walked him for miles, my technique getting better and better. I was the first person ever to have hotwired a living creature. I was going to be famous. But more importantly, I was going to live.

I walked that creature right up toward the ski lodge. People started running. Keith came out of the ski lodge and started shooting at me with a shotgun. Luckily, Keith was an even worse shot than he was a ski instructor. Missed me completely. Hit six tourists. Ended up in prison. But anyway the reason he was shooting at all was that it wasn't an antelope at all. Fucker was a bear. I had hotwired a bear, savvy? I dropped out of its stomach, covered in blood and guts, screaming "No, it's me! It's just me! I was lost but now am found!" I figured the Bible reference would prove to them that I was a Christian, and not some sort of pagan-bear-spirit come to maim or possess them.

My dad walked out of the ski lodge. He looked like he'd been crying. We stared at each other across the expanse. Keith's shotgun barrel was still smoking. My dad slowly began to walk toward me. I began to walk toward him. We moved toward each other until we were standing just one foot apart.

"You hotwire that bear?" he asked me.

"Sure did, pops."

He looked at me. I looked at him. He looked at me. I, him. He smiled. I smiled. He pulled his fist back. I frowned.

And then he proceeded to beat me for a solid hour and a half. "Don't you ever hotwire a bear again," he said, as he walked away. "Not ever. You understand?"

"Yes, sir," I said. I spat blood.

He walked away, leaving both the bear and me on the snow.

Bleeding.

Together.