Crazy Blood (37 page)

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.

I admired those girls for enduring all that. And I saw that I could change direction without having to make some grandiose gesture of repentance. Without having to so much as look at that woman. To change direction is to change what you do, not what you feel. Thus I led Wylie to what his sisters had done—my first act of kindness to a Welborn. The beginning of atonement. Atonement. An overgrand word in my opinion. I remind myself not to get carried away with it.

Am I crazy, or simply the victim of my own temper? If crazy, was I born this way, or is it self-created? I do remember as a girl I had very dark moods and terrible headaches that would put me in bed in a dark room for several days at a time. Extravagant hallucinations. Like hell must be. When they were over, I would feel changed: lighter and emptier. And I would begin to worry about when it would happen again. The dark periods coincided with my social failures, defeats in competition, holidays, and with both the winter and summer solstices. I considered ending my life. So maybe it was in the blood. But so far as self-created madness goes, we all can cave under our own constructions when they are heavier than we can bear. Five bullets fired into my beautiful Richard, and thirteen years of prison, come to mind.

*   *   *

Jacobie Bradford III was fired by Gargantua after a video of him and two women appeared briefly on social media. The three were performing obscene and likely painful acts, but I have no interest in watching such things, so I can't be more descriptive. Jacobie's firing, however, did make page one of
The Woolly,
and I used a nice big head shot of him. I had lots of takers on that issue.

The buzz around Mammoth Lakes was that the women were prostitutes out of Reno and the activity took place on the third floor of Mountain High. The buzz beneath the buzz was that Croft, the bouncer at Mountain High, arranged the video without Jacobie's knowledge and sent it to Belle Mikkelsen, who did the anonymous posting. It's easy to see how a guy like Jacobie Bradford would think he could buy anything he wanted in our little town—a monopoly for his business, the fish in our rivers, a bargain mansion still empty from the Great Recession, two young women. And it's easy to imagine how hard a corporate gorilla like Gargantua would land on an expendable district manager caught with his pants way, way down. Since then, the town has lost its love of Gargantua and renewed its vows to Let It Bean. A complete flip-flop. Beware the fickleness of the mob. Howard Deetz over at Town Hall said there's talk that Gargantua may close the store here.

*   *   *

Wylie won the X Games ski cross in Aspen two weeks after April's death. I watched it live on TV and I will say that Wylie blew the competition off the mountain in the final that afternoon. As a downhill racer, I can tell when a skier is asking too much of herself, when the main thing she's relying on is simple-minded bravery. That's when you'll can up and get hurt, or worse. But I've seen Wylie race enough times to know that he was smart and measured and in command of himself at the X Games. He smoked the final schuss fifty feet ahead of silver. He did just a few interviews afterward, saying little. He looked distracted and bored. An obviously unhappy man before cameras. But he was in special demand, after what happened here on our mountain. You cannot underestimate the public thirst for shock and tragedy. The less he said, the more they asked. There was a dustup with a photographer in Aspen, whose camera Wylie destroyed in a parking lot. The video went viral, and in it Wylie looked a little crazy.

His story gets better. Two weeks later, he won the first FIS World Cup ski-cross event of the year in Tegernsee, Germany. Much was made of this upset, before which Wylie was ranked twenty-fourth in the world. Apparently, he knew the course well, having spent time in a Tegernsee monastery after the war.

Almost unbelievably, Wylie won the next World Cup race, too, early February in Val Thorens, France. Got himself lots of ESPN and network time, nice write-ups in the
New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today,
and a lot of other big publications. Plenty of magazine covers to come. They all want to talk about April and Sky and what happened here in Mammoth Lakes. He isn't saying much. So it's mostly Wylie's bearded, sullen face that the world has come to know. We'll see his expression when the endorsement dollars start to flow.