Dump Trucks and Dogsleds: I'm on My Way, Mom! Read online

  She gave a little whimper, kind of like Cheerio does when he really wants a lamb chop but knows he’s not supposed to beg. Then she slid off the chair seat and stood up on her skis. Again, so far, so good. She made it over the mound, getting out of the way of the next people.

  But here’s the problem—she couldn’t stop.

  I just stood there watching as she skied down the mound and slammed face first into the picket fence that surrounds the hot chocolate stand at the top of the mountain. As she crashed into the fence, her skis wedged perfectly between the slats. She actually looked like she had been built into the fence as a holiday decoration.

  Her whimper turned into a scream.

  “Hank!” she shrieked. “I’m stuck! Get me out of here!”

  The sound of her scream was so high, I was afraid it might start an avalanche. I saw that once on the Discovery Channel on a show called Man Against the Elements.

  Before I could get to her, my father was already there. He grabbed her by the back of her ski parka and yanked really hard. As she came loose from the picket fence, I could have sworn I heard a pop, like someone had opened a can of soda.

  “There you go,” my dad said. “Good as new.” “That’s it, Dad,” Emily cried. “I’m done skiing.

  I’ll be right here having a hot chocolate with marshmallows. You guys come get me when you’re done.”

  “Emily, you have to ski down,” he informed her. “There’s no other way.”

  “Yeah,” I chimed in. “It’s not like you can call a taxi and say drop me off at the bottom.”

  She gave me a dirty look.

  “Hey, I’m just trying to be helpful. The truth is the truth. Look around. Do you see any other form of transportation?”

  “I can’t do it.” Emily shook her head and planted her skis firmly in the snow. “My feet are frozen, and I don’t mean cold. They won’t move.”

  “This isn’t like you, Emily,” my dad said. “You’re always so capable.”

  “Well, at this moment I’m incapable of moving.”

  “I have an idea,” I said. It was a good thing, too, otherwise I could imagine us still standing there for the Fourth of July fireworks. “Dad will go first and ski very slowly in a downward direction.”

  I saw her eye twitch.

  “But not too downward,” I added quickly. “Then you’ll follow him, staying very close so nothing bad can happen.”

  Yup, there went the other one. Now both her eyes were twitching.

  “And I’ll be right behind you, bringing up the rear. That way you’ll be protected, like a baby iguana surrounded by grown-up iguanas.”

  I thought the iguana thing was a nice touch, to make her feel comfortable in her beloved reptile world.

  “Don’t even go there, Hank. Iguanas don’t ski, and you know it.”

  Okay, the reptile thing didn’t work, but you have to give me credit for trying.

  “Come on, Emily. Be reasonable,” my dad said. “Hank has a good idea. We’ll get to the bottom safely, you can relax while Hank and I do a few more runs, and this afternoon, we’ll do whatever you want.”

  Emily wasn’t happy about the plan, but she finally had to agree to it. So we pointed our skis downward and turned the tips facing each other in what they call a snowplow, which is like skiing with brakes on, and began to make our way down the mountain. Emily actually was doing fine, and she was starting to relax. I could tell by the way her neck got longer as she un-hunched her shoulders and stopped looking like a tortoise.

  Until . . . Briiiiiiiiiiiiiiing. Briiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing.

  What was that?

  Briiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing.

  It was a cell phone ringing. Who carries a cell phone while they’re skiing? I’ll tell you who. My dad, that’s who. I could see him fumbling in his parka pocket, trying to answer the phone.

  “We have to stop for a minute, kids,” he called out.

  “I can’t stop,” Emily said. “Remember how I crashed into the fence.”

  “Well, I can’t answer the phone while I’m skiing,” my dad shouted back.

  “You don’t have to, Dad!” I called out. “The person will call back.”

  “What if it’s your mother?” he shouted. “I promised her I’d be easy to reach.”

  He slowed down so much while he was talking, that Emily . . . sure enough . . . crashed into him. She got him smack in the back of the knees, and her skis tangled up with his until they both fell over into the bank of snow. Their legs were up in the air and their skis looked like four chopsticks stuck in a bowl of white rice.

  I tried to avoid them, but I was so close that I tumbled right on top of them. Now there were six chopsticks sticking out of that bowl.

  Briiiingggg. Briiiiiiiing.

  The phone was still ringing.

  My dad stuck the fingers of his glove in his mouth, to try to pull it off so he could reach the phone. Emily was back to her whimpering, and I was rapidly getting in a bad mood because a pile of snow had wedged itself down my ski pants. I don’t want to go into specifics here, but just think frozen underpants, and you’re getting the picture.

  My dad finally managed to dig the phone out of his pocket. He flipped it open, but before he got it to his ear, it slipped out of his hand and buried itself in the soft snow. It was still ringing. We could hear it but we couldn’t see it.

  I dug around in the snow, following the sound, and rescued it.

  “Answer quickly,” my dad said. “Before it stops ringing.”

  “Hello,” I said. “Oh, hi Mom. How you doing? You are? It is? You’re what? Now?”

  Wow. This was too much information for me. I handed the phone to my dad.

  “Hello, Randi? You are? It is? You’re what? Now?”

  Emily was going crazy.

  “Will somebody please tell me what now means?” she said.

  “It means Mom’s on her way to the hospital,” I said.

  “Now?” she said.

  “Now,” I said.

  CHAPTER 7

  When Emily heard that my mom was on the way to the hospital, she rolled up into a ball right there on the snow. She looked like a doodlebug in a huge purple parka. I didn’t know what was going on with her, but she definitely had gone into some kind of bizarro state of mind. It could have been fear, because your mom having a baby is a scary thing. It could have been shock, because it was very surprising that the baby was coming early. Or it could have been just Emily being weird Emily. She is certainly capable of being odd. Let’s face it, folks. The girl talks to lizards.

  Anyway, there she was, rolled up in the snow like a puffy, purple pea pod. I glanced over at my dad, and he looked confused. This is not a look you often see on Stanley Zipzer’s face. My dad always knows exactly what should happen next. Like after dinner, you watch Jeopardy. Or after you eat your cereal, you rinse your dish and spoon and put them in the dishwasher. Or after you turn out the light at night, you put your head on the pillow and go to sleep. He’s a guy who always knows what comes next.

  But there he was, standing on that mountain in Vermont with Emily curled up at his feet and my mom on the way to the hospital, and he truly looked like he didn’t know what to do next. I felt I needed to take charge.

  “No one panic,” I said. “There is no need for panic.”

  “I’m calm as a cucumber,” my dad answered.

  Yeah right. So why is he sitting there in the snow like Frosty the Snowman?

  “Me too,” a little voice said from deep inside the hood of the purple parka.

  “Emily, if you’re so calm, how come you’re down there doing an impersonation of a dead doodlebug?”

  She stuck her face out of her parka hood. “I believe you’re referring to the pill bug,” she said, “which, as everyone knows, is a member of the woodlice family.”

  “This is no time for science, Emily,” I said. “This is a time for standing up and getting down the mountain. Now give it a try.”

  “I’m
comfortable here,” she shot back.

  My dad was still frozen in his same position. He didn’t even seem to notice that his yellow ski goggles were all steamed up. Oh man. This was going to require some serious leadership on my part.

  “Okay, everybody listen to me,” I said, making my voice sound cool and collected, like I was the captain of an airplane. “Focus on my voice. Mom is having a baby, and she needs us to be there. And we’re up here and we need to be down there. So we’re just going to get down to the motel, pick up Cheerio and our things, and drive back to the City. No problem.”

  This seemed to snap my dad out of his trance.

  “Good thinking, Hank,” he said. “That’s just what we’ll do.”

  If I wasn’t already sitting down, I would have fallen flat over. This was the first time ever that my dad had given me a compliment on my thinking. Usually, he just points out what a lousy thinker I am and says things like, “Use your head, Hank!” What do you think I was using, my elbow?

  “Okay, Dad, you lead the way down the mountain,” I announced. “Emily, you’ll ski right in back of him, and I’ll go last. When I count to three, everyone stand up. One. Two. Three.”

  Amazingly, on the count of three, my dad stood up and shook the snow off his zebra ski pants. Not amazingly, Emily remained seated.

  “Emily, you have to do this,” I reasoned. “Mom is counting on you.”

  “It’s such a long way down, Hank.”

  “We’ll go slowly.”

  “That’s what you said last time, and I fell on my butt.”

  She did have a point there. But we had to get down, and we had to hurry. That guy at the ski rental place had said there was a storm coming in the afternoon, and we needed to be on the road to New York before it blew in. My mind raced. Finally, it raced right into a good idea.

  “I have it, Emily. You’ll butt ski down.”

  “I don’t know how to butt ski. Besides, Hank, there is no such thing. You’re just making it up.”

  “Would I make up something like that? Everybody butt skis. It’s the new snowboard ing.”

  “Really, Hank?”

  “Sure. You just crouch down and rest your backside on your skis. Then somebody else pulls you down the mountain. You can’t fall down, because you’re already down.”

  “Are you sure I won’t look stupid?” Emily asked.

  “Em, I ask you. Could a girl of your intelligence and grace and style ever look stupid?”

  Between you and me, the answer is totally YES, YES, and YES.

  But I didn’t tell that to Emily because I needed her cooperation. So with great reluctance and even a few little tears brimming up in her beady eyes, Emily sat up, held on to my parka sleeve, and butt skied down the mountain.

  CHAPTER 8

  TEN DISADVANTAGES OF BUTT SKIING

  DOWN A MOUNTAIN

  1. You look totally stupid.

  2. Your skis keep falling off because they were meant to hold feet, not butt cheeks.

  3. Everyone shouts this at you: Hey, Knuckle-head! You’re supposed to stand up on those skis!

  4. It’s wet. No way you can keep your rear end dry when you’re dragging it along in the snow.

  5. You leave butt tracks so even if people don’t see you, they know you’ve been there. Enough said about that!

  6. It takes a really long time. The human butt was definitely not built for speed.

  7. The ski patrol stops you and asks if you’re okay, and you have to pretend that butt skiing is something you do every day.

  8. Everyone snaps a picture of you and says, “I can’t wait to post this on the Internet.”

  9. I wouldn’t know this personally, but according to Emily, your butt nearly starts to freeze up like a bag of frozen peas and becomes numb.

  10. Did I mention that you look totally stupid? Yeah, well that deserves to be said twice.

  CHAPTER 9

  Hats off to Emily, though. She toughed it out and got to the bottom of the mountain even though her butt skiing style created quite a ruckus among the skiers. We didn’t care that everyone was staring at us, though. We just wanted to get out of there as fast as we could and get on the road to New York. There was a baby coming, and we weren’t going to let my mom do this alone.

  By the time we got back to the motel, my dad seemed to be functioning a little better. He called my mom on her cell phone to get more details. Frankie’s mom was taking her to the hospital in a cab, and they were almost there. Emily and I gathered around my dad and tried to hear what she was saying, but he told us to get our things packed and he’d tell us everything when he hung up.

  We raced around the room, gathering up our pajamas and toothbrushes and stray socks. Cheerio could tell something was up. He picks up on your mood really fast. If I’m nervous, he’s nervous. If I’m tired, he’s tired. If I’m hungry, he’s hungry. Well actually, he’s always hungry, so I guess that one doesn’t count. As we raced around getting ready to leave, he started spinning in circles, chasing his tail at warp speed. He was going so fast, you couldn’t tell his head from his tail.

  “He’s excited to be having a baby brother,” Emily said.

  “That’s because he doesn’t know about the stinky diaper part yet,” I said.

  “Hank, you are so gross.”

  “Hey, I’m not the gross one. It’s not me who’s going to the bathroom in my pants.”

  When my dad hung up the phone, he seemed a little more like himself. At least he was able to string a couple of sentences together. He told us that my mom’s water had broken which meant she was going to have the baby pretty soon.

  “What’s plumbing got to do with having babies?” I asked. I remember one time, our neighbor Mrs. Fink’s hot water pipe behind her sink had broken and I didn’t notice her having any babies, just a flood.

  “The baby floats in water inside Mom’s tummy,” Emily informed me. “When the bag of water breaks, it means the baby is ready to be born.”

  “How am I supposed to know that?” I asked.

  “Because Mom has explained it to you a thousand times. If you ever listened, Hank, you’d know that.”

  Okay, I’ll score that one point for Emily. Concentrating when people are explaining things to me is not one of my strong points.

  Even though I hadn’t really known the whole water deal before, I thought it was cool that my little brother was floating in water. That meant he had to be a good swimmer. Maybe he’d grow up to be in the Olympics one day. That would be exciting. I’d go see him and sit in the stands and cheer.

  Oh wow. I sure hope he doesn’t wear those skimpy, skintight Speedos that make it look like you have almost nothing on. That would be really embarrassing especially if they had an American flag on them. Hey, if he’s in water now, will he come out with those on?

  “HANK!” I heard my dad saying. “Let’s go!”

  From the tone of his voice, I could tell this wasn’t the first time he’d called my name. I guess my brain had flown to the Olympics and, as usual, had forgotten to come back.

  I grabbed my duffel and we hurried down the stairs to our car. The snow was starting to fall as we loaded our stuff into the minivan.

  Correction. The snow wasn’t falling. It was plunging down in thick blankets of huge, fat snowflakes. My dad went to pay the motel bill, and in just the few minutes that we waited for him, enough snow fell on the ground for Emily and me to make snow angels. And not just one angel. We made a whole flock of snow angels. Or maybe you call it a herd. Or a school. Or a pod. Anyway, I don’t know what you call a big group of snow angels but I made a mental note to look it up when I got home.

  My dad returned and we climbed into the backseat. We drove slowly out of the parking lot, hearing the snow and ice crunch under our tires. As we pulled out onto the highway, the snow was coming down so quickly, the windshield wipers couldn’t clear if off the windows, even when they were going at the fastest speed. My dad was forced to drive really slowly.

  W
e crept our way through town. A lot of snow was piling up in the middle of the road.

  “I hope they plow these roads,” my dad said. “It’s getting pretty deep here.”

  I am not a person to be easily alarmed. In general, I am cool and unruffled, except in the case of spelling bees, pop math quizzes, and any other school type of test you can name. But I am here to tell you guys, as we left town and headed toward the highway, I felt my heart starting to pound. This was one alarming snowstorm. Driving down the highway, the snow was so thick you couldn’t see five feet in front of you. We had no choice but to keep going even though I’m sure that cars were not built to travel sideways.

  Within an hour, everything had turned white. The trees were white. The road was white. The houses were white. And my dad’s face was white—with fear!

  “You okay, Dad?” I asked from the backseat.

  “This is tough driving,” he responded. “Not much visibility.”

  We had to stop a lot to clean off the front windshield.

  “Maybe we should pull off the road and wait for the storm to pass over,” Emily suggested.

  “Right, and by that time, Mom will have had the baby and we’ll be under a mountain of snow,” I said. “Use your head, Emily.”

  We crept along the highway for another hour, but to be honest, we weren’t making much progress. We were going slower than if we were walking. A couple of times my dad tried to speed up, but that made the back of the car fishtail like one of those cars in the Indy 500. The road was slippery and snowy and we were the only car out there.

  We got very quiet. The only thing you could hear was Cheerio snoring. He was curled up on my lap, unaware that my dad was driving along a road that he couldn’t see. Sometimes, it’s good to be a dog.

  At last, we saw a town up ahead. It wasn’t much of a town, but there were lights on in some of the houses, and a little downtown street. We all breathed a sigh of relief as we approached the town. It was called Bedroom Falls or Bear Claw Falls or Belly Ache Falls . . . or something that started with a B. Sorry, but you know I’m not such a great reader even when I’m staring at a book, so you can imagine what driving by a road sign does to my reading skills, especially when most of the letters are covered in snow.