Volcano Springs

The old prognosticators do what they always do. They ache and talk about what it means.

Lazarus McGinty starts off about his knee, The sucker feels like it’s gonna blow, the man says, like it’s on fire.

Elijah Blart replies, and my elbow’s flatfooting to some tune I cain’t hear.

And they sit on the porch and look across the town. In late fall, heat waves drift across the street, cutting everything into a mosaic.

Some storm brewin somewhere, says Lazarus.

Yessir, replies Elijah.

The earth shifts a little under them. A fart squeaks out from under Elijah. He cackles, Sounds like it’s done been brewed.

Lazarus, who does not smell nor hear nor see much, does not laugh.

Some time passes. Lazarus sees his knee explode. Well I reckon it weren’t doin me no good nohow.

Elijah’s arm falls off at the elbow. yessiree, I reckon the weather’s bout to do somethin wild, he concludes.

The ground shifts underneath them again, then cracks open. Fire spits up from the depths. Molten rock bubbles and advances.

Time does not allow them further comment. The old men watch a volcano rise from the earth, and they feel wonder as their pain takes its meaning, then consumes them.

Story by Ian North

Jonah’s Dog

You are dry and your skin feels like parchment against this wind that blows hot against your left shoulder. You have been walking for days and this neverending breeze, comfortingly warm at first, has been taking all your moisture away. What is the term for when the sweat dries as it is formed? Perhaps wicking or just evaporation. You are unable to concentrate enough to remember.

You are travelling on foot, rhythmically stepping in time to old songs in your head, hymns and drinking songs blending into one another. You carry a canvas duffel bag and wear the faded black clothes still smelling of the tobacco that ran out three nights ago. There is a dog that is always somewhere on the periphery of sight. He has been eating the food scraps you leave, but you do not trust each other enough to get close.

You are following the telegraph poles. There is no road, just smoother dirt, and no trees. Rocks large and small stand all around, oblivious to the desert wind. Patches of low, tangled scrub stretch everywhere. You think the telegraph poles might be ash, from the mountains you came from, each made from a whole tree.

The dog begins to bark from somewhere up ahead, and the noise furrows your brow. It is not yet noon and your neck feels like deer pelts, curing. The telegraph poles seem to dip and vanish in the distance, from about where the sound drifts to you. In under an hour, you reach the dog, and he stops barking.

You are standing at the edge of an abrupt break in the desert; a canyon. The telegraph wires stretch directly down, dipping onto a roof amongst stores and homesteads. This town, your destination, nestles tightly between the cliffs. You zigzag down the rugged path, and the dog does not follow, preferring to hunt for lizards and scavenge away from people.

When you reach the canyon bed, you step onto soil and see that the land down here is good. A shame, you think. You walk amongst the buildings ignoring the stares as wives pause from sweeping their porches and children break away from games. You walk until you reach the gate of the largest building. You do not have to wait or knock as the mayor steps out swiftly.

“Weell, this must be im-por-tant in-deed.” He scans the crowd that has been forming behind you. His voice is like an unoiled hinge. “It takes three days by horse and you seem to have per-am-bu-lated alone.” You let his statement sit in the air for a beat or two before you answer, softly, with the only message you have been given.
“In twelve hours, this town will be destroyed.” A flicker of annoyance crumples his forehead as he thinks of a response, but you turn away to face the townspeople. With your voice raised so each word reverberates from the cliffs, you repeat yourself.
“In TWELVE HOURS your TOWN will be DESTROYED.”

Now that you face them, they see your dusty clothes for what they are. They notice the pale presence of your once-white preacher-collar. You walk back through the town, silent as the crowd jostles and questions and accuses. You climb the jagged path and, at the top, you sit on a smooth rock, watching the town, waiting to see the people follow you out. Below, your shadow stretches unnaturally large.

Your message is heavy, as messages go, and all afternoon and into the evening, you hear fragments of worried arguments and scorning laughter. It seems only a handful understood the fervour in your voice. Three families and an elderly couple started down the track, following the wires to the next town. Then the blacksmith with all the tools his cart could hold, after that four children, dirty and some bearing bruises. The townspeople that reached the top had asked questions, and you answered with what you knew. Most of them had seen the look in your eyes and known enough.

The stars come out in the cloudless sky and the moon rises, waning. The time has almost come. The desert wind fades to cool stillness. Without moving your head, you see the dog is nearby, sitting and watching. The taverns are filled to the balconies with people pretending it is just another day. Lanterns and fires sparkle defiantly in the street. A figure about the size and shape of the mayor steps away from the festivity and seems to look at you and raise something shiny; a glass, perhaps. You can feel his unheard curses amidst the shouting and the songs.

You listen now and a noise like a steady wind begins to drown the sounds of revelry. The noise rises, but the bushes do not move and the dust is not stirred. The sound gets louder. This is how the message is fulfilled, how the words that were spoken are made real. The sound is coming from one end of the canyon. It does not stop getting louder. You do not feel any great emotion as the dark water begins its work of destruction, its cleansing.

You and the dog watch as the fires are extinguished and a dark shadow takes their place. The fast-flowing river does not reflect a single star. The roaring of the flood is the only sound. You feel no pity and no hatred. You are Jonah. You are Noah. At first light you will leave.

Story by Chris Knight

At the End of that Cord

At the End of that Cord (right click to save file)

At dawn tomorrow
The snap steals my sorrow
Oh lordy lord
At the end of that cord

I loved my dear lady
She gone yesterday
I played by the rules
Cheater took her away

May justice be swift
And God take me quick
Oh lordy lord
At the end of that cord

I followed her there
With a blade in my pants
I laid her to rest
In the dust and the ants

May the earth have its way
When they take me away
Oh lordy lord
At the end of that cord

I went to my preacher
For some kind of help
He called the sherriff
Said I’s going to hell

May the Lord hide his face
When I meet my disgrace
Oh Lordy Lord
At the end of that cord

If I meet my maker
When my neck finds its place
I’ll tell him she killed me
And the noose gave me grace

Oh lordy lord
At the end of that cord
I met my grace
At the end of that cord

Music by Jonathan Kotulski
Words by Ian North

The Dust and The Ants

Exactly the opposite of Jesus, the prisoner lived in limbo for three days, then they strung him up there and he died for his own sins, and permanently.

He had lived in a neighboring town, and came to us tied up and surrounded by an escort of lawmen. They had the dirt of several days’ long ride mixing with sun-cracked skin on their faces, and seemed bored. Lyle himself swayed on his horse, head drooping to the side, snot oozing out of his nose.

“No wonder they ain’t lookin at im,” one of us said.

“He looks like he’s dead already,” another replied.

“What a sad sack,” said another.

“What an uninteresting fellow,” concluded yet another.

Still, despite all our disinterest, we watched him all the way to the sherriff’s office, where he was checked in and locked up. We only had a few chances left to learn anything about him, since he was to be executed at dawn. So Carl meandered over to the jail to strike up a conversation with the deputy.

“Well howdy, deputy.”

“Howdy.”

“Howdy do?”

“Not too bad.”

It went on like this for some time, Carl trying a soft approach, which the deputy did not catch on to. Finally, Carl tipped his hat and moseyed off. The deputy paid no mind when Carl rounded the side of the building and headed toward the back window.

He saw the prisoner sideways on the cot, heels planted on the floor, head leaning against the wall, hat tipped low over his eyes.

“Howdy, there,” said Carl.

“hmm?” no movement accompanied the grunt.

Carl picked up a stone and pitched it at the prisoner’s head. It struck him on the cheek. He didn’t move until the rock stopped wobbling on the floor. Finally, he tipped his hat up. He was bleeding a bit. Carl didn’t mind.

“Can I do something for you, sir?”

“Yeah,” said Carl, “you gotta pay for the use of our gallows.”

“What?”

“You can’t hang there for free.”

The prisoner placed his hat back on his head. Carl tossed another stone, which was quite a bit larger. This time, the prisoner grunted when hit, and sunk deeper into the cot. Realizing that he had just knocked the man out, Carl left the window quickly and came back to the saloon with his report.

The next morning, seeing his wound and the fact that he was unconscious, the sherriff postponed the hanging for a day. Lyle came to that afternoon, a little groggy. Carl meandered back around to him.

“Howdy there.”

“You. Get the Hell out of here.”

“Easy. You’d be dead if it weren’t for me.”

“Rather be dead.”

“Hm. Hey, stranger, what’d you do to get landed in here?”

“Confessed my sins.”

“To a lawman?”

“What do you care?”

“Just bein friendly.”

The prisoner looked up at Carl. The blood had been cleaned from his face, but there was no feeling in his expression except fatigue.

“Who’d you confess to?”

“To a preacher. He embellished for a lawman.”

“Shoot.”

“Yeah. Now let me be.”

“What’d you tell the preacher?”

“Nothing I aim to repeat to you.”

The prisoner put on his hat and reclined again, hoping to be knocked out so he could rest. Carl looked around for stones, but decided against it and, seeing that he was getting no further, he sauntered off.

That night, as we tried to sleep, a dust storm howled into town. It pelted our houses, whipped against our windows, and rattled every roof. The gallows creaked, moaned, and, after screaming like a dying woman, collapsed.

The next morning, the prisoner looked relieved to see Carl at the window.

“Howdy,” he said, before Carl had a chance to speak.

“Howdy,” Carl replied.

“Hey, stranger, you mind finding another stone to pitch at my head?”

“Uh, I ain’t sure…”

“There are stones out there, right? I heard ‘em rattling in the wind last night.”

Carl, realizing that the prisoner suddenly needed his services, used this strange leverage to try for some information.

“Yeah, but I don’t gotta throw one. I mean, I can, but I need some facts first.”

“What facts?”

“What’d you do?”

“Confessed my sins to a preacher.”

“What sins, in particular?”

The prisoner put his hat on, laid his head back and rested. Carl waited for more, and he finally drifted from the window, unsatisfied.

We worked on the gallows all day, and finished the repairs just as night fell. We heard a rumbling in the distance, but we paid it no mind. It sounded like a trick of some far-off wind. As we found our way home, the mountains seemed to grow blacker than the clear night warranted. We blinked, rubbed our eyes, and kept walking.

Back in our homes, it was easier to ignore the black stain crawling toward us, and we went to sleep without hearing the growing clatter.

The front line of ants hit around two that morning. They clambered over and through everything. Their movement built into a cacophony of tiny feet upon the walls and the dirt and our floorboards and we added to it with our screams. We all swatted and ran around, but the ants moved under us like water, not biting nor minding us at all.

When their line reached the prisoner’s cell, we heard a scream like that of a woman. It erupted amid all our cries, but it rose above them, splitting through every other sound, bathing the town in its horror before it gurgled and ceased. As the ants cleared out, we rushed to see what had happened to him.

Through the window, illuminated in moonlight, the prisoner curled like an armadillo on his cot. His whole form was trembling. We couldn’t see any marks or bites on him. After shouting a few inquiries at him, we saw that he was in no condition to respond and went back to our homes.

The next morning, when they tried to bring him out to be hung, they couldn’t pull the prisoner out of the knot he had made of himself. His fingers gripped his ankles like they were welded together, and it quickly
became clear that he was in no condition to die.

He didn’t respond to any sound all day. He left his lunch untouched. By the late afternoon, he began to unwind, but we were no longer in any mood to execute this poor fellow.

Carl, however, felt that this might be the time to make an inquiry, so he headed over to the window at dusk.

The prisoner’s face was at the bars when Carl arrived, and it surprised Carl so much that he almost fell over.

“Whaddya do that fer?” asked Carl, regaining his balance.

“Will I be hanged today?” the prisoner replied.

“Today’s almost over,” Carl replied, “it’s too late for a hanging.”

“I want to tell you something, since last night my wife finally left,” the prisoner said, wobbling on his feet.

Carl tried to look like a concerned friend, but his eyes twinkled like a thief as he said, “Go ahead.”

The prisoner confessed to Carl, who hovered over him like a priest, memorizing details to report to us as we waited in the saloon. Carl buckled and fell a few times, pulling himself back up to the window.

Toward the end of his speech, the prisoner broke off, “so, after last night, it is finished. Nothing more will happen. She screamed and broke something inside of me, and her spirit is now gone.”

When it was over, Carl said nothing to the prisoner. He wobbled his way back to the saloon. We sat him down, gave him a drink, and gathered around.

“What’d he say?”

Carl threw back his drink, looked around, and repeated the prisoner’s story to us.

Story by Ian North

Weather Report

Weather Report (right click to save file)

Weather Report: Today
the sun peeks once, twice
leaving us a silver veil of ice,
a silver veil of ice,
the breezes are gray,
the clouds shiver away

The Breezes are Gray,
the clouds shiver away,           
and chill the leafless limbs,                                   
chill the leafless, leaving the people,
with broken jokes
and sultry whims

Weather Report: Later This Week
it will rain, it will rain, it will rain
judgment fire, judgment fire,
blood will spill,
blood will gel,
o bloody hell

Judgment Fire, Blood Will Spill
burnt blood will turn silver gray ash
and flake away, and flake away,
silver blood ash
will flake away
like the snowflakes today

Song by Jonathan Kotulski

The Weatherman Wakes

The first morning, Samuel woke up on the barroom floor. He couldn’t remember how many drinks he had, but he felt pretty good for a man waking up on a barroom floor. Just a little sore in the neck.

His Ford waited for him in a parking lot where grass was seeping up through the concrete. Despite waking up on a barroom floor, the brightness of the sun did not hurt his eyes, nor did our friendly greetings make his head ache.

He got into the vehicle, drove out, and thought that was that.

“Sunny skies ahead,” he said to himself in his weatherman voice, “no chance of rain.”

When he started feeling tired, he found himself a motel in a small town and got a room.

“Welcome back,” the young woman said as she reached for his key.

“Back?”

“Mmmhmm. Room 301.”

She handed him a key, and he headed out.

The next morning, he woke up, looked through the blinds out the window, and saw the bar where he had woken up the morning before. In the grass-peppered parking lot to the side sat his car. He gathered his things, shook his head, and walked over to the office.

“Checking out?” asked a pale, forty-something woman from behind the desk.

“Sure.”

“Where you headed?”

“San Fransisco. New job.”

“Whaddya do?”

“Weatherman.”

“hm.”

He drove faster that day, pushing the pedal to the floor and earning himself two speeding tickets. He was to be well paid when he made it to San Francisco, so the tickets only bothered him because they slowed him down.

He did not stop when he felt tired, but pushed on across the desert, on the small, straight roads that stretch across the vacant parts of this land. Finally, long after the sun set, when he could no longer keep the car on the road, he pulled over. Without even leaning his seat back, he placed his head against the headrest and dozed.

As the heads of sleeping men do, his rolled to the side, then forward, and when his neck started to hurt, he awoke with a start.

An old woman in a pillbox hat clucked and shook her head in the pew across from him. A preacher stood at the front of the chapel, reading from the book of Isaiah. Samuel looked down to see that he was wearing a suit. A few other churchgoers glanced over to see that he had woken up.

Samuel waited it out. He even shook the preacher’s hand and told Mrs. McLarty to have a great week and inquired about her husband, who was sick. How did I know that? He thought.

“Oh he’s got good days and bad days. Thank you for asking, Samuel.”

Three buildings down, he saw his car sitting next to the bar. He waved at Earl and said hi. He went in for a quick drink, then got into his car and drove out. He woke up the next morning in a stable, sleeping near some of Earl’s horses, who didn’t seem to mind the company.

Not knowing where he was in relation to the town, he simply walked out of the stable into a field of grass.

The way things are going, he thought, there’s only one place I can end up.

Late in the afternoon, he staggered into town to find his car parked next to the bar. He knew all of us by name now, and greeted whoever he saw, asking things about our lives and relatives. He got into his car and drove away, and was back the next day and the next and the next and the next until winter had fallen upon us with its deep chill.

Each day awoke in a different place knowing more and more about the town. When he knew everything about all of us, he began waking up with knowledge about our past, and he’d sit at the diner some mornings before driving away and tell us things about our history which we didn’t know.

It wasn’t until an icy day in mid-January that his car got covered in snow and he did not try to leave. He shivered when he stepped out of the grocery store that morning, and went back inside. He bought some granola bars and had them for breakfast.

That evening, he found his way to the bar, finally resigned to the fact that he would not get out of town. He ordered a whiskey neat, make that a double, please, and sat down across from Earl.

“I’m staying,” he told Earl.

Earl chuckled.

“This town need a weatherman? I know what’s coming,” Samuel said.

“Ain’t got a TV station for a hundred miles,” Earl told him.

“Don’t matter. I can tell you what’s coming and you can spread the word.”

That morning, Samuel had woken up with the final piece of information about the town: how it would end, and when. Taking a sip from his drink, he looked straight at Earl and gave him the weather.

Story by Ian North

Jonah’s Song

Jonah’s Song (right click to save file)

You cast me into the deep
surrounded by Your billows
weeds wrapped about my head
waitin on the ocean gallows
at the roots of the mountains
water whirlin like a river
I went down to the land
whose bars close on me forever
 
While down in Nineveh
Old and rusty robots
Rattle round my love

Bolted to the tracks
the train is breathing nearer
metal of liquid motion
I see my thoughts in its mirror
The sky is full with sun
The clouds just pass on by
The train keeps comin on
I guess it’s time to die
 
While down in Nineveh
Old, defeated robots
Brush my betrayer’s boots

 

Lyrics by Jonathan Kotulski (verses) and Ian North (choruses)

Music by Jonathan Kotulski

Founded by Blood

I cough when I pass the graveyard. My throat tightens up and I feel cold and wet. Most towns have a grave yard, maybe by the church or tucked out of the way. But our town is a graveyard with people walking around like guilty ghosts. You see our town is founded by blood.

This blood guilt falls most full on Lenny Fookes. I met him as a boy, going to his store to look at his candy. And it was his candy, for he ran his store like some king or duke who had stolen away the kingdom. All in the store was his and when we came, we cowered under the spirit of this man who condescended to us by his mere presence. We respected him and hated him and fell guilty by his mere presence. The only thing that seemed to bring him down to us was his miserable cough.

Lenny’s father had been one of the first men to come to this land. His father was a wild man, but not terribly clever. Lenny’s father owned almost all of the land in these parts and like a bent nail refused to sell off a single piece. He hunted and trapped and scratched by on a meager, but honest living. Lenny’s mother was a pale and proud women; a daughter of some eastern banker. She always called Lenny, by his proper name, Leonard. She expected more from life than anyone could ever give. She wanted Lenny to be educated, but her husband thought this was a waste of time. She hated him for this, but he knew nothing.

One night misty and cold, the old man took Lenny out to check the traps, but never came back.

“Boy – quit lagging behind!”

“I aint’ Pa!”

As they walked, the silence fell over them. The ground was wet and the air was cold.

“Pa, next year you think I could go to school?”

“What do you want to go fool’in with that fo’? School never done nobody good. You just come back think’in you know sumthing, but get lost on the way to the john.”

“But, Mother said that if we sold some land…”

“Shut-up! What do yer mother know? She’s just a stupid spoiled heifer. Don’t go listening to her fool ideas.”

And as they walked, the silence went on.

“Here, make yourself useful. I’m gonna climb down this ravine and check them traps,” Pa said as he handed Lenny the gun. “Don’t let ‘er touch the ground. It’be just like yer stupid mother’s child to drop that gun.”

And according to Lenny, when Pa handed over the gun it went off. And the blast killed the old man. It was all a big accident. Of course none of this came out right away, because the body wasn’t found for a couple of days. Lenny stayed out in the woods wandering around in the belly of his guilt. Everyone says that it rained the whole time. Lenny was out in the cold rain for nearly three days. When he was found, the blood had soaked through with the rain and left his shirt a pale pink. This is when he started to cough.
It wasn’t until the body was found that questions were raised. They took Lenny in, but the details never matched up with his story. And it seemed like the longer they questioned him the more he coughed. Everyone talked about how guilty Lenny seemed; but slowly, one by one, nobody talked about it. If anyone brought it up, only a guilty silence hung over the group. Soon no one brought it up.

Lenny never got over his cough, but at the end of the year he went away to school. Most people sort of forgot about the whole ordeal. It was while Lenny was at school, that the town really grew. Most everything was built during this time except for the saloon which was already here. Everyone seemed to be doing well.

But in four years Lenny came back and opened up his drug store. When people went to say hello he glowered at them from his corner. He acted triumphant as if he had beaten us in battle. He acted better than us.

Once, someone asked him about his father.

“What do you care? Your folks are living on my old man’s land.” he coughed out.

And we were silenced by this. You see in the years following the old man’s death Lenny’s mother had sold off nearly all of the land. And the entire town knew that Lenny was as guilty as hell, but we had bought a piece of his guilt when we bought our land. So now we go to his store and buy our medicines, listening to him cough. We tolerate the condescension and share in the guilt because we know that we are as low down and dirty as everyone else in this God forsaken town.

When Lenny Fookes died they buried him next to his ma and pa. It’s a wonder that anyone came to the funeral because it rained the whole day, but curiosity and death always draw a crowd. Thirteen people got sick afterwards. I suppose that when the grave finally swallowed Lenny he got some peace from all his coughing. But even now when you go down to the graveyard you can feel the dampness. The temperature drops and your hair stands on end. As you walk you can hear what sounds like coughing. And if you linger the mists will wrap around your throat and the guilt will rise to choke you out of the land of the living…

Story by Joseph Kotulski

Upon a Stone

Upon a Stone (right click to save file)

Upon a stone I’ll rest my head
Until I find that death is dead
I’ll rest my head upon a stone

Amanda left a mark in glass
Twenty five years in a moment passed
I’ll rest my head upon a stone

She flees our grip in memory
We groan until we too are free
I’ll rest my head upon a stone

I will never claim a home
Until my love unthreatened grows
I’ll rest my head upon a stone

Lyrics and Music by Ian North
Instruments and Recording by Eric North

Coyote Bone Bicycles

At the edge of town, there is a pile of bicycles.  Some are racers – some are cruisers, all discarded.  Some are black and some are white and some are green.  But one thing they all have in common.  They were made out of the bones of coyotes and oak wood.

Thunk-Thunk. Thunk-Clunk.   

A woman rides one of these beauties over the freight train tracks.

She is surveying the scene.  Roaming with the spirits unaware.  Back in the empty town.  There is no one here.  There hasn’t been anyone for years.  Returning.  For what?  Where do I go now?  Which streets hold the memory of that boy I was going to marry?  And the children I used to teach? 

Memory sets upon the buildings and streets like dust. 

She pedals faster to stir up the dust with the wind. 

To stir up a cloud over memory for a moment. 

The town bar doors swing open with the wind as she passes, and she sees within a group of stragglers and strangers with horrible faces.  There are little ones with hungry bodies.  Men with cuts.  Women with bruises.  There is no speech.  Their sense of motion is weirdly minimal.  It is unclear if they are alive or dead.  Do they simply have nothing to do and are like this all the time?  Or has something just happened out of the ordinary to make them so sober and lifeless?  Or has the memory of one sudden tragedy left them in an ongoing state of paralyzed remembrance?

She stops past the bar, and, dismounting the bike, turns to go in.  The bartender is tough with age and loss, and stares with an expression of love or anger at her as she approaches.  Something in her stomach spins rapidly as he looks into her.  She scans the room quickly to find families, a wide assortment of people, sitting and staring some at each other, some at her, some out the window, and some down at their bourbon – children on the floor playing with things.  The slow pace of time suddenly rushes into dread as she recognizes these people.  They are all hers.  All of them were hers.  The children to whom she would have given birth if the accident had not happened.  The children in her classroom every day before the accident.  The babies of the children.  Her mother and father there.  And her younger sisters.  The accident.

The bartender gestures with his hand for her to take a seat.  Instead of sitting, she takes his hand, climbs up on the counter, pulls him up, and begins to dance lazily to the rhythm of the door swinging back and forth and the melody whittled by the wind.  Eyelids slowly lift with eyebrows.  The flesh and hair and eyeballs and clothes of the people begin to flicker in her vision.  Patches of color dissolve and disappear.  The familiar fades. 

As she pedals again, the mirror on her handlebars catches her eye, and she looks at herself with the main street shapes in the background.  She surveys herself.  Her face is the same as the people she just left behind.  Alive or dead?  She grabs at the mirror and pounds it once with a fist.  She loses some balance and then regains it.  The mirror has swiveled around but does not budge.

She keeps riding till she comes to the opposite edge of town, and merges onto a wider road.  The billboards beguile her with smiling offers.  Walmart.  Insurance.  Casino.  The trees wave easily in the sun, proud and green.  For miles, there are no other vehicles on the road.  The sky is dyed blue.

As the blue darkens, her pedaling slows.  Suddenly, she presses the brakes, gets off her bicycle, and walks through the grass on the roadside.  On impulse, she lies down in the damp grass.  As she falls asleep, she hears a voice begin to sing.  The sound of the voice is filled with grief and understanding and hope, and she stirs gently, dreams filled with restless love.

Story by Jonathan Kotulski