Выбрать главу

In time, Sidd’s older sister left Mumbai for the London School of Economics, and his brother was accepted to Stanford. Sidd, since the Maharashtra floods no more than a dutiful student, had fewer options. He earned his BS in chemistry at Mumbai University while plotting his escape to Montana.

Accepted to the graduate chemistry program at the University of Montana, he arrived on a hot and dry August day, emerging from Missoula International Airport like a grateful refugee. In his new school, he was surprised to find himself treated as an academic superstar — and to discover that India was not the only country struggling with the legacy of a caste system.

Most of his fellow students scrupulously avoided the subjects of race and skin color in his presence, while others went out of their way to remind him that they were color-blind. The wife of one professor rhapsodized about her months at an ashram in upstate New York, where she had temporarily taken the name Mavis Devi.

At the Oxford bar on Higgins Avenue, during a graduate-student pub crawl Sidd had endured as a forced march, two cigarette-voiced barflies had loudly debated whether he was a “feather Indian” or a “dot Indian” while everyone stared at their beers as if looking for signs. Sidd wondered if his color-blind new friends were color-deaf too.

By his second year, his grades were slipping. When his academic advisor suggested that maybe he needed a break, he grasped at her offhand advice like a lifeline and canceled his classes for spring semester. He lost his housing and his teaching stipend, but he didn’t tell his parents. He didn’t want to go home.

He found employment in a Missoulian help-wanted ad for a caretaker. The job paid poorly but included lodging and use of a vehicle. The interview, curiously, was held at the office of a local lawyer. A man named Buck Severson asked the questions while his lawyer keyed his laptop and frowned at the screen.

Very few of the questions had anything to do with his duties, which apparently involved looking after a large, rural property south of town. Severson wanted to know whether Sidd was an environmentalist (he didn’t think so), whether he had voted in any local or state elections (as a citizen of India, he had not), and, puzzlingly, if he was a skiier (he wasn’t; snow still made him feel like he was hallucinating, so he wasn’t sure he could trust it to cushion his falls).

All his answers except the last one seemed to please Severson, who, after a whispered consultation with his attorney, offered him the job as caretaker of the Montana Gold Ski Resort.

Severson gave him a ride out that very afternoon, and it was only as they bumped up a road toward the site that Sidd realized the resort did not yet exist.

“But it will!” exclaimed Severson, a red-faced man whose arms were so small compared to his burly torso that they seemed like vestigial limbs. “Any great visionary has his doubters. When these suckers realize what it’s going to do for the local economy, they’re gonna build a statue of old Buck Severson.”

Passing through a gate hung with signs that said, NO TRESPASSING, and, FUTURE SITE OF THE LARGEST SKI RESORT IN NORTH AMERICA, Severson shifted into four-wheel drive to give Sidd a tour of the property. Ski runs had been carved into the forest, leaving stumps and rocks behind.

As if making a pitch to a prospective investor, Severson pointed out the sites he had planned for the grand lodge with its roaring fireplace and Western bar, the condominium chalets, the pro shop, and several restaurants. Here would be the bunny slope, there would go the lifts, and right in front of them the buses bringing skiiers from the airport would drop off their cargo, turn around, and head out for more.

Severson was a good salesman. Sidd went from being skeptical that such a thing could be accomplished to vividly seeing it in his own mind. Instead of thinking of the job as a chance to regroup before resuming school, he imagined that if he worked hard enough, he might someday be managing Severson’s ski resort. Perhaps he would even learn to ski.

After the tour, with Sidd feeling slightly seasick, Severson bumped over primitive roads to the only two structures that occupied the land so far: Severson’s palatial log home and the dented trailer just down the road where Sidd would stay.

“I’m not here as much as I’d like,” said Severson. “I still run the ranch, plus they got me flying all over the place pitching investors. It’s a grind but it’s gonna pay off.”

“So I’m supposed to...”

“You’re supposed to protect the investment. We need someone here basically 24-7. Look after my house and water the yard. Ride the property on a four-wheeler every day, check the fence, and make sure nobody’s torn down a No Trespassing sign. Kill the gophers. Carry a shotgun in case any sandal-wearers hike through. You know how to shoot, don’t you?”

Under Severson’s brusque one-time tutelage, Sidd had learned to load and shoot the gun. Badly bruising his shoulder, he had pockmarked a tree stump, mutilated a plastic gasoline can, and murdered several other inanimate objects.

Mike opened the gate and waited for Poe to drive through so he could close it behind them. You could take the boy off the ranch and send him to prison for armed robbery, but he’d still remove his hat when a lady came into the room.

“Leave it open,” called Poe. “We might need to leave quick.”

Mike got back in, adjusted his fanny pack under his belly, and they rolled up the road. Poe hadn’t scouted the site because he hadn’t wanted to risk being spotted in the area. When he came to a fork in the road, he guessed and turned left, following a couple of tight switchbacks past an old trailer with a four-wheeler out front, before dead-ending at a varnished log palace with picture windows that must have given an IMAX view of the valley.

“Well, this ain’t it,” Poe grumbled, starting a three-point turn.

Mike unlocked the phone and started poking the screen again. Poe grabbed it out of his hands and dropped it into his own shirt pocket. Mike tensed, and Poe wondered if the guy was really as mellow as he seemed.

Poe nodded toward the windshield. “Look around. We’re on the job. I’m not paying you to play video games.”

Mike stared at his shirt pocket and for a long second Poe thought he was going to reach out and take the phone back. Poe looked away first and started driving back down the direction they’d come. Mike would not have gotten fucked with in the yard.

This time, they took the right-hand turn, which rose at a steady grade across the face of the hill. It was wider than the other one.

“This is the way,” said Poe confidently. “They got this wide enough for two busses to pass on the corners and the drivers to high-five.”

Then the road ended in a flat, open field of churned dirt, with weeds and pine seedlings poking through and ski runs carved out of the forest going up and out of sight. Poe put the transmission in park.

“No ski lodge, no lifts. What the hell are we supposed to burn?”

Mike dug in his beard like he was probing for ticks. “They didn’t give you instructions?”

Poe remembered that fleeting moment in the parking lot of Lucky Lil’s when he’d thought it was too easy, that the guy should have said something more. Or that he should have asked a follow-up question. But this was another problem he’d always struggled with: as much as he ran his mouth, he hated looking stupid, even when one simple question could save him a world of trouble.