Once a Noble Endeavor

by Michael Butler

  John casually assured Nicky that he was exaggerating the problem. “You will be fine.” All that was needed was Liz and John. “We will hold each shoulder, one right, one left, and you just get off the lift.”

  “Your ski is surely right behind us,” Liz confidently said, quickly adding, “held by the skier in the lower lift chair. You can bet on it.” Brennan accepted their confidence out of a sense of pure confusion but refused to look downhill again.

  The mountain was tall and intimidating, and he was completely incompetent to handle this situation. With premonitions of death, he briefly thought of his children and their life without a father. Then with lowered expectations he became concerned with how he would entertain himself in the local hospital for the rest of the family vacation, assuming, of course, he survived this ridiculous expedition.

  Nick approached the end of the lift ride and panicked as he saw the large arrival station, where a steep snow-covered exit ramp presented itself. John grabbed his left shoulder and Liz his right, and with their help he decided he could get off the lift. He slid down the ramp like a newborn pony, slipping, splitting, and sliding in every direction. At the base, Nick quickly composed himself, brushed off his bottom, and waited for the ski from the subsequent lift rider. He was quickly rewarded with the other half of the device that was to happily get him down this goddamn mountain. The click of his boot into the retrieved ski was a pleasurable experience and a sound he had longed for all the way up.

  After he attached the ski to his boot, pounded the skis on the frozen surface to make sure both were properly locked in, he turned to John and Liz.

  “Where now?”

  The looks on their faces foretold the next crisis he was about to face.

  “Look,” John said, “it’s no big deal, but the green trail is closed. We didn’t check before we got on the lift, so that means we have to go down a blue trail.”

  “No big deal?” Brennan repeated. “To you it’s no big deal yeah, just like you said in Pleiku when I had to climb that big ass tree. ‘No big deal, Nicky, no big deal.’” His mind raced. “Closed? Closed? What the hell to you mean, closed? How can you close a mountain trail? It’s a mountain, not a delicatessen. You can’t really close a trail, right? Closed?”

  “You know,” Liz said, “closed. It was open, but now it’s not. You used to be able to go down it, but now you can’t. There is no green way down. Green or blue, what difference does it make?”

  “Oh, I see,” said Nicky sarcastically. “This is about the color. I’m sorry, I thought we were talking about difficulty. Okay, I pick the blue trail all the way down. Ready, let’s go!”

  John was starting to lose his patience with Nick, “Stop it, stop it now!” and Nick was losing his mind. I should just strangle the bastard right here in the snow, where a powder hound would love to die.

  A blue trail, for an experienced skier, is no challenge; it is designed for an intermediate-level athlete. A novice or a brand-new skier has no business attempting the trip.

  “How the hell am I going to get down? Where the hell do I go?” Nicky asked, composing himself again and now merely agitated.

  “Just follow us,” John answered, as though Brennan was confused about which direction to take.

  “John, Lizzie, look, I know I have to go down the goddamn mountain. I cannot ski up the mountain—that is not the problem,” he said stridently, using slow and perfect enunciation. “I just don’t know how to ski down the goddamn mountain.”

  Exaggerating her manner a bit, Liz smiled broadly, standing with her hands on her wide, shapely hips on the sunny mountainside and said in a helpful voice, “It’s not that hard, Nick. Just watch.”

  She pulled away and skied with perfect form for about four hundred yards down the trail, finally raising her arms in false triumph. John without hesitation immediately followed.

  “Now all I have to do is ski to the lodge,” Nick, standing alone, said in a whisper to himself. “No big deal.”

  Suddenly he realized: was he ever wrong. Nicky knew he had no idea how to ski. He needed a plan. In desperation, he put his hands on his knees, aimed downhill, put the skies together, and went about 500 feet as fast as he thought he could before he intentionally rolled over and crashed in the crusty snow on the trailside. Nicky decided he had two missions in mind: one was to get down to the lodge, probably miles away, and the other was to not kill or injure some poor skier trying to do the same damn thing.

  John and Liz continued far ahead, looking uphill from time to time as Nick kept them in his sights. Nick decided to try to catch them.

  He was on his third “kamikaze” effort when he looked to his right and realized he was being pursued by the ski patrol. With his skis together and going in a straight downhill trajectory, he picked up an enormous amount of speed. Even the ski patroller had trouble trying to keep up. As he reached what he believed was maximum velocity, he rolled to his right and crashed into the large banks of what he realized was a pile of newly fallen snow—a softer landing, for sure.

  The ski patroller pulled up as Nick recovered from the tumble and brushed a face full of snow from his head. Breathlessly, the patrolman sternly asked, “How long have you been skiing?”

  This guy surely is no Sherlock Holmes, Nicky thought. “Including today?” Brennan asked calmly in response as he shook the snow from inside his ski jacket.

  “Yes,” the patroller said.

  “About four minutes,” Brennan responded.

  “Are you nuts?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Nick said. “You see, I listened to my friends, who thought I could ski from the top of this goddamn mountain with absolutely no experience, and any thoughtful rational person would never accept such a ridiculous opinion. So yes, I am nuts!”

  ****

  As Brennan, still in a dream state, pulled onto the roadway, Tom DeBoer asked, “Hey, wake up. You are daydreaming. What happened?”

  “I was speeding. Here and there.”

  “Speeding here and where? What are you saying? He had a speed trap in the woods next to a country meadow on a Monday afternoon in the foothills in a K9 unit in the fall, are you shittin’ me?”

  “Nah, no trap, he probably just needed a mover before the month ends,” Nick speculated, referring to a quiet quota for tickets most cops had to deal with. “Hey Tom, the cop said we should go over a little east and look. I was thinking maybe we should go into Massachusetts and find a place to stay tonight.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Tom replied as they got on Route 23 and headed east towards South Egremont, Massachusetts.

  Their first mission was to find a comfortable and reasonable hotel that didn’t require a lot of driving back and forth to dinner. South Egremont’s main artery was narrow, with a variety of establishments: an old, white, shingled market, a small bus stop, and a town square with several dark copper statues dedicated to military veterans. There were several other commercial buildings farther east on both sides of the road.

  “There’s a place for breakfast tomorrow,” Tom said as he pointed to a small diner, “and there’s a great place for dinner, right there,” he added, looking at the Old Mill Restaurant.

  The Old Mill was a red clapboard colonial-style building with three or four small, lighted windows on either side of a large stone stairway and sidewalk. It had a bar too. That was where they were going for dinner and drinks, they agreed.

  Right off Route 23, the pair found an old country inn probably built in the 1800s on an oversized lot with rooms at a good price. They needed two rooms, and the place appeared empty. Out of season: too late for the foliage and too early for skiers.

  As Nicky booked the rooms, Tom asked the clerk, “Are there any ghosts? You know, spirits that live here? I can feel the presence of one or more,” he added.

  “Yes. We have two, but most people don’t actually see them,” the clerk said as he smiled, perhaps facetiously.

  Tom was fascinated with ghosts and claimed he had experienced many
apparitions, but sometimes others thought he was just trying to be entertaining. Chills went up Nick’s spine at the clerk’s words; he summoned up some courage and decided these two were merely playing a game. The two cops checked in.

  Each went to his room to clean up for dinner. The accommodations were more than satisfactory. Nick’s room had a metal frame bed with a large colorful quilt and soft light-colored wooden walls with hardwood floors; while a bit small, it was tidy, with a pleasant fragrance of flowers and soap. Brennan took a quick shower and met Tommy downstairs in an old, dark room away from the main desk.

  To kill a couple of minutes they looked around and decided to take seats in the sitting area on chairs that were surely over a hundred years old. The fabric was stiff and the pattern on all the companion chairs was “busy”—multi colored, somewhat dull— perhaps bleached by the sun and crowded in design.

  Tom asked Brennan, “Nick, what made you decide to go to law school?”

  “I’m not sure. As a cop I grew to love the law, and I thought I could be good at it, so I took the LSAT and applied.”

  “Don’t you think most lawyers are scoundrels?”

  “Yeah, sometimes, but it is important to our democracy to have officers of the court to defend the justice system. Without justice there is no democracy.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know, but most lawyers manipulate the law to their own ends.”

  “That is occasionally true, but most of the time lawyers provide an important service—they help write laws, defend people, protect family wealth, solve social problems, and guide businesses. They promote real estate sales through their representation and prosecute criminals. In fact, most judges are lawyers.”

  “I don’t care, I think modern lawyers are basically crooks with a license to steal.”

  “Did you know John Adams defended the British soldiers that shot at the patriots on King Street in the Boston Massacre?” Nick asked.

  “No, but what the hell does that have to do with lawyers today?”

  “Well, I think the practice of law is a noble endeavor,” Nicky said with a serious look.

  “It was once a noble endeavor perhaps, but do you really think that the scummer who represented Steve Clinton was being noble?”

  “Epstein, yeah, in an abstract sort of way, I guess.”

  “The guy should’ve gotten fifty years. Epstein tricked the court and someday someone will have to pay for that injustice.”

  “Maybe. We’ll see.”

  ****

  The restaurant a block away had oversized white table cloths with stout, dimly lit candles on each table, high-back wooden chairs, and like the hotel, dark, broad plank flooring throughout.

  The meal was hearty and meaty—beef stew for Nicky and a steak for Tom. The two swilled ice-cold light beers during the meal. For dessert they went to the barroom, where they enjoyed an Irish coffee—a dark brew filled with strong whiskey. The bar provided a great venue to exchange old stories, which Tom and Nick did with some zeal.

  The walk back to their rooms was short yet invigorating in the cool autumn mountain night air on the dark, narrow, uneven sidewalk. The shadows cast by the moving tree branches against the street lamps made it seem like a Halloween night to Brennan. He immediately thought of ghosts. Even fortified by the alcohol, he wasn’t about to go too deeply into the subject with Tom, but perhaps superficially, he decided.

  “Tommy, do you really think there are ghosts in the hotel?”

  DeBoer, with a large head, short, dark, curly hair and piercing dark eyes, stared at Brennan and said nothing.

  “Actually, Tom, I’m afraid of ghosts. I’m also afraid of bees, drunken marines, and grizzly bears, but I’m mostly afraid of heights. You know, ladders, tree tops, roof tops, Ferris wheels, like that.”

  Ten minutes later, as Nick was lying in bed just before being overtaken by early twilight sleep, he couldn’t help but to remember Mount Snow once more.

  ****

  In the morning, DeBoer reported he had been visited by a spirit during the long fall night. He said, “She was a woman, probably a young woman, wearing a white, flowing lace gown.”

  Nick shuddered to think he had really seen a ghost. Like the scene in A Christmas Carol when Scrooge denies the existence of Marley by suggesting the vision may merely be “a bit of undigested beef,” he thought perhaps Tom’s visitor was the product of over digested hops and barley or maybe a bit too much Irish whiskey.

  Tom insisted the ghost was real, and when he asked the clerk if she fit the description of one of their supernatural tenants, the clerk said, “Yes,” with a sly smile. “She does—she was a jilted bride who hanged herself almost two hundred years ago. Right here in the main room, in fact, near where you sat yesterday.”

  Nicky, after dismissing the ridiculous notion of a spirit, walked out to the hotel lobby. While Nick was waiting for Tom to check out, he decided to go into the men’s room and relieve himself. As Brennan entered the rest room through the open entranceway he passed an enclosed commode to his left with the legs and shoes of a man wearing a dark pair of dropped trousers exposed below the bottom of the enclosure door. While Nicky was walking by the toilet, the man inside spoke.

  “Hey, hi, how are you doing?”

  Nick thought, gee these are very nice people up here. “Pretty good, thanks,” he said as he walked to the urinal and unzipped his pants.

  “What are you doing up here?” the man asked loudly.

  “My buddy and I are looking for a ski house for our families,” Nick said as he stared at the restroom wall with his left arm up on the wall for support.

  “Yeah, how long you going to be up here?”

  “Just a couple of days, maybe three. We are not sure yet.”

  Just then an older gentleman entered and walked to the sink and began to wash his hands. Nick finished his business and went to the sink to wash his hands as well and continue the discussion with his unknown conversationalist. “Do you know of any good places for sale or rent up here?” Nick asked.

  “I have one question for you,” the man said.

  “Sure, what?”

  “Are you still seeing Debbie?”

  Nick walked over to the closed toilet door, and looking directly at it he said, “Debbie? I don’t know any Debbie.”

  The man spoke again and said, “Hold on, believe it or not I think some asshole is talking to me through the closed toilet door!”

  Embarrassed, Nick looked over at the older gent and meekly shrugged his shoulders as he realized he was having a one-sided conversation with a guy sitting on the bowl talking on his cellphone. Forcing a smile, Nick said, “So long. Nice talkin’ at you,” and quickly left through the exit doorway, only to be confronted by Tom DeBoer waiting impatiently, hands on hips in the lobby.

  “What? I was having an interesting conversation with one of the locals.” Nick said in his own defense. Just then the old man also came out and said to Nick, “I thought you’d like to know—he is still seeing Debbie.”

  “I thought so,” Nick said with a crooked smile while looking at Tom.

  “Who’s Debbie, Nicky?”

  ****

  After a light breakfast in a small diner with small tables scattered about and an old-fashioned white and gray Formica counter, Tom and Nick visited a local real estate. The agent had a small office in a large tan log house. At first, they were primarily interested in a winter ski rental—someplace two families could rent for the season, but Tom also wanted to check out the real estate market in such a quintessential New England community. The real estate woman, older with gray hair pinned back in an untidy bun, immediately knew what the pair would need: buy or rent. It couldn’t be a single house, not even a two-family residence, she thought, but rather a property with two buildings— two dwellings. Tom and Nick were brought to a place that made both breathless as they approached.

  In a remote area far from the main road and without neighbors nearby the two entered the property from the south and the
ir first impression was expressed by DeBoer: “This isn’t two houses on a big piece of land—this is the goddamn Ponderosa.”

  It was another perfect cool, sunny day as Nick and Tom drove up the long, narrow gravel driveway. They approached a large horizontal flat board fenced-in area that looked like an old-fashioned corral. Straight ahead was a tall, big, three-story dark wooden clapboard house which they were told contained an enormous attic, four bedrooms, a modern kitchen, a family room, two bathrooms, and an outside wall with stone detailing. Off to the right was a barn which had been converted into a “carriage house” including three bedrooms, two baths, a living area and a large bright dining room adjoining the oversized kitchen. Both buildings were recently refurbished and modern. The pair was stunned to learn that the whole complex, including about five acres and a stream, was listed at $250,000. Certainly a large sum, but the property could, after all, accommodate two families, and the cost could be equitably divided.

  The owner—an older tall gent in overalls, with long white hair covering his large ears, sporting steel gray eyes and a New England accent—came out of the house. He took Nicky and Tom for a walk around the large yard and buildings, and after the tour had concluded he said, “Ay ah, got to go furthah north. It’s gettin’ too crowded around here. Probably Maine is where I’ll go.”

  Tom and Brennan carefully considered the whole place and were both thinking the same thing: maybe this estate could be purchased by two families and converted into a compound—a compound like the Kennedy family on Cape Cod; the Brennans with one building, and Tom DeBoer, including Tom’s wife Carol and two young girls—Maryann and Julie—with the other. There is an existential thrill that comes with love at first sight, but it also burns hot and quick. Tom and Nick weren’t going to waste any time.

  To divide the purchase equitably would be a complex exercise. Who gets the big house? And then how is the price for each family determined? How are the taxes divided? Finally, how could a proportionate share of the mortgage be determined? Everybody had to assume all the legal liabilities. But it was all doable, they both thought.