Crazy Blood

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “Right, Grandpa, and BMX and motocross and NASCAR and speed skating all that other stuff they say. And that’s not just PR talk. There’s something very … primal about ski cross.” Brandon smiled knowingly. “You’d have torn up this course in your day.”

  The U.S. Army recruiter had given Adam the same fraudulent smile when he said he might be able to get Adam over to the French Alps, or maybe Switzerland.

  “Brandon, my gut tells me to let Mike make whatever adjustments he sees fit. We’ve talked about the extra padding on the lift poles, of course. What we had was sufficient, but he wants to double up on it, out of respect for Robert, and to admit that bad luck can defeat good plans.”

  “I know Mike listens to you.”

  “I’m not going to ask him to change one inch of this course.”

  “I thought you’d like to give Sky a more level playing field.”

  “Sky and Wylie grew up on this thing.”

  “With all due respect, Grandpa, sometimes it seems to me that you favor Wylie over your own.”

  “He is my own.”

  “You know.”

  “He’s got the Carson blood, Brandon. He didn’t even have to marry into it.”

  Brandon blushed and his mouth tightened like a plastic coin purse. Adam was surprised to see him so taken aback. “Maybe I overcompensate,” Brandon said.

  “You make Andrea happy.”

  “I try very hard at that. I’ve never so much as raised my voice to her. She’s my … priority. We gave you three beautiful great-grandchildren. They are Shavers, and I’m very proud of them. But Grandpa—I have a problem here. Wylie badly embarrassed the team by throwing our biggest sponsor in the fish derby pool. Twice. After embarrassing the team by coldcocking Sky at Slocum’s that night. He could have really hurt Sky. And you know what gets me most about all of it? Not one word of apology out of Wylie.”

  “I wouldn’t think so.”

  “What kind of a team player does that?”

  “I’m aware that you and Wylie have some history.”

  “He called Andrea a ‘fat twat’ when she was a sophomore in high school. That hurt her feelings because she was insecure at the time. And somewhat overweight.”

  “Wylie was in sixth grade, wasn’t he? And you broke his nose for it.”

  “I had to do something. Now I’m the coach. I have to do something again. So, here’s the deal, Grandpa. The other night I decided to reread the bylaws. And I realized that the selection of the ski and board team membership is up to the committee for each team. But as I read further, I found out that the, well, deselection of an individual team member can be done by each team coach, respectively. The term gross misconduct is open to interpretation, but I think Wylie’s qualifies.”

  “So you can throw Wylie off the ski-cross team.”

  “Correct. It’s section three point four, paragraph G.”

  Adam studied his grandson-in-law. Even with the blackout wraparounds hiding his eyes, Brandon appeared nervous, if not just plain guilty. “I just had a funny thought,” said Adam.

  “Oh.”

  “Yes. The idea came to me, right out of the blue, that you and your lawyer friend from Palo Alto added paragraph G just after Wylie came back and wanted to try out for the team. One of your last-second changes. And I got this other funny idea that you had the draft bylaws printed so small, your beloved grandpa Adam wouldn’t have the patience to read them before he signed off.”

  Adam watched as a two small crescents of condensation crept upward from the rims of his grandson-in-law’s sunglasses. “None of what you’re implying is true.”

  “The last part sure is—I didn’t have the patience to read them before I signed off. So don’t be silly, Brandon—I’m just stating self-evident truths.”

  “Good God. All I’m trying to do is coach a team.”

  “You do that. And leave the course to Mike.”

  “Adam—I’m going to kick Wylie off the team if you don’t get Mike to make the course adjustments I need. For the good of the team. I have no choice.”

  “I won’t ask, and Mike wouldn’t anyway.”

  “But if Wylie’s not on the team, he can’t use the mountain before the tourists swarm in every morning. A half-day ski pass, five or six days week? It would cost him half of what he makes at Let It Bean. So he won’t be able to train properly. Which means his results will suck and the USSA won’t help him get on the World Cup circuit. No Europe means he won’t see the real competition. The USSA can afford to send only the top two or three—you know that. If he’s not on the team, Wylie won’t even get skis or boots or bindings or the Volcom gimmes or the damned free breakfasts at Gargantua. He won’t get squat. It’s simple as that, Grandpa. So talk to Mike. Please. Wylie’s future is on you.”

  “Make your own mistakes, Brandon. You appall me.”

  “Then Wylie’s off. Fuck it, Adam. He’s off my fucking team.”

  * * *

  Later Adam, Cynthia, and Bruce, the nurse, made sure that Robert’s temporary reconnections were properly made, then got him dressed and settled into the wheelchair, strapping him upright. It was tiring, time-consuming work. Cynthia brushed Robert’s healthy blond Carson hair, fluffing it up and patting it down with her free hand. Then she worked onto his expressionless face a new pair of sunglasses with stars-and-stripes frames and dark reflective lenses. “You look good, Robbie. Very handsome indeed.”

  Now it was Adam’s job to push the chair down the walkway from Cynthia’s house and muscle it over the curb to the dark, pine-shadowed street. Once they had gotten to Main, the bike path was wide and smoothly paved.

  This first stretch was slightly downhill and Adam let Cynthia take the helm. She smiled to no one in particular as she took the grips from him and lengthened her stride. She wore forest green camouflage pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt, green camo hunting boots, and a wide-brimmed green camo fabric hat. The clothes were cut for women, and Adam thought she looked stylish in a very strange way.

  It pleased but didn’t surprise him that Cynthia had become happier in the six months that Robert had been with her. For some years he’d thought that the widow needed more to do than skulk around Mammoth Lakes, asking questions and making notes for her weekly “newspaper.” He’d been right. For one thing, she was trimmer now, with all the wheelchair exertion. Her complexion was ruddier with the almost daily time outside, and she moved about now with a good carriage instead of her old hunch-shouldered, I’m-not-really-here posture. There was a good-size piece of Adam that still loathed Cynthia for what she’d done to his son, but a larger piece felt empathy with her. They had all lost their beautiful Richard. Son and husband and father.

  “This camo contains odor neutralizers so game can’t smell me,” she said.

  “Yes, I’ve read about it in the catalogs.”

  “I bought the winter versions back last year. In the ‘Snowy Bark’ hunter’s pattern, I’m virtually undetectable in snow.”

  “You could wear regular clothes and let people see you.”

  Cynthia nodded. “I’ve never gotten used to my own celebrity.”

  The afternoon had grown hot and the gray-white underbelly of smoke hung closer in the west. Like droughts and weaker winters, wildfires were another thing Adam had seen increase in his lifetime. Cynthia stopped and pulled her hat back on its strap and shook loose her yellow-gray ponytail. “I think Robert’s beginning to become aware of me, Adam.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “First, it was the eyelid flutters. Now it’s his breathing. When I talk to him about certain things, his respiration speeds up. Such as skiing. Or Hailee. Or Sky, or even Wylie. There’s this deeper inhale? And I believe it to be a precursor of speech. Like he’s trying to get enough wind up to deliver a word. Or even just a sound.”

  Adam wasn’t sure what to do when she talked like this. Who was he to question her hopes? Or to endorse her misconceptions? “I have to believe that he feels the sun on his face right now,”
he said.

  “Darned tootin’ right he feels it. I know what being inside without sun feels like, just like Robert does.”

  They went into the liquor store for refreshment. Cynthia removed Robert’s sunglasses. Adam got one of the newish energy drinks, which tasted great and dispatched a heavy dose of caffeine through his old system. Expensive. He wondered what Teresa was doing right now. Teresa, thirty years ago the waitress with the raven black hair and the beautiful smile, now a mother of four grown children and long widowed. Now thirty pounds heavier, her hair half gray. But—and this was the part that sometimes made Adam dizzy with happiness—she was just as preposterously beautiful as she had been way back then. Maybe more. Beauty was all about perspective. It came from you. He felt lucky to have had her in his life. First as an attentive waitress, then as a trusted employee who—when she’d lost her firstborn and Cynthia had begun her prison term—became a wet nurse for Sky. Now as a most dear companion.

  Robert’s head bobbed gently as Adam pushed him from the cooler to the cash register. Cynthia was asking the clerk about upticks in shoplifting in the summer months, due to the cooled tourist economy. In fact, the clerk had seen an uptick: Just last night, he’d called the cops on two young men who ran out with a bottle of rum and a twelve-pack of cola drinks. Cynthia had already taken the small notebook and pen from the book bag she hung on one of the wheelchair handles. Now she made notes.

  Adam set the wheelchair brake with his toe, put his drink on the counter, and dug out his wallet. Cynthia traded in her notebook and pen for a folder. She carefully removed the latest issue of The Woolly and handed it to the clerk. “Let me know if the shoplifting continues. I think it’s an important local story.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Carson. Hello to you, Robert.”

  “Robert is sending his regards. See, his eyelid is fluttering.”

  Adam set the bill on the counter and glanced down at his grandson. Robert’s face was serene, his hair was just right, and his right eyelid was quivering. Adam told himself it meant nothing. Told himself again. But he thought, I’ll be damned.

  Outside, he drained the drink and tossed the can into a recycle bin. “Shall we do this thing, Cynthia?”

  “I’m kind of dreading it,” she said, working the star-spangled sunglasses back onto her son.

  “You look fine, Cynthia.”

  “Well. It’s not about how I look, Adam. Why did we agree to do this?”

  “Sky’s deal. It means something to him. Look, he’s already there.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  They arrived in the Footloose parking lot a few minutes later, where Adrenaline had arranged to shoot the interview. As Adam pushed Robert toward the store, he saw Sky talking to the host, Bonnie Bickle. Adrenaline aired on Extreme TV and was one of several shows about young daredevils doing crazy things and living to tell about them. On the show, Adam had seen young people kite-sailing in a hurricane, wriggling through tunnels a mile below Earth, towed by Jet Skis into fifty-foot waves. It reminded him of when he was young. They had had the same crazed bravery, but less imagination. Or was it more imagination? Either way, he liked the show.

  Sky waved and continued yapping with the host. Adam was getting a little tired now, but with help from Cynthia, he pushed the wheelchair toward the set. He had had a premonitory bad feeling about this interview and the feeling had grown stronger. Too late to get out of it now. Bonnie Bickle shouted and pointed his way, and a videographer hustled over for this human-interest moment, tracking three generations of Carsons as they rolled along. Finally, Sky came over, and Rialto, the director, got them seated, then clipped on the mikes. Someone moved the light towers closer, and Adam could feel the extra heat on this already hot day. He helped Cynthia get a cap emblazoned with MAMMOTH FREESKI TEAM onto Robert to shield his face from sunburn.

  Bonnie introduced herself and shook their hands. She looked as on TV, but smaller and more serious. She had a quirky smile and large teeth. She knelt before the wheelchair and withdrew one of Robert’s hands from the blankets. “Robert, with all respect, thanks for doing this. Do you understand me?”

  “Don’t underestimate him,” said Cynthia.

  “I won’t.” Adam watched Bonnie look into Robert’s face as she pushed his hand back under the blankets. By the way that Robert was strapped upright in the chair, the way the new cap sat on his head, and the way that you could tell the eyes behind the sunglasses were seeing nothing, Adam realized that what he had hoped might be a dignified program about his family might well become something else. “Thanks to all of you for being here,” Bonnie said. “Sky, special thanks to you for pitching us this story. It’s going to be a good one. We’re calling it ‘The Carson Curse.’”

  Adam’s heart dropped.

  “That wasn’t my pitch at all,” said Sky.

  “No worries,” said Bonnie. “It’s just a handle for the sponsors.”

  “But this show is supposed to be about how we’re turning bad fortune around,” said Sky. “And me winning the Mammoth Cup for Robert.”

  “Exactly. Rialto?”

  Bonnie seated herself and Rialto arranged her mike, then got back to his camera and counted down. Adam looked at Robert’s serenely empty form, then at Sky’s dubious, eyebrows-arched assessment of Bonnie. She looked down, took two deep breaths, then turned to the camera with a smile and introduced the Carson clan.

  Bonnie started with the beginning of skiing in the Sierras, when Dave McCoy envisioned the first ski lift here on Mammoth Mountain, and couldn’t get a business loan to buy one, so Dave and Adam had built one with their own hands from a car engine.

  Adam’s mind shot back to the day that Dave had invited him to test-ride the first lift once again, after days and days of it failing—too fast, too slow, the ropes snapping, the cable threatening to decapitate someone—and Adam took hold of the crude handle and let it pull him five hundred feet up the mountain. Sitting here in the Footloose parking lot now, Adam didn’t feel the artificial light and the hot August sun, but, rather, the cold breeze in his hair as he gathered himself for that first run off the new lift. He felt the heft of the wooden skis and the cumbersome bindings and the eager thump of his heart. He saw Sandrine and Dave and Roma down the mountain, their small faces turned up to him. And again he felt that sweet drop of stomach as he launched.

  “You’re best friends with Dave, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. He was my best man.”

  “And together you took Mammoth Mountain from just a mountain with snow on it to the third-most-visited ski resort in America.”

  “Dave did that. I just helped.”

  “Adam, you helped build a town that a lot of people think is paradise. You had children make the U.S. Olympic ski team. You made a lot of money. You have had a charmed life, haven’t you?”

  “I always thought so.”

  “Until tragedy struck for your son, Olympic downhill skier Richard Carson. Now, our viewers should know that this Adrenaline segment is the very first time that Cynthia Carson—Richard’s widow—has spoken publicly about that tragic night. Cynthia, welcome to the show. And I know this might be difficult, but can you tell us what happened?”

  “Hey!” Sky called out. “Hey, Bonnie Bickle! This is fully uncool.”

  “What is?”

  “This story was supposed to be about the Gargantua Mammoth Cup and me against my rotten half brother!”

  “We’ll get there, Sky. I’m backgrounding. Now, Cynthia Carson—tell us about that night here in Mammoth Lakes, in January of 1990. You were married to former U.S. Olympic downhill skier Richard Carson, you were thirty years old, a mother of two, and you were pregnant with Sky. You went to a party. Take us there.…”

  “Well. Don’t forget that I was an Olympic skier myself. I competed in Sarajevo, as did Richard. The downhill, slalom, giant slalom, and the combined. Neither of us made it to the podium, though I finished higher than he did.”

  “Fantastic. Now take us back to that night.”
<
br />   “Oh my gosh, where to start? There was this rich man’s house where all us racers went to have fun? Richard went there early, as he always did. I stayed home with the children, as usual. Andrea was four and Robbie was three. They finally went to sleep.…”

  “And you went to the party?”

  Adam looked at Sky, flip-flops propped on the footrest of the director’s chair. He was looking down and kneading his right thumb into his left palm. “Leave her alone, Bonnie,” Sky said, cutting her a look.

  “This is an interview, Sky.”

  “The story is not that night!”

  “I’m okay, son,” said Cynthia. “But thanks for your concern.”

  “I can’t believe this shit,” he said.

  “Say whatever you want, Sky,” Bonnie said cheerfully. “We’ll beep out the too-naughty stuff.”

  “Okay, then—I can’t believe this fucking shit.”

  “You’re funny, Sky Carson.”

  “Mom, you don’t have to talk to this doorknob.”

  Adam watched Sky consider Bonnie for a long moment; the boy’s coldness surprised him. Adam had never seen that look from his grandson. But he recognized it. It was Cynthia’s, when you thought she was going to fold up or go to pieces. When you thought she’d been defeated. Then, suddenly, she was absolutely certain and capable. As Sky was now.

  “Let your mother continue,” said the host.

  “I’m okay, Sky,” she said, but Adam heard the tiredness in her voice.

  “Bonnie?” asked Sky. “Are you aware that you’re exploiting a family tragedy for entertainment and a paycheck? Can you formulate this concept in your small ornamental brain?”

  “I’ll work on it,” said Bonnie. “So, Cynthia, Richard was at the party and you were home alone that night, and?”

  “Oh, well, of course I got bored. So I called some friends to come sit with the children. I drove over and went in and got myself a diet soda from the fridge. Had some potato chips and pretzels—”

  “And was your husband, Richard, there?”

  Cynthia’s voice sounded thoroughly weary when she spoke again. Adam wondered if she’d be able to continue. “I thought I’d made that clear.”