by Paul Doiron
“You can’t trust it,” she’d said. “Not ever, Michael. Do you understand me?”
Her warnings had given me the idea that the river was an evil serpentine thing, a winding white dragon, slithering through the snow. The impression would be strongest at night, when I heard the ice forming and shifting. The grumbling sound made me think of sleepless monsters, and then in the morning I would see jagged new patterns in the surface, cracks and ridges that hadn’t been there the night before. The term my mother used for those nocturnal noises was river talk, but to me it sounded much more like the growls of something that would swallow me whole if I didn’t take care.
Then I would watch my father trudge out to the middle of the frozen river with a six-pack and his ice-fishing gear and sit there safely for hours pulling brown trout through holes, one after the other, while he got a buzz started for the coming night at the bars. When he returned with a bucket of trout, I knew for certain he must be the bravest man in the world. Who else could ride the back of that white dragon all day and return home alive?
* * *
The road to Rangeley took me through the college town of Farmington, where Shaylene Hawken had her office, and then northwest through the impoverished Sandy River Valley. Bleak little towns with names like Strong, Avon, and Madrid were strung like tarnished beads along the highway. Hunchbacked mountains blotted out the light for long stretches, and moose warning signs flashed amber at every curve in the road.
Surrounded on both sides by hills, the isolated shacks and trailers down in the river bottom must have seen the sun for only a few hours each day. I found myself imagining the domestic dramas that might be playing out inside those benighted homesteads—the drugs being injected, the alcohol being consumed, the blows and the screaming, the guns being placed speculatively against temples.
I pressed the gas harder to outrace my grim thoughts.
The crossing for the Appalachian Trail came into view. Few people attempted to hike this stretch of glacial terrain in the winter. There was a short ascent to Piazza Rock that got some foot traffic, but almost no one dared venture out onto the exposed ridges beyond. The foolish ones who did—the backcountry skiers and alpine snowshoers—often needed to be rescued by game wardens risking their own lives.
And then, suddenly, the mountains let me go, and I was back in the bright white world.
Down in the Sandy River Valley, almost all of the variety stores and motels had been closed for the winter—if not boarded up for good—but now I began seeing motor inns with glowing VACANCY signs, and restaurants with snowmobiles parked out front. SUVs with out-of-state plates and ski racks began to zip past. Finally, a great white bowl opened before me, and I saw the hard, shining expanse of Rangeley Lake. Bright-colored dots raced back and forth on the distant ice; the sledders were out en masse for Snodeo.
I’d never attended the winter carnival, but I understood it to be an extended weekend of snowmobile races, bonfires, and hard partying. While our fellow officers in the state police and the sheriff’s department patrolled the roads, Maine game wardens were given the trails and frozen lakes to watch over. Most of what we dealt with on the sledding routes were speedsters and drunks. I assumed the wardens assigned to Rangeley for the carnival must have gotten cramped hands from writing tickets.
As I drove through the village itself, I had to stop several times to let pedestrians cross the road. They piled in and out of the clothing boutiques and sipped lattes behind the steamed windows of the restaurants along Main Street. After the poverty and desolation I’d witnessed in the Sandy River Valley, I found it disorienting to see so much money on display in what seemed, on the map, to be the middle of nowhere.
The GPS told me to make a right onto Route 16, locally nicknamed “Moose Alley” for the number of collisions that occurred along it. Just past the village, the road took another hard turn, and then I was leaving the town and the traffic behind again. The houses began to be spaced farther and farther apart, and the woods began to edge closer to the snowbanks, until the trees on either side became unbroken walls of green. I drove fifteen more minutes along Moose Alley before seeing the sign for Widowmaker.
10
Widowmaker was situated on the steep southeast-facing slopes of East Kennebago Mountain. The last time I could remember the resort having been in the news was a decade earlier, when a chairlift had malfunctioned, sending dozens of skiers plummeting to the ground. A man from Connecticut, a father of two, had died. There had been a number of gruesome headlines in the tabloids playing on the Widowmaker name. After the accident and the subsequent multimillion-dollar civil suit, the mountain resort had struggled to stay open.
Then, last year, a big ski company from out west had bought the place for pennies on the dollar. Pulsifer had said the new owners were looking to renovate the outdated lodge buildings and lifts. I wondered if they were considering bigger changes as well. I didn’t know the first thing about marketing, but it seemed like they might want to rebrand their new investment with a less macabre name.
The access road to the resort crossed the frozen Dead River on a bridge that looked like it should have been replaced a decade earlier. Almost immediately, I came upon a cluster of businesses that had been built since the days when my father had driven a snowcat on the mountain. There was a grocery store plastered with signs that seemed to make a big deal out of its liquor selection; something called Kennebago Estates, which I guessed to be condominiums, offering many discounted units for sale; and a family restaurant, the Landing, which had an overly large and empty parking lot, as if its owners had opened the place with unreal expectations of how busy they would be.
One of the few landmarks I recognized from my childhood was the campus of the Alpine Sports Academy. The dormitories and halls had been built in the style of Swiss lodges—a timber-frame design that now seemed dated—but they looked better maintained than the other buildings I’d seen so far. Somehow ASA had managed to thrive even while the adjacent resort had fallen into disrepair—a tribute to the fund-raising prowess of its head of school, or at least proof that having half a dozen alumni with Olympic medals was enough to make the pickiest of parents overlook a lot of the mountain’s flaws.
Soon the ski slopes came into view. Dozens of white trails flowed in all sorts of crazy directions from the snowcapped summit; they followed the grooves between the dark forested ridges the way meltwater streams will find their own zigzagging paths downhill after a storm. There seemed to be a lot of empty seats on the chairlifts.
The big hotel in the middle of the village loomed into view: the hub of activity for everything going on at Widowmaker. I hadn’t expected to find a parking spot this near the top at the height of the season, but, to my surprise, a Volvo wagon was pulling out as I pulled in.
It was colder here than it had been at home. The air had a sharpness to it that promised imminent snowfall. As I crossed the lot, I noticed that I was one of the only people not dressed for skiing. Just about everyone else was clomping around in ski jackets, pants, and boots, as heavy-footed as Frankenstein’s monster. Unencumbered, I sprang lightly up the stairs that led to the center of the resort’s little village.
A recently shoveled sidewalk led between two big buildings: the Widowmaker Hotel and a plazalike strip of stores and restaurants. I saw signs for a market, a Laundromat, a coffee shop, and a few restaurants. You had to pass through an alley to reach the base lodge. It was a big post-and-beam building with wide doors. I followed a family of skiers inside.
I paused to remove my sunglasses at the entrance. At first glance, the great room seemed like a cozy-enough space; it was lighted by elaborate chandeliers and warmed by an enormous river-stone fireplace. But a closer inspection revealed that the carpet had been scuffed down to the backing in spots, and on the ceiling there were water stains shaped like prehistoric continents. Drafts blew about the room, carrying clattering echoes from the cafeteria and voices from the changing areas, where people were putting on and tak
ing off their boots and helmets.
A sign for the Sluiceway pointed me up the stairs to the second floor.
Inside an arch, a teenage hostess stood behind a podium. She had a skier’s tan, which made her gray eyes look grayer, and she was wearing a tight sweater, which accentuated the muscles in her firm little arms. She showed me the braces on her teeth when she smiled.
“One for lunch?” She lifted a menu from the stand.
“Is Amber working today?”
“Amber? She should be here somewhere.” She glanced around the room. Only the bar itself seemed to be illuminated by artificial lights. The rest of the place was awash with natural light from a wall of windows. The air smelled of french fries.
A shout went up from a table of guys in plaid snowboarding jackets. “No, she fucking didn’t, dude! That’s not what she fucking said!”
It wasn’t even noon yet, but those shredders were already buzzed.
The hostess blushed. “If you want to sit at the bar, I’ll send her over.”
“Thanks.”
She smiled brightly again, and I wondered how many drunken men mistook her innocent friendliness for flirtation. If I had been her brother, I wouldn’t have wanted her working at a place where guys got wasted before noon. I took a seat at the bar, positioned so I could keep an eye on the rowdy snowboarders.
I had never skied Widowmaker during my Colby years. East Kennebago was the runt of the local ski mountains, with no interesting geological features—no horns or windswept snow plains—to amp up its sexiness. Because its trails had been built on the southeast-facing slopes, the sun had more time to melt whatever snow fell, turning powder into water, and water into ice. The ski term for the mountain’s characteristic surface was frozen granular, but my classmates who had skied Widowmaker called it “death cookies” and warned me away.
I hadn’t needed the excuse. The real reason I had avoided Widowmaker was that I hadn’t wanted to run into my father unexpectedly. I knew that he frequented the roadhouses and saloons between Rangeley and Solon: a drinking territory that he roamed the way a predator will mark as its own a certain chain of mountains, or expanse of forest. The prospect of my wandering into a barroom and seeing my dad on a stool, unshaven, with a shot and a beer in front of him, had scared me off. It was easier to stick to Sugarloaf, where I knew he had already been banned for life, and where I didn’t have to worry about being humiliated.
The bartender came over. She was an athletic-looking woman with short hair the color of squid ink. She was dressed in jeans and a black fleece sweater with a W on the breast. “Beer?”
“Coffee.”
“I’m making a new pot, if you can hold tight for a few minutes.” She pushed a basket of popcorn across the bar. I took a handful. It was almost inedibly salty.
Glancing at the wall of windows, I saw tiny flakes of snow beginning to fall—the innocent-seeming vanguard of the coming storm.
“Mike?”
I spun on the stool, directly into Amber Langstrom’s embrace. She hugged me hard, as if we were old friends and not people who had just met two nights earlier. I felt a pain on the bruised part of my back. I didn’t bring my own arms up, but waited for her to let go.
“I knew you’d come!” She looked better than she had at my house. The whites of her eyes were actually white, and her blond hair was done up in a tousled style that made her appear younger. She wore the same black fleece as the bartender, but her jeans were as formfitting as ski tights.
“I thought I should see the place,” I said. “I haven’t been here in a long time.”
“If I didn’t have to work, I’d show you around.” She leaned in close and lowered her voice. Her eyes were gorgeous, as blue as the bottom of a swimming pool. “Gerald—he’s my new boss—is such an asshole. He thinks he’s hot shit because he used to manage an Olive Garden. I am so glad you’re here!”
I had no idea how to respond, but it didn’t matter, because she kept on going.
“First, you need to talk with Josh,” she said. “I heard he’s working up on the summit today, which is kind of a bummer. Did you bring your skis?”
“My skis? No.”
“Then you can’t ride the chairlift. Well, you can ride to the top, but they won’t let you come down that way. Do you want me to ask Elderoy to drive you up in his snowcat?”
“Wait. Who’s Elderoy?
“The lift-maintenance manager. He’s been here forever.”
“And who’s Josh?”
“He’s Adam’s friend, the one I told you about. He works on the ski patrol. Josh Davidson.”
“Davidson, as in Alexa’s brother? The one Adam beat up? I thought they hated each other.”
Her painted mouth tightened. “Where did you hear that?”
“Pulsifer told me Alexa’s brother tried to put an end to the relationship. He said there was a fight, and the kid ended up in the clinic. That was how the parents found out about Adam’s relationship with Alexa.”
From her reaction, you would have thought I had insulted her. “Gary shouldn’t be spreading lies.”
“They didn’t get in a fight?”
“Those two were always hitting each other for fun. You know how boys are. It had nothing to do with Alexa. If they hated each other, why did Josh stay in touch with Adam while he was in prison? He was the only one of his academy friends who wrote to him. The rest of them treated Adam like a leper.”
A stern-faced man wearing the same black fleece as the other workers in the restaurant appeared behind her shoulder. “Amber, can I have a word with you?”
She rolled her eyes at me, mouthed a silent profanity, and then turned to her manager with a remarkably genuine-looking smile. “Of course, Gerald. I was just giving this gentleman some recommendations for lunch.” She returned her attention to me, as if finishing a conversation. “You should definitely try the Sluice burger. It comes with bacon and onion rings on top. Now, what is it you wanted, Gerald?”
“A word.”
“OK, but I have an order up for table four, so you need to be quick.”
Amber moved purposefully toward the kitchen. The scowling manager stayed one step behind her through the swinging door.
I swiveled back around on the stool and found myself looking into the hazel eyes of the bartender as she poured my cup of coffee from a steaming carafe. “Amber’s a piece of work, isn’t she?” she said.
“Yeah.”
“How well do you know her?”
I blew on the top of the mug. “Not very well.”
“You might want to keep it that way. Just my recommendation.”
She thought I had been flirting with Amber. I gathered that it must have been a regular occurrence at the Sluiceway.
11
As I waited for Amber to return, I tried to make sense of what she had told me about her son and Josh Davidson. Why would the brother of the girl Adam had raped remain friends with her rapist, especially if—as Pulsifer had suggested—a fight between the two boys had been the incident that started the investigation that led to Adam’s conviction? And what was I to make of Josh Davidson being the last person to see Adam before he vanished?
Curiosity had gotten the better of me so many times in the past. And here I was back in its thrall again. I was such a sucker for unanswered questions.
Across the room, one of the loud snowboarders stood up suddenly and knocked over his mug. Beer spilled all over the table and onto the floor. His friends pushed back in their chairs to avoid being dripped on—a hard scraping sound that drew the attention of everyone present—and started laughing and shouting.
“Dude! No!”
“Ugh, it’s on my pants!”
“You are so wasted!”
“You bumped the fucking table!”
“I didn’t bump it! You bumped it!”
I glanced at the teenage hostess and saw her shrinking behind her podium, as if she hoped it would shield her from the mayhem. The manager, meanwhile, was still
scolding Amber in the kitchen.
I slid off my stool.
I zigzagged my way through the tables until I was standing behind the boarder who’d spilled his beer. “Guys,” I said. “You need to keep it down.”
The snowboarder—a big brawny kid—turned around and exhaled a heavy dose of alcohol into my face. “Lighten up, dude.”
“There are families here. You need to watch your language.”
I figured he’d give me some guff but then relent. It was early in the day for barroom brawls. Instead, he said, “Why don’t you step back?”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” And he shoved me in the chest.
I caught one of his hands and twisted. A wrist lock is one of the first self-defense maneuvers I had learned at the Criminal Justice Academy. A simple turn of the radioulnar joints in the hand is enough to make an aggressor’s knees buckle, and that was what happened with my drunk snowboarder.
“Ow! Jeez! Let go!”
“I think you guys need to leave.”
“Fuck you!”
I gave his hand another twist. “What was that?”
I turned my attention to his friends, who were still seated at the table. They were either less drunk or less bellicose, because they all reached for their wallets. They began scattering bills on the wet table.
I let go of the shredder’s hand.
He rose from his knees, shaking his wrist, his windburned face growing even redder with humiliation. “Ow! Jeez! What’s your problem?”
I removed my wallet with my badge and flipped it open. “I hope you guys aren’t driving anywhere.”
“No, sir!” one of his more sober friends said.
“We’re staying at my mom’s condo,” added another.
“I hope that’s true.”
One by one, they slunk out of the pub like so many kicked dogs.
I sat back down at the bar.
“Thanks,” said the bartender. “Are you a cop?”
“A game warden.”
“Is that like a forest ranger?”
“Not exactly.”