The Downhill Challenge

Okay so, backstory. My name is Calle, I'm forty-four, and I paint mountains for a living. I moved out to Montana when I was twenty-three, right after art school, because everybody told me a city boy would freeze or starve or both. Twenty-one years later I'm still here every fall, and I've never been married, never even come close, and I like it that way. I sell a painting, I flirt with whoever bought it, and by the time they think they've got me figured out, my truck is already rolling over the pass.

That's the reputation I walked into Silver Pine Chalet with last October. The Bitterroot Range in late autumn is gorgeous and dead quiet. The chairlifts aren't running yet, the slopes are just white silence, and the lodge is the only warm thing for miles. I checked in with two ski bags, a six-week painting residency the lodge was hosting, and a big ego, and I knew exactly what I was doing.

Carson, the lift operator, was stacking chairs on the deck when I came through. He's twenty-six, grew up right here in the town, been running lifts since he was twenty-one, so he's seen every type of tourist there is. He took one look at me and grinned.

"You're the painter, right? The one who does those big waterfall canvases?"

"The one and only," I said, and I may have flexed a little while saying it. Don't judge me.

"Cool, cool. Hey, uh, you know Donald's here this week, right?"

I didn't know who Donald was yet. I was about to find out.

* * *

The lodge bar that evening was all wood smoke and low light, maybe eight people in the whole room. I ordered a whiskey and sat down, and before my glass even landed, this voice behind me goes, "Well, well. The famous artist. And is that serious gear you brought, or did a catalog fall in love with you?"

I turned around. Six foot something, forty-one years old, beard going gray at the edges, arms like he carried a mountain on each shoulder. Donald. Backcountry guide, been living in this valley since he was twenty-five. I'd heard the name at check-in and now I got the full package.

"Excuse me?" I said.

"Your skis. And your jacket. And those gloves." He sat down next to me like he owned the stool. "That's mall gear, friend. That's what people buy when they want to look like they ski instead of skiing."

Oh, this man. This man right here. I've never in my life backed down from a dare, and he wasn't even daring me yet, that's how annoying he was.

"Tell you what," I said, and I flagged the bartender. "Round for the bar, on me. And a double for the guide here, since he's clearly cold and bitter."

"Generous," Donald said, taking the glass.

"And since you think I'm all catalog and no mountain, pick any run on this hill. Any run you want. I'll ski it with you tomorrow at dusk, no groomers, no shortcuts, and we'll see whose gear is decorative."

Carson had drifted over from the deck by then, wiping his hands on his vest, clearly settling in for a show. "Oh man, are you two gonna do this? Because I have literally nothing to do until snowmaking starts."

Donald looked at me over his whiskey for a second, and I saw something in it that wasn't just about skiing. I felt that in my chest, I'll admit it.

"There's a chute off the east ridge," he said slowly. "Ungroomed. Nobody skis it before the snowpack sets up because it'll chew you up. But we've had early snow, and I've ridden it twice this week. It's honest terrain. It doesn't care what you paid for your jacket."

"Then it sounds like it's gonna meet an artist tomorrow," I said, and Carson actually clapped.

"Deal," Donald said. "Dusk. But if you crater halfway down, you buy whiskey all winter."

"And when I keep up, you owe me an apology in front of the whole lodge."

He laughed at that, a real one, and something in my stomach did a little flip that I pretended was the whiskey.

* * *

Dusk came fast the next day, the way it does in late October. We rode the one service snowcat as far as it would go, then hiked the ridge twenty minutes with headlamps, and the whole time Donald kept glancing at my legs like he was waiting for them to apologize for me.

"You sure about this?" he asked at the top. Below us the chute dropped away between rock walls, blue and shadowed, steep enough that my breath went short just looking at it.

"You asking me or daring me?"

"Both."

"Then yes and yes."

He went first, and God, the man can ski. Silent, greedy lines, spraying snow off the steep rolls like he was born on the thing. I followed, and I'm not going to sit here and tell you it was pretty, but it was fast, and my edges held, and about two thirds down I pulled up beside him in the flat section and actually beat him to the stop.

"Not bad," he said, and he sounded almost angry about it.

"I know."

But here's what he saw and I couldn't hide. When we stopped, my legs were shaking. Not trembling, shaking, big visible wobbles in my quads that had nothing to do with cold. Forty-four years old and I'd just spent everything I had to keep pace with a local who does this before breakfast.

Donald looked down at my thighs and then back up at my face, and the smirk he'd been wearing all evening changed into something else. Softer. Worse, somehow.

"You kept up," he said quietly.

"I told you I would."

"Yeah. But you're done, aren't you? Look at your legs."

"They're fine."

"Calle." He said my name like he was trying it on. "Your legs are doing a polka."

I laughed, because what else do you do, and I sat down right in the snow, and he sat down next to me, and we watched the last light go off the ridge while my heartbeat came back down to human speed.

"Okay," I admitted. "Maybe a little shaky."

"Mm-hm."

"Don't you dare enjoy this."

"Too late," he said, grinning, and bumped his shoulder into mine. "Come on. My cabin's on the way back. You can rest your decorative legs and I'll feed you before you collapse on the cat road."

* * *

His cabin is small and warm and smells like pine and woodstove, and it's ten minutes from the lodge on a dark road I'd never noticed. He built the fire up while I dropped into the one good chair, and Carson, who had tagged along the whole way "just to see how it ended," sprawled on the couch with a beer like he'd bought a ticket.

"So," Carson said, wiggling his eyebrows. "Who won? He kept pace, so does the painter get his apology?"

"He kept pace," Donald said, handing me a beer. "And he's wrecked. So I'd call it a draw."

"A draw is not an outcome," I protested. "Somebody has to win. That's the whole point of a bet."

Donald turned around from the stove with two bowls of stew and this slow, dangerous smile, and I swear the temperature in that cabin changed.

"Fine. New bet, then. Since you're so competitive."

"Name it."

"Right here, right now. Arm wrestle. And if you lose, tonight's not over, it just moves indoors. Loser does whatever the winner wants. Rest of the night, no arguing, no take-backs."

Carson made a sound like a teakettle. "Oh my god, I'm staying for this."

I should tell you honestly that I knew I was tired. My arms were the only fresh part of me and I still figured I could take him. What I didn't figure, what I genuinely did not plan for, was how much I wanted there to be stakes at all. The way he'd said "whatever the winner wants" went through me like a current.

"And if I win?" I asked.

"Same terms. You get me for the night, any way you want me."

The room got very quiet. Carson was grinning at both of us like a man watching two trains approach the same crossing.

"Deal," I said, and put my elbow on the table.

We gripped up, and his hand was huge and warm around mine, and I thought briefly, wildly, that maybe losing wouldn't be so bad. Then he said, "Ready?" and I said, "Born ready," and we went.

Reader, I lost. I lost in maybe eight seconds. He didn't even look like he was trying, just leaned into it slow and put my knuckles down on the wood while my whole arm gave up like it had been bribed.

"Best two out of three," I shouted immediately.

"Uh, no. No take-backs, those were your terms."

"Those were YOUR terms!"

"Same thing." He stood up and looked down at me, and I stayed in the chair looking up at him, and my face was hot and my legs were still shot and I was grinning like an idiot. Carson got up, drained his beer, and pulled on his jacket.

"I'm gonna head out before this gets weirder than it already is," he said, backing toward the door. "You two behave. Or don't. Honestly, don't."

The door shut behind him and it was just us and the fire, and Donald crouched down so we were eye level, forearms on his knees.

"Still game?" he asked, and he asked it plain, no smirk in it at all. "You can say no and we eat stew and that's the end of it."

And the thing about me, the true thing, is that I have never once stayed anywhere longer than a weekend, and I have never once said no to a challenge. Both of those facts were about to collide, right there on his rug.

"I'm game," I said. "But I get to know what I'm in for first, guide. Rules of the run."

He smiled, slow, and reached out and took my beer out of my hand and set it down.

"Oh, Calle. You'll find out step by step, and you'll agree to every single one. That's how I run a mountain."

He stood up and pulled me out of the chair like I weighed nothing, which at that moment I kind of felt like I did. We ended up at the little table with the stew going cold between us and a bottle of whiskey he dug out of a cupboard, and that's where the night stopped being polite.

"Drink," he said, pouring two fingers each. "You earned it, you made it down the chute without dying."

"Without dying is my standard for everything," I said, and took a sip. It burned all the way down and I loved it. "God, that's terrible."

"It's local. Drink it anyway." He sat back, watching me over the rim of his own. "So. Painter. Sixteen years in this valley and I've never once seen you on the mountain. How does a man live somewhere twenty-one years and stay invisible?"

"I'm not invisible. I'm just quiet."

"You," he said, "are many things, and quiet is not one of them."

"You don't know me."

"I know your type. Big city, art school, comes out here at twenty-three thinking he's the tough new thing, never leaves, never lets anybody actually see him. Paints the mountain instead of climbing it. Until tonight."

"And what did you see tonight?" I leaned forward. I couldn't help it. "Huh? Tell me what you saw, guide."

He set his glass down and looked at me, and the firelight was doing things to his gray-edged beard that I was going to have to paint later