Page 29 of The Battery

Leo

D ad secretly loved Mom’s minivan. He would never admit to it, of course.

It was a sort of obnoxious teal color that my mother thought looked like Tiffany Blue.

Archie hated being seen in it, but I never minded so much.

It was spacious enough for two teenaged boys and their mountainous bags of sports equipment.

Plus, the middle row’s two cockpit seats were comfortable and, more important, the rear bench seat allowed the lucky one to stretch out.

We left our house in Astoria, Queens, packed up the minivan, and headed upstate to our usual ski resort for the annual trip.

Archie had taken up snowboarding three years earlier, but I stuck with regular alpine skiing.

Five days of speed and cold. Four nights of games and laughter.

Archie and I were showing signs of potential.

Scouts had been to a few of our games during the playing season.

Offseason, our parents threw us into the snow to keep us busy.

I swear my dad asked my brother and I every day if we wanted to keep going down this path.

All I could think about was catching. All Archie could think about was playing in the outfield. We were in heated competition when it came to hitting.

We were supposed to spend one more night at the rental, a log cabin on the ski mountain.

We had been going there for years and it was practically a second home.

The weather report showed a blizzard moving in around midnight and staying for almost two days.

So, in order to get back home in time, we decided to get ahead of the storm and left in the early evening. It would have been a three-hour drive.

As always, Archie and I played rock paper scissors for the back row, best outta three.

He won the first, me the second, and him the third.

I took my defeated position, the seat behind my mother.

I was belted in, leaning back as far as I could as I stretched my growing legs up between the driver and passenger seats.

Archie was not belted. It was a perk of the rearmost seat. The only way to lay down comfortably was without one.

The storm came much faster than anticipated. It started as flurries, with the wipers set on low. My father had been listening to AM radio, some awful talk show about tax code amendments that only he could find fascinating. It had nearly put me to sleep.

“… must decide whether to take this deduction first because it could affect your bonus depreciation calculations …”

An interruption in the broadcast warned of the swiftly moving storm through our area. Dad made a snide comment, as it was obvious to us in the teal minivan. The broadcast resumed as usual, though now I was no longer sleepy.

The snowflakes grew larger, and the plows still hadn’t hit the road.

I sat up a little straighter when the car skidded at one point.

Mom let out a slight gasp and reached out to grab my father’s arm, but he wrestled control of the car.

She implored him to slow down but he said we were fine.

We just needed to get farther south and away from the storm.

I waited for Dad to go slower but he never did. I had a sinking feeling about all of it, that my mother was right and my father should take it easier on these back roads.

I remember thinking I should tell Archie to wake up and buckle up.

I didn’t tell him fast enough. And I’ll never forgive myself for that.

Dad hit an icy patch hidden beneath some slush. The minivan spun out of control. I distinctly recall my mother screaming my father’s name, Archie yelling as he came awake. Dad begging God for forgiveness.

We spun twice, the world blurring by in pinpricks of white against a dark horizon.

Then we were over a guardrail and the minivan rolled down a sharp decline. My mother’s screaming went silent. My father cried out. The only sound Archie made was his body pinballing against the interior of the car. Bones breaking. Flesh splitting.

I had my eyes squeezed shut. Hands gripped the armrest and held so tightly I pried them free from the jolting force of the car. We rolled and rolled and rolled. An endless tumult of a family of four.

The minivan came to a crashing and sudden halt . We slammed against a copse of trees that prevented us from spinning farther into the ditch. A shattering of glass. More crunching of bone and flesh.

And the sound of the radio, still intact.

“… increases the deduction limit to one million fifty thousand for qualifying property placed in service during …”

The acrid scent of smoke and the powder from air bag deployment. Pine. Sap. And a coppery smell.

We were angled downward, the nose absorbing most of the impact and facing the sentinel wall of trees that held us back.

My first sight was Dad. Leaning against the deflated airbag. The right hemisphere of his head completely caved in. Blood. Gray matter. Even in the dim light I saw enough to haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.

Archie…

He was all around me. That is all I will say there.

But Mom. She was alive. Barely. A branch still connected to a tree drove through the windshield and pinned her against her seat. It punched into her chest and her lungs. She made a sticky, wet sound when she breathed in.

I unbuckled myself and fell forward but braced my body against the back of their seats.

“… applies to both new and used property, but there’s an investment limitation where …”

“Mom?” I asked as I craned my head forward. My voice sounded younger in my ears. Like I was a kid again. Scared. In the dark.

She turned as best as she could to look at me. The light had already dimmed in her eyes. “Baby boy.” She tried to reach out and touch me but couldn’t move her arms. “Be good. Be a good boy, baby. Momma loves you.”

“ Mom ,” I said, then sobbed.

“Be good, Leo. Promise me. Be good…”

“I promise.”

Her body gave out and she sagged forward.

It took me five minutes to get the rear sliding door open enough to climb out of. Part of Archie barred the way.

I left the minivan that Mom thought looked Tiffany Blue. That Dad secretly loved. That Archie and I fought over for the back seat.

The climb up was steep and I was too numb to realize I had kicked my shoes off when we got into the car an hour ago. I don’t know how long it took to reach the top of the hill but when I did, the blizzard was in full effect.

Directionless. Shoeless. No jacket, hat, or gloves. My breath fogged the air as I peered through the biting, stinging cold.

Then I remembered we passed a house not too far back. Just after Dad first lost control and regained it. I got my bearings, anchored by the guardrail where we went over, and set off into the wind.

It felt like twenty-four hours of walking.

My feet had gone completely numb and the rest of my body was on the way.

After twenty minutes or twenty years, I arrived at a cabin set a hundred feet back from the road.

Smoke rose from the chimney. A buttery-yellow porch light was on and a floodlight flared to life, activated by my movement.

Someone was at the front door before I reached it, a silhouette of a man clearly holding a shotgun.

Up the three steps. Onto the porch.

The screen door swung wildly open as an elderly woman shoved her husband aside and ran to me.

“For heaven’s sake, Joel, I said call 911!” she cried. Joel, her husband, had said something I didn’t hear. Probably telling her to stay back. “He’s just a kid!” she yelled in response.

I had fallen to my knees and sweet little Iris Daniels tried to help me up.

“No, no, hun, you go call,” Joel said as he pulled his wife up and pushed her inside. “This boy is big. Let me get him.”

I was inside and covered in enough blankets to stitch a slipcover for a hot air balloon. They had their wood stove blasting out heat.

The cops arrived and by then I had the wherewithal to speak.

“Georgios. May. Archidamus,” I told the cop. Dad. Mom. Archie. I had told the story of what happened and he asked for everyone’s names. I don’t remember saying much, but it was enough for them to go looking.

“Okay, son,” the cop said. “Is there anyone we can call for you?”

I nodded. “My uncle.”