Life at the Speed of Us

by Heather Sappenfield

  The porcupine freaked, scrabbled around, and fell. He landed next to my face, loosing a grunt of pain and sending a white wave across me as quills pierced my cheek and one side of my nose. A stretched wail erupted from me and hung in the air. My second loud sound. It felt like a taunt.

  The porcupine’s quills, the ones not in my face, clacked gently as it waddled away. Then it was just me and pain and landscape.

  Had Mom felt this lonely? I saw her as I had a million times: her skin masking a crushed back. She couldn’t even move her head to look at me. I took her limp hand, an odd grip with my fingertips resting over her wrist’s pulse. I felt her heartbeat grow fainter, fainter, fainter. Then her eyes fluttered shut and her pulse disappeared. “Hang on, Mom! You can!” I shouted, then and now. If only I hadn’t been whining. If only she hadn’t taken her hand from the steering wheel to pat my leg in that rhythm that promised the world would be okay. Me + anyone I loved = disaster.

  Sleepiness ruled. I heard Mom humming “Blackbird,” Paul McCartney harmonizing now. I relaxed, mind reaching for her again. My future would end with my past.

  “There’s a track!” a guy shouted. “It went straight at that tree. Look! I knew that was a scream!”

  Damn. It sounded like Wash.

  “Ah, shite!”

  Figures, I thought. Of all my possible rescuers, it was Wash. Relief and guilt pressed down on me harder than the snow.

  I pretended to be unconscious and pictured the two ski patrollers as they glided up and snapped off their skis. There was radio static. A post-holing step. The swish of red Gore-Tex.

  Wash leaned over the tree well. “Briggs! It’s Sovern! Are those quills? Sov, what happened?”

  Come on, Dad, I thought and pretended to struggle for consciousness so I could see his reaction through my lashes. But he just hovered behind Wash. Hunk with a moustache, a heart sliced open, and no clue what to do. I shut my eyes as Wash radioed for a sled.

  They called Dad “Beautiful Briggs.” Even the guys. He was six foot three, cut from lifting weights for his job—always Mr. Ski Patrol—and big-screen handsome. He used to smirk at that nickname. Now it made him clamp his lips and look away. Mom had coined it, back when he’d hired her as a patroller. Ever since third grade, I’d loved imagining them on the ski lift—Dad trying to be Mr. Professional Boss while attraction drove them nuts.

  I opened my eyes a millimeter. Ice clung to Dad’s moustache as his gloves dug out my body. He was in the tree well with me, and Wash leaned over the edge, scooping out snow along my other side. Dad maneuvered around the trunk, leaning against it, and plowed back most of the heavy stuff across my middle. He stopped and looked at me. Through his goggles’ lens, his eyes narrowed, just as I realized I was still humming Mom’s song.

  “Where are you hurt?” he said.

  I barked a laugh. Hurt? It was 2/22. I’d been hemorrhaging a year. To the day.

  “Sovern,” Wash scolded.

  I couldn’t look at them. I forced my mouth to say, “Arm. Ribs.” The quills were self-explanatory.

  “The right?” Dad said.

  “Right,” I said, like whatever, and then willed my mouth shut.

  There was the bump and click of moving metal and fiberglass. Wash became framed by a third ski patrolman hauling an orange sled.

  “Backboard,” Wash said, and straps whizzed as they were pulled from their ratchets. Dad knelt and studied his knees.

  “Briggs,” Wash said.

  Dad looked up, and Wash handed down a backboard. Wash slid down beside Dad in the well. Dad burrowed an arm under my helmet and one below my butt. Wash did the same for my legs and feet, and they maneuvered the board underneath. I sucked air through my teeth at the pain. They strapped me down. The tree made lifting me out a puzzle, but they finally turned me, gloves swishing against the sled, so the third patroller had my head.

  “Hey, Sov.”

  Great. Tucker, who was twenty-two and totally gorgeous. He pulled as Dad and Wash shunted me up. They all breathed like trains. Little veils rose from their mouths and merged with the sky.

  A snowmobile’s growl echoed across the emptiness, and I imagined a patroller driving it down Last Chance, then U-turning and waiting on the groomed run for me to arrive so he could haul out my sled. Through the trees I could just see Phantom Peak in the distance, cast in twilight’s orangey-purple. I concentrated on it to push down the humiliation of this predicament. How could this be happening right now? When I was little, Mom always told me to watch for the first star and make a wish, that it would come true, and I believed her. Uh-huh. This was when she died. In fact, we were approaching the very minute of her last breath.

  Fate. Always working against me. Like that snow whirlwind? What was the probability of that? And that porcupine making me scream? Wash and Dad would have continued their sweep of this area, never knowing I was trapped here. And Mom? Laughing, patting my leg, me laughing too just as the Honda’s tires licked ice? Yet I felt relief at this rescue, and that brought bile to my mouth. How could I live when Mom did not? Each quill piercing my face grew in potency. I screamed. Against their piercing, against the throb in my arm and ribs, against the humiliation of this moment, against the ache of Mom’s death turning Dad and me to hushed cowards. Against knowing that probability meant zero because fate ruled life. I could not stop screaming.

  The men flinched back from strapping me into the sled. Wash put a hand on Dad’s arm. Agony filled Dad’s face.

  “Hurt?” I said to him, as mean as I could.

  Tucker made this raspy sound.

  “Sovern!” Wash said.

  Dad studied Phantom Peak. “I deserve it.”

  Tucker finished strapping me in. He layered a hot-pack across my chest, below the blankets and tarp, and its warmth seeped through me. Wash and Dad stepped into their skis’ bindings as Tucker strapped my snowboard along my side. The sound of two more snowmobiles bit the air, come to haul Wash, Dad, and Tucker out of this bowl too since the lifts had closed. Three patrolmen driving snow mobiles. Three here with me. Six witnesses to my shame.

  “I got her,” Wash said.

  Dad just studied that lit peak.

  Tucker shaped the tarp so it framed my face. Canvas smell swallowed me. I could see Wash only from the waist up as he took my sled’s handles, but I knew he was stepping his skis into the fall-line, that Tucker was pushing the sled from behind. We took off.

  I’d never ridden in a sled. Fine powder sprayed across the tarp’s frame like a contrail. Pines were shadows against that twilight sky. That snowfield was so smooth it was like riding on air. There was the centrifugal force of a right turn, and we passed under the yellow-black boundary ropes and back onto Last Chance.

  The snowmobiles were U-turned to face uphill, just like I’d imagined. The three ski patrollers who drove them lunged to my sled, relieving Wash. I’d have to endure being hauled up out of the bowl and then down the front side. I rolled my eyes.

  They slid me to the back of a snowmobile, folded down its hitch, and connected the sled’s handles to it. I lifted my head, and, because we were facing uphill, I could see a patroller straddle the snowmobile and start it up. Wash stepped to him and said something. The patroller’s chin dropped. Wash put a hand on his shoulder. The patroller nodded after a minute, and his gloves moved to the snowmobile’s handlebars. A flick of his wrist put it in gear, and we started the journey back.

  Which of the ski patrollers who’d visited infant me in the hospital, watched me grow up, surrounded Dad and me at Mom’s memorial, hauled me uphill now? How many of them here now had I taunted as I’d stood near lifthouses, daring them, willing them, to tell Dad about my bad behavior?

  The other two snowmobiles roared to life, and I knew they would follow. Each snowmobile could haul two people, and there were five guys, so someone would be towed behind. Probably Dad. Ever since Mom died, he
was all about being alone.

  Though the guy drove slow, my sled bucked over Last Chance’s small moguls and the quills in my cheek swayed. I gnawed my lip against the pain. We passed the spot where I’d sprayed the class. We hit the flat of the road, and the patroller accelerated up it. A snowmobile sped past, Dad towed at the end of its rope.

  Through the air’s crystalline mist, the first star winked on, but no way was I making a wish.

  2

  We reached the gondola that ferried people in heated cars with Wi-Fi from Crystal Village to the mountaintop. It arrived in the first floor of a big log lodge. Next to where the gondola arrived was a ski-patrol station. Over its door hung a white “+” sign on red background: ski patrol’s emblem. Until last year, it had always represented Mom + Dad = me. Someone unhitched my sled from the snowmobile.

  Crystal Mountain Resort was a metropolis of hurtling bodies strewn seven miles over three peaks that rose from one long ridge. It had three treeless bowls on the back and regular runs through thick forest on the front. It had one gondola from Crystal Village, plus eleven more four-person chairlifts—two of these from either end of the village. The rest of the chairlifts originated from either mid-mountain or the back bowls.

  At the top of each of the three peaks perched a lodge and a ski-patrol station. We were at the westernmost peak, called Emerald West. The middle, highest peak was called City Center and had a small lodge that housed ski patrol’s headquarters. The third peak was called Sapphire East. Tourists always expected the gondola from the center of Crystal Village to go to City Center. Mountains aren’t symmetrical, though, so it ended here, at Emerald West, and the whole ski mountain reached east of town. Every ski patrolman wore a radio, but usually those radios were spread out over the resort’s vast terrain. Now, together, they crackled in an eerie stereo. Tucker yanked his from his belt and said, “We’re at Emerald West. Ten-four.”

  All the other guys heard him, knew what his words meant, and if I hadn’t been the director’s daughter, he’d have knelt down and told me, We’re going to ski you down the front side now to an ambulance waiting at the base. The ride is about fifteen minutes. Instead, he eyed me like a horse about to shy away. I wished they could just shove me into a gondola car and send me down alone. But a sled didn’t fit.

  I heard Wash draw his skis out of the snowmobile’s rack. They blurred to the snow beside me. He stepped over them.

  “I got her, Wash.” It was Dad, though I couldn’t see him.

  Lines appeared on Wash’s cheek as the side of his mouth curved up. Tucker’s gaze flickered. Big John grinned. Of course, Big John had driven my snowmobile. How could I not have recognized a giant?

  “I’ll take caboose,” Wash said. Caboose meant he’d follow my sled. Protocol.

  A voice shot out of the radios. “Hey, Crispy here. Send updates on Sov, will you?” Crispy worked City Center. Moments later, “Ditto that.” Sarge, in Sapphire East.

  Dad moved into my vision, straight-shouldered like I hadn’t seen for a year. He lifted my sled’s handles. He glanced at me, but I looked away. He took two skating steps, and we took off. Dad at the helm, mountain closed, no skiers to avoid: we’d make this 2300-foot descent in record time. It’d become lore. All of this would, I supposed.

  More stars blinked on. I glimpsed town below, all soft golden lights, even the cars zinging along the interstate. Finally, I couldn’t avoid watching Dad. The tarp’s lip hid his legs, but that emblem on his back was front and center. The twilight translated his jacket purple, and its “+” sign glowed. His helmet was still black. I could just make out six letters across his goggles’ strap: Dargon. I corrected my reading to the brand I knew they were: Dragon. Wash followed, no doubt, and I pictured a serious expression on his usually grinning mouth. With each of the sled’s undulations, the quills yanked my cheek.

  Pines soared by. The ropes around the Pay to Race arena flew by, and I knew Dad skied onto a run called Pride. We were halfway. Record time, for sure.

  We passed a snowcat rumbling up. Through its driver’s-side window, Tara waved, her pageboy blond hair swinging forward. Sinewy even in her jaws, she’d been driving cats for as long as I could remember. Snowcats are basically tractors, with rollers behind them made for pressing snow into perfect corduroy, and Tara was the only woman driver. Second in command when it came to grooming, she was one of my idols. She’d also been one of Mom’s best friends. She was part of what I’d always thought of as my ski-patrol family. As Dad steered into her groomed track, I cringed at the thought of Tara’s reaction when she heard about this.

  My ride smoothed, and we picked up speed. I heard the four other snowcats that I knew were following her in a staggered line across the run’s width. I smelled their diesel. The facing ridgeline jutted just above the tarp’s frame.

  A splintering crack sounded.

  “Briggs, look out!” Wash shouted. “Falling tree!”

  Dad’s shoulders twisted. He threw his skis sideways to stop, and their scraping edges launched a blizzard. I smelled sap and shut my eyes as branches raked my face. Again.

  “Shite!” Wash shouted.

  Dad disappeared in a grunt of pain and the sled bucked over him. Its handles, the ones he should have held, banged down at my sides.

  “Daaaaaad!” I screamed.

  I knew Pride well. Ahead, a steep, quarter-mile face dove down the mountain till it became a gentle grade that merged with the beginner’s route. The beginner’s route wound its way through the easiest sections of all the runs on this part of the mountain. Dad no doubt planned to follow it around this steep face. Now, I jetted over Pride’s knoll, airborne—one, two, three, four, five—and my innards took flight. But the sled touched down gently beneath my head, and though I expected another crash, the front landed like a caress.

  I moved so fast the handles barely clattered, and I heard the snowcats above. Wind pressed the tarp into my chin. I could see ahead. See how Pride curved right as it gentled. But gravity would keep me hurtling straight off that edge into the pines. I tried to calculate my speed, the height of the lip, the distance I’d sail.

  I shot over the run’s groomed edge, mimicking that scream from the porcupine’s fall as I counted—one, two, three, four, five, six—and landed. Like landing in a pillow. White smothered me. I still slid, but slower, slower, slower, till my sled tapped a trunk. A trickle of snow sifted from its branches. Tears burst out—I’m talking a river of tears. They pooled along my goggles. I was too worn out to care.

  Dad appeared and kicked out of his ski’s bindings. He was leaning hard to the right with that arm pressed against his stomach, glove limp. His goggles dangled from the strap at his helmet’s back, lens cracked. Across his helmet ran an orange gash from my sled.

  “Sov? Sov! I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry. I’m so … ” He whimpered. And then he cried. He carefully lifted my goggles till they rested on my helmet, and he watched my tears slalom through those quills.

  Above, Wash was frantic on the radio. We were near the base; help would swarm us in minutes. But just then, we were two blubbering dorks. My arms were strapped down near the elbows, stuck beneath that damn tarp. I lifted my left hand, made this little nub. Dad covered it with his glove.

  3

  When I was little, our neighbors were clouds. We lived in this cabin at City Center. It was part of Dad’s job. They needed someone to trudge out pre-dawn, dip a yardstick, and phone in each night’s snowfall amount. This was 1998, before the world became addicted to websites and smart phones. A brassy-voiced woman would record the snow report, and TV, radio, and thousands of people would call the hotline. I’m not kidding. Skiing is big business. Crystal Mountain’s guest capacity is 24,000. Dad was the guy in charge of safety.

  Life in the clouds was heaven. Two chairlifts surged up to City Center from front-side and Gold Bowl, but our cabin was nestled away from them, behind a cupped hand of pine
s. It had one main room, a bedroom only an arm’s length bigger than its queen bed, and an elbow-banger of a bathroom. My white crib was in the main room. When I got sleepy, Mom would lay me down in my footie pajamas, humming “Blackbird.” I’d suck my thumb, watching, as she and Dad read or played a game or snuggled on the couch till I slept. Mom + Dad = me.

  Mornings, pre-dawn, Dad would shuffle from the bedroom and stuff on his boots. He’d come back in from measuring the snow, cold stuck to him, and lift me out, carrying me on his hip as he made that call. I’d stretch to grab the phone’s curly black cord, big in my small hand—our narrow link to the world. Things change.

  Days, Mom and I built snowmen or forts or explored nature. I’d toddle around and she’d say, “A is for avalanche. B is for bear. C is for cornice. H is for hawk. L is for lodge. P is for powder. S is for ski. T is for tree.” Like it helped.

  We had no TV. We’d cuddle on the couch, and Mom would read and read and read to me. Book after book after book. We’d practice matching sounds with letters, Mom saying, You can do it, over and over and over. Her gifts to me: a deceptive vocabulary and the patterns of stories etched in my bones. Just don’t ask me to write them down.

  Beyond that cupped hand of pines, a gliding city teemed around us. Sometimes, a friend visited while her mom skied. A couple days a week, Mom would fire up our snowmobile and we’d descend to town for music or dance class, story hour at the library, or play group. We’d haul groceries and books home in a little ski trailer.

  Mom always bought flowers. I’d sit in front of her on the snowmobile and shelter those flowers as we ascended the runs’ edges, skiers and boarders streaming down. Those blooms would color our table. I’d stand on a chair and run my fingertip along a tulip, a rose, a daisy, and feel ridiculously proud.

  Most days, Dad joined us for lunch. It always began with Mom and Dad kissing. Always kissing. Dad would bring Wash or Sarge or Crispy or Big John. Never two at once. Somebody had to work. Back then, “Uncle” came before their names, and I knew the balance of each of their knees. Wash, a bachelor always, would stay with us some nights. His snores would wake me, and I’d study his sprawled self on the couch and understand, even then, that our equation was really Mom + Dad + our ski-patrol family = me.