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.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
T. JEFFERSON PARKER is the bestselling author of numerous novels, including Full Measure, Storm Runners, and The Fallen. Alongside Dick Francis and James Lee Burke, Parker is one of only three writers to be awarded the Edgar Award for Best Novel more than once. He lives with his family in Southern California.
Visit his Web site at www.tjeffersonparker.com. Or sign up for email updates here.
Also by T. Jefferson Parker
Laguna Heat
Little Saigon
Pacific Beat
Summer of Fear
The Triggerman’s Dance
Where Serpents Lie
The Blue Hour
Red Light
Silent Joe
Black Water
Cold Pursuit
California Girl
The Fallen
Storm Runners
L.A. Outlaws
The Renegades
Iron River
The Border Lords
The Jaguar
The Famous and the Dead
Full Measure
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
About the Author
Also by T. Jefferson Parker
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All o
f the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
CRAZY BLOOD. Copyright © 2016 by T. Jefferson Parker. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by James lacobelli
Cover photographs © Getty Images;
snow © Adam Clark; skiers © Adie Bush
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-06409-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-06408-0 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781250064080
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First Edition: March 2016