“Burn down the Montana Gold Ski Resort, is what the man said,” he told Mike. “That’s it.”
Mike leaned forward, putting his face right next to the windshield, so he could look up the mountain to where the stubbled ski runs disappeared into the haze. Dawn was breaking across the valley, making the air glow like a washed-out kitchen curtain.
“Maybe he meant to burn down all of this. Burn down the mountain.”
Sidd pulled the gate closed behind him and looped the chain over the post. He always left it cracked when he went out for a run, but the breeze must have creaked it wide open. Not something he wanted Mr. Severson to see — the next time, he would shut it properly.
He went slowly up the road, barely faster than walking, the smoke getting thicker as he climbed higher. He thought he could taste dust, as if someone had just driven by. But Mr. Severson was still in Chicago, talking to potential investors.
Twelve thousand years ago, these valleys had been lakes filled with water backed up behind an icy dam. There was no evidence of that water now. Sidd had walked trails in the forest where the cracked dirt formed mosaics like a dry lake bed in a desert. The yellow grasses rustled and crunched like paper. Lightning strikes and stray sparks made fire a constant presence in summer, from the standing-next-to-a-campfire smell of smoke to the falling-ash smog of apocalypse. The first time he stood in the forest, it had been so quiet that he wondered whether anything survived here at all.
The water shortage did not bode well for Mr. Severson’s dream. In his idle hours since taking the job, Sidd had read everything published online about the project and even some articles about the environmental forecast in Montana. To begin with, the lower ski runs were at too low an altitude, and snowfall would be uncertain each season, even more so as global warming wreaked havoc on weather patterns. The higher ski runs, which would have better snowpack, were not contiguous with the lower ones. Mr. Severson was counting on skiers’ willingness to take shuttles between the two.
To Sidd’s amazement, many modern ski resorts relied on huge machines that manufactured artificial snow. Water was required to make snow. Sidd saw now that Severson had counted on the goodwill and forbearance of so many people and government agencies that the project had almost certainly been doomed from the beginning. In years long past, the land owner could have played king, but Severson didn’t even own the land now. He had signed over the deed to the Montana Gold Ski Corporation in exchange for a minority share of future profits.
The trailer almost in sight, Sidd slowed the four-wheeler. Again he tasted dust, and wondered whether it was carried on a hot wind. He knew that huge forest fires created their own chaotic climates, the oxygen-hungry blaze producing gusts that could howl like freight trains. But the fires in Idaho were nowhere near that close.
Even though he no longer believed the Montana Gold Ski Resort was viable, Sidd was still happy as its caretaker. He didn’t fully understand his duties and sometimes felt he was cheating Buck out of his meager pay, but he loved the solitude and had come to love the land itself. The ski runs had scarred it and the persistent drought had choked it, but he knew now that he was wrong about its lifelessness. All he had to do was sit still. Large birds of prey wheeled on thermal currents, and deer came to lap the water that pooled around the sprinklers on the big house’s green lawn. Sometimes it was so quiet he could hear beetles scratching in the dust.
Occasionally, at dawn or at twilight, he even glimpsed the gophers Mr. Severson so despised. Disobeying instructions, he hadn’t shot at a single one.
He did his best with the other duties, though. He kept the four-wheeler fueled up and patrolled the land every day. And while the gopher invasion was real — the holes and mounds were proof of that — Sidd had yet to see a sandal-wearing conservationist, and the NO TRESPASSING signs had not been tampered with.
Winter was months away, but Sidd was anxious for his first one on the mountain. He was curious to see how deep the snow would fall. Buck had told him that riding a snowmobile was more fun than bull-riding, not quite as fun as getting laid.
Reaching the trailer’s weedy yard, he stretched his hamstring and calf muscles, then worked the hand pump by the side of the trailer. He drank straight from the spout, the first mouthfuls of water lukewarm and tasting of iron. On a hot day, it was like drinking blood.
He worked the handle, letting water splash over the river stones that had been piled around the pipe to keep the yard from turning to mud. Then he drank again, gulping cooler water until his belly was full.
He walked to the edge of the yard and urinated into the trees, a genuine pleasure. It was in mundane moments like these that he knew he could never return to Mumbai. A man who belonged nowhere could live anywhere. This dry place would be his home.
Sidd liked to do his first patrol right after his run, before the sun grew too intense. It was best to change into jeans and a long-sleeve shirt to protect his arms and legs from the four-wheeler’s hot metal and the rocks thrown by its knobby tires, but putting on clean clothes when he was sweaty was too unpleasant.
He climbed the railroad-tie steps, went into the dim trailer, and came out wearing the visored helmet and carrying the shotgun. He considered putting the shotgun back. He had already decided not to kill gophers, so logically it followed that he could not kill a human being. But nobody else knew he wasn’t going to kill a human being, so he supposed the gun was at least good for show. If he did meet any of Buck’s sandal-wearers, and if they refused to leave the property, he could always fire it into the air.
Sidd slung the gun over his shoulder, the thin membrane of his running shirt doing nothing to cushion the hard stock against his back. He tightened the helmet under his chin. Then he climbed on the four-wheeler and turned the key to start its engine.
The thing about arson was that it couldn’t look like arson. Obviously. Insurance companies didn’t pay out if they found a pile of melted gas cans at the place where the fire started. Poe did have two red five-gallon cans strapped in front of the wheel wells, but using an accelerant was an absolute last resort. Over his career Poe had figured out, usually by talking to contractors over cans of beer, a few simple ways of starting a fire and making it look like an accident.
“Why don’t you just call him?” asked Mike.
Dumb shit had been in stir too long. He didn’t even know why you didn’t do business on a cell phone.
Poe put the truck in four-wheel drive and started easing up the slope. “Look, it makes sense. They got insurance for everything now. This place is insured as a ski resort. Scenery’s part of the package. No one’s gonna fly to Montana to vacation in a moonscape.”
They probably should have gotten out and hiked. The truck was lurching from side to side, and the undercarriage sounded like it was being swept with the wrong end of the broom. But he wanted to get this thing done.
At the top of the lowest ski run, there was a little bench and the ground leveled out into a meadow. Poe angled the truck toward a thicket of trees. “You think here?”
Mike didn’t answer. He was tapping the screen again.
Unbelievable. Poe slapped the phone out of Mike’s hands and it tumbled onto the floor mat. “Hey, Mike! You think this place is okay?”
Mike looked at him, and again Poe had the feeling that, if the sleepy man-mountain ever erupted, the crater would be deep and wide. But Mike glanced out the window and nodded. “Here’s fine.”