Crazy Blood

Chapter Eight

Wylie Welborn is back. I saw him yesterday when I walked past Let It Bean. I was wearing my winter “snow bark” hunter’s camo, so he probably didn’t even notice me with all the snow on the ground. There he was, as if five years hadn’t gone by, behind that counter like he always was, waiting on customers. He fought in Afghanistan, they say. He ski-bummed around the world after that, they say. They also say he’s making a run for the Mammoth Cup next winter. They say it’s a personal challenge to Sky, thrown down by Wylie in Robert’s hospital room in San Francisco. Sky has posts about Wylie all over his social networks. Insults mostly. Wylie Welborn is back and their bad blood has stirred.

But I’ve learned to regard all information with skepticism, especially whatever comes out of the Welborn clan. I’ve never spoken to Wylie and have no plans to. I stare hard at him whenever we’re in close proximity. Everybody runs into everybody else in a small town like Mammoth Lakes, whether they want to or not. But he’s never had the courage to look back. Not once. I’d be afraid of me, too. But from a distance I do like to observe him, the way an epidemiologist might enjoy observing a virus, or a herpetologist a large python.

His mother, Kathleen, on the other hand, I’ve looked at directly many times. She’ll look right back at you, that one. She did a lot of that from the witness stand, all sworn in and somber and ready to give the world her version of what happened to poor Richard Carson. At the time of his shooting, Kathleen was eighteen — another wannabe racer from San Diego, fast down the mountain and fast on her way to being a party girl, too. Those types all got drawn here to Mammoth back then. Or to Squaw or Aspen or Park City or Sun Valley or Jackson. Still do. By the time the trial got going, she was nineteen and her baby had been born. What a difference that year made in her. From snow whore to Madonna with child, in a heartbeat. I will admit that she was an attractive girl back then, and spirited, but without sound judgment. Easy to see what Richard saw in her. But Richard was without sound judgment, too. Thus, all that followed and is still following and will likely follow for many years to come.

I remember Kathleen sitting there in Mono County Superior Courtroom 1, Bridgeport, California, the cliché of a rosy glow on her, holding that bastard son of hers, rocking him like the gold medal — winning mother she thought she was, tears handy, looking down at me as if I’d robbed her of something that was hers, which I had not. Richard was never not mine. I felt contempt for her. After all, I had problems of my own. Such as the fact I’d lost the love of my life. Don’t forget that, lady. In spite of his nonterrific judgment, Richard was more than a onetime inseminator to me. I adored him. There was even a tiny bit of worship in it. I had borne his children. Bore the last one — Sky, with whom I was pregnant on the night of the shooting — in a county jail hospital, where they flubbed the epidural. And let’s not forget that I was the one she was helping send to prison. I was the one who wouldn’t get to hug my own babies for thirteen years, unless you count hellos and good-byes on weekends and holidays at the Central California Women’s Facility down in Chowchilla. You can bet I counted them. They were all I had.

Sounds preposterous, but what I missed most during those years was pushing my children around in strollers. So frustrating to have two children of stroller age and not be able to go outdoors and push them. When I first knew I was going to be a mother, I saw myself rolling the little one around Mammoth Lakes in a snuggly protective shelter, getting him/her outside into the beauty of the world instead of being trapped inside all day, looking up at what — mobiles or the ceiling or at me bending down to make funny noises at him/her? I knew it would bring both me and the baby great pleasure. I got to show Andrea the great outdoors. Then in an eye blink, Robert was three and Sky was an infant, but there were no strollers or sons or daughters in my loud, clanking, institutional world. You cannot imagine how long one day can be in prison. By the time I got out, my children were too big for strollers.

Adam brought Robbie here yesterday, as he said he would. Robbie looks better than he did over in San Francisco. More relaxed. What I see when I look at Robbie is the best of my children, broken by the life he chose to live. Literally, broken. Adam and Brandon and Mike Cook and Hailee Patterson got the hospital bed in here, and the paramedics did all the hookups, and the nurse gave us each printouts of how to care for Robbie, all the dos and don’ts. Like a new exotic pet. A creature from Borneo. It’s going to be a full-time job. That’s good. Idle hands and all that. I gave them all the latest issue of The Woolly.

I couldn’t wait for them all to leave so I could sit here by his bed and look at Robbie and remember. He was three when they threw me in the hole. I lost thirteen years with my children and I know there is no way to get those years back. What a terrible thought, me outliving Robbie. Maybe he will just... continue to live. Quite a few brain-damaged people do just that. My first goal toward his complete rehabilitation is to get him to move one of his eyelids in response to simple questions. One movement for yes, two movements for no. That is where we will begin.

I am more than pleased to have him here right now. He’s not going anywhere and neither am I. Neither are Andrea or Sky. Finally.