Crazy for the Storm

CHAPTER 3

NEAR THE TOP of Ontario Peak I woke up. Feathers rocked from the sky and coated my face. I had been dreaming but could not remember the dream. Were Dad and I just gliding side by side down a powder run?

Wind rustled through the spruce needles, so pure and uncluttered that I wondered if I was still asleep. I was kinked over and a section of the instrument panel crossed the foreground. One corner of the panel sunk into fog like an upended ship. A few feet beyond it was a big tree trunk. It crossed the other way, making an X with the panel. It was impossible to know where the horizon line was and my eyes strained to orient myself. Then the fog thinned like a flock of birds lifting and one of the airplane wings was stuck into the tree trunk. All these weird mashed-together pictures did not add up to anything that made sense. Chaotic swirls of snow fell sideways and back upward then disappeared behind a whitewash of incoming fog.

I tried to breathe but couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. My stomach was choked off by my seat belt, which strapped me into the seat. I called for my dad.

I can’t breathe, I bellowed. Dad I can’t breathe!

Pinned on my side by my seat, I couldn’t turn around to check on my dad and Sandra in the back. I went in and out of consciousness—like sinking into a murk of water and then suddenly rising to the top only to drop into the murk again. The whole thing is just a nightmare, I decided. A nonsense dream. Can’t wake up though.

I noticed something beyond the shattered cockpit—the pilot seemed sprawled out as if diving backward and there appeared to be a bloody cavity where his nose should have been. A reef of fog swallowed him before I could be sure.

I tried to breathe again. Just a speck of oxygen. My hand fumbled for the seat belt buckle and my blue mid-top Vans squeaked against the snow. The buckle released and my lungs burned with cold air. Dad will fix this, I told myself. He’ll turn everything right side up again.

I felt myself winding down, an engine sputtering. My head was light, eyes blurry. I had no idea where I was. Eyes began to close and I surrendered.