#and the culture surrounding that community

[cedarboughs]

The Californians

The posters had been up all over town and the hill for a month. The International Junior Freeriding Cup, presented by a major car brand. They would rip down the rails and groomed jumps of the terrain park underneath the Lynx Quad, and everyone would cheer. We were dreading it. A competition meant a flood of athletes descending on Raven River in a loose horde, high on glory and just plain high, and every modifier on the poster winnowed the athletes, already a particular breed, into a narrower clan. Junior: teenage athletes. International Junior: American teenage athletes. Given that so particular flood, then, maybe the conversation I had on Hemlock Street was inevitable. 

We were headed down Hemlock to the Trapper’s Cabin liquor store, three of us, lifties all, from the rental house. Antoine and Pierre had moved in there a few weeks ago, just after the start of the season, during the second hiring spree. Antoine, from Trois-Rivieres, was a huge birdwatcher, and had taught me how to identify waxwings by the way they flocked. I had taught him Ticket to Ride - the board game, not the Beatles song. Pierre, from Gatineau, had given me his password to an online indie short film festival out of Montreal. I had found his best golf disc when he lost it in the snow. 

It was a warm night for January. We were in little more than sweaters, and wide Hemlock was alive. There were no fences on the residential side of the street, and between houses you could see and smell fires cracking in backyards, joints being passed around them. Somewhere down a side street, a guitar was playing some cowboy chords. We were just passing the bottle depot when footsteps fell in behind us, crunching on the old snow of the sidewalk. 

“Where’s the party?” said a voice, male, barely broken, and with a faintly detectable American-style fry on the syllables. 

I was in a good mood, so I glanced back and said, “Right here, man! This sidewalk is the party!” 

I expected in response a half-ironic but genuinely enthused fist pump and a mumbled ‘Hell yeah,’ an acknowledgement of the simple joy of existing, of standing on the cusp of the night, the unknown and, for all we knew then, the endless night, like a fresh-powder chute hidden by cliffs, and we were standing at the drop-in, clicking poles, ignorant of what the line might hold but ready to drop all the same. 

But there was no fist pump, no feeling of the drop back there. Instead, I turned and started walking switch to look at round faces, unmasked, deadly serious, hanging over shelf-creased Arc'teryx jackets. The one who’d spoken, I think, had a green jacket and was a bit shorter. The other was in orange and a little lankier.   

“Are you guys going to a party?” Green asked flatly. 

Now, I did really think that the party was there on the sidewalk. Not to get too woo-woo about it, but on some level it’s true that a party is a state of mind. That said, we were also on our way to a real party, that is to say, a physical party, nothing wild, but a living room in another rental, some drinks, and a Bluetooth speaker. Whoever brought a speaker somewhere was always hailed as a hero. Tunes out loud always brought things up, but a speaker cost well over a day’s wages for a liftie, probably close to a week’s rent. I had looked at them a half-dozen times, but never yet brought myself to justify it. It was an expensive sacrifice to the altar of kicks. Kicks! Did anyone actually call a fun night out ‘kicks?’ anymore? Not likely, but I didn’t mind thinking it. Whenever I started thinking in Kerouacisms, I knew my energy was right for the night. It was Margot Frances and Jimmy Anders, who had lived in the basement of the rental house before Antoine and Pierre, who had left On the Road in the kitchen for me when they moved out, after all. I could do a lot worse than taking some of the slang from it and leaving the homophobic and misogynistic bits. I wonder vaguely if Margot and Jimmy would be at the other house tonight. I had heard they were back in town, after tree-planting somewhere in the Cariboo for the summer. I had cooked my best chickpea pasta for Jimmy and Margot and given them the recipe. Margot had taught me Norwegian Wood – The Beatles song, not the Murakami novel. I had given Jimmy the novel. 

So, yes, we were going to a party. But we’d already agreed, without a word exchanged, that these guys wouldn't be following us there. 

“We’re looking for hookers,” said Green. 

“Hookers and molly,” said Orange. ”You know what molly is?” 

MDMA. I did know. I’d seen enough videos of glassy-eyed people grinding their teeth in dark parkades to know. It wasn’t much of a Raven drug. Oh, don’t get me wrong, there were drugs aplenty in town. I’d heard the rumours about how to get shrooms, and testimonies from lifties who insisted it was the only way to watch 2001. And of course, by my calculations there was a cannabis shop for every one-and-a-half-thousand people in the region, which had to be some kind of record, and that was just the legal trade. From what I’d heard, most people still got back-alley stuff, whether out of price or habit, since there was almost no enforcement on it anyway. Last summer during the public concert series, there was an opening act by the guy who owned the disc golf course, whose legal name was Eternity Equinox. He’d sung four songs, and three of them were about how pot was an herb that he grew in his garden and so should be legalized. I don’t think anyone had the heart to tell him that this had been the case for years. Margot said it was the best act of the season. 

But I’d never heard of MDMA in Raven River. I knew what it was, but didn’t know what it was, and maybe that was the difference. The drugs people wanted here were plants and mushrooms. You could imagine every step from growing in the woods to a backyard fire. Ecstasy was a pill, wasn’t it? Like Tylenol. Totally synthetic. I had no conception of where Eternity Equinox’s garden might come in. 

“Bro, d’you know where to find hookers?” Green said again. 

I didn’t know if there were sex workers in Raven. It was certainly possible, but I’d never heard of it. I was still in a good mood, though, so I joked back at them: “Everyone’s a hooker for a price, right? For a million bucks I’ll do anything!” 

Again, no laughter, but in the dark patch between street lights I could feel more than see a smirk come to Green’s face. ”My daddy’s a millionaire,” he said, “I could give you fifty thousand right now.” 

“Right now? For nothing? Deal!” 

“I’ll give you ten thousand to suck my cock,” he said. 

“We’re from California,” Orange put in, as if to support the claim. Only millionaires came from California, I guess he meant to say, and not from anywhere else. 

Antoine turned around for the first time and asked, “How old are you guys?”  

“I’m fifteen and he’s sixteen,” said Green. 

“Ah,” said Pierre, and there was great understanding in the syllable. Fifteen. Children of the new millennium. It still struck me as odd that birth years could start with a 2 for people who knew what drugs were. The Californians were born well after the twin towers crumbled down, just around when the economy followed, when, as Arcade Fire put it, we watched the markets crash, and the promises we were made were torn. We had to make our own promises after that. It became clear after a few years that the things we were told in school, that we could all climb the ladder of work and profit, that hard work paid out in the end in the victorious capitalism in which we lived, all that was bunk. So, we had to figure out something else. I think we were all still trying to figure out what that was, but I don’t know. It’s not as if we talked about it. And for kids like these Californians, it was history anyway. They had their own shatterings. I sometimes lamented that my life beyond my hometown had been almost entirely pandemic, but hell, these kids’ whole teens had mostly been pandemic so far. 

“Ten thousand dollars, bro, if you want it.” 

“What do you guys do for fun around here?” asked Orange. 

I said, ”Ski,” just as Pierre said “Snowboard.” 

Well, it was the Kootenays in January. What answer did they expect? 

“I can do a backflip,” said Orange. 

“That’s really cool,” said Pierre, falling back with them a bit. It was cool. I couldn’t do a backflip. Pierre could, I’d seen it once, but he didn’t often. When we rode together we spent more time digging the resort and the sidecountry for hidden lines, untouched pockets of treacherous but ridable alpine terrain far down the remotest ends of ridges where no one had dared to go since the snow fell. Backflips by the chair were cool, but they took time away from that. 

“This place is kinds fucking lame,” said Green, “There’s really no hookers except you fags?” 

“We’re not hookers. Or gay,” said Antoine. 

“Ten thousand, dude.”

“Yeah, okay,” said Antoine. We crossed a side street and he picked up his pace, muttering to me, “Viens. On parle en Francais, ouais?” 

My French was hardly good enough to hold any sort of conversation even in the enunciated Parisian accent of school memories and Duolingo. In Quebec French I was hopeless. Antoine knew that, though. He was trying to talk so that the Californians couldn’t overhear. He would go easy on me. 

“D’accord,” I said, wondering if the Californians could tell how bad my accent was, how transparent our attempt at coding our words was from them. We had no clue that they didn’t also speak French, I suppose. Somehow it just seemed unlikely. 

“I think they are rich,” said Antoine, in a French that was much slower and more scholarly than his and Pierre’s usual cheerful chatter, “They think they can pay for anything. It changes you as a person.” 

“Oui,” I said back, “I mean, ouais. And they’re fifteen!” 

“Are you gonna suck my cock for ten thousand dollars?” Green shouted again. 

“You are going to do it?” asked Antoine, a smirk in his voice. 

I struggled to find the words in French to explain. Even “Non,” was too transparent, as it sounded just like the English word. So, I just said “They’re fifteen,“ again, ils on quinze ans, and Antoine nodded sagely.  

Pierre was hanging back, speaking with the Californians quietly. Antoine glanced at the three of them. “He’s good at talking to them,” he said. We were getting close to the liquor store now, and they could tell. The sign with the trapper in his David Thompson hat was lit and visible. They knew where we were going, and switched tactics accordingly. The ten thousand dollars to be added to a sex offenders registry seemed to be, mercifully, put to the wayside. 

“Will you buy us beer?” 

“Maybe,” Pierre said diplomatically. 

“We want PBR. Do you know what PBR is?” 

Do you know what PBR is? I wanted to say back to them, it’s cheap shit. Instead I said, “Yeah, I know PBR.” 

“Pabst?” asked Pierre. I nodded. “Ah,” he said, ”Cheap shit.” 

“Not bad as cheap shit goes,” I said, granting a concession to the Californians. It was true; it wasn’t like it was Kokanee. 

Pierre held the Californians back again as Antoine and I went ahead. With Pierre distracting them, we could talk in English now. 

“There’s no price for sucking underage dick,” he said. 

“No, of course not.” 

“I don’t want to be on a registry. It’s selling your freedom.” 

“And your self-respect. It’s just a horrible thing to do. I wouldn’t want to do it even if they were our age, but at least it wouldn’t be criminal. They think they can just pay us to become criminals. Do you think they were joking? They have to be just joking. Right?” 

“I don’t know, man. I really don’t know. Money does things to you. They think they can just own people.” 

We came to a stop at last, across the road from the Trapper’s Cabin, the five of us hemmed into a two-by-two line by the snowbanks.  Pierre came over to us, a messenger crossing No Man’s Land, and leaned in. “I told them we would get them beer as long as they don’t follow us.” Antoine and I nodded. This seemed like a fair price for peace. 

“Will you get me a six-pack of PBR?” asked Green. 

“I’ll get you one can,” I said. 

“Two,” said Green. 

PBR was cheap shit, and there were two of them. “Alright,” I said. 

We started off across the road. As we went, Green dug his hands into his pockets and said to Orange, “Bro. It’s kind of lame. I thought the team was gonna party.” 

The team. Somehow, until then, I hadn’t thought about the freeride competition. But of course, that was why they were here, wandering the streets unsupervised. This was probably one of the first times they had a weekend away from their parents, who were back in Los Angeles, busy with their millionaire business. If they were millionaires. As we crossed Hemlock I thought about the bad teen movies I’d seen, where the heroes - to stretch a term – pulled off such elaborate scams, whole layers of lies. I thought about the party scene in every movie like that, with flashing coloured lights coming from who-knew-where in a house full of people with their arms up, music blasting, not a speaker in sight. Part of me still thought that maybe parties like that did exist, and just like in high school, I still wasn‘t in enough loops to know about them. But no, I’m sure I would have seen one by now. I thought about pop songs and trap-hop songs, music videos and lyrics, popping pills and hoes in the back seat. Like I said, Hemlock is a wide street. 

There was only one car parked at the Trapper’s Cabin. I hadn’t noticed it across the street, but it materialized in the red light up close. I was terrible at recognizing cars – these days they were uniformly bubbly and monochrome, the better to resell you to someone who might not like a certain colour, my dear - but this was a car I would remember for years. It was a pale green chevy pickup, circa early nineties model, with “protect parks” stickers on the tailgate and no less than three Rasta bobbleheads all lined up in the windshield. The roof was folded in a way that was definitely off-model, and I knew it was because it had collapsed in after a huge dump of snow, and then been punched back out and reinforced with two-by-fours nailed to the inside. This was Margot Frances and Jimmy Anders’ truck, a Genuine Kootenay Beater. When walking along the ski hill road with intent to get up there close to opening, it was generally known that if a clean black Mercedes SUV passed by, it wasn’t worth the muscle motion to send up a thumb. If a GKB the colour of road salt grumbled past, though, that was usually your way. And absent the quasi-trusty shuttle bus, Margot and Jimmy’s truck was my favourite way to ride up or down. There was just one back seat, which I had to fold into and sit sideways in, and feeling not at all like I’d be safe in a crash, we would set off around the hairpin switchbacks on the hill road, playing The Doors out loud on Margot’s Bluetooth and talking about our runs for the day.  

If one of them was shopping, I’d say hi. 

I’ve never thought of a liquor store as a refuge before, probably, and thankfully, because I’m not an alcoholic. But it was kind of nice having a place that we knew the Californians couldn’t follow. We could talk freely here, albeit with the restriction that we couldn't explicitly mention our plan to toss some cans to underage Americans, although in fairness, it was the Trapper's Cabin, the less refined of the two liquor stores in Raven River, and given it was Raven River, that was saying something, so I doubt the cashier would have cared in the least. He was slumped over the counter, head in his hands, hands breaking up the fall of his blond hair, which fell too around wire-framed round glasses – blond! Round glasses! So that was why the truck was outside. Jimmy was the cashier! 

“Hey!” I said, just as I’d promised myself. 

Jimmy jumped up a bit, activating Customer Service Mode, but shut it down when he saw me. “Jay!” he called out, “You’re still around!” 

I always went by J, or Jay, in Raven River. Jerry, what I’d been in Calgary, had been ditched after the first few weeks of jokes. I’d vaguely known that a Jerry was a term for a bad skier, but not realized quite how prevalent it was, or all the implications. Jerry wasn’t just someone who didn’t know how to ski, who was new, trying to figure things out. Jerry was someone from Calgary, or Toronto, who had a fresh snowsuit that matched pants to jacket, and slick skis with oiled bindings, and his toe in the heel piece of the bindings, because with the cash he’d spent on coming out here, somewhere along the line he must have bought the understanding of what he was doing. 

“I’m still around,” I said, “I heard you were back. And working here!” 

“Ayup. You’re liftying again?”  

“Yeah. Probably my last season.” 

“You said that last winter.” 

“I did. Yeah. I don’t know. Can’t beat the free pass, I guess.” 

“Yeah, for sure. It’s tough going back to paying for it. Margot’s just doing day passes, ‘cause she tore her ACL climbing in November.” 

“Oh, shit! Hope she’s alright?” 

“Yeah, she just lost enough riding days that buying the pass didn’t make sense. She’s working at the Lark Café now. Jill got her the position she used to have.” 

“Right, ‘cause Jill’s at that mid-mountain coffee hut now. I always get free hot chocolate from her. Well, if I’m scanning at the base, I’ll just let Margot up.” 

“Much obliged,” Jimmy nodded, and I went off to look at beers. 

For what I called a less refined store, the selection at the Trapper’s was good – two walls of beer and cider fridges and warm packages in pyramids between, good breweries from all around the West and any flavour profile or drinking style you might want. We rolled past plain sours and fruit sours and salted sours and goses, milk stouts and peanut butter porters, you name it. Antoine lingered in front of something called a Show-off Double IPA. I thought he might take it, but he pointed instead at the peacock on the label and said, “Green peafowl.” I think his bird-identifying was mostly somatic at this point, totally involuntary. 

The PBR was tucked in the slightly dismal back corner, under the little selection of Budweiser and the like. I grabbed a six-pack and brought it to Jimmy. Antoine settled on a box of ginger ciders. Pierre was still in the back, weighing a nice pack of honey ales with another pack of PBR. 

“I didn’t know you were big Pabst guys,” said Jimmy. 

“No,” said Pierre, “This is for someone else maybe. I will try to decide if I want to get it.” 

“Party?” 

“Yeah,” said Antoine, in a quick, shut-us-down sort of way. He didn’t know Jimmy, though. With any other cashier, not an old liftie, he’d have been right to be cautious. But I knew Jimmy. 

“Jimsy,” I said, using Margot’s pet name for him, which I didn’t know if I was allowed to do, but whatever. “You remember when you sent Napalm Chute in the work jacket and I didn’t tell?” 

“Yeah,” said Jimmy, unsure where this was going. 

“Right, that’s all. So you don’t need to tell whoever your boss is here that there are two fifteen-year-olds outside who won’t leave us alone unless we get them beer.” 

“One of them is sixteen,” said Pierre. 

“Sure. Some of the PBR is for them.” 

“Some?” 

“Two cans.” 

“Did they give you money?” 

“No,” said Antoine, “But they’re rich. They could have!” 

“I don’t think they were really rich,” I said. Putting it out loud changed the situation somehow. 

Jimmy went to the window, to the little maze of gaps between his back counter and the posters above, and peered out. “Those kids by the light?” 

I joined him at the window and looked. The Californians were kicking at a frozen snowbank under the halogen glow of a streetlamp. Maybe they were trying to cut a path through. That bank was solid ice though, weeks old, thawed and frozen a thousand times. It was hardly just snow anymore. At best there was a layer of avi-chute choss, three-day-old plow discard, on top of gravel ice. What’s that thing about the Inuit language having ten words for snow where English has one? Whoever started spreading that one wasn’t a skier. 

“They look kind of beat, don’t they?” I said. 

Jimmy nodded and considered this. “D’you mean like beaten up, or like, The Beats, like Kerouac?” 

“Both. Isn’t it the same thing, anyway? Like, he used the word the way it was used, beaten up, but then he added the other definition, the thing about beatific.” 

“You read it, Jay!” 

“Yeah. Thanks for leaving it there.” 

“I’m gonna get the honey ale,” Pierre broke in suddenly, “And I’m gonna give some to the kids as well. It’s more expensive but I’ll keep some.” 

“They wanted PBR,” I said. 

“But this is better,” said Pierre, “It’s sweet. They’ll like it. I’ll give them two.” 

“I was going to give them two of the Pabst,” I said. 

Jimmy leaned in and laced his fingers conspiratorially. “Tell you what,” he said, “If you’re getting two half packs then you’re just buying one, really. Then the kids can have the rest. They look pretty beat, after all. So...” he took off his glasses, laid them on the counter, and looked to the ceiling, “It’d be too bad if you put one of those packs in your bag and I didn’t see it. You might forget to even pay for it.” 

Grinning, Pierre unshouldered his backpack and slid the honey ale in. We paid for the Pabst and Antoine’s cider, which came out to not much more than the honey ales by themselves. The cost, then, was around an hour’s liftying. Two if it hadn’t been for Jimmy. Of course, to say two hours of liftying meant nothing without specifying. Was that two hours of the top station at the out-of-the-way chair on an uncommonly quiet day, sitting in a hut with a thermos of hot chocolate and a paperback, watching snow fall on the valley cedars outside, and then occasionally, every two minutes or so, someone would get off, give a wave, and glide away? Or was that two hours at the base, the main base, on a mobbed-busy weekend, with an endless crowded maze of beginners needing the chair slowed down or even full-stopped for them, and others trying to skip the line while you were occupied, and rich Americans who didn’t think the rules about masks in line applied to them, and even the best most courteous guests were still part of the back-aching cycle of bumping, holding back the mass of each and every chair with a special calculated one-leg-up leanback and never a moment to sit down or even to simply stand at attention? Those shifts paid the same: not quite a six-pack per hour.

“Thanks, man,” said Pierre, as he packed up all the beer, ”From a liftie to another.” 

Jimmy only shrugged. “Not a liftie anymore,” he said. 

“But you were, man, and maybe you say, once a liftie, always a liftie. What were you saying about calling people Beat, Jay? It means two things?” 

“Sort of,” Jimmy explained, “It means, like, poor, beaten up, had a bad time. But these guys back, what, seventy years ago, made it that, but short for beatific, like, spiritual. Godly. They thought that one led to the other.” 

“Yes!” said Pierre, jabbing a finger, leaning close in over the glass bit of the counter where Jimmy scanned wine bottle bar codes, “And Liftie is like that. It’s the job where we put people on the lift, but it’s also, like. Hey. Answer me this. When you work on a chair, who’s your favourite person to see in line?” 

Jimmy and I had no answer for this, but without missing a beat, Antoine said, “Another Liftie.” 

“Exactly!” said Pierre, getting way into it now, “Because they are your friend, but not just that. Because they make you feel good about doing the job. They know what it’s like! And...” he was practically vibrating now, “Wherever you meet another liftie, an old liftie too, even years later, they also try to help, because they know you’re down, they know you’re working hard and you’re tired and they LIFT you up... and you LIFT them up sometimes. The people who own the ski hill, who own the shops, they want you to pay for everything. They want you to work more, they want you to be better than the other guy by buying more stuff by working harder so you have more stuff than him. You compete, always competition. Lifting just yourself up...” 

“By your bootstraps,” I nodded. I’d never understood that expression. The only boots I even knew of that had straps were ski boots with ratchet straps, and they were too tight to the boots to lift anything by. They were too busy holding you to the snow. 

“But you don’t have to. Instead, you let people have free beer. That’s what Liftie is. You lift each other!” 

Jimmy stood stunned for a long hanging moment. I thought about the songs we sang and taught on guitar, free beers and hot chocolates, bird facts, board games. I thought about Pierre and Antoine and Jimmy and Margot, and Jill at the mid-mountain hut. Then Jimmy hit a button on his screen, and my short receipt began to print with a sound like the Lynx Quad powering up in the morning, and he nodded, slowly at first and then picking up, and said “Hell yeah.” Then he turned to me and said, “Holy fuck, Jay. Where do you meet these people?” 

I said, “At the hill. Liftying. Where else?” 

The Californians were still hanging out under the streetlight when we left the store. They perked up when they saw us heading back their way. 

“You got our stuff?” Green called. 

In response I twisted two cans off my six-pack and tossed them one at a time at him. He caught each with the flawless reflexes of a seasoned backflipper. 

“Take some of this too,” said Pierre, tossing them two of his honey ales. 

“What’s this?” said Orange. 

“Try it!” said Pierre, “Expand your taste!” Then he jogged off. Antoine was already headed back the way we’d come from. 

The Californians didn’t comment on getting four beers when they asked for two, but then, neither did any of us.  I never saw them again after that, so I never got any more hints on whether they really were millionaires’ sons, or just ski team kids on the tournament dime. Right then, when they were huddling with their gloveless hands in their armpits on a lonely street, I decided it didn’t much matter. Green gave me a peace-sign salute, a universal gesture of cool accord, and we parted, we two victims of disparate hoped-for nights. 

As I ran to catch up with Pierre and Antoine, a big raven fell with a sound of wind from a nearby powerline, landing in the middle of Hemlock Street. I took a pause to curtsy a bit. I always bowed to a raven when I saw one alone. One of them, an immortal one, pulled the first humans out of a clam shell on the beach in Haida Gwaii, so it was always good to be respectful, because you never know. Two years ago, when I was browsing a list of ski resorts that were looking for applicants, I had seen Raven River and thought of that. 

Two days later, on the final day of the International Junior Freeriding Cup (presented by a major car brand,) I was working the Lynx Quad at the mid-station. A remarkable oddity for a chairlift, Lynx Mid lets riders get off halfway, or else to sit tight and carry on through. For those who carried on, up to where they entered the start gates at the top of the terrain park, all I had to do was watch them pass by, thrusting their numbered bibs out to the safety bar for all to see. I passed the time by collecting high-fives. As they glided past, all I had to do for a high-five was to extend my hand, inches from where the chair slid by. I always got one back, and they would cheer for me.