Archer Mayor - The Marble Mask

I was so used to him after all these years, I actually laughed. “The day you give anyone a good attitude, I’ll start watching my back. I figure this bunch’ll get used to you just like the old one did.”

“I may not be rid of the old one,” he reminded me.

I pursed my lips for a moment before telling him, “I wouldn’t be so sure. You flunk out here, you might not have anything to fall back on. I don’t think Brandt’ll take your shit for long-not without a buffer.”

He didn’t look impressed. “Right-Joe the buffer. Why do you keep doing that? Saving my ass… What d’you get out of it, beside a holiness medal from people like Sam?”

I paused before answering, hoping I understood myself enough to be truthful. “That may be part of it, although everyone else thinks I’m an idiot. I’m not sure-I was thinking just recently it maybe had to do with my not having kids, and your being a good example of why that had been a really smart move.”

He laughed and scratched his ear with his good hand. “With that fatherly approach, you may be right.”

“You’re a bright guy, Willy,” I continued more seriously. “And a better man than you admit, especially to yourself. I don’t want to see that wasted just because you’re a social misfit. Maybe I believe it would make me less of a human being if I let you slide, or maybe it’s because I want to be around when you finally wake up and realize what you’ve got to offer. That would be the ultimate last laugh.”

“One you’ll never live to enjoy,” he said, his grimness turned inward.

“Who knows?” I countered. “You don’t drink anymore, I haven’t heard of you beating on anyone lately, you work hard and get results, and you didn’t turn me down when I suggested joining this crew. Why is that, if you’re so convinced you’re worthless?”

He scowled at me, unhappy at having the tables turned. “Somebody had to cramp your style.”

I ignored the diversion. “Sam seems to think you’ve got something to offer.”

He could have come back with another one-liner-and would have in the old days. But I was right. He was in slow evolution, growing like a thwarted, water-starved plant toward whatever light he could see-including this job.

And he knew it.

He got up abruptly, graceful despite the useless, limp arm, which he kept from flopping around by leaving his left hand shoved into his pants pocket. “We done here?”

I looked at him for a moment.

“We may be just beginning.”

Mount Mansfield isn’t much by global standards. While it’s the best Vermont has to offer, it still measures only 4,393 feet-a relative shrimp compared to its brethren in New Hampshire and New York, and less than a sixth of Everest. But it has great presence, especially since its western slope sweeps straight out across the Champlain Valley, ending at the lake a mere thirty miles off. And it can be brutal because of that bearing. Over the years, several claims have been made clocking the wind on Mansfield’s summit in excess of one hundred miles per hour.

That summit is actually a row of blended peaks, running along a north/south axis, the tops of which in profile, specifically from the east, look vaguely like a mile-long human face staring straight up at the sky-a supplicant giant-silent, determined, without hope of response. The Anglo name “Mansfield” has a murky genesis, but the ancient Abnakis showed how appearance can deceive: They called it “Mountain-with-a-Head-like-a-Moose.”

The most obvious of its summits is the Nose, but the tallest is the Chin, at the north end, and it was at the bottom of the cliff between the Chin and the Adam’s Apple where the frozen body of Jean Deschamps had been discovered by a daredevil skier looking for virgin snow far off the beaten path.

According to Ray Woodman, the head of Stowe’s Hazardous Terrain Evacuation Team-locally known as Stowe Mountain Rescue-such off-trail forays are not uncommon once the snow becomes firmly seated on the higher, sometimes cliff-steep slopes. Hunched over a topographical map at the fire department the following morning, he traced with his finger a reverse-curving, horizontal S, up and over the Chin’s left side, down around to the throat between the Chin’s base and the Adam’s Apple, and across the throat to the edge of a deep, steep ravine above Smuggler’s Notch, two thousand feet farther down, and the hot dog skier’s planned destination.

“We’ll be following roughly this path,” Woodman explained. “A diagonal climb from the gondola to just under the summit, along this swale here. Then down Profanity Trail above Taft Lodge. Another traverse to catch the top of the saddle between the base of the Chin and the Adam’s Apple, and then an easy climb down the saddle’s western slope to where the body was. We won’t be on skis. I never thought that was particularly sane. We’ll have snowshoes or crampons, depending on the surface. And ice axes.”

Willy leaned forward and planted his own finger next to Woodman’s. “If the skiers are trying to end up at Smuggler’s Notch, what was this guy doing on the western side of the saddle? The Notch is to the north.”

“He got disoriented,” Woodman explained simply. “Happens all the time. The saddle is almost flat along its crest. You hit a whiteout like he did, you think you’re sliding north beside the Apple, heading toward Hell’s Brook, but in fact you’re just slipping off the saddle’s side. It’s not particularly dangerous. It just ruins your day ’cause you end up miles from where you want to be. But he didn’t get that far. Way I heard it, he actually fell into the hole with the body.”

Frank Auerbach, towering above most of us, nodded in confirmation. “Talk about ruining a day. He was a basket case when I talked to him. What’s the weather report, Ray?”

Woodman straightened from the broad table we’d been leaning over to see the map. “A little iffy. There’s some activity in the area, but no rhyme nor reason to it. I wouldn’t mind waiting for a better day.”

Auerbach shook his head. “I’m already getting enough heat as it is. You saying we can’t go?”

Woodman looked unhappy. “I don’t know enough to say for sure. That’s why I’m suggesting caution.”

That seemed to settle it for Auerbach. “Duly noted. We go.”

I glanced around the room. Most of the ten people there bore Woodman’s stamp of experienced casualness. Wind-tanned, lean, and sporting their outdoor gear with the ease that older cops wear their guns, they all but radiated self-assurance. My crew and I looked like neophyte hikers in borrowed clothes.

Which was in fact the case. Even Sammie, who’d come with her own equipment, had been further complemented with a few extra items. The rest of us had been outfitted virtually from head to toe. We’d also been given a crash course in climbing protocol, rope use, and how to use carabiners and ice axes, some of which harked back to familiar special weapons training, others of which felt foreign and awkward.

“Jesus,” Willy muttered as we all prepared to leave, “it’s not like we’re assaulting K-2 or anything.”

“Maybe not,” Woodman told him. “But it’s what you don’t plan for that’ll kill you.”

An hour later, I was staring out the gondola window as we were pulled up the mountain’s face, wondering if this was what a spider felt climbing a silken filament up the side of a dormant human, knowing that if the host took notice, the end would be fast and brutal.

The bottom hadn’t been bad, surrounded by base buildings and a swarm of colorfully clad tourists. It had been entertaining looking down on the broad trail below us, watching skiers trying to strike a balance between self-control and speed. Farther up, though, I’d become aware of the mountain’s sheer mass overhead, and of my own comparative insignificance. To challenge such a huge, powerful, prehistoric chunk of the earth’s crust felt like tempting fate. I watched the approaching ridgeline, stretching across my entire horizon, with growing dread.