Crazy Blood

Chapter Sixteen

Anger simmering, Wylie walked up Old Mammoth Road and saw Steen manning the Little Red Pastry Shed, and a line of customers waiting. Steen was gesticulating enthusiastically, and even from this distance Wylie could tell that he was retarding his own business. The only thing Steen liked more than baking was talking about what he’d baked. He could go on for an hour on a certain grind of cocoa. The Mammoth Sports parking lot was busy with tourists, some checking out the bikes and racks of postseason snow apparel, some eating and drinking in the warm July sun, some letting their children try to net a tagged prize-earning fish in the aboveground “Trout Derby Catch-and-Release Pool” sponsored by the Mammoth Chamber of Commerce.

From here, Wylie could also see Gargantua Coffee across the street, with its tethered balloons fluttering in the sky and its inflatable plastic logo large as a dirigible floating high, and of course the streetlight banners up and down the street with more ape-faced logos on them. There was a sun shade set up in the parking area out in front of Gargantua, and Wylie could see skis and boards and even a couple of bikes gleaming under it. A woman’s amplified voice announced winning numbers.

Wylie and Steen were busy for the next hour solid. Wylie outsold his stepfather two-to-one due to Steen’s yapping, but Wylie noted that the yapped-at customers just yapped right back. He didn’t understand how people could be so happy buying and selling coffee and pastries. Steen had gotten the smart phone app to run credit cards. The change box had lots of twenties, some fifties, at least a couple of hundreds, and even several of the personal checks that Steen was always too cordial to refuse, though they almost never bounced.

Steen jovially blathered on. “Oh, yes, I have permission from Mammoth Sports to be here. They know I will bring in business for them!”

“No,” said a young man wearing hiking shorts, trekking boots, and a Gargantua barista’s shirt. He stood at the front of Steen’s line, sipping from a venti Gargantua cup. His nameplate read JACOBIE. “I said the town. Did the town of Mammoth Lakes issue you a sidewalk vending permit?”

“We are very far from the sidewalk!”

“Funny,” said Jacobie.

Wylie looked at him. “You’re holding up the line.”

“Pardon me.” Jacobie stepped aside, turned to the people behind him, and swept his free arm toward the cart in an exaggerated gesture of hospitality. “I’m looking forward to the first Gargantua Mammoth Cup, Wylie. We’re now the featured sponsors, as you might know. I’m Jacobie, regional manager.”

Wylie looked up at the nearest Gargantua banner, then back to Jacobie. “I recognized you from the banner.”

“Cute.”

“It’s unethical for you to undercut us like you did today. This used to be one of our biggest days all year.”

“Are you calling unnecessary roughness? I feel bad now. But Froth of July is national, Mr. Welborn. Not just here in Mammoth. You don’t take everything this personally, do you?”

“I take it personally when I see your prices cut in half and my store empty.”

“To be honest, we’re looking to win here in Mammoth Lakes. But back to the Gargantua Mammoth Cup — good luck. I love it that you and Sky have squared off. Like a good weigh-in. Like the Rumble in the Jungle. It’ll build the gate. Now that Robert canned up.”

“‘Canned up’ is disrespectful. Don’t say that about Robert again.”

Jacobie stared at Wylie. “So now Sky’s the most talented ski crosser on Mammoth Mountain. Though you used to be a real bruiser.”

Wylie considered Jacobie as he used to consider tactical situations. It always boiled down to consequences and what you thought they were worth. He tried to find that calm place inside.

“Are you judging something?” Jacobie asked.

“How far into that Trout Derby pool I could throw you.”

“Violent bastard, aren’t you?”

Wylie came around the cart. Steen squawked and tried to stop him. Jacobie held his ground with dissolving confidence. In the end, all he could do was drop the venti cup and raise both hands in frank capitulation. Like a strongman, Wylie jerked him by his belt and the scruff of his shirt, holding him high like a barbell, teetered a few yards, and pitched Jacobie into the fish pool.

The kids screamed and got splashed and the parents tried to gather them to safety. Some took pictures and video. Jacobie surfaced, throwing his head to shed the cold water.

“You’ll pay,” hissed Jacobie.

“You should pay,” said April Holly. Her dour-faced mother was not far behind, bodyguard Logan towering next to her, and a square-jawed, clean-cut young man caught uncertainly between them and April.

“What do you want?” Wylie asked her. Right now, he was less angry at Jacobie for pissing him off than at April for seeing him this way.

“I want to know why you’re violent. Why are you so violent?”

“This... he... okay, yeah, violent at this moment in time, but...”

“But why?”

“Ask the prick yourself.”

“No call for language like that,” said the clean-cut young man, stepping toward Wylie.

Wylie raised a hand and ordered Clean Cut to halt. It worked. Logan took a few steps Wylie’s way, then stopped, too. Jacobie vaulted the shaky wall of the pool and plopped to the asphalt, soaked and dripping. He briskly brushed his hands together back and forth: a job well done. April was addressing Wylie and he heard her voice, but because of the water splashing off Jacobie, and the amplified voice across the street announcing the winning number, and the Trout Derby contestants bickering over whose turn it was next, and a teenaged girl now offering April a pen and a Gargantua T-shirt to autograph while she told April that her switch backside 540 was, like, epic, Wylie couldn’t hear what she was saying. “What? Can’t you speak up? I can’t hear you.”

April cleared her throat and projected with some effort. “I’m asking you. Why are you so violent?” She smiled down at the girl, signed the T-shirt, and handed it back. Clean Cut tried to help in this transaction but was too late.

Wylie tried to slow his heart and order his thinking. “Well, we’ve had this family coffee business for fifteen years and Gargantua’s trying to shut us down so they can have all the business in Mammoth Lakes. And Jacobie, if you deny that or try to spin what I just said, I’m going to throw you back in that pool and hold you under.”

Wylie cringed inside, tried not to show it. Why, once he got riled up, could he not let a thing blow over? Especially a thing as underpowered and inconsequential as Jacobie? Escalation had always been his weak spot. And when his anger turned inward, as it had turned now, he became just plain stupid.

April looked at Jacobie. “Is that true?”

“Look across the street and figure it out for yourself,” said Wylie.

“It’s utter silliness,” Jacobie said. “The reason he got violent is because I exposed him for the vicious clown that he is.”

In hardly more than a flash, Jacobie was back in the pool, Wylie on top of him and holding him under. When Wylie finally let go, Jacobie came up gasping, fear in his eyes, and the men locked into a graceless waterlogged skirmish before two Mammoth bicycle cops waded in and pulled them apart.

Wylie got a holding cell with a homeless man, asleep and reeking of alcohol. Jacobie had the adjacent cell and they could see the rough outlines of each other through the perforated steel mesh.

Sgt. Grant Bulla sat on a folding chair outside the cages, with a laptop computer on his thigh and April Holly and her mother standing on either side of him. April and Helene had already stated what they’d witnessed, and Wylie had quickly confessed. Jacobie had gone from outrage to sullenness.

“Okay,” said the sergeant, “I can write warning tickets and free both of you guys, if you both agree not to press charges. If you do press charges, it’s arrest time, two calls and all that. So which will it be?”

Wylie and Jacobie declined to press charges.

“Okay. Next time, my gloves come off. I don’t care who you think you are.” Bulla opened the holding cells and the miscreants walked free. He took Wylie by the arm and held him back as the others moved along. “Get your act together.”

“Yes, sir.”

They walked toward the exit. “Those maple-bacon turnovers at Let it Bean yesterday were really something.”

“Cops know their doughnuts.”

Bulla smiled slightly. “I walked into that one. But good luck at the Mammoth Cup. The less time you spend behind bars, the more training you’ll get in. My son is Daniel, on the freeski team, by the way. Thanks for being cool to him.”

April was waiting for him outside. Wylie’s heart fell but bounced. He saw Helene at the sidewalk with Logan and Clean Cut, none of them speaking, all staring at him. Across the street, the festivities were still going on, though Wylie could see that Gargantua had given away most of their prizes by now. The big inflated gorilla logo swayed on its tethers.

“I’m sorry I had to testify against you,” April said.

“I forgive you.” Wylie felt foolish and repentant now and wished he could crawl into a hole.

“Have you always had that temper?”

“We go way back.”

“I know the history here. And it looks to me like you’ve got a log on your shoulders, Wylie Welborn. Not a chip, a log. Why? Because certain people will not forgive you for being born. Or your mom for having you.”

“What makes you a sudden expert on Welborns?”

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

Wylie looked at her and nodded, felt all the old currents still running their unchanged courses, pettily violent and repetitious, channeled by the past.

“Wylie,” said April. “There’s a proven way to shrink that log down to a chip.”

“How?”

“By hugging another person, or persons, at least four times per day.”

“What?”

“It works. Give me your hands.” He was too stunned not to. Hers were smooth and warm and small. She looked up at him, one corner of her mouth raised in a half smile, her eyes busily searching. He waited for her to erupt into laughter. Her voice was whispery, but it stayed on tune as she sang, “Four hugs a day, that’s the minimum. Four hugs a day, not the maximum...”

Wylie felt his mouth part. “Mom sang that to me.”

“Well, she was right. That song was written by Charlotte Diamond, who understood that hugs improve temperament. You can start by hugging me if you’d like.”

She released his hands and slid her arms around him, leaning in and turning her face primly to one side. He placed his arms around April, but he couldn’t commit because he wasn’t sure if she was mocking him, so he bent at the waist almost formally and held her for a moment. Wylie smelled her hair and wondered if it was the shampoo she advertised. Glancing past her shoulder, Wylie saw Helene staring at him and talking to Logan, who leaned, hands on knees, beside her like a lineman in a huddle, nodding. The clean-cut young man looked eagerly to Helene, as if for a signal.

April stepped back and looked at him. “And?”

“I feel better.”

“Of course you do. And are we getting negative vibrations from behind me?”

“Clearly negative.”

“How come you don’t shave?”

“I like my beard.”

Her eyes scanned his face again. “What you like is distance between yourself and the world. I’d grow a beard if I could. I’d hide behind it. Then I’d make a million dollars doing an ad for a beard-trimmer company.”

“I’d buy one. They haven’t made a good one yet.”

She smiled. “I’m going to Chile tomorrow for six weeks. Portillo. I’ll get a good look at the next year’s Europeans. Of course, we Americans invented my sport, so I’ve got an advantage.”

“You’re a beautiful slopestyler. I’ve never seen a triple cork like yours.”

“It’s all just amplitude on those triples.” Her eyes were back in scan mode. “What you just said means a lot to me. My whole goal is to board beautifully.”

“Good luck in Portillo, then.”

“It’s gorgeous there. You should think about heading down.”

He nodded.

“Look, I only met him once, but I’m very sorry about what happened to Robert. I hope and pray he can recover. I’ve read about people coming out of comas like that. You must miss him very much.” Wylie nodded, bracing himself for another hug plug regarding Robert. “Also, I don’t like what Jacobie Bradford is trying to pull on Let It Bean. He denied it all, but I believe you. So you’d better watch that temper of yours, because all it’s going to do is make things worse.”

“That’s all it ever does.”

“See you later, Wylie. Four hugs a day. Minimum. Not the maximum.”

She smiled at Wylie with all-American cover girl and Olympic gold medal wholesomeness, turned, and walked away.