Crazy for the Storm (16 page)

O
N FRIDAY WE DROVE
to Big Al’s house. He was my dad’s law partner and good friend. He was supposed to be all ready to go to Tahoe where I had a downhill race. My dad said that if I placed in the top three it would help my chances toward qualifying for the Southern Cal Championship race, only a month and a half away. My dad didn’t knock and we found Al doing yoga in his living room wearing nothing but jockey underwear. He was tall like a basketball player and his feet were gigantic. His hair was reddish blond and his beard and eyebrows were the same color and bushy. My dad teased Al about being in a yogi trance and pretended to fight off a glare of light.

Your aura is blinding, said my dad.

Al ignored him, keeping his eyes closed, breathing through his nose methodically.

My dad grabbed some organic celery sticks with dirt still on
them from the fridge. He dunked the celery into a jar of peanut butter and made me eat two whole sticks.

No time to stop for dinner, Ollestad.

Just after six the next morning we pulled into Uncle Joe’s orange high-rise hotel. We quickly stowed our bags, changed into our ski gear and hit the road again.

Clear to the town of Truckee, Al did yoga breathing exercises. Gradually his exhalations became more forceful and louder. My dad told him to take it easy or he was going to be worn out before the first run.

We turned onto Highway 40 and Big Al pointed out the Donner Pass sign.

I was hungry but I just lost my appetite, said Al and my dad laughed.

What’s so funny? I said.

Well, said Al. It’s not really funny. Right around here is where the Donner Party got stuck in an early-season storm and half of them died.

What were they doing? I said.

Looking for a new frontier I guess. Problem was, they were ordinary people, not mountain people, and they got stuck in a big storm, said Al. The long and short of it is that some of them ended up having to eat their dead just to stay alive.

Gross, I said.

We climbed the winding highway and we all stared out the window at the mountains where those people had tried to survive.

I rode up with Coach Yan and we met the rest of the team at the top of the downhill course. We slipped it and spent a lot of time
examining the S-turn. It dove over a pitch that fell away so that you couldn’t see the slope beyond. There were nets to catch us if we lost control and flew toward the rocky ravines on each side.

The snow in the S-turn was especially hard, nearly ice, and I knew that this was where I could win the race. All those days skiing the wind-buffeted fifteen-foot lip of the Cornice in Mammoth, and having to carve the icy face of Mount Waterman, had prepared me well. Yan emphasized that we needed to come in high on the first part of the turn in order to go directly at the next two gates, setting up a straight shot into the final pitch and run-out.

Because of your light weight, Norman, you have to beat them here in the steeps, said Yan.

Yan was right, of course. Many times I had had the lead coming out of the steeps, only to lose the race to heavier kids who had the advantage on the flats.

My dad and Al hooted when they announced my number. Yan massaged my thighs and told me to keep the skis down and running after the S-turn. Don’t lose any time in the flats, he reiterated. I felt loose and, most importantly, well attended to.

I attacked the upper course, taking an assertive line directly at the gates. I swooped in high on the S-turn and caught air over the fall-away pitch. I cursed myself for that but was thrilled by how much speed I had. I hit the long run-out and absorbed the humps and the ruffle sections where the skis tried to stammer. I plastered those fuckers to the snow.

I zipped over the dye and chattered to a stop. I was in third place, with Lance yet to race. I swore at the run-out and people turned their heads. I didn’t care. How could I have gone so fast and not be the fastest? I couldn’t go any better than that.

Yan arrived and told me I had the best time by three seconds coming out of the S-turn. I had lost over three seconds on the flats.

Why don’t they make a fucking steep downhill course, I said.

Yan was taken aback by my foul mouth and my dad ushered me out of the finish area.

We rode up the chairlift and my dad was silent and he stared down at the snow passing like a highway beneath us. I felt bad about my outburst. I didn’t say another word until after my second run.

Lance placed third and I placed fourth. In both runs I had been well ahead of the winner until I hit the flats. Yan said I was the best skier in the bunch and that success would come. We watched the awards ceremony and then it started to snow. Al had a hand-sized radio in his backpack and he tuned in the local weather. It was forecast to snow for two days and dump up to three feet. My dad called the office and he and Al conferred and by five that evening it was decided that we’d stay in Tahoe for a few extra days to ski some powder.

We skied good powder and the snow kept coming. My dad and Al decided to extend the trip further, pointing to the fact that I had a race in Yosemite the weekend upcoming and that there was no sense in Dad driving nine hours to Los Angeles, then back up here to northern California five days later.

For some reason my concentration was not at its best in Yosemite and I nearly hooked a couple gates on the first run. Once again I finished second (I think by one or two tenths). However the blow to my ego was mitigated when I realized that I had finally beaten Lance.

The next day he beat me in the giant slalom and I took second
again. I was frustrated and thought I might not ever win. I was tortured by the idea that I was just not quite good enough. Was there something about me, a character flaw, that was holding me back?

Don’t worry about winning, said my dad. It will come.

Why am I so small? I said.

You play the hand you’re dealt, he said. Don’t worry about trivial things like size and weight. Just put your head down and go for it.

I skulked past Al, who was watching us, quietly.

Shake it off, Ollestad, said Dad. All you can do now is focus on the next race.

We sought out one of Al’s secret hot springs on the way home and my dad did backflips off a rock into the natural pool. I preferred cannonballs and Al was fine just soaking up the minerals that smelled like rotten eggs. We reminisced about skiing St. Anton when I was five and they spoke in code but I understood they were reliving their adventures with women.

Almost every weekend thereafter my dad and I drove out of town to the ski races. The San Bernardino Mountains were only two hours east of Los Angeles, but Mammoth was six hours north and Lake Tahoe was nine hours north. We’d roll back into town late Sunday night and the next morning my dad would drop me off at school, brushing his teeth in the car in front of all the other parents, which embarrassed me. I’d stay with my mom during the week and play with the neighborhood boys as much as possible. I finally acquiesced to my status as a semi-outsider—permanently orbiting on the fringe of their banter yet too athletic to be completely written off.

One day after school Nick drove me in his station wagon to the University of Southern California campus. On our way to the football field to watch the Trojans practice he pointed out the halls where, he said, kids not much older than I studied as hard as they could so that they could get the good jobs and make lots of money and live the way they wanted. He added that there were fun parties and
beautiful dames
too.

He was a diehard USC fan and I asked him if he had gone there.

No. But all my friends did, he said. I hung around here so much everybody thought I did.

Learning that Nick did not go to college gave his message a special resonance. He wasn’t trying to make me be like him. Sort of the opposite, in fact. I wondered why Nick drove me all the way down here to show me this. He was actually kinda cool when he didn’t drink, I thought.

Education was the theme that week. After my hockey game on Friday night my dad told me that if I stuck with hockey I might be able to earn a scholarship to Harvard or Yale. I asked him why he didn’t go there.

Well I couldn’t afford it, he said. And I didn’t play hockey or ski race. Plus UCLA was right here and a pretty good school.

So why don’t I just go to UCLA too?

You can. But Harvard is better.

We were back in Lake Tahoe, at Squaw Valley. It was a big race—the top three finishers overall, from J3 to J5, would qualify to try out for the Junior Olympic Team, and certainly qualify for the Southern Cal Championship race.

At breakfast that first morning I talked freely with my new teammates, describing powder skiing with my dad, hockey triumphs, surfing Mexico, cannonballs at a secret hot springs, and
they responded with wide-eyed grins and asked me lots of questions, the antithesis of those blank faces back home. Feeling valued got me so excited that I talked through the entire breakfast and couldn’t wait for lunch.

The snow was hard and Yan said the course was tight like the way they set them in Europe. It was on the same hill as the 1960 Olympic slalom course and my dad called Al and told him. We slid the course twice and the pitch was unrelenting, no breather sections, with two flushes in steep hangs.

On the first run I stayed high and took it easy, positioning myself fifth overall, which gave me confidence. On the second run I let the ruts sling me from turn to turn and I thrust my hips for extra bursts of speed. For the entire run I was on the verge of out of control.

I won my division and finished third overall and for the rest of the weekend my dad called me Ingmar Ollestad.

During the car ride home I voiced my hopes and dreams.

I think I can win the So Cal Championship next weekend and make the Junior Olympic Team, I said.

Absolutely, said my dad.

I
’M BREATHING HARD
. I must be alive. You’re lucky you didn’t hit a tree on that tumble.

My stomach burned and my head tingled. Translucent diamonds waltzed amid the falling snow. Everything whirled and I thought about going to sleep. This is just a nightmare. I’ll wake from the dream and we’ll be landing in Big Bear. There was my dad carrying me off the plane.

Gradually my eyes found focus. The chute had widened. The rock borders on each side had melted into the slope. I figured I must be near the wooded section.

I sat up. It was not as steep. My whole body decompressed. But that gave way to a rush of images—Dad’s curly hair, his head on his knees, arms dangling, fading to an ice sculpture slipping away into a casket of mist.

I tried to shake it off. My mind reeled, desperate to escape the fact that my dad was actually dead. I needed blue sky. A
place to ascend to that was not this gray universe where death and pain and cold ruled. But all I could see was ashen cloud pressing down from all sides. Even so I tried to imagine my life thriving beyond this sludge. Nothing. I saw myself as a flame tussling in a draft alone in a barren world. I missed Sandra’s mumbo-jumbo.

I just sat there staring at the gateway to what I knew was the wooded section beyond the fog. My mind refused to initiate anything, too absorbed in my dire circumstances. I can’t. I can’t do this anymore, echoed in my head.

But my body moved. As if my muscle memory heard my dad’s voice,
Go for it Boy Wonder. You can do it
. I stood up.

I wandered across the chute to a tree and broke the ends off a couple limbs. Paring away the needles released their familiar scent and it gave me a boost, setting my mind into motion. An idea blipped. I dropped to my butt and began sliding downward, a stick in each hand to control my speed and turn around trees or crags of rock.

The spine of rocks to my left gathered back into a formidable border and this last few yards of the chute fed into a rivulet-like channel that ran along the base of the border. I went with the flow and saw patches of blood in the rivulet. My quickened pace and the idea that I was now beating the night charged me. At this speed I had a chance, I kept telling myself.

The border of rock blunted and I came around a small cliff face. Sandra’s body lay in my path. She was on her back. Her boot tips pointed into the air. Her hair flowed out from her head, dark against the white snow. I was afraid to call her name, afraid she wouldn’t move.

She was in a wooded enclave of tall spruces. Just above her was my airplane seat, leaning against a tree. I stood and my feet plunged. I couldn’t move. The snow clung to my thighs
like quicksand. Every strand of muscle in my legs burned as I lurched to unplug my drenched sneakers from the snow. I staggered toward Sandra, calling her name. But she didn’t answer.

Her eyes were wide open. Skin purple. I stood over her and she stared right at me. I kneeled and my legs trembled with fatigue. I shook her. I spoke to her.

Are you there? Sandra. Sandra. Your eyes are open.

I got right down in her face. You just slipped, I said. You’ll be all right. Let’s go!

She stared into the leaden gray and her body was stiff like a mannequin. She was dead. A stark fact, confused by her intense gaze.

The mistake, my overreach in the chute, piled on my shoulders and I needed to hide from it. I stamped and bucked like an animal then shrank down into what felt like a thicker skin. Huddled, my body was sapped of power, ravaged by all the death, the bleakness ahead, and I had no strength left for shame, for anything.

I let precious time pass, hunkered there. Then a growl rumbled in my chest and sent up a burst of energy. I rose onto my knees and hands, swinging my head upward to stand. I broke twigs from the spruce limbs, spending more precious time covering her body and face, leaving two openings for her eyes.

I have to go, I said.