Crazy for the Storm

living room warming her hands over the potbelly stove. It took me a moment to remember why we were all up so early—the plane ride back to Big Bear.

As I laced up my Vans I noticed a couple of new photographs on the judge’s desk that was given to my dad by a penniless client as payment for keeping his son out of jail. Next to the old black-and-white photo of me harnessed to my dad’s back as he surfed a two-footer off the point was a color photo of Dad, Grandpa, and me swimming that day we arrived in Vallarta, our three heads poking out of the water like sea lions. Beside that was another one of Dad and me skiing in St. Anton, Austria—boot-deep powder—in which I’m leading the way with my deadly snowplow that could cut through anything, as my dad liked to say.

Who took the picture of us skiing in St. Anton? I said.

He came out of the bathroom naked, brushing his teeth.

I had a professional do it. Pretty nifty, huh?

It’s great. We’re both shredding.

Sandra walked over.

I wonder how big the trophy’s going to be, she said.

Should be pretty big. Right? I said.

Who cares about a trophy, said my dad. You know you won—that’s all that matters.

CHAPTER 33

I WAS TRAPPED, WORN OUT and frozen. Night moved down on me like a mass of crows swooping in from all sides of the sky. I closed my eyes against them—wanting to fall asleep before they ate me.

Something like a jiggle wormed its way inside me. Something bigger, from the core of the earth, was counting out time. A drop of dew jiggling on a leaf, that faint.

I sensed the wind whistling through the gullies and heard it cut across the snow. Ice peppered my face. It dawned on me that I was still stuck and still cold and therefore still alive. I watched another gust peel off a skin of snow like grains of sandpaper ripping free. It made me think of a barren graveyard in a ghost town. I conjured my dad and me in Bodie, the cool dusk chasing us to the car, Dad saying the temperature had dipped from three-king cold to four-king cold, giving me license to say, That’s four-king A right.

I looked at the buckthorn rising out of the snow several yards away. I kicked at the buckthorn entwined with my legs and torso under the snow. No way to get to that first hedge.

Even so I stretched one arm toward the first hedge and my body floated in that direction. The snow caved and I circled my weight in ten different directions at once—a slow-motion dog paddle, treading water in the sea of vines. Intuitively my armpit, some ribs and a hip found a place to caress the vines and I delicately leaned, settling.

Like a gymnast swinging his legs over the horse, I lifted onto a ball of vines that buoyed against my hip. My feet then pushed off and I rose out of the hole. I was careful not to let my upper body reach too far across the snow and risk plunging headfirst into the next quadrant of mesh.

Then the vines collapsed. I pitched my hip under me and drove my legs downward, spreading all limbs, catching like a thorny lobe in dog hair.

Again I ventured one arm out. The snow felt solid before me. I spread my legs out in the mesh, dispersing the load. Under my forearm the crust was firm. I slithered chin, chest, then stomach onto this atoll. It cracked and I rolled onto my back. As the pane shattered I wheeled my feet and drove them down, ensuring they went first with the rupturing snow into the gnarl below. Sprawling wide again to ensnare the buckthorn, my head bobbled out of the hovel. There was the hedge. A leap away.

I lunged at it. Unfortunately I had no leverage and ended up sinking deeper into my pit. I tried again. Broadening my load this time, I uncoiled gracefully as I stretched one arm out. I eased over the lip of the pit. My fingers tickled the underside of the hedge. A little wiggle and my torso followed my arm out of the hole. I skated for an instant across the crust, then grabbed a throng of vines. My lame dexterity was salvaged by the tight weave of vines clasping me as much as I clasped them.

When the snow broke at my waist both hands snapped off the bush and I barely shot my arm up in time to snag the hedge with one hand. My legs fell and lodged in the netting below. Then I got my other hand clutched to the hedge and kicked away the nagging spurs. I lifted my body up into the hedge and snaked my legs deep into its gnarl. I hung to the face of the hedge and it bowed toward the snarling chasm. There was no fucking way I was letting go.

Then I understood that I could drop my legs and swivel from hand to hand along the face of the hedge. I moved, my numb feet tottering like dead stumps over the crust. I traversed the hedge as if swinging from rings in a playground. I made it to the end of the hedge. There was a three- or four-foot gap to the next spate growing out of the snow. I peered through the bush but could not locate the meadow. I knew it was close though.

I reached out with my leg and felt that the snow beneath was firm enough for me to rest some of my weight on it. I gathered my bearing and lowered onto my stomach, spreading my weight. The ground felt solid so I shimmied across the crust and grabbed the next hedge. This allowed me to stand again because I had the hedge to hold onto.

I walked on top of the snow and held on to the hedge so as not to put too much weight on the tenuous crust. The buckthorn spates grew closer and closer together as I moved downslope. I scurried from one to the other and only fell through a couple times. It was easy to pull myself out with the hedge right there. Then I saw the meadow. My eyes fixed on the oasis, nothing else.

CHAPTER 34

A GUARD LET US through the draw gate into Santa Monica Airport. It was desolate. The sky was gray and dull. We parked behind a building underneath the control tower. We walked in. My dad knocked on a door and a man a few years younger than he emerged. His name was Rob Arnold. His sandy blond hair was cut just below his ears and it was combed down neatly, reminding me of those straitlaced guys who came from the city to surf Topanga. He was our pilot. We were all set to go.

CHAPTER 35

WHEN I CAME to the edge of the meadow the snow had compressed the buckthorn, making a four- or five-foot lip on this side of the meadow. I slid over the lip and into the foamy oasis. Wading through the soft snow, moving upright across even ground, shocked me—it broke the spell that had channeled every bit of energy, mental and physical, into one singular focus. I stopped moving. I wanted to give up. Quit. Sit down and refuse to do this. All that I had witnessed over the last eight hours suddenly made me violently angry.

I stood there enraged. The spiking fury kept me from sitting down on the cushioned ground. The anger was hot. For the first time since the crash I didn’t feel cold. My fingers and feet were numb but my face and torso and thighs were actually warm.

Now all that mattered was not getting cold again—and in a flash I was back under the spell that drove me down the mountain and wrenched me out of those buckthorn vines like a wolf smelling fresh meat ahead.

I trudged across the meadow. I searched for an opening in the tight weave of buckthorn and oak trees on the downhill side. I walked the perimeter. The forest was too dense. There seemed no way to get to that road I had spotted from up high. How the hell do you get out of this place?