Crazy Blood

Chapter Thirty-Nine

I held Sky as his last breath quivered away. I felt a heartbreak I had never known, not even over Robert. Sky, my most talented and troubled. My most me. I tried to get him up into my arms and carry him away, but Sergeant Bulla would have none of that. I was thankful, because I wasn’t sure I could lift Sky, or for how long, or exactly where I should take him anyway. I wanted to shield him from prying eyes. The worst is everyone watching you, after. So I rocked him until the paramedics arrived. They blitzed in, did their tests, hooked up the oxygen and saline, refusing to admit the obvious, which is their training. It is not theirs to pronounce.

I climbed into the ambulance after my son. Before the doors closed, I saw another crew racing April Holly into a second truck. Wylie, stone-faced and white, got in with her. I got just a quick look at April, that poor, sweet, talented girl. All her crazy grace and courage. A shining star. Wylie had tried to get her out of the way, but Sky was shooting wildly because he’d lost his nerve, as he had in racing. So there was no safe place. Only chance. On the gurney, she looked lifeless, and I hoped that I was wrong, but I was not. Either way, my heart broke for her, a true innocent, like Robert. The doors slammed shut and the big boxy vehicle slowly ground along through the snow toward the hospital, lights flashing on the white world and the sirens howling.

What that Adrenaline show host never asked me, and what I’ve thought about all my life is, if I had it to do all over again, knowing what I know now, would I? Shoot Richard, I mean. I’ve had roughly a quarter century to ponder that question. Having walked my long, steep road, I must say that I would not do it again. Because there’s no way to foresee the consequences of violence. You can’t predict the many sad spokes that will branch outward from such a hub. But they will. I would not again burden the futures of my children, and their children, and so on, down the line. Of course, I knew none of that then. I knew only my own blind rage, and my betrayal by the man I had loved with all my heart.

Over my life, I’ve seen a pattern. But violence is not only a Carson curse. It is everywhere, within us and without us. The more I look the more I see it. The more I read, the more I find it — all the way back to when one of Earth’s first two brothers rose up in the field against the other.

Rose up.

Why?

I’m not qualified to say. I have read the Bible and most of the so-called great books — plenty of time for that down in Chowchilla — and I have learned nothing decisive from them. Are we born to violence? Or forced into it? Scripted by jealous gods, or part of our nature? I don’t know. But I do know that I am somehow not surprised that Sky rose up against Wylie. And Wylie against Sky.

The smell of Sky’s blood still lingers in my nostrils after all these weeks.

I am finally learning to change direction. Of life’s three great labors, this has been my hardest, regarding anything Welborn. I detested Kathleen and Wylie for taking what I loved from me. I do hear the towering selfishness in that statement. I always have. My change of direction began when I started watching the Welborn-Mikkelsen clan, which was not long before Wylie’s return from the war and his travels. I had become curious about what I loathed. And a good reporter is always looking for new stories. So I watched and waited and gathered their stories, too.

Because of my observations of them, I was able to see why they had stolen the bikes and snowboards and skis. I’d seen their slouching little house in the forest, and their long hours in that bakery/coffee shop, and everyone in town knew that Gargantua was running them out of business. And everyone also knew that Beatrice’s and Belle’s mother had promiscuously seduced my Richard — a living legend no less — and stolen his seed from me to make something spurious of her own. So my heart went out to them. Somewhat. In their guilt I saw their innocence.

I admired those girls for enduring all that. And I saw that I could change direction without having to make some grandiose gesture of repentance. Without having to so much as look at that woman. To change direction is to change what you do, not what you feel. Thus I led Wylie to what his sisters had done — my first act of kindness to a Welborn. The beginning of atonement. Atonement. An overgrand word in my opinion. I remind myself not to get carried away with it.

Am I crazy, or simply the victim of my own temper? If crazy, was I born this way, or is it self-created? I do remember as a girl I had very dark moods and terrible headaches that would put me in bed in a dark room for several days at a time. Extravagant hallucinations. Like hell must be. When they were over, I would feel changed: lighter and emptier. And I would begin to worry about when it would happen again. The dark periods coincided with my social failures, defeats in competition, holidays, and with both the winter and summer solstices. I considered ending my life. So maybe it was in the blood. But so far as self-created madness goes, we all can cave under our own constructions when they are heavier than we can bear. Five bullets fired into my beautiful Richard, and thirteen years of prison, come to mind.

Jacobie Bradford III was fired by Gargantua after a video of him and two women appeared briefly on social media. The three were performing obscene and likely painful acts, but I have no interest in watching such things, so I can’t be more descriptive. Jacobie’s firing, however, did make page one of The Woolly, and I used a nice big head shot of him. I had lots of takers on that issue.

The buzz around Mammoth Lakes was that the women were prostitutes out of Reno and the activity took place on the third floor of Mountain High. The buzz beneath the buzz was that Croft, the bouncer at Mountain High, arranged the video without Jacobie’s knowledge and sent it to Belle Mikkelsen, who did the anonymous posting. It’s easy to see how a guy like Jacobie Bradford would think he could buy anything he wanted in our little town — a monopoly for his business, the fish in our rivers, a bargain mansion still empty from the Great Recession, two young women. And it’s easy to imagine how hard a corporate gorilla like Gargantua would land on an expendable district manager caught with his pants way, way down. Since then, the town has lost its love of Gargantua and renewed its vows to Let It Bean. A complete flip-flop. Beware the fickleness of the mob. Howard Deetz over at Town Hall said there’s talk that Gargantua may close the store here.

Wylie won the X Games ski cross in Aspen two weeks after April’s death. I watched it live on TV and I will say that Wylie blew the competition off the mountain in the final that afternoon. As a downhill racer, I can tell when a skier is asking too much of herself, when the main thing she’s relying on is simple-minded bravery. That’s when you’ll can up and get hurt, or worse. But I’ve seen Wylie race enough times to know that he was smart and measured and in command of himself at the X Games. He smoked the final schuss fifty feet ahead of silver. He did just a few interviews afterward, saying little. He looked distracted and bored. An obviously unhappy man before cameras. But he was in special demand, after what happened here on our mountain. You cannot underestimate the public thirst for shock and tragedy. The less he said, the more they asked. There was a dustup with a photographer in Aspen, whose camera Wylie destroyed in a parking lot. The video went viral, and in it Wylie looked a little crazy.

His story gets better. Two weeks later, he won the first FIS World Cup ski-cross event of the year in Tegernsee, Germany. Much was made of this upset, before which Wylie was ranked twenty-fourth in the world. Apparently, he knew the course well, having spent time in a Tegernsee monastery after the war.

Almost unbelievably, Wylie won the next World Cup race, too, early February in Val Thorens, France. Got himself lots of ESPN and network time, nice write-ups in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and a lot of other big publications. Plenty of magazine covers to come. They all want to talk about April and Sky and what happened here in Mammoth Lakes. He isn’t saying much. So it’s mostly Wylie’s bearded, sullen face that the world has come to know. We’ll see his expression when the endorsement dollars start to flow.

Wylie is on his way. Where?

I’m better now. Thanks for asking. I miss Sky very much. Every loss in life is different, every sorrow its own. He was such a happy little goof when he was little. Now he’s a hole in anyone who knew or loved him. A hole covered by grass and marked by a headstone down in Bishop, near his father.

I have Robert and Andrea and Brandon and the two grandkids. I have Adam. Hailee and Antoinette and I are close. After some setbacks, we’ve gotten Robert moving his eyelids with volition again — once for yes and twice for no — either lid, we’re happy with either lid. Soon as spring comes, we’ll get him back outside in his chair, get some sun on his still-handsome face.

I consider myself blessed, though blessings are not always easy to detect. Some are secret. Some require faith. So I write my life. I’m my lone subscriber, my most attentive reader. We’re all our own best audience.

This is my story to tell, mine to live and die with. They can’t take it away from me.

Ever.