This Is How It Really Sounds (48 page)

“Dad! Please don't!”

The snow had quickened and the air was buzzing with particles of white so close in color to the sky that the world seemed swarming and alive. It would clear, then it would snow again, the little white disk of sun would sail away, and it would snow all night. It would snow the next day, burying his tracks, burying his deeds, burying his life.

“Fuck it,” he said, and with a quick little jump turn he pointed his skis downward into the chute and pushed off.

Nearly instantly the boards sank deeply into the white dust, then surfaced again as he picked up speed. He pointed them straight down then twitched his hips to bring them sideways, and felt the friction slowing him just a bit as he came to the throat of the chute. He felt an instant of panic in his stomach as he sped up toward the two rock walls, but he overcame it and he knew he was going straight in, perfectly lined up. He longed for the chute, leaned into it. He felt himself falling, his skis barely touching the snow and then not touching it at all, dropping like a sparrow between the jagged stone buttresses, in perfect silence because the world of noise didn't exist any longer, it was only the world of snow and stone and frozen air, the rock on either side, the subtle sideways leaning of his body in space, no way to correct it, his shoulder moving closer and closer to the face that would spin him around and break him into pieces, and just as he heard the nylon on his arm begin to rasp against the stone, he was out of it, flying unobstructed through the open air, then blending into the first landing with only ten feet of slope left to recover his balance and set up his next takeoff. His left ski hit first and he forced his body upright, sank his weight down, and used up his landing zone in a fraction of a second. Then the ground disappeared again and he was in that last big drop, falling, falling, tucking up his legs beneath him as he dropped. Closer and closer to the steep slope below him, and then, as he reached the white surface he extended out again, absorbing the blurry impact of gravity with his thighs, melding into the deep, feathery surface, a surface so light and steep that at first it was barely distinguishable from the air. He kept his line straight down the mountain as a blinding explosion of snow came up into his face, and he smiled at the joyful familiarity of the sensation, alone there, under the chute. He heard the compressed-air sound of his own slough thumping off the cliff right behind him, and he darted a quick glance over his shoulder.

He knew immediately that something very bad had happened. Just behind him, the surface of the snow was shattering like a pane of glass. A sickness reached up from the pit of his stomach and tried to grab his throat, but he let it pass and kept his skis pointed straight down. It was going to be a race, if he was lucky. He tucked and put his poles under his arms.

The air began to whiten as the powder blast caught up with him. Suddenly his speed seemed weirdly slow, as if some strange relativity had taken hold. The entire mountain was sliding behind him, liquefied into a boiling field of molten snow. Thick slabs and ice boulders jumbled just above his head, bouncing like coffee beans in the top of a grinder, then everything disappeared into a colorless world of mist. There was no mountain, there was no time, there was no up or down. It was like being in pitch dark, but it was a choking pitch white, its tiny crystals swirling into his nose and mouth, instantly coating his goggles.

He couldn't turn. If he turned, the seething mass would suck him in and crush him like a grape. He had to reach the run-out at the bottom of the bowl, where the slope flattened and the furious wave of frozen rubble would slow and spread. He thought briefly of his son, above, watching, felt a flicker of regret, then pushed it away and braced himself against the chaotic world that raged around him. Ground and air had become a hissing, thumping, blinding smoke of pure motion. It was all by feel now.

He reached up and gave one lens of his goggles a quick swipe with the back of his hand. To his amazement, he could see something ahead. The air was slightly clearer, which meant he was getting ahead of it, but just as he thought that, the ground beneath suddenly slowed and began to shift. He no longer had any speed, because the field of snow he stood on was itself sliding, accelerating down the mountain. The slope had turned to churning boulders that he desperately poked and pushed with his poles in a bid to keep his balance. The front edge of the avalanche was only some fifteen feet ahead. It was all about staying on his feet now. If he stayed up, he might live.

And then, in a horrifying instant, he felt the ground drop away beneath his left ski, and he went pitching to the side, riding the roaring mass with his head downhill of his body. He let go of his poles and began to flail in the snow. People talked about swimming in an avalanche, but there was no swimming in this. Around him he could see ice blocks the size of garbage cans and sofas, bounding down the hill beside him, rolling and leaping end over end with a crazed freedom, and mattress-sized rafts of frozen snow vibrating along. He felt one of his feet release from the ski, and he watched the red tip of it rise up from the mass and then slide along on top. He was sinking. His legs were buried now, and he kept trying to push his upper body out of the snow, but it kept sinking lower, even though the snow was moving more slowly. He was in up to the waist, his head still downhill, then up to the chest, and though the mass below him had stopped, there was still snow moving down the mountain from above, and he felt it closing over his head, deeper and deeper. The world had turned a dark gray. It was almost done now; the snow was beginning to set up, and once it did, it would be like concrete. He took one last gulp of air and expanded his lungs. In one final gesture of desperation or defiance he convulsed his entire body toward the surface, pushing downward with his arms with all his strength, and his head rose one last time three inches above the surface of the snow and stopped. The world was locked into a raw, broken silence.

His arms were pinned downward in the snow and his entire body was gripped as tightly as if he was a fist in cast iron. He was sideways to the slope, and a large boulder of snow sat on his chest, compressing it so tightly that he could only take shallow, suffocating breaths, as if he'd just sprinted a hundred yards and was being held in a bear hug. But it was air, welcome and cool. He was going to get another chance.

Then he thought of Jarrod and the boys up there, and the dread welled up inside him. He'd panicked when Guy had gotten caught; he'd jumped onto the bed of the avalanche and almost been killed himself. They might do that. Or there might have been a sympathetic avalanche that reached all the way to the ridge and sucked the boys down with it, and in that case there'd be no rescue, just five men dying in the cold, broken or smothered or fading out from hypothermia. With that thought, he felt a remorse that nearly made him sick to his stomach.
Jarrod!
He tried to call out but he couldn't muster enough breath, and he heard his voice come out in a muffled gasp. There was only silence. He'd come up here to save his son and instead he'd let everything get fucked up beyond recognition. Like before: tried to be the big man and just wrecked it all! Lost his money.
Lost his son!
His goggles had been ripped from his face, and now the little plugs of snow in his eye sockets were melting and running down his face. He strained to catch sight of the boys, but he was locked in place, and his field of vision was nearly completely blocked by the frozen debris that pinned him. He didn't know how to pray or who to pray to, but he tried to cut some sort of deal, offering things of little value in exchange for everything that mattered.

Some time passed. The snow that had been pushed beneath his coat began to burn his ribs, then to chill them. He thought he heard somebody shouting, but he couldn't make out what they were saying. Then there was silence again. A few seconds later, he saw his son picking his way carefully down the bed of the avalanche on his snowboard, below the chute, and he tried uselessly to call out to him. He lost sight of him behind the debris piled up around his head, heard him yell, “I've got a signal!” then his footsteps scuffling over the debris.

Jarrod's head appeared in the air above his face. “Dad! Dad! Are you hurt?”

“I'm okay,” he said. He heard it come out like a whisper, with barely any breath behind it.

Jarrod turned and yelled to summon the others, then slipped his pack off and started taking out his shovel. He was kneeling beside his father. “Hold on. I'm getting you out of there.”

He could read a lot in that voice. It was the voice of his son trying to be brave, trying to be a man, but he could sense the terror and the anguish. He wanted to hold him, to reassure him. “I'm not hurt,” he gasped. “Just get that thing off my chest.”

His son had taken his goggles off, and his father could see the turbulent expression on his face. His eyes were wet and his voice was filled with pain. “Why, Dad?
Why?
”

“I don't know. I really don't.” Harry could feel the snow melting down his cheeks, and he realized his son would think he was crying. “I'm sorry.”

Jimmie's face suddenly appeared over Jarrod's shoulder. He seemed to assess the situation instantly, and he put his arm across his friend's shoulders and squeezed. “Jarrod, man, it's all right. Your dad's okay.” At this Jarrod lost all control and began to sob. “Let it out, man. It's okay. That scared the shit out of me, too.” He turned back to Harry's head poking out of the snow. “Mr. Harrington, you are one crazy dude!” He took hold of Jarrod's shovel and offered it to him. “Here. Let's get your dad out of there.”

They had him out in less than two minutes. Jarrod said nothing, while the others concentrated on the details of digging or looked for his skis. One had escaped the avalanche and gone down the slope another two hundred yards, and TJ went after it. The other was found through luck: the top six inches were sticking upright through the snow. They never found the poles.

It was just as well, Harry thought. His shoulder was pretty tweaked. The entire bowl had gone: the valley floor was a jumble of shards and boulders for hundreds of yards, an impassable debris field they would have to skirt.

There was silence as they pulled their gear together for the ski out. Snowboards were disassembled into skis again, and skins were stuck back onto their bases for traction. He couldn't separate his skins from each other because of his shoulder, and TJ offered to do it for him. As they readied their gear they would look up at the massive avalanche around them and study it, imagining themselves in its grip, awed at its power. Two-foot-wide trees had been snapped off at the snow line, while ice boulders the size of pickup trucks stood like primitive obelisks hundreds of yards across the valley floor.

“I can't believe you skied out of that,” Jimmie offered at last.

“
Almost
skied out of it,” Harry answered.

They headed out across the lower part of the bowl, eyeing the slopes above them with a mixture of reverence and fear. It was still snowing. There were still great overhanging cornices capable of breaking loose and thundering down on them. TJ took the lead and Harry followed without his poles. He was weak, and his shoulder hurt him. He was trying not to shake. Not much of a hero now, he guessed. He'd come up here to protect his son, to set a good example, and instead he'd made a complete ass of himself. The story would spread about what an idiot he was, how they'd had to dig him out. Humiliating. And his wife; that was going to be a whole other problem. He'd have to ask Jarrod to let him be the one to tell her.

They got to where the high valley fell downward back toward the trailhead, and they posted up at a safe spot to transition their gear. Skins came off and snowboards came back together. Poles were collapsed and stowed. Jimmy decided to smoke another cigarette, and they all stood looking out across the whitened fuzzy space toward the bowl and the chute he had run. No Name was barely visible through the buzzing air, and he watched as the clouds closed down over it. He knew he had to say something.

“Thanks for digging me out, guys. I'd still be lying there if it wasn't for you.”

“Don't mention it, Mr. Harrington,” Jimmie said. “I know it'd work the other way around, too.”

“It would. But this time it worked this way.”

TJ said, “It never would have happened if we hadn't come out here.”

“He's right,” Jimmie said. “This was my fault.”

“Yeah, well … we were all a little bit stupid today. But I set a piss-poor example of how to be a man, and I'm sorry for that.”

The boys all looked at him. Jarrod was poking the snow beside his ski with his pole, leaving little circles with dark blue holes in the middle.

Jimmie said, “You
crushed
No Name! And then you rode out a fifty-year avalanche event! I wouldn't call that a piss-poor example; I'd call it freaking
hero
!”

He suspected Jimmie was just trying to make him feel better, and for the first time he felt genuine affection for his son's friend. But having done something so reckless and gotten away with it, he had the sense that he'd just signed Jimmie's death warrant. He knew it wouldn't be long before someone else worked up the nerve to try that chute, and someone was going to get hurt.

“Nothing ‘hero' about wrecking your family trying to prove something.” But that wasn't it, he thought. That wasn't what he needed to tell them. That was only part of it. He struggled for the words.

“In a million years, I wouldn't run that chute again. It's a squirrelly, nasty little chute and there's no margin of error. Maybe you could do it, or maybe that particular day you clip your ski on the way in, or you hit a little patch of glaze right at the turn, and then you're fucked. Your friends have to try to save you and somebody has to pay to medevac you out of there, or do body recovery, and the bottom line is, it's not really worth doing in the first place. You can't see anything; you can't style it. There's no joy in it, except to brag that you did it—”