Crazy Blood

by T. Jefferson Parker

  I remember Kathleen sitting there in Mono County Superior Courtroom 1, Bridgeport, California, the cliché of a rosy glow on her, holding that bastard son of hers, rocking him like the gold medal–winning mother she thought she was, tears handy, looking down at me as if I’d robbed her of something that was hers, which I had not. Richard was never not mine. I felt contempt for her. After all, I had problems of my own. Such as the fact I’d lost the love of my life. Don’t forget that, lady. In spite of his nonterrific judgment, Richard was more than a onetime inseminator to me. I adored him. There was even a tiny bit of worship in it. I had borne his children. Bore the last one—Sky, with whom I was pregnant on the night of the shooting—in a county jail hospital, where they flubbed the epidural. And let’s not forget that I was the one she was helping send to prison. I was the one who wouldn’t get to hug my own babies for thirteen years, unless you count hellos and good-byes on weekends and holidays at the Central California Women’s Facility down in Chowchilla. You can bet I counted them. They were all I had.

  Sounds preposterous, but what I missed most during those years was pushing my children around in strollers. So frustrating to have two children of stroller age and not be able to go outdoors and push them. When I first knew I was going to be a mother, I saw myself rolling the little one around Mammoth Lakes in a snuggly protective shelter, getting him/her outside into the beauty of the world instead of being trapped inside all day, looking up at what—mobiles or the ceiling or at me bending down to make funny noises at him/her? I knew it would bring both me and the baby great pleasure. I got to show Andrea the great outdoors. Then in an eye blink, Robert was three and Sky was an infant, but there were no strollers or sons or daughters in my loud, clanking, institutional world. You cannot imagine how long one day can be in prison. By the time I got out, my children were too big for strollers.

  Adam brought Robbie here yesterday, as he said he would. Robbie looks better than he did over in San Francisco. More relaxed. What I see when I look at Robbie is the best of my children, broken by the life he chose to live. Literally, broken. Adam and Brandon and Mike Cook and Hailee Patterson got the hospital bed in here, and the paramedics did all the hookups, and the nurse gave us each printouts of how to care for Robbie, all the dos and don’ts. Like a new exotic pet. A creature from Borneo. It’s going to be a full-time job. That’s good. Idle hands and all that. I gave them all the latest issue of The Woolly.

  I couldn’t wait for them all to leave so I could sit here by his bed and look at Robbie and remember. He was three when they threw me in the hole. I lost thirteen years with my children and I know there is no way to get those years back. What a terrible thought, me outliving Robbie. Maybe he will just … continue to live. Quite a few brain-damaged people do just that. My first goal toward his complete rehabilitation is to get him to move one of his eyelids in response to simple questions. One movement for yes, two movements for no. That is where we will begin.

  I am more than pleased to have him here right now. He’s not going anywhere and neither am I. Neither are Andrea or Sky. Finally.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Adam sat before the enormous fireplace in his great room, looking southeast down Mammoth Mountain. Looking through the wall of glass, he saw snow dropping off the branches in slow diagonals. Past the trees lay the steep flank of mountain and below the mountain sat the town. Smoke rose from chimneys almost too small to see. Gondolas and lifts climbed and descended. Toy skiers and boarders zigzagged down. Adam’s house was perched on recessed caissons sunk into the steep rock, which allowed it to hover out from the mountain like a satellite in space. Some people coming into his home for the first time felt unanchored and afloat. He had actually had guests collapse to their knees with confusion and vertigo upon walking in. The two-track dirt road leading up to it was impassable for six months of the year—sometimes longer—leaving two gleaming silver funicular cars for transportation.

  Adam considered the newly expanded Mammoth Racing Committee, seated around the sprawling redwood burl coffee table: Jacobie Bradford III, the regional manager of Gargantua Coffee; Diane Dimeo of Vault Sports; Claude Favier of Chamonix Racing; and Adam’s own grandson-in-law, Brandon Shavers, married to Cynthia’s daughter, Andrea. Brandon coached the Mammoth freeski team.

  He stood and began passing out copies of the revised Racing Committee Bylaws. Adam saw that Brandon handled the books with pride. Brandon had made no secret of how much work it had been to make so many last-second changes this quickly, even with the help of a very expensive attorney in Palo Alto. In Adam’s opinion, the text was needlessly long and detailed, and the print almost impossibly small to read even though, for eighty-seven, his eyes weren’t bad. These leather-bound editions had come in just yesterday, each cover embossed with the committee member’s cursive signature in gold.

  Adam accepted his edition of the racing bylaws, watching the lovely Teresa returning from the bar with another tray of beverages for his guests. She delivered a third Irish coffee for Brandon, which he took with a dopey grin. Adam could tell he was already jacked on caffeine and half-looped by the whiskey. Adam wondered for the thousandth time how his granddaughter could stand the man. He traded glances with Mike Cook, his closest friend and longtime Mammoth Mountain course setter, though not a Racing Committee member.

  “Nice,” said Jacobie Bradford, setting his bylaws on the immense planed and shellacked table. “But back to business, Mr. Carson—we really don’t think that Gargantua banners at the start and finish lines for the Gargantua Mammoth Cup courses, and a smattering of verticals around town, would be unsightly at all.”

  “You said forty-six vertical banners, which is every streetlamp in town,” said Adam. “And I didn’t say ‘unsightly’; I said ‘piggish.’”

  Jacobie chuckled. “Right. But Mammoth Lakes is spread out over—”

  “I know how big my town is.”

  “Exactly. So with only forty-six eight-by-three verticals to hang, it’s not like people will feel overwhelmed by them. The banners have full color Mammoth-specific nature scenes—skiing and boarding, cycling and hiking, all that. Not one pig! Each will have our Gargantua logo—of course—tastefully positioned.”

  “An ape’s face,” Diane Dimeo noted.

  “But you should see what the design team has come up with.” Jacobie said. He was thirtysomething, his head shinily shaven, and he sported a trim Vandyke.

  Adam wondered what this generation of men had done with their hair. Traded it for smart phones? He raised his binoculars and watched a snowboarder wipe out way down on Ricochet. One second the boarder was carving downhill and the next he was a tumbleweed of snow.

  “Grandpa? Sir?” asked Brandon. “I have to say I think we’re getting a lot of buck from Gargantua. And I want them to get plenty of bang back.”

  Adam lowered the field glasses and considered several responses, but the moment passed.

  “I think Mr. Carson is right to be skeptical,” said Diane. Adam looked at her. She was slight, dressed all in black, with thin sheets of shiny white hair and dark brown eyes. He considered himself a good guesser of age, but couldn’t get better than thirty to forty-five on Diane.

  “Because Vault Sports wants to hang verticals banners, too?” asked Jacobie.

  “Yes, we do. And because Vault doesn’t want Mammoth Lakes to look like just another one of your many identical, metastatic coffee shops.”

  “Metastatic? As in cancerous? Really, Diane? I’m sorry we succeed so well. And employ twenty-six thousand people nationwide. Offer decent pay, good benefits, and donate millions of dollars a year to charity. God, am I so very sorry.”

  Diane set her soft drink on an end table and gave Adam a frank stare. “I still think forty-six vertical banners that advertise one company is overkill. We’re sponsors here, not invaders. Mr. Carson, I ask you to allot the forty-six lamppost displays more equally among the three of us.”

  “But our patronage isn’t equal,” said Jacobie. “And it’s not
up to Mr. Carson anyway. It’s up to his friends on the town council.”

  “They do whatever he tells them to,” said Brandon.

  Adam held his grandson-in-law with a look that silenced the room. Brandon smiled in discomfort. “Claude?”

  “Of course it is the decision of the city,” said the Frenchman. “We at Chamonix believe in winter sports. They are our life. Chamonix also believes in Mammoth Mountain. We will continue to sponsor young athletes here. We will continue to offer our best products at competitive prices in select Mammoth stores. We always advertise on the Mammoth TV channel. Chamonix is not made of money, but of passion.”

  “I suggest twenty-six banners for Gargantua and ten each for Vault and Chamonix,” said Adam.

  “That’s completely disproportionate, sir,” said Jacobie. He threw open his arms, raised his shoulders, and scrunched his head down.

  “Share the mountain,” said Diane. “Don’t buy it.”

  “Gargantua has more than enough streetlamp banners, Jacobie,” said Adam. “And you also have the start and finish signage for the half-pipe, the slopestyle, and X Course.”

  Jacobie sighed and shook his head. “What did I do?”

  Adam lifted his binoculars and watched a very aggressive skier fly down Dragon’s Back. Adam liked the straightforward power of the woman, the assured turns, the absence of hotdogging. Honest speed. “Brandon? What’s this about Wylie Welborn wanting to join our Mammoth freeski team?”

  “He’s got it in his thick head to win the Mammoth Cup. Him and Sky are hating on each other again. It’s become some kind of loyalty thing to Robert. Like whoever wins the cup loves Robert more. But Wylie withdrew his app—snatched the money right off my desk.”

  “Wylie Welborn?” asked Claude Favier. “He won the Mammoth Cup ski cross very impressively five years ago. On Chamonix Saber Three skis!”

  “He’s older and fatter now,” said Brandon. “I don’t need him on the team. He probably couldn’t afford it anyway.”

  Adam caught Diane and Jacobie trying to read his mind—not easy, he knew, given Wylie’s divisive relationship with the Carson family proper. Adam understood that Jacobie wouldn’t want Wylie on the team, given Gargantua’s not-so-secret desire to claim pretty much all of Let It Bean’s market share. Brandon was against Wylie because Brandon had never liked the Welborns and they had never liked him, and that was that. “Put him on the team, Brandon. I’ll cover his fees.”

  “Why, Grandpa?”

  “Because he’s one of the best ski crossers I’ve ever seen.” Adam raised his binoculars again. He hated committees, bureaucracies, democracies. Squabbles, strife, opinions. Peering through the glasses, he watched some speed demon slicing down the black-diamond Head Chutes run. The equipment is so much better now than back in the old days, he thought. He remembered those heavy wooden skis, the bindings with minds of their own, the monstrous boots. Not a helmet in sight. Suddenly, Adam was sixty years back, helping his friend Dave McCoy build that first Mammoth Mountain rope tow—using a car engine and old tires! It was summer on the mountain and unusually hot, and they worked in jeans and boots. Dave’s wife, Roma, was there, and Adam’s beloved Sandrine, both so beautifully young and tan-armed in sleeveless blouses and shorts, and many others sweating and grunting and trying to get that damned V-8 rope tow to work without dragging them up the mountain at thirty miles an hour.

  Adam could see Sandrine turn and smile at him. What a lucky man I was.

  Now he watched the skier tearing down the mountain in a flurry of powder. And listened to the Racing Committee blather on.

  Jacobie was agreeing with Brandon that Wylie should not be a part of the free-ski team. Who could know better what the team needed than its coach?

  “And if Wylie is on the team, think of those last few loyal customers who might stay with Let It Bean,” said Diane.

  “Jesus, Diane.”

  “But I agree with you. It’s Brandon’s team and Brandon’s call.”

  “I believe we all would be fortunate to have Wylie Welborn on this team,” said Claude Favier. “It would be good for Mammoth Lakes and the sport of ski cross.”

  “And you hope he rides Chamonix skis again,” said Diane.

  “Yes, I passionately hope for this,” said Claude.

  “But I win,” said Brandon. “Three votes against Wylie. Only two votes in favor.”

  Then came a silence, during which Adam gazed down at the town of Mammoth Lakes.

  “Wait,” said Diane. “There are lots of moving parts here. So, yes, Adam, I’d be willing to give Wylie a chance on the team, if you would suggest to the town council a more equitable allotment of the streetlight banners. Say, fifteen each for Chamonix and Vault, and sixteen for Gargantua. As a nod to their much deeper pockets.”

  “That’s a travesty,” said Jacobie.

  “Deal,” said Adam.

  “Sir,” said Jacobie.

  “The fuck, Grandpa?”

  “Ah, excellent,” said Claude.

  Adam stood and made an underhand shooing motion toward the door. “Out out, damned spots. Mike, I need to talk to you a minute. You people hold the funicular for him.”

  The Racing Committee filed out, mostly arguing, Claude laughing, Brandon casting a hangdog look back at Adam before slamming the door. Teresa began the cleanup. Adam heard the funicular engine start outside. “Mike, has Brandon talked to you about the X Course for the next cup?”

  “Yes. He wants two more gates, tighter banks, and flatter straights. For safety, after Robert.”

  And to favor his lighter-bodied skiers, thought Adam. Such as Sky. “And what did you tell him?”

  “I told him to do his job and let me do mine. I always set the best and fairest course I can, Adam. And the safest.”

  “I know you do.”

  “And I want you to know that the padding on the X Course was very heavy, high quality, and correctly installed.”

  “I have no doubt.”

  “I’m crushed about Robert. I love him.”

  “I know you do.”

  Mike stood there for a moment.

  “It’s good to have a friend who tells the truth,” Adam said. “Please let Wylie know he’s on the team. Not to sweat the money.”

  “I hope those corporate pricks don’t run his family out of business.”

  Adam considered this notion. He understood the value of prosperity for Mammoth Lakes, and he understood the value of family. This was about both.

  “And did you hear? April Holly is moving to Mammoth to live and train, away from the spotlights in Aspen.”

  Adam had not heard. He’d never met April Holly, but he’d seen her image on supermarket magazines and on TV thousands of times. She had four World Cup Crystal Globes and a gold medal from Sochi. A snowboard wizard with a pretty smile and bouncy hair. America’s snow princess. “Another Olympic medalist for our mountain. I’m pleased.”

  “I hear she travels with quite a crew. Private jets, custom Escalades with her picture on the sides. Bodyguards, coaches, and supermom. They say she creates a spectacle wherever she goes.”

  So much about snow sports has changed, thought Adam, suddenly back in his station wagon with Sandrine and Don Oakley and his girl, all packed in and barreling down the highway with eight pairs of skis on top, ski gear and cheap food loaded to the roof, music on the radio if they could get it, following the FIS circuit from Mammoth to Squaw to Aspen to Jackson to Stowe and then on through Europe. He’d never forget those days. Always trying to take down the Europeans, put America on the map for the downhill, slalom, giant slalom, and the combined. They hadn’t quite accomplished that. But they’d gotten the attention of the USOC, and paved the way for Billy Kidd and Jimmie Heuga in ‘64.

  A flurry of snow blew into the foyer just before Mike closed the door. Glancing out the window, Adam saw Mike’s footprints multiplying in the snow, then Mike climbing into the silver funicular car. The thick steel cable lowered and the car started down.

&nb
sp; Teresa took his arm and laid her head against his shoulder. “They want only what they want.”

  “Teresa, let’s build a fire in the bedroom and lie down by it.”

  “It’s built and I’m ready.”

  “You are a joy to these old bones.”

  “You are a joy to mine.”

  “Sandrine always said it wasn’t how much you love, but how much you are loved.”

  “That is what we do for each other.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Wylie dressed out with the Mammoth freeski team at the Main Lodge HQ, then caught the shuttle back to chair 24, which took him up the mountain to the X Course. Daniel, whose plaster arm cast Wylie had signed days before, sat beside him, steam wavering from the hole in his ski mask and forming clouds on his goggles.

  “It’s cool you get to try out,” said Daniel.

  “I haven’t run the X Course in five years.”

  “But you skied all over the world after the war.”

  “Pretty much so.”

  “I saw you win the cup. My dad still talks about it. He’s a cop. He thinks it’s awesome I got to meet and ride up with you the other day.”

  The morning was cold and bright and the pure white Sierra peaks towered around them, dotted with rocks and trees. An hour ago, Wylie had left work at Let It Bean feeling guilty, but now even his family seemed a distant responsibility and his spirit felt lighter as the chair drew him up the mountain. At the dismount, the chair leveled off and Wylie and Daniel glided onto the snow side by side.

  “Go forth and shredify,” said Wylie.

  “You, too.”

  Positioning himself in the X Course starting gate, Wylie’s usual prerun yawns vanished, replaced by an odd adrenaline-fueled calm that he got only when racing, and, later, while on patrols in Kandahar. Now he heard the breeze in the trees and the distant creak of the chairlift and he was aware of the other skiers watching in silence. The thought crossed his mind how very small this X Course was within the context of Mammoth Mountain. Really, the X Course was just a little slash on a big map. So was the mountain itself. They had once seemed big to him. Five years, he thought. So we meet again.