Oscar

By Kurt Mullen

Originally Published in Powder Magazine

LOOK OUT FOR THE MAN BEAMING HIS LIGHTS AT NIGHT

I call him Oscar, like on "Sesame Street." But instead of heckling people from his dirty can, this Oscar—Oscar the Groomer—is taking me up a dark hill in a metal-gray machine.

This Oscar grew up in Rhode Island and, looking across the seat at him, I wonder how long ago that was. The hair below the gray cotton cap is salt-and-pepper, and he has an older guy posture—more stooped than slouchy. For a decade, he's lived here in New Hampshire, where aging well is not about hair and skin and bright teeth—it's about accepting that you're weird.

"Grooming at night," he says, as we pass the slopeside hotel, "people are changing clothes in front of the windows. They forget you're out here."

We ramble up, and then we're perched at eye level with the blue contours Of dark mountains. The lodge below is covered in blackness, and the condo village is a frozen necklace Of white light. We crawl down a steep pitch, suspended midair, like in the metal egg of a Ferris wheel. We are weightless, and it is peaceful.

I ask Oscar what's the strangest thing he's ever seen out here. "One night," he says, lurching to life with the story, "this lady runs out of the halfpipe flashing her tits at me. She wants to know if I can give her son a ride."

We laugh. And as we motor on, he shows me the techniques Of good grooming. There's more to it than mowing the lawn, but, as I suspected, not much. so I prod for another story, and as we pass the hotel again, he remembers the couple having sex. "l shined the spotlight right on that guy's ass!" he blurts. He kept it beaming there, too, until the guy jumped up and tore the curtains shut.

Working alone at night, you take your laughs where you can get them. The memory Of heckling that man with his light leaves Oscar beaming, and it's this beaming that gets me. It's quiet again, and Oscar shines the light on the trail in front of us. He drops the plow and pushes some snow across a small scar of ice and runs it over. He points us back up the hill and into the darkness we disappear.