John D. MacDonald

Moonlit Sport

Zissman’s voice on the long-distance wire was deceptively mild. “Yes, Georgie,” he said, “it is warm here, and as a defensive conversational gambit, weather-talk is maybe a little feeble. Instead, we will discuss Christina Wiel, please.”

“Lovely girl. Lovely,” George Barker said.

“Should I be sending you out there all expenses paid to sign up something that rides on a broomstick? May I remind you of the budget? May I remind you that I am growing more anxious every minute to get our skiing epic into production? With Miss Wiel the picture will be what, Georgie?”

“A thrilling yet tender film of the snow-clad mountains, featuring that—”

“Georgie, she will do for skis what you-know-who did for ice skates. Be factual, Georgie.”

George Barker scratched the sole of one stocking-clad foot with the toes of the other. He swallowed hard. “Mr. Zissman, maybe it looks easy when you’re in the palm-tree belt, but this Christina Wiel came over here from Switzerland to compete in the national skiing events as an amateur. She thinks the movies are silly. She thinks everybody that doesn’t spend their time going a hundred and eleven miles an hour down the side of a mountain is silly. She thinks I’m silly.”

Zissman sighed heavily and audibly. “Georgie, that amateur movie we got shows me a new queen of the films. She photographs like a dream a sailor has after maybe twenty days in an open boat. There is nothing outstandingly silly about a thousand a week with options. You disappoint me, Mr. Barker. I am sending out Joey Bellish to help you. And when Joey gets out there to New Hampshire, Georgie, I want him to find you going up and down those mountains at a hundred and eleven miles an hour hand in hand with Imposing Pictures’ new star, Christina Wiel.”

“But I can’t ski!”

“We are paying you four hundred a week and expenses, Georgie. From now on you can ski.”

“Argus Studios has a guy out here trying to sign her. He can ski and he is getting no place — at least, as far as signing her up, Mr. Zissman.”

“You can ski, Georgie,” Mr. Zissman said sadly.

George heard the gentle sound as Mr. Zissman hung up the phone.

George sat on his bed in the warm, paneled room at the Crestrun Inn. Snow was piled on the outside window sill. He glared at the snow and shivered. He was one of those rare creatures, a native Californian. He had teethed on an abalone shell and walked his first steps on the sand within spitting distance of the Pacific. That rain, better known as a heavy dew, should turn into white stuff and coat the landscape seemed a phenomenon both unnatural and fearful. He padded to the window and stared up at the white, sun-glittering slope. Little dots made S curves down the incredible slope, throwing up arcs of powdered white. They converged at the foot of the slope, fastened onto a cable, and went trundling back up again.

“I won’t do it,” he muttered. “Damn if I’ll do it.” Then he gave a defeated sigh as he remembered Mary Alice. She was, he hoped, waiting patiently for his return to California. And she was a project requiring the major portion of that four hundred a week...

The bronzed salesman in the Pro Shop yanked the strap tightly across his instep and said, “Those boots are what I’d call a good fit, Mr. Barker.”

George grunted and managed to lift his foot. “And I can always use them for deep-sea diving.”

“Heh, heh!” the salesman said. “Let me see, now. We’ve fixed you up with everything except goggles and skis. Goggles are necessary. That cold wind makes your eyes water and spoils your vision. You could slam into a boulder that way. Here’s a good tinted number for seven and a half.”

“Unbreakable glass?” George asked in a husky whisper.

“Heh, heh!” said the salesman. “Of course. Now for the skis. Come on over here. Like these? Seven and a half foot, steel-edged. The skis, harnesses with heel springs, and an all-purpose wax kit will come to — let me see — thirty-five eighty. Oh, I did forget the ski poles. Here they are. They have a nylon web and a manganese steel point. Eleven dollars the pair.”

Five minutes later George trudged toward the door. He stopped suddenly and turned back. The ends of the skis brushed a pile of wax kits from the counter. The salesman, wearing a pained smile, picked them up and stacked them again.

“I just wanted to know,” George said. He thumbed the needle point of one ski pole and stared at the glittering steel edges of the skis. “Going down a hill with all this hardware, this sharp stuff. Did anybody ever fall in such a way that the — the point here or — maybe one of these edges... uh—?”

“Why, no! Of course not, Mr. Barker! Once an exceptionally clumsy person managed to... hm-m-m... well, it couldn’t happen to you, of course!”

George turned back toward the door. Behind him he heard the wax kits cascade to the floor.

Thirty minutes, and three hot, buttered rums later, George Barker, in all his finery, stood with the massive boots clamped inexorably onto the skis. The thongs of the poles were looped around his wrists. The tinted goggles cut the sun glare.

The wax, he had found, came in little gismos like shaving sticks. He had selected a number 3X at random. The poles were planted firmly on either side of him. He pushed one foot ahead. The ski glided along nicely. Smiling confidently, he advanced the other foot. As he advanced it, the first ski slid back to its original position. He stopped and studied the problem. He took two more steps and still remained in the same position.

A round little lady with gray hair came bounding out of the inn. She yanked her skis out of the snow, slapped them down, leaped onto them, clicked the harnesses tight, jammed in the poles, and shoved off, turning around to grin in a comradely way at George.

When she had dwindled in the distance George bent his knees, shoved the poles into the snow, and pushed. Five minutes later he was a good hundred feet from the inn. He pried himself to his feet again and looked back at the series of round indentations between the wavering tracks of the skis. The last few indentations were more widely spaced. A chart of progress.

A man with an impassive, mahogany-colored face slid to a stop beside George and looked back over the telltale trail. “You want lessons?” he asked.

“What do you think?”

“I think yes. I am Hans Schtroigen, teaching individual ten dollars an hour, or five dollars hour in class.”

“In my back pocket is my wallet. Take it out and take ten dollars and then teach me how to get over there to the bottom of that thing.” George pointed with his ski pole at the lift house. He wavered dangerously, and got the pole jammed in again just in time.

Schtroigen removed the ten and said, “No. I show you how to get over to the beginners’ slope.”

“Uh, uh. Not there. I gotta go up the big hill.”

“You are not ready.”

“How soon would I be ready?”

Schtroigen shrugged. “You work every day, maybe next year you are ready.”

“Give me back my ten and go away. I’ll crawl over there.”

Schtroigen sighed. “Hokay. Now, putting the right foot along and the left pole, like this. Bringing the left foot and right pole up and pushing with the pole each time.”

By the time George had covered the hundred and fifty yards to the bottom of the tow he could go in a straight line and, by moving the toes of the skis a few inches at a time, he could even alter his direction. He was panting.

Schtroigen said heavily, “Forgiff me. This I do not care to watch any more. Good-by.”

George stood with assumed nonchalance and watched the people glide up to the moving cable, transfer ski poles to the left hand, grasp the cable with the right, and move steadily up the slope. He waited until traffic was light and edged cautiously over to the cable. He grasped it. It was like standing next to a moving merry-go-round and grabbing a horse. It yanked him into the air convulsively and projected him, head down, into the snow.

He clawed his way out. Somehow, the snow had gotten packed behind the goggles. When he could see again, the round little lady with gray hair was beaming at him.

“You didn’t do it right, you poor boy. You have to let the cable slide through your hand, and then you slowly squeeze down on it. That starts you off without that horrible jerk.”

By the time he worked his way back up onto the skis she was out of sight up the slope. The second time it worked better. A few hundred hours of aquaplaning served their purpose. The skis moved steadily in front of him. He smiled confidently.

Ahead of him the cable disappeared in a hole in the side of a small frame structure. George let go of the cable but the terrain had flattened and he was speeding toward the boards. Both the poles were in his left hand. He set the points in the snow ahead of him, between the skis. The butt ends of the ski poles made an almost successful attempt to penetrate his stomach. He lay on his back and made small whinnying noises. He used the name of Zissman in vain.

When at last he got to his feet and moved over toward one side, he happened to glance down into the valley. The Crestrun Inn had shrunk to the size of a penny box of matches. It did almost the same thing to his stomach that the ski poles had done. The mountain wind turned perspiration to shale ice. A girl of not more than twelve swung away from the tow, shoving hard with her poles to get a good start, and dropped down over the rim out of sight. She appeared a few seconds later, ducking and bobbing, far below.

If a girl of twelve... George clenched his teeth and moved toward the brink. The uptilted points of the skis hung over empty space. He decided suddenly to back up. But this time the stubborn boards, eager to back up when he was in the inn yard, dug in behind him. When he turned around gently to stare back over his shoulder at them, he slid helplessly over the brink. Instinct bade him to sit down immediately. But he was leaning too far forward to be able to sit. By the time he could get his weight shifted, the speed of passage indicated sharply that it would be unwise to do anything except attempt to stay upright. The wind tore at his clothes, flapping his ski pants, numbing his teeth as he tried to yell.

The sunlit world tilted sideways, hung awkwardly in space for a moment, and then exploded. George Barker lay, head down the slope, and whispered, “Good-by, Mary Alice. We would have had fun, we two.”

He breathed deeply, waiting for the bubbling in his throat, for the acid pang of the broken rib end in the lung. Nothing happened. Probably the neck or back, then.

Slow amazement flooded through him as he found that he could sit up. Outside of feeling as though he had been thrown through the roof of a convertible, nothing seemed to be wrong.

He glanced back up the slope and saw that he had come only a hundred feet from the brink. Nobody was in sight. Guiltily he unsnapped the harnesses, snagged the skis as they were about to take off independently, and began to walk across the slope toward the shelter of a pine woods.

There was a shout from above. George looked up, and froze. A herd was swooping down at him. Two of them were headed for him. He shut his eyes. There was a whisking sound, a spray of snow in his face, and they were gone. He made better time toward the woods. In the shelter of the woods he could creep inconspicuously down to the flat land below, dragging his skis behind him.

He fumbled through the pines and came out onto a clear place. He jabbed the skis and poles into the snow, lowered himself onto a stump, and fished out his cigarettes. He snapped the lighter shut, and smiled as he saw the ski tracks on the trail. So some other fakers came down the easy way, too... He frowned. For somebody coming down the easy way, those skis had thrown up a lot of snow.

He stood up and walked over and looked down at the tracks. There was an angry roar yards away. An oversized citizen swooped down at him like a jet-engined gull. Even as George recognized the man as the Argus Studio agent and tried to dodge back, a heavy shoulder sent him spinning. The man wavered but kept his balance. George realized that he was flat across the tracks. As he tried to get up, he glanced back up the slope and saw her coming at him, that bronze-blond hair streaming out behind her, the gray eyes startled and bleak.

The twin shining points of the ski poles swung toward him. Spitted, he thought, in that last moment, like a marshmallow at a picnic. But somehow the points didn’t touch him, and Miss Christina Wiel soared up and over him. She landed beyond him. He watched her as he crawled backward off the track. She landed crouched and went into a long, sliding turn to make the corner looming up at her. She tried to twist her body by the pine trunk, but her shoulder hit it solidly. The impact threw her off the other side of the trail into the brush, and she lay still.

He plunged to her and dropped on his knees beside her, thinking even in that moment of guilty horror that here was one female athlete who couldn’t conceal, under the uniform of the sport, ample evidence of femininity.

He picked up her limp hand and said brokenly, “Christina! Speak to me!”

Gray eyes opened and focused. The accent was tiny and delicious: “You unutterable classification of clown! You... you maniac! Crawling around on your hands and knees in the middle of the fastest part of Thunderhead!” The other hand swung around and connected with the side of his face.

George sat down. “Thunderhead?”

“A ski trail, Mr. Barker. Ever hear of one? As if it wasn’t bad enough to hear you breathing on the back of my neck every moment I’m in the inn, you have to come up here on the slopes. Please, Mr. Barker, for the sake of the safety of innumerable people, why don’t you go back down to that nice, warm fire? The meet is in three days and I need my practice.”

“But I—”

“Bring my ski over here.”

He saw it, a dozen feet away. It had snapped out of the binding. He brought it back to her. She was standing on one ski, and there was an odd, strained look on her face, a blue-grayness around her mouth.

“Don’t stand there with it. Put it down!.. Oh, no! Would you mind turning it around so that it heads the same way as the other ski?”

He blushed, and did so. Her ski boots looked as small as a child’s. And there was something of a child’s sweetness about her lips and temples.

She shoved the boot into the binding and he fumbled with the clamp. He touched her ankle, and she made a small, harsh sound.

“Say! You hurt yourself!”

She ignored him. She snapped the harness herself, glanced up the trail, then pushed out onto the tracks. She went thirty feet, and fell heavily.

“This makes it dandy,” George thought. “Just fine! Please sign a contract, Miss Wiel. Right here on the dotted line.”...

Christina Wiel sat in a big leather chair half facing the fire in the main lounge of the Crestrun Inn. The bad ankle was propped up on a hassock. The Argus representative was named Stanley Sherman. Except for a few morose citizens in casts and on crutches, everybody was out on the slopes except George and Stanley and, of course, Christina. It had been this way for two days.

George sat glumly by the fire. In the beginning he had tried to follow Sherman’s conversation with Christina. But it jumped from a discussion of Tuckerman’s Ravine, which seemed to have a wall in it, to the Austrian school and tempo turns. Every time he heard Christina’s silvery laugh he winced and hunched his shoulders.

“So you’re going out tomorrow?” Stanley asked.

“He’s going to tape it and I can take the easy runs, but I can’t enter the competition.”

Stanley beamed over at George. “Thanks to that knucklehead over there.”

“You’re welcome,” George growled.

Christina’s glance was colder than the wind atop the mountain.

“If it wasn’t so crowded here, Chris, I’d like to talk over something with you,” Sherman said.

George stalked out. “Good-by.”

Once beyond the arched doorway, he veered sharply to the right and crept back to within hearing distance.

“...I grant you, Chris, that there are a lot of objections to having anything to do with the movies. And I know how you feel about professionalism, but I have an idea that, by making one movie for Argus, you could really make a terrific contribution to the sport. People will see you ski, and this boom that’s on already will turn into the biggest...”

She hadn’t interrupted him. George adjusted his shroud and walked away. That Sherman was slick. A nice presentation and nice timing.

He looked out the windows. The day before the meet, and the slopes were alive with skimming dots. He’d wait for Joey Bellish to arrive and then shove off. Maybe Mary Alice wouldn’t find out for a few heavenly days that he was unemployed. You’d never catch Mary Alice running around with boards tied to her feet. In fact, you wouldn’t find Mary Alice walking two steps after anything if there was a man within hailing distance... He stopped the train of thought. It seemed vaguely disloyal.

He looked out the window. Strange occupation for supposedly intelligent people, this sliding around. A few nice moments, though. Finding out he could actually move across the level on the darn’ things. That heady sense of terrific speed before he had gone thunk.

“No, sir,” he said softly. “Never again.”...

Schtroigen halted the entire class. “Blease, Mister Barker. Distangle yourself. In the snowplow you haff to push pressure on the legs and hold them there. No pressure, and the skis cross each ozzer.”

George spit out a mouthful of melting snow. “So I noticed,” he said.

“All together, now,” Schtroigen roared. “SNOWBLAU!”

The four children, two elderly ladies, and George went solemnly and majestically down the four per cent grade. And again, and again.

After class was over, George stayed out on the slope. He snowplowed until fine red-hot wires ran up his legs. He snowplowed until he found out that by stepping over with one ski he could make a quite abrupt turn. The first time it worked he was unprepared for it. He lay, glowing with pleasure. Seven falls later he could do a slow, halting figure S down the middle of the beginners’ slope. The sun was low in the west.

A hot tub soaked some of the ache out of his bones, but it didn’t help to lighten the gloom he had felt since he had reentered the inn and seen Chris, symbol of defeat, nursing her strained ankle. There was a telegram in his box: “BELLISH ARRIVING NOON TOMORROW. ARRANGE INTERVIEW WITH WIEL. ZISSMAN.”

He delayed the mission until after dinner. He found Stanley Sherman in the bar.

“Where’s Chris?”

“Go home, you bum. She hasn’t got time for you.”

“Why so cheery? Wouldn’t she sign?”

Sherman had a cold eye. “I could bust you one in the chops.”

“They don’t pay me for that,” George said, wandering off. He searched in a halfhearted way for Christina.

Outside, the snow crackled underfoot and the air was keen and crisp. A huge moon was shading from orange to white as it climbed above the horizon. He squinted at the slopes and saw the die-hards out skiing in the moonlight.

They seemed to make those turns so easily. He remembered his own stem turns on the little slope. Maybe, with a bit more speed... The hum and grind of the cable tow echoed across the night, punctuated by the thin shouts of the skiers. No, a fellow could kill himself out there in the moonlight and maybe nobody’d even find him...

The dark bulk of the cable house loomed up ahead. George cast off, and used his turn to swing him around onto a line parallel with the drop-off. His heart was thudding. At least, in the dark, nobody would see him make a fool of himself. The moon was bright enough to show him the whole slope.

This had to be planned carefully. A long, diagonal run across the face of the slope seemed feasible. If he started to go too fast he could slow down by turning toward the slope. Then, when the woods got close, make the big turn and come back across the slope in the other direction.

He took a deep breath and shoved off. The skis ran with a small, crisp sound against the snow. The plan seemed to be working. The woods moved steadily closer. He made his turn, but it wasn’t enough of a turn. It faced him almost directly down the slope and he picked up speed with a great whoosh. He made a desperate effort to turn to the left, remembering to lean in toward the slope. He went into a long skid turn and ended at a dead stop, still on his feet. The surprise of it toppled him over.

“Whaddya know?” he said softly.

On the next diagonal run he braved a steeper angle. The turn at the end went wrong and he broke up a yard of crusty snow with his chin. He laughed out loud and started off again. The turn worked. He angled back, and a dark figure came toward him. The lines of passage intersected. At the last moment he wrenched himself into a turn and the black figure did the same. His flailing arm caught it around the middle and they went down together.

George sat up. “Don’t you know how to steer those things?” he said angrily. “You saw me turning away from you.”

“How did I know which way you were going?... Is that you, Mr. Barker?” Christina asked weakly.

“Chris!” he gasped.

She began to laugh helplessly. It held overtones of hysteria. “Of all... of all the blundering... impossible...”

He picked up a clump of snow and shoved it into her mouth. She gasped. He caught her wrist. “No, you don’t pop me again, friend. If you haven’t hurt your ankle again, kindly stand up and slide away from here. I don’t have to be laughed at by experts. Go on. Move!”

She stood up, tested her ankle, and brushed some of the snow off. Her voice was cold: “Amateurs shouldn’t be on the slopes at night.”

“Report me to the rules committee.”

“Just what were you trying to do, Mr. Barker?”

“I’m not trying. I’m doing it. I go back and forth across the slope and make a turn when I come to the end each time.”

“I saw you the day I jumped over you. You can’t make a turn.”

“No, smart guy? Watch this one.”

He sped away and did the sliding turn to the left that brought him to a stop. “How’s that?”

“You don’t bend your knees enough, George. Get way down, like this.” She sped at him, turned with effortless grace, and skidded to a stop beside him.

He tried. It was easier.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“What are you doing out here, Miss Wiel?”

“I couldn’t wait. I strapped up the ankle and decided to give it a try.”

“Uh, huh,” he said slowly. “I can see how you would. Nice out here, isn’t it?”

They were standing close together. Her uptilted face caught the moonlight. She cocked her head on one side. “You really like this?”

“I’m no Sherman at it.”

She said hotly, “He doesn’t like it. It was just a big act with him. Oh, he can ski all right, but instead of skiing he stayed right there in the inn trying to talk me into the silly movie business. He didn’t fool me a bit. I don’t like sly people.”

He glared at her. “I’m sick of this silly-movies routine. What gives you the go-ahead to be condescending? What have you got? Just a lovely face and a rare figure and you photograph well. Is that something you worked for?”

“They want me because I can ski!” she said.

“And they wanted Grable because she could knit, I suppose? Or Sheridan because she could hemstitch.” He grabbed her shoulders and shook her and shouted down into her face, “You’re the most beautiful thing I ever saw in my life, Wiel, and that’s why they want you — because there isn’t enough beauty to go around in this hungry old world.”

“I like you when you’re angry!” she said.

“I... uh... what?”

“Would you work on the picture too, George?”

He swallowed hard. “That could go into the contract.”

“Because by the time the picture was done I’d have you skiing as though you knew how, George.”

“You... you’ll sign?”

“Now that you’ve given me a reason. I just didn’t want to be hired to ski. But if you can think I’m beautiful, maybe some other people will, too.”

His hands were still on her shoulders, the ski poles looped over his wrists. He wanted to be able to compose several symphonies and a half-dozen tone poems about the way the moonlight touched her lips. He bent toward those lips.

She wriggled away and scooted under his arm, headed directly down the slope. “You’ve got to catch me first, George,” her voice came back, fading on the wind.

George angled grimly down the slope, his knees well bent, weight forward, taking the turns in stride. Far below, Christina moved swiftly out onto the flats toward the inn. He saw her stop abruptly, tumbling with a smother of snow.

George Barker turned directly down the last of the slope. The wind cut his face and he felt eight feet tall.

She didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get up.

“Yeee-ow!” howled George into the teeth of the wind.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Moonlit Sport