Crazy Blood (3 page)

 

CHAPTER FOUR

Wylie sat in the start-gate stands with his mother and sisters for the Mammoth Cup ski-cross finals. The January afternoon was cold and clear and he could see through his binoculars that the upper X Course was still in good shape after two days of ski-cross racing. Ski cross was a young sport that pitted four skiers against one another on the same high-velocity downhill course at the same time. They raced one another, not the clock. Ski cross was one of the newest Olympic events, aimed at the new generation and considered by many to be equal to the fearsome downhill in peril and prestige. It was certainly rougher. For Wylie, winning this Mammoth Cup ski-cross event five years ago had been a defining moment in his life.

He explained to Beatrice the United States Ski Association point system, and how only the winner of that day's final would automatically go to the Aspen X Games the following week. The four finalists were
that
close in total points. The three others could advance only as alternates, at the discretion of the USSA selection committee.

“But either way, Robert's retiring after this season,” said Belle. “To get married and work a job. Sounds horrible, doesn't it? With all his talent? With the Olympics only two years away?”

“He's going on to the next thing,” said Wylie. “That's what people do.”

“That's what you did,” said Beatrice. “And at least Hailee is, like, moderately cool.”

Belle just shook her head.

Glancing across the stands, Wylie saw Hailee sitting with Cynthia Carson—mother of Robert and Sky. Cynthia, his father's executioner. Hailee waved. Cynthia acknowledged no one, all her attention forward on the coming race, looking to Wylie, as always, commanding, indestructible, and frightening.

The stands were full. Wylie knew many of the people gathered here, but many he did not. The faces had changed in five years. It was an odd feeling to be remembered in your hometown but also to know that its memory of you was already fading. At twenty-five, with a Mammoth Cup win to his credit and youthful indiscretions still trailing him, Wylie was a notable here, but old guard. The new hotshots were teenagers. Chloe Kim was good enough to have made the last U.S. Olympic boarding team but, at sixteen, was too young by IOC rules. There was much talk in town of half-pipe boarder Johnny Maines—not quite twenty years old yet and maybe the next Shaun White.

The women ski crossers went first. Wylie was struck by how much faster they had gotten in his five years away. They were stronger and braver. Sitting on either side of him, Beatrice and Belle fidgeted with anticipation. Beatrice was a slopestyle snowboarder and could make the Mammoth snowboarding team for next year. That was a matter of time and money. Five grand, roughly, Wylie thought. Belle was an up-and-coming ski-cross racer like him. She was fearless, even as the ten-year-old whom Wylie had last seen. They watched an eighteen-year-old out of Tahoe win the women's ski-cross finals, a full ten feet ahead of the pack. She skidded to a stop in the out run, throwing a wall of snow and a smile at the photographers.

Wylie felt the sun on his face and smelled the sweetly noxious fumes wafting up from the waxing station. Nothing on earth better than a sunny morning with good snow on a mountain. He thought of the late bright mornings at the Great St. Bernard monastery in Switzerland, the sunlight on the mountains so precise and brief that long winter. There was never quite enough light at Great St. Bernard. Or the Benedictine monastery at Tegernsee, or the Monkey Temple in Kathmandu, or even in Lillehammer. Was there enough light in winter anywhere? Sometimes at dusk, he'd watch the last of that light dim down to no light at all and he'd have this squirrelly fear inside that it would never come again. But those were good years, alone and free.

Wylie's two years of wandering after Afghanistan were his way of shedding what he had been: boy, son, brother, baker, barista, ski-cross racer, marine. He had ditched himself as thoroughly as he could, believing that later he could re-collect the useful parts. He'd tried to simplify without oversimplifying: mountains, snow, and speed. He'd stayed at the monasteries because they were remote and beautiful and affordable if you labored. And because they were built on the promise of a God, whom by then Wylie had come to doubt. And because half of his fellow travelers were young women.

Now he took a hand of each sister and considered the X Course without the distraction of skiers on it. It was a good course, tucked into a crevasse between chairlifts twenty and twenty-one, both closed for this event. It had been designed by Mike Cook, Mammoth Mountain's longtime course setter. Cook was known for steep, fast runs, high ramps for big-air jumps, narrow banks, tight gates, and straightaways wide enough for passing. The X Course was smaller than that at the Sochi arena, but the jumps were higher.

With four racers on such a course, ski cross is a crowded, high-speed contest similar to downhill and slalom, but also related to motocross, speed skating, and roller derby. There is an element of NASCAR, too—high-velocity drafting only inches behind the skier ahead is an important technique. No contact between the racers is allowed, but “incidental contact” is expected, and ski-cross judges are known to be loose constructionists. Foes are occasionally cut off, shoulders thrown, bodies launched in desperation or team sacrifice, skis lapped over other skis, causing sudden explosive ruin, poles deployed. High-velocity wipeouts, known as “yard sales” because of the gear and clothing torn away and left spread all over a course, are common. Whoever leads controls the race; whoever would lead must pass. Race speeds reach seventy miles per hour.

Wylie had always loved the chariot race in
Ben-Hur.
His personal take on ski cross had essentially been a power game, big on mass and speed: E=mc2. He was burly for a ski crosser, bearlike at times, though not graceless. He wasn't quite quick enough to consistently make that first hole shot—right out of the start gate—to take an early lead. So passing was the heart of his game. Coming from behind, Wylie presented relentless threat; once in front, he was amply fast and stubbornly immovable. He worked his fall line—the shortest distance down a slope, the route your body would take in a fall—with a kind of adhesive velocity. His dark to-the-shoulder hair, full beard, and mustache reinforced his ursine air when racing.

Wylie watched as Robert, Sky, and the other two finalists loosened up. Robert was a classic skier with sound judgment and made few mistakes; Sky, a talented risk taker, high-strung, programmed for both winning and crashing. They were two of America's best. In the years Wylie was away, Robert and Sky had both been racing the Federation Internationale de Ski World Cup circuit against the Europeans, who dominated the sport. The Carsons finished middle of the pack at best on the FIS-approved World Cup courses.

Watching the racers prepare, Wylie felt that edgy shimmer of adrenaline in his core. He yawned. He wondered what competition would be like again, after five years without it, unless you counted survival in combat as competition. Maybe that was the greatest competition of all. Certainly the most consequential.

“Robert's going to win today,” said Beatrice. “He'll put everything into it for Hailee. He's romantic like that.”

“God, look at Sky Carson,” said Belle. “Doesn't he ever get tired of being himself?”

Sky Carson had gone to the staging area's barrier, over which he now rested his arms, helmet off, poles in one gloved hand, chatting up some girls and hamming for the cameras. He was trim and lithe, with a head of blond Carson hair, a sharp nose, and blue eyes. Like several of the many Carsons who had settled in Mammoth Lakes, Sky was a gifted athlete. Wylie had grown up with him and knew Sky as a high-energy egotist or sullen bully, depending on his mood. Meds were long rumored. Wylie and Sky had never gotten along, often much worse than that. A running public feud had begun in childhood. Same father; different mothers. Antagonists. Rivals. Bad blood.

Today, Sky had dressed in a pattern of exploding stars and stripes instead of Mammoth Mountain ski team blue. In a nod to the youthful snow-apparel industry, ski crossers—unlike USSA downhill racers—were allowed to wear casual clothes of their own choosing in competition. A race official trudged over on snowshoes, and Sky barked like a dog at him, then turned back to his audience.

The grandstands stood to the right of the starting gates, and the crowd could see down the course only as far as jump two, known as Goofball. After that, the start-gate spectators would view the action on a huge monitor perched across the course, opposite the grandstands. For those preferring to see the finish of the race live, more grandstands had been set up down the mountain, near the vendor booths and sponsor displays.

The racers finished their loosening-up routines and made short starts, then settled into their starting gates. Wylie's heart was beating hard and he yawned again, which he used to do incessantly before races to balance his oxygen/nitrogen mix.

A moment later the gates flew open and the four ski crossers dropped into the half-pipe start, war whoops sharp in the thin alpine air. Wylie heard the grind and hiss of the skis. Robert grabbed the lead out of the first right bank, held it down a short straight and into Launching Pad, jump one. Wylie could see his skis shuddering but tight together, his neat turn inside the first paneled gate, then his sudden burst of speed out. Robert had more hours on the Mammoth X Course than anyone, even his brother, and his home-course advantage was real. Sky hounded him, just a hair outside and behind. The two other men—one of them the previous year's X Games silver medalist, Bridger Burr from Colorado, the other a nineteen year-old racer, Trey Simms from Squaw Valley—formed a tight knot no more than two yards back. Wylie saw they were hitting fifty miles per hour on this first straightaway. In his gloved hands, his sisters' grips tightened.

The racers sped down the straight, bunching even more tightly. Wylie guessed if Sky maintained his number-two position in and out of the second jump—Goofball—he would try to pass his brother on Dire Straights, which was wide and steep and had always been one of Wylie's favorite places to pass. Dire Straights schussed into Conundrum, jump three, the highest and most dramatic of the jumps, a Mike Cook signature. From there, the course then curved steeply into Shooters, where positions could be improved only at peril.

The racers launched off the Goofball ramp, dropping slowly through the air and out of sight. A thousand sets of eyes, Wylie's among them, rose to the video screen, onto which the ski crossers, now much larger than life, came floating airborne toward them in a tight multicolored formation in which each man, ski, pole, and rippling bib hung painterly composed and balanced against the pale blue Mammoth sky. Sky Carson landed a nanosecond behind Robert, but just as Wylie had foreseen, Sky precariously stole inside on gate 2 and passed Robert onto Dire Straights. Burr stuck right behind him, using Sky's draft to pass Robert, too. Trey Simms held fourth, back by twenty feet.

Heading into the next turn, Simms set too brash a line and clipped Burr from behind. It looked like no more than a brush, but Wylie knew better. Burr tore off-course and went down, smashing into the right-side netting, then somehow broke free to spin like a big eight-pronged child's top to a stop on the bank.

“Ugh,” said Beatrice.

“
Scheiss
and a half,” said Belle.

The three remaining racers ground out of the turn side by side, their poles feeling around them like the canes of blind men. They accelerated down the straight and launched off Conundrum as if linked. They soared identically, bunched and oddly still. Wylie's breath caught at this brief beauty.

As he landed, Robert's skis shuddered violently on a patch of ice. He rose from his crouch to check his speed, caught more ice, and—still going at what looked to Wylie like sixty miles an hour—shot off-course, scattering bystanders and flattening sapling pines, throwing snow high in an unstoppable ballistic calamity. Off the embankment he flew, rising higher and higher, pivoting slowly, then, on his descent, backstroking with his poles in a braking windmill.

The ski lift stanchion was set back from the X Course several yards, wrapped in padding. Safety padding could be thin, in some cases no better than a T-shirt pulled over a telephone pole. In Wylie's experience, and in ski-racing lore, stanchions drew you to them as if they were magnets and you a metal shaving, and the faster you were going, the less you could resist their pull. Their mojo was bad and strong. To Wylie, Robert's line of descent looked fated. Loudspeakers broadcast the amplified
whop
of him hitting padded steel, and he dropped to the snow like a bird having hit a window.

Thoughtless, Wylie was out of the stands, slipping and sliding fast down the snow steps for the lower course. When he got to Robert, there was already a small crowd. Wylie barreled through and knelt beside him.

Robert was unconscious and his head was turned acutely. His helmet lay nearby in two pieces, with the chin strap still fastened. Wylie found Robert's pulse and the rise of his lungs beneath the layers of his clothes. His skin was hot and slick, and when Wylie lifted his brother's eyelids, he saw uncomprehending black pupils set in their irises of blue. Spine, he thought, bone and nerves: Sgt. Lance Madigan, Kandahar, shot in the neck by a sniper.

Wylie stood and hollered “Away” to the onlookers so Robert could get some air. Unable to resist, and because racing is about winning, he checked the big screen, to see Bridger Burr cross the finish line inches ahead of Sky, nailing gold and his place in the Winter X Games the following week in Aspen.

 

CHAPTER FIVE

Adam Carson sat beside his grandson Robert's bed in St. Francis Memorial Hospital in San Francisco. The Carson patriarch was eighty-seven years old and feeling every second of those years. He disliked cities and their inescapable noise, and he had been here since Robert's accident two weeks ago. A big man, he sat forward on the chair, elbows on his knees, chin resting on the bulbous knuckles of his interlocked fingers. He had hands like driftwood. His hair was gray, straight, and cut unfashionably.