“Still an asshole.”
“That’s my father’s brother,” Rob said. “Same gene pool. Same personality pool. The war hero in my dad still can’t forgive me for being 4-F. Look. Put your gear in the cab and climb on board. I’ll help March up.”
“Just keep your hands where I can see them,” Mike said.
Minutes passed as they rode the Cat around the base of the mountain, and Rob told March every stupid when-Mike-and-I-were-kids story he could muster up: the time they stole penny candy from the neighborhood market, were picked up by a squad car and brought home with sirens blaring; a Sunday when they put Milk of Magnesia in their grandmother’s famous butter cake; how loud Mike had screamed the day their grandfather chopped the head off a chicken and the headless bird came right at him; and the day they were fishing for snapping turtles and were cornered by their grandfather’s prized bull, an animal Rob swore was the size of Godzilla.
Mike tossed out some terrible Rob-tormenting-his-younger-sister stories, until, shaking her head, March said, “You both have no idea how glad I am I never had any brothers.”
The Cat took a sharp turn and easily rumbled down through the trees and into a clearing where there was a short steep run with a rope tow, chained off with a “Closed” sign. Mike’s cousin killed the engine and hopped down. “Here, pretty baby. Jump into my arms and run off with me. Leave this weird geek. I swear I’ll be sweet to you.”
“Sweet like you were when you locked your poor sister in that trunk.” March jumped down on her own and gave Rob a quick pat on the shoulder. “Thanks, but I don’t think so.”
“Don’t think I’m terrible. She only cried for an hour. Hell, I couldn’t sit down for days.” He raised his hand to Mike. “Give me a minute. I’ll unlock that chain and start the rope tow. Then the run’s all yours.”
Mike dropped the bags. “I brought three boards. You staying?”
Rob turned around, walking backwards and grinning. “Absolutely.”
“What boards?” March looked over his shoulder as Mike dug through the gear, grabbed his goggles, and pulled on his ski gloves. She leaned closer. “Are you going to tell me what we’re doing now?”
“No.” He unzipped a long ski bag and pulled out three of the latest and best skiboards he’d made in his garage during the summer. The skiboards, wide and formed like a skateboard without the skates, had foot plates and buckled straps to hold regular leather snow boots, and he’d crafted the edges of each board as close as he could to the metal edges on his Rossignol skis.
“Mike?” March asked, frowning.
He slung a board over his shoulder. “We’ll show you. Watch us.” When she started to argue he added, “Stay here, woman, and watch.”
She saluted him irreverently, then gave him the finger.
The rope tow was glacier-slow and seemed to take forever to get to the top of the run. But once there and poised at its crest, a wide chute of white before him, the air like fresh laundry, the sun gleaming almost too white on the powder below, Mike adjusted his goggles and looked over at Rob. “Ten bucks says it takes us twenty passes to the bottom, and you fall first.”
“You’re on.” Rob pulled down his own goggles and they took off a heartbeat apart.
The snow was perfect, the new board design much improved, and better than his skis in deep powder, which showered up and over them. It was something to be on the mountain again. He shouted out, unable to keep his excitement inside, and shook his fists, crossing Rob twice and edging ahead down the run.
The new board turned more easily, cut well, and gave him more control than on these same slopes last spring, when he’d ridden so often his old board felt like skiing on a cloud, a natural extension, floating on the snow, almost like flying.
Years ago, for only a short time, there had been a ride at Disneyland called the Flying Saucers. Inside a huge circular pit in Tomorrowland, the saucers were big, flat, round and rubber. They hovered off the ground just a few inches and could race across the pit when you leaned into the direction you wanted to fly. That is, if you had a clear path. Without one, you bounced off the other saucers like buoyant bumper cars.
That one summer trip, he and Brad had spent half the day and into the night chasing each other around the pit and crashing into each other and the walls, bouncing away, and really flying. It had been the best ride at Disneyland. A true E-ticket, though the park hadn’t been using ticket books much anymore. When the amusement park first opened, they sold ticket booklets for their rides and each ticket was A,B,C,D,E—E being the best rides in the park and the fewest tickets. That was how he felt on this hill, at this moment, on this board. All he had to do was lean into the direction he wanted to fly. His newest skiboard was an E-ticket.
He cut across the hill and flip-turned, then flew past his cousin. Rob tried the same maneuver and went down. “Ten bucks!” Mike hollered as he passed him, whipped down to the bottom and skidded to a stop right in front of March. Snow coated his lenses and he could only see part of her smile, so he raised his goggles and kissed her before she could speak, then lifted her off the ground, spinning around. “God…It doesn’t get any better than this.”
“Yes, it does. I need to be on that hill with you. Let’s go.” She picked up the other board and ran toward the tow ahead of him.
“March, wait!”
But all too fast she was on the board, hanging onto the rope and heading up the hill. About twenty feet up, he said, “Get off now and we’ll take a short test run first.”
“No guts, no glory!”
“Come on. Get off.”
She looked back at him, probably planning to flip him off again, but she lost her balance and slipped off the rope, swearing. So he stepped off and helped her up. “Let me tell you what to do.”
“There’s a man for you, always wanting to tell women what to do.” For just a moment she looked irritated.
“I don’t want to bring you home with a broken leg, sunshine.”
“I’ve been skiing since I was three.”
“This is different than skiing. More like a skateboard. Have you ever ridden one?”
“Yes.” But the way she said it told him March and a skateboard weren’t close friends. Her stance was unyielding. “So come on, big man. Tell me what to do. Time’s a-wasting.”
“I’m waiting for you to tell me what happened on the skateboard.”
“This snow is a lot softer than concrete.”
“Break anything?”
“Nothing important.” She turned and looked up the hill.
“I have all day.”
“Okay, okay. I’m right-handed, and I only wore a cast on my left wrist for six weeks. I can do this. Really. I can.” Then she relaxed long enough for him to tell her how to turn and most important: to dig in her heels to stop.
“You should be good at that,” he said.
“Funny man.” She patted him on the cheek.
“I’ll go first. You can follow, but not until after I stop at the bottom. Agreed?”
“Yes. Yes. Yes…come on.”
“Watch me and don’t go until I tell you. Got it?”
“Yes, master.”
Laughing, he took off down the short, flatter section of the run, stopped and turned back toward her.
“Can I go now, master? Please? Please?”
“Someday your mouth is going to get you in deep trouble.”
“It