The Kneissl Kid
Part 1: Introducing Buck Avery, maybe the best
there ever was.
By VICTOR SMITH

November 5

Thanks, I say, hauling the stuff of my priceless life from the back seat of the sedan. I pull on the strap of my duffel bag, dragging it out across the vinyl, dropping it next to my skis, poles, boots, and unicycle next to the car.

Sure you don't want a beer? I ask again, my bluejean pockets flush with fives and singles, a couple-three twenties. The rest I keep in the duffel. You did me a real favor getting me up here like this, you know.

He shakes his head and says he's got to get to Oneonta by dinner time. Dinner time, yeah...you go eat, now. He drives off spattering gravel, opening windows even though it's cold. You'd think he didn't enjoy my company, or something. Me?

Buck Avery? Everybody loves Buck Avery.

Now, here I stand next to the bridge at the bottom of the access road to Huntington Pass, it's getting dark, and the wind is blowing out of the northwest like it's fixing to drop a foot tonight. Early snow. What better way to start out fresh. Good sign.

I wonder if I can carry all my stuff on the uni. I'm pretty used to carrying all kinds of baggage around when I have to. So I throw the duffel over my shoulder and begin picking up my stuff, piece by piece, until I look like a porcupine with skis and poles sticking out in all directions. I look around and get the feeling, but only for a second, that I'm all alone. Then it all comes back to me, why I'm here in the first place, and I whistle up a little rock 'n roll as I think through my next couple of moves.

The access road looms long before me, snaking up the hill to the lodge and ticket booths. I've been here before, some years ago. And now I'm back. Return of the Kneissl Kid. They'll know who I am. I pull my trench coat closer to my throat and button it using the hand holding only my poles and boots; a pretty good trick, but I'm pretty good at a lot of things. I look down at the uni through the jumble of steel, wood, and leather I'm holding, and decide that I’m probably carrying one thing too many for this load. So I carefully drop it all again and begin looking around for an alternative.

Change. Choices. Life is full of them, or should be, anyway. This is one right here. An alternative to squalor, a change in seasons, a new beginning. Leave Utica behind, forget the back rent, and live the life you've dreamed. You have to make change happen, that’s what I say. Make change happen.

Well, how about this? I'll just stash my stuff under the bridge for a bit until I get my bearings, have a beer, and find a place to crash for the night. I try to do it in one trip around the guardrail, down the embankment, but it's kind of slippery and I end up quite a way below the bridge, up to my ankles in the cold water, mud all over my hands, so I cr...Real nice, Ave, real nice. You have enough trouble just walking with that leg of yours, why do you always have to ma...ake three trips around the guardrail, finally getting all my stuff hidden real nice, just underneath the bridge, right up tight to the edge of the bank.

Well now, it's time to bust open a cold one. I climb back around to the guardrail, up and over, then I pick up the uni. I set it just so between my legs out in front of me and hooch myself back into the saddle. Back in the saddle again. Back where balance is a friend and where I’m maybe the best there ever was. I spin my way down toward town, stretching my arms overhead in a big yawn. I'm thinking I probably could have carried my stuff after all, but, hey...I got a good spot for it until I'm ready to move in somewhere later tonight.

I walk into the bar at the Klondike, a dimly lit dive that’s just as empty as the ski trails over the top of the roofline, up on the northeast ridge facing town. I set the uni against a table, careful to get the saddle wedged just right so it doesn't wheel out from under itself. I turn toward the bar and pick out a good stool from the empty line along the scratched mahogany. The uni crashes to the floor. I whistle to get the bartender's attention away from the black-and-white TV on the shelf up in the corner. He doesn't seem to hear me, so I whistle again. He turns slowly, I mean real slow, and just looks at me for a minute.

Hey, ho, Mr. Barkeep, I say, a good opening being a thing of value anywhere you go these days. Any chance you got a beer back there somewhere?

He stands there looking at me, then slowly walks over to the corner and reaches up to turn off the TV.

"Closing," he says, wiping his hands on his apron.

Whaddaya mean? I ask.

"Closing," he says, walking back into the kitchen. Well, Jesum Crow, I'm thinking, I'll just take my money somewhere else, somewhere there's a human behind the bar.

Oh, Mr. Barkeep, I yell back, picking up the uni, I want you to remember one thing, just one thing. I scooch up onto the saddle and ride it around the inside of the bar, between tables, only knocking over a couple of chairs. I'd probably knock over a few just walking to the door. I ride a lot better than I walk. You just remember some day, maybe next year some time, you just remember how you...

He comes back out from the kitchen, wiping down a big French chef's knife, and walks the length of the bar. Since this has actually happened to me before, I've got a pretty good idea what comes next and I spin toward the door. Balancing with my feet horizontal on the pedals, I wave good-bye and reach for the door handle. I pull it open and bump up over the threshold. I turn back as I close the door.

See you later, masturbator.

So I ride down the block a little further until I see the lights are still on at Sam's Dinette. I've been to this little diner before. And it's not bad, not bad at all. I'm having trouble getting the door open so I hop off the uni and set it up against the wall. I pull the handle and walk in, turning back to grab the uni. Don't want anybody stealing something valuable like that, I'm thinking.

You got any beer? I ask, knowing the answer, just trying to be friendly.

"No, sir," says Sam, a huge man with a belly that he can't seem to keep his apron tied up and over. "Got coffee, though."

Hey, ho, I say, bring it on.

It's not beer, but it's not bad. I chug it like a beer just to see what Sam thinks of that. I can't really tell what he thinks, though, since my eyes are closed and my tongue is doing the Hully Gully, trying to scrape the pain off the inside of my mou...How nice, Ave, now really! Is this your way of making a first impressi...Shit, I say, 'scuse my French, wiping tears off my face.

Sam brings over the carafe and pours from two feet above the cup without looking; filling it to the rim, spilling nothing.

How do you do that? I ask.

"Do what?" he asks.

I hunker down on the counter, both hands around the steaming cup. I guess I'll take my time with this one. I order a couple of cheeseburgers and fries, which come in less time than it takes to get the coffee past my throbbing tonsils. Sam sets them down in front of me and I drain the cup.

Refill? I ask.

I eat the first burger in three bites and down my third cup of coffee. I wolf half of the second burger and dip a fry in the pool of ketchup half covering my plate. I tip back my head, hold the fry up at arm's length above my cavernous mouth and drop it. It hits a tooth and falls sideways up against my nose before dropping to the floor. Sam frowns.

Usually pretty good at that, I say as I slide off the stool to retrieve the fallen spud. I pick it up and pop it in my mouth, regaining my perch at the counter. I take a dozen paper napkins and put them in my pocket.

Cut these yourself? I ask, wiping ketchup off my nose with the back of my hand.

"Frozen," Sam says.

Refill? I ask.

I decide to take a circuit of the town before going back to get my stuff, before I try to find a room. I'm buzzing so bad that I have a little problem with balance, even though I'm maybe the best there ever was, anywhere. I bump up onto the sidewalk and pedal east, feeling each crack, pumping my arms like I'm running a marathon or something.

Everything is closed and it's getting dark, real dark. I pass the Alpine Lace Ski Shop. Its windows are full of the most expensive women's jumpsuits and high-heeled ski boots, fur-trimmed après ski boots, the newest and flashiest of the little, short-shit skis they all use today. I pass the Troubadour, a theater, a drug store, Gus's Gas, a line of little ticky-tacky cottages that just have to be seasonal rentals, and a cozy-looking laundromat. I'll just have to check them out in the light of day, I guess.

I pedal down to the very end of town and turn back in front of the dark windows of Momma's, which has a sign like a bar but appears to be somebody's house. Halfway back through town, I stop at Gus's and pull some change out of my pocket. I drop a couple of quarters into the soda machine and hear the root beer drop into the chute below. I open the door, pull it out, and crack it open. Not beer, but not bad, I'm thinking. I tilt back my head and take the whole bottle. Man, does that ever ta...Ave, you should know what happens when you do tha...at all without taking my feet off the pedals, without holding onto things. Like I say, I'm maybe the best there ever was.

I get back to the bridge and realize that I'm now buzzing like a swarm of yellow jackets, which makes me laugh right out loud because that's what they call the instructors here at Huntington. I sit balanced on the uni, one foot up on the guardrail, wondering just how good life can get.

I decide that I might just as well save a night's worth of money by sleeping under the bridge, which seems like a pretty good idea seeing that everything in town is closed. I step up and over the guardrail and pull the uni over behind me. I skid more carefully down the embankment with my other leg downhill this time, and clamber up under the protection of the bridge as a light snow begins to fall. I open my duffel in the dark and pull out my four blankets, laying them out on as flat a spot as I can find on this embankment. I tuck my blankets in under the stink of my socked feet and settle my head on the cushioned saddle of the uni.

So, I'm thinking, this is one great way to end the first day of the rest of my life. Life is just so precious. Some people don't understand how important it is to be alive, no matter what they've got going on. Mom, Dad; both gone. Where? Who knows, just dead, far as I can see. Dead, gone, but not forgotten: the one thing, the only thing that ever scares me. If you’re not alive in somebody's brain, you’re deader than shit, 'scuse my French. And empty as a flushed toilet.

But, whatever else happens in this priceless life of mine, I won’t be flushed out and forgotten. You can bet anything you've got; change is coming–lots of it–and people are definitely going to know who I am.

So I snuggle down into my four blankets and close my eyes to jagged flashes of color streaking out of nowhere deep inside my buzzing brain. I sleep on and off, mostly off, grinning as my intestines trumpet out the coffee, root beer, and beef fat in three-part harmony. A "sweet Welsh air," as Dad would say, floating above the water music burbling below.

Next: Chapter 2


 Discuss this story in our Workshop forum