Crazy Blood

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Tonight, the village was at its best. Eaves and roofs shouldered the heavy snow, and icicles dropped shining beads into the light of storefront windows. The snow had been blown off the plaza floor, and there were three bars and a dozen food stands spouting fragrantly competitive clouds of steam into the cold, clear air.

  Walking up the steps to the plaza, Wylie was startled to see Cynthia Carson standing in the snow under a tall red fir, pointing a small camera at them. She was very close but scarcely visible in her winter-bark camo jacket and matching knit cap and gloves. The camera clicked twice, then dangled on a strap on her wrist. She held a pen in her camera hand and a small notepad in the other, her thumb marking her place. Her blue eyes looked backlit. “You won.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How did it feel?”

  “Good.”

  She wrote deliberately, then looked up at April. “My name is Cynthia Carson.”

  “Yes, I know who you are,” said April.

  “Sky believes that your contact on the X Course went past incidental,” Cynthia said.

  “I thought he would,” said Wylie.

  “And what do you believe?”

  “Neither of us gave one inch. The referee saw no infraction. It’s part of ski cross.”

  Cynthia wrote again—carefully and slowly—then nodded, as if she’d anticipated Wylie’s words. “Sky feels that he must follow through on his warning to you.”

  “I wish he wouldn’t.”

  “I understand his position.”

  “I’ll bet you do. But I’m not going to apologize to him for things I didn’t do.”

  “His broken right arm has been set. He and his fiancée are up in Reno tonight. He feels humiliated.”

  “He ran a good race. I hope he lets us all be, Mrs. Carson.”

  “Don’t escalate.”

  “I’m going to the party now.”

  “A pleasure to meet you, April. I never liked board slopestyle until today. I don’t understand how you do it, but it’s courageous and very beautiful.”

  Tonight, Village Square was overhung by a white canvas canopy outlined in strands of twinkling lights. Stainless-steel heaters glowed within and propane-burning fire pits threw up lapping waves of orange flames. Wylie guided April under the canopy, and as the revelers recognized them, they broke into hoots and shouts and glove-muffled applause. The DJ spun “Can’t Hold Us,” and suddenly phones and cameras were clicking and flashing. Wylie smiled and waved, then took April’s right hand and raised it high. A platoon of reporters, photographers, and video shooters materialized from the crowd and made straight for her.

  The winners’ tables were bar-style, round and high, and spread throughout the canopied square so the guests could step up and talk with the athletes. Wylie joined the two Colorado ski-cross finalists, who pressed an open bottle of champagne on him, hugged him tipsily, and offered bleary smiles to the circle of ski-cross admirers. Wylie sipped a long, cold shot and hugged two girls who wanted him in their selfies.

  Claude Favier broke away from a group and strongly shook Wylie’s hand. “Never have I been more proud for Chamonix! I wish you all the good luck in Aspen. And in Europe, if you choose to compete.”

  “I’m taking those CR Fives on the FIS circuit, Claude.” It sounded strange to hear himself say this in public for the first time. The World Cup circuit!

  “It will be a challenge, but you are a good ski-cross racer. Do not let European snobbery destroy your confidence. I know the very best wax technician on the Continent and I will introduce you to him. He can read a racer’s mind and reveal it in the waxing. He can improve any racer’s speed.”

  “I’ll send you a picture of me on the podium at Val Thorens.”

  “With the CR Fives prominently visible!” Then the Frenchman’s smile dropped and he leaned in close to Wylie. “I saw your dramatic pass of Sky yesterday. Something in it disturbed me. Later, the chief of race allowed me to view the video. I watched it several times and decided that you did no wrong in the passing of Sky Carson. You raced honestly. But Sky is very temperamental, so you must be civil to him.”

  “I can manage it.”

  “His threats are, of course, nonsense. Ah—I see a friend I must welcome.” Claude angled skillfully through the partygoers to intercept a tall and strikingly beautiful woman with a borzoi on a leash. The woman looked at the dog and the dog sat, and Claude cheek-kissed her three times in the French way.

  Wylie talked briefly with a Powder magazine stringer who said he’d gotten a kick out of Wylie’s “power pass” in the finals, though obviously Sky Carson had not. He told Wylie that Sky’s broken wrist was a “green-stick fracture” and not serious. He said the FIS ski-cross circuit was much rougher than here—totally physical—then excused himself to catch up with a waiter bearing a tray of complimentary wines.

  Next to Wylie, the Colorado guys had loudly begun reenacting key moments from their races, one of them snatching the champagne bottle back from Wylie. Wylie seized the moment to locate April, who stood at a middle table with the women slopestylers. The media troops had closed in again and her table had twice the crowd as any other. But, somehow sensing his attention, she looked over and found him and smiled as her admirers pressed in and the camera lights slapped her face. She had taken off her jacket and become even more beautiful.

  Mike Cook brought Wylie a bourbon and they posed for pictures for The Sheet and Mammoth Times. As the photogs snapped away, Wylie saw Kathleen and Steen and his sisters yapping it up with Jesse and Jolene Little Chief. Beatrice and Belle did look penitent with their shorn hair and humble good manners.

  Adam and Teresa made their entrance, to solid applause. Adam looked underdressed and bored, as he often did at social gatherings, while Teresa was radiant. The mayor and two council members stood with the chief of police and two Mammoth Lakes developers. Bart Helixon cut through the crowd, talking to somebody somewhere, wearing a trim navy suit, his window lens shimmering.

  Grant Bulla and his son Daniel were engaged with the women half-pipe boarders. The sergeant looked over and Wylie nodded. Bulla had been persuasive in the legal proceedings against Wylie’s sisters—urging leniency for their youth and good characters—and Wylie made a note to thank him again tonight, later. Coincidentally, Wylie spotted the Honorable Caroline Hoppe at the men’s boarder-cross table. She was holding a steaming mug, nodding intently along with an animated presentation by the first-place medalist.

  Jacobie Bradford delivered drinks to two young women Wylie didn’t know. The women glanced at each other. Jacobie’s head shined as if waxed and he had traded in his fly-fishing uniform for a tuxedo and a bold scarf in Rastafarian black, green, gold, and red. Wylie watched the snow falling in the darkness outside the canopy and heard his beloved Rexroth: Believe/In the night, the moon, the crowded/Earth.

  He looked at April again, surrounded by her crowd and unaware of him. He pictured her last slopestyle run, the skill and abandon that she’d brought to a competition that she had already won. She’s right, he thought, remembering the first long walk they’d taken together—from Let It Bean to her rented home in Starwood—when she’d told him she was at her best in the air, trying to do beautiful things. Impossible things. He admired that freedom. The freedom to be the best you can be. The freedom for it to be more than a job or a means or a contest or a way out. For it to be a way in, Wylie thought. Thank you, April Holly. Unseen by her, Wylie saw the flash of her smile, and he had never felt this full. He wanted to be closer to her.

  Soon he was. The eighteen winners were herded onto a low stage set up near one of the fire pits. More photos, Wylie thought. The gold medalists took center stage, and the second- and third-place contestants squeezed in around them. Wylie arranged himself most happily next to April. Photographers both pro and amateur filled the floor in front of the athletes, and their lights flashed away as Jacobie rolled a wheeled, hooded object through them, stopping it at the stage.

  With a flourish, he yanke
d on the shroud to reveal the newly redesigned Gargantua Mammoth Cup—a cast statue of a lowland gorilla with an almost human expression, standing upright and holding a chalice over his head with two stout arms. Hoots and hollers rang out. The trophy was close to four feet tall, and the winner’s names had already been engraved. The medalists played it straight for as long as they could, then broke into impromptu aping. Wylie held a beer to the gorilla’s mouth and the photographers fired away. April slipped her arm around Wylie and he felt the wonderful heft of her against his side and the beat of her heart. He knew this was one of the great moments of his life.

  Sky Carson strode into the lights of the canopy. His right arm was in a red satin sling and his left was intertwined with the arm of a sleek young woman. He wore a tuxedo and his Mammoth Cup champion’s jacket from four years ago. His colored hair had been restored to its yellow blond, and his blue beard was gone. The woman was sheathed in black leather and her hair flashed like obsidian. They stopped and Sky touched Claude’s arm. It looked like Sky was introducing his date. To Wylie, Sky seemed like his usual old self—relaxed and happily the center of attention. Sky and the slender woman moved on then to another group, where he made a joking attempt to shake someone’s hand.

  A few minutes later, Sky looked across the room to Wylie and started in his direction.

  Wylie was aware of the parting, now quieting crowd, but he was totally focused on his half brother. Sky’s face was set. The photogs surrendered their ground to him. Wylie shouldered April behind him, noticing that Sky’s left hand was empty. In his peripheral vision, Wylie registered Kathleen beginning to move toward him and Steen holding her back; the flames coiling in the fire pits and the snow swirling beyond; Cynthia and Adam drifting toward Sky from the rear of the canopy; cameras flashing; Beatrice and Belle unmoving, their faces puzzled. Jacobie’s wineglass stopped just short of his lips, which rose into a smirk.

  Sky stopped before the stage and released his good arm from that of the woman to point his forefinger at Wylie. “I couldn’t have been more clear or honest with you. Account for what you did.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I’ve tried very hard to accommodate you.”

  “Give it up, Sky. You’ve stirred things up enough.”

  “You decide whose mountain this is to die on.”

  Wylie tried to check his anger, but he was already moving toward Sky. The winners’ bodies slowed him and he felt April’s hands lock onto him from behind. But his adrenaline was spiking and he was stronger, so he dragged April hoppingly along. Then she swung herself in front of him with the same gifted lightness she used for slopestyle, dug in, and pushed him back toward the stage. “No, Wyles, this is when you let it go. You let it go right now.”

  Looking past her shoulders and through her bouncing curls, Wylie saw Sky reach his left hand into the sling and withdraw a dull black thing. The sleek woman screamed and grabbed at it. Wylie powerfully swept April away as a gunshot cracked the thin alpine air. The crowd exploded as if a bomb had gone off. People screamed and charged away in all directions, while others fell flat and covered up. Wylie charged into another shot and another—feeling nothing—and he saw through the smoke and the riotous commotion that Sky’s eyes were wide as he waved the gun. Then the horrified scream of someone shot. More screams, the sleek woman now hitting at Sky, the flare of her black hair in the lights. Fighting against the exodus, Cynthia Carson waded toward her son, and Steen tried to hold Kathleen back, and Adam barged toward Sky, and Sgt. Grant Bulla crouched in a two-handed shooter’s stance, angling for a clear shot, his voice sharply audible through the gunfire and shrill panic: “Drop it, Sky!”

  Wylie focused on the gun in Sky’s hand. It went off again, muzzle flashing at the canopy overhead. Sky wheeled on Bulla. Two rapid concussive booms then, and Sky dropped heavily, as if the force that had held his body together had been yanked away.

  Wylie turned and looked for April but couldn’t find her. One of the half-pipe skiers headed toward the street, bleeding from his hand and escorted by two other medalists. Wylie barged into the big throng gathered to his left, where he had flung April to safety. People huddled and crouched, their attention drawn downward, their gestures frantic and emphatic, sending up a weird concatenation of questions and answers, orders and silence, outrage and consolations. In the middle of them lay April, spread-eagle on her back, with her head on Belle’s lap and a pile of coats and jackets randomly piled on, a swamp of blood loosening around her. Wylie knelt and leaned over her and looked down at her white face flecked with red and her wide blue eyes. Within the bloody garments, he got her hand and found her rapid pulse. Her eyes seemed to locate him at a great distance, and her pupils tightened.

  “Hang on now,” he said.

  “’kay.”

  “I love you very much.”

  “Good.”

  “What’s going to happen is the medics will be here in a minute. And we’ll get you on a gurney and to the hospital. It’s a good one, here in Mammoth. I’ll be with you every second and I’ll never let go of you.”

  “’kay.”

  “Think about Solitary Meadow, April. Picture the wildflowers and the creek. And the runs we made. And think about tomorrow and where we’re going and what we’re going to do together. We’ve got a busy schedule, girl. So much to look forward to.” Wylie’s throat clenched tight and he saw the frost trying to seize the blue of her eyes, saw the swoon of the black pupils, small to large to small.

  “They robbed us, Wyles.”

  He touched his lips to hers and prayed for breath. Breathe April, please breathe. Do not stop breathing. No. Please. No. An immeasurable piece of time later, he pulled back and looked into her eyes and saw that she was gone. He lowered his forehead to hers and felt the hot outrush of tears. More time stole past, her face cold against his.

  Belle touched him. He could hear her crying. “I saw you get her out of the way, but Sky was shooting everything.”

  Then more planes of chaos were intersecting above him—the ascendant screams of sirens, and hands and voices upon him. Mother and sisters. Steen and Adam. Teresa and Claude and Grant Bulla, ordering the people away, making way for the first responders.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  I held Sky as his last breath quivered away. I felt a heartbreak I had never known, not even over Robert. Sky, my most talented and troubled. My most me. I tried to get him up into my arms and carry him away, but Sergeant Bulla would have none of that. I was thankful, because I wasn’t sure I could lift Sky, or for how long, or exactly where I should take him anyway. I wanted to shield him from prying eyes. The worst is everyone watching you, after. So I rocked him until the paramedics arrived. They blitzed in, did their tests, hooked up the oxygen and saline, refusing to admit the obvious, which is their training. It is not theirs to pronounce.

  I climbed into the ambulance after my son. Before the doors closed, I saw another crew racing April Holly into a second truck. Wylie, stone-faced and white, got in with her. I got just a quick look at April, that poor, sweet, talented girl. All her crazy grace and courage. A shining star. Wylie had tried to get her out of the way, but Sky was shooting wildly because he’d lost his nerve, as he had in racing. So there was no safe place. Only chance. On the gurney, she looked lifeless, and I hoped that I was wrong, but I was not. Either way, my heart broke for her, a true innocent, like Robert. The doors slammed shut and the big boxy vehicle slowly ground along through the snow toward the hospital, lights flashing on the white world and the sirens howling.

  * * *

  What that Adrenaline show host never asked me, and what I’ve thought about all my life is, if I had it to do all over again, knowing what I know now, would I? Shoot Richard, I mean. I’ve had roughly a quarter century to ponder that question. Having walked my long, steep road, I must say that I would not do it again. Because there’s no way to foresee the consequences of violence. You can’t predict the many sad spokes that will branch outward from such a hub. But
they will. I would not again burden the futures of my children, and their children, and so on, down the line. Of course, I knew none of that then. I knew only my own blind rage, and my betrayal by the man I had loved with all my heart.

  Over my life, I’ve seen a pattern. But violence is not only a Carson curse. It is everywhere, within us and without us. The more I look the more I see it. The more I read, the more I find it—all the way back to when one of Earth’s first two brothers rose up in the field against the other.

  Rose up.

  Why?

  I’m not qualified to say. I have read the Bible and most of the so-called great books—plenty of time for that down in Chowchilla—and I have learned nothing decisive from them. Are we born to violence? Or forced into it? Scripted by jealous gods, or part of our nature? I don’t know. But I do know that I am somehow not surprised that Sky rose up against Wylie. And Wylie against Sky.

  The smell of Sky’s blood still lingers in my nostrils after all these weeks.

  * * *

  I am finally learning to change direction. Of life’s three great labors, this has been my hardest, regarding anything Welborn. I detested Kathleen and Wylie for taking what I loved from me. I do hear the towering selfishness in that statement. I always have. My change of direction began when I started watching the Welborn-Mikkelsen clan, which was not long before Wylie’s return from the war and his travels. I had become curious about what I loathed. And a good reporter is always looking for new stories. So I watched and waited and gathered their stories, too.

  Because of my observations of them, I was able to see why they had stolen the bikes and snowboards and skis. I’d seen their slouching little house in the forest, and their long hours in that bakery/coffee shop, and everyone in town knew that Gargantua was running them out of business. And everyone also knew that Beatrice’s and Belle’s mother had promiscuously seduced my Richard—a living legend no less—and stolen his seed from me to make something spurious of her own. So my heart went out to them. Somewhat. In their guilt I saw their innocence.