Jill Barnett - New Beginnings

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 already has,” she called down to him. “Just ask my father. Although he’s not talking to me this week.” She took off.

To his complete amazement she made three perfect turns—not even a wobble—stopping a few feet from him, grinning and cocky. Rob was at the top of the run, whistling loudly. Typically March, she made an exaggerated bow, her hand gesturing from her forehead like a swami. But she bent too far, lost her balance and fell on her face in the powder.

It took a minute for her to look up at him, snow hiding her expression, her voice a little muffled, “Now will you let me go all the way to the top?”

The first thing out of Rob’s mouth when they came off the rope tow to the top of the run was, “Wow. She’s a natural.”

“Why do you men always talk about us as if we’re not here?”

“Sorry,” Rob said. “But hell…I skidded down the hill on my face the first time I tried this. Tell her, Mike. My nose was bleeding everywhere. Look. No blood. She went down that hill like she’d been doing this for years.”

Mike expected a smart comeback, but March wasn’t paying attention. She stood right at the edge of the run looking down. “You know, if I had poles,” she said thoughtfully, “I could really shove off. Maybe get a little air.”

“You can get air. Just jump,” Rob said. “Like this.” He pulled his knees up and was off.

“No!” Mike reached for her. “Don’t.”

But it was too late. She was already in the air, board pulled up to her chest so tightly she looked like a big, dark human fist, sailing through the air, the fur-trimmed hood on her parka hanging behind her.

He stopped breathing until she landed on the steepest part of the hill. The board flew out from under her and she tumbled head over heels for a good ten feet. When he reached her, she was already sitting up, hands resting on her knees. All she said to him after she spit the snow from her mouth was, “I need poles.”

“No, you don’t. It’s called balance,” he said and took off.

She cupped her hands and called out. “It’s called unfair advantage. Cheater!” She stepped back onto the board and came after him at full speed, yelling at him. He stopped at the bottom of the run, turned just as she sat down low on the board and came right at him.

She took him out, both of them tumbling together in the snow, her laughter muffled until they lay still, dusted in powder. She raised her head and said, “Gotcha. Master.”

“I hate surprises,” he spit snow.

“No, you don’t. What you hate is not knowing the surprise.”

“Funny.”

“I know,” she said.

“I don’t get it. Have you ever surfed?”

“No.”

“Slalom waterskied?”

“A few times. I wasn’t very good. Why?”

“How the hell did you come down that mountain so fast without falling?”

“Talent, my dear. My innate skill. The ability to learn on my feet. With my feet. Ha!” She picked up the board. “Besides, I’m a woman.” Then she began to sing a Maria Muldaur hit about all the things a woman could do.

She stood above him, dancing, singing, and grinning as if the world were hers. He rested his arms on his knees. “What does being a woman have to do with it?”

“Old Russian proverb. Women can do everything; men can do the rest.” She held out her hand. “Get up, pokey. Let’s do it again.”

So that was how Mike spent only an hour teaching March to board, instead of the whole weekend he’d expected. When he thought about it later, driving to his cousin’s cabin near Tahoe City to drop off their stuff, exhausted, high on the day and her, he realized he shouldn’t have been surprised. Nothing about March was expected. How nuts it was that she wanted to be special and thought she was ordinary. She was better than one of his father’s expensive wines, better than any hundred-year-old Scotch.

Sunshine. The name just came out of his mouth at the Fillmore that night, along with everything else he was thinking and feeling. Enter brain, exit mouth. He’d spilled his guts, said exactly what he thought then, all the while expecting her to turn and run. But here she was, now the brightest part of his life. His luckiest hunch.

At dinner that evening with his cousin over draft beer and thick sirloin burgers covered in onion rings, served in red plastic baskets at his favorite place, a small shack near the water packed with locals every night, they sat on metal chairs and ate on old, mismatched dinette tables in front of a huge fire while she quizzed him about everything, how he made the boards and where his idea for them had come from.

“It all started with a sled you could stand on and slide down the hill, a Snurfer. But before I ever saw one, I’d spent plenty of years on a skateboard. Brad and I surfed summers in Santa Cruz.”

“We all got Snurfers one year for Christmas from our grandfather,” Rob told her. “Gramps said they reminded him of when he was a kid and they used to sled down hills standing on barrel slats tied together with clothesline.” Rob nodded at Mike. “Genius here was the one who after one Snurfing season wanted to improve the design.”

“I got tired of face-planting.”