Olivine stood beside her car to stretch. She sank deep into a lunge, and then she lifted her arms in the air and breathed and then she bent forward at the waist, feeling a tug and a warmth in her back and in her hamstrings.
And then she opened the back of the Jeep and took out her ski boots. When she had both boots on, and the laces were pulled tight, she gripped her skis, which extended from the center console, high into the back hatch, and she removed them as a pair, in one sweeping motion, and she placed them parallel near her feet on the ground. She clicked her boots into the skis and pulled her poles from the car.
She checked the position of the sun in the sky. She knew she would have only a short time to ski before sunset, so she stuffed a headlamp into her jacket pocket and pulled a thin wool stocking cap over her head before swinging the hatch closed.
Olivine made her way across the snow-packed parking lot and over the hump of snow at the base of the trail, and she began to kick and glide across the squeaky snow. The swoosh of her skis and the puffs of her breath combined into a syncopated rhythm, which came faster and faster as she climbed. It wasn’t long before a sense of contentment and peace descended upon her, as it always did, when she skied through the trees. Being out here was like hitting her “reset button.” It helped her to think and to clear the cobwebs and the fuzziness from her mind.
It reminded her of when she was writing—back when she had been writing—when she reached that state of supreme quietness and moment-to-moment thinking. That lovely flurry of activity and movement combined with a calm, peaceful focus. A focus she found only in moments of deep love and deep exertion.
She had tried to take Paul along on a backcountry ski trip once, but he preferred the chairlifts and the predictable routes and runs of the ski resort. And that was okay. She adored being out here alone, and she loved skiing up mountains just as much as she loved skiing down them. Kicking and gliding up a steep ascent, she could push her body to its limits—hamstrings, glutes, quads, triceps—all engaged to propel her toward the summit.
She loved this trail, in particular, because it started with a climb. Straight up. And then it would spit her out, lightheaded and happy, on top of the world where she would be able to see everything. On all sides.
The sun had just dipped below the peaks, and she skied along in the near darkness, not yet ready to spoil the wilderness with an artificial puddle of light from her headlamp. And, once she got going, Olivine’s mind began to churn as it always did when she skied, one thought after another: linear, clear and sharp.
And she found herself thinking back to the day when she and Henry had been driving along in his Volkswagen and Led Zeppelin’s “Over the Hills and Far Away” had crackled through the speakers: “Hey lady,” the song began, “You got the love I need.” And Henry had said, “This song makes me think of you. It’s simple. It’s lovely.” This was how she felt when she was with him. Simple and lovely. Genuine and whole. Hushed, like when the house was empty and she heard her own footsteps clacking on the wood floors and her own breath echoing in her head and she settled down on her favorite chair and she felt herself—her soul, her mind—inhabiting her body. And this would lead to a surge of total awareness, and she would wonder for a moment if anyone had the right to be this peaceful, this happy. There was a reverence to this feeling, a slight buzz and a dizziness to it, like she was just coming out of anesthetic, and there was a sense of fullness and of peace. This was how she had felt with Henry.
But she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about Henry. Only Paul. And she continued to climb, and her hamstrings and her triceps throbbed, and her breath quickened, expelling from her now in bursts and her thoughts continued their forward march. Memories from a decade ago right alongside those from yesterday.
What did she need to do to stop thinking about Henry? Henry was married. And she was engaged. To a man who could not only take care of her forevermore but who would help her find her purpose in life. Who wouldn’t stop until he had helped her to craft a meaningful existence for herself.
She remembered then something Yarrow had told her once, just after the twins were born. “There’s something people don’t tell you about adulthood,” Yarrow had said, “probably because they don’t want to make you too scared to go on. They don’t tell you that, half the time, you don’t know what in the world you are doing. I mean, I had a full week of mandatory training to be a waitress at Shoney’s, but these nurses, they just handed me two babies. Newborns. Just like that. And now, I feel like I’m playing house. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, which makes me wonder: Does anyone know what the hell they’re doing?”
And Olivine had nodded her head, adding, “I certainly don’t,” and even then, she had been thinking about Henry and the way she felt a little lost. And she had continued sharing her fears and her anxieties with her sister because it always helped. At least a little bit. Olivine had said, then, “When you're a child and even a young adult, you go along and you get good grades and you go to college and then you get a job that is sort of like something you could have gotten without going to college. And unless you're an engineer or a doctor, you flounder around and you try to see what others are doing. You try to see how others are managing, and you try to do whatever you were put here to do. And then one day you hear statistics that say more than one hundred people die every minute but each lived a meaningful and, in some respect, rich life. But no one is just a tally mark in a statistics book. Each of these tallies lived and dreamed and puked and pooped and had their heart broken and grew vegetables and cried and loved and scratched. And it just gives you a different perspective on everything. That vastness of the world…” and she and Yarrow had swayed their heads and shrugged and looked at one another with bewilderment. This was back when Yarrow had time to be existential, Olivine thought with a smile.
This conversation had occurred five years ago, and, yet, here she was. Without Paul, she would be no closer to determining how she would make her mark on the world. And then she thought, that in the amount of time it took her to have these thoughts, in the amount of time it took her to climb one hundred yards, several hundred more people on the earth had perished. People just like her. And so, did it really matter? For all of her scratching about and trying to change the world and do something meaningful? She chuckled at herself; at the places that her mind went when she skied.
And so she skied faster, faster though the trees. Just ahead, the trail dipped low and then it climbed still steeper, and she had to dig in hard with her poles for traction and her triceps burned, and she remembered just then how she had once told Paul about wanting to travel around and write and be a vagabond for awhile.
“Doesn’t that sound like a dream?” she had asked.
“No,” he had replied.
“Oh.”
“I mean, why travel if you don’t have the money to enjoy it? It would be far better to get a good career… one that means something to you and to the world, and then, when the time is right, you’ll have money and vacation time. If you do things right, you can retire rich and then you can see the world. It’s much more enjoyable that way.”
Shortly after this conversation, Paul had presented her with a course catalog for the local college, where she ended up starting her prerequisite classes the very next semester.
“And I don’t want you doing anything else while you’re taking your classes,” Paul had said. And then he laid out his plan: “Now, because you already have your bachelor’s degree, in something else, you could join an accelerated program and become a Registered Nurse in a single year. But you are going to have to push it. You are going to have to work extremely hard. I’ll support you. I’ll pay for everything. And that means you don’t have to do any more writing.” He had looked proud, smug even. “Then,” he had said, “We can work alongside one another. All day, at the hospital. And when we are older, if you still have that travel bug, we could go, together, to Honduras or Ghana or any of a number of other nations where t
hey need people like us, with the kinds of skills I have and the kinds of skills that you will soon learn.” He was talking quickly now, “I could do some humanitarian missions in war-torn nations around the world, and you could assist with my surgeries, as I give people back their mobility. Their lives.”
“And I could write about it. I could write a book about it. And take photos. I could document the whole process.”
“Sure, if you had time for that. I mean, you’d be pretty busy as my assistant,” he had said.
Paul was a good man, and he was taking good care of her. She had to admit that it was nice not having to juggle her career and school at the same time. It was nice that he took such interest in how she spent her time, though, it occurred to her now, he did sometimes worry about her skiing and running and biking alone; about her “heading into the wild,” as he called it, all by herself.
“I’m never really alone. I see people on the trail all the time,” she reassured him.
“Yeah. Guys. Weirdos. Kooks who know your favorite trails and where you’ll be every day.”
He had bought her some liquid Mace once, to bring with her. “You can call it bear spray if you prefer,” he had said.
“Okay, sure,” she said, and then she put it in the drawer near her bedside table, where she figured it probably was to this day.
Not that she hadn’t seen plenty of kooks. One time, a man dressed in full camouflage followed her for awhile, but she skied so fast he couldn’t keep up. Another man, whom she saw on occasion, was in the newspaper for placing land mines and booby traps around his home, just a quarter mile from this very trail. And then there were the homeless people who lived in canvas tents or homemade tepees, even in these harsh winter conditions. The locals called them “woodsies,” and they were in the news from time to time, as well. Mostly, though, they kept to themselves, working behind-the-scenes jobs in the resorts and restaurants: cleaning dishes or sweeping gondola cars. It was a lifestyle she could understand on some level. In some ways, she supposed, they were vagabonds.
With Paul, there would be no vagabond lifestyle, and she reasoned now that this was just as well since she was getting used to the life he provided for her. It was a good life, with probably more than its share of luxury. But if she started a family, she would be in that place she was never sure she wanted to be. Completely tied down. Just like Yarrow. Neighbors would pop by to chat about things like potty-training strategies She would need to sew Halloween costumes and bake cookies for fundraisers. The domestic commitments would go on and on. She’d probably have to work as a nurse, too. And all of this would take her even further away from her writing. But, then, she hadn’t gotten around to writing anyway. Not for years. Not writing her own stories at least. As a ghostwriter, she was just writing some other joker’s stories. For peanuts. So what difference would it possibly make?
Maybe Paul would agree it would be okay for her to take some time off from the career he had devised for her in order to raise his children. If he decided he wanted them, of course. That was a conversation she would still need to have. And then there was the fact that learning about the human body made her feel kind of woozy most of the time. If the professor showed a film in Anatomy, sometimes she couldn’t eat for the rest of the day.
Just then, a sharp crack broke the stillness of the forest. She sucked her breath in sharp and stopped. An image flashed in her mind. A photo that had been in the paper after one of the woodsies had bludgeoned another to death, just outside a handmade yurt. It was some kind of fight over a fifth of Jim Beam. Olivine’s heart began to race as images pulsed through her mind. Woodsies, but also mountain lions, black bears, and moose. Why didn’t she bring that bear spray?
Something was definitely coming her way. As it neared, the sound became more round, and it struck her, now, almost like a yodel. A short yip, followed by a song, low and guttural. Louder and louder. “Yodel ho del ho die ho.” Definite woodsy. Definite kook. Heading straight for her. Olivine’s heart lurched into her throat.
She knew she should have turned around twenty minutes before. This was also when she should have put on her headlamp. It had just felt so good to be able to think and to be on her own.
She needed to turn and go back the direction she had come. Now. Fast. She turned one ski, flipping it up and facing it in the opposite direction on the trail. And just as she lifted the other ski and was beginning to turn it into the air, she felt the impact.
Her knee twisted as something knocked her backward into the snow. The powder on the side of the trail cushioned her fall, but a searing pain ripped through her knee. She closed her eyes just as a wet, warm sensation lapped at her nostrils. She sputtered and blinked her eyes open. It was a tiny dog, white-faced with two perfect brown spots on either eye, hopping on her chest, first to one side, then to another. Licking her face between hops. And then she saw Henry. On the trail. Nearly on top of her.
“Oh Olivine,” he was saying, “I’m so, so sorry. I was going so fast on the way down and I didn’t expect anybody out here and I didn’t even see you until it was too late.”
Olivine’s face flushed hot. She laughed. “Call off your dog.”
“Sorry, sorry. Come on, Lola.” The dog jumped to Henry’s side and tilted her head, ears cocked.
“Please, please tell me you’re okay.” Henry said.
“I’m fine.”
“You look sort of…twisted.”
“Yeah, and sort of upside down, huh?”
“Here.” He held out his hand, buried inside on oversized mitten, and she grabbed for it while he pulled her up, but because her leg was connected to the ski, this motion only caused her knee to twist still farther. She sucked in her breath.
“Oh. Wow. That hurts. Doesn’t it?“ Henry asked.
She held her breath, then sputtered. “It does.”
“Oh Olivine, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine. I’m fine. Probably just needs some ice.”
He removed his mitten and pulled a bag designed for dog waste from his pocket. “It’s clean, I promise,” he said as he scooped snow inside and tied the top. Before she could protest, he had clicked out of his skis and was reaching one hand under the back of her legs and another behind her back. And then he plucked her out of the snow as though she weighed nothing. She looked up at him, seeing only the bottom of his chin. The whiskers here were entirely silver. Adrenaline surged through her, whether from being hoisted from the snow by Henry Cooper or from the throbbing pain in her leg.
As he picked her up, her legs untwisted, and he lay her on the soft powder just to the side. Then he removed her skis and applied the snow pack to her knee.
“Well,” he began. “It looks okay now that it’s straightened out, but what the hell do I know?”
She laughed. “Let’s just sit for a minute.”
“Then we can figure out whether you need to go to the hospital. Do you think you need to go to the hospital?”
“No.” Olivine found that she couldn’t stop looking at him. In the fading light, his silhouette. Those long lashes, sweeping over his coffee-colored eyes.
Henry settled himself next to her. He stared down at the icepack sitting atop her knee. “I set off from the cabin, to clear my head,” he said, low. “I was in my own little world, I guess. What are you doing out here? Way up here?”
“Well,” she laughed. “I had stopped and was trying to turn around because I could hear a crazy man yodeling in the woods, and I didn’t want that crazy man to hit me.”
“I’m so sorry.” He looked up at her face, his brow furrowed. “Where did you ski from?”
“Straight up. From the Prospector’s Point Trailhead.”
“Wow, woman. That’s quite a climb. You don’t mess around,” he said, “But then, I guess you never did.”
The cold from the snow beneath her braced her, grounded her in the moment. She took off her hat.
He watched her. His eyes were so luminous they appeared almost glassy. He gave h
er a lopsided smile. “You must have been climbing fast. Your head is steaming. Guess those legs still work like they used to.”
A memory flashed through her mind. Her legs locked around his hips, tangled in the sheets. Their fingers interlocked.
“How’s the pain?” he asked.
“It’s fine. Really.”
“Is there anything I can do. Are you comfortable? At all?”
“You could yodel for me.” She grinned. “That might help.”
“You heard me singing, huh?”
“Is that what you call that?”
He smirked. “Sometimes, the joy of the descent just gets the best of me, Olivine. You know?”
She nodded.
“And, when I’m all alone, I like to hear my voice just echoing along in the trees…I really didn’t expect anyone else to be out here.”
“Evidently.”
“Poke fun if you must,” he said, “but yodeling is strangely soothing. Do you want me to teach you?”
“Do I ever!” She laughed and tried to straighten out her knee. Nope, not quite ready for that yet. She kept it bent and watched him—his mouth, his eyes— as he spoke.
“I learned the technique on a visit to the central Alps, where it’s actually a way for herders to communicate, both with other villagers as well as with their animals.”
“Is that a fact?”
“It is.” He leaned back, rolled over on his side to face her and braced his head on one hand, just the way he used to. “Honestly, it’s really fun to make those kinds of noises. Something deep, deep, deep. From your diaphragm. From your core. There’s something nearly primal about it.”
He began making a barking pitch, up and down, with his throat, and the sound made her giggle. His eyes were so bright, so expressive. And Olivine realized she was smiling. Broad and deep.
“Now you try.”
The One Who Got Away: A Novel Page 9
