Crazy for the Storm

CHAPTER 10

MY MOM’S VW Squareback climbed the Topanga Beach access road. The hard gray suitcase rattled in the back. We darted across the Pacific Coast Highway, turned up the canyon, then into my dad’s dirt driveway. Suddenly a guy on a motorcycle was coming right at us, a plume of dust around him. My mom slammed on the brakes and the bike swerved around us and I glimpsed Sandra’s silky hair. Her arms were around the guy’s stomach.

Sandra and I locked eyes for an instant. She looked angry and her mouth tightened.

Hey I don’t even want to go, called my inner voice. You go. You go!

Then Sandra was whisked into the dirt cloud.

My God, said my mom. They almost ran right into us.

Where is she going? I said.

I have no idea, she said.

That’s how it always was with Sandra, a mystery. She just appeared one day with my dad down at Barrow’s and it was understood that she was his new girlfriend. Beer-Can Larry called her a feisty little honey and a dark Scot. Her skin would tan a dark caramel brown—except for her pink lips, thick compared to her otherwise delicate face—and her wide-set chocolate eyes blended in with her skin when she got really tan. Barrow said he was sure she was from a poor neighborhood in Scotland, even poorer than his and Dad’s old neighborhood. After fighting with my dad she would always come shrinking back. Once when they were broken up she came by my dad’s office and asked for money, desperate, and he gave her some. He even signed something so that she could extend her visa. He seemed to feel sorry for her, wanting to protect her all the time. Nonetheless Sandra hated that I always came first, her eyes flaring at me when Dad had to take me to hockey practice or away skiing.

When we got in the pickup truck the seats were already sticky. My dad wedged his guitar case behind the seat bench and tuned in a country station that was playing his favorite, Willie Nelson. It was dusk when we hit the Tijuana border. A fat man in a uniform and hat approached us. He circled around the truck bed, eyeing the tarped washing machine and our two surfboards rainbowing over the edge. He waddled to my dad’s window.

Buenas nochas, said my dad.

The man nodded and asked in Spanish for something. My dad reached in the glove compartment and handed the man the Sears receipt. The man inspected it for a long time. Then he said a number—I knew this because I had learned some Spanish while visiting my grandparents last summer.

My dad grumbled and said a different number.

The man smiled and flashed his gold teeth. Before the man spoke again my dad handed him some pesos. The man counted them. As he did my dad put the truck in gear and rolled forward. The man looked around before stuffing the money in his pocket, and my dad hit the gas.

Why’d you have to pay him?

They call it a tax. But it’s a bribe.

Isn’t that against the law?

Sure is. But he is the law.

He’s the police?

Basically.

If the police break the law then who arrests them?

I don’t know. Good question, Ollestad.

He let me stew over the paradoxes for a while. Then he spoke.

In a poor country like Mexico people try to get money any way they can. They even do it in a rich country like America. It’s not right. But sometimes—like with that guy—you play along because you understand the circumstances.

He checked on me a couple of times as we wound out of Tijuana and back along the coast. It was black outside. A few lights scattered around in the distance.

He’s a liar then, right? I said.

The border guard?

Yeah.

Uh-huh. That’s right.

I wanted to blurt out that I had lied too, about skateboarding, about where I got my scrapes. I pressed my forehead against the passenger’s window. I could feel my dad’s eyes on my back. I flashed on Nixon, his saggy jowls and hunched shoulders, and the policeman’s gold teeth, and him sitting in his box all night and him taking money from people and stuffing it in his pocket.

Take it easy on that window, Ollestad, said my dad.

Sorry.

You want to rest your head in my lap?

Yeah.

I swiveled around and put my cheek across his thigh and my bent knees up on the seat so my feet could fit against the door.

Sunlight poured in the truck’s window onto my head. I sat up and wiped my forehead with my T-shirt.

Buenos dias, said my dad.

I noticed the creases under my dad’s eyes—they were lined in an olive yellow, standing out against his smooth honey-brown skin. He looked older and more tired than I had ever seen him look. He drank coffee out of a Styrofoam cup.

Where are we? I said.

Just pulling out of Ensenada.

One eye was still blurry and I looked out the windshield. The sun cut across the sagebrush and the sage climbed the hills, spotting them with dull greens. It reminded me of Malibu. I looked west out the passenger’s window beyond the bald headland cliffs, and the Pacific Ocean spread as far as my eye could see, the water tinted peach in the morning light.

My dad yawned.

Did you sleep? I said.

Yeah. I pulled off to the side of the road in Rosarito and took a nap.

Why didn’t Sandra come?

His smile drained away like water seeping into sand. He stared out along the highway and his eyes narrowed.

She was pissed off at me about something, Ollestad.

What?

It’s complicated.

Did you fight?

Yeah. But that’s not why she’s mad.

Why’s she mad?

Nick’s brother. You know Vincent, right?

I nodded.

Yeah well he thought it was funny to take Sandra’s bird.

He took her little parrot?

Yeah.

Why?

To play a joke, he said shaking his head.

What kind of joke?

He pretended to be a birdnapper I guess. We even left money in that phone booth by George’s Market. We didn’t know it was him until he showed up with the bird.

My dad moved his puckered mouth from one side to the other just like Grandpa did sometimes.

Sandra wanted me to call the cops, he said.

Did you?

Naw.

So she left?

Yeah. She gave me an ultimatum.

Like you better or else?

Exactly.

Who was the guy on the motorcycle?

I don’t know. Some friend of hers.

His eyes were soft and the hook-shaped bone of his brow was less pronounced. There was no sign of that raw animal in there.

Why didn’t you call the cops? I said.

Vincent is a friend of mine.

I had seen my dad and Vincent play poker together at Barrow’s house on the beach and I had always thought it was weird that my dad was friendly with my mom’s boyfriend’s brother. But I didn’t say anything about that.

Was what he did against the law?

My dad nodded.

Then why didn’t you call the cops?

It was just a stupid prank.

If you were still in the FBI would you have arrested him?

He laughed.

No. We went after real bad guys, not pranksters.

I stared out the window at the road. I had heard about my dad’s one-year FBI stint, stationed in Miami from 1960 to 1961. About the book he wrote exposing J. Edgar Hoover’s hypocrisies, one of the first of its kind.

Dad joined the FBI at age twenty-five. It was a coveted job, demanding a graduate degree, preferably in law. Before joining he read every book he could find about J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, wanting to familiarize himself with the man who was considered the greatest crime fighter in American history.

In the first weeks of FBI training school Dad was shocked to find so many cracks in the facade. The instructors boasted to his class that no president would ever fire Hoover and that Congress never dared challenge the great director’s assertions about anything. Dad was surprised when he took his first exam and the instructors gave everyone in the class the answers—ensuring the success of Hoover’s policy that all FBI agents get A’s on the exams. The only real test was the final one, when he met the director himself. Hoover either gave you his blessing or dismissed you as unfit. If you caught his eye then you were thrown out. If he didn’t like your physical appearance, such as a pinhead-shaped skull, you were dismissed.

On Dad’s first day as an agent he couldn’t understand why all the veteran agents picked the most beat-up FBI cars from the garage, even though they were unreliable in a chase and the radios didn’t work. He learned that Hoover’s policy stated that if any agent damaged an FBI vehicle in any way, even in a chase, he would have to pay for it out of his own pocket. Hoover’s policy kept insurance costs way down and allowed Hoover to brag to the congressional Ways and Means Committee that he was saving tens of thousands in taxpayer dollars. A few weeks later Dad realized that Hoover was assigning a disproportionate amount of agents to finding stolen cars. He figured out that Hoover did this to inflate the FBI’s statistics, counting retrieved stolen cars—without actually apprehending a suspect—as another crime solved by the FBI.

The hypocrisy and inefficiency drove my dad crazy—What about catching criminals? he kept protesting. After ten months he was completely disillusioned with the FBI. Two incidents amplified his frustration. He found out that there were agents in each of the fifty-two field offices across the United States whose only job was to sit around and watch TV, listen to the radio and read the newspapers looking for any mention of Hoover, which was then immediately reported to Hoover’s loyal lieutenants, who investigated the perpetrators. This discovery coincided with the firing of Agent Carter. Carter was caught alone with a girl, which was against FBI policy—regardless of the fact that the girl in question was Carter’s fiancée. Then two of Carter’s colleagues were fired for failing to report Carter’s improper relations with his fiancée. Dad concluded that fighting crime was not as important to Hoover as imposing his personal views on the agents that worked for him, so he resigned.

Mom said he was so disappointed by the way Hoover ran the FBI that he didn’t care what would happen to him if he wrote the book. It was before Watergate, she said. Most people didn’t believe that Hoover could be bad. After Inside the FBI was published they tapped our phones, printed false newspaper articles about your dad, basically tried to ruin his reputation, said Mom. The book came out the year you were born. It was pretty scary, wondering if Norm was going to get arrested on some made-up charge, or put in jail for being a Communist or something. He was harassed not only by Hoover himself but by a famous TV personality named Joe Pine, who invited Dad onto his nationally acclaimed show. During the show Joe Pine accused my dad of being a KGB agent, and brought an alleged KGB double agent onto the stage. The agent, big and burly, confronted my dad, which nearly ended in a brawl between them outside the studio. Mom said that Hoover was completely stunned by my dad’s audacity—how could this nobody challenge Hoover’s integrity when even the president of the United States and Congress wouldn’t dare? So Hoover hit him hard.

I studied my dad driving the truck. I thought about his notorious FBI informant Murph the Surf, who used to meet my dad out in the warm Miami surf to exchange information, and years later was busted for stealing the Star of India sapphire. Murph introduced Dad to a beautiful girl that he really fell for. But she was the daughter of a high-ranking mafioso, and when the FBI found out that Dad was sleeping with her, and not just doing surveillance like he had claimed, he had to let her go.

Dad’s fingers tapped the steering wheel. I imagined him hanging out with ruthless criminals, sleeping with a mafioso’s daughter, then defying Hoover and enduring the assault that followed—dangerous shit. It seemed odd that nobody on Topanga Beach was all that impressed by it. And I realized that no matter who you were, or what extraordinary accomplishments you made, Topanga Beach was always bigger than you. All that mattered there was surfing. It was the great equalizer. I think Dad loved the purity and simplicity of that.

Up ahead there were pastel-colored buildings and my dad announced that we were entering the town of San Vicente.

We ate lunch at a restaurant off the highway. He looked sad and I wondered if it was because of Sandra. The porch faced the dirt road where we had parked the truck. We ate under a trellis and during the entire lunch my dad’s face was sliced in two by the shadow of one of the overhead slats. One of his eyes was lit and the other was dark. It was the first time that he ever seemed guarded, secretive to me. There was no way to know what he was thinking or feeling. I wondered if that’s what had bothered my mom so much.

Let’s go, I said, wanting to get him into the full light of day again.

The blacktop quivered in the heat and the world was dead and dried out all around us. We drank mineral water and ate peanuts and tossed the shells out the window. Our only jubilant moments came when we had a farting contest. My dad won. Later we squatted and shit in the sagebrush and my dad told me to watch out for rattlesnakes, and then I couldn’t go and I was doubled over with a stomachache until we stopped at some town by the water and I used a restaurant bathroom.

After relieving myself I found my dad on the beach playing guitar and singing Heart of Gold to three Mexican girls. They were dressed for winter, I thought, and one of them walked right into the ocean with all her clothes on and took a swim. They did that in Vallarta too and I wondered why they didn’t wear bathing suits.

A couple of mean-looking guys came out of the bar and stared at my dad and the girls. My dad played on like they weren’t there staring at him. One of the guys with a sunburn over his brown skin called out to my dad in Spanish and I recognized the word gringo and my dad glanced over at him, his eye bone hooking around and setting his eyeball deep in the socket.

The guy scoffed at my dad. My fingers tingled and I was anxious. The sunburned guy approached my dad and my throat closed. My dad said something to him in Spanish and it took the man by surprise. He didn’t speak for a moment and then he said something back. My dad smiled and began playing a Mexican song and sang in Spanish, and some more people came out of the bar and the sunburned guy gestured toward my dad as if he had arranged this little concert with his old gringo buddy.

I walked over and sat next to my dad. Between songs I told him I wanted to go. After my second request he glanced at the ocean.

Yeah. No waves around here. Gotta review the map, he said.

We checked into a cinder block motel and my dad paid the elderly clerk to watch the truck. We parked it in front of our room and kept the yellow curtain open. My dad looked over the map. The red circles indicated a good surf spot he had heard about.

Apparently we’ll pass a few tomorrow, he said.

The road cut through shades of gray and as the dawn gave way the dirt turned more golden. Cacti posed like stoic cowboys with the sun still behind the sharp ridges. Nothing but cactus and bush could live out here. It was going to be hot and dusty in a couple of hours and we would spend another day baking in the truck, sticking to the seat, hoping for the air coming through the window to be cool but tasting the dust and slumping there like zombies. I daydreamed about snow, cool and fresh on my face, turning to water on my tongue. I would have given anything to turn back the clock to winter.

Just eight months ago my dad and I had ridden the single-chair chairlift up the face of Mount Waterman. It took an hour and a half to drive his little white Porsche there from Topanga Beach. It was snowing and my dad didn’t stop to put on chains because he wanted us to get the first chair and find untracked powder.

The lifty put a blanket over me as I sat on the wet seat and I glided up the slope into the driving snow. I was warm beneath my parka but my face was frozen. I thought about my friend Bobby Citron’s birthday party and eating chocolate cake and I hoped I wouldn’t miss the party.

At the top we hiked into a cluster of spruce trees that protected us from the wind. My dad’s thighs flexed like a racehorse as he sidestepped above me. We reached a nearly square boulder the size of an outhouse and my dad hiked up next to it and looked over the lip of the ridge.

Looks fantastic, Boy Ollestad.

Is it steep?

Just right for all this snow, he said, and I knew that meant it was steep.

I hate it when it’s too steep.

I’m going to cut across the ridge and check for avalanches.

Don’t fall in.

I won’t.

He cut across the ridge and a chunk of snow sloughed off and drained into the gully that dropped from the ridge. A hundred feet below, the gully disappeared in the clouds crawling upward.

Looks good. Go for it, Ollestad, he said from up on the sidewall of the gully.

I kicked and bucked my skis to turn them the right way. I looked down and it was really steep.

The deep snow will hold you up. Don’t be afraid to get some speed going, he said.

I dug my poles in and they sunk all the way to the handles. I jerked them out and rocked back and forth until my ski tips broke through, then I began to track downward.

Up and down. Pump your legs, yelled my dad.

I tried to move up and down. The snow was thick and deep, shoveling up against my chest. I wrenched my body in an attempt to turn. Through the snow covering my goggles I saw the side of the gully curving up in front of me. I tried to pump my legs again. Suddenly I pitched forward, releasing from the heel of my bindings, and vaulted head first into the gully wall. Snow plugged my mouth and I couldn’t breathe. I strained to move my arms. They were swaddled to my sides. I coughed out the snow, yet every exhale produced an involuntarily inhale. The more I fought to breathe the more snow stuffed down my throat. My mouth would not close.

Boot-first my dad pulled me out. I regurgitated snow. I cried. I yelled every swear word that I had learned on Topanga Beach. He cleaned my goggles and told me he was right there. There was no way I was going to suffocate because he was right there.

When my mountain fit ran out of steam he strapped the goggles back around my helmet and fitted my boots into the bindings.

We should just hike back up, Dad, I said.

It’s too deep.

That’s why we shouldn’t have come here. It’s too deep.

It’s never too deep, Ollestad.

Yes it is. It’s too deep to even see or move.

You have to pump your legs right away before the skis submarine.

It’s impossible, I said. Why do you make me do this?

Because it’s beautiful when it all comes together.

I don’t think it’s ever beautiful.

One day.

Never.

We’ll see, he said. Vamanos.

I’m just going to crash again. And it’s going to be your fault.

Keep the legs pumping.

I can’t.

Then I pushed off and lifted my arms up and out like a bird opening its wings. I meant to prove that I was stuck but my skis rode to the surface.

That’s it, Ollestad. Pull the knees up.

Above the gluey snow it was easier to bank my skis. As I sank again I lifted my knees up into my stomach. The counter-weight elevated my tips like a ship heaving over a swell and I rocked up and over the next billow of snow. I kept it going, the up-and-down rhythm, wrenching free of the heavy snow before my tips buried. I heard my dad hoot and then a wave of snow splattered across my goggles and I was blind. I swiped at the goggles clearing the left side enough to see another wave hit me, and I swiped again and remembered I needed to pull my knees up. It was too late. I ejected out of my bindings, somersaulted and landed on my back.

I brushed the snow off my face and was able to breathe. I lay there until I heard my dad hooting and I sat up. A wedge of snow rippled toward me down the center of the gully as if an orca tunneled beneath pushing a white wave.

My dad’s head appeared for an instant, popping out the top of the white wave. Then he stopped just above me. His mustache was a frozen white sausage. His beige sheepskin jacket and black pants sprouted cotton balls of snow. I caught sight of one of his eyes, electric blue through the rose-tinted goggles, half-crazed like something wild that had just killed and eaten its prey.

Beautiful Ollestad, he said in smoke puffs.

Inside I was jumping for joy but I was careful not to let him see because that would only encourage him and then he’d ask for more.

Can we go home now? I said.

He groaned. You’re a real pulver hund, he said, and I knew that was German for powder hound.

Wait till you ski Alta, Utah, he said. The powder there’s like floating on a cloud.

I caught myself dreaming about superlight Alta powder for a second, then turned away to hide any glimmer from him. Sometimes I detested his charisma, the way it trampled everything and always won out. Yet even then I wanted to be like him.

It was a lot of work to make it to the road in the heavy snow. We hitched a ride from a Cal Trans truck back to the parking lot. I could tell that Dad wanted to ski another run. I even knew the logic of it: These days are rare and you gotta get ’em while you can. I wanted to share in his excitement for this golden moment. But I wanted to play with my friends more.

For some reason he didn’t push it further that day, and an hour and a half later we pulled up in front of Bobby’s house. I ran inside with my ski clothes still on and discovered that the kids had just finished the chocolate cake. I cried and wouldn’t talk to or look at my dad. The mothers eyed us—we were out of place in our wet ski clothes and soiled matted hair, and we smelled like sweat. They had come from showers and smelled like lilacs and we had just crawled out of the woods. Oblivious to it all my dad charmed the ladies and then scarfed down the vegetable plate. Feeling rough and dirty compared to everyone else I stayed in the background, hoping for, but never finding, a thread of conversation to grab that would tow me into the gang’s banter. I had nothing in common with these kids, and once again, I yearned to live the life of my peers—riding bikes together after school, playing ball in a cul-de-sac.

Am I going to miss any birthday parties? I asked my dad as he cracked open a bottle of water and handed it to me, the Baja heat coming on early this morning.

None that I know of.

I gave him a bitter look and he added, There will always be more birthday parties.

I turned away from him, sulking. He patted my back.

You got it easy, Ollestad, he said. Grandma used to drag me off the baseball field right in the middle of games and make me go to dance lessons. Imagine that. Shit, all you have to do is go surfing and skiing, fun stuff.

Shocked, I swung around to face him. Dance lessons? Like tap-dancing? I said.

Worse. Ballet.

Oh man, I said. Why?

She had a dream, he said, stretching out the word dream, of me being in movies.

In Cheaper by the Dozen Dad played the oldest son, twelve or thirteen years old, and I remembered that in his first scene he was wearing a baseball uniform.

Was it your idea to wear the baseball uniform in Cheaper by the Dozen? I said.

A smile lifted his whole face.

Absolutely, he said.

That’s pretty cool, Dad, I said.

Well, he said, riding that bus for hours to one of the studios and then having to wait like cattle for two or three more hours wasn’t cool. I missed a lot of fun for Grandma’s dream.

Dad looked like a little boy asking for sympathy, and I knew he was still pissed at Grandma.

Waiting in those lines I’d sleep leaning against the wall, he said.

Didn’t you fall down? I said.

He glanced at the road and shook his head.

You made money though, I said trying to make him feel better.

True. That helped me get through college, he said.

We stopped to get gas and eat and then we were on the road again. The road climbed through higher country. The remainder of the day was just a blur of heat, and I nodded off and drank water and stared out the window at the same thing over and over—dirt and chaparral and cactus. I complained about drinking only water. I needed something else, some kind of juice. He gave me a hooked-eyebrow glance and took a showy swig of the water.

Mmm, he said, smacking his lips. Water-juice. It’s fantastic.

He handed me the bottle.

Water-juice? I protested.

Try it, he said, as if this were a brilliant idea worth celebrating.

I took a sip.

Mmm water-juice, I said.

At around sunset the road wound back down to the sea and we spent the night in a hotel near crashing waves. The heat kept me stirring all night and I tried to pretend I was in the cold so that I could sleep. I kept thinking about the trip we took to Alta, Utah, during Easter break.

My dad was brushing his teeth in front of the bathroom mirror at the Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City. I saw his dick hanging in the mirror. His ass was whiter than his legs and the muscles up his spine made a deep groove to his shoulders.

The shower shut off and Sandra stepped out in a waft of mist. Like a ghost I saw her reach for a towel and wrap it around her chest. It hung over her sex and her legs looked really skinny—chicken legs, my dad would tease. She moved out of the mist and saw me watching from the bed and the skin around her eyes twisted. I wondered if she knew that I had watched her straddle my dad last night, across the room on the other bed, her face cringing with pain but her sighs full of joy.

Norm, she said, addressing my dad. Can’t you put some clothes on?

You’re one to talk, he said with a smile.

It’s like a barn around here, she said.

My dad laughed and Sandra closed the toilet room door behind her. My dad walked to the window and slid the curtain all the way open.

There’s at least a foot of snow on top of the Porsche, he said.

A blast of wind peppered the glass and he turned his head and shot me a look full of hunger.

Sandra emerged from the toilet wearing long johns. When she saw the blizzard outside she stopped.

You must be kidding me, she said.

My dad crossed the room and his eyes were glazed, lost in some powder-feast. He collected my ski clothes and brought them to me.

Let’s go, Boy Wonder.

What’s the rush, Norm? said Sandra. Look at it.

Exactly. Look at it. It’s a dream come true.

As we rode up the first chairlift and snow pecked at my face I wondered how come Sandra got to sit in the Alta Lodge and sip cognac.

At the top of the lift Dad and I tucked and skated to fight through the driving wind.

Stay in my tracks to the next chair, he said.

The second chairlift was also empty and the lifty hardly acknowledged us. Blown by the wind, our chair clanged against the first tower. Lightning flashed and cut open the clouds and I huddled next to my dad. He nestled his armpit around the back of my neck.

They’re going to shut it down, he said. We’re lucky we made it on the chair.

Lucky?

Thunder clapped and he didn’t respond and I wasn’t going to twist from under his wing to see his face.

We slid off the chair at the top of the mountain. I waited with my back against the wind while my dad scouted out the area. He hiked up the ski patrol trail to a ridge.

He looked like a bare spruce tree leaning over the far side of the ridge and I waited for his signal. I heard a whistle. It could be the wind. Then I saw an arm wave.

I hiked up to him. When I looked over the ridge a gust swept dry powder off the long white humps of snow like a swarm of diamonds. A silver cloud tumbled out of the sky and unraveled into tendrils like a ballroom of dancing ghosts.

I can’t see shit, I said.

We got to find the trees.

Where are they?

Down there somewhere.

I’m cold.

He rubbed his gloved hand up and down my back.

Go for it, Boy Wonder. Test the snow.

I think we should go back down the regular run, I said.

He shook his head.

As I dropped over the ridge a rising tide of snow reached over my knees and my thighs plowed the sea of white crystals. They blew off my chest and glimmered in a halo around me. The crystals and I moved as one. The clouds and the wind sheared off and nothing seemed to exist outside my crystal ball. I lifted my knees and popped into the air. I came down and the crystals spread away beneath my skis. I steered and there was no resistance, no fluctuation, just one fluid stream of powder. This is what he dreamed about and made him so excited, this powdery nothingness.

I banked like a seagull riding a current of wind and there was nothing more to life than this blind freefall.

I heard my dad yell and felt him glide in beside me—now we were inside one big halo. His sheepskin jacket was all I saw.

Whoosh. The halo shrank and he was gone, shooting down the slope. I was alone again in the weightless cascade.

Trees stood in a row. They reflected light onto the snow under the limbs. No tracks anywhere. Deeper in the woods the snowflakes fell straight down because the forest kept the wind out. I held my turn until I saw an opening where I could enter the woods. I banked and sailed through. The halo sucked away behind me. It was brighter and the snow piled up around the tree trunks and I weaved around them as though they were race poles. The trunk pillows burst apart and the feathers wisped my face. I loved the feeling and I hunted down the biggest pillows I could find. I wanted to show my dad.

Then everything dropped out beneath me. I flipped over. I was upside down. But not falling anymore. Snow poured into my parka from the waist and out the neck and into my hair. When it stopped I saw a tree trunk not more than two feet from my face. Looking downward I saw frozen earth and roots. Upward I saw my skis parallel with the tree’s limbs above them. My ski tips were wedged against the tree trunk on a lip of bark. My tails rested on the outer rim of the tree well in which I hung upside-down.

I reached upward for my skis. The bark cracked. Too fragile. I pinned my chin to my chest and yelled.

Dad. Dad!

It was quiet. What if my dad can’t find me? He’ll have to go down and back around. But he might think I’ve quit already and go to the lodge. Snow will cover my tracks if he doesn’t come soon. He’ll never find me. I’ll freeze to death.

Dad! Dad!

My feet were cold and the blood drained into my head and it got heavy. I unzipped my pants and pulled out my dick. With my teeth I pulled off one glove then cupped my hand around my dick. It was warm. Having something to hold, something so entirely mine, settled me down, and I forgot about freezing to death.

I must have put my penis back inside my pants because when I felt a tug on my ski I was not holding it anymore.

Boy Ollestad! said my dad.

Tears and coughing.

It’s okay, he said. I’m here.

He crashed into the tree well and my skis broke from their perch and we both fell onto the frozen ground. My helmet smacked the trunk and one of my skis smacked my dad’s shoulder.

You all right? he said.

I guess, I said.

He clicked off my skis. When he stood up his head was just below the top of the well.

I’m going to throw you out, he said.

He grabbed my waist. Hoisted me onto his shoulders. Inter-locked his hands in my hands and straightened his arms as I straightened mine.

Put your boots on my shoulders, he said.

I lifted my knees and steadied the boots onto his shoulders. He moved forward and I sprang over the top of the well. I landed facefirst then crawled away from the well.

My skis came flying out next. Then my dad’s head appeared. He wedged one boot and one hand against the trunk and the tip of the other boot and the other hand into the snow wall—spread like a starburst. His arm shot up and he grabbed a limb and snow ruptured from the pines and caked his head. He twisted, pushing both boots off the trunk to dive. He landed next to me.

He shook his head like Sunny coming out of the ocean. He lifted his goggles.

That was gnarly, Ollestad.

I know.

How ’bout that powder?

I was looking at the tree well and in that moment the bliss of the powder was difficult to enjoy. Then I noticed him staring at me. His eyes beamed like a golden sun cutting through the snowstorm and the high seeped back in.

He opened his hand and I took it and he pulled me upright.

We’ll head down that valley, he said. Could be some good skiing down there, Boy Wonder.