Crazy Blood (29 page)

“So,” she continued. “What we came up with was that Sky and Wylie should sit down together alone and talk it all out. The sooner the better. Wylie can apologize in private, and Sky can retract his threat without losing face. Because—and here's the heart of it, sir—Sky doesn't need this hanging over him before the race. It's a burden. He loses sleep over it. He obsesses. It eats away at him. Sky doesn't want to ‘punish' Wylie at all. He only wants the apology and an acknowledgment of truth. It doesn't have to go viral, or even be public.”

“So the threat
is
empty,” said Adam.

“No, Grandpa,” said Sky, summoning calm. “I mean what I said. I mean it … thoroughly. Shouldn't you be trying to talk me
out
of it?”

“But the whole point is, Sky will retract it for the apology,” said Antoinette. “This is a mark of good character, sir, and Teresa. And a way to get this thing off his back and win the cup. That's all he wants for now. So, with that in mind, we were hoping you could bring them together, sir. Sky and Wylie. Maybe right here in this beautiful room. They'll talk if you order them to talk. You alone. They respect you more than anybody on Earth.”

Sky watched his grandfather pry his gaze away from Antoinette, glance at Teresa, then slowly rise. It took him longer and longer these days. He certainly was tall. The room was quiet enough for Sky to hear his grandfather's joints crack. Adam walked slowly and steadily toward Antoinette, who stood waiting for him in the middle of the room.

Adam nodded and offered his hand and she shook it.

*   *   *

For Sky, the next hour of conversation was a pleasure. He mostly listened. His grandfather and Teresa prodded Antoinette with questions about her family and childhood, and Antoinette responded with all her natural charm and easy grace. That voice of hers was so clear and bright. He learned some more things about her, too—that her community-college-speech-teacher father spoke four languages; her eldest sister had died at birth; her mother, a trial attorney, ran triathlons and was now on her fourth marriage. One of the things that Sky first loved about Antoinette was her reaction to the fate of his father at the hands of his mother. “What a terrific loss for everyone,” she had said, brown eyes becoming wet.

Sky gazed down the mountain to the bustling little village. The eastern sky looked like powdered lead and he'd heard that more snow was on the way. He could feel his own inner barometer lowering in response to this minor snowfall and the promise of more on the way. When he smelled something markedly appetizing wafting into the room, his grandfather asked, “Are you still eating that slime instead of real food?”

“Sir, yes, sir. It's called Soylent. I'm supernaturally strong now. I've clocked a fifty-nine-second X Course run on the Imagery Beast. The first ever.”

“But not on the real X Course.”

“There's no snow on the real X Course.”

“Under one minute?”

“Fifty-nine point seven five.”

His grandfather nodded. “Well. Nice. Teresa has made us up some venison chili that is excellent, and ready to be served. Please stay for lunch.”

*   *   *

After lunch, Antoinette wanted to see Robert again. Sky was intrigued and impressed that she had developed such a lasting affection for Robert, having taken ski lessons from him five years ago, when she was fourteen. Cynthia let them in, touched Sky's newly colored hair, and reported that Robert had been communicating more clearly these last few days—sometimes by fluttering an eyelid, sometimes by subtle changes in respiration. Robert's fiancée, Hailee, was there, too, and to Sky she looked disheveled and dispirited.

They stood in the warm bedroom, the blinds open to let in the autumn light. Sky greeted Robert cheerfully, touching his hair and face. Antoinette reintroduced herself as one of Robert's students from five years ago. She recalled that her first run with Robert had been down Schoolyard. She told him she still loved to ski. Hailee stared wordlessly.

Then Cynthia bored in close, face-to-face with Robert, and told him about the last snowstorm—which had dropped six very nice inches—and the storm forecast for later that night, which was supposed to be heavier. “I know how much you love the snow,” she said. “Don't you, Robbie?” They waited a long moment in silence for either the eyelid flutter or respiration-rate change.

“Might be asleep,” said Sky.

“Quite certainly,” said Cynthia.

“You're beautiful, Robert,” said Antoinette.

Sky watched Hailee turn, hugging herself, and leave the room.

“No room onboard for the unhopeful,” said Cynthia. “There, did you see that? Left eyelid. His response is not always immediate.”

“Yeah,” said Sky. “Pretty sure I saw it.”

*   *   *

Sky drove Antoinette back to her apartment. They stopped off at Von's for a few things she needed. As they were crossing the parking lot Megan and Johnny Maines and Ivan the Terrier all paraded past.

“Mahalo, bitches!” Johnny called out, waving. “I've got money on you for the Mammoth Cup, Sky! Don't let Wylie Welborn butt you off that mountain again!”

Sky and Antoinette walked to Sky's car, each holding a plastic shopping bag and the other's hand. At the mention of Wylie Welborn's name, Sky's expansive mood seemed to deflate and fall again. He heard the Black Not cackling faintly in the background. He took a deep breath.

“Are you okay, Sky?”

“More than okay.”

“Was it what Johnny Maines said about the race?”

“Indeed. I'm trying to control my emotions.”

“Adam will arrange the meeting. You can get to the other side of this thing. I so believe in you.”

“You're the only person in the world who does.”

“I almost never hear self-pity in you.”

“That was factual, not self-pitying.”

They walked the rest of the way to the car in silence and Sky took another deep breath. You can do this.

“What do you guess Adam and Teresa think of me?” she asked.

He looked at Antoinette. It startled him that someone with so much intelligence and good grooming could be so uncertain of herself in the eyes of others. “I think they were impressed but worried that we're hurrying things.”

“Well, we kind of are.”

“Totally. It's part of the rush. But, Antoinette, I'm nonbudgeable in what I feel for you. I've made up my mind. So it is written. I love you very much and want you to be my wife.”

They put the bags in the trunk of the Subaru; then Sky held the passenger door open for her. Before climbing in, she stepped up close to Sky and kissed his lips lightly. “I'm proud to be your woman. I'm going to be the best woman you've ever had. I'm so sorry about Robert. I still remember the day I skied with him. You reminded me of him the second we met.”

“We were—
are
very different.”

“Less than you think. And he didn't have your disadvantages.”

“It wrecks my soul to see him,” said Sky. “But I try to be strong for Mom.”

“You're a good son.”

“I'm not sure what to do with crazy people.”

“Just love them.” She hugged him tight. She was small and slender enough to practically disappear. Her voice came from almost behind him now, disembodied, like his father's. But Antoinette's voice was invariably positive, not negative. Not
not.
“You don't feel the Black Not coming, do you?”

“A presence but not a threat.”

“It'll pass. You can beat it! I'm with you, Sky.”

“I feel like I was raised by a gigantic ghost with a face bigger than the whole town of Mammoth Lakes, and she hovers just above the tree line and watches everything I do. Do you think Wylie will talk?”

“For Adam, yes.”

“But not for me.”

She broke the embrace, sat down in the car, and looked up at him as she swept the shoulder restraint into place. “You two are half brothers. You're going to figure it out. Just remember to stick to your facts and your ideas when you talk with Wylie. We'll write out the main points on four-by-six note cards you can take with you.”

“Awesome, Antoinette. You are awesome.”

 

CHAPTER THIRTY

Then, as in a movie smash cut or in a dream, Sky was sitting in the same wing chair in his grandfather's aerie without Adam or Teresa, only Wylie heavily seated where Antoinette had been, seemingly moments ago. It was night, and in the expanse of the outdoor lights Sky saw the thin carpet of boulder-strewn snow, and beyond that the blackness of the slope, then the distant twinkling Christmas globe of a town far below.

“What's with the hair?” asked Wylie.

“Antoinette did the color. What do you think?”

“Well…”

“I may grow a beard and have her do it sky blue.”

Wylie nodded in his superior way, Sky noted, or was it pure disdain? “I'm glad you showed,” Sky said, looking down at the note cards. Antoinette's handwriting was neat and as sweet as her voice.
Clear air first.
“I want to clear the air so we can have a good clean race.”

“I'm good with you, Sky.”

Recap facts of the attacks.
“Not so fast. You forced me off the X Course last January. And knocked me out at Slocum's.”

“To clear the air, you have to let go of those things.”

“Exactly.”

“I can't let go of them for you, Sky.”

Politely restate request for apology.
“But you can apologize for running me off the course. Then I can let go. Really, that's all it would take.”

“Are those note cards?”

Wylie looked at him for a long beat and Sky returned it. Without his beard, Wylie looked less bearlike and less intimidating to Sky. With the long hair, Wylie could have a Jesus look going, if only he could bring spiritual credibility to his face. Sky could see their father's bones in him, at least what bones he could extrapolate from photos and video. Sky also noted the skeptical, show-me stare that nearly every Carson had. And, as always, Sky saw something of the brute stubbornness that ran through the river Carson like a deep, wide undertow. Wylie still held his gaze.

“Sky. I brushed by you. I took the line and you lost it and canned up. I won't endorse your lie. And I won't apologize for what I didn't do. Why would I do that?”

“Because I'm asking you.”

“I won't. You can't revise something once it's done. You don't get to. Nobody does. You have to see things for what they are. Not what you want them to be.”

“But you, Wylie, can change things with a simple apology.”

“No. I can't change things at all, with anything. That's the whole point, and you don't get it.”

“I knew you'd be too stubborn and self-righteous to apologize.” There was a long silence, until Sky spoke again. He watched the snow slanting softly down. “And there's the threat I made.”

“Right.”

“I won't retract it.”

“I let it go, Sky.”

“Big mistake. I gave my word on it. And my word is something I don't retract. Not anymore.”

“Right.”

Right.
The inflection in Wylie's voice hit Sky like the X Course rocks he'd busted up on that day. It was a revelation. He dropped the cards to the floor. He sensed the Black. Not nearby, eavesdropping on all this. He heard his father's soft cackle. He tried to blot it out so he could hear Antoinette's clear, logical, persuasive voice. “You don't take my warning seriously.”

“No. I never did.”

“Never?”

“Not after I saw the water come out of the squirt gun.”

“Not even a shadow of doubt?”

“A very occasional one, maybe.”

“What if the gun had been real?”

“There you go again, trying to change what can't be changed.”

“The realness of the gun is changeable. Didn't you learn threat assessment in the war?”

“From the second I signed my name at the recruiting office.”

“Then how can you ignore this? You're making a terrible mistake, Wylie.” Sky leaned forward, rested his arms on his knees, and stared down at the note cards splayed on the floor before him.

Accept apology with graciousness and retract threat sincerely.

Remember that your mutual love of Robert is behind all of this.

If no apology, withdraw threat ANYWAY to remove obligation and clear conscience.

Withdraw?

No, he thought. I won't do that. Not again. As I have so many times before. I'm sorry, Antoinette, but that was the one card you wrote out that I didn't agree with. I spoke very clearly, but you talked over what I was trying to say. Your clear, beautiful voice went right over me. But you can't talk over me now. And I have to speak for myself.

“Don't try to force me off the mountain again.
Anyone
off the mountain. The consequences will be severe.”

“You are a man with red hair on the left and white hair on the right,” said Wylie.

“Don't confuse showmanship with lack of conviction.”

“Got it.” Wylie looked at him, shaking his head, but said nothing more.

Sky squatted, collected the cards, and stood. “You're a belligerent mongrel,” he said. “If you don't run a clean Gargantua Cup, you won't be able to change the consequences and I won't be able to help you.”

“I've let the threat go, Sky.”

“As I stand before you, I can't overstate the danger you are in.”

“Let it go. All of it. I have.”

An idea then came barreling into Sky's mind, straight into the gap between his defeated diplomacy and his stymied plans. He sized it up and found it promising. “But … maybe there's another way to make you see. I may just try one more time.” Sky saw that he finally had Wylie Welborn's full attention.