Hero's Mountain

by Jerry Dawson

  Hero’s Mountain

  A short Sam ’n’ Patty prequel

  by Jerry Dawson

  plus an introduction to

  Sam ’n’ Patty’s 1st Adventure

  Hidden Gems

  Copyright © 2018 by Jerry Dawson

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, businesses, places, and events are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner to lend a sense of authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental.

  Hero’s Mountain

  “Snowplow!”

  Ashley was yelling to me to slow down. This was my first day ever skiing, and there was so much to keep straight. Lean right to turn left, lean left to turn right, snowplow to slow down. All this while most of my brain was just trying to stay balanced.

  “Patty! Snowplow!”

  Okay, okay. I spread my feet apart a little while keeping my ski tips together. Whoa …. Tilt my feet in a little so I’m on the inner edge of my skis. It was working! I looked more like a cowcatcher than a snowplow, but I was slowing down. Hey! Who put that orange fence there? Aaagh …!

  Okay. Trip two down the practice slope … if this even deserved to be called a slope. It looked almost level to me. It’s amazing how fast you could get going on those things.

  “Start out in the snowplow position right from the start,” Ashley said. “I’ll follow you again.”

  Easy for her to say. She already knew how to ski. Probably learned when she was five like most of my other friends from App State. Ashley was my roommate there, and now we both work in Charlotte so we still get to hang out.

  Okay, it was working. I was going down slowly. Maybe I wouldn’t end up hanging over the fence like a sheet on a clothesline this time. That was so embarrassing. So much for my new candy-striped ski jacket making me look good. There were a couple cute guys nearby, too.

  “Okay, now move your left leg forward and aim it to the right.”

  “Aagh.” I went down in a heap.

  “You leaned left.”

  “I thought you were supposed to lean left!”

  “No, you lean right to go right, but you have to put you left leg forward.”

  I used my poles to stand back up. “This is too complicated.”

  “No it’s not. You just need to get the feel for it. Try not to think about all the details. Here, I’ll go in front. You just watch my skis and do what I do.”

  “Okay, I’ll try.”

  __________

  Most of North Carolina got dumped on with a foot of snow yesterday, so when I saw my buddy Carl’s name on my ringing phone, I knew something abominable would follow. “Yo.”

  “Terrible weather we've been havin’. Snow … and ice." Carl did a great Yukon Cornelius.

  “What’s up?” I asked.

  “We can’t let all this great snow go to waste. I’m taking you skiing!”

  “Why me? I don’t even know how to ski.”

  “Because you have four-wheel drive. There’s no way all the roads will be cleared.”

  “Ah. But wait, you said you were taking me. Does that mean you’re buying?”

  “You pay for the gas and lunch. I’ll spring for your lift ticket.”

  “What the heck, I’m up for a new adventure.”

  “Atta boy, Sam. Be at my place tomorrow morning early—around seven.”

  And that’s how I found myself at the bottom of the beginners’ slope at Hero’s Mountain this morning. My trial run on the practice slope went okay—better than some girl I saw with her skis stuck through the fence at the bottom—and my first run down a real slope just went surprisingly well. I even figured out how to stop sideways.

  “Lookout!”

  I barely heard the scream at first, but it was getting higher-pitched and louder. If I remembered correctly from my physics class, that meant it was getting closer.

  I looked uphill just in time for a red blur to slide right overtop of the front of my skis. I jumped to attention to get my face out of the danger zone.

  “Snowplow!” another person yelled from behind her as she skied over the back of my skis, nipping my butt as she flew by.

  The first blur was a red striped coat that looked familiar. She now had one ski in the air and both arms flailing. Gotta give her credit. She clearly had lost her balance, but that girl was determined to stay up.

  All the way to the orange fence.

  She folded in half when she hit it at thirty miles an hour. It’s amazing how much those things can stretch. I had never really thought about what great people-catchers those construction fences make, but then I remembered where I saw that striped coat before.

  __________

  “Get ready … stand up. Lean forward a little.” Ashley coached me off the ski lift for the second time on Happy Daze, one of the two beginner slopes here at Hero’s Mountain. Getting off that seat is almost as scary as skiing back down the mountainside.

  Almost.

  The beginner slopes start only halfway up the mountain, where it levels out a little. Above that, it gets really steep for the intermediate and advanced runs.

  It was kind of crowded today since North Carolina had just gotten a record snowfall. My boss told me the newspaper would pay for my lift ticket if I wrote an article about my first time skiing. Sure beats listing all the school closings.

  The number of skiers here was a little nerve-racking. There wasn’t any time to get mentally prepared for your next run. Ashley and I just followed the flow and before I knew it I was sliding forward and starting to pick up speed.

  I did a little better this time. I worked the snowplow to control my speed, but then some teenage boys suddenly squeezed in on both sides of me and I had to pull my skis in to avoid them. I recognized these kids. They had skied right in front of me on my first run and made me go right over the top of some other guy’s skis and crash into the fence.

  The boy on my right bumped into me and pushed me over, and he was laughing while he did it. I stuck out my right ski to keep from falling over, and that steered me further left just in front of the other teenager. He turned left to keep from hitting me, but then our skis were all lined up, practically touching each other. And we were going a lot faster.

  “Look out!” he shouted at me. “We’re gonna hit the trees!”

  I couldn’t do anything to control our descent. I knew I had to stick out my left ski to turn right, but he was in my way.

  A wall of trees was dead ahead. The teenager shoved me and yelled, “Get out of my way!”

  That made me mad, so I hit him back with my elbow. His ski binding got caught in the back of mine and pulled my ski up a few inches off the snow. I kicked against his boot and almost lost my balance, but it did turn me downhill. I planted my left ski back in the snow while I brushed against some pine boughs. The kid behind me screamed as he disappeared into the trees.

  __________

  Carl wanted to move up to an intermediate slope for our next run, but I wasn’t ready for that yet. I may have made it down the beginner slope okay, but it had felt kind of dicey a few times. “One more beginner run,” I told him. “Then we can go to the top of the mountain.”

  We popped off the lift chair and followed the flow of people around to the top of the slope. We were going down Happy Daze again. I would have picked Laverne & Surly just to be different, but this was where we ended up.

  The view from the top wasn’t so intimidating this time, having been there before. I experimented with steering all the way to the right side of the slope and back to the left. Dodging all the people made an additional challenge, but I was getting the hang of it. Certainly better than some of the others
out there. People were wiping out left and right.

  I saw some people bunch up ahead of me, and two of them squirted out to the left joined at the hip. That red striped coat was one of them. They were headed straight for the trees and started hitting each other. Stripe-girl got away at the very last second, but the guy who was fighting her made a spectacular face-plant into a longleaf pine. He looked like one of those Halloween witches that you wrap around a tree with her broom sticking out the other side.

  And then all the snow from the tree fell on him. Wylie Coyote never had a better scene.

  There were three other skiers in the original bunch that aimed toward stripe-girl after that. She started to go back across the slope and they bunched up on her again. Something was up and it didn’t look good, but I was hardly able to do anything about it on my rented skis.

  Stripe-girl leaned left and poked one of her tormentors with her ski pole. All three of them went down like dominoes and I laughed out loud as I passed them by.

  __________

  After my run-in on the slope, I needed a break. And I realized that I was hungry, too, so Ashley and I headed toward the restaurant.

  Wow. And I thought the slope was crowded. This was definitely a burger-and-fries place, and I had reviewed enough new diners to know to stick with what a place is known for. The line moved fast, and we each got a cheeseburger plate and found seats at a table with some older people. They looked like they were in their forties.

  “Are you up for another run, after all that?” Ashley asked.

  “Heck, yeah. I didn’t come all this way to be chased away by some high school bullies. Besides, I think I’m getting the hang of it. I never fell once that time, and I got stopped before I hit the fence.”

  Ashley giggled. “Do you think you’re ready to go all the way to the top? There’s one slope up there that goes off to the side, away from the others, and isn’t much steeper than Happy Daze. It’s just a lot longer.”

  “Okay, let’s try it. What’s it called?”

  “I don’t know. They changed all the names since I was here before. I know where it is, though.”

  We finished our lunch and went back out to find a lift that went all the way to the top.

  This lift was not only longer; it was higher off the ground, too. I’ve never really had a reason to be afraid of heights, but it was a bit unnerving up there. The view was magnificent, though.

  Ashley led the way to her slope, and barely anybody else was there. Just a few people coming back toward us. “It’s closed,” one of them told us. “They’re fixing the lift.”

  We skied over anyway. It wasn’t far. The sign said Straightjacket Escape next to a blue square, and there was a big CLOSED clipped underneath it.

  “That stinks,” Ashley said. “This is the best slope here.”

  “What does the blue square mean?”

  “That’s the symbol for intermediate. A green circle is a beginner slope, and a black diamond is advanced.”

  “Are there any other intermediate slopes up here?”

  “Yeah. They just aren’t as nice as this one. Follow me.”

  Ashley led us over to where all the people were gathered. “All these slopes are steeper on the top half, then you have to turn left and it’s just like Happy Daze after that.”

  She picked a slope called Rabbit’s Hat. The sign had a blue square, so it looked okay to me.

  “I’ll go first this time. Try to follow me and do what I do.”

  “Okay.”

  And then she was gone.

  She wasn’t kidding about that slope being a lot steeper at the top. She was a whole football field ahead of me by the time I got started.

  And snowplowing didn’t work up here. Not like it did below, anyway. I turned left to cut my speed a little. When I started coming up on the trees, I began to turn right, but those same teenagers were right beside me again. One of them steered into the front of my skis on purpose. I reacted by turning away from him, which put me on a collision course with the trees!

  But there was a path cut through them. I aimed for it and passed by a sign as I entered. It said Kamikaze Run and had a double black diamond on it. Oh my god! This was worse than a single black diamond. I was on an argyle slope!

  __________

  I saw those same guys harassing stripe-girl again. They pushed her onto a skinny path through the trees. I didn’t know if it went anywhere or what, but I couldn’t let them just get away with that.

  I got to the bottom of the extra-steep part of the slope and turned left where it leveled out a short way before continuing down the bottom half of the mountain. The culprits had swung wide, so I was able to catch up to them. I saw that they were pretty young—probably high school punks. Two of them were within earshot, and I yelled at them, “I saw what you did to that girl!”

  One of them whipped me the finger, and the other threw a couple choice words at me. They both laughed and tucked into crouches to go straight down the hill.

  I was hooked now. I went after them as fast as I dared, but they were putting a lot of snow between us. I saw Carl pass me on my right, crouched like the kids were. He gave me a quick wave, but he never took his eyes off the kids.

  When I got to the bottom, Carl was waiting for me. “Those kids went that way, toward the parking lot. Did you see them push that girl into the trees?”

  “Yeah, and they got away with it.”

  “Not yet they haven’t.” Carl pushed the tip of his pole onto the back of his bindings and stepped out of his skis. I did the same and tried to run toward my car but quickly learned that running doesn’t happen in ski boots.

  I was parked about three-quarters of the way back in the parking lot, so it seemed to take forever to get to my car. A snow-covered SUV went by that I thought was an old Lexus—I couldn’t be sure. I recognized the kids inside, though. The Lexus was probably a rich-daddy hand-me-down.

  Carl threw our skis and boots in the back of my Subaru while I quickly brushed off the windshield; then we took off in hot pursuit—or maybe it was cold pursuit.

  Snow had started falling again in those big wet flakes that are great for making snowballs. I turned on my wipers and took a quick right out of the parking lot, obligating Carl to gather the ski tips out of my face. We came to an intersection of Black Dog and Whole Lotta Love, and of all times, it suddenly hit me that I had seen other familiar sounding, strange road names on the way up.

  “Tracks,” Carl said, pointing to the road to the right.

  I turned that direction and gunned it.

  A succession of switchbacks took us uphill quickly. There were occasional guard rails, but not nearly as many as I thought this road deserved—especially with all the snow on it.

  We came to a T at Stairway to Heaven.

  “Right,” Carl called out, and I followed his direction.

  This road got even steeper uphill, but my trusty Subaru took it in stride. I saw the Lexus SUV fishtailing up ahead and quickly caught up to it—probably a little closer than I should have, but I wanted to let them know that we were there.

  The road made a sharp left, but the Lexus didn’t. It sailed right off the road and down a short hill. I stopped and watched while, to the driver’s credit, he kept going right through the sparse woods. I was flabbergasted to see him climb onto another road and turn left.

  I wasn’t going to let them get away just like that. I cut my wheel to the right and hit the gas. “Over the hill and through the woods,” I said to Carl. “I don’t think Led Zeppelin ever sang that.”

  “You’re nuts, you know that?”

  “Why? You think they did sing that?” We bounced through the short stretch of woods.

  “No, dummy. It’s over the river and through the woods.”

  “Oh. Well everybody sang that.” I climbed onto the same road—name unknown—and turned left with all four wheels throwing snow.

  __________

  This was a scrawny little path that hadn’t been skied on t
oday at all. A cluster of trees appeared in front of me, and I went to the right around them with barely three feet on either side of me. Then I had to go around the left side of a big tree trunk that was suddenly in my path and further left around a couple more pine trees and then I had to make a really sharp right so I didn’t crash into a whole bunch more of them! All this in a matter of seconds. I didn’t have time to think about any move I made. It was just reflex.

  The trees suddenly vanished as I shot out of the trail sideways onto a bigger slope that was a lot steeper than the one I had started out on. I passed a sign that I think had just one black diamond on it, but I’m not really sure. All I know is I started going downhill really fast and I was fighting to not fall over backward on my skis.

  I half-fell, half-leaned to the left and quickly found myself cutting across the slope. I didn’t hit anybody, not that I had any control over that. I made it about halfway across till I flipped and started spinning over and over, tucked up like a giant snowball.

  __________

  We went around a switchback and saw the Lexus stopped up ahead. But he must have seen me at the same time because he took off again. As I caught back up to him, I saw the reason he had stopped: this was some kind of service access road for the ski slope. And the Lexus was heading at a pretty good clip onto the level strip that runs across the middle of the ski slope—with me right on his tail.

  I laid on my horn. Mostly to warn the skiers, but probably some of that was trying to shake up the inexperienced driver in front of me, too. Juvenile, maybe, but probably effective.