Crazy Blood (35 page)

“Good luck to you, too, then, Sky.”

“My words mean nothing to you.”

“Approximately.”

“I can do no more for you. This is for Robert.”

“For Robert.”

They banged gloved fists and glided away from each other, Sky loosening up at the waist, Wylie yawning again.

The starter called them into their gates. Wylie slid forward until his ski tips touched the blue dye. He lifted his goggles again, then firmed them against his face, snugged the helmet and pushed the strap under itself and against his throat. Again he checked all his zippers and buttons, loops and hooks, cuffs and pocket flaps, and every small thing that could retard his speed. His bib was tight and he liked the big odd number: 77.

He looked down and saw the line for a hole shot of his own into that first right bank. First in, first out. Tempting. His route would intersect Sky's, without doubt. So Wylie considered a more cautious start, which would take him lower, ceding the lead to someone else, likely Sky. Then he'd play catch-up as he usually did, the Wylie playbook.

His heart boomed away and he heard the familiar roar of blood in his ears and his mind felt lighter now and damn if he didn't like the idea of a surprise start. Sky might well be caught off guard, and Wylie had his good left foot to count on through that first right bank. Sky would be flabbergasted, and Claude Favier, too, and, really, the whole mountain would.

He took three deep breaths, exhaling fully, then yawned again. He felt the vanishing CO
2
replaced by a cold surge of oxygen. Vision clear and ears sharp. Now I see. Make the shot. Take the lead. Yes. It's yours. For Robert. For April and the girls. For
me.

The gates swung open and Wylie dug powerfully with his poles. He launched and dropped like a cannonball, hitting the steep half-pipe flank with a deep bend of skis, crossing the bowl barely ahead of Bridger Burr and Josh Coates, but already behind Sky Carson.

Through the first short run, they formed a tight knot, skis rattling, poles digging. Wylie's legs felt heavy, and whoever was behind him was close indeed. He held his line to the first bank, but Sky got there well ahead of everyone. Wylie ceded the turn, then tucked in behind Sky on the short straightaway leading to Launching Pad. The course was fast and he was airborne before he knew it, soaring off the jump just behind Sky. Then Wylie was floating, weight forward and ski tips jammed downward to dig into the air as the vast Sierra peripheries slowly unfolded around him. Then the course rushed up. He landed well, closing fast on Sky, hearing the hiss of Sky's skis and the louder hiss of his own, and the steady grind of those behind him. He carved close behind Sky and into the welcome pull of his draft. Pressure, he thought. Pressure him off this mountain. One of Sky's poles flicked oddly and Wylie felt a sudden stab of pain in his left shin.

The four drafted tightly toward the first gate, a sweeping right. Sky took it high, above the track, where the snow was less trammeled by racers. Wylie followed, snow blasting his goggles and the rasp of skis close behind him, urgent and high-pitched. He tried to focus ahead, but all he could see beyond Sky was the course jumping crazily ahead of him. Then a maddening moment as Wylie carved too hard into the gate on the race-battered ice and had to check his speed. He shouldered past the panel as tight as he could, but coming out he heard sudden dread quiet behind him as Bridger Burr swept past.

Tucked into Burr's draft, Wylie held third position down the straight toward jump two, Goofball. The straight was wide but offered insufficient velocity to pass. He broke left of Burr for the jump, launched high and deep into the sky. Another long moment of motion frozen in time, then Wylie hit hard and tore into a gentle left bank leading to the next gate. He held third place through the panels and came out fast.

On Dire Straights, he freed his speed, hugged his fall line to come up tight on Burr, his thighs parallel to the snow, calves together, knees working like pistons. The heaviness in his legs was gone. He was thoughtless and automatic, arms and poles acting far ahead of his dumb authority. He felt no more in control than a sneaker in a washing machine. This straight was his bread and butter, the most profitable feature of the course for a large racer. Wylie felt huge. He tucked around Burr, made an easy inside pass, and found himself breathing down the neck of Sky Carson.

Tucking in behind Sky again, he
ooorahed
to rattle Sky's cage. They sped toward Conundrum, where Robert had had his tragic fall. Wylie moved deep into Sky's draft, but Sky was staunch, claiming his line for the commanding center of the Conundrum ramp. Wylie dropped back inches as Sky pressed ahead, loosening a blast of snow and ice into Wylie's face. Sky had the good lane and launched off Conundrum. Wylie shot into the air on Sky's right. Leaning into the sudden silence, Wylie pressed hard, driving his ski tips down so the wind wouldn't flip him. He heard the slash of Burr, then of Coates, both launching behind him. His altitude was good. He could see Sky fully extended, straining for inches. Sky landed past where Robert had hit the ice. Wylie landed right on it, but lightly—for him—and well balanced, and he felt the CR Fives arcing radically, their sharp edges carving around a wide right bank that suddenly dropped him onto the next straightaway.

Wylie closed on Sky again, tight to his draft. But again Sky was staunch and relentless, body and nerves stout, giving Wylie not one inch, nor the slightest hint that he was even aware of the threat behind him. Down the mountain they flew, rippling with speed, bound by a tenuous bond of velocity and blood.

Sky held the lead, taking the best and shortest line into Shooters. Wylie stayed hard upon him, inches off his fall line, heard the rattling hiss of pursuit just feet behind him. Wylie felt enemy skis crunching over the backs of his own, then the terrible shimmy of deceleration.

“Coming through, Wylie!”

He flew into Shooters two yards behind Sky, the world abruptly closing around him—tree trunks and branches flashing by in the diminished light, the snow frozen to ice here in this cloistered forest.

“Coming
through
!”

He felt the rough grating of skis riding over his own again, kept his poles forward and free, dug mightily after Sky, who by now had claimed an impassable line out of the first chute and into the next. Wylie came up hard behind him, heard the skis still rasping behind him. The chute was long and narrow, and Wylie shot through flashing spokes of shadow and sunlight. The chute resolved in a hard right bank and he sensed that Sky was going too fast to take such a high line into it. Risking much, Wylie checked his speed, inviting Sky to take a safer, lower angle into the bank.

More shear and grind behind him.
“Coming through, Welborn!”
Skis clattered over the backs of his own again; then he felt a nanosecond of wobble. Wylie jabbed behind him smartly, felt his pole point hit snow. Sky chose the lower line into the bank, tucked tightly and made his move. It took less than a second for Sky to sense his mistake. Wylie saw him glance back, then bunch still tighter, setting his left pole, driving his uphill shoulder into the turn. Wylie had the higher line. He saw that they would converge exactly on the apex of the curve—Sky on the downhill side and Wylie narrowly above him. Whoever took the turn would have the lead into the long final straightaway and finish.

Sky streaked in from the left. He glanced at Wylie again and Wylie saw the blue beard and the wild white of eyes behind the goggles. The gate rushed them. Wylie freed all the speed he had in him, drew his shoulders up and out, and bumped past Sky. Sky quivered upon contact, then drove over the backs of Wylie's skis for a higher line that would send him out of the turn first. At desperate speed, Sky came even with Wylie, then tipped up on one ski to speed alongside Wylie, poles out for balance but all physics against him. He went down like someone thrown from a train, then spun off into the trees and out of Wylie's sight.

Once through Shooters, Wylie hogged the fast middle course with fierce abandon. For you, Robert. He heard no one behind him. The seconds seemed eternal. He crossed the finish line alone and threw up a huge rooster tail of snow in the out-run before looking back uphill. Bridger Burr and Josh Coates followed a hundred feet back. Ten long seconds later, Sky came essing down in the slow sway of concession, waving one acutely bent pole to the cheering crowd, his right arm tucked weirdly up against his side.

*   *   *

On the middle podium, Wylie raised to the filled grandstands his first-place trophy and an oversized replica of his ten-thousand-dollar check. The trophy was cast in the form of a gorilla holding up a chalice that had
Gargantua Mammoth Cup I
engraved around its lip. The check's background depicted a gorilla's face coming up behind Mammoth Mountain like a sunrise.

Wylie heard the applause and the loudly amplified announcers' voices, saw the cameras flashing. He felt very strange. He'd never been so stuffed with gratitude and with belief in tomorrow and with strong love for what he saw around him. Could all of this really come from winning a simple ski race? It seemed unlikely. But what was wrong with winning a ski race? And what was wrong with setting your sights on the biggest ski-cross race of all, and winning that, too? Was being the best ski crosser in the world any less an accomplishment than being the best actor or baker or poet or doctor or the best anything else?

And speaking of life, did that have to be only about holding parts together, locking things in, keeping the memory boxes properly stowed? Couldn't it be about playing up? Dreaming bigger? Nailing it? He reminded himself that this moment was a beginning and he knew that the road ahead would be long and rugged. For an example, he glanced down at the blood-smeared hole in his snow pants, just above the left boot, Sky's doing at the bottom of Launch Pad. That hurt.

He looked out at April and Kathleen and Steen. Then at Beatrice and Belle with their beanies pulled snug for warmth over their shorn heads. At Jesse and Jolene. All his people sitting close together in the stands. He could see their smiles and puffs of breath as they pounded their gloved hands together and yelled to him. Falling snow muffled the sound. To the left side of the grandstand, behind the roped-off media area, on an asphalt walkway leading up from the lodge, stood Sky and Cynthia and Hailee, and a woman Wylie had not seen before. Robert sat among them in his wheelchair, bundled against the cold.

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Twenty hours later, a drastically hungover Wylie Welborn sat in the stands with his family, waiting to see April's final slopestyle routine. She had already won the cup on the first of her two finals runs, untouched by any of her competitors. The common wisdom on a clinched competition was to play the second run safe and get yourself to the podium in one unbroken piece.

“Think she'll try that back-side double-cork ten-eighty, Wyles?” asked Belle.

“No reason to try it now. X Games probably.”

“I want to see it. Never been landed by a chick. Not in competition, for reals.”

The day was cold again, and both Beatrice and Belle scrunched close against their brother on the butt-numbing grandstands. They wore their heaviest parkas, and beanies with earflaps tied snugly down. It had been Beatrice's idea to shave their heads in partial penance for their thievery. After ordering them to write essays on why they had stolen, and why they should not have, an octogenarian juvenile court judge had sentenced them each to five hundred hours of community service—which would average approximately five hours per week over the next two years—spring and Christmas breaks excluded. They had done their first sixteen hours back in December, at town hall, apologizing and serving hot chocolate to people who were trying to reclaim their stolen bikes, skis, and boards at a well-publicized weekend open house. Belle had told Wylie that the judge, the Honorable Caroline Hoppe, had attended both days of the event, helping herself to the spiked eggnog and glaring at her and Beatrice occasionally, making sure they took their penance seriously.

As Wylie watched on the big monitor, April shook herself loose behind the start gate, slid in, crouched, and waited. Up top, the breeze was stronger, and April's well-known golden curls swayed below the rim of her turquoise-blue helmet. She wore the white and turquoise-blue colors that matched her eyes, had long been her signature uniform, from which she never varied.

Last night, the painless, wine-drinking Wylie had cooked for April her “lucky precompetition dinner”—a thin skirt steak done Mexican-style with onions and tomatoes, a baked potato buried in sour cream and bacon bits, asparagus, and chocolate pudding, served at 5:48
P.M.
, April's lucky preevent dinnertime. After dinner, he had watched her arrange toiletries and grooming products on her bathroom counter, each bottle, tube, and tub paired with its identical mate. The couples faced each other, front label to front label. The pairs stood in descending order by height, the tallest beginning back at the mirror and the rest winding out to the counter's edge, then along the front of the sink and back to the other side of the mirror. She hummed, her concentration was total, and she said nothing. Then a long shower.

Her lucky precompetition bedtime was 8:48. April told Wylie that all her lucky times ended in forty-eight because it had been lucky to her even as a toddler. So Wylie lay beside her in bed as she listened to music through earbuds. It was plenty loud enough for him to hear. At exactly 10:48, he nudged her, as instructed, and she pulled out the buds and turned over. For half of the night, she thrashed and called out through dreams that seemed disturbing even to Wylie, but he remained good to his word not to wake her. After that, she slept like the dead. Then, this morning, he had made for the seemingly refreshed April Holly her “lucky precompetition breakfast” of black coffee, scrambled eggs, and two packs of small waxlike chocolate doughnuts, served at 8:48.