Книга - Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival

Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival
Norman Ollestad


Set in the aftermath of a harrowing plane crash, this is the true story of one young boy’s fight for survival in nature’s most treacherous conditions.Eleven-year-old Norman Ollestad was a gifted skier. After winning the 1979 Southern California Slalom Skiing Championship, his father chartered a small plane to fly Norman home, so that his son could collect his trophy and train with his team.Moments later the Cessna, engulfed in a blizzard, crashed into the San Gabriel Mountains and was left suspended at 8,000 feet. Norman's father, his coach and his hero, was dead.Climbing out of the wreckage, young Norman begins a gruelling descent, thousands of feet down an icy mountain. Blinded by heavy snow and faced with a raging wind and below-freezing temperatures, he attempts to guide his father's injured girlfriend to safety. Kept alive by sheer will, Norman summons everything his father taught him about determination and courage to save his own life.Powerful, inspiring and utterly compelling, this is a unique and unforgettable memoir.







This memoir tells the true story of my childhood, based on my memories, my interviews with family and friends, and my research. Some names have been changed.




CRAZY FOR THE STORM

NORMAN OLLESTAD


















My father craved the weightless glide. He chased hurricanes and blizzards to touch the bliss of riding mighty waves and deep powder snow. An insatiable spirit, he was crazy for the storm. And it saved my life. This book is for my father and for my son.







I am harnessed in a canvas papoose strapped to my dad’s back. It’s my first birthday. I peer over his shoulder as we glide the sea. Sun glare and blue ripple together. The surfboard rail engraves the arcing wave and spits of sunflecked ocean tumble over his toes. I can fly.





















Table of Contents


Cover Page (#u7998cee5-a26a-520f-8c7f-e4b212622779)

Author Note (#u90ffc141-4160-5541-b37b-36294d25cb2f)

Title Page (#uf4240601-afef-503c-b6cf-84f684c3856e)

Dedication (#u2bbf5a66-7550-567a-aff8-5f8a2e3c5ee0)

Map (#ulink_6a192552-e473-5826-b2a5-0be32292a339)

CHAPTER 1 (#u70e786b7-da1c-5850-9149-02469a0bfe2b)

CHAPTER 2 (#ub266d770-9cd3-54fd-a2b2-696f51f82362)

CHAPTER 3 (#u744ad86e-6b86-5686-8924-8dfb4e6b78fd)

CHAPTER 4 (#u84a803a2-1b9d-50e8-9a8f-d07ebbaaca74)

CHAPTER 5 (#u8cc45bf4-d186-5d58-a2a1-b398d140c77d)

CHAPTER 6 (#u60329630-d854-5575-99b8-fc13b8d643c9)

CHAPTER 7 (#u31299aa7-89f0-573e-898d-a2845b86db4d)

CHAPTER 8 (#u2ebfbb87-a22d-5dc1-9a00-5f0d7378989d)

CHAPTER 9 (#uec2b1f54-db7c-5e6a-a00e-4b0b0cdea0bc)

CHAPTER 10 (#u05501760-655e-5582-9a4e-e1e40252f039)

CHAPTER 11 (#u26d32530-6bd5-5eb5-8d2a-7a4797e8c263)

CHAPTER 12 (#ub9399673-fc3b-589b-9a91-d77555c1b70c)

CHAPTER 13 (#ud0815797-ddf6-51cd-85d8-7704b25c5772)

CHAPTER 14 (#ua8e809d0-c66a-5266-aec5-93cc50153982)

CHAPTER 15 (#u975344c5-9ebc-54f6-999a-cd38cf1221b8)

CHAPTER 16 (#uc7067f56-d9b3-59c3-ab8e-a21063d23905)

CHAPTER 17 (#u9fa26ce6-e391-5a41-ba1c-faefab59f874)

CHAPTER 18 (#u823da961-93a9-5730-9ead-f26638e35036)

CHAPTER 19 (#u459a38f3-2fab-576f-bf06-baf47e549d14)

CHAPTER 20 (#u733c6b06-4242-512e-a191-59481ec52544)

CHAPTER 21 (#u36079da2-6eca-5412-ab46-5e5c860bdedb)

CHAPTER 22 (#u5afede5e-19c1-5df8-af45-345b3cb5573c)

CHAPTER 23 (#u36a4e659-975e-5ac2-b622-649420a7e860)

CHAPTER 24 (#u5ddf02e9-b1da-5c79-a024-b1d0e6b88dd6)

CHAPTER 25 (#ua6f7a5a8-d63f-5c60-8ce5-ac0196e1e004)

CHAPTER 26 (#u519e9c81-f328-5e04-9d5a-a07591ca0e87)

CHAPTER 27 (#u285f40b7-bdcc-524f-9f4b-145d04f55a71)

CHAPTER 28 (#u3cbccbc2-18f1-5963-a344-344a590a60d4)

CHAPTER 29 (#u06abf326-5a5b-55d8-a9d6-24a63d57922e)

CHAPTER 30 (#u3d88ff15-72ce-5750-bf9f-ba31cb48d492)

CHAPTER 31 (#u7030b373-94a5-5c88-98df-6db47ffb0224)

CHAPTER 32 (#u3a96dfc2-68df-51ad-aa76-d8b14a168f06)

CHAPTER 33 (#ue2335d5b-0e30-5901-a87a-7e415a7ada60)

CHAPTER 34 (#u5c36080c-f627-54cb-9ce1-332e57fb803a)

CHAPTER 35 (#u13ca3b84-051b-5087-95bb-32c24a556459)

CHAPTER 36 (#u4579df48-6e2a-5e67-b2eb-fe0a71d38384)

CHAPTER 37 (#u132e89ce-3589-58f9-a256-fe9aadefc586)

CHAPTER 38 (#udbc9faa0-fe75-59b0-b217-e0c46e73c3f5)

CHAPTER 39 (#u4806e786-6c2f-5831-8542-3a64b7236fa5)

EPILOGUE (#ua23c8f86-9793-5dc7-bd95-13056909422f)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS (#ud596720f-cf6e-5fc8-8da7-b41b84284cd8)

Photographic Inserts (#u17da0513-c882-5285-ad61-bfd5ba55694f)

About the Author (#u7f151f14-7667-5495-a365-57190b69616c)

Copyright (#ubddafedf-987c-57f1-93a7-1bb6b2c3794d)

About the Publisher (#ufa154cd4-1bd7-59bb-aac0-38af4bc3348b)




CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_89a342d1-2023-52c4-b203-6f8ca347be8c)


FEBRUARY 19, 1979. At seven that morning my dad, his girlfriend Sandra and I took off from Santa Monica Airport headed for the mountains of Big Bear. I had won the Southern California Slalom Skiing Championship the day before and that afternoon we drove back to Santa Monica for my hockey game. To avoid another round-trip in the car my dad had chartered a plane back to Big Bear so that I could collect my trophy and train with the ski team. My dad was forty-three. Sandra was thirty. I was eleven.

The Cessna 172 lifted and banked over Venice Beach then climbed over a cluster of buildings in Westwood and headed east. I sat in the front, headphones and all, next to pilot Rob Arnold. Rob fingered the knobs along the instrument panel that curved toward the cockpit’s ceiling. Intermittently, he rolled a large vertical dial next to his knee, the trim wheel, and the plane rocked like a seesaw before leveling off. Out the windshield, way in the distance, a dome of gray clouds covered the San Bernardino Mountains, the tops alone poking through. It was flat desert all around the cluster of peaks, and the peaks stood out of the desert as high as 10,000 feet.

I was feeling especially daring because I had just won the slalom championship and I thought about the big chutes carved into those peaks—concave slides, dropping from the top of the peaks down the faces of the mountains like deep wrinkles. I wondered if they were skiable.

Behind Rob sat my dad. He read the sports section and whistled a Willie Nelson tune that I’d heard him play on his guitar many times. I craned around to see behind my seat. Sandra was brushing out her silky dark brown hair. She’s dressed kind of fancy, I thought.

How long, Dad? I said.

He peered over the top of the newspaper.

About thirty minutes, Boy Wonder, he said. We might get a look at your championship run as we come around Mount Baldy.

Then he stuffed an apple in his mouth and folded the newspaper into a rectangle. He would fold the Racing Form the same way, watermelon dripping off his chin on one of those late August days down at the Del Mar track where the surf meets the turf. We’d leave Malibu early in the morning and drive sixty miles south to ride a few peelers off the point at Swami’s, named for the ashram crowning the headland. If there was a long lull in the waves Dad would fold his legs up on his board and sit lotus, pretending to meditate, embarrassing me in front of the other surfers. Around noon we’d head to Solana Beach, which was across the Coast Highway from the track. We’d hide our boards under the small wood bridge because they wouldn’t fit inside Dad’s ’56 Porsche, then we’d cross the highway and railroad tracks to watch the horses get saddled. When they came into the walking ring Dad would throw me on his shoulders and hand up a fistful of peanuts for lunch. Pick a horse, Boy Wonder, he’d say. Without hesitation he’d bet my horse to win. Once a long shot named Scooby Doo won by a nose and Dad gave me a hundred-dollar bill to spend however I wanted.

The mountaintops appeared higher than the plane. I stretched my neck to see over the plane’s dashboard, clasping the oversized headphones. As we approached the foothills I heard Burbank Control pass our plane onto Pomona Control. Pilot Rob told Pomona that he preferred not to go above 7,500 feet because of low freezing levels. Then a private plane radioed in, warning against flying into the Big Bear area without the proper instruments.

Did you copy that? said the control tower.

Roger, said pilot Rob.

The nose of the plane pierced the first tier of the once distant storm. A gray mist enveloped us. The cabin felt compressed with noise and we jiggled and lurched. Rob put both hands on the steering wheel, shaped like a giant W. There was no way we were going to get to see my championship run through these clouds, I thought. Not even the slopes of Baldy where my dad and I had snagged a couple great powder days last year.

Then the gravity of the other pilot’s warning interrupted my daydream.

I looked back at my dad. He gobbled down the apple core, smacking his lips with satisfaction. His sparkling blue eyes and hearty smile calmed my anxiety about the warning. His face beamed with pride for me. Winning that championship was evidence that all our hard work had finally paid off, that anything is possible, like Dad always said.

Over his shoulder a crooked limb flashed by the window. A tree? Way up here? No way. Then the world turned back to gray. It was just a trick of light.

Dad studied me. His gaze seemed to suspend us as if we didn’t need the plane—two winged men cruising a blue sky. I was about to ask how much longer it would be.

A bristle of pine needles streaked past the window behind him. A shock of green, clawing open the mist. It was snowing now. Then a spiky limb lunged at the window. An evil ugly thing that Dad was unaware of. It sucked all life from the cabin, scorching the scene like a photograph eaten by fire. Suddenly my dad’s face was blotched and deformed.

Time seemed to decelerate as if lassoed by a giant rubber band. Fog pressed against all the windows and there was no up or down, no depth at all, as if the plane were standing still, a toy hanging from a string. The pilot reached down with one hand and spun the knee-high trim wheel. I wanted him to spin the dial faster—we’ll climb faster, away from the trees. But he abandoned the trim wheel and steered the giant W with both hands, jerking us side to side. What about that dial? Should I spin it for him? A branch out the window caught my eye.

Watch out! I yelled, curling my four-foot-nine, seventy-five-pound body up tight.

The wing clipped a tree, sending a thud into my spine, and the plane twisted ass-backwards. We bounced like a pinball off two more trees—metal ripping, the engine revving. I was fixated on the trim wheel. Too late to spin it now….

We slammed into Ontario Peak, 8,693 feet high. The plane broke apart, flinging chunks of debris across the rugged north face and hurling our bodies into an icy chute.

We were sprawled amongst the wreckage. Our bodies teetered on the 45-degree pitch threatening to plunge us into an unknown freefall. Exposed to freezing snow and wind, we dangled 250 feet from the top—the distance between life and death.




CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_2fc017a2-cf5b-50a9-b467-44f7211104db)


THE SUMMER BEFORE the crash my grandmother’s washing machine broke. Grandma and Grandpa Ollestad had retired to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and the inflated prices for appliances in Guadalajara or Mexico City would have strained their budget. Also, renting a truck and picking up a new machine themselves was a major ordeal in those days. So my dad decided he would go to Sears, buy a new washer and haul it down to Vallarta himself. He would borrow Cousin Denis’s black Ford pickup, cross the border in San Diego and cruise the Baja Peninsula highway all the way to La Paz. He’d take the ferry across the Sea of Cortez to Mazatlán, which was mainland Mexico, then head farther south through the deep jungles, hitting as many of the rumored surf spots as he could before reaching Vallarta.

Hearing this news made me stiffen with fear. I went silent when my mom explained it all to me on our way home from summer school, where she taught second grade and I was preparing for sixth. She didn’t say anything about me having to go but it was in the air—looming—more threatening than if it were a certainty. The idea of baking inside that pickup truck for three or four days and hunting for surf—and worse, finding it and having to paddle out in big waves and float alone out there with just my dad in the vast sea—was not appealing at all. He would be focused on the surf and I would be left to fend for myself. I envisioned my body crushing under the lip of a wave, tossing around, clawing upward, gagging for air.

Mom’s car turned onto the Pacific Coast Highway and I heard the ocean shushing. I was staring at my blue Vans, listening to the Beatles on the eight-track, and I felt carsick and had to look out the window.

We arrived at my mom’s house on Topanga Beach, the southern-most cove in Malibu. The homes were built right on the sand, slapdashed together and teetering at all angles as if shelter were an afterthought, second to the essential need of being on the beach. My dad used to live there also. When I was three he moved across the highway into a cabin on the edge of Topanga Canyon. By the time I was ten I had gathered various tidbits of information, forming a sketchy portrait of what broke up my parents.

Mom complained that sometimes the phone would ring in the middle of the night and Dad would leave without a word and return with no explanation. Mom knew it had to do with Grandpa Ollestad or Uncle Joe, my dad’s half brother, who always needed Dad to save their ass, but Dad wouldn’t talk about it. When Mom protested her exclusion from certain family secrets, my dad just shrugged it off. He would go surfing or simply walk away if my mom persisted. The final straw had been when my dad secretly loaned Uncle Joe money from Mom and Dad’s joint savings account and then refused to tell my mom why. Right after this incident a French guy named Jacques came to visit. He was a friend of a friend of Dad’s. My dad had just gone through major knee surgery and could barely move around, so he loaned Jacques a surfboard and called out instructions from the porch, using his crutch to guide Jacques to the takeoff spot. Dad didn’t have the strength to show Jacques around Malibu, so Mom took him to Point Dume—a chain of pristine coves—and to Alice’s restaurant on the pier, and to the Getty Museum. After Jacques went back to France Dad stopped coming home at night. This lasted a couple of weeks. Then he returned for a few days, until he finally moved his stuff into the cabin across the highway.

Mom started hanging out with a guy named Nick. Right from the get-go Nick liked to mix it up, which was the opposite of my dad, who was reluctant to fight with my mom. Nick and Mom had spectacular clashes in front of everyone on the beach. It wasn’t that abnormal really—a lot of people on Topanga Beach who were married were kissing other people, fighting with their new boyfriends or girlfriends, and suddenly moving into other houses. It was an incomplete picture of what went wrong between Mom and Dad. Something was obviously broken, that’s all I knew, and was forced to accept it.

Mom parked the car in the garage and I immediately found my three-legged golden retriever Sunshine. She was waiting on the outdoor walkway that ran along the side of our house. Sunny and I ran to the porch, jumped over our beach stairs and ambled up the beach to the point—a curve of sand that came to a tip at the north end of the cove.

Two girls my age cantered their horses bareback through the waves washing along the shore. I held Sunny so she wouldn’t spook the horses. The girls lived up the canyon in the Rodeo Grounds, below where my dad lived, and as always we just waved to each other. The horses kicked up salt water onto the girls’ legs, which shimmered in the late afternoon light.

When they disappeared up the mouth of the canyon I threw Sunny’s stick into the surf. A blond dude with a long beard dressed in full Indian garb did a rain dance toward the setting sun. He reminded me of Charles Manson, who was always hanging around the beach when I was a baby, and used to serenade my aunt while she rocked me in her arms on our beach stairs.

Good thing I never went up to that commune he kept talking about, my aunt said when she told me the story.

After dinner I tried to fall asleep to the crashing waves. I read the Hardy Boys to help take my mind off the trip to Mexico. Later I woke and made a tent with my covers and played a spy game, radioing secret information to headquarters via the rusted posts of my old brass bed. Sunshine lay curled at the foot of the bed and guarded our hideout. I petted her and told her about how I hated having to surf, hating not being able to play all weekend like the kids in the Pacific Palisades.

I often complained to my dad about not living in a neighborhood. He told me that one day I’d realize how lucky I was living right on the beach, and that since Eleanor (my unofficial godmother) lived in the Palisades and I got to stay there sometimes, I was doubly lucky.

But she doesn’t have a pool, I said, and Dad rebutted that I had the biggest pool in the world right in my own front yard.

Before I was born my mom used to work at Eleanor’s nursery school, Hill’n Dale, and my parents became close friends with Eleanor and her husband Lee. I started going to Hill’n Dale when I was three and Eleanor immediately lavished me with attention. We have the same birthday, May 30, she liked to tell everyone. Ever since the first grade I had walked the two blocks from grammar school to Hill’n Dale, hanging out there until my mom or dad picked me up after work. All those years of seeing Eleanor practically every day made me think of her as my other mother, and I told people so.

Morning brought good news—my dad had to prepare a malpractice case with his law partner Al before leaving for Mexico so I wouldn’t have to surf this weekend, and Sandra would be joining my dad on the trip to Mexico. The odds of not having to go were now heavily in my favor. I was so dizzy with relief that I didn’t realize what Nick had in store for me until it was too late. Nick had been living with my mom for several years by now and he talked about mouthpieces and jabs and said that Charley, the only boy my age still living on the beach, was coming over. I was preoccupied, basking in a heaven devoid of Mexico and teeming with sleepovers and birthday parties and frosted cakes.

The sand was hot and white. It was August and the fog was long gone and the sun beat down. Nick and his friend Mickey drank beer and drew a circle in the sand.

That’s the boxing ring, said Nick. Don’t step outside the ring or you’ll be automatically disqualified.

Everybody said Nick looked like Paul Newman. He was taller than my dad and didn’t have broad shoulders—I had decided it was because he didn’t surf. He was different from my dad in a lot of other ways too. He would never dance at parties like my dad always did. And Nick didn’t play any instruments like my dad, or sing—stuff Dad learned to do when he was a child actor. Dad was in the classic Cheaper by the Dozen, acting in several films and TV shows through his early twenties. On a show called Sky King Dad played a mechanic, which was funny because he couldn’t fix anything, not even my bike. And I couldn’t imagine Nick running a summer cheerleading camp like my dad did. That’s how Dad met my mom—he was recruiting song girls to teach at his camp and my mom was staying with one of the song girls in an apartment in Westwood by UCLA. It was 1962. Dad had just resigned from the FBI and was working as an assistant U.S. attorney under Robert Kennedy. He and his friend Bob Barrow, who grew up near Dad in South Los Angeles, cooked up the idea of organizing a summer cheerleading camp as a way to make some extra money and meet college girls. Dad would teach the girls dance routines in the mornings before suiting up and going into the Department of Justice.

On their first date Dad took my mom to Topanga Beach. He played guitar for her and convinced her to paddle out surfing with him. They got married a year later, moving into a house on the beach.

Mickey helped Charley and me string up our boxing gloves. Mine had been acquired in a trade for my Raggedy Ann doll with a boy who was moving from the beach. This went down following a particularly tyrannical evening with Nick after which I had announced my desire to learn how to box. Then a few days later, as if to show that he was unfazed by my sudden urge to box—an obvious gesture meant to protest Nick’s drunken rages—Nick put together this little bout between Charley and me.

It’ll be good for you, Norman, he said.

While Mickey secured the knots Charley and I craned our necks to peek around the flat-topped dirt knoll on the point.

Stop leering at the naked ladies and put your mouthpieces in, said Nick.

The nude beach was just around the dirt knoll and both Charley and I quickly denied any interest in girls.

Good, said Nick. You know what’s behind those tits and asses?

Charley and I looked up at Nick, waiting with our eyes and ears wide open.

Mothers and grandmothers and brothers and sisters and cousins that you have to deal with, he said. Weddings and anniversary parties. Endless headaches.

Charley and I waited for more, but that was it.

You’ll get it one day, said Nick. Mouthpieces in?

Yeah, I said.

Good. Your mom would have a complete nervous breakdown if you lost your teeth.

Mickey was chugging down his beer. He looked back into the cove at my house where my mom was watering plants on the deck.

Okay, said Nick. Keep your hands up and keep your feet moving.

Like Muhammad Ali, I said.

Nick smiled and I could smell the beer on his breath.

Yeah, just like Ali.

Charley didn’t look nervous at all. He was two inches taller and about ten pounds heavier. We circled each other and I danced like Ali. I saw some openings between Charley’s glove and shoulder, enough room to punch him in the jaw, except my arm just lurched instead of shooting forward to punch him. Again, I tried to swing but my muscles tightened and I had to break through their resistance to throw a punch that ended up as a fly swat across Charley’s forehead. Then all of a sudden he came at me. I put my hands up and he hit me in the stomach and I lost my breath and turned sideways and he hit me in the nose. A stinger went down my body to my feet. It wasn’t as simple as pain. It was liquid and it was cool like the ethyl alcohol that my dad used to wash out his ears after surfing. My eyes watered and instantly I was scared shitless. I looked around for help and Nick was squinting at me, lips pursed.

Ready to quit? he said.

I nodded. Charley threw up his arms in victory.

I put out my hands for Nick to unlace my gloves and he rubbed his forehead and sighed and put down his beer. Charley moved with a confident swagger and Mickey complimented him on his toughness, and that brought to mind my crying over my Raggedy Ann doll the night after I made the trade. I had wanted it back. It was the only toy left from when my parents lived in the same house. But it was too late—the boy and my doll were already in another city.

Charley got his gloves off first and said he was going skateboarding with Trafton and Shane and a few of the other legends on the beach. They were going up to Coastline where the pavement was new and the streets were wide and steep and rolled on forever.

Your mom specifically forbids that, Norman, interrupted Nick before I could make my plea to tag along with Charley.

I looked at him and I felt my face turn red and my chin quiver.

It’s too dangerous, he added.

I touched my nose and it was sore and he seemed pleased that it didn’t make sense—allowing me to box but not go skateboarding.

Life is a long series of readjustments, he said, patting me on the back as if to soften the unfairness. Better to get used to it now, Norman, he added.

Nick and Mickey went ahead of us, carrying the gloves and mouthpieces so that we wouldn’t lose them. I followed Charley to his house near the point.

You can come along if you want to, he said.

I didn’t need his approval, I knew all those guys too, but I pretended to be grateful.




CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_91260ae2-9dfd-5b66-a010-18d94f6df4d4)


NEAR THE TOP of Ontario Peak I woke up. Feathers rocked from the sky and coated my face. I had been dreaming but could not remember the dream. Were Dad and I just gliding side by side down a powder run?

Wind rustled through the spruce needles, so pure and uncluttered that I wondered if I was still asleep. I was kinked over and a section of the instrument panel crossed the foreground. One corner of the panel sunk into fog like an upended ship. A few feet beyond it was a big tree trunk. It crossed the other way, making an X with the panel. It was impossible to know where the horizon line was and my eyes strained to orient myself. Then the fog thinned like a flock of birds lifting and one of the airplane wings was stuck into the tree trunk. All these weird mashed-together pictures did not add up to anything that made sense. Chaotic swirls of snow fell sideways and back upward then disappeared behind a whitewash of incoming fog.

I tried to breathe but couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. My stomach was choked off by my seat belt, which strapped me into the seat. I called for my dad.

I can’t breathe, I bellowed. Dad I can’t breathe!

Pinned on my side by my seat, I couldn’t turn around to check on my dad and Sandra in the back. I went in and out of consciousness—like sinking into a murk of water and then suddenly rising to the top only to drop into the murk again. The whole thing is just a nightmare, I decided. A nonsense dream. Can’t wake up though.

I noticed something beyond the shattered cockpit—the pilot seemed sprawled out as if diving backward and there appeared to be a bloody cavity where his nose should have been. A reef of fog swallowed him before I could be sure.

I tried to breathe again. Just a speck of oxygen. My hand fumbled for the seat belt buckle and my blue mid-top Vans squeaked against the snow. The buckle released and my lungs burned with cold air. Dad will fix this, I told myself. He’ll turn everything right side up again.

I felt myself winding down, an engine sputtering. My head was light, eyes blurry. I had no idea where I was. Eyes began to close and I surrendered.




CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_790572cc-1b6a-546d-ac73-c71f0d83eeea)


WHEN CHARLEY AND I loaded into the VW bus it was filled with smoke from the joints going around. I took a puff, careful not to inhale too deep, and Big Fowler had to jump out so that the bus could make it up the beach access road to the Coast Highway. A mile south we turned off the highway past the Getty Museum. Shane floored it so we could climb to the top of the hill, then one of the girls would drive the bus down to where Coastline crossed another street and went uphill—the run-out.

Barefoot and shirtless, hair in ponytails, the gang spilled out of the sliding bus door. Polyurethane wheels were fairly new, replacing the old clay ones, and I was awed by the swooping high-speed S-turns the gang carved down the center of the street. Charley and I watched until the succession of dangled arms disappeared around the first bend.

All that remained was the black slope. Charley didn’t seem intimidated and stepped right onto his board and took off. I had never skated anything this steep and I didn’t want to be all alone up there. I rolled forward, kept my turns long and made sure to curve back up the hill before starting the next turn. Charley went around the bend in a tuck and I worried that he would finish way before me and that everyone would be watching as I dribbled in last.

I sucked up my fear and pointed my board down the center of the street. In an instant I was flying. As I came around the bend I could feel the board start to wobble. I shot out of the turn and kept leaning up into the hill, trying to eat up some of the speed. The wheels sent violent quivers into the trucks—the metal axle below the skateboard deck—and up through the deck into my legs and my legs vibrated like loose exhaust pipes. Hold on, I told myself. The sidewalk was closing in and I had to start the next turn. I fought the whipping motion and shifted my weight to my toes and suddenly the wheels stuck and the board booted me into the air. I landed on my left hip, bouncing twice before my skin gripped the pavement and refused to let go. I put my hand down and my elbow came with it, flipping me over. When I finally stopped my back and ass were scraped raw too.

The air stung the whole left side of my body and the ground hurt against my backside. My hand burned and my hip throbbed but all I cared about was if anybody had seen me eat it. I looked up—Charley was already around the next turn.

My skateboard was in a rosebush and I plucked it out, scratching up my other hand. I threw down the board and pushed off, making big round turns for the remaining quarter mile. When I reached the run-out Charley was sitting against the bus with all the guys and the girls with the flowers in their hair.

What happened? said Charley.

Looks like Norm wiped out, said Trafton.

I nodded and pulled my trunks off my hip to show them my war wound. It was as red as a raspberry and bloody and the skin surrounding it was smeared black.

Check out that road tattoo, said Shane.

Everybody laughed and my bravado shrank.

You must’ve been hauling fucking ass, said Trafton.

I shrugged.

Way to shred, said Trafton.

Thanks, I said.

I didn’t have to look at Charley or anybody else—I knew I had their respect now. I pulled up my trunks and picked up my board. Charley offered me a sip of beer and I said no.

My mom was standing outside our garage, so Shane pulled the bus over at the top of the access road and I slipped out amongst a group of boys and right through someone’s gate. The gang climbed back into the bus and I heard it sputter away. I hoped nobody was home because I didn’t really know these people too well, only that a boy who visited one weekend a month stayed here with his father. I decided to walk down the stairs around the side of the house in order to make my way back home via the beach.

The stairs dropped past a window and I saw the boy’s father below on a bed. He was between a woman’s legs fucking her. I stared straight down on them and the woman turned her head side to side and her cheeks were pink and when she moaned a ripple of excitement washed down the center of my body. I could never share this with Dad. He’d tease me if he knew I liked girls. So would all his friends.

The boy’s father thrust hard into the woman and she cried out and I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Then he rested down on top of her. My nose was inches from the glass and the glass was steamed up from my breath. I stepped back from the window and there was a wet spot on it the size of my face.

I dreamed about her pink cheeks as I wandered down by the mossy rocks exposed at low tide. To the south near the bottom of the cove Bob Barrow, Beer-Can Larry, and Nick’s brother Vincent were hunched around the poker table on Barrow’s porch. I heard some scratchy noises next to me and turned. Music echoed from the yellow house where all the best surfers lived. They called that house the yellow submarine. Nick used to live there before he moved in with my mom. I was shocked when I found out that he didn’t surf. Trafton and Clyde appeared on the upper deck with their electric guitars. They stood stiff-legged and rehearsed bluesy riffs.

A woman with crow-black hair drifted down the beach as if carried by the wind. She fluttered to the foot of the yellow house and lay on the sandbank formed by the waves at high tide. She gazed up at Clyde and Trafton stroking their guitars. I ambled off the rocks onto the wet sand, drawn to her. She rolled onto her back and looked out at the ocean and bobbed her head to the jam. I kneeled down and dug a hole in the sand and stole glances up her miniskirt. Her body was magnetic, which seemed natural enough, but I was unsure of what to do with the excitement coursing through me.

At first I didn’t notice her watching me. It seemed like a long process of me tearing my eyes away before I noticed her there, looking at me. She studied me as if I had not been looking up her skirt but up some other woman’s skirt, detached, like she was studying a photograph of this scene. She didn’t seem to care that I was staring at her private area. Like the nude sunbathers around the point didn’t care whenever Charley and I meandered up there.

I picked up my skateboard and walked home. I scurried over the ivy growing out of the sand in front of our porch. I heard a door slide open and saw my mom step onto the side walkway. It was shaded in there. Her silhouette moved around in the darkness and then went back inside. I made a run for the walkway. Once under it I hid my skateboard on the lower shelf behind the dog and cat food. I walked to the sliding glass door and stepped inside.

My mom’s torso was curving out from the laundry room doorway. She leaned back and looked at me.

Where have you been, Norman?

Down the beach.

Without Sunshine? she said.

Sunny came out from under the kitchen table, tail wagging and wiggling as if she hadn’t seen me in years. I kneeled down and petted her and kissed her snout.

You’re lying, said my mom.

What are you talking about?

You were skateboarding. Your board was gone.

I don’t keep it there anymore because Dad keeps dinging the surfboards on it.

I ducked into my room, which was right off the kitchen. I shut the door and Sunny scratched it as I whipped off my T-shirt and put on a long-sleeved shirt.

Coming out of my room I went right to the fridge, drinking from the milk bottle. My mom appeared on the other side of the fridge door.

Are you telling the truth?

Yes.

Don’t lie to my face. It makes it worse, Norman.

I’m not lying. Ask the guys. I didn’t go.

She eyed me and I shrugged.

Why are you wearing a long-sleeved shirt? she said.

I’m going up the canyon, I said.

She looked confused and sort of worried. I called to Sunny and we crossed through the kitchen into the living room, past Nick’s rocking chair from which he watched the news every night. I thought about having to watch the Watergate hearings and Nick shouting at the TV from that rocking chair with a bottle of vodka in his hand.

Sunny led the way, jumping off the step into my mom’s sunken bedroom and bounding through the opened sliding glass door onto the porch. Sunny was missing her front left leg but that didn’t stop her from leaping off the porch onto the sand.

She knew where we were headed. Topanga Canyon emptied at the point, the creek water gathering into a pond that trickled into the ocean, gushing when the winter rains came. We navigated a dirt pathway around the pond overgrown with licorice plants. The smell perfumed the air. I tore off a limb and chewed on it and tore off another and gave it to Sunny. A VW bus was still in the middle of the pond, having washed down the canyon after a big rain years ago. On a dare I once swam out there and stood on its roof.

Under the bridge it was cooler and the cars rumbled overhead. We came out the other side and the path meandered along the sandy edges of the creek. I led Sunny into the bamboo stalks and we sat down on our tattered blanket within the confines of our fort. I continued to tell Sunny a story I was writing about Murcher Kurcher, the famed detective who was looking for the Mona Lisa thief aboard a ship bound for Europe. As I spoke I wrote it down on the pad of paper I kept rolled up in an old metal thermos that I found in the canyon. At the end of my story I told Sunny that when I got older I’d have big muscles and would kick Nick’s ass if he yelled at me or bossed me or my mom around anymore. Sunny looked into my eyes. She always listened like I was the most important person on earth.





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