Set in a small mountain town, Allison Snyder’s “If I, He, They, She Had, Hadn’t, Had,” explores the ways grief takes hold of its inhabitants. A ski accident kills the narrator’s neighbor, and while he waits for the incident report, tension builds around what might have gone differently. This is the kind of story readers will feel deep in their bones.
The night after Doc was airlifted out of Columbine Canyon, I’m thinking how, if I hadn’t loaned Cooper the Tacoma to haul some stone slabs, then I wouldn’t have been at the repair shop with busted shocks when Doc called for a ski partner yesterday morning, and Stump wouldn’t now be slamming a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue on my already bottle-cluttered table as he says, “Doc and I were supposed to drink this tonight, supposed to tune up his goddamn chainsaw, and drink this.” When Stump thunders the table again, my insides pulse with the urge to punch his bearded jaw, and I turn toward the ten folks cramming the table, then toward the ten more sardined around the kitchen counter. They all look away, thumb the beers in their hands, and I keep my fist in the back pocket where it’s been since the urge to hit Stump first overtook me this morning. A choreography of avoidance, I think and step back, toward the aspen-heat of the woodstove that divides the kitchen from the living room.
After Stump’s sullen arrival lingers for an awkward while, Janie stands, and with a too-many-beers-limp, shuffles toward my less-than-organized cupboards for more glasses. Meanwhile, the rest of us stay quiet and Stump bows his head, hand still gripping the Johnnie Blue, as a mess of dark ringlets pour over his face. He doesn’t move, doesn’t say a word, which is unprecedented for a guy who’s been disrupting the peace since he moved to town six years ago. Always pulling donuts on his beater dirt bike, revving that two-stroke engine every time he passes my house cause he knows I can’t stand motorheads, and picking fights at Town Hall meetings just to hear himself argue. “Easy Marty,” Doc would always say to me when things got heated at Town Hall, then he’d laugh, “you were a stubborn duckling once too.”
And maybe Doc is, was, right, but I haven’t liked Stump since he bullied the town into hiring him to eradicate non-native plants. “Convinced,” Doc would interrupt, “Convinced, not bullied.”
Stump never liked me either. That’s the kind of town we live in. Personalities mirror the environment. There’s a reason this place, save for the brief mining boom blip, went mostly undeveloped until the dawn of the new millennium. Tucked into a high-mountain valley, the winds are relentless. On the best days, snow falls at a slant and most days, the snow runs parallel to the ground. At least twice a winter, avalanches slam the road, locking the town in with mounds of cement-like debris. And we didn’t get internet until a few years back. Before that, unreliable landlines were our access to the world beyond the one hundred people living here. On top of all that, we govern ourselves like the miners did—once a month, we gather at Town Hall with six-packs of beers to argue over whether we should decrease the town’s speed limit, or fix the leaking water pipe, or pave the dirt road that’s kicking dust up all summer long. These meetings last until all opinions, informed and uninformed, have been stated several times over and there’s no beer left to drink.
The Great Internet Debate went on for a full year of town meetings, and it was the only time Stump and I aligned. Neither of us wanted it, and we were right—it’s brought millennial work-from-homers who are softening the population. Just look at Kayla, pressed against my kitchen counter, phone in the air, recording the sorry shindig I never should’ve told Janie I’d host. I don’t know who wants to see a bunch of half-drunk, half-high, sad-faced middle-aged folks in LL Bean flannels, and Carhartt vests, and logo tees, staring at a man with a curtain of curls praying to a bottle of Johnnie Blue. But what do I know, the only content I create is scrap wood furniture for the second, third, fourth homeowners in the resort town to our north.
“Knucklehead. Doc, you’re a freakin’ knucklehead,” Utah shouts, breaking the awkward beer-thumbing avoidance as he stomps in from the deck, shaking a neon lighter against his thigh. All twenty-odd gazes, save for Stump’s, shift toward Utah’s twiggy frame. He’s swallowed in an orange-bright down jacket, the sort worn on Everest, or to walk the wind-blasted streets of our town in late February.
Utah hesitates, takes in the scene as he slams the lighter hard against his thigh. Utah’s been out all day with Search and Rescue. He was in the helicopter this morning. The one that spotted the blood trail on the snow leading to Doc’s body.
When the flame finally sparks, Kayla and Janie clutch their noses in irritation as tobacco overtakes the beer-musk nectar. That’d usually piss me off too, but tonight, I don’t care if the place stinks like The Tavern circa 1999, where every weeknight I inhaled second-hand smoke, and swallowed back the bitter taste of PBR to wash away a day of teaching uncoordinated teens in Pit Viper goggles to ski. It was all I could afford then. Those rich kids were a stingy bunch and I was always grateful when Doc came around on Fridays to buy me something better than PBR. He was a bit older, making some money as a lawyer, and he flinched when we called him Juris Doctor, so of course that’s what we called him, until eventually, Doc was the only name he had.
“Knucklehead,” Utah says again, louder this time, and as that depressing Neil Young song about mother nature on the run comes on the radio, he trudges back outside, muttering about Doc and slamming the door behind him.
“The music’s making this sorry shindig even sorrier,” I can hear Doc say with a laugh as Stump stands there with his head hanging like some near-decapitated doll, Janie searches the cupboards, and the rest of us misfits say nothing, sip more beer.
* * *
When it comes to scraps, aspen is my least favorite. Soft and porous, I can never get them to do what I want and don’t like the way they look against the hardwoods I get on the cheap. But that doesn’t, didn’t, stop Doc from bringing me a twisted aspen trunk every time he went out with his Milwaukee Mini-Chainsaw, clearing some trail of wind-felled trees. All summer and fall, he strapped that chainsaw to a pack, pedaled his mountain bike, and brought me his favorite pieces no matter how many times I said I’d never be able to make anything with them. They all ended up in the pile next to the shed, and when firewood supplies get low, I dig the dry ones out of the bottom. By winter’s end, the pile shrinks cause Doc only clears Engleman spruce in the winter, those are the trees lining, and sometimes blocking, his favorite ski runs.
* * *
After draining another lager, I toss an aspen log on the fire, and start thinking how if the client hadn’t called with a list of impossible customizations for the scrap wood chest I’m making her, I wouldn’t have been so distracted when I pulled into the repair shop yesterday morning, wouldn’t have left my phone among the coin and toothpick clutter in the cupholder where I couldn’t hear it ring, couldn’t answer it, and couldn’t tell Doc to hold off on the ski until I was back, tell him to wait until Tuesday, which is now today, and if I’d just been able to answer the goddamn phone, then this morning, I wouldn’t have woke to the hum of a helicopter as dawn cracked, yoking the Engelmans and snow-slathered peaks surrounding town with light.
At first, I didn’t think much of it. Like Stump, the local HeliSki operation has been disrupting the peace for the last six years. Always bombing the slopes in Columbine Canyon, ripping the mountain clean of unstable snow so they can drop flatlanders with no avalanche rescue skills at the top of those avalanche-prone slopes, send ‘em for a ride of their lives. “Cheats,” Doc always said when the subject came up, usually while we sat on his deck, smoking a bowl of Janie’s ultra-mild weed. Doc is, was, the sort who subscribed to the philosophy that turns were better when earned. Like me, he thought getting a helicopter lift, instead of hiking, to the top of a slope didn’t count. Not like either of us could afford lifts on a regular basis anyhow.
By the time I scooped coconut oil into my coffee this morning, the drum of the helicopter rattled my chest bone and there was no explosion cratering the mountain. That’s when my stomach dropped like it always does on these sorts of days. Kinda like plunging down the steepest part of a rickety old roller coaster, but unlike that roller coaster, there’s no relief, no hope for relief, and that bottomless feeling in the gut just stays that way until I learn the person is safe or, another one of my friends is dead. At fifty-three, I’ve watched enough Tibetan prayer flags flutter at celebrations of life for lives that ended too soon in a wilderness that will never be tamed, and eventually, the body learned how to deal with the misery of the ride. It’s best to push through, keep going, and so, as the helicopter rattled over Columbine, I took my oiled coffee outside and walked the ice-slick streets to Town Hall, an old log building with a sagging roof.
Now, I’m not a religious man, haven’t been to church since my ex-mother-in-law dragged me to a candlelit Christmas Eve service eons ago, but as ice squeaked under my feet, my pleads turned to prayers, and as I passed each house, I looked in the windows, tried to determine who was home, who wasn’t. Most the windows were curtained or hidden behind aspens or spruce. This town doesn’t exactly attract extroverts. Most of us are better at conversing with dogs and trees than each other, but I care about these folks, and without realizing it, I began praying for each of them as I walked by Janie’s fogged solarium, and Utah’s thick, glossed logs, and Cooper’s rainbow trellis, until I neared Town Hall where I got distracted by the fact no one’s keeping up on removing snow from the already sagging roof. There, the air hissed and hummed with the static of radios and the controlled chaos of the sheriff’s makeshift command center. Volunteer Search and Rescue crew spilled from Town Hall and some guy I didn’t recognize delivered directives, though I couldn’t hear what they were about. Couldn’t hear if it was a rescue, or a retrieval.
That’s when I saw Stump. Pacing at the nearby playground. Going from swing set to the snow-packed mound under the cracked yellow slide, kicking untied boots into the ice, then turning, pacing some more, and I knew it wasn’t good. I also knew Doc was the only friend we had in common in this town. When we made eye contact, Stump shook his head hard, the ringlets half-buried under a bulky gray beanie, and when I asked who it was, he mouthed Doc, then slammed another boot into the frozen mound.
As he began pacing again, I looked toward the slopes of Columbine Canyon, looked for some sign of an avalanche, a crown, a scar of debris scraping the white slopes, but too much of the terrain was hidden in the dips and turns of the canyon. I didn’t see anything, and the rickety roller coaster in my stomach kept on dropping, no relief in sight, because Doc wasn’t an early riser. He liked to take his time in the mornings. Coffee. Two eggs over easy. Rye toast with a dash of Janie’s weed turned seasoning. If it was Doc, that meant he’d been out there since he went skiing Monday afternoon, after his missed calls to me looking for a partner, and that meant Doc had been out all night. If he was under the snow, buried by a slide, he would’ve had about eighteen minutes before there was no air left to breath.
* * *
Doc: Found you a real zinger this time Marty.
Me: That’s gnarled as all heck. How exactly am I gonna use that?
Doc: You’ll find a way. Just look at the character of it.
Me: Stop breaking your back to bring scraps that’ll only ever work to keep me warm.
Doc: But look at that knot, right there, like it’s watching over us or something.
Me: I never met anyone who saw the beauty in the warped as much as you Doc.
* * *
Stump’s still gripping the damn Johnnie Blue like it’s the only thing steadying his sullen self as Janie returns, carrying a bunch of mismatched glasses, and Kayla clears the table clutter with one hand, the other hand holding her iPhone in selfie mode, and I’m thinking about all the things I didn’t say to Doc, all the times he told me about some line he’d skied or planned to ski that I thought was questionable given the unstable snowpack, all the times I made a sort of joke of it, telling him he was going to kill himself one day. We all did it. Called him Doc Danger. And when the official Avalanche Accident Report comes out tomorrow, it will say something like, Skier 1 was an experienced backcountry skier, with a high-risk tolerance, who was comfortable traveling alone. But that’s not the whole story. Because last week, when we were sitting on his deck, watching the toothy ridgelines dissolve into grayness, Doc told me how a beetle-dead Engelman had fallen across the path of his favorite tree run in Columbine Canyon, told me how he planned to clear it with that Milwaukee Mini as soon as he had a day off, and if I’d told him to cool it, told him the snow was too touchy, made him swear not to go up unless someone was with him, then maybe, just maybe Cooper wouldn’t be wrapping an arm around Stump next to my kitchen table, saying, soft and slow, “It’s all good man. It’s all good.”
Stump keeps on standing there, unmoved by Cooper’s words of comfort, which are rooted in denial because Cooper had been out of town since Saturday, just drove back this evening and has only known Doc is dead for thirty minutes, give or take. Plus, Cooper’s one of those extreme pacificist who refuses to kill the spiders and mice and even the aphids in his house. “What makes me any more entitled to this pad than them,” he’ll say if you ask, or if you don’t. But if he keeps on attempting comfort with a man who cannot be soothed, that might just provoke Stump into punching. And if Stump starts the fighting, I won’t feel bad throwing a fist in his face like I’ve wanted to since I found out he got word Doc was missing last night and didn’t bother to call me, just went out there on his own, looking for Doc under a no-moon abyss.
“Stump, you there buddy,” Cooper asks real slow as he inches his face toward the curtain of curls. “It’s all good, all good.”
Shaking my head, I step away, retreat from the crowded table where Janie’s given up on using the glasses and is talking to another millennial import who makes money doing something on the internet. Ask about it and the long-winded, technical explanation is the best sedative around, knocks you out standing up. But they must be talking about something else cause Janie’s laughing with her whole body, shaking everyone within ten feet. Except for Stump. He’s a block of cement.
Getting another lager from the fridge, Kayla walks toward me and says, “Can I ask a stupid question?” And I nod, cause at least she’s self aware.
“Why’d he go out skiing yesterday when the snowpack was still touchy?”
“Is that thing off,” I say, looking at her phone, cause I don’t want to be featured on anyone’s social media reels, especially one glamourizing #mountainlife through the eyes of a yuppie transplant. When Kayla nods, I say, “In thirty years of living here, how many times do you think Doc skied that slope? More than anyone. And yeah, I wouldn’t have been there yesterday afternoon, but Doc wasn’t stupid. He just wasn’t perfect. Or maybe, he was.”
Biting her bottom lip, I see Kayla’s trying to stop the tears and realize she’s new to this roller coaster ride and it almost breaks me, almost cracks through the losses that’ve turned pain into numbness. Patting her shoulder, I smile and say, “It sucks, I know,” then we both look toward still-frozen Stump. Like the motorhead he is, he’s accelerated through the stages of grief, landing at Depression, just twelve hours after he whipped wild with Anger like Utah’s whipping with tonight, and all that means is he’ll master something like Acceptance, only to wake back with Cooper in Denial tomorrow. Not that I buy into that stages-of-grief bullshit. It’s always felt more like a Ferris Wheel you can’t get off, thrashing through each stage again, and again, and again.
“It’s snowing horizonal,” Utah says, stomping boots and slamming the deck door behind him, a half-finished cigarette dangling from his mouth. He eyes Cooper and Stump, then heads that way, a thunderous trail of melting snow in his wake as he unzips the bright-orange puffy, tosses it hard across the room, and his whole body shivers with the rage and cold, each step a crescendo against the otherwise stilled room. He pauses at the bottle-and-crowd-cluttered table, then picks up an empty longneck lager.
“Chill, man,” Cooper says to Utah, his arm still hanging on to block-of-cement Stump.
“A fuckin’ Knucklehead,” Utah shouts as he hurls the lager toward the scuffed-up pine floor, smashing the emerald bottle into a kaleidoscope of glass.
Stump finally releases the Johnnie Blue and spins toward Utah, nose to nose as he yells, “What the hell did you just call Doc?”
Kayla has her phone in the air again, because really, is there anything better than a fight between middle-aged, grief-wallowing men to propel someone to social media fame? I wonder.
Cooper stares at Stump.
Stump stares at Utah.
Utah stares at Cooper.
And the rest of us, save for Kayla, we stare at our beers.
* * *
Last year, the inspiration hit me to do something with some of that gnarled, too-porous aspen next to the shed. Figured I’d make some funky and disfigured table for Doc’s sixty-fourth birthday. The first attempt went all wrong. Not at all funky, too disfigured. And the second try wasn’t much better. By the time we stood on Doc’s deck, drinking whiskey and singing that Beatles song questioning love’s longevity, I hadn’t started on the third attempt. Next birthday, I told myself, as I watched Doc dip and sway to the rooty-toot-toot of Paul McCartney’s voice.
* * *
Looking out the kitchen window, I see Utah’s right, it’s snowing sideways, which is nothing new, but it’s getting even more horizontal these days as the winds pick up velocity, carrying in dust from far off places and screwing with the snowpack. And, like the rest of the world, our temps have gone erratic, the snow doesn’t fall like it once did. Tomorrow, the Accident Report will say something about how the snowpack on the slope was shallow and composed of faceted snow grains. But what it won’t say is how, after a few rounds of Janie’s weed, Doc and I always got to lamenting like a couple old fogies about how the snow used to be, and it won’t say how, if we were still getting snow like we used to get snow, that fallen Engelman would’ve been buried, and Doc wouldn’t have been so damn set on clearing it, and this morning, I wouldn’t have been at the town playground, visoring my eyes, looking into Columbine Canyon when Stump started yelling and screaming about the sheriff, about how the damn sheriff wouldn’t help him out last night, and how, if he’d just had some help, he could’ve got to Doc, could’ve saved his life.
When Stump took a breath this morning, I dropped the hand visors and wanted to punch him, but before I could ask why the hell he didn’t call me for help, he revved up again complaining about the sheriff and the sheriff’s bureaucratic protocols. Stump was screaming and yelling and barely making sense, and he didn’t care the sheriff could hear, or more likely, that was the point. And then, he swung his anger around real fast, taking on Doc, cause why the hell did Doc ski that line alone? Couldn’t he have just waited a couple of goddamn days, let the snow settle a bit. A fuckin’ death wish. It was a death wish to go out there in the afternoon and lap it solo. Stump screamed on, still pacing, while I tried to keep up on the facts, tried to keep a stoic face cause I sure as hell didn’t want him to whip that anger to me, especially without a full cup of coffee in me, especially with all the anger I was feeling toward him.
As he rattled on, I turned away, visored my eyes again, and looked toward Columbine Canyon, toward the hovering helicopter, toward Doc.
* * *
Last week, I came across the second attempt at the gnarled aspen scrap table when I was digging for firewood. Laughed at what a mess it was and decided to give it to Doc as a joke. Shaking the table free of snow, I figured seeing its disfigurement would help him realize just how useless all those scraps were, and maybe he’d stop hauling them to me. I put the table in the shed to dry out, never gave it to him, and in truth, Doc would’ve loved the thing, would’ve loved how it’s so warped and deranged. Character. Just look at the character.
* * *
When the Accident Report comes out tomorrow morning, it’ll also say something about how, if Skier 1 had a friend with him, or a location device, maybe he’d be alive, maybe he would’ve survived the 1,000-foot slide that banged his body against spruce after spruce after spruce. And maybe that’s true, but as Cooper stares at Stump, and Stump stares at Utah, and Utah stares at Cooper, I’m thinking about how, if those beetles hadn’t burrowed so deep into that Engelman’s bark, that tree would still be standing, and I wouldn’t be wondering what Doc’s last moments were like, wouldn’t be hoping he’d laid down, looked at the mountains he loved better than the rest of us, and closed his eyes for a long sleep.
Startling me back to this sorry shindig is the opening chords of some Diana Ross song that sounds happy, but is actually heartbreaking when you listen close, and I see Kayla is still filming the three-way standstill that could go on forever. Each one of them existing on a different plane. Cooper with his slow words of misplaced reassurance is rooted in Denial. Then there’s Utah, his feet firm in Anger. And finally, Stump, drooping in Depression.
Just when I’m about to sit back and tune out again, Janie stands and walks toward them with her beer-limp, and as Diana Ross asks to be set free, Janie steps between the three of ‘em, motioning the men in for some huddle hug, but none of them move, and I tell Kayla to turn the damn phone off, which she does without much protest other than a look of annoyance, or maybe despondence. Stump looks to Janie, Janie looks to Stump, and that’s when he breaks. Starts yelling and shaking and saying, “I noticed Doc was overdue when the lights didn’t come on at his house last night, and, by that point, it was already long dark, already hours after Doc should’ve come home from an afternoon ski. But when the sheriff finally showed up, he wouldn’t let me take my snowmobile out until he’d done some damn thermal drone search, and it was pushing ten o’clock when the drone landed back at Town Hall having found no heat dots, so that’s when I went looking, zigging and zagging through the moonless black, heading toward Doc’s favorite tree run, and when I got close, I radioed the sheriff for support, cause I didn’t want to cross the slope and get caught in a slide without anyone on the ready for a rescue. But the sheriff said no, said that’d break some fuckin’ bureaucratic protocol, and so, I thought about it, but I didn’t go, I didn’t cross the damn slope and what do you know, but the helicopter found Doc this morning in the exact location I was trying to get to last night. His body was right there. A few hundred feet from where I’d been asking for backup. Right. There. And maybe Doc was already dead, but we’ll never know. All we know from that fuckin’ blood trail is he survived the 1,000-foot slide, unburied himself, and walked a few hundred feet until he laid down, laid down so damn close to where I’d been last night, so damn close if it’d been daylight, I would’ve seen him, so damn close, if the sheriff had sent me some backup, I could’ve got to Doc. Or, if I just had Mondays off and could’ve skied with Doc yesterday, or if Doc had just waited to ski with me today or if, if—”
Janie throws both arms around Stump as his voice melts toward mumble and they just stand there while Diana sings on, until eventually, Cooper steps in, takes Janie’s place, pressing chin to shoulder, shoulder to chin, and then Utah tags in for Cooper, and then, Stump looks at me, and I consider whether I want to participate in this Hallmark moment or punch him, like I’ve been wanting to since the playground this morning. And of course, I think about Doc. Think about how he liked everyone in this strange, whacked-out town, cause he knew, deep in his bones, that we’re all just doing the best we can, and if he was here right now, he’d tell me to get over myself, get on with the truth that life only moves in one direction, and he just beat us all to its inevitable end.
* * *
By the time I wake into tomorrow’s too-quiet morning with a Johnnie Blue headache, the Accident Report will be out and I’ll know better than to look, but I’ll look anyway, and I’ll do it un-caffeinated, while the coffee grinds dissolve into the boiled water. The report will begin like always—All of the fatal avalanche accidents we investigate are tragic events—and that first line will piss me off more than usual, piss me off so much I’ll turn away. Scan the haunted remnants of the night before. Opened and emptied cupboards. Stacks of barren ice trays. Utah’s orange-bright puffy clumped on the floor. Cans crushed and scattered around the recycle bin. Glasses at the edge of the sink. And when my eyes settle on that gnarled aspen scrap table I don’t remember dragging in from the shed, I’ll catch a memory of pine tar and wish I never knew the up-close biting fragrance of Stump’s curtain of curls, or how he hugs like he argues, like he’ll never let go.
Allison Snyder is a writer living in southwest Colorado. In 2016, she traded a legal career in Manhattan for running shoes and a used car and set out to live a simpler, less material-driven life. Her work has appeared in Ninth Letter, New York Times (Modern Love), Another Chicago Magazine, and Litro Magazine, among other places. When she’s not writing, she’s most often out exploring with her dog, Pippi. To learn more about her work, visit www.allisonmsnyder.com.