Taut: The Ford Book

“What happened?” she asks, turning a little so she can try and look at me.

Mission accomplished. I should just get her in the truck right now and stop this conversation before it starts.

But the trip to the cemetery has opened up something inside of me. Something that says I made a lot of mistakes after my dad’s death and it’s time to get over it. “Stay still now. I’m trying to keep you warm since you insist on falling to pieces outside in the dead of winter.” She doesn’t stay still, in fact she turns all the way around and presses her face to my chest. I unzip my jacket and try and wrap it around her as best I can. Her arms reach under my coat and circle my waist. Her hands are cold, but it makes me feel warm.

And then, before I even have time to reconsider… that shit just comes pouring out.

“I loved skiing. Fucking loved it. It’s like, f**k. That sport consumed me. Every weekend in the winter I was in Vail skiing. When I bought this Bronco in tenth grade, I’d ditch school early on Friday so I could get in some afternoon runs. My parents never really cared about that, they encouraged me in pretty much everything I did. And my dad and I, we were so much alike. I was definitely less socially astute—he had a ton of friends and I’ve never had any, not really. Just Ronin and Spencer, the guys I keep calling back in Denver. But most of it was business and that was college.

“But my dad and I were like brothers born a generation apart. He was smart, not freaky smart like me, but just so intelligent. And he was good at all the stuff I liked to do. Skiing, running… all of it. So one day we were gonna hit the slopes in Vail. But I needed some new gear and we always get it from a shop in Copper. A friend of the family owns it. My dad and I went in there to get me some poles and I bumped into a couple of guys I knew from competition days back in high school. And they were gonna ski some backcountry nearby, just up Loveland Pass.”

I stop to lean down and whisper into her neck. “It was f**king Loveland, Ashleigh. It’s like our back f**king yard. It’s less than an hour from Denver. I’ve been skiing these slopes since I was seven. It was f**king Loveland. My dad and I did that backcountry run a few times in my teens. This wasn’t some virgin cliff in Alaska. It wasn’t some run you gotta sign a fatality release form for up in the Tetons. I could see the goddamned highway when we started.”

She looks up at me with her red face, chapped and dry from the cold and wind. “Tell me the rest.”

I stare out at the setting sun, a bright orange outlining the mountains off in the distance. “I saw it. We all saw it. There was a crack in the snow near the summit. But the accumulation the night before wasn’t heavy, just a few inches, so we took a vote and it was a go. We hiked up, put on our skis, and I went first.

“I can see it clearly in my mind. Pulling my goggles over my eyes, looking back at my dad as he gave me a thumbs up. And then the rush of taking off in that fresh powder. Everyone followed me, my dad second, then the other guys, but I was way out in front—just hitting that shit hard.

“I triggered the avalanche. My route is what did it. I loosened the slab, heard the crack as it pulled away from the base. And then everyone I came up that mountain with was dead. I was the only one who lived. I didn’t even get buried. I skied off to the side and watched the whole f**king thing happen right in front of my eyes. I saw the look on their faces as they tumbled, then there was nothing but white.”

The only noise I hear is the idling engine of the truck behind us. Ashleigh says nothing.

“We all had beacons. Hell, we all know the dangers—we were all very experienced skiers. So we all had beacons and packs with probes and shovels. Just in case. That’s like famous last words, right? Just in case.”

I stop and take a deep breath as I picture it all in my head again. “And if you’re in an avalanche and you’re not buried, you switch your beacon from transmit to receive. So I switched it to receive and I got my dad’s signal. We had a high-end system with W-link. The other guys had regular beacons, no W-link. There’s a big difference in how you read these signals. So I knew which signal was my dad and I hauled ass down to where it was emitting and started probing and digging.

“We both know how it ends, obviously. But I watched him die on my transceiver.” I look down at Ashleigh and she’s staring up at my face, all thoughts of whatever it was that was bothering her gone as she listens to my story. “W-link detects the movement created by a beating heart.” Her face crumples a little. “He was buried seven feet deep. I got about four feet of snow removed when his heart stopped.”

She climbs up my lap and wraps her arms around me and pushes her face into my neck.

And I let her, because f**k it. I like it. She’s warm and her body is soft. She feels good to me and I probably feel good to her too.

“I’m so sorry, Ford.”

“That’s not the worst of it.”

I stop again, because I’ve never talked about the accident afterward. Not even to rescue officials. I’m trained to say nothing if I’m questioned by authorities because of all the jobs I did with Spencer and Ronin. So when it came time to talk to the ski patrol I just shut the f**k up because I had no Ronin to talk for me. We weren’t even on speaking terms back then.

“I knew where all the other guys were in that group. I could see all their signals on my transceiver. Their beacons didn’t transmit movement, and my dad’s did. So I clearly knew which signal belonged to my dad and which ones belonged to them. And even though I was a lot closer to every one of those guys, and the signals were stronger so they were probably closer to the surface, I decided to dig out my dad instead.”