Crazy Blood

Chapter Twenty-Six

The first snow of the season fell overnight in early November, lowering a thin white blanket over the town. That morning, Wylie sat in his truck outside Cynthia Carson’s home, looking up at the mountain and watching the snowflakes still wafting down from above. His truck engine was running and he had the heater cranked up. Yesterday’s text from Cynthia Carson was more an order than an invitation: “Be at my home at 8:00 A.M. Wednesday — C. Carson.”

He looked again at Cynthia’s front door. He had rarely felt such dread. He had never actually spoken to her before. Never really looked her in the eye. Soon, he would have to do both. Sipping the last of his coffee, Wylie remembered first hearing the whispered gossip about Sky Carson’s mom shooting his dad before Sky was born. She was in prison. One of the other kindergarteners had a folded newspaper picture of her walking into court. Sky was suddenly different to him, but how? Was this the reason why Sky was either funny or sad? No kid talked about any of it when he was around, that was for sure. As a kindergartener, Wylie had thought a lot about all this. Wished it hadn’t happened. Wished they could all wake up from it, like from a bad dream. He’d lost his own father to a bad illness, so he understood growing up without a true dad around.

Wylie drained the coffee, dropped the container into the holder, and suddenly it was fifteen years ago, his eleventh birthday, and he and his mother were walking along Mammoth Creek. It was a beautiful October day. Atop a lookout point with a breath-stealing view of the White Mountains across the valley, Kathleen told Wylie that she wanted to set a few things straight. “I think you’re old enough now,” she said. “I don’t want you hearing half-truths. I hope you don’t judge me too harshly.”

“I wouldn’t do that, Mom.”

In fact, whatever she says is okay with me, he’d thought. He’d heard some very strange rumors. Maybe she could clear things up.

“When I was seventeen and just out of high school in San Diego, I moved here to Mammoth Lakes to become a pro skier. I was brave and naïve and I had some talent. I worked three jobs to pay rent and to buy my ski passes. I made the team. And... about a year later, Wylie, I became pregnant with you.”

“This was when Dad was alive.”

Kathleen took his face in her hands and looked tearfully into his eyes. He had never seen such an emotion from her and he was afraid. “Wylie? Your father was Richard Carson. He was my coach.”

He felt light-headed and took a knee. He had no idea what to say or do. Sky’s long-dead dad? How did that happen? Kathleen had continued talking, though her voice sounded far away. She said that when she got pregnant, Richard had been married to Cynthia Carson. Cynthia had then killed Richard in anger, so, yes, some of those rumors Wylie might have been hearing were, in fact, true.

By then Kathleen was crying and trying to blot up the tears with a pink-and-white paisley bandanna that flapped in the dry alpine breeze. “You were my baby, Wylie. My baby, and Richard’s...”

Suddenly, he had felt something heavy unfurling inside him, like a thick curtain trying to separate the complexities of what his mother was saying from the simple truth he had always known, that his father — William, a good man — had loved Wylie but died of natural causes just two years after Wylie had been born. Yes. Truth. And that Kathleen had married Steen years later, with Beatrice and Belle coming along soon after. Yes. Truth again. Then Wylie was aware of his mother kneeling beside him, and of her arms strong around him, her voice cracking, and her tears smelling somehow tropical.

“But I saw pictures of Dad. You showed me.”

“The man in the picture was an old friend. He was not your father. His name was not William. I lied to you. And I’m so very sorry, Wylie.”

Wylie had stood and walked away from her, back down the dirt road toward Mammoth Park, slowly, his ears roaring and his vision shrunken and blurred around its edges. He could hear her footsteps behind him, keeping pace but not coming fast enough to catch him. He wanted badly to be going fast down a snow-covered mountain, so incredibly fast that it would tear all the bad things away and leave only the good and the happy and the true. He ran for home as if he were running for his life.

Two years later, Cynthia Carson was back in Mammoth Lakes. She was shorter and thicker than Wylie had expected. Her hair was white and her face was pale and her eyes were the blue of lake ice. When small-town coincidence brought them into proximity, she would stop what she was doing and stare at him and say nothing, as if daring him to look back. He couldn’t, because he was terrified. Did she hate him? Why? How was it his fault that she had killed his father? Shouldn’t he hate her? Did she still have the gun? Wylie, age thirteen, was overmatched.

Now as the first snow of the season came down, he looked again at Cynthia Carson’s front door. It opened and a white swatch of human face appeared. He checked his watch. Crap. Let’s do this. He turned off the engine of the truck and got out.

She watched him approach, but when he made it to the door, she made no effort to open it farther. He stood before her. He watched her lake-ice eyes roam him, summoned his will not to look away. “With your face clean-shaven, you look more like a Carson,” she said.

“If you say so.”

“Finally you’ve looked me directly in the eye.”

“You used to terrify me.”

“Now?”

“A little less.”

“Close the door behind you.”

He followed her through a short foyer and into the living room. The town house was warm inside and smelled of coffee. The walls were crowded with ski posters, their frames aligned to form perfectly symmetrical rows both up, down, and across. There was a faux-leather couch faded by sunlight, and a recliner with a bear and pinecone blanket draped neatly over the back. A card table and one folding chair were set up near the woodstove. A red laptop computer, closed, sat centered on the table, along with a printer, a yellow legal pad open to a clean page, a stapler, and a Mammoth Woolly coffee mug stuffed with pens and pencils. Wylie’s guts were in a sore twist. He wondered if Cynthia was crazy enough to shoot him dead, too.

“Do you read The Woolly?”

“Now and then.”

“I’ll give you the latest edition.”

“Why did you call me here?”

“I want you to see Robert. Come.”

Robert’s room was dimly lit. When Cynthia turned the rheostat, Wylie saw the hospital bed and Robert’s sheeted body propped upright at the waist. His still-handsome face reclined in pillows.

“You may have heard about his progress,” she said.

Wylie looked from Robert to Cynthia. “Really?”

“He can move both eyelids in response to questions. One blink means yes and two mean no. It can be either eyelid. He’s equally fluent with both. His respiration rate also changes in response to my questions, as if he’s trying to answer. Right now, he’s either asleep or opinionless. Robbie? Wylie Welborn is here. I’ll bet you never thought you’d see the day I’d let him into our home. Are you awake, Robbie?”

Wylie stepped closer to Robert, touched his half brother’s forehead. Robert’s skin felt thin and cool and there was no movement of his eyelids. “Hello, Robert. It’s Wylie. I’m in your home, all right. I’m not really sure why. But I’m standing here with you.”

Wylie saw Cynthia at the edge of his vision, canting her head keenly toward Robert. Robert’s eyelids did not move. “He’s asleep,” said Cynthia. “Clearly.”

Wylie found Robert’s hand under the covers and took it. His experience in combat had taught him almost nothing about this kind of neurological damage. In combat, Wylie could perform the four lifesaving steps: restore breathing, stop bleeding, protect wound, treat for shock. It was bloody, adrenaline-crazed work, but only once had a man died right there on him. Sergeant Madigan. The others were alive when they got CASEVAC’ed out. Some made it and some did not. Early in his deployment, Wylie had been amazed at how badly a man could be mangled and still survive. The medical corpsmen were good, the CH-46 evacuations were swift, the doctors at the field hospitals were excellent, and the drugs were strong. Thousands of lives were saved that in other wars could not have been. A couple of them were partly due to him.

But he felt more helpless with Robert now than he had ever felt on the battlefield. Wylie had no tools for this — no tourniquet or QuickClot or even a roll of gauze, no gun to shoot back with — and no hope, either. He watched Robert’s eyelids intently for a long moment, hoping he was wrong about Robert. He’d never wanted so badly to be wrong. He almost envied Cynthia’s delusions. Almost. Which was worse — no hope or false hope?

“Well,” he said. “Maybe he’s asleep. Like you said.”

“April Holly will not be true to you. True champions are never true.”

Wylie turned to her. The light coming through the cracks in the blinds lined her face, and he saw Robert and Sky in her. “Why did you bring me here?” he asked.

“Life is made of three great labors. The third is learning to change direction. By that, I mean I want to apologize for what I did to your father. My husband. But now that we’re standing here so close together, I can’t apologize. I cannot form the words.”

Wylie looked into the pale blue eyes trapped between the slats of light. “Maybe someday.”

“I’ve certainly looked my deed straight in the eye. Even then I saw what I had coming. But I cannot change direction with you and your mother because first I would have to forgive you.”

“Forgive us for what?”

“For taking Richard from me, of course.”

“Have you forgiven yourself for killing him?”

“Never. The consequence is mine. My burden through eternity.”

“And mine is to not have my father.”

“Things circle outward from the act. As from a rock thrown into a still pond.”

“Not much stillness here, Mrs. Carson. On this mountain. For us.”

“Toil and trouble.”

Wylie looked at Robert again. “Well, then.”

“Well then, indeed.”

“You still scare the shit out of me.”

“You cannot imagine my dreams.”

Before he could think of anything else to say, Wylie was outside in the lightly falling snow, unaware of having passed back through Cynthia’s town house and out the door. He started up his truck. His heart was racing and sweat ran down his flanks and he couldn’t get the picture of Robert’s beautiful, unconscious face from his mind. He closed his eyes against it and let the defroster roar.

He heard the rapping on the window, saw Cynthia’s fist coming at the glass again, and her eyes open wide. “Roll down the window!”

Wylie hit the down button, felt the cool gust of air, saw a strand of Cynthia’s white hair blow across her face. “You forgot this!” She pushed a copy of The Woolly through the window. He set it on the seat beside him.

“I can’t apologize to you for what I did,” she said. “But I can commit a small act of kindness on behalf of someone you care about. And give you a piece of practical advice.”

He waited, locking eyes with her again. “Kindness and advice? From you? Commit away, Mrs. Carson.”

“Make them show you number twelve Madrone. Up by Canyon Lodge.”

“Who? Why?”

“Your sisters. Twelve Madrone. Make them take you there. And here is my advice — beware of Sky’s threat. He has the blood to back it up.”

Cynthia turned abruptly and headed back inside.