The posters had been up all over town and the hill for a month. The International Junior Freeriding Cup, presented by a major car brand. They would rip down the rails and groomed jumps of the terrain park underneath the Lynx Quad, and everyone would cheer. We were dreading it. A competition meant a flood of athletes descending on Raven River in a loose horde, high on glory and just plain high, and every modifier on the poster winnowed the athletes, already a particular breed, into a narrower clan. Junior: teenage athletes. International Junior: American teenage athletes. Given that so particular flood, then, maybe the conversation I had on Hemlock Street was inevitable.
We were headed down Hemlock to the Trapper's Cabin liquor store, three of us, lifties all, from the rental house. Antoine and Pierre had moved in there a few weeks ago, just after the start of the season, during the second hiring spree. Antoine, from Trois-Rivieres, was a huge birdwatcher, and had taught me how to identify waxwings by the way they flocked. I had taught him Ticket to Ride - the board game, not the Beatles song. Pierre, from Gatineau, had given me his password to an online indie short film festival out of Montreal. I had found his best golf disc when he lost it in the snow.
It was a warm night for January. We were in little more than sweaters, and wide Hemlock was alive. There were no fences on the residential side of the street, and between houses you could see and smell fires cracking in backyards, joints being passed around them. Somewhere down a side street, a guitar was playing some cowboy chords. We were just passing the bottle depot when footsteps fell in behind us, crunching on the old snow of the sidewalk.
"Where's the party?" said a voice, male, barely broken, and with a faintly detectable American-style fry on the syllables.
I was in a good mood, so I glanced back and said, "Right here, man! This sidewalk is the party!"
I expected in response a half-ironic but genuinely enthused fist pump and a mumbled 'Hell yeah,' an acknowledgement of the simple joy of existing, of standing on the cusp of the night, the unknown and, for all we knew then, the endless night, like a fresh-powder chute hidden by cliffs, and we were standing at the drop-in, clicking poles, ignorant of what the line might hold but ready to drop all the same.
But there was no fist pump, no feeling of the drop back there. Instead, I turned and started walking switch to look at round faces, unmasked, deadly serious, hanging over shelf-creased Arc'teryx jackets. The one who'd spoken, I think, had a green jacket and was a bit shorter. The other was in orange and a little lankier.
"Are you guys going to a party?" Green asked flatly.
Now, I did really think that the party was there on the sidewalk. Not to get too woo-woo about it, but on some level it's true that a party is a state of mind. That said, we were also on our way to a real party, that is to say, a physical party, nothing wild, but a living room in another rental, some drinks, and a Bluetooth speaker. Whoever brought a speaker somewhere was always hailed as a hero. Tunes out loud always brought things up, but a speaker cost well over a day's wages for a liftie, probably close to a week's rent. I had looked at them a half-dozen times, but never yet brought myself to justify it. It was an expensive sacrifice to the altar of kicks. Kicks! Did anyone actually call a fun night out 'kicks?' anymore? Not likely, but I didn't mind thinking it. Whenever I started thinking in Kerouacisms, I knew my energy was right for the night. It was Margot Frances and Jimmy Anders, who had lived in the basement of the rental house before Antoine and Pierre, who had left On the Road in the kitchen for me when they moved out, after all. I could do a lot worse than taking some of the slang from it and leaving the homophobic and misogynistic bits. I wonder vaguely if Margot and Jimmy would be at the other house tonight. I had heard they were back in town, after tree-planting somewhere in the Cariboo for the summer. I had cooked my best chickpea pasta for Jimmy and Margot and given them the recipe. Margot had taught me Norwegian Wood – The Beatles song, not the Murakami novel. I had given Jimmy the novel.
