by Paul Doiron
I had lost count of the number of times people had asked me that question. Even some native Mainers didn’t understand that wardens are essentially off-road police officers. They associated us with checking hunting and fishing licenses—an important part of our job—and not with all of the other laws we enforced.
The teenage hostess tapped me on the shoulder. “Those gentlemen would like to buy you a drink.”
“Who?”
“Them.” She pointed to an eccentric-looking trio of older men seated in the corner.
One of them was obviously ex-military. He had a straight spine, like someone who had stood at attention for a long time, and a physique that suggested he still pumped iron every morning. He was neatly shaved, and his gray hair had been trimmed almost down to the skull, probably cut that very morning.
The second man in the group was ruddy-faced, with a snow-white mane and a prominent gut. He was wearing a tweed jacket over a fisherman’s sweater, wool pants, brogues, and a herringbone driver’s cap. He looked liked he’d stepped off the label of a bottle of Scotch whisky.
The third man, dressed in canvas shirt and corduroys, had the gangling appearance of someone who might be very tall when he stood up. Everything about him—head, limbs, and hands—seemed to have been stretched. He had a yellowish complexion, gold-rimmed spectacles, and a blond mustache going white.
My first thought was, What are those characters doing drinking in a skiers’ bar?
They all raised their glasses to me in a toast.
I whispered to the bartender, “Who are those guys?”
“The Night Watchmen.”
“Huh?”
She leaned across the bar. “That’s what they call themselves, but if you ask me, the only thing they watch at night is porn. They come in here for the free popcorn and to pretend they’re not gawking at snow bunnies half their age. I made the mistake of debating drug legalization with them once. After five minutes, they were ready to send me to Siberia.”
I gave the trio a subtle wave of recognition and said to the hostess, “Thank them for the offer, but tell them I’m not drinking.”
I turned back to the bartender.
“You should come back tonight when things get really wild,” she said.
“No thanks.” I smiled and sipped my lukewarm coffee.
After a few minutes, Amber emerged from the kitchen with a tray balanced on her shoulder. Gerald, the manager, was still shadowing her. He stood watch over Amber as she passed out plates of hamburgers and nachos to a table of skiers. When he was finally satisfied, he left her alone and disappeared again through the swinging door.
Amber came over at once. “Meet me downstairs in the Black Diamond Room in five minutes.”
She was gone before I could reply.
The bartender raised an eyebrow at me.
I shrugged and paid for my coffee.
* * *
I followed the signs downstairs, past a laundry room that smelled of detergent and dryer exhaust, and an old-time video arcade where a few kids were zapping aliens and steering furious hot rods. The Black Diamond Room seemed to be some sort of banquet hall. The lights were off and the room was vacant, but the spirits of past wedding receptions seemed near. I waited inside the door, in the dark, amid the round tables and stackable chairs, feeling ridiculous at being made an accessory to Amber’s act of subterfuge.
Fifteen minutes later, a burly little man in a black snowmobile suit stuck his head into the room and flicked on the fluorescent lights.
“Are you my passenger?” he asked.
“I’m not sure.”
He had the crow’s-feet and weathered skin of someone who had never worked a desk job in his life. There was snow mounded on his fur-lined hat and snow melting in his grizzled brown muttonchops. He removed his deerskin mitten to shake my hand. “I’m Elderoy.”
“Mike Bowditch.”
“Bowditch? Jack’s son? Well, isn’t that something! I worked with your old man before he got the heave-ho. Wasn’t he a ticket, though. Anyone ever tell you you’re the spitting image?”
“Not today, but it’s still early.”
He flashed one of the wider smiles I’d seen. His teeth looked as strong as the rest of him. “Where’s Amber?” he asked.
“Trying to get away from her manager, I think.”
“Gerald may be the first het’rosexual man Amber hasn’t been able to snake-charm.”
On cue, as if summoned, she appeared, out of breath and flushed in the face. “Elderoy, I need you to take Mike up to the top for me. Josh is working the ski patrol, and Mike needs to talk with him. It’s really important.”
The old man scratched one of his impressive sideburns. “Let me get this straight. You expect me to stop the important work that I am doing and chauffeur this young man to the summit just because you asked?”
“It’s really, really, really important.”
“Goddamn it, Amber,” he said, trying but failing to suppress another smile. “You know how to play me like a fiddle.”
“You’ll do it, then?”
He pursed his lips and tapped his furry cheek for her to kiss.
She obliged, leaving lipstick marks.
Elderoy turned to me, beaming. “I’ll meet you over at the Shady Lane Lift. This pretty lady can tell you how to get there.”
I couldn’t remember having agreed to interrogate Josh Davidson. Those lines I thought I knew? They seemed to be getting wavier by the minute.
“Are you sure Josh Davidson is going to talk to me?” I asked Amber after Elderoy had left the room.
“He’s worried about Adam. Josh is his only friend left in the world.”
“You said that before.”
“Did I? Adam used to be so popular, too. He was such a great skier, and all the girls thought he was so handsome.” She winced, as if the admission had caused her physical pain. Then she gazed directly into my eyes. “You really do look like him, you know.”
She seemed so convinced—and so convincing. I had made a lifelong practice of building walls against my emotions. Now I felt something begin to crumble inside of me. Bricks coming loose.
The question was out before I could stop it. “Does Adam know?”
“Know what?”
“Who his real father is.”
Her expression became soft as she studied my face. “Not yet. But I want him to know—especially now.”
I cleared my throat, zipped up my coat, and made to leave.
She touched me lightly on the arm. “Mike? If you don’t mind, there’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask you, too.”
“Go ahead.”
“Where is your father buried? I want to go see his grave with Adam.”
“I don’t know.”
She yanked her hand from my arm as if from a burning stove. “How can you not know?”
“I’m pretty sure the state had him cremated. I never bothered claiming the ashes.”
“Did anyone?”
“I have no idea.”
“Jeezum, that’s kind of cold. Don’t you think?”
I pressed my lips together hard to keep from saying something I couldn’t take back.
“You need to find out where he is,” she said. It was the first time she’d assumed a motherly tone. “You owe your father that much at least.”
What I owed my father was not a subject I cared to discuss. Not with her. Not with anyone.
I was learning that Amber Langstrom had a prizefighter’s gift for knocking me off balance. I needed to do a better job of keeping my guard up when I was around this woman.
* * *
The snow had begun to drift down steadily and silently. It seemed like such a tranquil scene. I made my way through the stream of skiers and snowboarders tromping back and forth through the village plaza.
I saw Elderoy waiting beside his idling snowcat on the far side of a chairlift.
When I was seven, my father had taken me up with him in his snowcat one moonl
ess night. I didn’t remember much about the experience except certain sensations: the stomach-churning fear of climbing up and down the icy slopes, the wolflike howl of the wind as it shook the windows of the groomer.
“Ever ridden in one of these contraptions before?” Elderoy asked.
The cold seemed to awaken the stitched wound on my arm. “My dad took me once.”
“Not like this one, though!” Elderoy proudly told me that his snowcat was a new PistenBully with tank treads and a flexible plowing blade that could be adjusted to deal with different kinds of snow conditions. He circled the enormous chugging vehicle, showing off its premium features—adjustable tiller, high-performance suspension, heated seats, and a winch cat for grooming the steepest trails—as if trying to sell me one.
“Your old man used to drive our prehistoric Tuckers,” he said with a grin. “I’ll never forget the night he slid down Steep and Deep in his groomer and everyone thought he’d killed himself. Turns out he’d had a girl with him and a bottle of Allen’s coffee brandy. Jack was a rogue all right. Of course, he always liked me, so I never saw his bad side, although I heard plenty of stories.”
I wanted to say, “You’re lucky.”
“I don’t suppose he ever mentioned me?” he asked.
“I think I would have remembered your name. You don’t meet many Elderoys.”
“There used to be two of us with the same first name—Elder Roy and Younger Roy. That was how they told us apart. But Younger Roy passed away some years ago. His snowmobile went through the ice over on Rangeley Lake during the Snodeo. Drunk, of course. Most everyone from the glory days is gone now, retired or passed away. I’m the last of the Mohicans.”
When I opened the passenger door, heated air rushed out of the cockpit. Elderoy cranked up the reggae music playing over his speakers, took hold of the PistenBully’s joystick, and aimed us away from the lodge.
“Ever ski Widowmaker, Mike?” Elderoy asked.
“Sugarloaf’s more my speed.”
“Not sure I would have pegged you for a Sugarloafer!” he said. “I suppose you’ve heard the saying, ‘Sugarloaf is old money. Sunday River is new money. And Widowmaker is never had any money.’ Too bad, since we’ve got some mighty fine trails here.” He started reciting their names with the paternal pride of someone who had cared for them for ages. “We just passed Snow Bunny and Pow Wow. Wild Thing is the main run. Atta Boy and Gritty Girl are moguls. Over on the south side of the lodge, near the condos, are Free Ride, Big Dig, and Git R’ Down. My favorites are the diamond ones up above—Steep and Deep, the Beast, and Take It from the Top. That’s the summit trail.” He thrust his arm in front of my face. “And over there’s Hospital Air Park, where the boarders strut their stuff.”
We started up the mountainside, grinding along an access road that curved away from the ski lifts and trails. A two-way radio murmured on the dashboard. I couldn’t hear what was being said above the Caribbean steel drums.
“Can I ask you something?” I shouted.
“Shoot!”
“What can you tell me about Adam Langstrom?”
He turned down the volume and glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “That depends, I guess.”
“How well do you know him?”
“I’ve known Adam all his life.”
“Did you know he was missing?”
“I did.”
“Any idea where he might be?”
He stopped smiling for the first time since we’d met. “Not sure if that’s any of your business.”
“You’re probably right,” I said, “but his mother asked if I could help bring him home.”
He ran his tongue over his chapped lips. “I hope you don’t find him, in that case.”
“Why not?”
“Because he should have taken off for Canada back before the trial, when he still had the chance.”
“I’m not following you.”
“Adam was never going to get a fair shake. He was screwed the minute the headmaster called in the cops.”
I waited, hoping he would continue.
And he did: “In this world, it doesn’t matter if you’re guilty or not. What matters is if someone else needs you to be guilty. I’ve seen it happen before. I’ve seen decent men ruined.”
“You’re talking about the chairlift accident,” I said slowly.
“That lift never should have been running; it needed so many repairs. Buddy of mine, Scott Dyer, nicest guy in the world, was the lift manager back then. He kept telling the VP of mountain operations that the lift should be shut down. Did the VP listen to him? No, because shutting down the lift would have meant lost money. Sure enough, the line snaps one day in a windstorm, and a skier dies, just like Scott was warning everyone was going to happen. Guess who gets thrown under the bus?”
On the sound system, the Wailers were wailing. The summit was lost in fog.
“The thing that burns me,” said Elderoy, “is that I didn’t have the guts to quit. Because I was afraid, I watched a good friend lose his job and get crucified in the press. Scott would have gotten sued, too—if the poor man hadn’t shot himself. And here I am, ten years later. Only it’s me who’s in charge of the lifts now. And it’s no secret who’ll be blamed if there’s another fatal accident.”
The machine tilted as we started up a steep slope, and I found myself staring up at the white sky like an astronaut about to be blown into space. The coffee sloshed unpleasantly in my stomach.
“It doesn’t sound like you’re going to help me find Adam,” I said.
“No, I am not,” Elderoy replied. “I get that Amber wants to know where her boy is—because she’s his mom and she’s worried about him—but that kid has suffered more than enough, if you ask me. I hope he’s a thousand miles away from here. I hope he’s someplace where no one’s ever heard of Widowmaker Mountain.”
12
As we gained elevation, Elderoy paused a few times to push around some newly created snowdrifts that were blocking the road. It seemed that the groomers and snowmakers were engaged in an unending battle with the weather. Some days, my job felt that way, too.
Near the summit, looking out at the horizonless landscape, I began to get a sense of vertigo. The snow didn’t seem to be falling so much as rising, borne aloft on intermittent squalls. We passed a boarded-up building with gaping holes in the walls where windows had been kicked in by vandals or broken by storms.
Elderoy turned off “Three Little Birds” in mid-chorus. The wind seemed to raise its voice outside the snowcat.
“That’s where it happened,” he said, gesturing toward the old wreck. “That’s the Ghost Lift.”
“Why haven’t they torn it down?” I asked.
“No money to do it. Not until now, that is. The new owners have scheduled demolition of the towers and the lift building for this summer.” He dropped his voice even lower. “Maybe then people will stop remembering. I never will.”
I stared down the mountainside and saw, through the rippling curtains of windblown snow, a descending row of T-shaped towers. They were spaced evenly apart, like steel telephone poles that had been stripped of their wires. But in my imagination I could see the missing chairs, and I could picture what it must have been like on that fateful day when the cables snapped and everything came crashing down.
The road flattened out as we traversed a shelf seemingly cut from the mountain rock. Peering ahead, I saw the colorful helmets and jackets of skiers coming off a modern, functioning lift. Some of them shouted and raised their ski poles over their helmets when they recognized Elderoy. Someday they’d probably name a trail after the old mountain goat.
Beyond was a wooden shack perched on stilts above the hidden valley. It had a first-aid emblem painted on the side. The most remote outpost of the Widowmaker ski patrol.
Elderoy piloted the PistenBully up to the building. When he popped open the door of the groomer, the temperature dropped fifty degrees.
“Nippy!” he shoute
d above the wind.
And then he’d slammed the door and was struggling, bent over, toward the stairs up to the shack. It hadn’t occurred to me that he might be joining me inside.
I had never worked a district where one of my primary duties was finding lost skiers and snowboarders, but I had participated in a couple of alpine searches, and I knew the drill. Generally speaking, the ski patrol handled whatever calls came in, but any time the situation began looking desperate—night was beginning to fall, or the snow was turning to sleet—the local wardens would get an emergency summons.
I tried to follow the compacted path the ski patrollers had made in the snow—just as Elderoy had done—but I took a wrong step and found myself thigh-deep in powder. With some effort, I managed to climb free of the drift. I fought the wind all the way up the stairs.
Elderoy was waiting. “We were just about to send out a Saint Bernard!”
“As long as it’s carrying one of those little casks of brandy.”
A gust of wind slammed the door shut for me. I found myself blinking through fogged glasses at three people. Elderoy, of course. The other two were a young man and a middle-aged woman, both dressed in red ski jackets and black synthetic pants.
“Hello?” the woman said.
I unhooked the sunglasses from behind my ears and made an exaggerated series of expressions, trying to loosen the numb muscles around my mouth. “Hello.”
“This is Warden Bowditch.” Elderoy had removed his fur-lined hat and held it in front of him like a vassal who has come to beseech his feudal lord. “This is Kat, and that’s Josh. They didn’t know we were coming.”
Typical of Amber, I was beginning to realize.
Davidson had dark hair, a thin nose, full lips, and a complexion that told me he tanned easily. There was something delicate about him, not just the narrowness of his shoulders and hips but something else, too. I had trouble imagining him belaying an injured skier on a stretcher and transporting him down an icy incline. Most of the competitive skiers I had met had been sturdy specimens: weight-lifting athletes with oversized legs and muscular butts. Not so with Davidson.
“What can we do for you, Warden?” the woman asked. Given the rosiness of her cheeks and the whiteness of her teeth, she seemed to be one of the healthiest human beings I had ever met.
