He cut me a quick look. “You writing a book?”
I realized my mistake. “Maybe just talking about myself,” I said to cover. “I been out of work for months. I come in here, see all the fancy cars, condos, and cash being kicked around. Kind of pissed me off.”
Again, it was the wrong choice of words. His expression displayed a deepening suspicion. I began thinking I was more tired than I’d thought.
“What d’ya want?” he asked me. “You’re gettin’ some of it. I pick up a communist or something?”
I ducked in another direction, feeling increasingly off balance. “Shit, no. But I heard cops were asking about a bunch of burglaries-talk they might’ve been inside jobs. Made me wonder what was up.”
Luckily, he followed my lead and got me out of trouble. His voice became sad and his demeanor philosophical. “Yeah, you’re right,” he conceded. “Shouldn’t be so sensitive. Old guy like me lives in the past too much.” He waved a hand at the void around us. “All this used to be about skiing, and maybe breaking even, if you didn’t pay yourself much. I don’t know where you’re from originally, but I was born in New Jersey. Came up here as a kid whenever I could, did anything they asked me just so I could ski. We were all like that-ski bums working for peanuts and day passes. You ate, slept, skied, got laid if you were lucky, worked when you had to, and skied again as soon as you could.”
He shook his head, repeating, “But you’re right. That’s all gone and buried. Now it’s a rat race like any other, maybe worse since this is a one-company town, like the lumber camps a hundred years ago. I heard about those burglaries-made me sick. That’s why I snapped at you just now, all that bullshit about us against them. But that’s the way it really is. I’m just kidding myself-maybe some of the employees are ripping off the condos.” He paused before adding, “Everything’s gotten upside down, like with those protesters that’ve been in our face the last few days. We used to be the ones wearing the white hat-good for the economy, good for unemployment. Back then, people knew that cutting ski trails opened up a more diversified environment. All sorts of animals started campin’ out here because of that combination of slope and forest. Now we’re just nature killers.”
Throughout all this, we’d been crisscrossing the wide trail, spreading the proud snowmaker’s artificial product as if it had suddenly appeared from heaven. The ironies and contradictions of Bucky’s dilemma were just as palpable and confusing.
“Not that I think they’re totally off base,” he added as if I’d challenged him. “It’s gone way beyond cutting down a few trees. I can’t say the TPL, or whatever, are wrong about using water the way we do. It looks okay to us, but what do we know? Or care? We’re not talking skiing anymore. It’s just about money.”
He abruptly stopped his machine and twisted around in his seat to stare at me. “I changed my mind. You’re not a writer. You’re a goddamn shrink. How’d you get me to say all this shit, anyhow? I was a happy man before I met you.”
I looked at him, slightly at a loss. He was right about my being subversive, after all, even if he had my profession wrong. It made me feel like I’d robbed him of something irreplaceable.
Happily, he then reached across and punched my shoulder. “Lucky thing I don’t give a good goddamn, huh?” And he burst out laughing.
But I wasn’t so sure. What he had laid out in his rambling, curiously effective way had struck me as a parable for many of society’s ills, far beyond this small, struggling commercial enclave. And his final ambiguity about what it all meant and where it might be heading struck a deep, resounding chord.
Chapter 8
One of the many disadvantages of living in Tucker Peak’s employee housing was that I’d been given a roommate, a concept I hadn’t thought possible for several decades, aside from having briefly lived with Gail. Fortunately, he was an older man, a kitchen worker named Fred who didn’t favor loud music, didn’t snore too loudly, and wasn’t too much of a slob. He did come from the old school, though, that dictated regular bathing to be antithetical to proper thermal insulation during the winter. As a result, he smelled bad enough to make my eyes water.
He wasn’t in the room much, however, and was already gone when I woke up from only four hours of sleep the next morning.
But not for long. He came banging through the door just as I was pulling on my pants. “Max, come outside. You gotta see this.”
I looked at his wide, excited, bloodshot eyes and decided not to argue, pulling my boots on without socks and my coat without a shirt, all while Fred stood before me, literally dancing from foot to foot, chanting, “You won’t believe it, you won’t believe it.”
It was, admittedly, a sight to behold. Standing at the edge of the employee parking lot, the only vantage point from which the mountain was visible around the bulk of the “Mountain Ops” building, were most of the dorm’s inhabitants, many of them half dressed as I was, and all of them staring at a pop artist’s dream from the 1960s. Blotching the mountainside across several of its broad trails were a series of large yellow stains, looking exactly like oversize urine deposits. The very snow Bucky and I had been pushing around last night, but whose color we couldn’t discern in the artificial light.
“Ain’t that too much?” Fred asked, pounding me on the back. “That marketing bunch must be smokin’ something harsh.”
The marketing bunch, of course, were fit to be tied, which is exactly what the Tucker Protection League protesters had intended when they’d drilled holes through the ice of the existing snowmakers’ source pond the night before and injected untold gallons of nontoxic yellow dye. Not only did the end-result supply its own highly suggestive message but also, if the mountain managers wished to continue making snow (since the pipeline to the second pond hadn’t yet been laid), they’d have to live with its being yellow until the water’s spring-fed source diluted it back to normal.
Not that alternatives weren’t quasi-hysterically considered. As I walked around the base lodge-and the glassed-in, futuristic scale-model fantasy of itself that sat smack in the middle of the lobby like a wedding cake-I overheard heated discussions ranging from adding another color to the yellow to make it more attractive, to importing snow from other places until the crisis passed, and finally-the winner-to making the best of a bad situation by using the camera crews the protesters had already summoned to launch a reverse-spin publicity spiel about being the most colorful resort in Vermont. A contest was even suggested in which people would be issued additional dye of all colors with which to paint the mountain psychedelically from top to bottom.
The fevered pitch of the debate was such that not only was I totally ignored as I moved along the executive hallway with my bag of tools but also I finally got to see Conan Gorenstein, the reclusive CFO, step out of his enclave to join in some of the chatter. A pale, bald, retiring-looking man, he didn’t last long and disappeared after offering a few totally ignored suggestions.
Through it all, the TPL protesters, whom Phil McNally was still reluctant to forcibly evict, chanted with renewed enthusiasm, their ranks temporarily swollen, and marched around with banners and picket signs, otherwise adding to the carnival atmosphere. Privately, I had to hand it to McNally. Any other CEO would’ve called for the National Guard. Instead, he stood before the cameras, merely asked that the TPL be respectful of everyone’s rights, and closed by offering his critics free food and ski passes, much to their obvious disgust and frustration. Shortly thereafter, in an additional display of oneupmanship, he dressed a few of his employees like protesters on the sly, complete with signs, and had them photographed riding the primary, western chairlift and enjoying his proffered amenities.
It all made me think back to the mountain’s overall beleaguered state, and of McNally’s reputed canniness in dealing with it. If this resort had any chance at survival, it seemed to me this man would be responsible for it.