Mount Baker. He’d had to fi ght for the privilege

of my company, because my mother was still angry

with him for sneaking me into a nightclub during

his last visit, to see Thelonious Monk.

He wouldn’t give up. He promised, hand on

heart, to take good care of me and have me home

for dinner on Christmas Eve, and she relented. But

as we were checking out of the lodge that morning

it began to snow, and in this snow he observed

some rare quality that made it necessary for us

to get in one last run. We got in several last runs.

He was indifferent to my fretting. Snow whirled

around us in bitter, blinding squalls, hissing like

sand, and still we skied. As the lift bore us to the

peak yet again, my father looked at his watch and

said, “Criminy. This’ll have to be a fast one.”

By now I couldn’t see the trail. There was

no point in trying. I stuck to him like white on

rice and did what he did and somehow made it to

the bottom without sailing off a cliff. We returned

our skis and my father put chains on the Austin-

Healey while I swayed from foot to foot, clapping

my mittens and wishing I was home. I could see everything.

The green tablecloth, the plates with the

holly pattern, the red candles waiting to be lit.

We passed a diner on our way out. “You

want some soup?” my father asked. I shook my

head. “Buck up,” he said. “I’ll get you there.

Right, doctor?”

I was supposed to say, “Right, doctor,” but

I didn’t say anything.

A state trooper waved us down outside the

resort. A pair of sawhorses were blocking the road.

The trooper came up to our car and bent down to

my father’s window. His face was bleached by the

cold. Snowfl akes clung to his eyebrows and to the

fur trim of his jacket and cap.

“Don’t tell me,” my father said.

The trooper told him. The road was closed.

It might get cleared, it might not. Storm took everyone

by surprise. So much, so fast. Hard to get

people moving. Christmas Eve. What can you do.

My father said, “Look. We’re talking about

fi ve, six inches. I’ve taken this car through worse

than that.”

The trooper straightened up. His face

was out of sight but I could hear him. “The road

is closed.”

My father sat with both hands on the wheel,

rubbing the wood with his thumbs. He looked at

the barricade for a long time. He seemed to be

trying to master the idea of it. Then he thanked

the trooper, and with a weird, old-maidy show of

caution turned the car around. “Your mother will

never forgive me for this,” he said.

“We should have left before,” I said. “Doctor.”

He didn’t speak to me again until we were

in a booth at the diner, waiting for our burgers.

“She won’t forgive me,” he said. “Do you understand?

Never.”

“I guess,” I said, but no guesswork was required;

she wouldn’t forgive him.

“I can’t let that happen.” He bent toward

me. “I’ll tell you what I want. I want us all to be

together again. Is that what you want?”

“Yes, sir.”

He bumped my chin with his knuckles.

“That’s all I needed to hear.”

When we fi nished eating he went to the

pay phone in the back of the diner, then joined

me in the booth again. I fi gured he’d called my

mother, but he didn’t give a report. He sipped at

his coffee and stared out the window at the empty

road. “Come on, come on,” he said, though not to

me. A little while later he said it again. When the

trooper’s car went past, lights fl ashing, he got up

and dropped some money on the check. “Okay.

Vamanos.”

The wind had died. The snow was falling

straight down, less of it now and lighter. We drove

away from the resort, right up to the barricade.

“Move it,” my father told me. When I looked at

him he said, “What are you waiting for?” I got out

and dragged one of the sawhorses aside, then put it

back after he drove through. He pushed the door

open for me. “Now you’re an accomplice,” he said.

“We go down together.” He put the car into gear

and gave me a look. “Joke, son.”

Down the fi rst long stretch I watched the

road behind us, to see if the trooper was on our

tail. The barricade vanished. Then there was nothing

but snow: snow on the road, snow kicking up

from the chains, snow on the trees, snow in the

sky; and our trail in the snow. Then I faced forward

and had a shock. The lay of the road behind us had

been marked by our own tracks, but there were no

tracks ahead of us. My father was breaking virgin

snow between a line of tall trees. He was humming

“Stars Fell on Alabama.” I felt snow brush along the

fl oorboards under my feet. To keep my hands from

shaking I clamped them between my knees.

My father grunted in a thoughtful way and

said, “Don’t ever try this yourself.”

“I won’t.”

“That’s what you say now, but someday

you’ll get your license and then you’ll think you

can do anything. Only you won’t be able to do this.

You need, I don’t know—a certain instinct.”

“Maybe I have it.”

“You don’t. You have your strong points,

but not this. I only mention it because I don’t

want you to get the idea this is something just

anybody can do. I’m a great driver. That’s not a

virtue, okay? It’s just a fact, and one you should be

aware of. Of course you have to give the old heap

some credit, too. There aren’t many cars I’d try this

with. Listen!”

I did listen. I heard the slap of the chains,

the stiff, jerky rasp of the wipers, the purr of the

engine. It really did purr. The old heap was almost

new. My father couldn’t afford it, and kept promising

to sell it, but here it was.

I said, “Where do you think that policeman

went to?”

“Are you warm enough?” He reached over

and cranked up the blower. Then he turned off

the wipers. We didn’t need them. The clouds had

brightened. A few sparse, feathery fl akes drifted

into our slipstream and were swept away. We left

the trees and entered a broad fi eld of snow that ran

level for a while and then tilted sharply downward.

Orange stakes had been planted at intervals in two

parallel lines and my father steered a course between

them, though they were far enough apart to

leave considerable doubt in my mind as to exactly

where the road lay. He was humming again, doing

little scat riffs around the melody.

“Okay then. What are my strong points?”

“Don’t get me started,” he said. “It’d take

all day.”

“Oh, right. Name one.”

“Easy. You always think ahead.”

True, I always thought ahead. I was a boy

who kept his clothes on numbered hangers to insure

proper rotation. I bothered my teachers for

homework assign ments far ahead of their due dates

so I could draw up schedules. I thought ahead, and

that was why I knew that there would be other

troopers waiting for us at the end of our ride, if

we even got there. What I did not know was that

my father would wheedle and plead his way past

them—he didn’t sing “O Tannenbaum,” but just

about—and get me home for dinner, buying a little

more time before my mother decided to make the

split fi nal. I knew we’d get caught; I was resigned

to it. And maybe for this reason I stopped moping

and began to enjoy myself.

Why not? This was one for the books.

Like being in a speedboat, only better. You can’t

go downhill in a boat. And it was all ours. And it

kept coming, the laden trees, the unbroken surface

of snow, the sudden white vistas. Here and there I

saw hints of the road, ditches, fences, stakes, but not

so many that I could have found my way. But then

I didn’t have to. My father was driving. My father

in his forty-eighth year, rumpled, kind, bankrupt

of honor, fl ushed with certainty. He was a great

driver. All persuasion, no coercion. Such subtlety at

the wheel, such tactful pedalwork. I actually trusted

him. And the best was yet to come—switchbacks

and hairpins impossible to describe. Except maybe

to say this: if you haven’t driven fresh powder, you

haven’t driven.