Crazy for the Storm

CHAPTER 11

I ROSE FROM my dad’s cold limp body. Everything appeared to have slowed down. Each snowflake was separate and unique from the other. The plane debris creaked a specific timbre with every gust. The fog swarmed in discrete braids of vapor.

I crouched on all fours like a wolf or some sort of animal that is used to living in these mountains. I swiveled my neck up and down, eyes tracking the geography of the funnel. I could smell the snow and distinguish the wind in another chute from the wind roaring in this chute. As if wearing ski goggles, I was able to delineate the contours in the snow, no longer a shapeless white mass that I would have to touch in order to discern the changes in texture and pitch.

My mind stopped darting from one thought to the next. No longer debated whether or not the punishing storm would finally win, whether or not I would lose my grip on the ice, or if Sandra was right or wrong about my dad. My mind sealed itself off from everything but the immediate geography.

I turned away from my dad and stared into the blizzard. Far across the chute a white airplane wing, previously camouflaged by the gray fog blending with the white snow, seemed easily distinguishable, as if suddenly my eyes could cut through the flat, milky light. The wing was lodged against the base of a big tree trunk. The snow was flatter there, having gathered behind the trunk.

I moved toward it, one hand then foot at a time, scaling laterally out of the funnel. The wind gathered razors of ice off the tree limbs and lashed my face. Upslope a few feet the wind had chafed away some of the snow and exposed a faint trail. I tracked higher to root it out, sturdy on my four paws as a mountain goat.

My hands found the scant trail ledge before my eyes saw it. I slinked low to eye the trail’s shape and trajectory. It traversed the chute, feathering away near the tree where the plane wing pulsed in and out of existence. The edge of the wing was fused into the snow at the base of the tree trunk. It was propped up at an angle. Shelter.

I thought of the airplane’s floor rug. I remembered seeing it tangled amongst some twisted metal near Sandra. I needed it. Also maybe there’s an ice axe or shovel or at least some gloves somewhere in the wreckage. So I followed my prints back to the impact zone. Slipping was not an option. I was hunting for tools.

I rummaged through the twisted pieces. Nothing to help me, except the rug. The frayed metal scraps would only cut my hands up, and they weren’t stiff enough to axe with. I coiled the rug and hefted it under what would be my downhill arm during the hike back to the wing.

I heard Sandra whimpering. She was above me—I had tuned her out along with everything else that was a distraction. Her eyes were glassy, lashes frosted. I told her to carefully, slowly, step-by-tiny-step, move with me to the wing.

No, she said. I can’t move.