A Crash In The Night: An Ookpik Adventure
Chapter 2: Juanita Clarita and Hans Errmann

February 14, 2006

By Buck Meadows

From his Ski Patrol office on top of the mountain, Hans Errmann lifted his binoculars and looked directly down the chairlift line and saw Juanita Clarita sweep onto a chair. Errmann bit his lower lip and inhaled, making a low whistling noise.

He sat at his desk along a long panel of windows, 11,000 feet above sea level and 7,000 feet above the distant valley floor. He tapped a ballpoint pen on the desktop, but as soon as he saw that Juanita Clarita was aboard the chairlift and headed up to him, he swiveled in his chair and, in a series of fluid, instinctive motions, kicked off his sheepskin boots, pulled on his ski socks, slipped into his ski boots, flicked the buckles down and stood, all the while looking out the window.

"Going somewhere, Chief?"

Errmann turned, threw his shoulders back and faced the patrolman who had asked the question. The patrolman instinctively took a half step backward.

"Yeah, I'm going out on the hill," Errmann said. His voice was deep, strong, straightforward and husky—gravel in a blender. "I don't expect I'll be long, and anyway, you're not going to need me on a bluebird day like this one."

He peered from his snowy aerie again and looked for Juanita, as if he —or anyone—could miss her.
Her long, onyx-colored hair fell onto her shoulders from beneath a knit cap blowing slightly as a gust of crosswind passed over the cables of the lift. Errmann thought her face—shaped in sharp, angular Oaxacan features—was radiant, like that of a goddess. Errmann loved and admired her and often justified his jealousies over her to himself.

"Something wrong, Chief?" the patrolman asked.

Errmann answered too quickly. "Why would you think that?"

"Dunno. You seem a little jumpy."

Hans Errmann stuck his chin out and narrowed his eyes.

"You'd be jumpy, too, if you had 18,000 Angelenos on this hill, every single one of them just one stupid decision from a disaster, and I'm working with a short-staffed crew."

"But it's a bluebird day, Chief. What can happen?"

"Christ," Errmann said and rolled his eyes.

Errmann clunked toward the ski rack in his ski boots. He gathered up his skis in one of his huge paws, grabbed his poles with the other and shouldered his way out of the office, onto the gangway that led to the snow. Hans Errmann never wore a hat.

On his way out he heard the patrolman say to another:

"But he himself is an Angeleno, isn't he?"

And the answer: "No. Hans Errmann is from Austria. He came here years ago after a stint in South America."

"Chile?"

"No. Peru."

Juanita Clarita skied to where Errmann had planted himself, on the flats above the lip of the ski run. She was about to speak, but Errmann cut her off.

"What's the town saying about Naira Delgado?" he asked, even before Juanita was stopped in front of him.

"And good morning to you, too!" Juanita said, without bitterness. She was proud of her man and bathed in the light of his glory. When they were together, particularly on a ski slope, Juanita felt like a ballerina, dancing in counterpoint to him. In the coffee shop in town, their pictures hung side by side, Town Champions.

Some people in the Ski Town called Hans Errmann and Juanita Clarita "The Starlight Couple," and as they stood there, framed by the cobalt sky above and snow below, he in his red Patrol jacket and she in white, other skiers slowed down to stare and gawk.

Her voice was as clear as the morning and her eyes sparkled like the snow. "No one knows what to think!
Mostly people think she somehow slipped, lost consciousness and froze to death, but it's all just talk. Nobody really knows anything. In the ski area offices there is going to be a memorial service tomorrow, and her own staff, in accounting, was given the day off."

Errmann nodded slowly and bit the inside of his lip. "And the fact that the airplane crashed so close to her?" Errmann fidgeted with the loop on his ski pole.

"Nobody is piecing any of this together," Juanita said. "But you should know that a parachute was found out in the flats this morning, out by the airport and that footprints in the snow led to the highway and then disappeared, as if the pilot bailed out and then was picked up."

Once more, Errmann nodded slowly. He poked at the snow with one ski pole, then the other.
Juanita moved as close to Hans Errmann as she could, and whispered, "Has anyone figured out what the numbers on the paper mean?"

"No, but we're getting closer all the time," Errmann said. He moved his eyes right and left.

"Hans, is there something you want to tell me? You sure seem nervous this morning and your voice sounds funny."

Errmann took a deep breath and waited before answering. He adjusted the loops of his poles around his wrist. "Yes, I want to thank you for bringing that piece of paper back to me."

For a time, both of them stared into the distance, breathing the high mountain air and watching as skiers and snowboarders disappeared over the lip of the cornice to begin their runs.

Finally, Juanita Clarita broke the silence. "The Quebecer, Yankton Rondeau, found a ledger book in the plane wreckage. He said there were pages with lots of numbers written the same way as the paper in Naira Delgado's hand: 16 numbers, a slash and three more numbers."

Errmann lifted his eyebrows. "I thought all he found was money in Peruvian Nuevo Sols."

"He also found a ledger book, but he didn't say if he knew what it was all about. Does all this tie together?"

"I don't know, Juanita," he said. "Let's ski."

Hans Errmann skated two steps to his left and dropped in to the vast, wide, white and steep bowl—the crater of an ancient volcano, covered with a thick blanket of snow. Juanita Clarita followed him closely, waiting for a signal, the appearance of her muse. She felt for the consistency of the snow in her feet and legs, adjusted to the conditions and wondered what kind of inspiration might find her on the hill this day.

She opened her mind and senses, as if on a director's cue. Distant voices; the scents of sunblock, cold snow and warm sun;; sweat on leather gloves; t the taste of lip balm and the lingering aftertaste of her breakfast: sweet buckwheat pancakes and warm maple syrup. She floated down the mountain as in a dream, and waited, even as she skied.

Below her, Hans Errmann drove hard down the fall line, an Apollo. Once, after he made a hard, low turn, she saw an aura radiating from him. Her skis sliced smoothly through chopped, difficult snow and her body adjusted to the shocks, her legs and knees taking the secondary shockwaves from her skis, her hips and thighs taking what was left over.

She imagined Hans Errmann as an artist's brush, a red figure painting the side of the mountain with his bold ski strokes, and she felt exhilaration, as if she were transported. She saw that he painted the snowy canvas with bold, wide brushstrokes—aggressive, angry, audacious. She conjured the artist Franz Kline, throwing bold, beautiful, black, abstract expressions onto the snow.

She followed, and imagined herself embellishing her man's expression, adding color and whimsy to his brushstrokes.

On some ski days, Juanita Clarita thought of herself as a musician, playing music with her skis on the vast musical instrument of the mountain; some days it was Latin jazz; other days she played Chopin. But today she was painting, and her skis bent through the snow and down the mountain, and she felt the contours of the earth as she carved down the hill behind Hans Errmann.

In her mind's eye she saw de Kooning's "Untitled XXIV," its curves reminding her of her line down the hill, the painting's understated blues and oranges becoming the snow under her feet, its dark, curved lines becoming the shadowed tracks of her skis.

And now she was sailing, sailing, down and around, following the angry, bitter, beautiful artist in front of her, Hans Errmann, head of the Ski Patrol.

As they skied, onlookers on the slopes stopped to watch them, astonished at their beauty.

They stopped, finally, midway down the mountain and said good-bye. Juanita Clarita accepted a long kiss from Hans Errmann, who then turned and skated toward the mid-mountain chairlift to return to his office.

Juanita Clarita pushed off one ski and glided to the entrance of the chalet at mid-mountain.

-------

Yankton Rondeau and his dog, Barco, arrived at the chalet at the same time as Juanita. From a distance they watched her enter the building.

"She is more beautiful on skis than she knows," gruffed Barco, his English thickened with a French Canadian accent. "What she sees in Errmann is beyond me."

"Did you see them ski?" the man said to the dog. "Mon Dieu, it is like watching ballet; like hearing Chopin for the first time; like designing lovely clothes. It is art."

"Eh. Art." The husky shrugged his shoulders so that his fur ruffled.

"Mon vieux," the man said softly, in French, touching the dog on the top of the head and smoothing back his fur. "Art is the creation of beautiful and important things. When an artist works, the rest of us must step back and accept. Nothing less will do. When she is with Hans Errmann and they are on skis, we must step back and watch her and accept that she is blind in many areas, including matters of the heart."

Barco cocked his head sideways, then broke into a wide dog grin.

"Every day I thank the Heavens that I was born a dog and not a human," he said. "Who needs all the complications?"

The two friends walked through the doors and into the chalet. The chalet was divided into a large seating area and a large buffet area. In the buffet area, young workers, many foreign and speaking in Spanish, sat at rows of cash registers, working quickly and listening to their headphones as customers worked their way through the lines. They wore company fleece vests with the company's signature logo on the left, and name tags with their names and home countries.

Juanita Clarita saw the dog and the man as soon as they entered the chalet.

"Monsieur Rondeau!" she cried. She waved and made a move toward them. As she did, her eyes met those of the adventurer from the Great North, and her knees buckled slightly and breath ran out of her. Dizzy, Juanita grabbed the edge of a table to steady herself.

"Whoa!" she said out loud. People at the tables noticed her sudden difficulty, and several began to rise to help her. Juanita raised her hand, palm out.

"I'm OK, thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Quite all right. Thank you."

She felt Rondeau at her side before she actually saw him—a magnetic force that lifted her and strengthened her. A wave of warmth flowed from her shoulders to her ankles. She flexed her legs and took a deep breath, then another, now sensing the dog, too.

"Barco!" she said, and she ruffled the fur on his head. "What are you doing here?"

The man answered in English, though it was burdened with his Quebecois accent. "Barco is polishing his avalanche rescue techniques today," Rondeau said. "A dog gets rusty over the course of a summer and autumn, and he since he got caught last year, he just wants to practice a little more."

Barco grinned and panted, and nudged his nose under Juanita's hand, begging for another pet on the head. He whimpered slightly, knowing that it was a good trick to get a scratch behind the ears.

"Asseyez-vous, s'il vous plait," Rondeau said to both the dog and to Juanita and waited until they sat, she at the table, Barco underneath. Rondeau looked straight into Juanita's eyes and he saw her go weak again.

"I'll bring some water for you." He smiled as he turned away from the table.

Yankton Rondeau walked into the buffet room, crowded with customers on their lunch breaks. He stood in line for the water tap, and as he stood he overheard chatter all around him. Rondeau swiveled his ears and closed his eyes—hunting. He flexed the talons in his boots as he began to transform himself into
Ookpik, the great snowy owl of the North.

Before he completed the transformation, Rondeau pulled back, but he kept his ears sharp and his eyes peeled.

From nearby and to his left:

"The sheriff's gonna say it was an accident, and he's also gonna say that the two incidents are unrelated."

An answer:

"Christ, man. How can a plane crash like that and a death like that beunrelated? That's why sheriffs should never be elected officials. Too much weird shit."

From across the room, Rondeau heard another conversation amid the din.

"I heard there was funny business going on in accounting."

"Where'd you hear that?"

"I'm trying to remember."

And from behind him, Rondeau heard this—a woman's voice:

"Naira Delgado was a saint, if you're asking. I heard she left work early to go to a meeting, but she wouldn't say with whom or why, but that it seemed really important the way she fidgeted around and left in such a hurry. And now she's dead."

Rondeau processed all this quickly as he reached the edge of the room. For reasons that he could not explain he noticed that two of the employees at the cash register had small pins of some sort, above their nametags but below the company logos. The front of the pins appeared as if they were made of clear glass.

Rondeau blinked and squinted. His eyes turned yellow and sharp. He blinked again, and as his top and bottom eyelids separated, a third eyelid, moving on a diagonal, swiped across his eyes. He zeroed in quickly, and, he hoped, unnoticed.

A woman was paying for her lunch and talking to a friend at the same time. The cash register employee leaned forward and took her card, bent his left shoulder inward and then ran the card, making the transaction.

"Muchas gracias and thank you very much," the employee said.

Rondeau went back into the buffet room and picked up an energy bar. He got in line. When he reached the head of the line he paid in cash and noticed that the employee did not lean forward, as he had with the woman.

Rondeau examined the young man's name tag.

Underneath the name: "Peru."

When he returned to the table, Rondeau apologized to Juanita for taking so long, and sat quietly as Juanita drank the water. He nudged Barco under the table and the dog looked up at his human companion. The dog understood that Yankton Rondeau had figured it out.

-------------

On the summit, Hans Errmann stood in an empty office, the patrolmen out on the hill on duty. Short-staffed, Errmann had volunteered to man the phones and radio.

He kicked out of his ski boots and got back into his sheepskins. He looked out the window. He pushed his hands into his pockets and paced the room, finally stopping in front of a full-length mirror.

He crossed his arms but his reflection stayed still. Errmann uncrossed his arms and hooked his thumbs over his belt. The reflection stayed still.

"This is going to be a tight one, Hansie," the reflection said. Its voice sounded like Errmann's, but there was a sickening unctuousness to it—a cloying, prying, superior tone that threw Errmann off balance
immediately.

"It'll be all right," Errmann said.

"Convince me," the reflection demanded. "First, a woman in accounting finds out about the scheme, and you know why? Because you are sloppy, arrogant and conceited. Then, when you try to cover it up, all kinds of things go wrong, including the crash of the plane and the disappearance of the pilot. And why in the world did you agree to meet Naira Delgado at the Hot Springs? On the night of a cash shipment, occurring not more than two miles away? They built a statue of you for nothing."

Errmann stood in front of the reflection, seething, his jaw set.

"I was going to convince her I knew what was going on, and that I was helping the authorities investigate, and that I was acting on behalf of the ski hill." Errmann paused. "Crap!" he said. "I wanted to see the plane land, as well, to make sure of the schedule, and things just got out of control too fast. But I think it's going to work out."

"You got lucky last year with the avalanche," the reflection warned. "Don't count on your luck two years in a row."

"A man makes his own luck," Errmann said. "Luck is bullshit."

"You have a load of work to do before this night is out. First of all, there's a pilot on the loose, and you don't want him to start talking. Better get going, Hansie. And you'd better take care around the Quebecer and his dog. They have strange powers that no one but they understand. You might have to find a way to, ahh, neutralize them."

Errmann scowled at his reflection but nodded, then walked to the back of the office, reached into a file cabinet drawer and pulled out a thick, padded envelope. He looked inside to make sure the money and compact disks—containing yesterday's and this morning's work—were there. He stuffed the envelope into the inside of his ski jacket.

He then kicked off his sheepskins, pulled on his gear and bulled his way back out onto the mountain. Snow was beginning to fall.

Buck Meadows lives with his imagination near Yosemite National Park.

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