Whiteface

In 1932 and 1980, Lake Placid, New York played host to the Winter Olympics. The "Miracle on Ice," America's hockey victory against the Russians, remains the most memorable triumph of those two fortnights, but Whiteface Mountain, home of 1980's Alpine Skiing events, shouldn't be forgotten.

Nor should the resort bearing its name, The Whiteface Club, on whose golf course I worked as part of the maintenance crew for three summers in high school. My stepfather belonged to the club and golfed every summer morning, struggling to break 80. Through some pathway of tenuous connections, he managed to secure me a job under Ron, the crew supervisor.

As the youngest member of the maintenance staff, at 16, I was legally (and intrinsically) unfit to drive the various mowing machines. This left me the responsibility of tending to all the grass they couldn't reach. With a push-mower, I would struggle up the small hillocks on the sides of greens, tees, and bunkers, averting my face to avoid the spray of rocks shooting from the blades, and keeping an eye out for golfers, a species notoriously intolerant of noise distraction. My partner, Corey, the boss' son and one of the town's star athletes, was an easygoing 18-year old who had a habit of chasing squirrels in our Workman (a miniature pick-up truck with only 4 gears and no cover on the cab) and showing up to work hung over.

Corey had the bearing and accent of a local, but he was intelligent in the cynical, almost cruel way of someone who exceeds their surroundings but will never leave. We sped along the course, my hands braced against the metal dash, Corey hunched over the wheel, seemingly asleep, from hole to hole. The course stretched out in long, difficult sprawls of green hilly terrain, tainted by brown splotches of dying grass, carved amid a forest of pine, oak, and maple. When we needed a break, Corey drove through the woods on unmarked paths, searching for small glades where we'd rest. He already had a hacking cough from smoking, and he'd often seek these sanctuaries in order to vomit what remained of last night's alcohol. His retches mixed with birdsong and the crackle of dead leaves, a strange cacophony in the shafts of sunlight penetrating the tree cover.

Corey, a pitcher, could throw a stone with uncanny accuracy. The majority of his targets were birds. He never threw hard- just enough to scare it from its branch. Once, spotting a blue jay high up in the branches, he bet me I couldn't make it fly away with one throw. Normally I didn't like to bother the birds. I remembered once, as a child at my grandmother's yard, shooting at a red plastic cup with a cheap slingshot I'd bought at a county fair. At a distance of fifteen feet, I hit the cup one out of ten times if I was lucky. Later, on her porch, I spotted a bird sitting on an electric wire forty yards away. I loaded the slingshot with my last stone, and sent it arcing without taking close aim. It described a perfect parabola and hit the target in a flutter of wings. The bird flapped and propelled itself in obscene, crippled motions, and gravity took it downward in a spiral. It hit the ground and died. For a week, guilt lingered.

But this time, I couldn't resist the challenge and a flash of ingenuity. I took the bet and filled my hand with as many stones as I could hold. Proud of my clever strategy, I pegged them to the heights. One of the scattering rocks hit the jay, and it crashed to a lower branch and then to our feet, close enough for us to spot the crimson spot on its breast. The bird limped away and crawled up a tree. Corey shook his head. "Better finish what you started." Watching the bird, I looked for signs that the wound was temporary. But it couldn't fly, and only struggled to hop from branch to branch. Though it was pure mockery on his part, I realized Corey was right. I chased the bird through the woods, attempting to put it out of its misery and spare a slow death.

Unfortunately, the bird climbed higher and made itself a difficult target. Only by the pure, glaring blue could I track its progress. It took a half hour and several ineffectual hits, along with severe terror on the bird's part, before I gave up the pursuit. In the Workman, Corey waxed philosophical. "It'll die eventually," he said. I braced myself against the dash and didn't say anything.

The second summer at Whiteface there was a severe drought in upstate New York. I spent three months wearing a rubber rain coat, standing on greens, spraying them down with a hose. When golfers came by, I'd stand politely to the side, a yellow oddity in the oppressive heat. At the end of the day, my wrist and thumb ached from holding the nozzle, and my hands were swollen and pruny from the water. After a few weeks, I began securing the nozzle with wire, which spared some pain. But despite the constant attentions of the maintenance staff, the greens died slowly over July and August.

Austin, the oldest member of the crew, was deaf. He drank all day from a filthy coke bottle, and responded to every query with a loud "EH?" He wore a faded blue painter's cap and odd, pink slacks- some combination of pajamas and windpants. The other crew members accused him of selective hearing, as his deafness would worsen when he was asked for a favor. At lunch breaks, sitting in the large, oil-stained shed, he bore the brunt of the aggressive humor circulating through the room. At every insult, I'd watch his face as he sat next to the boss in cheap blue folding chair, and it was impossible to tell among his twitches and silence if he could hear at all.

Mark had a red drinker's face and a burly, thick body. The constant snarl on his face reflected the unabating meanness of his character. He picked me as his target early, accusing me of slacking, arrogance, and a variety of other offenses. Twenty years his junior, I ignored him in a manner which was no doubt interpreted as further arrogance. It came to a head one day as we shoveled stones into the Workman, preparing to fill in parts of the cart paths that had been washed away in the previous night's rain. "Hey," he said, turning to me with sweat pouring down his forehead. "Can you pick up the fucking pace?" I told him to go fuck himself. He raised the shovel and threatened me. Corey, nearby, ran over. He got in Mark's face. "He's just a kid!" he yelled. "He's just a fucking kid." Although Corey was only two years older, I realized, watching the respect he commanded and the weary drop of his shoulders after the confrontation, that he was right.

Later, parked in the woods, feeling young and weak, I told him he didn't have to step in for me, that I could have handled it myself. Instead of responding, he talked about Mark. "A few years ago, he went to his dad's place after work. The old man was dead in his recliner, blood on his shirt, shotgun on the floor." He lit up a cigarette. "Mark's been different since." Then he turned the key, the engine sputtered to life, and we drove off.

My last summer at Whiteface, I worked with Jason. I'd turned eighteen over the winter, and he was fifteen. Jason hated his stepfather and wanted to race cars. He had dark hair and an impish smile, and wore a large Yankees hat pulled low. His arms were scrawny and long. As a partner he didn't compare to Corey, because he was scared of being fired and forced me to work harder, but I liked him anyway. One afternoon, we devised a brilliant plan to get back at a lone golfer who'd screamed at us for starting the Workman when he teed off on the third hole.

The sixth hole at Whiteface is a long, dogleg left par 5. After the first shot- downhill, around the trees, into a gulley- you're faced with an uphill second and third. The green rests on a slight downslope past the top of the hill, and is therefore invisible from below. In order to access the putting surface, carts have to travel a curved path through the woods, during which journey the course is obscured from view by thick pines.

When the angry golfer hit his third shot, I watched the ball land on the green, thirty feet from the hole. I couldn't see him below, but Jason signalled with a loud burst of the Workman's horn when he was safely on the cart path. I raced onto the green, pocketed the ball, and sprinted back into the forest with plenty of time to spare. Slipping through the trees, I ran until I came to the road. Jason drove back to the sixth tee, to avoid overtaking the golfer and arousing suspicion, and from there to the road, where he picked me up. We sped to the seventh tee and waited, pretending to fill our mowers from the pink gas containers. When the golfer emerged from the woods above the sixth green, still puzzled, he paused and scrawled an illegitimate number in his scorecard.

The next day, we repeated the act with a slight variation. Watching a foursome's iron shots land in various positions around the green, I hunched in the woods and awaited the Workman's horn. This time, instead of stealing the ball, I placed one of the Titleists directly in the hole. Again, we waited for the golfers to emerge, and when they did, one wore a dazed smile. His friends shook their heads. A couple days later, we put two balls from a single foursome in the hole, and the following day, brimming with confidence, we put three in the hole and stole the fourth. This last maneuver aroused suspicion, and a general warning came down from the Club Pro that anyone caught tampering with golf balls would be immediately fired.

Some time in June, word got around that I would be attending Duke in the fall, a secret I'd vigorously tried to guard. Small-town resentment flared, as I knew it would, and my isolation was complete. I spent lunchtimes reading by myself, and attempting to catch a frequent chipmunk (named Chippy by the staff) beneath a trash can. I devised a trap consisting of peanut butter, crackers, a rake, and thin rope, and secured his trust over three weeks. When I finally nabbed him, I earned the very brief admiration of my fellow workers for the first and only time. I let Chippy go, and watched with envy as he dashed over the shed's concrete floor.

In late July, I discovered that Jason, in his first year, out-earned me by three dollars per hour. I attempted to rectify the situation, and was told by the big boss that Jason worked harder and deserved the pay. In fact, because he lacked the strength to push the heavy mowers up the steep hills, I had to do all the difficult jobs and exert twice the effort. But instead of arguing, I quit and became a dishwasher and prep cook at a restaurant called Tail O' The Pup.