Lifted

It’s not every day you get to ride up a ski lift with your dead father. Especially since he’d never shown any interest in snowboarding. Or any winter sport for that matter. His main cold-weather activities were shoveling snow, wrapping chains around his Oldsmobile tires and waiting for winter to end so baseball could return. But there he was, seated right next to me. I was glad to have him there though.

He had on a rust-colored, checked coat that was made of the kind of unidentifiable material that had the approximate softness of a steel brush. Sheep wool lining peeked out of the collar. And he wore that black corduroy cowboy hat that he favored in snowy conditions. It sat ridiculously high on his head, adding another foot to his overall height, not that he needed it. In a way, he looked like a caricature of what a Midwesterner thought a cowboy might look like. The one exception was his Vietnam-era combat boots that he proudly pulled on for most outdoor activities. They dangled nonchalantly from the lift.

The falling snow piled up quickly on the brim of his hat. From time to time, he’d take it off and brush it clean. “Can’t let too much pile up on the roof,” he said as he smiled at me. I smiled back, but my dad’s smiles were so much more genuine than mine. His whole face seemed to explode with joy when he grinned his happy grin. I used to see it when he’d break into a fresh package of anything from Entenmann’s Bakery. Particularly the danishes. He liked those. Even when they got stale and hard. 

“It’s coming down pretty good here,” he said to me. We both looked around and soaked in the mountain surroundings, blurred by the curtain of snow that cascaded down from above. We marveled at the way the pines below our feet dutifully accepted their robe of snow, like kings donning their royal cloaks. And we couldn’t help but notice the many varied shades of gray that were woven together to form a sky; the grays showing themselves in so many more shades than one imagines the color gray possibly can. In them, we found the antithesis of what gray typically stands for. I loved days like this. And I loved it here. I hoped my dad would too. I took it as a good sign that the smile remained planted on his face as we continued to ascend.

Mountains weren’t the kind of place we tended to visit, even though we would go on a family vacation every year. We would head to a little lake in northern Wisconsin. We stayed at the same resort, in the same cabin and did the same things, year after year. We fished, sat on the dock with our feet splashing in the cool lake water, and tried to snag crayfish from the shallows. We’d also boat, first laughing as my dad fought to get the outboard motor going, yanking the starter cord ten thousand times, then being very still and quiet as he’d start swearing and grunting and getting agitated by the obstinate engine. Evinrude would eventually become a four-letter word in our household. In the mornings, we’d eat Pop Tarts, and for lunch we’d cut disks of summer sausage from a tube fat enough to double as a Louisville Slugger. Occasionally, when my dad had enough of listening to my brother and me bicker, he’d hand us a couple dollars to play pool in the resort bar while he sat on a stool, chatting up the owner for fishing hot spots and emptying the reserve of Pabst Blue Ribbon that was special ordered for his visit. To him, that place, that week, was paradise. It was his personal heaven-on-earth. He dreamed about owning his own lake cabin up there. Something always stood in the way. Maybe it was us.

I looked out over my paradise…my personal heaven-on-earth…pyramids of rock jutting up to the heavens, skies that have no end, trees taller than city buildings. Sharing it with my dad felt right. And in ways, not right. But as he inhaled the thin western air, filling his lungs with the taste of wide, open spaces, he embraced the mountain vibe. He adjusted the hat on his head, tilting it slightly back. He started singing “Elvira” by The Oak Ridge Boys. He really got into the part where the deep-voiced guy bellowed, “giddy up, oom poppa, omm poppa, mow mow…giddy up, oom poppa, omm poppa, mow mow.” And he finished belting out, “Heigh-ho Silver, away!” I heard that song coming out of his mouth more times than I can remember. And I can recall the deep sense of embarrassment, cringing every time he sang it, strutting awkwardly as he did. Oh, how I’d wither, praying none of my friends were in earshot. Not long ago, I purchased the song on iTunes after hearing it on the radio. I sang as loud as I could. Maybe I should have been proud of his confidence and spirit. 

After all, when I graduated from college, he couldn’t have been prouder of me. Of the name of the school on the degree. Of my future. Yes, he was certainly proud of me. And looking back, that was really something, especially coming from a guy who put himself through school – beginning with high school. Can you image that? A boy who understood at age 14 that he could do better than the blue-collar life that certainly awaited. He worked to pay his way through private high school. Then he did it again for college. He was the first in his family to graduate, back when graduating from college truly meant something. And there he was…proud of me…a guy who didn’t put in a single cent of sacrifice toward paying for his education. In fact, I spent the money he gave me when I graduated from high school on a guitar, rather than books. I never learned to play that damn thing. I think I swapped it for a bunch of CDs or something else regrettably forgettable. I looked over at him on the chair lift. He was looking straight up into the snow, flakes collecting and melting on his eye lashes and his ruddy cheeks. He looked bigger. Or I felt smaller. 

He pulled a pipe out of his back pocket. Lord only knows why he thought that was a wise place for it; he’d broken so very many by forgetting they were there and subsequently crushing them when he sat down. This one appeared to have survived intact. He filled it with shredded tobacco and lit it with a match. The smoke from the pipe rose and blended with the frosty breath he exhaled. The scent became a time travel machine. For a moment, I was a boy of six, and he was rubbing his scratchy cheek on mine as I squealed with delight, a nighttime ritual that sent me giggling off to bed. 

I inhaled deeper so I could live there a little longer.

We were about halfway to the top. The chair bobbed and swayed from an inhospitable gust that insidiously waited for us from behind a clearing of pines. I was still searching for the right words to say. When it comes to dads, no matter how old you are, sometimes you feel stuck – stuck between being a son and a being a peer. Stuck between the smallness of always being one’s child and the desire to be a man. It’s that sticky place that can make it completely impossible to say something that adequately snakes between the two without going too far in either direction. He sensed it. I was thankful when he filled the empty space.

“You know when I knew the world was really something?” he said. I shook my head, and he continued. “When I could have fresh strawberries in the winter. It used to be…you could only have strawberries in the summer. But when they invented refrigerated trucks, suddenly, you could have them any time of year.” Through the snow pelting him in the face, making him squint, I could see him tasting those strawberries with his eyes. But I could also see he was telling me never lose sight of how wondrous the world around me could be.

He rarely told such stories for the sake of merely telling a story…there was always a point, a greater moral. Every tale was laced with life lessons and nuggets of wisdom. I was supposed to be gleaning things from them, collecting them in a toolbox in order to strengthen myself as a man. I didn’t, partly because I was a dumb kid and partly because I didn’t yet understand what it was to be a man. I struggle to recall all those stories now. Some of them come back to me though, each one a treasure when it resurfaces.

He motioned to my snowboard. I lifted it up so he could get a better look. I could tell it wasn’t something he was really all that curious about, but he always seemed to get a kick out of things that were “cool.” Although if he knew how much I spent on it, I’m sure he wouldn’t like it as much. I once got him a bottle of Maker’s Mark Bourbon. He really enjoyed it. So much, he went to the liquor store to buy another bottle. He returned with a bottle of Old Crow and yelled at me for spending so much on the gift. Simply put, he was the kind of man who preferred things he sorta liked that were inexpensive over things he really liked that might be a bit more costly. Everything was kept in moderated perspective. Luxury was to be tempered.

He started examining the lift, wrapping his bare paw around the thick metal bar that connected us to the moving cable above. He had undoubtedly lost a glove somewhere as he frequently tended to do. But he still wore the other one, perhaps with the hope the runaway would turn up along the way. “Must have been some job putting this up,” he said. As his gaze rose upward to take in the workings of the lift, I saw him peek over his shoulder at the valley below. I joined him, craning my neck to take in the view. It was the kind of view where you beg your mind to hold on to it with infinite clarity, forever. As we admired, we simultaneously sighed. 

I remember the sigh he exhaled the day he took a job for which he was massively overqualified. He didn’t want to take it. It didn’t compensate him nearly enough. But he’d been fired from his last job. Money got tight. Anxiety got high. Tempers got short. I can still see the disappointment in his eyes when my mom scolded him. “You’re going to take it,” she shot. It’s not what he wanted to hear. But he took it anyway. He hated it. But he went to work every day. His sense of duty to family was stronger than his ego. Bravery wears many different outfits.

Not far from the summit, the chair came to an abrupt halt, no doubt the result of someone getting tripped up while loading or unloading. The wind and snow also paused, and the silence was suddenly obvious; the world hushing itself all around us. I knew this was my chance, a moment being gifted to me…to finally say everything I wanted to say. To tell him how I’ve come to understand him so much more now that I’ve lived more life. That I should have had more appreciation for all he did for me. That the lessons he taught me, in words or in actions, sunk in. That everything I do, I weigh against what he would have done.

That I still worry about what the dead man sitting next to me thinks. 

But the lift resumed, jolting forward and picking up speed. It began going faster than before. The end of the line was approaching at an alarming pace. In my panic, I forgot about all the things I was going to say. I just watched the end get closer and closer and closer. I fretted. “You can do it, Thomas.” That’s all my dad said.

The chair arrived at the mountaintop. I stood to unload, pushed by momentum as I coasted down a small ridge. I turned back to the chair. I watched as my dad, in that black corduroy hat with the snow still piling up on the brim, kept riding, happily taking in the view, puffing at his pipe, humming. He disappeared into the fog and haze of the resuming snow. And all that remained, was the lift.

LIFTED

A Short Story by Tom Witkowski

9 Circles Fiction

Photo Credit: Joshua Sukoff

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