Free Hotshots by Judith Van Gieson Page B

to play basketball he put up a net. He bought me my first pair of skis. He never skied himself, but he always encouraged me.” My father, who worked for the phone company for thirty years, encouraged me to do all the things he couldn’t or wouldn’t do himself: to take risks, to finish college, to ski, to become a lawyer, and to never work for anyone else. After he died I completed his life. I graduated from college, became a skier, went to law school, and eventually started my own practice. I lived in Mexico for a while, which he would have loved to have done. I ended up in New Mexico, where he would also have enjoyed living. Joe and I were both sun seekers. After my brother joined the army, my father and I were left alone. The major relationships build their own kind of house. The one that Joe and I built was a snug and isolated cabin with a wood stove and no room for anyone else. The Kid and I shared twelve hundred square feet (when he stayed here, which had become more and more often), but the house our relationship inhabited had lots of rooms, lots of doors; some of them (the kitchen) were opened rarely, some of them (the empty room) were kept closed. “I was a good skier, Kid. I could ski better than most of the men on the hill. Do you believe that?”
    â€œWhy not? You have mucho determinación when you want to do something. Why don’t you ski now?” You only had to look out the window to see that we had mountains year-round and in a few months they’d be covered with snow. “The cigarettes?”
    â€œNo. I smoked then. I don’t know why I quit exactly. I was at my peak. After my father died I had a perfect day and I didn’t want to ski anymore. That’s when I decided to go to back to school. When I passed out in the fire I was reliving that day, and I saw my father at the base of the mountain calling to me.”
    â€œMy father does that sometimes in my dreams,” the Kid said. “He calls to me from the end of the soccer field.”
    â€œAre they asking us to join them or telling us not to?”
    â€œNot to or we would be dead, no?”
    â€œMaybe.”
    â€œWhen you learn a sport you never forget it. It stays with you your whole life.”
    â€œI don’t know, Kid. Skiing isn’t like riding a bicycle. I don’t know if I could do it again. The equipment is different now. I’m not in great shape.”
    â€œI mean it stays in your attitude.”
    â€œYou mean I have a skier’s attitude?” These days that meant expensive skis and boots. I wasn’t a person who’d chosen to earn or spend a lot of money, and I’d already been a ski bum.
    â€œYou have no fear, Chiquita,” he said. “That’s what I mean.”
    No fear or no sense. I had a feeling of twenty-year-old invincibility that lingered no matter what the pushing-forty evidence indicated. One thing I could say about my life was that I’d lived it. There’d be no one left to do that on my behalf. Was there anything wrong with still feeling like an invincible twenty-year-old? It had taken me into some dark places, some light places, some very interesting places. If you went into the past looking for hurt and abuse, you’d find them. If you went looking for accomplishment, you’d find a platform to spring from. You can master more than the mountain when you learn how to ski. That was what Joe had taught me.
    ******
    Because my appointment with Sheila McGraw was for nine in the morning I approached the Forest Service’s office on Gold from my home on Mirador instead of from my office on Lead. I drove down Edith past the new warehouses, the old pawnshops, and the bars with topless dancers. Albuquerque is a one-story town, a place where development doesn’t climb, it crawls—although we do have a couple of skyscrapers downtown that can be seen from all over the city. They’re the tallest buildings for miles,