The Drop

by Jeff Ross

  Just as Hope was about to hit the ground, she suddenly yanked herself around and landed backward to the slope. Now riding backward down the hill, she had to push hard on her tip to swing the board up and around. She did this with more grace than I thought she possessed, then swept in toward us, spraying everyone with snow before falling into a heap.

  “What was that?” Dave said.

  “I got twisted,” she said.

  “That was pretty cool,” Bryce said. Hope smiled and reached an arm out. Bryce leaned forward and pulled her to her feet. Sam looked at her for a moment, then turned his attention to the top of the mountain. He pushed his sunglasses back up his nose.

  “When you get into these things, you just have to do it. You know what I mean?” Sam said. He seemed to be talking more to the mountain than us. “Sure, you have to be cautious if you’re the first one in. But I was already down here. I let you know what it was going to be like. You all have the skills to pull off something like this. You know you have the skills. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have the skills. So believe in yourselves and just go.”

  I looked up at the sky to where Sam’s attention seemed to be stuck. Two minutes before, it had been a beautiful day. Now, the dark clouds that had been heading south were rolling back over us. We were so high up and they were so low, it seemed like we could touch them.

  Sam smiled, nodding his head. “We’re standing on the top of the world here. It doesn’t get much better than this.” He slapped his hands together and looked at us. “All right. There were supposed to be two more tests to do here, but I don’t like the look of those clouds. The last thing we want is to be stuck out here in a storm. So let’s only do one of the tests and then get into the cabin in case bad weather hits.”

  “What are we going to do?” Dave asked. He looked scared already.

  “See the trees down there?” Sam pointed to a little forest beneath us. It was strange to see growth so high up. But I guess it was flat enough that things just grew. “There’s an object in there you have to find. First one to do so gets a prize.”

  “What kind of object?” Dave asked.

  “What kind of prize?” Bryce said.

  Sam shook his head. “That would just be giving it all away, wouldn’t it?” He straightened himself to the hill. “Stay to the right of me, all right?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Why?”

  He pointed to the left. “Dead Man’s Drop. Ever heard of it?” We all shook our heads. “It’s some kind of geological freak show over there. There are spots where the drop to the other side is no more than three or four feet. But in other places there’s a slit in the mountain that goes all the way to the bottom.”

  “What do you mean, all the way to the bottom?” Bryce asked.

  “The bottom of the mountain. Hundreds of feet straight down.”

  “Whatever,” Hope said. “That’s not even, like, possible.”

  “All right,” Sam replied, “don’t believe me. But stay in the bush anyway, okay?”

  “How come no one knows where it’s four feet and where it’s five hundred feet?” Hope asked.

  “Because the snow swirls around there all the time. Wind or no wind, it’s like waves breaking on the shore. I know a spot or two where it might not be that big a drop, but then, you can’t be certain.” Hope must have looked at him as though she thought he was full of it. “No, that’s all right. No one believes me. Cool, cool. But still, stay to the right.” He jumped a couple of times and started shooting down the hill. “Remember”—his voice floated back—“first one to find the mystery object gets a prize!” The four of us looked at one another and then, all at once, jumped and tucked down the incline toward the forest.

  chapter three

  By the time we got to the lightly forested area, the clouds had closed in above us and a vicious wind had picked up. Bryce was the first into the woods, cutting far to the right and shooting between a couple of saplings. Hope followed closely behind. Dave went for the middle, which was likely the smart choice. I steered over to where Sam was leaning against a tree. Then I cut back toward the middle. I figured there must be a reason for him to be standing where he was. Maybe it was even a clue as to where the object was.

  Boarding through trees is about the worst thing you can do. I mean, short of dropping off a two-hundred-foot cliff or something stupid like that. Snowboarders need a little more space to turn than skiers do. As for stopping, well, that’s another story altogether. You can’t just snowplow your way to a stop in trees. Once stopped, however, you can very easily hop from one spot to another or pull yourself up with branches. But most of all, since you aren’t holding on to poles, your hands are completely free. You see a lot of Ski Patrollers without poles. But they tend to be holding on to something—a sled or a first-aid kit— and they look really awkward. Boarders never look awkward.

  At least I don’t think so.

  After about two minutes, I discovered that I had taken a difficult line. It was tight in there, and the trees were all bunched together. There was the odd old-growth oak or spruce, but generally it was little saplings that whipped my face or snagged under the board and shot me sideways. I caught an edge as I was about to pivot around a very large tree. I stumbled, righted myself and dug in hard on the back edge of my board, trying to turn. I wasn’t really thinking about anything more than not hitting that tree.

  The tree near Dead Man’s Drop.

  I busted out of the woods and found myself on a thin stretch of open space. The powder was deep, and after coming out of the fairly low snow of the forested area, it felt like I’d been shot straight into the middle of a huge bowl of ice cream. I leaned back, as you have to in deep powder, and tried to do a bounce turn. I wanted to stop, but I knew if I did, it would be really, really hard to get going again.

  The bounce turn sent me up into the air. I kicked out and landed on my toe side, cutting softly back toward the forested area. There seemed to be hundreds of saplings in front of me. I didn’t really feel like getting beat up again by them. So I shifted back onto my heel, trying another turn in the deep powder. It felt good. Actually, it felt amazing. It was everything I had ever wanted from life, right there.

  Then I saw the snow squall along the edge of what had to be Dead Man’s Drop. Sam was right. It looked like waves crashing on a shore. The snow would come up, shoot straight into the air, then fall back down along the edge of the drop. There was no way of telling how much of a fall it was. A hissing, howling sound accompanied the squall. It sounded like voices, like people moaning down there. I stared for too long, and by the time I thought to watch where I was going, I was almost to the edge. I dug in hard on my toe side and put my right arm down on the top of the powder to turn as quickly and tightly as possible. The waves of the drop brushed over me, covering my goggles with a thin wash of snow. I brought my left hand around to try and wipe it away. When I could see clearly again, I was about five feet from a tree. I had no choice. I bailed.

  Hard.

  I came to an abrupt stop face-first in the powder, my board spinning out above me and bending my legs. I pushed my hands down and tried to roll over, but the snow just gave way. I sank deeper. I could still breathe, but it was getting harder. The snow was light and fluffy on the surface, but when it was pounded down, it became as solid as concrete. Everything was dark. I shook my head and tried to think. We’d been taught what to do in a situation like this. My training came back. Sam’s voice in my head. “Get on your back. The last thing you want is to feel like you’re in a coffin. Look at the sky.” But how? How do you go from being facedown in the snow to lying on your back? I tried twisting, but that didn’t work. So I jammed my board down until it stayed steady. Then I rolled myself over.

  There was no sky. Just darkness.

  The clouds had settled in, and everything above the trees was black. To my left, the horrible moaning from the drop continued. Snow shot up into the sky. It truly was a terrifying place.

  I started
pumping my legs, trying to get my board underneath me. The sooner I got away from here, I thought, the better.

  The trees to my right bent under the press of the wind. I tried to slow my breath and calm down. Panicking here could be deadly. I pushed my hands into the snow, but this just made me sink deeper. I sat still for a minute and looked at the cold, dark sky. I wasn’t going to get lost out here. If I was going to be a Backcountry Patroller, I had to be brave enough to get myself out of this kind of predicament. I wiggled my legs until I got my board free and beneath me. Then, in one quick motion, I stood up.

  The wind blew ice into my face. It felt terrible. Like a thousand bees stinging all at once. Now that my face was wet from the snow, it felt even worse. I had to get somewhere warmer quickly or risk serious frostbite on my face. I took a last glance behind me at the rolling, churning wash of the drop. Then I jumped as hard as I could, kicking snow from the top of my board, and cut back into the woods.

  It was quieter there. I took some deep breaths and tried to stay as horizontal to the slope as possible. I wasn’t at all worried about finding the object or winning the prize. I just wanted to get out of there and inside the warm cabin. Maybe listen to some music to get the terrible sound of the drop out of my ears.

  I had traveled halfway across the wooded area when I came to a clearing. It was almost peaceful in this little square where no trees had found root. The sun filled the space with heat. I turned from my toe side to my heel and cut along the tree line, looking for a place to drop into the deeper woods, finally comfortable being surrounded by trees. There was a bit of a chute ahead of me. Maybe ten feet between trees. As far as I could see, this kept up for the rest of the wooded area. I steered toward it. And then, just as I was about to go onto my front edge again and drop into the chute, I spotted something leaned up against a tree. At first I couldn’t tell what it was. A lump of blue and orange fabric, like a jacket left outside through a long winter. Then I got closer, and I could see exactly what it was.

  A person. A big person.

  chapter four

  My heart jumped in my chest. I swung around the tree until I was right beside the body. Its head was tilted forward and down. Its arms hung limp at its sides. I couldn’t see skis or a snowboard. Just a jacket and snow. How long had he been out here? Was no one looking for him? I got a little closer and thought about checking for a pulse or something, but it was too much.

  Way too much.

  So I just started yelling.

  “Help, help! Over here. There’s a guy. Help.” No one came. I had totally forgotten about the two-way radio. “Come on, man, get up. Just stand up and walk away from this,” I said. I was beginning to wonder if he was alive. The jacket was so puffy, I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. He didn’t move. I yelled again, but no one responded or swept in to help. It was all up to me.

  I took a glove off and reached my hand out. I forced myself to move my hand past the collar of his jacket and beneath his neck warmer. His skin was cold and spongy. I yanked my hand out, hitting his goggles on the way past. They fell to the ground, and his dead eyes stared back at me. But something wasn’t right. His eyes looked dead, for sure, but his eyebrows were strange. As if they were painted on. And his nose was deformed—hacked off at the end. Yet there was no blood.

  I reached out and lifted his tuque. His hair was painted on as well. He had no ears. No mouth. Just a painted on slit. Everything was fake because he was fake.

  A dummy.

  The two-way radio snapped to life.

  “Did you find Keith Richards? Over.” Sam’s voice.

  Was he nuts? “Who the hell is Keith Richards? Over.”

  “The Rolling Stones? You seriously don’t know who the Stones are? Over.”

  “What is this about, Sam? Over.”

  “You found the object, Alex. Congrats, man. Over.”

  “The object? Over.”

  “Yeah. The prize is yours. Over.”

  “And what would that prize be? Over.”

  “You get to carry Keith Richards down to the cabin. Over,” Sam said.

  I looked at the mass of plastic I’d thought was a person. “I have to carry a dummy down to the cabin? Over.”

  “Alex, Alex. Please don’t call Keith a dummy, it’s not nice. Over.”

  The wind roaring up the chute was cold and deafening. The button keeping one of my pant legs tight across my boot had popped off and was waving in the breeze, leaving my ankle to freeze. I took my other glove off and tried to fix it.

  “You still there, Alex? Over.”

  “Yeah, I’m still here. How am I supposed to carry this thing? Over.”

  “That’s for you to decide. But be gentle. As you can see, Keith’s been through a lot recently. Over.” I got my pant leg secured over my boot. Then I pulled the dummy out of the snow. He was heavy. An absolute deadweight. At least he didn’t have a board on. In fact, he didn’t even have legs.

  “Oh, and Alex? Over.”

  “What? Over.” I had lifted the dummy up and had to drop him back down again to push the button on the radio.

  “You scream like a little girl. Over.”

  I flicked the radio off and put it back in my pocket. It took me a minute to figure it out, but finally I decided that putting the dummy on my back and tying the sleeves of his jacket over one shoulder and under the other arm would likely do the trick. He was heavy, and it felt strange once I got him attached. Every time I shifted from heel to toe, he flung out beside me, throwing me completely off balance. I looked down the long chute out of the woods and wondered just how far away the cabin was.

  chapter five

  “Keith!” Sam yelled when I stepped in the door of the cabin. It was just after three o’clock. It had taken me over an hour of falling, swearing and heaving the stupid dummy to get to the cottage. A journey that likely took the rest of the Backcountry Patrol hopefuls about fifteen minutes.

  I dropped the dummy on the ground, face-first, and stepped on him.

  “Have some respect,” Sam said. “The man is an artist.”

  “What’s he talking about?” Dave said. He and Hope and Bryce were seated around a table, steaming bowls of stew in front of them.

  “Yeah, Alex, what’s going on?” Bryce asked. “Sam said you won the prize, but he wouldn’t tell us anything else.”

  I gave Keith Richards a kick in the head. Then I walked across the room to where a woodstove was pumping out heat. “The object,” I said, “was that. A dummy.”

  “Ahh, man, what did I say about that? He’s no dummy.” Sam had gathered the dummy up in his arms and was cradling it like a baby.

  “The prize was carrying that stupid thing all the way down here,” I continued. Sam placed the dummy in a chair, stroked his painted-on hair and shook his head.

  “Who told you that?” Sam said.

  “You did.”

  “I said no such thing. I said you’d found the object. I said you screamed like a girl. But I never said carrying Keith Richards was the prize.”

  I knelt in front of the stove and rubbed my hands together. I was sure some part of me must have frostbite. Maybe a few parts. But I wouldn’t know which ones until I started to thaw.

  “So what is the prize?” Dave asked.

  Sam smiled. “Alex doesn’t have to haul Keith down the mountain tomorrow.”

  “Great prize,” I said. “Seeing as I just did that.”

  “Ahhh, but you see, it is. Because tomorrow these three”—he gestured at Hope, Bryce and Dave—“will be carrying the Jonas Brothers downhill. And those three are certainly dummies. The plan for tomorrow is as follows.” Sam turned to the other three. “I will go out early and hide the Jonas bothers. You will go out and find them.” Sam went to a built-in closet and opened the door. Three identical dummies hung from hooks. It was kind of spooky. “When you each find your victim, you will perform cpr. Then you will carry your victim to a designated location farther down the mountain. A spot, I will add, that is doub
le the distance Alex just carried Keith Richards here.” Sam slammed the closet door and sat down beside Keith Richards.

  “That’s not fair,” Hope said immediately. “They look really heavy. I mean, I’ll try to carry one, but…”

  “They are heavy,” Sam said. “Well, not that heavy. Not as heavy as a real person. Likely half the weight of anyone you’d ever have to haul off this mountain, unless garden gnomes suddenly take up extreme sports.”

  “I still don’t know if I’ll be able to carry that kind of weight,” Hope said.

  “And I know you can.” Sam tapped his head. “It’s all in your head. If you know you can do something, you can.”

  “The heaviest thing I have ever carried on a board was that stretcher last week with the first-aid kit.” Hope looked worried. She stuck a finger in her mouth and started chewing the nail. “Carrying one of those dummies all the way down the hill. That’s tough…”

  Sam stared at her for a moment, then grabbed a large satellite cell phone off the table beside him and began pressing buttons.

  “What are you doing?” Hope asked.

  “Calling base camp. I’ll have them send a chopper up in the morning to get you out of here.”

  “Why? What did I do?”

  “If you can’t carry one of the Jonas Brothers down the mountain, then you may as well quit now.”

  “But what if I ca…?” Hope’s voice trailed off.

  Sam put the phone back on the table and glared at Hope. “What did I tell you last week about that sentence? Huh? Anyone?”

  “If you say you can’t,” Bryce said, “you won’t.”

  Sam pointed a finger at him.

  “Exactly. Say you can’t and—guess what?—you can’t. That simple. So, Hope, if you want to give up, give up. Drop out. Go home. It’s fine with me. I can put in a recommendation to the lift operators or, I don’t know, maybe the Baby Bushwhackers. You can help five-year-olds bang into poles all day.”