He spent the next five minutes getting back into his left ski, which had released when he scrambled out of the track. David and I waited patiently, and then skied to the bottom with him. Sandy had gone to the top, had skied down, and was waiting for us.
“Seymour,” she said, “that was ridiculous.”
“I know,” he said.
“Seymour, if you can’t ride a T-bar, how do you expect to ski the north face?”
“I know,” he said.
“Seymour, you must never do that again.”
“I know, I know,” he said.
He did not do it again.
We rode the T-bar to the top of the novice hill (no accidents this time) and then skied over an almost flat connecting link to the double-chair that serviced a hill marked with a blue square. At most ski areas, the trails are marked either with a green circle (for “Easiest”), a blue square (for “More Difficult”), or a black diamond (for “Most Difficult”). The three of us had skied this “blue square” hill before, though, and it was impossible to consider it “more difficult” than anything but a parking lot. Wide and gently sloping, free of moguls, covered with good packed snow, I could not conceive of anyone in the world having trouble with it — rank beginner, paralytic grandfather, or even Foderman. He and I examined the terrain below as we rode up in the chair together, at which time he told me that his first instructor had been a man who favored the Throw-the-Baby-in-the-Water approach. Equipped with a repertoire of nothing more than snow-plow turns, Foderman had been taken to the top of a mountain while still a novice, had been pointed down the fall line, and told to find his way to the bottom, hit or miss, kill or be killed. That first trip down must have been a hair-raiser for everyone on the slopes. The wonder of it all was that Foderman had not crashed through the base lodge and continued on south to New York via all of Vermont, part of Massachusetts, and a corner of Connecticut. But he had, he insisted, learned a great deal from the experience. He realized on that day that he was not afraid of the mountain and that he could come down anything it had to offer. He then went on to apologize for having fallen off the T-bar, claiming such a thing had never happened to him before in all the time he’d been skiing. I assured him we all had our little mishaps every now and then, bad starts invariably led to good skiing the rest of the day, we were blessed with sunshine and lovely snow (sounding more and more like a preacher), it would only be a short while before we were warmed up enough for our assault on the north face.
“Oh, sure,” Foderman said.
Sandy and David were waiting at the top.
Foderman and I skied off the chair, and then walked over to them. You can tell a lot about a skier by the way he walks in his skis, and Sandy was watching Foderman very carefully as we approached. His recent tumble off the T-bar had been something less than encouraging, and she must have been entertaining second thoughts along about now (as I most certainly was) on the advisability of taking Foderman along. We went through the usual skiers’ ritual of blowing noses and zipping up pockets and adjusting clothing, and then Sandy asked, “Have you been down here yet, Seymour?”
“Oh yes, all the trails here,” Foderman said. “They’re very easy.”
“Mm,” David said.
Foderman lifted the goggles away from his face, de-fogging them, and then said, “I’ve been down from the top on this side, you know.”
“Well, before we go to the top,” David said, “let’s take a few runs here, okay?”
“I don’t normally fall off T-bars, you know,” Foderman said, and smiled. “In fact, I was just telling Peter that’s the first time it ever happened to me in my life.”
“Mm,” David said.
“Well, let’s go,” Sandy said, and poled in, and took off.
David followed her without hesitation. Foderman glanced at me inquiringly, and I nodded to him. This was to be the first real glimpse I’d had of Foderman in action. A pole clutched tightly in either hand, knees bent, skis parallel but wide apart, he planted himself solidly, looked straight down the mountain, and, without using his poles to shove off, leaned forward on his skis until he began a downhill plunge. Plunge it was, make no mistake. I watched in awe as he went straight down the fall line, never changing position, never traversing, never turning. Foderman was the kind of skier I normally dread and avoid. Foderman was a tank.
Schwartz, of course, on that day he’d crashed into the forest had been something of a tank himself, but nothing compared to the juggernaut that was Foderman. Foderman gaveth not a damn for man or beast. Foderman was Patton’s Third Army knocking over trees and houses, pushing aside boulders, splashing into rivers, squashing the countryside flat. Squat, burly, built low to the ground, poles as rigid as mounted cannons, boots as wide apart as fixed caterpillar treads, nothing but a Molotov cocktail (and perhaps not even that) could have stopped Foderman the Fearless on his headlong descent. To the vast amazement of Sandy and David, who were skiing close together, carving beautiful link turns across the mountain and certainly not expecting an avalanche, Foderman went speeding past like an iron statue assembled by a junkman, and then executed a screeching stop that tore up half the hillside. Grinning from ear to ear, he lifted his goggles onto his hat, raised one pole, and signaled for David and Sandy to hurry up and join him. I had still not started down the mountain. It took me another ten seconds to recover. Still shaking my head, I shoved off.
The three of them were in conference on the side of the trail when I finally caught up.
“... the way I always do it,” Foderman was saying.
“Yes, Seymour,” Sandy said, “but there are trails that won’t allow such daring.”
“Daring, my ass,” David said. “Recklessness, you mean.”
“I’ve never had an accident in all the time I’ve been skiing,” Foderman said, offended. “I can stop on a dime.”
“Seymour,” Sandy said.
“If you don’t want me to ski with you, say so.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“She’s saying you ski like a goddamn idiot, Seymour.”
“Quiet, David.”
“Sure, I’ll be quiet!” David said, shouting. “Let him ski however the hell he wants to. Let him kill...”
“Don’t you worry about me, David,” Foderman said.
“You? I’m worried about myself!” David shouted. “Did you see him, Peter?”
“I saw him,” I said. “Seymour, what you did was very dangerous.”
“I’m standing here, no?” Foderman said. “I came down faster than either of them, and I’m standing here in one piece. So what’s so dangerous?”
“You’re a menace, that’s what so dangerous,” David said. “First you force me off the T-bar, then you come down the mountain like a locomotive...”
“A tank,” I said.
“Yeah, a tank,” David said, nodding. “Right! A goddamn tank! What do you think you are, Seymour, a goddamn tank?”
“I’m a gynecologist,” Foderman said with dignity.
“Yeah, well I’d hate like hell to have you looking up my cooze,” David said. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“We promised Seymour we’d ski with him,” Sandy said.
“Well, you ski with him, then. Let him hit you from behind!”
“I didn’t hit anybody,” Foderman said quietly. “I was in perfect control all the way down, and I stopped on a dime.”
“Seymour,” Sandy said.
“On a dime,” Foderman said.