Crazy Blood (23 page)

It was a trim little thing, a .38-caliber autoloader with nine shots. It was here for times like this, when he seriously considered trading the Black Not for the much kinder black forever. He stared at the weapon while he tore open the box of dog treats and, without looking, dropped one into Ivan's mouth.

It would take only a few seconds, he thought. Already loaded. You check the chamber. You unsafe it. You hold it to your temple and close your eyes. No pain forever.

The Black Not had gone quiet now, as it always did when Sky got out the gun.

The implication was,
Of course you can't do it.

Because he was Sky Carson, who lacked nerve, just as his father had lacked nerve, according to Cynthia. Who knew everything. Every single thing. And clearly did not lack nerve.

Because he was Sky Carson, a mid-pack ski crosser forever trying to catch Robert and Wylie and whoever else was racing well on any given day.

Because he was Sky Carson, royally born and genetically gifted. But assaulted on his own X Course by Wylie. And what had Sky done about it? Nothing. He had responded with a threat that people saw as comic but had taken no real action at all. Made no defense of his honor. If that wasn't lack of nerve, what was?

Because he was Sky Carson, knocked out cold with one punch by Wylie that night at Slocum's. In front of his friends and fans and the waitress he liked, and half of Mammoth Lakes.

Because he was Sky Carson. Of course he couldn't pull the trigger.

He couldn't even pick up the thing.

Sky poked at it with an index finger, as if trying to see if it were alive. Vision off, he kept missing. Then his fingertip caught the front sight and the gun spun and came to a stop with the barrel facing away from him and the grip waiting for his hand, just inches away, an invitation.

He still couldn't pick it up.

Because Sky Carson couldn't even answer an invite from God
.

Dad, what should I do?

Pick it up, you fucking coward.

He went to the open bottle on the kitchen counter, tilted it up for a long swallow of the añejo, then veered back to the bed and fell in.

*   *   *

The next two days were similar, but without Ivan trying so hard to get killed by a pack of wild dogs. Sky tightened up the dog's collar and got him outside every few hours on the leash to do his business, then pretty much dragged him back inside the cabin for the next assault from the Black Not. Sometimes Sky argued with the voice, denying the terrible emotions the voice made him feel. Sometimes he yelled. In quieter moments, he fed the dog. Threw a wadded-up sock for him. Drank Soylent. And tequila to blunt the pain.

By the third evening, he was exhausted. Then late that night, after several hours of torment that left him looking down on the gun once again, sobbing at his lack of courage, Sky fell into a sleep that lasted well into the next afternoon.

*   *   *

He woke up and drank a double helping of Soylent flavored with powdered raspberry mix. Downed some pretzels, too. He washed himself with bottled water and a little tablet of motel soap, rinsed with fistfuls of the water, air-dried in the sun and put on clean clothes, then headed north for Mammoth Lakes.

Coming up Highway 203, Sky looked out at the forest and the mountains looming high and he felt that strange sense of newness that always followed the Black Not. As if he was seeing things in a fresh way. Familiar but different. Old but new. It made him feel as if he'd been away a long time. The afternoon had turned cool and the sky beyond the mountain looked gray and solid as granite.

He caught the light red at Old Mammoth Road and watched the cars coming down from the village. He saw Johnny Maines roaring down Main toward him on his yellow motorcycle. Sky was always kind of impressed by how Maines could control the big Harley on tight turns even when the weather was bad. He'd seen Johnny slide through ice on the bike as if he were snowboarding it. Sky saw the fly-rod tubes that were strapped to the back of the motorcycle, vibrating with the speed; then he saw a flag of brown hair waving behind Johnny and realized he had a passenger. Even with the helmet and sunglasses she was wearing, Sky recognized Megan, for sure, holding Johnny tight around his middle, and damned if Megan wasn't smiling as Johnny ran the red light and turned the loudly farting Harley right in front of him.

No Harley out front when he got home. He led the dog up the stairs and let him in. It looked like Megan had had a party—cans and bottles and open bags of chips everywhere. A sleeping bag lay on the floor beside one slip-on canvas sneaker. He looked into the bedroom, cringed when he saw the unmade bed with the sheets all twisted up and every pillow on the floor.

He sat down on the bed with his back to the door, looking out the window to the sharp peaks of the Sherwins. The Black Not, never fully absent, piped up:
Of course she's with Johnny Maines. Cat away. Probably learned it from you. What did you expect?

He heard the pounding of someone starting up the outside stairs, soon joined by a second person. Ivan launched into a tirade of barking and ran to the front door. Sky heard voices, male and female, something being discussed, the male voice louder and more forceful but the female agreeing. The front door opened and shut and a moment later he felt eyes on his back.

“I'm sorry, Sky.”

“Just get out,” said Sky without turning around.

“Yo bro,” said Johnny Maines.

“You get out, too.”

“I want Ivan,” said Megan.

“Take him. Go. All of you.”

“I tried,” said Megan. “But the Sky Carson show just wasn't working for me, once I saw it a couple of times.”

“It's the best I have. Leave your key.”

“Can you at least turn around and look me in the eyes?”

“There's nothing to see.”

“Don't blame you, dude,” said Maines. “See you around. I'm all about you for the cup.”

“Yes. Godspeed, you regicidal toddlers.”

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Five-fifteen
A.M.
October air cold and thin, mountain darkness close.

Wylie unlocked the front door of Let It Bean, to find April Holly waiting outside in that darkness.

“I'm ready,” she said. “Sorry for the short notice.”

His heart hopped to. “Come in. I need to do some things.”

“We should be fairly quick about this.”

At the counter, Wylie wrote his address on a napkin, sensing eyes from the kitchen on him. “Park under the blue tarp by the pastry cart. It's up Main, left on Mono, then left on Cornice. Put all your stuff on the deck. Steen will help.” She took the napkin and her eyes searched his face as they had done before, and in this Wylie saw fear and determination.

“Please hurry,” she said.

“I'll be there soon.”

His sisters and mother were in the kitchen, at work in glum silence, the girls dressed for school, the radio low. Since Gargantua had begun opening at 5:30 each morning, the Let It Bean staff was getting up half an hour earlier to open at 5:15. At 4:00
A.M.
, those thirty minutes of sleep were sorely missed.

Wylie told them he was taking off for a few days; not to worry, Steen would be here by 7:30. All three of them gave him knowing looks. “If that was April Holly's voice,” said Belle, “then that must have been April Holly.”

“Where are you two going?” asked Beatrice.

“Solitary,” he said. “Madman.”

“Adam, too?” asked Belle. “For your birthday, like you used to?”

“We'll see, with the short notice.”

“I'd go with April Holly on
no
notice,” said Belle.

“Happy birthday almost, Wylie!” said Beatrice.

A moment later, the girls hugged him and his mother handed him a paper bag. Wylie hustled across the parking lot in the cold dark, slipping and sliding on the ice, risking a half lutz as he got close to his truck, landing the jump nicely.

*   *   *

April said nothing as they charged toward Highway 395 from Mammoth. She kept her eyes on the side-view mirror, and Wylie felt her nerves. They ate the pastries and drank the big coffee drinks. He was surprised how small the cab of his truck became with her in it. Much smaller than with a sister or Mom or even Jesse Little Chief aboard.

He used the phone just once—it was going to take Adam and Teresa two days to get up there. This gave Wylie the thrill of having April Holly to himself.
To himself!
He would be cool and courteous. He would be April Holly's host. Her driver, guide, protector, and companion. He would be Helene and Logan and Clean Cut and himself, all rolled into one. That was funny.

This late in a snowless autumn, the faint two-track path was easier to find and follow. Wylie happily goosed his truck up the front side of the Sierras. Aspens shivered against the gray flanks of the mountains and gold medallions rained down. The gorge was a furnace of red and orange flames in a cloudless blue sky, the breeze-blown leaves swirling like embers. Jays squawked at them while two big hawks circled in the updrafts precisely as clockworks. Glancing in the rearview mirror, Wylie cast an appreciative eye at the MPP, then let his gaze linger on April's profile.

Her voice was faint and seemingly distant. “Last night they arranged to have Tim stroll in with an armful of red roses and tears in his eyes. I'm not a hard person. I'm not. But I'm furious because … I'm just furious.”

“I understand.”

“Please don't. I'm exhausted by it. I hope I brought the right stuff for out here. I used to camp, but it's been years.”

“We've got everything.”

“Where will I take a bath?”

“Breakfast Creek. You'll be clean and very awake. We'll heat up water on the fire.”

“Let's not talk about a single thing.”

“Okay, not one.”

“I'm never sure if you're making fun of me.”

“Sometimes I am.”

“Can I be not me for a few days?”

“I'll call you Mae. I like that name.”

She sighed. “Yeah. Sure. Old-fashioned, like me. Twenty-one going on ninety.”

“Not talking might be good.”

“Don't you shush me.”

“We're going in circles, April.”

“Triple corks.”

“Always imaging.”

“Snowboarding is the only thing I'm not sick of. And I don't want to know what that says about me.”

*   *   *

They parked in the middle of Solitary, away from the canyon walls so the sun would be on them, but not too far from the young tree upon which he'd been hoisting the food away from the bears. Wylie got out and threw open the door of the MPP and the tailgate of his truck. April walked off.

Wylie arranged the folding chairs facing each other across the fire pit, set his ground pad and sleeping bag on a flat spot near the tree, propped the skis and boards against the trailer tongue. Kept an eye on April. He wrestled the MPP off the hitch, then leveled it, cranking and uncranking the handle until the bubble was exactly equidistant between the level lines. He watched April walk into the meadow and stand in the waning wildflowers, looking up at Madman.

Wylie was suddenly unsure of what to do. He rechecked the level of the MPP. He fussed over the boots and bindings and poles and snowshoes, arranging them under the tree twice. Back at the trailer, he carefully wiped the road dust off the portholes. Short of counting the change in his pocket, he was out of ideas. So he rearranged the stones in the fire pit. April was still out there catching the sun, sitting on a round boulder, a singular woman alone in the world. Let her be, he thought.

Two hours later, they stood panting on the precipice of Madman, snowshoes fastened to their backs, ski and board tips in the air. “Take this first one slow,” he said.

“My heart's beating everywhere.”

“Good luck.”

April launched. She vanished in freefall, then landed with a hard rasp and carved right. Wylie dropped in and went left, gained speed, made a wide turn back toward the middle and crisscrossed April coming the opposite way. The snow was softened by the afternoon sun, but it was last year's snow and far from powder. He heard the edges of his skis cutting into it, felt the surge of speed when he ran through tree shadows and shot into sunlight near the right side of the slope. He swung back and they crossed in the middle again, Wylie letting out a war whoop and April opening her hands in a bring-it-on gesture as she flew past him.

They essed down the mountain in a loose weave, each holding back, feeling for the ice and the softer holes. Wylie was truly impressed by her ease and economy of motion, her lightness and promise of speed. Such easy transitions from goofy to conventional, he thought. Fluid. Thoughts played out on snow. How does she do that? He put his weight into the turns, legs powerful from the miles on Highway 203, upper body staunch from splitting cords of wood. On the last few hundred yards, he pulled up next to her and they fell into a rhythm determined by the course, reading the snow, anticipating and approximating each other. They stopped at the downslope end of the natural out-run, both breathing hard, Wylie's poles dug in for stability and April with a hand on his arm for balance. “Oh. My. God.”

“I thought you'd like it.”

“Planet Amazement. Again?”

“Let's go.”

Their second run was freer and faster, Wylie out ahead, coursing through late-afternoon shade and sunlight, trying to find that place where he was present but absent, where his body skied while his mind oversaw. Maybe it would come. He was strong enough, but he didn't feel limber. Power without feel. Twenty-six years old tomorrow. Not twenty. Not bad. Just different. They figure-eighted down, two signatures on one mountain.

*   *   *

At dusk, they made a fire, using good split wood brought from home, then put on the steaks, asparagus, and rolls they'd picked up in Big Pine. The folding chairs were actually comfortable. Wylie poured her a very small bourbon in a coffee cup, which she casually sipped, then spit into the fire. “That's just awful.”