“Correct. It’s section three point four, paragraph G.”
Adam studied his grandson-in-law. Even with the blackout wraparounds hiding his eyes, Brandon appeared nervous, if not just plain guilty. “I just had a funny thought,” said Adam.
“Oh.”
“Yes. The idea came to me, right out of the blue, that you and your lawyer friend from Palo Alto added paragraph G just after Wylie came back and wanted to try out for the team. One of your last-second changes. And I got this other funny idea that you had the draft bylaws printed so small, your beloved grandpa Adam wouldn’t have the patience to read them before he signed off.”
Adam watched as a two small crescents of condensation crept upward from the rims of his grandson-in-law’s sunglasses. “None of what you’re implying is true.”
“The last part sure is — I didn’t have the patience to read them before I signed off. So don’t be silly, Brandon — I’m just stating self-evident truths.”
“Good God. All I’m trying to do is coach a team.”
“You do that. And leave the course to Mike.”
“Adam — I’m going to kick Wylie off the team if you don’t get Mike to make the course adjustments I need. For the good of the team. I have no choice.”
“I won’t ask, and Mike wouldn’t anyway.”
“But if Wylie’s not on the team, he can’t use the mountain before the tourists swarm in every morning. A half-day ski pass, five or six days week? It would cost him half of what he makes at Let It Bean. So he won’t be able to train properly. Which means his results will suck and the USSA won’t help him get on the World Cup circuit. No Europe means he won’t see the real competition. The USSA can afford to send only the top two or three — you know that. If he’s not on the team, Wylie won’t even get skis or boots or bindings or the Volcom gimmes or the damned free breakfasts at Gargantua. He won’t get squat. It’s simple as that, Grandpa. So talk to Mike. Please. Wylie’s future is on you.”
“Make your own mistakes, Brandon. You appall me.”
“Then Wylie’s off. Fuck it, Adam. He’s off my fucking team.”
Later Adam, Cynthia, and Bruce, the nurse, made sure that Robert’s temporary reconnections were properly made, then got him dressed and settled into the wheelchair, strapping him upright. It was tiring, time-consuming work. Cynthia brushed Robert’s healthy blond Carson hair, fluffing it up and patting it down with her free hand. Then she worked onto his expressionless face a new pair of sunglasses with stars-and-stripes frames and dark reflective lenses. “You look good, Robbie. Very handsome indeed.”
Now it was Adam’s job to push the chair down the walkway from Cynthia’s house and muscle it over the curb to the dark, pine-shadowed street. Once they had gotten to Main, the bike path was wide and smoothly paved.
This first stretch was slightly downhill and Adam let Cynthia take the helm. She smiled to no one in particular as she took the grips from him and lengthened her stride. She wore forest green camouflage pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt, green camo hunting boots, and a wide-brimmed green camo fabric hat. The clothes were cut for women, and Adam thought she looked stylish in a very strange way.
It pleased but didn’t surprise him that Cynthia had become happier in the six months that Robert had been with her. For some years he’d thought that the widow needed more to do than skulk around Mammoth Lakes, asking questions and making notes for her weekly “newspaper.” He’d been right. For one thing, she was trimmer now, with all the wheelchair exertion. Her complexion was ruddier with the almost daily time outside, and she moved about now with a good carriage instead of her old hunch-shouldered, I’m-not-really-here posture. There was a good-size piece of Adam that still loathed Cynthia for what she’d done to his son, but a larger piece felt empathy with her. They had all lost their beautiful Richard. Son and husband and father.
“This camo contains odor neutralizers so game can’t smell me,” she said.
“Yes, I’ve read about it in the catalogs.”
“I bought the winter versions back last year. In the ‘Snowy Bark’ hunter’s pattern, I’m virtually undetectable in snow.”
“You could wear regular clothes and let people see you.”
Cynthia nodded. “I’ve never gotten used to my own celebrity.”
The afternoon had grown hot and the gray-white underbelly of smoke hung closer in the west. Like droughts and weaker winters, wildfires were another thing Adam had seen increase in his lifetime. Cynthia stopped and pulled her hat back on its strap and shook loose her yellow-gray ponytail. “I think Robert’s beginning to become aware of me, Adam.”
“How can you tell?”
“First, it was the eyelid flutters. Now it’s his breathing. When I talk to him about certain things, his respiration speeds up. Such as skiing. Or Hailee. Or Sky, or even Wylie. There’s this deeper inhale? And I believe it to be a precursor of speech. Like he’s trying to get enough wind up to deliver a word. Or even just a sound.”
Adam wasn’t sure what to do when she talked like this. Who was he to question her hopes? Or to endorse her misconceptions? “I have to believe that he feels the sun on his face right now,” he said.
“Darned tootin’ right he feels it. I know what being inside without sun feels like, just like Robert does.”
They went into the liquor store for refreshment. Cynthia removed Robert’s sunglasses. Adam got one of the newish energy drinks, which tasted great and dispatched a heavy dose of caffeine through his old system. Expensive. He wondered what Teresa was doing right now. Teresa, thirty years ago the waitress with the raven black hair and the beautiful smile, now a mother of four grown children and long widowed. Now thirty pounds heavier, her hair half gray. But — and this was the part that sometimes made Adam dizzy with happiness — she was just as preposterously beautiful as she had been way back then. Maybe more. Beauty was all about perspective. It came from you. He felt lucky to have had her in his life. First as an attentive waitress, then as a trusted employee who — when she’d lost her firstborn and Cynthia had begun her prison term — became a wet nurse for Sky. Now as a most dear companion.
Robert’s head bobbed gently as Adam pushed him from the cooler to the cash register. Cynthia was asking the clerk about upticks in shoplifting in the summer months, due to the cooled tourist economy. In fact, the clerk had seen an uptick: Just last night, he’d called the cops on two young men who ran out with a bottle of rum and a twelve-pack of cola drinks. Cynthia had already taken the small notebook and pen from the book bag she hung on one of the wheelchair handles. Now she made notes.
Adam set the wheelchair brake with his toe, put his drink on the counter, and dug out his wallet. Cynthia traded in her notebook and pen for a folder. She carefully removed the latest issue of The Woolly and handed it to the clerk. “Let me know if the shoplifting continues. I think it’s an important local story.”
“Yes, Mrs. Carson. Hello to you, Robert.”
“Robert is sending his regards. See, his eyelid is fluttering.”
Adam set the bill on the counter and glanced down at his grandson. Robert’s face was serene, his hair was just right, and his right eyelid was quivering. Adam told himself it meant nothing. Told himself again. But he thought, I’ll be damned.
Outside, he drained the drink and tossed the can into a recycle bin. “Shall we do this thing, Cynthia?”
“I’m kind of dreading it,” she said, working the star-spangled sunglasses back onto her son.
“You look fine, Cynthia.”
“Well. It’s not about how I look, Adam. Why did we agree to do this?”
“Sky’s deal. It means something to him. Look, he’s already there.”