Crazy Blood

Chapter Thirty-Three

The next morning, Wylie guided his truck up the steep rocky road that led to Adam’s aerie on the mountain. The MPP bounced along behind, stable but nimble. Wylie parked near the funicular landing, looked at the sleek silver car waiting beneath the tall pines with a futuristic air.

He helped Adam load in his fishing gear, again checking the sky for signs of the big Alaskan storm due to arrive later this Friday evening. The streets of Mammoth Lakes were already buzzing with weekend vehicles, and the ski shops had their rental banners out, and the young go-getters who sold and installed snow chains for incoming tourists were already staking out their turf. Traffic on Highway 203 was steady for late November, an inbound stream as Wylie and Adam headed down the hill toward Hot Creek Ranch.

As they came down into the basin at 395, Wylie saw that the sky had the hard white heaviness denoting a storm. Such skies had been one of his early pleasures as a child. He clearly remembered his first runs down the hill behind their house, executed on flattened pasteboard boxes. Then later the plastic snow dishes, and after that a sled. Then his first pair of skis and boots, a birthday present when he was four. He’d slid around the house on them and slept with them beside his bed for a month, anticipating the first snowfall. Something in him clicked when he was on skis. A gift. He never felt like a beginner.

“I met with brass from the Olympic Committee and the USSA yesterday. Their hero? April Holly. Their villain? You.”

“Claude said as much.”

“Their position is easy to see.”

Wylie headed to the airport/hatchery exit and followed the dirt road past the hatchery to Hot Creek. He turned onto the private ranch. Hot Creek was exactly that — a creek partially fed by thermal springs, which kept it relatively warm year-round, much to the delight of aquatic vegetation, insects, and trout. The fish were many, some quite large, most of them experienced at telling artificial flies from real ones.

Wylie parked by the lodge and the manager came out and talked to them while they rigged up. He liked the MPP, touched it lightly. He was an old friend of Adam and let them fish here for free. There were no other fishermen today and the manager said there had been Tricos mayfly hatches midmorning and pale morning duns when the sun hit the water. “Use the lightest line you can still see and lots of it,” he said with a smile.

Wylie saw Adam’s curt nod — the old man disliked jokes about his age from anyone but himself. Adam was ready to fish before Wylie had even gotten his line through the guides. Wylie tied on a PMD and mashed down the barb with his hemostat and they walked downstream, looking for rises.

“So I’ve been tasked with talking some sense into you,” said Adam. “What are my chances?”

“Good as they ever were.”

Adam smiled. “I told them to talk to you themselves. But there’s no end to the mess they can make, dealing directly with an athlete. Who knows what you’ll say or post? And they stubbornly profess to believe you’ll listen to me. I told them no young man in love is going to listen very closely to anyone.”

“I’ll listen, sir.”

“I like this run.”

They stood well back and watched. The long, glittering run came hard downstream, dropped over rocks, and tailed out, pooling against the far side. It looked deep. The water was nearly black under the pale sky, and the aquatic grasses swayed beneath. Wylie knew that the fish loved the vegetation for cover and for the healthy bug life it engendered. People from all over the world came here to test their skills. Wylie had seen trout thirty inches long in here but had never caught anything much longer than twenty. These were the pickiest and most annoying fish in the Sierras. Adam decided to change flies, and while he studied the contents of his dry-fly box, Wylie checked his eBay auction. The high bid was now five thousand dollars, with fifteen hours until midnight. Damn.

Adam cast upstream and mended early, letting his fly ride the current down. At this distance, it was a white speck. It drifted twenty feet without incident. Adam cast again. “Wylie, you know that April Holly is America’s biggest winter sports star, biggest money earner, a true showcase athlete, as the Austrians like to say. Salonne shampoo pays her three million a year for the ads and the helmet space. Her equipment makers come in at about that, too. Her apparel makers pay her roughly another two million just to wear the stuff. They pay and pray she won’t start her own line — though April has told them she might want to do just that. Her appearance fees are in the high five figures for no more than two hours of her time. Those amounts will double or even triple if she stays healthy and wins in Korea. Ah, a fish!”

Wylie watched as Adam played the fish, got it onto the reel, and brought it in. Wylie netted it and worked the hook loose and held out the net for the old man to see.

“I love the dark browns,” he said.

“That’s a beauty, Adam.” Wylie set the net deep in the water and the fish eased, then flashed away. Adam gave him his spot and Wylie fished the same run, but closer to the bank. The larger fish were assumed to lie along the cut, deeper banks, and in Wylie’s experience, this was occasionally true. Adam’s voice came from behind and beside him.

“Of course, Helene Holly has bent their ears,” said Adam. “She told them that April is emotionally far younger than her twenty-one years. This, due to her meteoric rise as an athlete and somewhat retarded social development. Helene says April is extremely vulnerable, if not gullible. Helene says that April is given to pronounced highs and lows. She says that as competitions near, April becomes extremely focused on the event. She eats the exact same foods at the exact same time, wears certain ‘lucky’ clothes and uses certain ‘lucky’ gear. She sleeps up to ten hours a day, including an afternoon nap. She listens to the same songs and watches the same movies. April has a ritual that she does in her bathroom the evening before a contest, in which she arranges every grooming product on her counter in pairs, in a long procession, so that the front labels of each pair face each other, while their backs are turned to the backs of the coupled products on either side. Or something like that. Helene believes that this obsessive single-mindedness is what sets April apart. Helene says that when April loses focus, she is injury-prone. Helene’s afraid — in a nutshell — that you’re going to fuck everything up and April’s going to lose the Mammoth Cup slopestyle to start her season. Which would be a disaster for her confidence. Or worse. April’s never had a major injury. She’s had minor ones, when she’s lost focus. Helene predicts that the longer she’s involved with you, the better are her chances for catastrophe.”

“I get all that. And I’ll go anytime, Adam. Far away as April wants. I’ve told her that more than once.”

“The Olympic and snowboard mafias, and Helene, want you to make the move now. To get out of her life and let her win.”

“She’s happy to be free of her mother and the rest of the team. She’s laughing off the pressure. I’m not wrong about this, Grandpa. I know her.”

Wylie saw his fly vanish and felt the jerk on his line simultaneously. It was a small fish, and Wylie let it run until tired, then skittered it across the surface, knelt, and released it. He dried the fly and smudged some floatant onto the feathers, then cast it to the far bank. He gave it a quick mend and let it ride.

“Then the meeting got interesting,” said Adam. Wylie looked over his shoulder at his grandfather. “These are not subtle people. So hear me out. They’ve got a reward/punishment offer for you. Ready? Their current thinking is that U.S. ski cross is a losing proposition for the Seoul Olympics. John Teller had that fabulous run through Sochi, but he was our only one. Looking ahead, they see you and Sky and Tyler Wallasch and a couple of guys out of Aspen, and that Bridger kid out of Colorado. They’re impressed, but not impressed enough. So on a go-forward, the USSA and Olympic plan is to cut ski-cross support to a trickle.”

“Ski cross is the best winter Olympic event there is!”

“The masses want boarding, not skiing. You know that.”

“But ski cross is faster and crazier. It’s a downhill blitz and a giant slalom and a NASCAR wreck waiting to happen — all rolled into one. Shit, Adam. Don’t get me started.”

“There’s no accounting for what people want, Wylie. Or what they don’t. But, of course, there’s the reward side of the equation.”

Wylie glanced back again. He couldn’t keep the hostility out of his heart or his voice. “Bring it.”

“If you break off with April, the USOC will put more resources behind ski cross. And the USSA will do likewise. They say they are offering you a chance to do something for yourself, and your sport. Not to mention theirs.”

“Do you really believe they’d do much?”

Wylie glanced back and Adam shrugged. “I can’t vouch for what they’d do. They won’t make any commitment that can’t be denied, or at least modified. It’s all CYA. This is how our sport is run, unfortunately. By organizations with their noses to the wind. But there are many winds. They change and die and start up again.”

Wylie lifted the fly and false cast to dry it. He used a reach cast to create an upstream mend midair, and put the tiny fly close to the bank with a big loop behind it. “Okay, so what if I leave April and she isn’t happy? What if I break her heart and mess her up?”

“Helene said it’s worth the risk because April doesn’t know herself. The boosters agreed.”

“Buncha fuckin’ pigs.”

“Possibly.”

Wylie saw the gliding, unhurried rise and felt the sharp tug, then nothing. He raised his rod tip smartly and the fly line whizzed downstream in a wake of spray. The fish was heavy and it found the fast water. Wylie knew he would either keep up with it or lose it. He splashed ashore and followed the narrow foot trail downstream, giving up line as he had to.

The foot trail was muddy and his boots slipped on the contours. It was like being on a ship pitching in an ocean. The fish exploded in a spray of red and silver, a kype-jawed rainbow, and Wylie heard the hard splat when it hit the river. Now it had most of his line, and Wylie felt no surrender, only an extra burst of strength as the fish tore into his backing and the reel screamed. He came to a chasm in the bank and leaped into it, climbing and slipping up the steep far side. The fish jumped again, and it looked so far away and alien, as if projected onto a plane that wasn’t quite real, like an old Hollywood backdrop.

The next break in the bank was a shallow mud wallow, so he cut inland around it, busting through the brush, only to see that the trail would soon end at a gravel bar and a pool too deep to wade across. Once upon the bar, he dropped his phone to the rocks, lifted the rod skyward, and threw himself into the pool. He was instantly heavy and cold. Using one arm, he pulled himself forward, barely staying afloat in the deep, still water. It rushed over the top of his waders, trying to sink him. His boots were eerily heavy. The cold made it hard to breathe. Through the rod he could still feel the faraway fish muscling along with the current.

He tried to do the same, scooping himself with one hand toward the river proper. The current finally took him and he buoyed upright, running without his feet touching, as in a dream. Then he found bottom, a blessed rocky slope up which he clambered, pulling himself onto a shallow riffle, where he got his feet under him and renewed his trudge downstream. His heart was pounding, but he was breathing steadily and deeply and this was his mission. He retrieved the backing and a few turns of line.

Which was when the line jumped back at him, then went slack, the distant weight of his fish vanished. Wylie dropped to his knees, bellowing in agony, his voice puny in the world.

Adam caught up with him a minute later. He waded out onto the gravel and stood not far from the still-kneeling Wylie, whose teeth were already chattering. “Good effort,” said Adam. “You did everything right that I could see.”

“I’m not going to go until she asks me to.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

“The only thing on Earth I’d trade April Holly for is that fish.”

“Of course.”

“Shit. Man. Christ.”

“Well said. I picked up your phone.”