“You were right to come home when you did.”
“Was I? I haven’t accomplished one damned thing.” Jesse looked at him, stepped back from the billowing smoke, and sipped from his glass. “Thanks for the news from your journeys.”
“Least I could do.”
Jesse added some mesquite chips to the fire and looked at Wylie through the shifting billows of smoke. “But I’m glad we ended up fighting together. After barely knowing each other at school, what were the chances of that? One of those coincidences that change your life. But the war wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. Maybe I got what I deserved, after drinking all night before and signing my life away the next day.”
“That’s pretty much how I joined up, too. It’s amazing just how dumb we were,” said Wylie.
“Really, it is. But we did it. We made it out alive.”
“When I hear about the war now, it doesn’t sound like the war I was in.”
“No,” said Jesse. “Grunts shouldn’t look back all the time like they do.”
“No, they shouldn’t. We did what we did. I don’t think about it, but I’ll never forget it, either.”
Wylie and Jesse shifted positions again. The barbecue smoke seemed to follow them. “Have you ever told anybody?” Jesse asked in an offhand tone of voice.
Wylie was a fine compartmentalizer, adept at stuffing memories into imaginary boxes and setting them high on his mental shelves. There, they wouldn’t fall down and hurt him, but he could find them if he needed them.
“Fuck no. I just say I was like a medic. That’s good enough for most people.”
“Sure. Yeah. That makes sense. And it’s true: You were an unofficial medic. You did some real good when the corpsmen weren’t around. Best tourniquet guy in the company.” There was a long silence as Jesse prodded at the fire with the tongs. “I’ve told you a hundred times, but I want to thank you again for... sticking by me that day. It wasn’t your idea, but you finished it for me. We could have got prison for that. It’s a debt I’ll always owe you.”
“Look. That skinny killed Sergeant Madigan and was trying to kill us, Jess. And we did what we did and it’s not changeable. Sometimes when you cross a line, the line goes faint, or even away. That can be a good thing, as in our case.”
“Do you think we were right?”
“I don’t think about it at all. Ever. Really. Except with you and some of the guys. I saw Lineberger and Carrasco in Germany. Lots of talk.”
“Still, thanks.”
“Jesus, Jesse — I’ve told you a hundred times not to thank me again, and here you go.”
“I’m just a dumb stubborn Paiute.”
“Me, too.”
“That’s what got us into all this!”
They laughed at this as they always did and drank a shot of bourbon; then Wylie refilled the shot glasses again. Jesse pulled the steaks away from the flame and got the platter ready.
“How many countries did you end up seeing?”
“Fourteen.”
“Lots of ladies on your travels?”
“More or less.”
“French the prettiest?”
“Tied for first with all the others.”
“That’s funny.”
“True, even.”
“And you always had mountains to ski?”
“Yeah. I never got that out of my system. I still haven’t.”
Jesse turned the steaks and looked down at his watch. “Your sister told Jolene you’re going to stay in Mammoth awhile. Going to win that Mammoth Cup thing again.”
“I’ve committed to it.”
“Why? You already won it once.”
The breeze changed direction and Wylie stepped away from the roiling smoke. “To honor Robert and shut Sky up.”
“And winning this race would do that?”
“I hope so.”
“Robert’s not going to get better?”
“He’ll never wake up. He could live for years, though. It’s just tubes, nutrition, and antibiotics.”
“Shit, Wylie. I hardly knew him, but Robert was cool. He was a good guy. I saw that. Nothing like the rest of them.”
“No one like him, Jesse.” Wylie squinted and wiped his eyes with his jacket sleeve. Smoke and grief. It angered him that when he thought of Robert, he saw him paralyzed in a bed rather than flying down a mountain with sweet, beautiful speed. “Jess, there’s another reason I want to win that race. I’ve been seeing a lot. And thinking a lot. I want something better for my family than them working their asses off year after year for less and less. It’s worse now. Remember, back in the old days, when we were the only show in town? No more. Now Gargantua is in, and they’re trying to run us out of business. It’s working. They’re price-cutting for market share, sponsoring the Mammoth ski team and the Mammoth Cup next year. All so Gargantua Coffee can rake in the tourists and run us out of town.”
“Way of the white man.”
“No shit. But here’s the deal — if I can win the cup, then crank at the X Games, I’d have a shot to make the FIS World Cup circuit. And if I do well there, I just might make the Olympic team. And if I make the U.S. team and do well in Seoul? Well, then my family is set for life. That would be a dream come true. I’ve never actually had a specific, gonna-do-this kind of dream. Now I do. But dream sounds pompous and bourbony. I don’t know. I’m thinking out loud.”
Jesse nodded and stared down at the meat. “You a good-enough skier to do all that?”
“I don’t know. That’s a whole other question.”
“That you can’t answer until you try.”
Wylie threw back the bourbon, set the shot glass on the barbecue deck and took up his beer. “Expensive to compete up at that level. Not sure exactly how to finance all that. But I’ll tell you one thing, Jesse. I still love the speed. It’s still in me. I’m happy flying downhill like there’s a demon on my ass.”
“That’s what you looked like when you won the Mammoth Cup last time. I remember thinking, He’s not chasing something. Something’s chasing him.”
They ate with the girls in the small dining room, with the TV propped up on the kitchen counter and a football game on. Jolene and Tonya tried hard to be adults — having set a nice table with somewhat matching flatware, quality paper napkins, and glasses of water with lemon twists floating on the ice. Jolene glanced at Wylie often and stopped talking a good full second before Wylie began a sentence.
Wylie felt the alcohol swirling through him. It loosened his memories and helped give voice to a story of what had happened while he was staying at the Great St. Bernard Hospice in Switzerland. Wylie confirmed that, yes, this was the place known for breeding the hearty rescue dogs. He gave in to the excitement of telling it, gesturing and raising his voice, which he rarely did. Waving his arms and using a thick German accent, he impersonated the panicked hospitality director, then dramatized their mad, half-blitzed scramble to get on their boots and skis and jackets to go attempt a rescue. He dramatized the rather dicey flashlight-illuminated extraction of three Swedish cross-country skiers who had fallen into a crevasse not five hundred yards from the hospice brewery. They had been on an after-dinner jaunt. Wylie revealed that the big rescue dogs did not carry casks of brandy on their collars, and that they had romped through the snow, barking uselessly while the men and women pulled the skiers up using ropes and a lot of muscle. Wylie capped off his tale by quoting each Swede after being snatched away from certain death: