Crazy Blood (33 page)

Belle shook her head. “No way.”

“No way for me, either,” said Bea.

Steen sat up straight, as if someone had slapped his face. “That is not a fair amount for Gargantua to pay for a business that is strong. Or
was
strong, until Gargantua came here. Yes, it would pay off the eleven thousand dollars for the new ovens and walk-in of two years ago. As well as the time and materials for the Pastry Shed. And give us two years of the good profit we used to make and enough to pay for the new roof at home. But in those two years, we would have to create another business for supporting our family. We have seen how difficult this is. Our coffee and pastries are well known for quality in Mammoth Lakes, but still we do not make much money.”

Kathleen had taken her work cap off, and now her face was shadowed by thick black hair. Wylie saw the gleam of her eyes within. “No. I won't take it.”

“Good, Mom,” said Belle.

“Way to go, Mom.”

“Wylie?” asked Kathleen.

He looked outside again. The snow was coming down faster now, and the people on the sidewalks were hunched tighter in their caps and coats. He saw good things on this small-town street—community and progress and the passing of years. The streetlamps seemed to connect it to a previous age, though maybe this was just his young man's sentiment, but right now even the damned Gargantua banners with their inanely humanized gorilla faces seemed no worse than comic relief. What I was born into, thought Wylie, and what I am. But now what?

“Come on, Wylie,” said Belle. “Gargantua can't do this to us. We're human beings and they're apes. I will not have Jacobie Bradford sitting in this chair in front of this fire a month from now, plotting his next move. I'll chain myself to the stove. I'll burn the building down. I will not allow this to become his.”

“So totally,” said Bea.

Wylie stood. “I need a moment with you girls. Back in the kitchen. Mom, Steen, we shall return.”

He led them far back into a kitchen corner, where the walk-in hummed and the chill was heavy. They looked at him anxiously. He told them that Jacobie would go to the cops about twelve Madrone if they refused Gargantua's offer. The cops had taken fingerprints from the stolen property and a comparison would identify them. He'd read in
The Sheet
last week that the town council was publicly pressuring the PD for an arrest. Some of the council members were not fans of the chief to begin with.

Wylie crossed his arms and leaned against one of the stainless-steel prep tables. Beatrice had tears in her eyes. “It's our fault.”

“My
fault,” said Belle. “My idea.”

“I stole as much as you did.”

“Think for a minute,” said Belle. “The way things are right now, we can't say no to Jacobie. If we do, all three of us will be arrested and sit in jail until bail is set. After that, the criminal justice system will pauperize us with legal fees. Meanwhile, Let It Bean is still being strangled by Gargantua. And there's no staff. And Wylie gets DQ'd from the Mammoth Cup because of his arrest. Right, Wylie?”

“That's the rule for a felony arrest.”

“But we would clear you,” said Bea.

“It wouldn't be up to you,” said Wylie. “My not reporting the crime is a crime, too.”

Belle put a hand on Wylie's shoulder as she walked to the rear door and pulled it open. A flurry of snowflakes eddied in, and Wylie saw the silent, steady fall of snow and his little sister looking up at it, and she was him ten years ago, standing in that same doorway, holding the same door open, wondering what the first big storm of that season would bring to the mountain.

Belle looked out at the snow for a while, then closed the door and turned to her brother. “But there is one way we can tell Jacobie to shove it. And to pay a lesser price to keep our bakery. Wylie, back at twelve Madrone, you said Bea and I needed to go down to the cop shop and tell them what we did. You were right. It'll kill Mom and Dad to have raised criminals, but they won't have to sell for so little, just to cover us. And Wylie, you won't get caught up with what Bea and I did.”

Bea looked pale and uncertain, as almost always. She stared at her sister for a long moment, then turned from Belle to Wylie. “I know I'm always, like, agreeing with people instead of thinking for myself, but I really do think Belle's right this time. You can stay focused on your race, Wyles. You can win the thing and shut Sky Carson up. We'll have a good snow year and Let It Bean will make it. Maybe we can borrow money for the roof. And maybe, because we didn't sell any of the stuff we stole, the owners can get it all back. And if we fully confess, maybe we get off with less punishment. And—”

Belle opened the door again and the three of them watched the snow, lessening now, smaller and sparser. It looked like she was saying good-bye to it. “I'll tell Mom and Dad,” she said. “But first, I'll need a cigarette and a blindfold.”

Wylie closed the door and brought them in close and they locked arms and bowed their heads together.

*   *   *

After dinner at home that night, Belle did what she'd said she would, even without a final cigarette or blindfold. “… you have raised two felons, but we're still good people,” she concluded.

Kathleen stared at her daughters, mouth open and ready for speech, but no words came forth. Steen looked as if he'd been slapped and couldn't believe what had just happened. He poured another aquavit.

Wylie explained how it had all come to a head because of Jacobie. In the very long silence that ensued, Wylie listened to the syncopated plip-plop of melting snow hitting the three buckets that were now stationed in the living and dining rooms alone.

The girls and their parents commenced arguing about the best way to give themselves up. Steen suggested they hire a lawyer first. Kathleen vetoed it as a needless expense. Belle wanted to post the whole thing live on social media, maybe do a Kickstarter campaign to raise defense and new-roof funds. Bea hated that idea.

Wylie excused himself and went to the living room couch, where he checked his phone and found out that his beloved MPP had received a bid that doubled the existing high offer to twelve thousand. After paying Jesse, that would leave him $9,800 toward the new roof, on which work was set to begin in two days' time. He didn't know whether to raise a fist in victory or gnash his teeth.

Either way, it was
adios, MPP.

He put more wood in the stove and used the bellows to stoke the flames, leaving the door slightly ajar. The fire popped and spit and lapped at the inside of the smoke-grayed glass. He wrote a text to April—“luv u miss u,” wondered what a true poet would think of such an atrocity, then, before sending it, rewrote it as:

< 3 AM, the night is absolutely still;

Snow squeals beneath my skis, plumes on the turns.

➢
That's beautiful, Wyles.

< Rexroth. I do love and miss you.

> Then where r u?

< Tending to criminal females.

> Time for 1 more?

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

In the afterglow, they lay splayed and panting. Wylie lolled his head for an unforgettable view of April's moonlit buns protruding from a sheet. He pictured skiing down one. What a fall line that was. Looking out a high window, he watched breeze-scrubbed stars flickering in the sky. His Saber Fives stood propped against the wall, gleaming slightly, and Wylie thought he had everything in life he wanted. He crawled over and lay alongside April. She told him their lovemaking had allowed her to successfully image a back-side double-cork 1080 she was thinking about trying for the first time at the Mammoth Cup. It had never been landed before in a USSA competition, though there was an Austrian girl, nineteen, who had done one late last season in a FIS-sanctioned event. It would all come down to amplitude and good conditions. She had landed it in her mind just now.

Wylie fished his pants off the floor, opened his wallet, and handed April a neatly folded piece of white printer paper. “I wrote this for you.”

She dropped her jaw histrionically and widened her eyes. “A poem?”

“A haiku.”

“I love Japanese food!” She scrambled back against the headrest and pulled up the comforter. Unfolding the paper, she flattened it against her raised thigh and glanced once at Wylie. Then she read the lines out loud in the dry whisper of voice that he had come to love:

“The doors you open

And the rocks you lift reveal

Creatures made of gold”

She read it again to herself. “It's beautiful. The rhythm keeps its weight forward, like a boarder down a slope. It's about courage in dark times and me nailing that back-side ten-eighty! And winning gold medals!”

“Precisely.”

Wylie's phone rang. He swept it from the nightstand, sat up, and saw a restricted number.

“Yeah?”

“The south parking lot holds a reason for you to take me seriously.”

“Damn you, Sky.”

Wylie looked to the curtained south window and saw a faint glow beyond the fabric, something small and round, like an orange wrapped in gauze or a distant campfire. He ran to the window, threw open the curtains, and saw the MPP roiling in flames in the parking lot below.

He told April to call 911, jamming into his jeans and a hoodie and a pair of shearling boots. He took the stairs down to the living room three at a time and ran to the front door. By the time he got to the MPP, the flames were high and bright, the smoke was black, and the smell of burning gasoline and resin was noxious. He threw open the propane hatch at the fore of the trailer and knelt to unscrew the fitting. He could feel the heat thrashing around him and smell his hair burning. When the fitting came free, he wrestled out the tank and flung it far into the lot. On his knees, he unhitched the trailer from the truck, then stood and backed away from the coiling heat to dig the truck keys from his pocket. It seemed to take much more than enough time for the truck gas tank to blow. Luck held. From the driver's seat, he could see the flames leaping in the rearview as he jammed down on the gas pedal and the truck screeched free, swerving on the slushy asphalt.

He got the fire extinguisher from the crew cab and charged back. Rounding the trailer to the windward side, he crouched and blasted away. It was a blessed standoff, flames versus retardant, and he saw there was true hope, but then the extinguisher huffed and spit and dribbled out, while the fire redoubled and took back lost ground.

April ran with a swaying bucket toward the MPP until the heat stopped her. She stepped back, braced, and heaved. By then, neighbors were spilling toward the MPP, some with buckets, some with extinguishers, one man dragging a garden hose in one hand and clutching a goblet of wine in the other. The hose stretched only partway, so the man stopped, arched the stream high, turned his head away from the fire, and drank some wine. Wylie saw the breeze-blown water droplets angling down ineffectually into the inferno.

An older woman shoved a small red fire extinguisher at him and he took it, wading in as close as he could get, then pulling the pin and blasting a load of retardant against the glass of a porthole. But he saw that the porthole glass was broken and the fire was raging inside the MPP. In the brief moment of chaos before the flames jumped back at him, Wylie saw the beautiful interior birch walls curling in the heat, the maple cabinets and table engulfed. Lying on a bench and still folded was the blanket that Jolene had given him, now ash black at its center, with its edges limned in orange-red, like a huge marshmallow left too long in the campfire. Wylie dropped the canister and backed away into the stink of his own burned hair, pawing at the pain on his neck. A wave of cold water crashed against the back of his head, and Wylie turned, to find April holding an empty white bucket.

“Outta the fire, Wylie!”

“Sky did this.”

“Out!”

“It was Sky.”

“I believe it. I believe it.”

April pulled him away from the trailer, the fire now burning with a proud, percussive roar. Wylie wrenched free of her and stripped off his sweatshirt, running back into the conflagration, flapping at it uselessly as the fire unfurled at him and the flames licked his skin. Hands pulled at him and forced him back. He lost his footing and was borne away from the heat and into the wails of sirens and the rhythmic flashing of lights.

Soon the paramedics were there, but Wylie stood them down, wouldn't get into the van, batted away their well-intentioned blue-gloved hands. Shivering, he struggled back into the hoodie and zipped it clear to his chin.
“Christ, guys, I'm okay. Let me be.”

He watched the firemen swarm in with backpack extinguishers, waving clouds of retardant at the fire. As the flames shrank and sputtered, the MPP seemed to deflate, so that when the fire was out, it just sat there, nothing more than a small black shell from which rose random heat waves and thin coils of smoke.

“Excuse me just a moment,” Wylie said to no one in particular. He squeezed April's hand. “Should move my truck out of the way, don't you think?”

He trot-skated across the lot, shivering and lifting the hood over his head. He could feel the burn on the back of his neck and hands, but the rest of him was soaked in icy sweat and water. His knuckles jumped with pain as he dug out his truck keys. He started it up and guided it cautiously over the slick asphalt, saluting April through the window. When he came to the road, he turned left and goosed the gas a little, bound for Sky Carson's condo.

*   *   *

Nobody answered Wylie's knocks, so he stepped back, gathered his will, and crashed through the door. Inside, he hit the lights, barreled into an empty bedroom, threw the covers back to make sure Sky wasn't buried down in them. The idea came that he could burn the place down, tit for tat, but there were neighbors and it would be much worse than foolish.