Chapter 9

Surprisingly there had been no wind following the snowstorm, and the spruce the next morning carried armloads of white against a bright blue sky. But the plow had been through. Cilla had mixed feelings about the road being sanded; what a delight it would be to travel it by sleigh.

Kurt Britton was jovial; he’d beaten three of the ski school instructors over the NASTAR course Thursday afternoon. Britton had only skied seriously the two years he’d been in the business, but approached the sport with the same intensity he brought to the rest of his life.

“Coffee for Big Mama?”

“Tea. What time did we start grooming?”

“It was three A.M. before the temperature dropped enough.”

“They must be still out.”

“Just finishing on Wild West. Did Hudson tell you all the snowmakers are in working order?”

“Great! That makes the new snow just a bonus.”

“The real bonus will come next summer when we can hook the system up to the pond we’re building. The environmentalist weenies aren’t going to let us draw from the river much longer. We’ll be one of the few ski areas with self-contained snowmaking. And we’ll have the capacity to handle Big Haystack when we get to it.”

“If we get to it.” Great Haystack Ski Area was actually built on Little Haystack Mountain, but the corporation owned another two thousand acres next door, some five hundred of them running up the side of Big Haystack Mountain to meet White Mountain National Forest near the top. The ski area could more than double its size if the land on the larger mountain was utilized. Plans had been drawn up for a new complex with four lifts, twenty-five trails, and a hotel and restaurant immediately abutting Forest Service land. All it needed was money, and with no mortgages on the existing business, funds were available whenever Cilla decided to take on debt.

It was a Friday, so Cilla skied an assortment of the area’s thirty trails to assure herself the mountain was ready for heavy weekend traffic. Having grown up in Bartlett, she’d been on skis since she was three, and - as with all Mt. Washington Valley kids - skiing was one of her grammar school “courses”. Combined with a natural athletic ability, she was as home on skis as walking, and as knowledgeable about the on-snow side of skiing as grizzled veterans. She sent snowcats back up on three trails to flatten infant moguls in the new snow. These bumps, created by skiers all turning in the same places, were allowed to grow on several expert trails, but ninety percent of Great Haystack’s skiers wanted a smooth surface where turning locations were their option, not somebody else’s.

She left a little earlier than usual to take Andre for his swimming therapy at the club. Cilla had also been swimming since she was three, usually in the Saco River. Now, during the winter, she tried to use the club’s pool at least once a week, each session for a hundred or so laps. Her one-piece bathing suit was as conservative as could be found in the malls of North Conway, but she was aware of Andre’s eyes on her more often than on the female swimmers in smaller pieces of cloth. The attention made her uncomfortable. Damn Loni, wherever she is. She left the pool area as soon as she’d finished her routine, breathing a sigh of relief, when Bob Gold appeared from the weight room, suggesting to Andre they try the new Indian restaurant on the “Strip”, as the three mile commercial stretch south of North Conway village was known.

The Rogers were having a guest of their own for dinner, which was rare. She and Hudson were private people, who neither needed nor wanted a social circle. But Jim Evans was a local physician who’d shared some of the couple’s short history together. He’d doctored both Cilla and Hudson the previous fall for wounds not commonly associated with the peaceful life of the north country and become a friend in the process.

Cilla greeted him at the door as he stomped his boots. “Susie Tardon, how is she?”

“I’m sorry, Cilla. She didn’t make it.” He hung his coat in the mudroom.

“Oh no! That’s terrible! What happened?”

“She never regained consciousness.” The doctor headed toward the glowing fireplace rubbing his hands.

Cilla followed him in. “So… What did she die of?”

Evans gazed into the fire. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? Doctors are supposed to know.”

The doctor nodded wearily. He turned to face her. “That’s what I used to think. You remember Annie Cross?”

“Sure, ran into her last week at the grocery store. She lives on River Street.”

“Lived. She died two days ago. Her niece found her sitting at her dining room table looking as if she was just waiting for dinner to be served.”

“Annie must have been eighty-five.”

“Seventy-four and last week as healthy as sixty. You probably know Henry Callow?”

“I saw him last night at the Planning Board meeting, looking like death warmed over. Don’t tell me…”

“His daughter found him this morning. Sitting in his car in the driveway as though about to drive to the store. He was seventy.”

“I would have guessed him older.” She paused. “But seventy’s not young.”

“Old age isn’t a cause of death. It’s a reason why parts sometimes fail.”

“What parts failed with these?”

“That’s the point; none that I can tell. They should still be alive.”

“Like Susie?”

“She went the same way. Mind you, people die all the time, we just usually know the reason.” He was lost in thought a moment. “Both Annie and Henry were found with peaceful looks on their faces and their mouths open, as if they were just about to greet their Maker. Susie, who didn’t yet speak, looked the same.”

“Is that unusual?”

The doctor shrugged. “No, not really.”

“Something’s bothering you,” said Hudson.

“Talking with my colleagues, there may have been two others.

“Older people?”

“The youngest was sixty-one. Except for Susie. She’s the only child.” He grinned. “Don’t make a big deal about it. This isn’t China or India.”

“Where the people are more disease prone?” asked Cilla, with an edge to her voice.

“More densely populated. We’re breeding too much, Cilla. There are getting to be just too many people on earth. Why should humans be any different than, say, the Gypsy Moth?”

“Who die off after a few years?”

“Each species has it,” said Evans. “A built-in control triggered by overpopulation that thins out the numbers. Sometimes wipes them out completely. When was the last time you saw a raccoon? Yet twenty years ago they were all over the Valley. We’re already seeing a substantial drop in human birth rates. So far we’ve been able to survive diseases. But we’ve only been around a short time and we’ve multiplied so rapidly that unless we peel back voluntarily it will get done for us.”

“Meaning?”

“It’s already been happening. The Black Plague decimated Europe. Influenza wiped out more than twenty million in this country and over there before it ended. And look how nervous scientists got over Swine Flu.” He folded his arms tightly around his chest and leaned on the chair arm. “Smallpox, TB, AIDS. And when we find a cure for one, it mutates and a resistant strain develops. There’s no dearth of people who feel the whole planet is on its way up the chimney. Whether or not they’re right at this time, they will be someday very soon if we keep adding to our numbers the way we have. If not a giant collapse through increases or decreases in global temperature, or destruction of the ozone layer, a bacterial or virus outbreak we can’t control in time. Probably starting with our older people.”

“And Susie.”

The conversation over dinner was muted.