Crazy for the Storm

Are you okay? I said.

I’m fine, Ollestad.

It’s bleeding real bad.

It looks worse than it is.

I remembered my mom telling me the same thing about her black eye.

So how was it? he said.

Just…I searched for words, images. All that I could grasp was the feeling—I had never felt so good in all my life.

I don’t know. Radical, I said.

He held my gaze as if perfectly attuned to the ecstasy spiking and reverberating in every part of me.

You’ve been to a place that very few people in this world have ever gone, he said. Someplace beyond all the bullshit.

We drifted and thought about the perfect place I had been, and the ocean grew very calm. My dad bled into the water and the threat of sharks was somehow negated by my tube ride, as though we were invincible because we were a part of everything. I looked around and this strange world suddenly made perfect sense.

CHAPTER 15

SANDRA WAS CURLED up into a ball near the wing and I was startled when she grabbed my arm, squeezing viciously.

How can he be dead? she said. How can your dad be dead?

I growled like the wolf that I had imagined I had become and her question got rejected, spit out, before my brain could fully absorb it. A layer of rough hide seemed to grow over my cold skin, shielding the snow and wind and bad thoughts, and I hunkered and drew it tighter to my body. Then I slithered under the wing. I lay the rug over the snow and tucked it against the back edge of our shelter.

Get under the wing, I said.

She crawled under and I crawled in after her. She wrapped her arms around me. Two animals huddled in their cave.

I hope they come for us, she said.

Go to sleep, I said. Rest.

Are we going to die? she said.

No, I said, then wondered if we would freeze to death waiting here for someone to rescue us.

It got warm under the wing with Sandra wrapped around me and I faded into sleep.

As I dreamed I knew it was the same dream that I had dreamed before I woke up the first time after the crash. I wondered how many hours ago that was. Or was it less than an hour ago? In the dream I float upside down. My blue Vans above my head. A luminous white oval encapsulates me, black beyond its edge. At the top of the oval seeps a granular light. I drift feet first toward the light and ask myself what is happening. Calm and lucid comes the answer: You’re dying. Oh, I’m dying, I say back to myself with wonder. Something is pulling me down. I can’t quite reach the granular light, the cracked doorway. Two hands, two currents—no, a wave-shaped force pitches over me. Holds me from floating up into the granular light.

He jumped over me, I said, and my voice woke me from the dream.

Sandra was wrapped around me tight. Her hands were very cold. I turned and snuggled her, my face nestled against her neck. I envisioned my dad jumping over me as the plane broke apart. He saved my life and I would find a way to save his. I held this hope in my mind even though some part of me knew it was too late. Melting into Sandra’s body I dozed again.

A muffled thwack against the air woke me. It repeated itself and I couldn’t understand what it was and it came and went like the waves of fog.

I noticed Sandra’s watch. It was still ticking. I thought of the commercial catchphrase Takes a licking but keeps on ticking. I looked closely, and it was a Timex. It was nearly twelve noon, the big hand and little hand both near the twelve, and I laughed.

What’s happening? she said.

It’s still ticking, I said.

What’s going to happen to us, Norman? she said.

I did not know what to say. I thought about how long we’d been up here. We took off around seven, I remembered. So it’s been five hours. What the hell have we been doing? Then the thwacking noise got closer and I identified it. I slithered from under the wing and rose off my belly onto all fours.

Where are you going? said Sandra.

I hear a helicopter, I said.

The fog was breaking and the sky was patched with black-edged clouds and the strips of blue looked far away. I had to get out from under the broad reach of the spruce limbs. The light was brighter now and the trail was trodden from my two trips back and forth and I scampered across the chute. The thwack of the blades was gone again and I wondered if I had imagined it.

For the first time I could make out the chute’s broader features. As I had guessed, it was shaped like a half- pipe carved vertically down the mountainside, dropping for at least twenty yards, maybe more below the receding clouds. The icy chute was bordered by chunks of rock. The rocks hemmed us in and trees grew out of the rocks with snow filling in the nooks and crannies like mortar. A slick, icy groove washed straight down one side of the chute— the funnel. Instinctively I understood that the funnel was the predominant fall line where your skis would gravitate, the most direct and thrilling way down. I wanted nothing to do with it today.

Suddenly rotors boomed overhead again, sending laps of noise against the mountain. I yelled up at the checkered sky. Struts appeared through the shifting pools of smoky fog. I waved with both hands and yelled at the belly right above me. I waved and yelled.

Hey! Right here! Hey!

I thrashed my arms and screamed so loud it burned my throat raw.

Right here! See me?

The helicopter hovered above the treetops. The struts were like the rails of a sled that I could grab.

Just in time, I thought. Dad can’t hold on much longer.

I screamed at the ’copter and kept whipping my arms.

Dad. We’re saved!

The ’copter dipped to one side and I saw a guy with a helmet and expected him to call back through the loudspeaker. I’ll guide them over to my dad and they’ll lower down and fly him to a hospital.

My adrenaline spurred me across the chute toward my dad and I motioned to the ’copter to follow. The ’copter powered up. It whined.

I shuffled my feet, careful not to slip, and kept flagging them toward the impact zone. The closer I got to my dad, the funnel, the slower I had to go. Any moment now I’ll have to drop to my belly and hug the mountain. I won’t be able to flag them. So I stopped where I was. Arms raised high like a ref signaling a touchdown I motioned the ’copter toward my dad. You guys are the greatest. Thank you. Thank you.

Then the ’copter dipped to one side and slowly banked away from me.

Hey! Right here! Wrong way!

A cloud swallowed the blades, then the belly and struts. The thwacking noise thinned. Then faded.

What the hell?

I turned to my dad, who was about fifteen feet away across the chute. Can you believe that?

He was coated with snow like an ice sculpture.

My adrenaline went cold and flushed down my body, leaving me hollow.

I closed my eyes. I pushed everything away. Tough it out. Focus on the next thing. Don’t worry about what has already happened.