The Trickster. Muriel Gray
on the line. She cupped a hand over the mouthpiece. ‘The fun-run. They’re all up at Beaver.’
Eric made a small noise of discontent, more because he’d forgotten than that he disapproved of their absence, and sat down heavily in an empty chair. Two lines rang simultaneously. Betsy hung up her call and answered both of them before he could make it to any of the phones on the desks.
Eric left her to her ridiculous martyrdom of efficiency and let his eyes wander round the empty office. A pile of posters lying on a desk for the fun-run that was already under way suggested that the publicity department hadn’t been bothering their ass much. Eric was annoyed. He’d put that poster together with the designer. Two colours, advertising the fancy-dress race down Beaver, prizes highlighted in red. Why bother? The lazy bastards obviously hadn’t distributed them to the local hotels and shops as ordered. They’d be lucky if anybody showed at all, even with this tiny break in the weather. Betsy finished one call, punched up the other, dealt with it and hung up.
Eric pointed at the posters. ‘So are the public just expected to come in here and take one? I thought a poster meant you posted it someplace.’
Betsy looked at him with disdain, sliding a pencil behind her ear. ‘They’re left-overs.’
‘So they posted them all over Silver?’
‘All over Silver and Stoke. Even took some to Calgary.’
Eric gave in. If he needed someone to take out his temper on today, Betsy wasn’t going to let it be her.
‘That new guy up at Beaver too?’
‘Guess so.’
The phone warbled again and she picked it up, still looking directly at Eric. ‘Silver Ski Company, Betsy speaking. How may I help you?’
Eric got up and wandered over to Sitconski’s desk. Looked like he’d been working on the rota, very thoroughly indeed. Beside two names there were pencil marks. Of course there was nothing odd about making pencil notes beside names that needed attention. There was plenty wrong with making marks so hard that they ripped through the paper and left shards of broken lead embedded in the paper like shrapnel.
‘Hey, hey, hey! Here comes Sean! Would you get that!’
The high speed quad delivered an eighteen-year-old boy on skis dressed inexpertly as an Indian chief. His gaudy feather head-dress fluttered madly in the breeze, and a makeshift loincloth that was wrapped around tight ski pants was lifted to his friends in a burlesque gesture of vulgarity that passed as a greeting. Eight people hollered and fell about shrieking with laughter as the blond boy skied up to them performing a mock war-dance with knees wreathed in neck-ties, then toasting them with a bottle of cheap whisky he fished surreptitiously from his pocket.
‘Shit on you white men. Me pray to um spirit for heap big powder. Me drink fire water. Make me win dumb fucking race.’
The gang of laughing youths were in no position to mock. Two were dressed as cowboys, one as a clown, three girls attempted to look like Playboy bunnies, diminishing the effect by the thermal tops they had on under the bustiers, and the remaining two, a couple, had made little more effort than buying masks of a Jurassic Park velociraptor and ET.
Sean was the best, which wasn’t saying much. But with the odd assortment of clothes he wore combined with that huge waving head-dress, he was more like a real Indian chief than anything Hollywood could come up with. Apart from his pink Rossignols and ski boots, he could have stepped out of a sepia photograph from the town museum. Those long-dead men had sported the same rag-bag inattention to detail that Sean boasted, though they were saved from ridicule by a glint of power and nobility in their eyes that was plainly absent from the boy’s. Yes, he looked like an Indian. The wrinklies lining up a few yards away thought so too. Their frowns and muttering indicated they were offended.
One of them, a woman in her fifties dressed in Victorian skirts and a bonnet, skied over to where Sean was busy being slapped on the back by the cowboys and touching the heads of the genuflecting girls in front of him.
‘That’s in rather poor taste don’t you think?’
Eight young, golden-tanned faces looked at the woman, then at each other, and burst out laughing.
The woman’s voice became shrill with anger and embarrassment. ‘Our Native Canadian heritage is not a joke.’
The kids laughed even louder and kicked up the snow, until the woman’s husband in Victorian plus-fours and a motoring cap skied across to rescue her. ‘You guys are way out of order. Try and show a little respect. Come on, honey.’
She slid away, hot and bothered. ‘God help Canada,’ she said in a loud voice as they retreated.
‘God help America, lady! We’re from California!’
That sent them into a new wave of hilarity, interrupted only by Mike Watts, the ski patroller at the start line, clacking his ski poles together for attention.
Sean hid the whisky.
‘Okay guys, welcome to the Silver Fun-Run. Well, well, we’ve got some neat costumes here today.’
The kids started imitating the patroller. Neat was not how they liked to be described.
‘Hey, Barney. Neat costume, man.’
Hoots and shouts of mirth. The patroller smiled wearily and carried on. Kids. They could give him as hard a time as they liked. Soon as they started moving on those skis, Mike would have their respect. He could ski the fanny off any of them and they could shove their Californian tans. It was always the ones who made most noise standing at the top of a trail who went very quiet on their way down the hill in the meat wagon, strapped into that stretcher after breaking their bodies in dumb accidents. Despite the temptation, Mike Watts never leaned over the stretcher and said I told you so.
‘Yeah, right, guys. We’re goin’ to start out from the line here …’
The Californians were finding Mike’s Canadian flattened vowel sound on out the funniest thing they’d heard. From the group came lots of oowt sounds accompanied by cries of neat. Mike sighed before continuing. It was going to be a long day.
‘… and then the race will commence down the Beaver run, through the slalom poles you see there, ending at Beaver Lodge, where you’ll be judged not only on your time, but on the originality of your costume.’
The wrinklies looked smug, their nods and smiles telling of their conviction that their Victorian skiing-party theme would win the day with dignity. The kids whooped and hollered neat.
‘So if you want to register here now, pick up a numbered bib, then there’s ten minutes for a practice run, just to get those legs warmed up. Okay, everybody. Have a great fun-run, remember to ski safe and good luck.’
The older participants applauded Mike politely while a scuffle of wrestling and jostling kids ignored the end of his speech and hurried to the starting post to pick up their bibs.
One of the girls in the pathetic bunny outfit brushed Mike as she passed, letting the hand not holding her poles run across his buttocks. ‘Sorry Mr Canuck. Hand slipped.’
Mike swung his ski round in front of hers, making her jolt to a halt and caught her round the waist before she fell.
He spoke in low voice, right in her ear. ‘Missy, if I fucked you, you wouldn’t sit down for a week. So if you’re really gagging for it, you best stick with these faggots if you want to go home with your buns still touching.’ He flashed a huge grin at the horrified girl as if he’d just read the snow report, and let her go with a gentlemanly flourish. ‘Have a nice one, you hear.’
The flushed bunny hurried to get her number and hide in the sanctuary of her young companions. Mike smiled and pushed off down the trail to man his post at the slalom.
The clown and the two cowboys were trying to step on each other’s bindings and unclip them while the girls tied each other’s bibs on. The Victorian