Sorry, I said.
Go in the den.
I won’t do it again. I’m sorry. I just want to watch the end.
He grabbed my arm and the cup and walked me into the den. He slammed down the cup and jammed me into the chair.
If you can’t control your slurping then you eat separately, he said. Until you learn.
I wasn’t hungry anymore so I went downstairs to my room. My whole body shivered. I turned on the furnace and got into bed and buried myself head-to-toe under the blanket.
The very next day on the way to the bus one of the neighborhood gang pointed out another kid in our grade named Timothy. I recognized Timothy as the boy who always looked down at his feet, muttered, sat alone, read comic books at recess, and startled easily. He reminded me of a beaten dog—sort of how I felt last night. One of the gang called to him across the street.
Hey, Creepothy, he yelled and the other boys laughed.
Timothy did not look up. He turned away from us, stopping so that we’d get far ahead of him. I kept glancing back at him, fascinated. He was skittish like me, but he couldn’t hide it. He probably has a mean dad or stepfather, I thought. I wanted to cross the street and walk with him. Then the idea repulsed me. I was the first one to walk ahead.
Later that week Nick punished me again for chomping and I sat in the den and ate alone. When I was finished he handed me a piece of paper.
A contract, he said.
I looked at it, unmoved.
Read it.
I hereby promise to get control of myself and take responsibility for my actions. I will not chomp, slurp or eat with my mouth open. If I do I will eat alone.
Do you understand it?
I nodded.
Sign it.
I signed it.
A few days later I saw Timothy at recess picking his nose. He sat on a bench in the corner of the yard. Somebody threw the kickball at him and he tried to duck it, tripping over his feet. It bounced off his face as he scurried to the other side of the yard. I wondered if they’d do the same to me if I stopped being good at kickball. I played my butt off that day.
CHAPTER 21
I lifted the stick and my feet, pushing off my right hand into the funnel.
Sandra was above me, plummeting now. I craned outward and her heel rapped my forehead. Then I axed the stick down. My toes dug and my free hand clawed. Under the half-inch of crust it was solid ice. I knew ice. I could ski it as well as any kid around. But there was nothing I could do now. We sailed as if in a free fall.
The chute’s overall slant also ran through the funnel. So our momentum ran us across the funnel instead of straight down its gut. Another lucky break. Just below the rocky border was an embankment of snow that was angled in such a way that the snow was softer here. As we careened up the embankment I saw crags of rock and intermittent trees mottling it.
I burrowed one sneaker into the snow and collided with something hard. I bounced off it and felt my trailing arm whack a rock. Fortunately it checked our plummet, slowing us down.
Sandra was directly above me. I grabbed her ankle and hacked at the snow with the stick and fished for another rock with my foot. The stick had broken and wasn’t much use. I worked it down my palm to expose more tip. My foot tapped another rock and I rolled my weight onto that side. My toe caught the next crag of rocks, each catch a deceleration, until that foot planted against the blunt face of a larger rock. We came to a stop like a crushed beer can.
Sandra was crying, wailing out. I looked up and her ankle was in my hand yet I could not feel it there. The skin on my first set of knuckles was gone. A pink liquid oozed out.
I studied the larger rocks rising out from the crag of rock we were currently mashed against. How to climb up onto them, the chute’s border, and get us out of the funnel? Once atop the spine of rock I visualized us making our way downslope. Each five-foot drop to the next little ledge will be slick with nothing to grip, I thought. Then I saw us tumbling and bouncing down the rocky cascade and that made me abandon that idea.
We have to stay against these rocks, Sandra. See how we can use them to slow down? See? See, the ice is a little softer here. Okay?
Sandra said something about God’s wrath. Why is she suddenly so religious? I thought.
Here we go, I said.
Using the softer snow and crags of rock along the embankment, we moved down as a unit. With Sandra’s boots crutched on my left shoulder, my head braced her to that side. And miraculously she still had the stick in her good hand.
Over the next few minutes we only slipped once. Right away, I leveraged my shoe tip against a rock, halting us.
Good job keeping your feet against me, I said.
Why are you doing this to us, Norman?
Ask God, I said.
I pulled down her boot soles tight to my left shoulder.
Here we go, I said.
We moved on our stomachs and it got darker from the ashen fog washing over our backs. Fifteen feet lower the embankment grew steeper and we had to fight against sliding back into the funnel.
Then the embankment of snow dissolved into a vertical wall of rocks. I stopped and felt out a tuft-line of pliable snow maybe three inches wide, trailing along the foot of the wall. My numb hands cleaved to this supple thread. I begged the snow-thread to keep trailing downward or we’d be forced into the funnel. With the side of my head I braced Sandra’s ankle and we started moving again.
Keep your upper body straight, I said.
Keep your upper body straight, she repeated. Then again as if reminding herself.
We scaled down at a snail’s pace. I hoped for the chute to end soon, or for us to come upon a tree growing out of a crack in the rock wall, low enough for us to grab. I needed to rest. But the scenery never changed. The fog pinned us to the thread of snow, our lifeline. A few feet later still nothing had changed. No sign of that wooded section. Just the nasty funnel at our hip. Don’t rush, I told myself. Inch at a time. Once you get going there’s no stopping.
CHAPTER 22
