Free Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad

chin to my chest and yelled.
    Dad. Dad!
    It was quiet. What if my dad can’t find me? He’ll have to go down and back around. But he might think I’ve quit already and go to the lodge. Snow will cover my tracks if he doesn’t come soon. He’ll never find me. I’ll freeze to death.
    Dad! Dad!
    My feet were cold and the blood drained into my head and it got heavy. I unzipped my pants and pulled out my dick. With my teeth I pulled off one glove then cupped my hand around my dick. It was warm. Having something to hold, something so entirely mine, settled me down, and I forgot about freezing to death.
    I must have put my penis back inside my pants because when I felt a tug on my ski I was not holding it anymore.
    Boy Ollestad! said my dad.
    Tears and coughing.
    It’s okay, he said. I’m here.
    He crashed into the tree well and my skis broke from their perchand we both fell onto the frozen ground. My helmet smacked the trunk and one of my skis smacked my dad’s shoulder.
    You all right? he said.
    I guess, I said.
    He clicked off my skis. When he stood up his head was just below the top of the well.
    I’m going to throw you out, he said.
    He grabbed my waist. Hoisted me onto his shoulders. Inter-locked his hands in my hands and straightened his arms as I straightened mine.
    Put your boots on my shoulders, he said.
    I lifted my knees and steadied the boots onto his shoulders. He moved forward and I sprang over the top of the well. I landed facefirst then crawled away from the well.
    My skis came flying out next. Then my dad’s head appeared. He wedged one boot and one hand against the trunk and the tip of the other boot and the other hand into the snow wall—spread like a starburst. His arm shot up and he grabbed a limb and snow ruptured from the pines and caked his head. He twisted, pushing both boots off the trunk to dive. He landed next to me.
    He shook his head like Sunny coming out of the ocean. He lifted his goggles.
    That was gnarly, Ollestad.
    I know.
    How ’bout that powder?
    I was looking at the tree well and in that moment the bliss of the powder was difficult to enjoy. Then I noticed him staring at me. His eyes beamed like a golden sun cutting through the snowstorm and the high seeped back in.
    He opened his hand and I took it and he pulled me upright.
    We’ll head down that valley, he said. Could be some good skiing down there, Boy Wonder.

CHAPTER 11
    I ROSE FROM my dad’s cold limp body. Everything appeared to have slowed down. Each snowflake was separate and unique from the other. The plane debris creaked a specific timbre with every gust. The fog swarmed in discrete braids of vapor.
    I crouched on all fours like a wolf or some sort of animal that is used to living in these mountains. I swiveled my neck up and down, eyes tracking the geography of the funnel. I could smell the snow and distinguish the wind in another chute from the wind roaring in this chute. As if wearing ski goggles, I was able to delineate the contours in the snow, no longer a shapeless white mass that I would have to touch in order to discern the changes in texture and pitch.
    My mind stopped darting from one thought to the next. No longer debated whether or not the punishing storm would finally win, whether or not I would lose my grip on the ice, or ifSandra was right or wrong about my dad. My mind sealed itself off from everything but the immediate geography.
    I turned away from my dad and stared into the blizzard. Far across the chute a white airplane wing, previously camouflaged by the gray fog blending with the white snow, seemed easily distinguishable, as if suddenly my eyes could cut through the flat, milky light. The wing was lodged against the base of a big tree trunk. The snow was flatter there, having gathered behind the trunk.
    I moved toward it, one hand then foot at a time, scaling laterally out of the funnel. The wind gathered razors of ice off the tree limbs and lashed my face. Upslope a few feet the wind had chafed