By JON GRANT
Snow Valley
Chapter VII: How a new presence was felt in Snow Valley
A peculiar thing began happening in Snow Valley right after the lifts closed, in the time between the chairs stopping their turn and the groomers coming out to groom the beginner and intermediate runs smooth again after the day’s turns.
Every afternoon since the season’s opening day, a man clad in an all-white, ‘30s era ski suit walked in rustic boots down Fanny Way, out past the Tavern, entering the village of cobblestone rooves in front of Alice’s Grocery; he’d walk past the great fire pit to stop briefly into the Snow Valley Inn and, from the lobby jug, pour himself a glass of lemon water. He’d study the snow report posted on the wall. Then he’d walk over to the base of the TK lift and proceed to hike up the mountain for solitude and a ski.
He was tall and broad and long of gate. He always wore a smile. And though valley residents thought he must have been in his 70s, it was as if each day he was seeing the world for the first time. His skin was leather-tanned and, as he walked, his long white hair looked like the mane, if one ever existed, of a polar bear-lion.
And upon his left shoulder lay the perfect punctuation to the appearance, a pair of long woodcut wood skis with telemark bindings, natural slats that made Alice think of the early days of the valley between the six peaks.
No one knew the old man. Other than questions of snow conditions and words necessary to procure international newspapers, he seldom spoke.
He conveyed a Buddha. He invited thought. His mystery inspired people to stop and look for answers in approaching clouds, to contemplate, perhaps even wonder.
Late night at the Tavern he was likely to come up in those enthusiastic, beer-infused conversations that inquire, but rarely answer.
Morrison figured him for a drinker. Alice was curious if he had any family. Jillie figured he must have patrolled at some point, and Stanwick and his beard figured him for a writer.
“He reads minds, como un dios,” said an Argentine liftie. “Like a god.”
Miguel and Matty were home at the Castle Flophouse playing the African stones game, Mancala, game 29 in a best of 51 series they’d devised to see who’d clean the bathroom during annual mid-winter cleaning at the Castle — but Curtis Case was on hand to offer his take. “I think he’s some excommunicated royalty, man, like Rasputin or something.”
That one sent the crowd into slow nods of unequivocal agreement. Stanwick and his beard, who didn’t talk much unless spoken to, heard the movement toward gossip. “Hell, he’s just another guy, just like the rest of us who sacrifice to call this place our home. He just likes to ski, ski in the good mountains and have a little space to be himself.”
Since no one would go up to the man to ask his name — some because they just didn’t think he’d give it and most because their fortitude did not yet equal their curiosity — it was decided that he needed a nickname, a moniker to more easily identify him in these nightly analyses. His accent and sharp European features, along with his age, swayed the first night’s naming toward “KGB.”
But the next Friday it was determined by Morrison, in a rare assertion of dissention, slurred but remarkably cogent for the late hour, that the name, “Jus’ dudn’t feel right.”
The other barflies agreed. The man with the mane had experienced pain, perhaps even caused pain, but his mystery was not cloaked in deception or the diabolic, rather robed in perspective, some kind of purity.
So after skiing ten inches of fresh snow the following Thursday, a divine day indeed, a ramshackle jam session broke out at the Tavern. Jillie made up a song about him and, needing something to rhyme with “… those eyes don’t ever lie,” sang a quip about “… a crazy old Samurai.” The name stuck.
As far as people could tell, the Samurai had just appeared in Snow Valley the first day of the season. No one had seen or heard anything of the man before that day. And for weeks now his routine had remained unchanged. He did not have a season pass nor ever bought a day ticket. After all, when a guy pays all that money for a day of skiing, he is not paying for the right to ski but for the privilege to ride up a lift. This man didn’t seem to need that privilege.
He hiked up the mountain every day, two and three hour hikes, often coming down among the alpenglow but sometimes by moonlight — and Mike once swore to Matty that he saw him descend, “… straight out of the star, no joke bro. In the name of Ullr.”
Then, one snowy night as the Samurai was walking back after his ski, walking back to wherever he returned, a freckled Snow Valley girl of ten heard those old ski boots clanking on past the Snow Valley Inn, heading right for her.
The girl was a tomboy, a girl living in the mountain world of boys, and to keep respect in this world she had to prove herself constantly. She could ski with the boys and splinter kindling better than most flat landed men.
She put her hand to her chin and knew she had to say something to the Samurai. For even more so than the barflies at the Cantina, like only an old and eccentric hermit can, the Samurai had come to hold illusive sway over the youth of Snow Valley. And the stories ran far on the legs of childhood imagination. “He had no toes… he was a hundred years old… he talked to mountains.”
But the girl knew better. “He must have toes,” she told a classmate at school earlier that day. “Course he’s not a hundred years old.”
She heard the clicking of ski boots grow closer, louder. Even in the dim light she saw his form — wooden skis above white mane above white suit. “Hey Mister!” she said. “I heard you’re a Communist, and you don’t believe in God or nothin’!”
Silence fell with the snow. The man did not speak, the only signal he understood the words was a barely perceptible movement of his lips into something resembling a grin.
The Samurai stared directly into the young girl’s eyes. Yet when she returned the gaze the figure was no longer there, and she stood, unmoving, peering into a single enormous eye.
Like a terrible old-time motion-picture, she saw banners and flags and marching uniformed men, terrible-creaking tanks and guns, frenzy, devastation. A man was giving a speech and pumping his fist in the air; in snow-covered fields there were mothers holding crying babies. Houses burned and below cold shining stars, bodies without breath lay like bone.
Everything turned blood red. The girl lost perception of time. When finally able to move, amidst the snowfall and old-world lanterns of Snow Valley, she turned from the sight and ran the long direction home.
The Samurai continued on his way, walking to wherever he was walking. The snows came heavier, his footsteps filling as quickly as they were made.
