Crazy Blood

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Behind Sky stood cabinets, glass-faced and filled with electronics. Red and blue lights pulsed or held steady. Six feet in front of Sky, an electric leaf blower was clamped to a ladder, eye level with him, the barrel of the blower aimed at his face. Glued into a hole in the top of the barrel was a large flared funnel filled with chipped ice and slushy water.

  Coach Brandon Shavers’s voice came to him from a small but powerful speaker mounted somewhere in the ceiling above him. “Ready, Sky? We don’t have all day.”

  “The runs take approximately one minute, Brandon.”

  “But you’ll be dripping sweat when it’s over,” said Helixon.

  “I’m already dripping sweat and everything else.” Sky thought that Helixon was the worst of dilettantes when it came to racers. Though to Helixon’s credit, he’d invented the Imagery Beast to help racers train in the off-season. The Beast was really something. But of course Helixon insisted on hovering around and acting like he knew something about doing highway speeds down a mountain of snow with three other hell-bent maniacs.

  “You should be,” said Helixon. “I see on the monitor here that your pulse is still at a hundred and five. That last run was one minute, one and two-tenths seconds.”

  “My best.”

  “You can beat it,” said Brandon.

  “These shin bangs are bad. Much worse than on real snow.”

  “Eyes on the prize, Sky,” said Helixon. “Your mind is a muscle and you are about to work it out again.”

  Sky couldn’t see the video cameras that allowed Brandon and Helixon to see him, so he just flipped off the ceiling in general.

  “Cute,” said Brandon.

  “Don’t distract me,” said Sky. He pulled his goggles away from his head to forestall condensation, then patiently fitted them to his face. The straps were soaked and the lenses flecked with bits of ice. He wore his baggy race pants and O’Neill jacket, which were pretty much soaked; his Head Worldcup Rebel i skis with the Vöelkl rMotion2 race bindings; and his Head Raptor boots, cinched up tight. His poles were cut off short so they wouldn’t hit the floor and actually move him off the sensors. He strapped his helmet and wiggled his fingers in his gloves.

  “Ten seconds,” said Brandon. “Nine…”

  Suddenly, the dome around him brightened and Sky was standing at starting gate 3 on the Mammoth Mountain X Course. The course fully surrounded him in high definition, beautifully detailed. The snow glistened slightly, and downslope the branches of the pine trees dangled and swayed and cast moving shadows on the run. The tracks of prior skiers were visible. The blower roared on, huffing bits of snow and ice into his face, lightly now. He felt eager but calm, no nerves lurking inside, looking for a way to ruin this run.

  Today they were focusing on flat light conditions, a treacherous combination of shadows and poor light that flattened out the course topography to the point where it was hard to read. Every racer hated flat light, especially when combined with hard-packed snow or ice. Helixon had constructed this virtual run beginning with Sky’s GoPro videos of his runs down the Mammoth X Course. Stabilized and linked to Sky’s skis through the an intricate network of floor sensors, then streamed throughout the surrounding dome, the graphic course was visually authentic, and as close to being on the real course as anyone could get. Plus, Helixon could simulate different conditions of snow, light, and even wind. Due to his hours in the Imagery Beast, the Mammoth X Course—this time of year nothing more than a steep gash of rock and rubble through which mountain bikers bombed—had become more familiar to Sky than ever in his life. Much more familiar. Intimate. He was a full two seconds faster than he’d been the month before. By ski-cross standards, two seconds were huge.

  The gate swung open and Sky launched and the half-pipe bowl rushed up to meet him. The shin bangs hurt, but he gave himself over in spite of them. He felt the chipped ice hitting his goggles and his racing buff, heard it tapping against his helmet. He tore across the bowl and down the first short straight to a hard right bank. He went in early and high, just above the track.

  He let himself become lost, but not fully so, his mind mostly in the now but with one crafty corner of it thinking ahead to the next thing he would have to do. The clear, loud audio caught the movement of his skis with eerie verisimilitude—whispering on the powder, grinding through the ice, slashing through the turns. Even with his boots locked into his skis and his skis sensor-bound to the floor, Sky extended into the jumps and tucked into the straights, torquing his hips through Mike Cook’s fast, narrow gates.

  He finished the run panting hard, his heart thumping, his legs trembling. It was far more mental than physical, but still, four runs of the X Course every day, plus the exterior imaging that would come later, the weights and isometric exercises, the running and biking, all fueled by the Soylent diet, were making him faster and stronger by the week.

  “One minute, three and eight-tenths seconds, Sky,” said Brandon. “Off the pace a bit.”

  “Chip, chip.”

  “Tired, Sky?” asked Helixon.

  “One more run.”

  “Okay, animal,” said Brandon. “One more, but that’s all. Five a day is probably one too many. After that, we’ll do some exterior imaging, then hit the weights.”

  “I love my Imagery Beast,” said Sky.

  His next run was a downhill scald, beating today’s best by another one-tenth of a second, leaving Sky heaving for breath, his legs aching and his heart racing. Afterward, he knelt in the twilight to loosen his boots. The floor was opaque Plexiglas, and past his dull reflection he could see down into it like an aquarium. Sky studied the labyrinthine tangle of electronics built into the floor, which registered his slightest body movements and sent them to the computer. The boots were likewise fitted with microcomponents—a tiny motherboard in the sole, crowded with chips and capacitors and buses and wires he did not understand—and more within the walls of his boots, blinking and glowing when he stepped out of them.

  He heard Brandon outside, speaking to Helixon: “So I guess they didn’t arrest Wylie or Jacobie yesterday.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Wylie Welborn no longer exists,” said Sky, stepping from the Imagery Beast.

  “Still on that kick?” asked Brandon.

  “It’s not a kick, you cephalopods. It’s the way it is. I’m starved.”

  “Weights, external imaging, then your wonderful Soylent supper.”

  “You’re nothing but sadists living off my talent.”

  “Yes,” said Brandon. “And we hope you have enough of it to win the cup next season.”

  * * *

  Two hours later, Sky’s daily workout was finished. Showered and replenished with chocolate-flavored Soylent and no longer hungry, his gear stashed in the Mountain High locker room, he biked back down the mountain to his place off Minaret.

  It was a downhill glide and he got some pretty serious velocity. With the wind whistling past, he thought, I am large and in charge—one of Brandon’s training slogans. Large and in charge is what Brandon wanted Sky believing when he went up against Wylie Welborn in the Mammoth Cup. Large was Wylie’s thing, Brandon had explained. Or, Wylie thought it was his thing. But in fact, nobody—not even Wylie Welborn—can own largeness, now can they?

  So Sky was going to be large, too. He was going to remove Wylie’s psychic advantage of largeness by becoming larger himself. In a very true way, Sky would become Wylie in order to defeat him. Sky wasn’t exactly clear on all this. Brandon could get a little out there. Brandon had also suggested that Mike Cook might reconfigure the X Course into a tighter run that would favor a nimble racer like Sky and give Wylie fewer opportunities to pass. Sky wasn’t sure what to make of that. The X Course had to be updated and reset anyway, so maybe Mike Cook should just do whatever he wanted. The wind shot through the slots in Sky’s helmet and the tires vibrated up through his arms.

  He carried his bike up the condo steps, propped it against the porch bench, and put his helmet and
gloves in the outside ski closet. He thought of the rash of bicycle thefts so far this summer, way more than the usual. Of course, his mother had written about it, suggesting it was related to the sputtering Mammoth Lakes economy and the spree of ski and board thefts last snow season. He locked the bike to the porch railing.

  Adam had bought Mammoth homes for most of his twelve grandchildren, and Sky’s was this two-level at Sunrise. A dog shrieked inside. Sky waved to the mom who lived across the parking lot. Not many people here in summer. Most of the units were rentals owned by out-of-towners. He pushed the door open and stepped in. “Hey, baby, look who’s home!”

  Megan hopped off the couch and came across the room. Ivan the Terrier was already right there in the foyer, making a protective stand on stub legs, barking insanely, a Jack Russell on yet another mission.

  “He’s still getting used to you, Sky. You’re still new to him.”

  “You’re old to me,” he told the dog.

  “Don’t hurt his feelings.” They hugged and the dog continued his tirade. “How was it, Sky?”

  “A minute one and a tenth!”

  “You’re amazing! Johnny Maines told me last night at work that the Imagery Beast is the best way he’s ever trained without snow.”

  “Who cares what Johnny Maines said?”

  “I sure don’t!”

  Sky kissed the apple-scented part of her shiny dark hair, broke away, and hung his backpack on a coat hook by the door. He looked around his home. It was sunny and tastefully decorated thanks to a former girlfriend. Sky thought it was cool, for the most part, to have a woman in his home again. His gaze settled on Meg and he smiled. She had surprised him with her sudden announcement last month—breaking off with Johnny Maines and confessing she’d always wished she was with Sky in the first place. Well, well. He liked her. She was straightforward, easy on the eyes, affectionate, and only about one-fifth as crazy as Sky was, in his estimation. She brought great desserts home from work most nights, though Sky could only watch her eat them because of his commitment to the Soylent diet.

  Ivan the Terrier shot to the far screen door to get at a jay that had landed on the deck railing. Luckily, the dog understood something about the word screen and didn’t blast right through it, though it seemed likely that someday he would.

  In the moment of relative quiet, Sky met Megan’s eyes again. “Good to be home,” he said.

  “Maybe later we can take Ivan for a walk in the meadow,” she said. “But I could sure use a little nappy-poo first.”

  “Me, too!”

  She took him by the hand and led him into the bedroom, shutting the door before Ivan could follow them in.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Wylie towed the MPP up the back side of the Sierras in four-wheel low, with slow, agonizing caution—the only way to finally arrive at Solitary.

  This side of the mountains faced west and south, getting even more snow than the east side, where the lifts and town were built. Even now in August, the higher westside elevations were still packed with snow. But it was very steep country, heavy with boulders and conifers, slashed by sunlight and shadow, and there was only one primitive two-track road that, if you knew where it ran beneath the snow and you could keep your tires on it, would eventually land you in Solitary.

  Adam and Dave McCoy had built the road with their own hands, cutting down the trees and bulldozing the rocks ten yards at a time to create the narrow passage. Used dynamite, too, Adam had told him. It took their “spare” time for the better part of three summers. Adam said that Dave McCoy had more energy than any person he’d ever seen. To young Adam, Dave McCoy had been a hero, a cross between Zeus and Paul Bunyan.

  For Wylie’s twelfth birthday, Adam had brought him to Solitary. Very carefully showed him the way in. They had spent three days and nights camping and fishing, birding and reading, glassing for bears, before packing up and skidding their way back down the mountain in first gear. Two flat tires. Over the years, they had camped at Solitary for a few days each October, around Wylie’s birthday, weather permitting, until the war and his travels had taken him away.

  Now, as his truck crawled up the mountain, Wylie’s memory arced back to that first camp they’d made at Solitary. His tent had been green and Grandpa’s yellow. He remembered stripping the lime green lichen off the kindling and the reluctant little campfires that took him so long to create. And fishing the creek for brook trout that darted for the banks like golden bullets. They’d hiked into backcountry so remote, it had been seen by a few scant handfuls of human beings. They had seen an eight-point white-tailed buck and a silver-faced black bear his grandfather guessed weighed four hundred pounds. They had dug for hours, hoping to find fossil bones, but found no bones at all. In his memory Wylie was light-headed for three straight days. Not only from the elevation, exertion, and the breath-snatching majesty of the Sierras, but—with his mother having told him about his conception—from realizing that Adam was closer to being his real father than any man could be.

  On their last night at Solitary, Adam had told Wylie about his son.

  You should know that Richard was a good-hearted man. He was generous. He was funny. He was handsome, and people were drawn to him. He was arrogant and vain, too. He had trouble maturing because I spoiled him, as I spoiled all my sons and daughters. That is my greatest failing. So Richard had little sense of consequence. He did not have the judgment required to be a sound man. He sensed this. To mask it, he tried to be lovable. To be admired. That’s why Cynthia chose him—because she knew what he was inside and how to shape it. But he betrayed her, and that is part of why we’re sitting here tonight, Wylie. Sometimes consequences are good. I won’t dwell on Richard’s flaws. He was a bright and shining star, more bright and shining than he knew. People loved him. Dogs loved him. He brought home a baby raccoon once and kept it in his room, and the creature was tame around him and violent toward everyone else. It acted like Richard was its mother. Richard loved to ski, but he did not love to race. He preferred being graceful to being victorious. He badly wanted to be like me, and to live up to my expectations and please me. I wish that on no son or daughter. When you think of him, know that your father had a good heart. And know that if he had lived, he would have brought his share of wonders into this world. Even beyond Andrea, Robert, Sky, and you. Inside, most everybody in the world is pretty much alike. Those who are different shoulder a load for the rest of us. And that load is not always light.

  Now Wylie goosed his truck through a barricade of pine branches so thick he couldn’t see beyond them. He was aware of the MPP fighting along behind. He prayed to God to deliver his trailer from scratches. And to be able to stay on the narrow, occasional path. So far, so good.

  Three times he stopped and fired up the chain saw to lop off low-hanging limbs. He stood on the wall of the truck bed, careful of his balance as he swiped the heavy, smoking machine through the trees. The branches dropped and the air filled with the smell of gas exhaust and pine pitch and the sun felt hot and unfiltered on his upraised face.

  When his truck trundled over the last, steep outcropping of boulders, he felt the vehicle starting to level. A moment later, he was on his first flat ground—nearly flat ground—in three hours. He could smell the clutch and his temperature gauge was getting up there. He looked out at Solitary, pulled forward a hair more, then cut the engine and stepped out.

  The snow on the meadow floor was thin at this elevation. Up-mountain on the run, it got deep fast. Madman Run—Dave McCoy’s and Adam’s name for the slope—rose dramatically before him, still deep enough with snow to ski. Madman began above the timberline, a precipitous but wide run that narrowed to chutes through sudden stands of white-bark pine and mountain hemlock, lodgepole and red fir, then opened into a steep, unobstructed schuss that tailed out and gently flattened into the broad meadow in which Wylie now stood.

  He looked down to the little alpine lake that Dave and Adam had named Breakfast Lake, for the many gullible brook trout the
y had caught there. Breakfast Creek wobbled into the lake, barely visible in the trees. Between the lake and Wylie’s truck, the meadow floor was a mosaic of snow patches and wildflowers, mostly blue lupine and red snow plant, which gave the meadow a patriotic look. The air was sharp and cool.

  He leveled and unhitched the MPP, then set up camp. He hoisted his cooler into a tree whose branches were strong enough to support it but not strong enough—hopefully—to support a black bear. He stopped to watch four deer in the cottonwoods lining the creek, looking at him attentively.

  When he was done with the cooler, he stood a few yards away from the MPP and tried to fully appreciate it in this context. How could this svelte man-made confection even be in this wild place? It was the equivalent of one of Steen’s perfect pastries, labeled and in its paper cradle, sitting atop Mount Everest. He shook his head at his good fortune, photographed the MPP from several angles, thought of the yawning aloneness and the huge exertion that were to be his for the next three days.

  * * *

  It was early afternoon by the time he was ready to set off for Madman. Enough time for two runs, he thought. He strapped on his snowshoes and started up the edge of the run, where the snow was shallow and he could sidestep confidently without sinking. He stopped and rested on his poles. The incline was steep, and the way was long. You asked for this, he thought. Within minutes he was breathing hard, but he timed his breath to his movement to make a rhythm, stuck to it, made some progress. He stopped and looked up again, panting now, not believing how far he had to go.

  Forty minutes later, he was above the timberline, at the top of Madman, lungs dry, heart beating hard. He stepped up to the very edge of the cornice, snowshoes strapped fast to his back, ski tips in the air. He sipped from the nozzle of the hydration pack. Down-mountain the breeze in the pines made a long, distant rustle. He felt the familiar brew of fear and exhilaration jostling around inside like two ski crossers dueling for the best line, the brew more potent after Wylie’s five-year absence.