Crazy Blood

by T. Jefferson Parker

  The hostess squared the menus and smiled at April. Sky watched April look around the room at the racers fallen quiet at the bar tables, and he was pretty sure she looked directly at him. Briefly. Then she turned and headed for the exit. Her mother closed in quickly behind her, followed by the men.

  The big fellow held open the door until the rest had exited, and when a party from outside started in, he let go and the breeze blew it shut on them. Looking through the frost-edged windows, Sky watched April leaning into the snow, arms around herself, headed for the large black SUV parked in one of the handicapped spaces. It had a large likeness of her face on it, and April Holly written in a cursive, autographlike style above her mountain of golden curls.

  “We’re not good enough for her,” said Megan.

  “Yes,” said Sky. “I am.”

  * * *

  By the time Wylie came in five hours later, Sky had lost count of the Stolis and was halfway through the cowboy steak dinner. He had retreated into the back dining room, which at this hour was sparse of diners and gave him a view of the bar. It was still busy out there. He watched Wylie join a table of half-pipe boarders and skiers. No Carsons at that table, of course. The wallpaper in his booth had a detailed Victorian pattern that swirled and settled, swirled and settled. There was no proper way to leave the premises but past Wylie. Sky wondered if this was fateful. Of course he could go through the kitchen and out the back, but he was a man and a Carson. When he was finished with his dinner, he stood up straight, dropped some twenties onto the table, and walked into the bar.

  The room was crowded and loud, football on all four screens, Sky keeping Wylie just in the corner of his vision. Sky could tell Wylie was watching the game, his bearded face uplifted and the TV light faint upon it. Sky thought he should stop and survey the room with some kind of propriety, just to project that he was in no hurry to leave, that he was champion skier Sky Carson, future Olympian, on his way to his next appointment. He looked around briefly and thought, I guess I should at least say hello to the bastard, if I’m to regain my authority and good name in this town.

  He angled through the revelers, sidestepped through a tight spot, and brought himself to rest at Wylie’s table. Wylie and the others turned to him and went quiet. Time to say something, he thought. “My line in the snow is fairly drawn.”

  “Beat it, Sky. I’m just so damned sick of you.”

  “Apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “Foul play on the X Course.”

  “So, this is all about something that didn’t happen?”

  “It’s about everything that has happened.”

  “Oh hell—not all that.”

  “Your ho mother cost my father his life and sent my mom to prison. All I got out of the deal was you and your disrespect. You can apologize for that, too, while you’re at it.”

  Movement. Sky threw a punch, but he was already falling backward under a blow. Smack and percussion, no pain. He was flat on his back, looking up at a thickly bearded face, Megan hovering, a chandelier, and a stamped aluminum ceiling, all interlocked and rotating like the pattern in a kaleidoscope.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I was five months along with Sky at the time I shot Richard. I was showing plenty, as a woman will do with number three. Thirty years old and my third child on the way. But I still had good strength because I was born strong, and I was extra stout in the legs from a lifetime on skis. Big-lunged, too. I could ski or run or swim forever and not get winded. I’d long ago given up racing to have my family, but I still got up on the mountain when I could. And ran and swam at the athletic club. And kept up with a three-year-old and a four-year-old. What I’m saying is I was a five-months-pregnant mother of two and I was still as beautiful and strong as I’d ever been, and I was there for Richard, all his for anything, willing, a good wife.

  I was a prisoner when I bore Sky at the county jail hospital. The pregnancy really took it out of me. He was breech and I tried for weeks to coax him into turning around. I’d lie on the preg-room floor with my feet elevated and a little radio set up down by him, with music playing, trying to get him to just switch himself around inside me so he could hear the music better. The doctor said the music was an unproven folk remedy, and he was right about the unproven part, because Sky turned not one centimeter that anybody could determine. And like I said, when Sky finally came, the epidural didn’t work right, so when it was over I felt like I’d died and gone to hell in the form of a county hospital staffed by tiny, grim nurses and one monstrous deputy sheriff wearing a shirt so tight that it pulled apart between the buttons, and, of course, a big gun.

  They took Sky immediately, and I didn’t see him again for one month. They did let me pump milk for him—to shore him up against allergies and worse—which went into a cooler that Adam and Sandrine ferried from the prison to Mammoth Lakes. Sky had a wet nurse, Teresa by name, who had lost a baby of her own. She used to wait on us at El Matador on Main.

  Of all the infuriating things that got into me during those first months of prison, one of the worst was thinking about Sky suckling at the breast of another woman. Sure I was thankful he had something like a mother’s milk. Sure I knew he’d be better off for it. But I had a recurring dream back then that I was standing on a cliff with Teresa and she handed baby Sky to me and I brought him into my arms and smiled at her, then placed my boot—a ski boot!—to Teresa’s middle and pushed her over the cliff.

  I healed up slowly. Never felt weaker or had less hope. Hell is a cage with you in it. Murder trials are time-consuming, for starters, and we had my pregnancy and the birth of Sky and a storm of pretrial motions to consider. I went through three lawyers. When we finally got into the courtroom, the DA went straight after me, and you can bet it was a free-for-all. Kathleen Welborn was one of the witnesses. The DA painted me as privileged Mammoth Lakes “royalty,” which meant a Carson. Tried to make it a class thing, portrayed Kathleen Welborn as a penniless commoner who’d come up from San Diego and worked as a doughnut maker, then later as a ski instructor so she could try her luck on the mountain. Which is exactly what she was. Common.

  The first time I saw Kathleen’s son, Wylie, was in court. When she came in with him, it caused quite a stir, even though without a jury there weren’t lots of people. The judge allowed it. Of course it was a naked ploy by the DA to steal any small sympathy for me that the judge might have in his heart. I didn’t ask to bring in Sky. I would not stoop that low.

  Even at two months, the baby Wylie had the hallmark Carson head. Same as Sky and all of them. Wylie had a hint of the Carson jaw, too, and I could see it would become more pronounced as he grew. So there I was, sitting ankle-shackled in the Mono County Superior Courthouse, room 1, helpless but worried sick about Sky back home in Mammoth, not to mention Robert and Andrea.

  And being forced to look at my own husband’s seed made flesh through Kathleen! That first time I saw Wylie was the closest I ever came to feeling like I might go crazy. I was never crazy. I was not crazy when I shot Richard. I am not crazy now. But for that first hour sitting in the courtroom with Wylie not thirty feet away, I feared that I might just leave my marbles behind and never be able to find them again. But I didn’t. Instead, I stared. I stared at Kathleen and my husband’s son, and resolved never to be defeated by them.

  Earlier today, I got the wheelchair from the medical rental place by the hospital, even though Robbie’s doctor said it would be impossible for me to get him in and out of it by myself, much less push him around town to do some sightseeing. He was quick to say that Robbie wouldn’t be aware of anything that was around him. Nothing.

  But—and this is interesting and I’ll be writing about in The Woolly—when I pressed the doctor for a 100 percent guarantee that Robbie was not aware of anything, the sawbones would not give one. He admitted there was a small chance that Robbie was, in fact, aware of some things, just like it said in that newspaper article that Sky found. With the new scans, they can tell things th
ey couldn’t tell just a few years ago. So who is one nearsighted, itty-bitty little neurologist to seal my son’s fate? Who is he to attempt that? I told the doctor I’d take Robbie out into the world regardless. I gave him a current issue of The Woolly, however. Certainly no hard feelings

  It’s a heavy contraption, that wheelchair. But I’m still very strong and patient and I’m going to get Robbie out there in the sunny, real world. As I would have done with him so many more times in his stroller if it weren’t for Kathleen Welborn. Adam and Sky and Hailee will help, and we’ll get the nurses if we have to. The way I look at it is, what could it possibly hurt?

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Spring came and the racers skied and boarded the corn snow into June. Finally, the corn snow melted to hero snow—the slushy pack in which even beginners can carve deep turns. Eventually, the hero snow gave way to a thin mud-speckled carpet, and the man-made snow was too expensive to earn a profit for the mountain. So Adam Carson closed it. It had been a good year—584 inches of snow, high visitation to the mountain, and high occupancy in the rental market. Restaurants were full and spending was strong, real estate inching back up for the first time since the Great Recession. No plane crashes, avalanches, ski or boarding fatalities, no tree-well suffocations, deadly fumarole collapses or earthquakes.

  Robert’s tragedy at the Mammoth Cup hung over the locals like a fog that wouldn’t break, but the tourists who came and left and paid the bills seemed to have already forgotten. Wylie Welborn’s one-punch knockout of Sky Carson in the bar at Slocum’s was much discussed. Some said Sky had it coming. Some said Wylie was way quick to violence. For the most part, the town seemed empty and abandoned.

  But by July, the bikers and climbers and fishermen and runners were back and Mammoth Lakes’ second season was in swing. The sponsored and more prosperous snow racers were headed down to South America or New Zealand to board and ski. The less advantaged headed up to Mount Hood, or stayed in Mammoth to work the restaurants and sporting-goods stores, sometimes taking two or even three jobs at a time to pay rent, and do dry-terrain training. Snow was what they talked about, even though it seemed an eternity away. They rode mountain bikes and took classes at Cerro Coso College and hit the happy hours in the customer-shy bars and restaurants.

  Wylie put in eight-hour days at Let It Bean, then went home and split wood, a lot of it. By mid-June, he had half enough for winter, all of it stacked neatly along the east side of the house. His arms, hands, and back became very strong.

  He repaired the sagging rear deck and patched the roof with mastic and aluminum as best he could. But he saw that many of the old composition shingles were broken and the tar was dried and cracked everywhere he looked. He got two quotes for a new roof: twelve thousand dollars and fifteen thousand, and both roofers said to replace this thing before winter or it would be a wet one inside. Wylie gave the grim news to Steen, who cheerfully stated that they would find the money, as they always did. Wylie helped Steen finish his pastry cart, putting on two coats of bright red paint and, at Steen’s delighted insistence, stenciling large yellow Scandinavian-styled letters that read THE LITTLE RED PASTRY SHED.

  Every other day, Wylie ran distance with Bea and Belle, legs being the foundation of ski racing. Over the years, Wylie had been amused at the way ski and board racers—himself included—treated their legs as if they were special, privileged parts of the body. There were endless miles, ferocious sprints, hours of leg presses, lifts, lunges, and squats. A racer with a few moments of free time did in-place knee bends or one-knee bends. They’d have contests to see who could do most. Then came the stretches, rubdowns, liniment, ice, whirlpools, handfuls of glucosamine and condroitin pills for the knees and ankles, cortisone if it got bad. Wylie didn’t love the running, but he loved being with his sisters—so nice to learn what the young were thinking.

  In the long afternoons and evenings, he fished Hot Creek and the Upper Owens and the East Walker up past Bridgeport. Sometimes he drove home, but often he slept out in the vastness of the Sierras, on the ground or in the bed of his truck. By lantern he read and composed poetically intentioned lines that amounted to nothing. He could not sustain a thought on paper. He ate his larger trout and drank bourbon in reasonable amounts.

  By the time Jesse Little Chief called to say he had finished the trailer, Wylie had traded twelve pounds of fat for muscle, and the six combined miles he ran down Highway 203 toward Highway 395 and back up again were getting easier.

  * * *

  Now Wylie slowly circled the module, personal, portable, which stood outside Jesse’s shop down in Bishop. The MPP was even more elegant than he had imagined. And so obviously capable.

  Jesse had alternated bands of maple and teak, light and dark, and finished the entire module in a heavy spar varnish that captured the hot June sun. The oversized double doors to starboard were graceful and, when latched open, welcomed the world. There were real nautical portholes up on the roof for stargazing and ventilation. Jesse had gotten the portholes from a marine-salvage place in Morro Bay, and worked the brass into a potent shine. The birch interior, simple and beautiful, shortened Wylie’s breath.

  “I’m speechless. And I’ve got the next two grand, Jesse—I’ve been living at Let it Bean. Eight hours a day, seven days a week for three months.”

  “You need a Mexican.”

  “I am a Mexican.” He thought of the agreed-upon fourteen-thousand-dollar roof job looming over the Welborn-Mikkelsen household. And the new lease on the Let It Bean space, which would surely be more money. And the heating bills to come in the fall, and the newly expensive health insurance. Good time to buy a custom-made trailer, he thought. Even the ten-thousand-dollar prize money for winning the Mammoth Cup wouldn’t even cover the roof, let alone the roof and the MPP. But how could he have known back in January that the whole damned roof was shot? “I’ll have enough by winter to pay it off.”

  “No worries, Wylie.”

  “You sure?”

  Jesse gave him a look.

  “I owe you more than I owe you, Jess.”

  A screen door wheezed open and slapped shut. Jolene hopped from deck to yard and picked her way barefoot across the dirt toward them, keeping to the cool of the shop shadow. She had a blanket over her shoulders and carried a large pasteboard box in both hands, the lid sections flapping. Her black hair shined. Above the box, her eyes were fixed on Wylie, and below the box, her legs were dark and trim. She arrived with an appraising look, then set the box on the front fork of the trailer chassis, which rested on a jack.

  “Hi, Jo.”

  “Oh, it’s you. Hello, Wylie. Here’s some stuff you’ll need.” She slung the blanket and handed it to him and waited for him to do something with it. Wylie raised his arms and let it unfold. It was a Navajo-style print, acrylic, likely from the Paiute Palace gift shop up the road. “Fake Indian junk, but it will help keep you warm in this wigwam.”

  “I like it.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Wylie folded the blanket once over and set it inside the MPP. Jolene eyed him narrowly, reached into the box, and lifted out a battered and well-seasoned iron skillet, which she set on the blanket. In the skillet were paper dispensers of salt and pepper and a new Mag flashlight. Next from the box she brought two pairs of extra-heavy wool boot socks, a pair in each hand, wiggling them at him as if trying to interest an infant or a dog. She set them on the blanket. Then a handsome leather-bound journal with a jumping trout tooled into the cover, then the collected love poems of Kahlil Gibran, followed by a bottle of the bourbon he liked, and, last, an economy-size bottle of shampoo/body wash for men.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  She stepped forward and kissed him on the cheek. “Stuff you’ll need.”

  “This is really something, Jo.”

  “It’s the next best thing to having me in there.”

  “Stop tormenting him, Jolene,” said Jesse.

  “Payback,” she said. She squinted at Wylie
once more, then strode through the shadows and back into the house.

  * * *

  Towing the MPP back up to Mammoth that evening, Wylie could barely keep his eyes off it in the rearview. The sun glanced off the varnish, and the alternating slats of hardwood made him think of the breadboard he’d made his mom in wood shop, grade seven at Mammoth Middle School, those beautiful runners like you’d see on vintage surf- and skateboards. That breadboard was still on the kitchen counter, he’d noted. He was happy with the substantial weight of the MPP, and wood was unbeatable for warmth retention and beauty. He pulled over at Tom’s Place just to get out and walk around it again and see how totally sweet it was, hitched to his truck, waiting for him, for life, for adventure. He got a rag from the toolbox and wiped off the bugs that had met their Maker on the rounded edge of the bow.

  Can’t rub too hard or I might scratch the finish.

  There.

  He felt triumphant, idling at the first traffic signal in town. A guy in the crosswalk looked at the MPP and Wylie nodded coolly. He made the turn onto Old Mammoth Road, drove slowly through town, and pulled into one of the Mammoth Cycle parking spaces in the crowded Von’s shopping center. Wylie was dying to show off the MPP, and his high-school buddy Chris, the bike maniac, was the nearest pal he could think of. Wylie found him in the service area with a bike up on the stand. Chris followed him out to the parking lot, flipping a box wrench end by end in one grease-blackened hand.

  “Holy crap, dude.”

  “Don’t touch it with greasy hands.”

  “Jesse Little Chief made this?”

  “Every inch of it.”

  “I want one.”

  “Everyone will.”

  “How much?”