Odie’s arm, signaling the all clear, rose as I skated out of my waiting position, moving neither slow nor fast. That’s the tricky part in attempting a stunt that’s never been tried before. The variables are all unknowns. If you hit it too hard, you could jump as high as the chairlift cable itself and break your neck. If you didn’t hit it hard enough, however, you’d land in the minefield of tightly clustered monster moguls, a confusion of levels and angles only some Swiss champion with legs like twin pythons could ever land standing.
Me? I was what? Sixteen. Maybe five feet eight inches and at best 135 pounds, with legs like titanium toothpicks.
I’ll never really know how I did what I did, except that — well, I liked scaring myself to death. That was what life was about back then. But a certain measure of finesse was needed. Hit it hard but not too damn hard. And yeah, I had to trick my brain to initiate at the base of the zig-zag wall as though I were aiming to land straight into the oncoming chair, though it came into sight only over the very top of the jump. Beyond that I had to trust my calculations, blind.
As luck would have it, I was completely committed by the time an older woman sitting in the next oncoming chair came into view. That nausea I told you about when I was ten? That fear-laced desire? By now it was this wave of bile engorging my throat while a sucker punch of panic lightning-kicked my gut.
Skating out of my waiting position I felt like I’d surely puke and shit myself at the same instant. I’d never been so scared in my life.
Except that there was one thing that scared me even more: the idea that I was a skinny little chickenshit who didn’t have the balls to do what no else in their right mind would do. In other words, that I was just like everybody else.
That was the single most terrifying thought ever to enter my brain. And so — fighting it —there I was, specifically not glancing at Odie as I started up the face of the jump, centrifugal force gathering in my feet, weighting them as I rode up the scoop-like wall.
I suddenly became convinced I wasn’t moving fast enough, that I’d been too cautious, and so, yeah, I’d prematurely ejaculate into the many monster moguls just over the rim. I’d crack a few ribs, and reveal myself as a total chickenshit without the guts to reach out and grab destiny by the tits.
So I bent my knees deep into the natural compression of that awful scoop and sprung up with all my might just as I was clearing the edge, only to realize the lip alone had launched me all I’d need. Instantly I was up there, really fucking up there. So my fists were doing eggbeaters and I’m tucking my tails up underneath me with my tips down, trying to get my shit together while sailing out a whole helluva lot further than I’d planned.
Odie let out this orgasmic whoop, and here’s why that helped. He could see my trajectory and he whooped. You don’t whoop when the jump is going wrong. You whoop when it’s going right. Sure, I was shooting out further than I’d planned but I wasn’t going up so high as to tangle with the cable. Not quite.
So there I was. Waiting to peak and start down but instead just hanging — and I mean just ha-a-a-a-nging — up there. When suddenly this terrified scream pierces my eardrums and echoes across the mountain. So I look. Sure enough, there’s this old lady in the oncoming chair who doesn’t have the slightest iota of an idea that I’ve been planning this jump for years. I mean, like a fucking bank robber plans a heist!
But she doesn’t realize that. Instead she’s scared out of her brainbox that I’m going to land in her goddamn lap. Of course, I’ll miss her by an easy twelve feet — but she doesn’t know that. Still she fucks up my concentration with her goddamn scream. But it’s okay. I’m out in front between her and the next set of chairs coming down. Now all I have to do is land this fucker.
So I spread my skis ten inches apart, bring my tips up and my tails down. Thing is I’m hurling far deeper down the trail then I’d ever planned. Running out of steep, and that’s not good. Because you don’t want to land on the flat — not from this height. But it’s going to be what it’s going to be. And it’s going to be … right now.
The snow is so damn deep and heavy I’m realizing just as I hit how nuts I am to try land in this soup. But I win the coin toss of hitting the downhill side of the last bump of steep. I’m thrown forward ’cause the snow is so slow. Both my fists hit. There’s a burn on the back of my right heel which I’ll feel beyond the next decade. I fight and bring my torso up as speed is finally conveyed from air to snow, and in fact the fear around the burn seems to help me hold course through the choppy shit ahead. There are a couple of lonely screams of congratulations down the sparsely filled chairlift and another shout from Odie with my name attached to it.
I don’t know how bad I’m hurt or if I’ll be able to ski to the bottom, but one thing is for sure — I can’t stay visible. So I whisk out of sight through the woods over to next trail, taking most of my weight on my left foot and angrily realizing that lady’s scream could have cost me my life.
It turns out I didn’t tear my Achilles’ tendon, though I must have come pretty close. The unfortunate part is I couldn’t get the sound of that lady’s scream out of my head, try as I might. Worse, I started to see the whole stunt from her point of view, whereupon I realized how truly terrifying it must have been for her. When
suddenly — bam! — it happened.
And I finally realized that indeed sometime, somewhere I’d slipped over the edge and gone from nuts to full-on crazy. And from then on, things changed.
Over the next twelve years or so every time I pushed too hard I’d feel my right heel burn. By the time the burn went away, I was pushing thirty. A sense of mortality dawned on me like a hangover I couldn’t shake. Whenever adrenaline started calling my name even without the burn kicking in, I’d hear that old lady scream, and suddenly the voices would diminish. I’d put the brakes on and gradually slow down.
And I suspect that’s why I’m still alive today.
