by Tim O'Brien
When Number Nine cut through the bannered finish line, the rest of the pack was so far back that Perry could not make out their numbers.
Grace found a bench and they sat to watch three more heats finish, then they walked back up towards the hotel, Grace holding his hand and chatting, and they had a long lunch alone. Afterwards she went up for a nap and Perry looked in on Harvey. The shades were drawn but Harvey was awake and waxing his skis. The room was littered with bottles and glasses. It had a peculiar odor.
“Hard night,” Harvey said matter-of-factly. “I swear that’s the last ounce of booze I touch, forever and ever. Truly a remade man.”
“Well, you look all right.”
“I slept. Clean living, too. Say, have you seen Addie?”
“No.” Perry decided to lie. He didn’t decide, he simply lied. “No, but you’d better put a hurry to it. You’re scheduled for three o’clock. You feel up to it?”
“Clean living. How about helping with that other ski? Be a good brother.”
Perry found a sock and began waxing one of the long skis.
“What time do you ski?”
“I scratched,” Perry said.
“Scratched?”
“Too tired. I’ll just relax and watch you win a big trophy.”
“Too bad. You were in the money, I’ll bet. All that practice and everything.” He started to smile, but the smile jerked like a tic.
After a time Harvey went to the bathroom and brought out a half-empty bottle of wine and drank without a glass. He was wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans. Even after his sickness, he looked strong. He was lean. He lit a cigarette and rested it on a bed-stand. “That Addie.” He wiped another coat of wax on his skis and shaved the edges with a razor blade. “I’ve carried on too much. Have to stop carrying on.”
“You’ll win her, Harv. It’ll turn into a good vacation. Grace is loving it. She likes vacations no matter what.”
“Got to stop carrying on so,” said Harvey.
“Right.”
“Came home from … feeling like a bum. War and all. Wasn’t so good, you know. I told you something about it last night, didn’t I?”
“Just a little. You were drunk. I forget.”
“Forget, remember, forget, remember. No matter, I was a goddamn baby anyway. Is that ski done? What time is it? Just forget everything I say.” Harvey took a swig on his wine bottle. He went to the windows and looked out towards the west. Then he came back. He put a hand on Perry’s shoulder, slight at first and then harder. “You’re a good man, brother,” he said. He looked at Perry through his good eye. “I’m serious, you’re really my goddamn brother, aren’t you?”
“Right,” Perry said.
“Impossible, you’d think.”
“I guess so.”
“I mean, what’s a brother?”
“Yeah. I don’t know.” They were quiet awhile. “I don’t know, Harv.”
“Don’t ever listen to me.”
“I don’t, Harv.”
“That’s good. Don’t ever start listening.”
“You’d better put a step to it. Quarter to three already.”
“I mean, what are we? We’re bloody adults now, have you ever stopped to think about that?”
“Now and again.”
“So you know it’s true. Bloody adults, I can’t get over it. You understand what I’m driving at?”
“More or less, Harv.”
Harvey smiled. “Good. You want some of this wine? Awful stuff. Don’t know where I got it.” He stood up and slipped on his sweater. He put on sunglasses and a fuzzed-tipped stocking cap. “Did I tell you? I was thinking. I shouldn’t say, I guess. But what the hell. I was thinking maybe about asking Addie to get married, the whole schmeer. What do you think? After last night, I don’t know. I was just thinking about it.”
“Good idea,” Perry said.
Harvey grinned. “Good idea if it works.”
“Right. Don’t forget your leggings. Can’t be a winner without those leggings.”
“I’m a winner, all right,” Harvey said. “And you are a brother, aren’t you?”
“Stellar,” Perry smiled.
“Stellar. Right. Stellar, now that’s a good word.”
Perry carried his brother’s skis from the hotel and down towards the starting area.
“I’m betting on you,” he said. “Give it hell.”
It was the last championship heat. The day was already coming on towards dusk. Perry watched as six ski-mobiles took the racers down the trail to where the heat would begin. When they were out of sight, he walked to the finish line and had a cup of coffee and watched several heats come in. One turned into a good race, a wild and desperate finish that had the crowd yelling, won by a fifteen-year-old boy. The boy was a native and the crowd’s favorite. Perry cheered along with everyone else. The boy’s father was drunk and happy, hugging the boy and dancing about, holding a can of beer that spilled everywhere. The crowd was happy. Everyone jostled the winning boy and Perry went over to shake his hand. The boy’s father was jumping and dancing. While everyone celebrated Addie came through the crowd. Perry watched her. Eventually she saw him and smiled and waved and came over.
“Don’t be so nasty. I hope you aren’t going to start, too.”
“Some sweetie.”
“Peeping Paul. Here, let me have a sip of that. It’s actually colder out here than you’d think with all the sun.”
“So where’s your new friend Daniel?”
“Racing. Don’t be nasty now. I’m terrible, I’m a witch. Where’s a good spot to watch them finish?”
They found a bench overlooking the lake.
Addie had a pair of binoculars and she scanned each group of racers. As the heats finished, the crowd got smaller and less boisterous. The dusk was rapidly coming on, and with it the cold. Addie went off for more coffee, and as she returned a group of skiers broke from the forest. The snow had formed a dark crust. On the far side of the lake, the skiers seemed to advance just on the edge of dusk.
A brace of spotlights was turned on, illuminating the finish line and part of the lake, but beyond the slice of light it was night.
“Can’t see a thing,” Addie said. “Wouldn’t you know it?”
She handed Perry the binoculars. Through them, he could just make out the forms of the skiers. They were hunched low and did not look much like people.
“What number is your friend Daniel?”
“Six. Sixteen. Sixteen, I think. He’s wearing that maroon and gold college sweater.”
“Can’t see color.” He searched for Harvey in the coming forms. The binoculars were useless.
The forms were knotted together. They came in a pack. He heard them before he saw them. He heard their skis gouging the snow, then he heard them howling. He heard their breath in the back of his thoughts.
He gave Addie her binoculars.
“Here they come!” she said. “Here they come.”
Perry pulled his glasses tight and peered out. It was cold and he was shivering.
They were howling. The pack was tight together. Dark, hunched shapes. In the dusk, they had the forest weight behind them and they came hurtling in their pack, howling and banded together and merging into a single shadow as they crossed the lake towards the bannered cord and spotlights, the harsh sounds of their flight and chase coming closer. Their heads were low out and deformed over the snow. Their tongues and teeth. One of them fell and toppled and the fallen was left abandoned, and the others came on, crossing the lighted fringe and into the spotlights. The skis snapped against the snow, a quick crisp cutting sound, and in the spotlights the ski poles gleamed silver and Perry saw the racers’ breath frosting in a single cloud that was swept behind them, and the racers were braced in the spotlights. Perry leaned forward. Their faces were red. One of them shrieked and the others took up the howl. Red faces, shining, nostrils flared, they were separate from their skis. Twenty yards from the finish line, another skier fell and rol
led.
It was over in a moment, the pack had a leader. Low and poles under his arms, the leader’s mouth was pulled in a long fierce grin, and he crossed the line and held his poles high and howled. The others came across like gazelles on a faraway plain, then a herd, the harsh grating noises as they braked.
“It was Daniel!” cried Addie from somewhere.
“What?”
“He won! I knew it, I knew all along.”
Addie got up and gave him the binoculars to hold and rushed off to the finish area.
The winner was surrounded.
Perry waited awhile then went down to the finish line. Daniel was being congratulated. The loudspeaker gave his winning time. The boy did not look tired. The other racers were sitting or lying still, breathing hard, but the boy was standing and leaning against his poles while people shook his hand. His time was marked up on a blackboard.
Perry shook the boy’s hand and said it was a good race, and the boy nodded but he was looking at the blackboard, then at Addie, and he did not seem excited.
Then Harvey crossed the line. He was alone and his leggings and sweater were snow-clotted.
“Harvey!” Perry called, and watched as his brother slowed to an awkward silence under the lights. Harvey raised his head and his throat bulged, his skin cream white and old, and he howled. He quivered, his throat bulged again, and he turned to howl at the black sky, then his skis slipped from under him and in slow motion he sat on the lake, then lay back, face up.
Perry knelt down. Harvey was grinning. “Just a stupid country race,” he said.
“I know it.”
“Help me up, for God’s sake.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. I fell.”
“How could you fall?”
“I just fell. I got tired. Help me up.”
Perry unbuckled the skis and clapped the snow from them.
“I suppose the Olympic champ won.”
“It was a good race. You all right?”
“I guess. Just a country race.”
“Yeah, come on.”
Harvey brushed the snow off. As he stood, the spotlights were turned off and the lake went dark. The remaining crowd was leading Daniel up towards the hotel. “There they go,” said Harvey. “It was just a crummy country race.” He bracketed his skis together and flung them over his shoulder.
“Where’s Addie?”
“She’s around. Let’s go up and get Grace and have some supper.”
They had a quiet meal. A small band played in one corner of the restaurant. Grace was golden and consoling. They had creamed chicken and fresh spinach and wine. Grace wore a long dress and she looked good and Perry was proud of her. Towards the end of dinner, Addie and Daniel came in, and Addie waved but she did not come over. They sat at a table near the band.
“That girl is a goner,” Harvey said.
“Forget it.”
The band played quiet music and a few people got up to dance. Harvey took out a packet of cigars and they had brandy and watched the dancers and drank their coffee from pewter cups. Later they went into the lobby, sat in stuffed chairs, then Harvey went up to bed and Perry took Grace upstairs to dance.
He went to the window. It was morning, and a crowd of skiers and brightly dressed people were milling in the snow. He touched the window, steamed cold. Outside, a platform had been erected in the snow and decorated with colorful pennants and streamers. Perry dressed and hurried outside. His tooth was hurting again.
The six championship-flight finalists were being introduced by a man in a giant Eskimo parka. Daniel was on the stage along with the fifteen-year-old and the others. The crowd was dressed in sweaters and nylon ski jackets and stocking caps. They clapped loud for the fifteen-year-old.
Perry found Grace and Addie sitting on a bench. They stopped talking when he came up.
The man in the Eskimo parka made the introductions and the six finalists trooped off the stage. Everyone applauded and waved scarves.
“Just a minute,” Addie said. “Don’t have breakfast without me, I’ll be right back.” She hurried over to Daniel and walked with him partway to the starting area, then she kissed him and came back. “Okay,” she grinned, “now we eat. He’ll win.”
“Bless your Olympian.”
“You said it.”
“I think it stinks.”
“Maybe over breakfast it’ll smell better.” She smiled straight at him.
Later Harvey joined them. He was sour, refusing to look at Addie. As soon as possible Perry took Grace’s arm and led her out of the hotel. They took a van into Grand Marais and spent the morning looking in the shops. Grace found a set of carving knives she liked, and Perry bought them, then they decided to hike back to the hotel. It was a sunny, deceptive sort of day.
“Sorry it’s not coming to a better time,” he said.
She took his hand and they walked quietly for a while.
“That Addie should be spanked.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s a vacation anyway.” A big truck went by and they moved off on to the shoulder of the road. “I like it when we’re alone like this. And it was nice of you to dance with me last night. Wasn’t it fun?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I’m glad. It was nice of you. Sometimes you do nice things and I like it.”
“It would all have been better if Addie behaved herself.”
“Well, I like being here with you. Can we come back in the summer? I’d like to be here in the summer. We could spend a whole week here, couldn’t we? I’d like that. Can we do it? I was looking at some brochures in the hotel and they have all sorts of things going on. We can come alone then, all right?”
“Maybe. Maybe so.”
When they got back, the championship race was over and Daniel had won easily. The times were posted on the hotel blackboard.
Perry sat with a newspaper in the lobby, content to be alone. He read about events in Washington and Paris and Minneapolis, forgetting the details as he read. The twilight crowds were coming in, some heading for the bar and others to prepare for dinner, and people were laughing. Perry put the paper down. For a time he simply sat alone, watching the people move through the lobby and listened to them. He saw the yellow-sweatered girl and she said hello and passed on towards the stairs. A fire was going. The lobby had high ceilings and crisscrossing beams and leather chairs.
Reclining, absorbed into the lobby as if he were an odor or physical object, Perry sat alone. The winter evening restlessness. Too bad about Addie, too bad for Harvey, too bad in general. Everything was too bad. He did not want to go upstairs. And he did not want to go to the bar, or sleep, or wander, or be still. He lit a cigarette and snuffed it out, then thought what the hell and relit it, crossing his legs. When the cigarette was smoked, he took a walk around the hotel, stopped to watch some children skating on a large artificial pond, then he went inside and took a chair nearer the fireplace. Too bad about Addie, too bad about Harvey, too bad in general. He untied his shoes, slipped them off, let the fire bake the smell of his socks into the air. The yellow-sweatered girl came by again. She waved and said hello and continued into the bar. Too bad in general. Later the tiny elevator deposited a group of young skiers into the lobby, the doors creaked, the elevator climbed again and came back with Addie and her new friend Daniel.
She was playful. She wore a long dress with gloves. The boy was careful not to touch her.
“Do you know Daniel? Daniel, this is my very good friend and confidant and trainer, Paul Milton Perry. Paul is a special friend and you have to be nice to each other. And Daniel, Daniel is the cross-country champion, you know. Daniel is my new friend, Paul, and you have to be kind to him, you must promise.”
Perry promised and shook hands with the boy.
He seemed nice enough. The boy had nothing to do with it. Sitting with his chin slightly tilted, he looked a bit of an aristocrat. He wore a maroon sweater trimmed in gold. Perry asked him about the Olymp
ics and the boy blushed and said it was something he was aiming at, nothing certain.
“Oh, you can’t listen to Daniel,” said Addie. “Daniel never says the truth. The truth is always too good to be the truth. Daniel, Daniel has already qualified and he’s in training. He just won’t say that. Isn’t that right, Daniel?”
The boy nodded and smiled at the floor.
“And Daniel is also a student at the university and he’s majoring in … What is it? Premed. That’s it, he’s going to be an Olympic champion and then a doctor, isn’t that right?”
“Yes,” the boy said, smiling at Perry. Perry smiled back at him.
“The skiing doctor,” said Addie, “can’t you see it? Skiing out to the farms with his black bag, arriving just in the nick of time, saving the pregnant mother, the baby dies but it isn’t Daniel’s fault, and the woman cries but he consoles her and tells her there will be other babies, other pregnancies, other dreams, other … I don’t know what. It’s a great story and I can’t wait to watch it on television.”