Crazy Blood

by T. Jefferson Parker

  With the Little Red Pastry Shed now history, and the fourteen-thousand-dollar roof job looming, and the lease here on Let It Bean soon to be doubled by a new landlord, Wylie felt the same cold undertow of shortage that was part of what had pushed him away five years ago. Again he wondered about his nontriumphant return home. Toil and trouble. Now he wanted to stay and make things right. He wanted to help his sisters, mother, and Steen get a better shot. He knew he had a chance at the cup. After that, the X Games and FIS circuit and the Olympics were higher levels. Could he be good enough? All of that was technically possible, but another part of Wylie wanted just to light out for new territory, get back into the bigger world that lay beyond this mountain.

  Now Beatrice was banging around in the kitchen and Belle was tucked into one of the leather chairs by a window, reading her world history textbook.

  Wylie, still crouched, heard the bell on the door chime and sensed incoming customers. He kept at the fridge, giving the newly arrived patrons a minute to read the wall menu. It was amazing how much time some people took to figure out what size coffee to buy.

  “What’s a person have to do for some service around here?”

  He recognized the voice and stood. “You have to want it badly.”

  “I badly want a pumpkin scone and a double nonfat latte.”

  “Welcome back from Portillo.”

  “Thank you.”

  Wylie watched Belle look up from the book as if surprised, then wave coolly. He knew Belle idolized April Holly by the offhand and often dismissive way that she brought April into conversations over and over.

  “Looks like some serious homework there, Wylie’s sister,” said April.

  “Like I need to know when the First Crusade left Constantinople.”

  “One thousand ninety-nine. You should see Rhodes. It’s beautiful, and their coffee is Turkish—almost as good as yours. Wylie, you’ve lost weight.”

  “Been training hard.”

  “How’s the module?”

  “Personal and portable.”

  April was tanned from the Andean sun and snow and she wore an Inca-style knit sweater with a band of characters holding hands across a white background. The figures all wore gloves and caps and boots. Wylie watched her curls dangle as she unsnapped a colorful woven coin purse.

  “This is on us,” said Wylie.

  “But—”

  “If Gargantua can give away skis, I can give a coffee and a scone.”

  “Please accept our gifts!” called out Belle. “Is Portillo, like, the best resort ever?”

  Beatrice peered in from the kitchen and April smiled at her. “It’s unbelievably fantastic. You should go there sometime. Not to train. But to have fun.” She pushed a couple of bills into the tip jar and hooked a bouquet of curls behind one ear.

  “And you should come here every morning,” said Wylie. “You’d get great coffee and pastry and you’d bring us more customers. And I could give Gargantua the finger.”

  April snapped the coin purse shut and dropped it back into her bag. “What? Still no inner peace? Haven’t you evolved at all in the last two months?”

  “No. But they threw me off the Mammoth freeski team, if that makes you feel better. I’ll have to battle the tourists for X Course leftovers.”

  She frowned. “Because of what you did to Jacobie and Sky?”

  “I think there was some politics, too, but I don’t know for sure.”

  “That’s an awful thing to do to you.”

  “I’ll keep up my dry-terrain training program until the snow.”

  “Splitting wood and running?”

  “Correct.” Wylie bagged the scone and handed it to her, then moved down the counter to make her coffee. The previous week he’d spent another three days making his secret vertiginous moonlit runs down Madman. He felt right. Legs and eyes strong, spirit firm. But still no snow on this eastern slope. The earlier it came to Mammoth, the better. As he’d discovered on that first run down Madman back in August, he was twenty-five now, not twenty. He needed more time on snow. There was no invitation to the Imagery Beast from Bart Helixon. And when the snow finally did come, having to share the X Course with the tourists would be an expensive handicap, but he’d have to make it work.

  “Where’s your mother and the dwarf?” asked Wylie.

  “Gave ’em the slip. I’ve got a day to recover from South America, then hit the gym and pray for snow. Nice to be free for a whole day.”

  Wylie steamed the milk into the espresso, sprinkled some cinnamon on the froth, and worked on a plastic lid.

  “I’ll drink it here,” said April. “Unless you’re trying to hustle me out.”

  Wylie gestured to the empty chairs and couches. There was a nice little fire going, though, and magazines all about skiing and boarding and fishing. What more could an Olympic gold medalist want? He poured the drink into a big ceramic mug and set it on a saucer in front of April.

  “Manners, Wyles!” Belle whisked around him, picked up the saucer and mug, and took them to her favorite table, near the window and the fire. After April had settled into one of the red leather chairs, Belle moved the saucer just a skosh closer to her, gave Wylie a look, and headed back across the room.

  With no more customers, Wylie knelt down and went back to work on the refrigerator. When he stood again, Beatrice and Belle were both seated in red leather chairs at April Holly’s table and the three were tightly engaged in conversation. They all stopped talking and looked at him at once, his sisters proudly defiant but April smiling.

  Wylie went about his work, looking over at them now and then from various inconspicuous angles. April caught him once, or did he catch her? A couple came in and headed toward the counter, faces raised to the wall menu.

  * * *

  She stayed almost two hours, talking with the girls, signing autographs, and posing for pictures with the steadily growing stream of social-media-informed fans. With her around I really could give Gargantua the finger, he thought. To Wylie, she seemed earnest, asking questions, considering her own answers. He kept a weather eye for falseness but saw none. But when the rush was over, he saw April sit back and let out a big sigh. Her face looked a little slack. He offered to see her out.

  They walked up Meridian toward the Starwood homes. The golf course grass had gone pale and the tractors were already taking up this year’s turf. Wylie shortened his stride to match April’s, though she was a brisk walker. The sunlight lit her hair and freckles and bleached the blue of her eyes. When she smiled, April looked almost impossibly happy, and he wondered how much of this was her act. It certainly brightened magazine covers and sold shampoo. But now, up close like this, her face looked puffy and tired and older than when she’d left two months ago. “You must be thrilled to see me again,” she said.

  “I am. I thought about you.”

  “Thought what?”

  “There’s this run we call Madman. It’s a secret. Adam Carson showed it to me years ago, a good steep run, and you have to use snowshoes to get to it. I’ve been hitting it hard. I think of you when I go down it. Think of you boarding it, I mean. It’s not a slopestyle course. Just a straight alpine schuss.”

  “No one else was there?”

  “Deer.”

  “And what do you do at night?”

  “Grill up the catch. Read and make notes. Listen to music. Sleep like a rock.”

  They continued slowly up the gentle grade. Wylie felt proud and privileged for the chance to walk alone with April Holly. Like he’d won it in a contest. He was hoping a carload of friends would come by, just to witness this.

  “That sounds fun,” she said. “The second I turned pro, they tried to take the fun out of boarding. I had to fight to keep it. Still do.”

  “How old were you?”

  “I had sponsors at eight, Mom and an agent lining things up. Pressure. You?”

  “Sixteen, I got skis, boots, and bindings. And free breakfasts at Main Lodge after workouts. I loved those.�
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  “We athletes live weird lives. Sometimes I think we’re born to do what we do. Other times, I think we get a notion in our heads because it’s all around us when we’re young. But then they make a pro out of you and everything changes. They, like, melt you down and pour you into these body molds so you can reanimate and become a champion and make money.”

  He smiled at this, but she did not. “You’re the best there is,” he said.

  She looked up at him. Her standard public expression of permanent sweetness seemed far away now, replaced by something somber. “Wherever I go, I see two kinds of people,” she said. “Mammoth? Aspen? Portillo? It’s all the same. There’re the ones who love what they do. They’re at their best when they’re doing it. Then, there’re the ones who want to be the best in the world at something. And to prove it by winning.”

  Wylie had come to the same conclusions. There were two basic paths: to be your best or the best. “Which are you?”

  “I live for it, Wylie. Launching into the sky at high velocity, doing impossible things? That’s my best me—doing something beautiful in the air. It’s what I care about most. What about you?”

  It took Wylie some time to put words to the complex brew inside him. “The other. I need the Mammoth Cup for a shot at the X Games. If I can do well at the X Games, I’ll have a shot at the World Cup tour and the U.S. Olympic team. I don’t know if I’m good enough, but if I can get to the podium in South Korea, my family is set for life. I’d get endorsements and job offers and who knows, maybe another Olympic shot when I’m thirty-two. I could buy the space for Let It Bean instead of Mom and Dad leasing. Hire some help. Get the girls out into the world. Give a rest to Mom and Steen. This is my first official dream. So, I have to win.”

  “So you want fame and riches.”

  “Sure. Sign me up.”

  “So skiing is a job?”

  “If I win, it is.”

  “Oh, man. No pressure, Wylie!”

  They walked on. On the flanks of the Sierras, the aspens had burst into orange and the cottonwoods were coined with yellow. The meadow grasses glimmered white in the sun. Wylie felt a sudden desire to talk. “And there’s Robert. I want to win for him because I love him and he loved racing and now he can’t even walk. That sounds corny, but it’s true.”

  “That’s not corny. It’s love, looking for a way to show itself.”

  They continued up Meridian and along the golf course. Wylie successfully stole another glance at April. He thought back to when he and his friends had sneaked onto the golf course to steal golf balls and seen a large black bear digging a gopher out of a fairway, and the clots of good green turf flying through the air.

  Now, loading up ahead, Wylie saw the forest that surrounded Starwood. Mammoth had still not recovered from the recession and real estate crash, so many of the beautiful Starwood homes now sat locked and empty. They slowed their pace. “So, Wylie, you have to beat everybody in the world to get what you want?”

  “Every one of them.”

  “It must be scary, saying you’re going to do that. Because if you fail, the whole world will know you’ve failed at what you wanted most. They’ll know and you won’t be able to hide it. And they’ll use your pain against you.”

  “You must feel that pressure, too.”

  “Oh, yes, I feel it.”

  “You board for yourself, but there’s got to be a part of you that wants to blast the opposition off the snow. Just being out there says you want to win. And you know those other slopestylers think the same, teammates or not. No friends on the mountain, as John Teller told me once.”

  April nodded along but said nothing for a long moment. She stopped and gave him a half smile. “I love winning. But being on the podium isn’t as good as being in the air.”

  He tried to steal another look at her, but she was studying him closely. “I love skiing, too,” he said. “When I’m coming down Madman, there’s no one to even beat!”

  “Don’t let racing be only work. It can’t be only that. Mom and the coaches always say, ‘It’s your destiny and your job.’ And I keep trying to fight off that job idea.” She was still looking hard at him, blue eyes roaming his face as if searching for something. She reslung the bag strap over her shoulder and they continued up Meridian. “Why did you give it up? You were at the top of your game.”

  “I had to launch.”

  “Meaning that we athletes live narrow, self-obsessed lives and have no idea of the real world around us?”

  “I saw that happening to me.”

  “Most of us pros don’t have an idea of the world.”

  “You knew about the Crusades.”

  “I got lucky and had some good tutors.”

  Wylie could see the Starwood houses huddled in the trees now, and the black Escalade with April’s face and the yellow Team Holly logo on it. Helene Holly and extra-large Logan climbed into the vehicle and slammed the doors. “Here comes your posse.”

  “Mega crap.”

  “We can cut across the golf course and hide.”

  “I’d feel childish.”

  “Me, too. We never ran from the skinnies, and they were trying to kill us.”

  “I’ve never thought of my mother as Taliban.”

  “She has that look.”

  “Do you want to blast Sky off the mountain in the Mammoth Cup?”

  “Positively.” Wylie watched the SUV turn onto Meridian and start toward them.

  “Everybody’s heard about his pledge to beat you. And I saw his selfie threat, what he’ll do if you run someone off the course again. I also got the gossip, Wylie, even way down in the Andes, and what I heard is that half the freeski team saw you run Sky off the X Course, and the other half saw him try to do that to you.”

  “Vote Wylie. I barely touched him. I forced him off his line and he lost his nerve.”

  April stopped mid-sidewalk and gave Wylie another long assessment. The Escalade whooshed past them and Logan made a U-turn. “You idiots should wake up and make up. Lose an enemy and gain a brother. It would lighten both your loads and you’d ski better.”

  “Would I have to hug him?”

  “That’s a shitty comment.” The SUV came to a stop behind them. April looked back, then at Wylie.

  “April? April!” Helene’s voice cracked sharply in the warm Sierra afternoon.

  “I apologize then, April. But I don’t have anything to make up with Sky. He makes messes; then other people have to clean them up.”

  “April, we are late for the two-thirty! Please? Now!”

  “Four hugs a day happen to work, Wylie. I was about to start my hugs today with you. But you can wait and I can, too.”

  “It’s my loss.”

  “I hate your detached sarcasm.”

  “But I meant it.”

  She wiped a sudden tear from each eye. “I broke my engagement. His name is Timothy and we’ve known each other since ninth grade and he is a good, good guy. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

  “April!”

  April turned. “Shut up, Helene! Just shut the fuck up!” Then she wheeled on Wylie. “Don’t you say one word.”

  An Escalade door opened and slammed, and looking over April’s shoulder, Wylie saw Helene marching toward them.

  “Look me in the eyes, Wylie.” April’s voice was a hurried whisper, almost a hiss. “I thought about you every day in Portillo. It was ridiculous. I texted you every day, and deleted them. I couldn’t wait to get back here and see you. There’s no order left inside me, and I don’t like it.”

  “I dreamed I drove from Mammoth to Chile to see you. Slept in the MPP.”

  “I wish you had.”

  Helene stopped short of them. “Honey?”

  “I dreamed it twice.”

  “April—we just really can’t leave ESPN waiting, can we?”

  “Come ride Madman with me,” said Wylie. “We’ll stay a few days. Adam and Teresa will be there, too. For adult supervision.”


  “You really do think I’m a sheltered child, don’t you?”

  “Nothing childish about this.”

  “I can’t do something that foolish.”

  “Sure you can. Soon, while the weather holds.”

  She looked at him unreadably, then turned and walked toward the vehicle. Helene came to Wylie. “Stay away from her. She’s very vulnerable now. She has no time in her life for you or people like you. April wasn’t born to lose, Mr. Welborn. Surely you can see that.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  The evening of that same October day, the Black Not began creeping down on Sky Carson. He happened to be with Megan at Mountain High. What terrible timing, he thought. Just when he was feeling healthy and strong and optimistic.

  The Black Not—Sky’s name for it—was a black shapeless thing that slowly draped itself over him, tarlike. He could never get a good look at it. While it lowered and began to seep into him, it talked to him in his father’s voice—a voice he’d actually never heard except in recordings. The Black Not made him feel bad about things, very bad, and it brought him pain, surely as a poison. He’d could keep it off him for a day or two at most. Then it would have him for three, maybe four days. Those days were hell on Earth. He had been free from it now for nearly seven months.

  He sat there in Helixon’s theater with Megan, nursing along his second beer of the whole night and watching Fight Club for the forty-eighth time in his life, trying to prepare himself for what was to come.

  “I want to go home,” he said.

  “All right. Okay. Though this is one of my nights off.”

  “I hope Ivan hasn’t torn apart the other couch.”

  “He’s still just a puppy.”

  * * *

  Sky lay in his bed in the dark with her, Ivan locked out but scratching inquisitively at the door. Sky looked through the blinds at the ragged outline of the Sherwins, darker than the sky and topped by stars. “I love you,” he said.

  “I can tell something’s wrong.”