Scar on the mountain
Post #23: Douglas Stanyer, Lloyd Humes
Douglas Stanyer. Mechanical Engineer. Pilot. Skier. (March 1975, Banff.) On the ride up to Sunshine my Uncle Doug brings us up to date on B.C.’s mining industry. Colleagues from rival firms calling him all the time with niggling questions, “Gee, Doug, what size this?” or “what capacity that?”
“Everyone thinks I’m a free consultant,” he groans.
Years working in the Middle East and the Canadian North give him a wider perspective. Tough-minded. He takes Mum up in his plane. She dotes on her brother who is a year older. A photo from 1937 or 1938 shows two toddlers in matching overalls and caps with their smiling grandparents David and Bessie, and youthful father Jasper. The latter built the great ski jump at Kimberley and used it. You can still find the scar on the hill where it stood. Another photo has three-year-old Doug balancing on his mother’s long skis.
From Sunshine’s peak the vista is breathtaking, a panorama of mountain tops indeed bathed in sun. I’ve never skied at this altitude, never seen such long runs.
“I guess you Easterners can ski powder?” my uncle inquires , eyes twinkling.
“I think so,” I reply uncertainly. I do know a heavier powder, inches deep, but here is three newly-fallen feet of the lightest there is.
He coaches me to ease back my centre-of-gravity and demonstrates the subtle weight shifts for long sweeping turns. An error-prone first hour provides him with no end of mirth, but after that there is the joy of real mountain skiing, from whose seduction I’m unlikely ever to recover.
Lloyd Humes. Skier. (March-April 1976. Fredericton.) A motivating incident occurs just as I arrive before Mick’s family home on the town plat. The front door flies open and out tumbles Gwen, ejected down the steps to graze a tearful cheek on the sidewalk. Get out, bitch! Get lost! That’s Jed’s voice. Mick’s parents must be out. Sobbing, she draws herself up, straightens her skirt and coat, is startled to find me standing behind her.
We walk the eight blocks to her house. About halfway I take her hand, and she holds mine tightly. Her voice quavers.
“He’s not usually like that.”
I nod, knowing that Jed is like that. Last winter, with the ski team at a race up north, I saw it. Look, there is nothing non-factual in all this. If there is any problem, it lies in the unformed sixteen-year-old mind. I regret that all I have to offer Gwen at this moment is stunned silence. (Oh, that’s a word we use, stunned, for someone noticeably dazed by the ructions of adolescence.)
…
Since that day, I’ve watched out for Gwen, but there is no further obvious trouble. She and Jed, at seventeen, older only by a year, inhabit some alien emotional economy inside the gargantuan high school. Yet she’s ever on my mind. He deserves not one moment of her attention.
Local princeling, Jed has a father said to be both powerful and unscrupulous. I imagine the son emulates him. Youngish to be inducted into his outer sanctum, there is a part of me that the athletic Jed more-or-less wants around. The part knowing some poetry, literature, that plays music, has long hair, has lived in a metropolis, who’s skied the Rockies.
As for Gwen, she knows that neither she nor Jed will leave the town, never for long. Maybe he’ll fill his father’s shoes? Unlikely to be the one, she’ll nonetheless make her way. Vaguely they sense I’m among those in our cohort who’ll seek fortunes elsewhere.
She’s exited the school heading down the hill to the town plat when I catch up with her. Nervously, I inquire if she might accompany me to the Coffee Mill? Surprised, she stops and smiles.
“That’s so sweet,” she laughs softly, an unpromising tone.
Then, brow furrowed, scanning the pathway, her voice drops into seriousness.
“He would kill you, understand?”
That comes as a relief. Her rebuff has an external cause. There might have been an opening.
…
Waking up early in Dave’s frigid family ski camp at Crabbe Mountain everything is clear, quiet and crystalline; long icicles, one would think it could stay cold all day. I get the woodstove going. Everyone else still asleep. Skis laid out, waxed for spring skiing; edges sharpened to carve the icy ruts. Jed and Gwen, up in the loft. Nothing much in the cupboard for breakfast. Sitting with my notebook in the armchair, I slowly absorb the rising warmth of the stove. A gray jay flits in the trees.
…
Sliding off the ski lift, Jed leads us to the overgrown path to the back of the mountain where an unused and difficult piste awaits the experts and the foolish. Lloyd Humes was part of the gang of Crabbe founders that cleared the first runs, including this swathe, twenty-odd years ago. The day, already warmer than expected, has produced granular “corn” snow that is slick and fast. We bask in the sun on a large boulder, Jed passing around a leather wineskin. Warmish Casal Mendes argues sweetly with the taste buds. He lights a joint that goes from hand to hand, except mine. Still stinging from my father’s rebuke following a smoky evening at Mick’s place; I’ve never liked dope anyway.
Dave is nattering archly to Mick about Gwen’s best friend, about the hockey team. Gwen the cheerleader who doesn’t ski. Tiring of that banter Jed snaps his yellow banana boots into the bindings on his new K2s, pulls down his goggles, and launches boldly into what is a treacherously wild run.
With zest and skill, he navigates fallen trees, stones, and bushy outcroppings, careful to keep his skis from catching the crust. Following him methodically by stages, still I arrive at the bottom carrying too much speed, well ahead of the others. I fly into a narrow opening through the woods to rejoin the official trail, straining to keep my balance over irregular terrain, dodging tree trunks. From there I glimpse Jed deftly entering the open moguls of Humes’ Flume and disappearing over them into the next pitch.
A minute later, skidding over that same crest, I’m astonished to find him prostrate on the snow, writhing in pain, one ski loose. Grinding to a stop next to him I see how the steel edge of the errant ski has slit open his cheek and jaw, now bleeding profusely. A neat slice, the right side of his face cut wide open. A little lower, it would have been his jugular.
Tearing open an unused packet of tissue I press it over the wound and tell him to hold it there, placing my scarf under his head. Mick and Dave catch up, turning pale at the sight of Jed sprawled in the bloodstained snow. No cynical comments. Rather, an air of reserve suggests that they, unlike me, grasp longer-term implications of this mishap. My mind is on the immediate.
“Get the ski patrol,” I bark. “Tell them to bring the sled. Go. Quickly.”
The two push off down the ‘Flume’. Jed moans. I help him press the wad of Kleenex against the open wound.
“They’ll be here in a few minutes.”
Gently I unfasten the remaining ski and safety straps. I take his wineskin and reefers into my own backpack. Resting on the mogul beside him, I wonder how could this happen? He, who so skilfully handled the dangerous side of the mountain, and this trail, though steep, so well-groomed, so routine for a giant slalom competitor. What’s running through your mind, Jed, to bring you down?
Two patrollers arrive and quickly have the injured skier strapped in. The lead patroller snowplows, holding back the sled with its metal handles roped around his waist, assisted from the rear by his partner holding it from behind. Together they descend carefully to the lift.
Gathering Jed’s skis and poles I follow them. As I reach the base station, he is already being dragged back up to the lodge, kept warm beneath a blanket.
…
What follows from a pretty boy accidentally disfiguring his face?
He’ll still ski to win, still intimidate associates. But what of the hockey team? Rival boys who attract girls like Gwen. What about college, where one wishes to cut a fine figure? What of that long scar from the mountain, marking his face for life?
I have neglected other, nobler, friends to be around Jed. I’ve been aloof to a friendly girl prettier than Gwen, in her own way, and much smarter. Usually, I drive up to the mountain not in Jed’s speedy Volvo but in the damp slow school bus packed with kids, and old Mr. Humes, former racer, faithful lover of skiing, now disabled by Parkinson’s. Leaning on his crutches, he boards with us at dawn to pass his days up at the lodge, delighting at reports on his flume.
It’s as though Jed’s scar broke a spell, and I neither care about him, nor Gwen, Mick nor Dave, not anymore.