The Farmer's Tease

I was hip deep in muck and misery, shoveling the barn, when I heard Lynette's truck. I knew that engine before I saw it. Nobody else in three counties downshifts like that.

I poked my head out the barn door and there it was. Lynette's old blue Chevy, still rattling like a coffee can full of bolts, still with the dented fender from the night she took the ditch outside Fairview. That was five years ago and I guess neither of us ever fixed anything.

She climbed out and my brain kinda short-circuited. Lynette Pendergast, thirty-one years old now, same laugh, same wild brown hair under a wool hat, hiking boots crunching across the snow like she owned the whole county.

"Dennis Fitzpatrick!" she hollered. "You still live in the middle of nowhere!"

"Last I checked!" I hollered back, because that's how we talked, both yelling like the other one was deaf.

She walked right up, snow squelching, and looked me over. Manure on my boots, hay in my hair, probably a smear of something on my jaw. Real romantic.

"You look terrible," she said, grinning.

"You showed up unannounced. You get what you get."

She laughed and punched my arm. "I'm here to rescue you, idiot. Get your coat. We're going skiing."

I just stared at her. "Skiing. Me."

"Yes, you. You've lived forty minutes from a ski town for seven years and you've never been on a slope once. That's pathetic. That's actually sad."

"It's called being busy."

"It's called being a hermit." She jabbed a finger at my chest. "I'm a ski instructor now, believe it or not. Certified and everything. And I'm not leaving this farm until you say yes."

Now, I need to tell you something about Lynette before I go on. When she wants a thing, she gets it. That's how she got me to marry her at twenty-one, and how she got me to sign the divorce papers at twenty-six without much fuss. She just doesn't stop. And there I was at thirty-one, five winters single, spending my Saturday shoveling what a cow left behind. So my arguments were thin and we both knew it.

"Why do you care?" I asked her.

She got quiet for a second, looking off at the white hills. "Because you used to be fun. And I hear from your mother, who hears from my aunt, that you haven't been fun in a long time."

"My mother is a traitor."

"Your mother is a saint. Come on. I'll teach you. You fall down a lot, I laugh at you, we drink something warm. What's the downside?"

I stood there with the shovel in my hand. Somewhere a crow was making a racket, as if the whole world was egging me on.

"Fine," I said. "One day."

"One day." She did a little hop in the snow and clapped. God, I'd forgotten how she does that.

So I hauled myself inside, washed off the worst of it, and dug out a coat I hadn't worn since who knows when. She drove, obviously. The old Chevy smelled like pine air freshener and something faintly like her, that same soap, and I spent the whole drive looking out the window so I wouldn't do anything dumb.

"Tell me about this lodge," I said.

"It's called Timber Bend. Big stone fireplace, wooden beams, the works. It's nice." She paused. "Eddie owns it."

Eddie. Right. Her boyfriend, the one she'd been dating two years. I'd heard the name through the family grapevine and pretended it didn't do anything to my stomach.

"He knows you're dragging your ex-husband up there?"

"He knows I'm teaching a beginner. It's a job." She glanced over. "Don't be weird about it."

"Me? Weird? Never."

She threw one of her gloves at my head.

Timber Bend turned out to be exactly what she said. Big stone fireplace going, logs the size of telephone poles holding up the ceiling, and a smell of woodsmoke and hot chocolate. And at the rental counter stood Eddie Byrd, thirty-two, tan in February, jaw that belonged in a toothpaste ad.

"Well, well," he said, and his smile didn't get anywhere near his eyes. "Lynette's farmer."

"Eddie," she said, all business. "Rental package for my student, please. Boots, skis, poles, the whole thing. He's a total beginner."

"Is that so." Eddie looked me up and down like I was a used tractor he was appraising. "Work boots, Dennis? You even own gloves?"

"Work gloves," I said. "Insulated."

"Charming."

Lynette rolled her eyes and smacked a credit card on the counter. "Rent the gear, Eddie. He's not staying forever."

I did catch that, the little edge in it. Forever. Interesting word choice, but I let it go.

We got my boots, which felt like wearing two concrete blocks, and my skis, and she marched me out to the bunny slope like a sergeant. The cold hit different up there. My breath came out in fat white clouds and hers did too, and for a second it was like old times, the two of us fogging up the air and laughing at nothing.

"Okay, farmer. Basics." She planted her poles. "Bend your knees. Lean forward. If you feel like you're going to fall, fall sideways, not backwards."

"Got it. Bend. Lean. Fall."

"You're gonna be great." She kissed her mitten and pressed it to my goggles like a bless-you. Which did things to me I'm not proud of, given her situation.

First run. I must be straightforward about how it went, meaning it did not go.

I made it maybe forty feet. The slope was nearly flat and I still found a way. My left ski crossed my right ski, the way skis apparently do, and I went down like a sack of feed. Face first. Pole over there, ski over here, dignity nowhere.

Lynette laughed so hard she had to grab her own knees. Actual tears, I think. "Oh my God. You just went down like a ton of bricks."

"Glad you're enjoying this."

"I'm having the best day of my life." She skidded over and pulled me up by the arm, still giggling. "Okay, okay. Here's your problem. You're standing like you're bracing for a bull. Relax your knees. Weight forward, over your toes. Like this."

She got behind me and put her hands on my hips to set my stance. And here is where I should confess something. That squeeze, both hands, firm, right on my hips, lasted about four seconds longer than any ski lesson in history requires. I felt it through my whole coat. I'm fairly sure she felt me feel it.

"Better?" she said, close to my ear.

"Sure," I said, in a voice about two octaves off from normal.

"Hold that stance. Now push off, little kicks, shuffle shuffle."

I shuffled. I actually made it a hundred feet this time before the mountain got me again. Slower fall, more dramatic, lots of flailing. She skied up alongside, shaking her head.

"You know what your problem is?"

"Talent."

"You're scared. Stop being scared. The hill is not out to get you."

"Everything is out to get me. That's farming."

She laughed and held out her hand. "Come on. One more run, then cocoa. Deal?"

Now, her boyfriend was inside by the fire, and here was his girlfriend, hand out, offering to help her ex-husband up off the snow. I looked at that hand a second too long, and she knew it, and I knew she knew it.

"Deal," I said, and took it.

Her mittens were soaked through by the second run, so we called it and headed in. At the counter, Eddie was waiting with that same cold smile, arms crossed.

"How's the beginner?" he asked.

"Terrible," Lynette said brightly. "Absolutely hopeless. Two runs, six falls. I'm proud of him anyway."

"Six." Eddie laughed, but it was a thin laugh. "Well. Cocoa's on the house, I suppose. For the brave."

He slid two mugs across the counter and then looked right at me. "So, Dennis. You two go way back, huh?"

"Since we were both twenty-one," I said.

"Married, I heard."

"Eddie," Lynette said, warning in it.

"What? I'm making conversation." He shrugged, all innocence, and went back to his paperwork.

We took our mugs to the big fireplace and sank into a bench built from a whole log. My legs were already shaking from the falls. Lynette pulled her boots half off and groaned with actual pleasure.

"So," she said, blowing on her cocoa. "Be honest. Worst day of your life, or best day of your life?"

"Worst," I said. "Ask me again after the cocoa."

She grinned over the rim of her mug. Steam fogged up her face and she looked, for one second, exactly like the girl who married a farmer too young because he made her laugh.

"We're doing this again Saturday," she announced. "You're not hopeless. You're just terrified."

"That's the same thing."

"Nope. Hopeless people quit." She nudged my boot with hers, under the bench, where nobody could see. "You didn't quit."

Across the room, Eddie was watching us over the top of his ledger book, and not in a friendly way. I took a long sip of cocoa and wondered exactly what kind of trouble I'd just said yes to.

A week is a long time when you spend it alone with cows, let me tell you. I did chores. I fixed a fence post. I thought about that boot nudge under the bench about four hundred times, which is embarrassing to admit but there it is.

Saturday came around and I drove back to Timber Bend in the truck, telling myself the whole forty minutes that this was just a ski lesson. Just a lesson from a certified instructor who happened to be my ex-wife and happened to be dating the guy who owned the mountain. Nothing weird about that at all!

The lodge lot was busier this week. Eddie had a whole crew of instructors milling around in matching red jackets, and he was out front directing them like a general. When he saw me park, his smile did that thin thing again.

"Back for more abuse, huh?" he called.

"Apparently I hate myself," I said.

He laughed, and this time the laugh had a little more in it. "She's waiting at the lift. Try not to break anything on my mountain. Lawsuits, you know?"

Lynette was standing by the beginner lift in her instructor jacket, and I swear she'd been watching for my truck, because she lit up the second I got out. Thirty-one years old and she could still light up like that. It wasn't fair, honestly.

"You came back," she said. "I had a bet with myself."

"What were the odds?"

"Sixty-forty you'd show. Eddie said thirty-seventy."

"So your boyfriend's betting against me now?"

"Eddie bets against everybody. It's how he stays rich." She hooked her mitten in my elbow like it was the most natural gesture, like we were twenty-three again and walking to the feed store, and steered me toward the lift. "Today we're doing turns. Real turns. Yesterday was just surviving. Today is skiing."

"Can I just survive some more? Survival was going pretty well."

"Get on the lift, farmer."

The lift ride was its own kind of trouble, because there's nowhere to look on a chairlift except sideways at the person next to you. She asked about the farm. I asked about the lodge. She told me Eddie had proposed the lodge to her as an investment two years ago, back when they met, and she'd put her instructor savings into it, which I hadn't known. Five years of marriage and I'd apparently only ever asked her about hay.

"Wait, you own part of this place?"

"Ten percent. I'm basically a mountain baron." She stuck her chin up all proud.

"Does Eddie know you're giving free lessons to your ex-husband on your own mountain?"

"He knows. He's being weird about it, but he'll get over it. He's insecure. He's thirty-two and owns a ski lodge and drives a Range Rover and he's insecure. Men are funny that way."

"Thanks," I said.

"You're welcome."

At the top of the beginner slope she stopped me before we went anywhere. There's a spot near the summit building where you can see the whole lodge below, all lit up, the big stone fireplace glowing through the windows. I noticed later, and I mean much later, that one particular window had a good view of this exact spot on the slope. At the time I just wanted to not fall.

"Okay. Watch me first." She pushed off a few feet ahead of me and demonstrated, slow and exaggerated, like an exercise video. "See? Turn your legs, not your shoulders. Edge, turn, edge, turn. The mountain does the work, you just steer."

She made it look like breathing. She'd been doing this since before we were married, actually, since she was nineteen and worked her first winter here. Some things you don't forget about a person, and one of them is watching her ski.

"Now you," she said, and skied backwards in front of me, which instructors can apparently do without dying. "Push off. Nice and slow. Turn when I say."

I pushed off. The world picked up speed. My shoulders did the thing where they took over from my legs.

"Shoulders down. Legs. Turn."

I turned. Sort of. It was more of a zigzag than a turn, and it took me three feet too wide, and suddenly I was heading straight at a snow pole instead of away from it.

"Stop. Stop stop stop." She reached out and caught my jacket, and physics being physics, that meant we both went down together in a heap, her on top of me, poles everywhere, both of us tangled up as a dropped plate of spaghetti.

For a second neither of us moved. Her face was about six inches from mine, cheeks pink, a strand of hair stuck to her forehead under her helmet. Her breath puffed white between us.

"Well," she said. "That's one way to stop."

"I overshot."

"You overshoot everything, Dennis. You always have." Her voice was lower than the lesson voice. Lower and slower. "You married me at twenty-one and then you overshot right into the barn until the marriage fell over."

"That's not fair."

"Maybe not." She started to get up, then paused, one mitten flat on my chest. "Just let me guide you. In the turns, I mean. That's all today is. Just let me guide you."

I nodded, which is hard to do lying flat on your back in ski gear. She pulled me up and we didn't say anything else about it.

What I didn't know, and found out later, was that Eddie had picked that exact moment to step into the lodge's front window with a cup of coffee. From that window you can see the whole beginner slope, and from that window, his girlfriend's ex-husband was lying in the snow with her mittened