Crazy Blood (31 page)

Claude stepped back from the SUV, drawing out the new Chamonix racers. They really do look like black sabers, thought Wylie—slender and elegant and purposeful. The Sabers were part of the Chamonix racing line, made for groomed but slightly softer western snow. Chamonix's traditional red race trim was now splattered bloodlike across the lacquered black, reinforcing the saber idea. Pure aggression. Claude stood the skis beside him, one in each hand, then leaned one out. Wylie took it, registered the slightly greater heft of the racer compared to his earlier model, shook it sharply to gauge the flex.

“Stout,” he said.

“It has speed greed,” said Claude. “Yet you feel
ee-pox-ied
to the snow.”

“Same length as my old ones. Narrower in the waist. Nice.”

“You are holding nearly eight decades of history in your hand. We will launch them to market in December.”

Wylie slowly turned it to catch the pale autumn sunlight. “How much will Chamonix be asking?”

“Eleven hundred twenty-five.”

“I'll stick with the threes.”

“Of course you must. But try these fives.”

“I'll just ding them up and not be able to pay you for them.”

Claude waved his free hand, as if shooing a mosquito. “Wylie. I know you cannot afford them. But take these skis. Chamonix is proud that you win on our equipment. All we ask is that when you are posing for photographs, you turn the ski so the Chamonix name is highly visible. If you don't like them, use the old Saber Threes. But still keep Chamonix highly visible!”

Wylie looked at the Frenchman's weathered, sharply chiseled face and delighted light blue eyes. “I'm suspicious of gifts.”

“Then this is a flaw in your character. If you are worried about the USOC, this we consider to be a testing pair for you. As such, no retail value. Not a gift and not a sponsorship. Most legal. Although I ask you not to tell Brandon Shavers about this gift—I have not similarly equipped the Mammoth team.”

Claude held out the other ski and Wylie accepted it. “Thank you, Claude.”

“Thank Chamonix. Chamonix is passion.”

“That's a good slogan.”

“Yes. Passion opens wallets.”

Claude smiled again and brought a cigarette from a silver case and offered it to Wylie, who declined. The silver case was also a lighter. Claude slid it back into his jacket pocket while the smoke slowly mingled with the heavy air.

Wylie carried the skis to the MPP, knelt, unlatched the equipment drawer, and let it roll out. He slid the beautiful new Sabers into the carpet-lined compartment, smiled slightly at them, then pushed the drawer closed. When he came back around the trailer, Claude was leaning against his SUV. “You are at an interesting place in your life,” he said.

“It's interesting all right.”

“Are you ready to race?”

“I could have used Chile or New Zealand this summer. But I'm ready.”

“You have lost weight.”

“Same as five years ago. Well, three more pounds, actually.”

“The Saber Fives will use your weight well. Tell me of your plans, Wylie. If you are to be winning the Mammoth Cup on my skis, I want to know where you will be going. I want to share in your plan. I want to help.”

Wylie told Claude that he was putting his all into the Mammoth Cup, and if he did well enough, he'd go to the Winter X Games later in January, and if he did well there, he'd do the FIS ski-cross circuit in North America and Europe.

“You have the backing of Adam for this travel, yes?”

Wylie nodded.

“And then?”

“I want the Olympics, Claude. I need them. I can build a life on them.”

Claude looked at Wylie through the loitering smoke. “Yes, as we all can. And for you, what is this life you would like to build?”

Wylie told him about buying a place for Let It Bean, and maybe sending his sisters to college, giving them a chance for more than a small-town bakery. He crossed his arms and looked down at the asphalt and saw rows of stolen boards and bikes, cabinets filled with skis, Jacobie Bradford's shining head and combative face.

“They are doing well in life, your sisters?”

Wylie looked up at him. “They're young is all.”

“Yes, when youth is wasted.”

“I never believed that.”

“Not quite.”

“Can I speak to you as a friend?” Claude looked at the end of his cigarette and tapped the ash to the ground. “Wylie, of course you know this, but I should remind you that you have no chance of placing in the Olympics. The Europeans are several years ahead of you and every other American ski crosser. Why? Because their mountains are better. Their courses are better. Their programs are better because skiing is much more important there than here. So, because of this, there is always money for training. But more than the money—in my native France, for example—ski racers are heroes. They are athletic gods. Here in America, your ski racers only exist every four years for the televised Olympics. One or two stars are made and quickly forgotten. They are not gods, but only celebrities. The rest of you compete when you can, and work in bakeries and bike shops and restaurants. How are you to compete at the highest level?”

Wylie nodded, pondering this. “Well, fuck, Claude, I guess I'll have to prove you wrong.”

“Please, Wylie, do not take offense. I am trying to help you, as a much older man, by being practical and realistic. Yes, you may win here in Mammoth if you can beat Sky Carson. And even yes, perhaps you can do well in Aspen. But on the World Cup circuit, you will be up against the very finest in the world, and these men are younger than you and trained professionally, and have single-mindedness bred into them. Look what the French did in Sochi ski cross. Gold, silver, and bronze!”

Wylie shrugged, felt his usual useless anger begin to boil. “Then why did you give me the skis? Pity?”

“I want you to win the Mammoth Cup on Chamonix skis! That is all.”

“That is not all. I'm going to win more than that on them. I have to.”

Claude drew on the cigarette and looked at the ember philosophically. He studied Wylie for a long time. “You want to win for your family? And perhaps as a sentimental gesture to Rob—”

“Yes, Claude—I just said all that.”

“But is there more? Is there another motivation for you that is larger even than those? I sense there is. I want to see if you will confess it.”

Wylie nodded. He felt pried open. “Me. I want good fortune for me.”

“Of course you do! All champions want this. I had no idea your dreams were so big, and so serious.”

“Now you know.”

Claude gave him another long, squinting assessment, then a subtle nod. “But you must still be realistic. So, let me suggest a simultaneous plan, in case your FIS and Olympic goals do not fall into place. You yourself mentioned a table for two. My advice is: Do your best to make April Holly a happy woman.”

“Leave her out, Claude.”

“Leave her out? Why be childish? Be as honest with me as I am being with you. You should tie your life to her if she will allow it. Tie it tightly. Let her be the one to go to Korea. She is nearly a certainty. Let her become an even bigger celebrity. Let Salonne shampoo and the many more lucrative endorsements to come be your security, too. She has more than enough for two. She has the singular talent, the gift. You do not. Sky Carson does not. What happens on this mountain is small compared to April Holly. And someday, all of this heated competition and striving to be champions will pass. You and April will both be too old for racing and aerial trickery. And she will want children and you will give them to her and care for them. She will want a ranch near Aspen and an apartment in Lillehammer and a chalet in New Zealand or Chile. She will want her sisters-in-law to have every opportunity in life, not just a bakery. I think this is a beautiful future for you, and any man in the world would accept it happily. You could be most eagerly replaced.”

“I've thought of all that, Claude.”

“So?”

“It feels wrong.”

“Do you love her?”

“Yes, I do.”

“If you love her, then what is wrong with wrong? You really are suspicious of gifts, aren't you?”

“Good should feel good.”

“So to feel good, a man can take no gift? He must do it all himself? Alone and on a white horse?”

Wylie nodded. “Some of it.”

“But where did he get that strong white horse? Or the sleek black skis?”

Wylie looked at Claude but said nothing.

Claude drew on the cigarette again, then flicked the butt away. “Wylie? Wylie. I see something in you that I did not see before. You have no rational right to your dream, and yet you surrender your heart to it. All right. You have the smallest of chances. But in your smallness of chance is the seed of heroism and glory. You know I have spoken to you out of respect, not malice. I hope the Saber Fives land you on the podium in Seoul. And if they don't, you have my respect and best wishes as far as my skis take you. I have seen you race many times, and I have watched every video made of your races. And I offer this advice for the Mammoth Cup: You will not make the hole shot off the start. That will belong to Sky. He is under one minute now on the IB—the only one under a minute. But once he leads on the real X Course, he will expect extreme pressure from you. Apply it thoroughly but patiently. Do not try to pass him too early. Do not force yourself. Let the pressure eat his nerves away and he will surrender according to his nature. You will see your moment. Be like a lion upon a gazelle.”

Wylie breathed deeply and exhaled, watched his breath condense in the air before him. “Thanks, Claude. I'll try the skis. I'm off and running now, just like a big lion.”

“Excellent, Wylie. And just so you are aware, upper-level representatives of the U.S. Olympic Committee and the USSA arrived together here in Mammoth just yesterday. The main purpose for their visit is to speak to Adam about you and April Holly. They have great concerns about your love affair coming at such an important time for April and for the sport.…”

Wylie heard the last few words trailing off from behind him as he chugged across the parking lot toward Highway 203, one foot in front of the other.

Just past the gas station, Wylie ran past Cynthia Carson, sitting still and barely visible in the trees and patchy snow, dressed in green-and-white camo. She stared right through him. Wylie's heart jumped and he sped up to catch it.

 

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.