Crazy Blood

by T. Jefferson Parker

  As he landed, Robert’s skis shuddered violently on a patch of ice. He rose from his crouch to check his speed, caught more ice, and—still going at what looked to Wylie like sixty miles an hour—shot off-course, scattering bystanders and flattening sapling pines, throwing snow high in an unstoppable ballistic calamity. Off the embankment he flew, rising higher and higher, pivoting slowly, then, on his descent, backstroking with his poles in a braking windmill.

  The ski lift stanchion was set back from the X Course several yards, wrapped in padding. Safety padding could be thin, in some cases no better than a T-shirt pulled over a telephone pole. In Wylie’s experience, and in ski-racing lore, stanchions drew you to them as if they were magnets and you a metal shaving, and the faster you were going, the less you could resist their pull. Their mojo was bad and strong. To Wylie, Robert’s line of descent looked fated. Loudspeakers broadcast the amplified whop of him hitting padded steel, and he dropped to the snow like a bird having hit a window.

  Thoughtless, Wylie was out of the stands, slipping and sliding fast down the snow steps for the lower course. When he got to Robert, there was already a small crowd. Wylie barreled through and knelt beside him.

  Robert was unconscious and his head was turned acutely. His helmet lay nearby in two pieces, with the chin strap still fastened. Wylie found Robert’s pulse and the rise of his lungs beneath the layers of his clothes. His skin was hot and slick, and when Wylie lifted his brother’s eyelids, he saw uncomprehending black pupils set in their irises of blue. Spine, he thought, bone and nerves: Sgt. Lance Madigan, Kandahar, shot in the neck by a sniper.

  Wylie stood and hollered “Away” to the onlookers so Robert could get some air. Unable to resist, and because racing is about winning, he checked the big screen, to see Bridger Burr cross the finish line inches ahead of Sky, nailing gold and his place in the Winter X Games the following week in Aspen.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Adam Carson sat beside his grandson Robert’s bed in St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco. The Carson patriarch was eighty-seven years old and feeling every second of those years. He disliked cities and their inescapable noise, and he had been here since Robert’s accident two weeks ago. A big man, he sat forward on the chair, elbows on his knees, chin resting on the bulbous knuckles of his interlocked fingers. He had hands like driftwood. His hair was gray, straight, and cut unfashionably.

  Finally, the endless Carsons and in-laws who had traipsed into this room today to sit and whisper and blubber over Robert were gone. Visiting hours were long over, thank God. But Adam had made arrangements for two of the most important of those visitors to return together for the first time, instead of separately. He heard footsteps coming his way.

  Grandson Sky strode through the door first, followed a moment later by grandson Wylie. Neither seemed aware of the other. To Adam, it was wrong for young people to be sullen, with so much life still ahead of them. As a sympathy-inspired alternate at the X Games the previous week, Sky had done poorly, and that was surely eating at him. “You look like two fighters coming into the ring,” said Adam more truthfully than he would have wished.

  “Good evening, sir,” said Wylie.

  “Is he any better?” asked Sky.

  Adam watched Wylie round the bed and stop opposite Sky. From this vantage point, Adam could see both of their profiles and trace the distinct Carson lines of jaw and cheekbone clear back to his paternal great-great grandfather, Theodore, born in 1848 in Portland, Oregon, and photographed in Union uniform after Vicksburg. These facial features had come all the way forward to the Carson-Fixx twins, Evan and Evangeline, born to great-granddaughter Leigh-Ann down in L.A., what, five years ago? The last five years of Adam’s life seemed to have gone by in about five minutes.

  Sometimes Adam drew comfort from the long years he’d lived, but sometimes he felt like he was just one more helpless observer. He watched as Wylie lifted Robert’s eyelids, looked down for a long moment, then smoothed them closed. Over the last weeks he had noted that, home from his five-year journey, Wylie seemed strong and humorless as ever. Wylie went to the foot of the bed, where he lifted the sheets to run a finger along the sole of Robert’s left foot.

  “He can feel that,” said Sky, dropping into a chair.

  “You don’t know what he feels,” said Wylie.

  “There’s another chair outside, Wylie,” said Adam.

  “I’ll stand.”

  Adam looked at his favorite three grandsons, listened to the hum and shuffle of the hospital. “I asked you two to come here so we could have an honest talk. I have some questions that need answers. First is what to do with our beloved Robert. As you know, the doctors say he is beyond hope.”

  “The doctors are full of shit,” said Sky loudly, aiming his voice toward the open door.

  “In this rare case, I agree with them,” said Adam. “However, inarguably, this room has been running me eighteen hundred a day for the last two weeks. Plus the meds, supplies, nutrition, et cetera. Cotton swabs cost eight dollars per. This isn’t about the money, of course. It’s about getting Robert to where he would want to be.”

  Adam caught Sky’s impatient look and took a deep breath, reminding himself that forgiveness was divine, especially when it came to offspring. “And where is that, G-pa?”

  “Mammoth Lakes,” said Wylie. “Obviously.”

  “Yeah, but take him home? Or to a room at the hospital?”

  “Neither,” said Adam. “I think we should move Robert in with his mother. I think that would please her. The family can afford doctors and nurses as needed. But I wanted your thoughts before going ahead with that.”

  “Mom is Mom,” said Sky. “But better for Robert than this dump.”

  “Wylie?”

  “Not up to me, sir.”

  “I asked for your opinion.”

  Wylie thought a moment. “Robert’s better off with his mother. So, yes, Cynthia.”

  Sky looked at Wylie impatiently, then shook his head as if Wylie were a simpleton. “So, G-pa—what did you really drag us down here for?”

  “We need to talk about you two.”

  “Whatever.”

  Adam set his big hands on his knees, balanced his weight over his boots, and stood. His knees ached and his vertebrae clunked, but he straightened to his considerable full height. With his toe, he pushed his chair to Wylie and pointed at it. When Wylie had sat, Adam took a deep breath and looked down at his grandsons. “I believe in both of you.”

  “I believe in me, too, G-pa, although—”

  “Shut up, Sky.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let me reassemble my train of thought. Good. Now. Twenty-five years ago, each of you was brought into this world with both advantages and challenges, as we all are. You are both parts of the larger Carson clan. Because of the death of my son, Richard, at the hand of Cynthia—and Richard’s prior fathering of Wylie—you two half brothers have had a rocky time with each other. You were born less than six months apart. Innocence protected you at first. Then, through the years, you found knowledge, truth, suspicion, distrust, dislike, disrespect, and—for want of a better term—contempt.”

  “Don’t forget his envy of my Carsonness,” said Sky.

  Adam looked down at Sky and rested his gnarled hands behind his back, feeling his shoulder rotators grinding softly—an old man trying to keep from slapping his grandson across the face. “We are now set forth on a new direction. The one person who could sometimes keep you two at peace lies before us, unable to speak to you. So, on his behalf, let me try.”

  Adam relaxed his shoulders and let his arms fall forward to his sides, felt the blood surging back into place. “Robert loves you equally. He is never happier than in your separate companies and he looks forward to the day when all three of you can love each other as brothers are meant to. He is engaged to be married. If he could speak, he would ask that, in honor of that union, you forgive each other. The slights. The insults. The fights that spilled real blood.
The hate. So I now ask you to forgive each other, in honor of Robert and Hailee. Move forward, apart in your lives but together in the spirit that Carson strength, excellence, and goodness shall not perish from the Earth.”

  “No shame in that game,” said Sky.

  “Wylie?”

  Adam watched as Wylie continued to study Robert, as if Robert were a problem that could be solved. “What about Welborn strength, excellence, and goodness?”

  Sky chortled quietly.

  “Of course I meant to include them,” said Adam. Now in the lengthening silence, he was lost for words. He’d outlined his address, of course, refreshing himself with his beloved Lincoln, but forgotten to write the clincher that would close the deal. It was time to improvise.

  “Then please rise and face each other.”

  The young men did.

  He saw their gazes lock, but he could see no emotion. They certainly were good-looking young men. For reasons he did not understand, Adam was prouder of these three than any of the others—even his own brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, other grandsons and granddaughters, great-grandsons and great-granddaughters—and the whole muddy slough of in-laws who were contributaries to the great river Carson. Of all, he loved these three troubled brothers most. Or, maybe, he was only most afraid for them. This idea was coming to him more often now, since tragedy had stolen Robert in his prime. Were the Carsons cursed? Adam felt his eyes welling and he willed it to cease. “Sky, do you swear in the presence of Robert that you forgive Wylie for all past wrongs? The words, the blows? Everything?”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “Wylie?”

  Wylie waited a long beat. “Yes, I forgive all that.”

  “Embrace.”

  Adam watched Sky and Wylie come together briefly, then break apart with obvious relief. Still, hope lilted through him. “I’m not expecting instant miracles,” he said. “But I do expect civil behavior from you men. This isn’t for me. It’s for Robert. He loves you both very much. I’ll be making the arrangements with Cynthia to take him home. In the meantime, you two grow up. That goes especially for you, Sky.”

  Adam saw the anger flash in Sky’s face. So much like his mother in that way, he thought; their emotions take them over and they do foolish things. Then, as Adam watched, Sky’s anger changed to something more subtle. Sky looked to Robert and took his hand. “Robert, for you, I’ll forgive this … man. But I’ll do more than just that. I’ll win next year’s Mammoth Cup for you. I’ll make you even more proud to be a Carson. I promise this to you more totally than I’ve ever promised anything to anyone.”

  Sky kissed Robert’s hand and folded his unresisting arm back upon the blanket. To Adam, the arm looked no more living than a shirtsleeve. Sky patted Robert’s hand lightly, then gave his grandfather a look of satisfaction. Wylie left the room, and Sky followed. Adam sighed, very tired, and sat back down. He heard his grandsons outside:

  “Wylie, I actually don’t forgive you. I always hoped you’d die young and in agony. Still do.”

  “Back at you, brother.”

  “You’re not my brother. I got the good blood.”

  “You can’t win the cup next year, Sky.”

  “I can and will.”

  “No, it’s mine.”

  “I’ll do anything on Earth to prevent that.”

  “You can’t beat me, Sky. The cup already belongs to me.”

  * * *

  Adam took a cab back to the Monaco Hotel on Geary. He packed and had the bellhop take his bags to the lobby. He went downstairs with his Catton and got a glass of Napa cabernet from the restaurant. He sat by the fireplace and looked toward the street, exhausted by Robert’s fate and by his two grandsons’ unbending dislike for each other. Neither was at genuine fault. The true blame lay on his own son, Richard, and his wife, Cynthia, and the determined Kathleen Welborn. How many times had that story played out in the history of civilization—the married man of success and charm, the flattered young admirer, the shocked wife?

  The wine was unearthly good. He pondered Sky’s pledge to win the next Mammoth Cup for Robert, not sure what to make of it. Sky was certainly capable of winning it. But Sky had also always excelled at the hollow gesture. Sky, who, at age six, had wanted to change his name to White Ice Carson, to be more “marketable” as a skier. Who, at sixteen, had brought impoverished Croatian twins to live with him and Cynthia and train on Mammoth Mountain, then angrily turned them out when his interest in them dwindled. Sky, who had been engaged to and dumped not one but two women, practically at the altar. Sky, thought Adam—boastful and brash and brimming with inborn talent, but still afflicted by moods, like his mother, and by a sliver of fear on the mountain, like my beautiful Richard.

  So, Sky as Mammoth Cup champion? Maybe. He would need to dedicate himself to it.

  But Wylie could win it, too. He had comparable instincts and abilities. And Wylie was serious in ways that Sky wasn’t, quite. He was strong and could summon will. He was both a skier and a racer—two different things. Wylie’s Mammoth Cup win five years ago was the most impressive ski-cross run that Adam had ever seen on the Mammoth X Course. But Wylie would need to find desire. For Wylie, there had always been the next adventure, the next mountain, the next place where the grass would be greener and he could find whatever was missing. Like my beautiful Richard, Adam thought again.

  Now, he thought, the cup stood equidistant between them like a gleaming sword that only one of them could grab first and employ. Which one of his grandsons would he really like to win that race? Well, legally, Sky was the legitimate Carson and therefore an heir. Spiritually? Bastard Wylie might have the edge.

  Adam looked at the magnificent vase that stood in the middle of the lobby, at the elegant furniture, the beautiful marble floor. Through the front windows on Geary he could see the rain coming down and a bellhop with a raised umbrella escorting a woman inside. He thought of Sandrine, almost five years gone now, but he still often awoke in his bed believing that she was there beside him, as she had been for sixty-four years. Sometimes he reached his hand out, expecting her warm skin. Then that free fall into truth.

  But surprisingly to Adam, what he found himself dwelling on in his advancing years were not the staggering losses in his lifetime—Sandrine, a brother, a sister, Richard, a granddaughter, several of his closest friends, and scores of people he had liked and loved—but, rather, the pleasures that carried him through each day. He had his home and his ATV and the Sierra Nevada to roam upon. He could still fish Crowley Lake and Hot Creek and the Upper Owens. He could still ski the more forgiving slopes. He had his reading and the eyes to do it with, thank God. He had the love of Teresa. He had Mammoth Mountain to manage—twenty-eight lifts, three lodges and a cross-country ski center, six restaurants, two bars, and an untold horde of employees—all subject to the vagaries of snow. Blessed, all-powerful snow. It had always been his life and love and fortune. Not that he was involved with the day-to-day running of the mountain anymore. It was time to sell, and he knew it.

  In the early days, Dave McCoy had built the resort of Mammoth Mountain, most of it with his own hands. Young Adam had been one of his many acolytes. Eventually, through his family’s commercial development fortune, Adam had bought controlling share of the resort, and it had been his for the last decade. But by now he had come to believe that, regarding what we love, we are all just janitors for allotted times. Adam had offers on the table from corporations in the United States, the UK, Germany, Japan, China, South Korea, and Dubai. He would make scores of millions of dollars.

  Finally warmed by the fire, Adam surrendered his troubles to those of a darker time. He opened his beloved Catton, the finest writer on our great civil war, in Adam’s not always humble opinion. Antietam was coming, still the bloodiest day in the history of the nation, a spectacle of profitless tragedy and waste. The first battlefield in the history of the world that was documented by a newfangled thing called photography. Brother killing brother. Adam read for half
an hour, making occasional notes in the margins. When he was done, he riffled the pages quickly and smiled to himself. There were pen scratchings in his Catton going back sixty years!

  An hour later, at exactly eleven, Mike Cook, friend and ally and Mammoth Mountain racecourse setter, walked into the lobby. He found Adam and rocked his shoulder, then sat with him for a while as the older man’s mind began to fire again. It didn’t take long. Cook had never seen such energy in a person. Sure, Adam was slower now, but once he got going he still had that unstoppability, that God-given combination of weight and gravity that took him places others couldn’t get to.

  Cook helped Adam get his luggage to the door, where a bellhop took over, setting the bags with care into the back of Cook’s SUV. The rain had stopped. The bellhop asked about the current Mammoth Mountain snow level and Adam told him to the nearest quarter inch, adding that another six to eight inches were due on Thursday night. He overtipped the young man, as he did all gratuity-dependent service workers.

  “Get me out of this city,” he said to Mike.

  CHAPTER SIX

  In the cold darkness the next morning, Wylie dug his old Chamonix Racing Saber Three skis from his bedroom closet. They were 180 centimeters long and slim-waisted, with acute, deep-carving edges. He propped the skis against the wall and ran his fingers along the sharp undersides. Dusty, and badly in need of wax, of course. He could hear his sisters banging around in the darkness, arguing over first shower while the hot-water pipe groaned and shuddered. He remembered what it was like getting up this early to get to Let It Bean, followed by ski workouts on the mountain, then school, then another hour or two at Let It Bean, then homework. Even with the special Mammoth School District programs for team skiers and boarders, Wylie had needed more than a little willpower to make it through four years with his 3.0 grade point average intact.

  He arrived at Main Lodge just before 7:00 A.M., when the Mammoth ski team had its pick of the best runs. That gave the pros an hour of skiing and boarding before the paying public was allowed in. The morning was clear and cold, eighteen degrees, according to the lodge thermometer.