Wylie nodded. “Some of it.”
“But where did he get that strong white horse? Or the sleek black skis?”
Wylie looked at Claude but said nothing.
Claude drew on the cigarette again, then flicked the butt away. “Wylie? Wylie. I see something in you that I did not see before. You have no rational right to your dream, and yet you surrender your heart to it. All right. You have the smallest of chances. But in your smallness of chance is the seed of heroism and glory. You know I have spoken to you out of respect, not malice. I hope the Saber Fives land you on the podium in Seoul. And if they don’t, you have my respect and best wishes as far as my skis take you. I have seen you race many times, and I have watched every video made of your races. And I offer this advice for the Mammoth Cup: You will not make the hole shot off the start. That will belong to Sky. He is under one minute now on the IB — the only one under a minute. But once he leads on the real X Course, he will expect extreme pressure from you. Apply it thoroughly but patiently. Do not try to pass him too early. Do not force yourself. Let the pressure eat his nerves away and he will surrender according to his nature. You will see your moment. Be like a lion upon a gazelle.”
Wylie breathed deeply and exhaled, watched his breath condense in the air before him. “Thanks, Claude. I’ll try the skis. I’m off and running now, just like a big lion.”
“Excellent, Wylie. And just so you are aware, upper-level representatives of the U.S. Olympic Committee and the USSA arrived together here in Mammoth just yesterday. The main purpose for their visit is to speak to Adam about you and April Holly. They have great concerns about your love affair coming at such an important time for April and for the sport...”
Wylie heard the last few words trailing off from behind him as he chugged across the parking lot toward Highway 203, one foot in front of the other.
Just past the gas station, Wylie ran past Cynthia Carson, sitting still and barely visible in the trees and patchy snow, dressed in green-and-white camo. She stared right through him. Wylie’s heart jumped and he sped up to catch it.
Chapter Thirty-Three
The next morning, Wylie guided his truck up the steep rocky road that led to Adam’s aerie on the mountain. The MPP bounced along behind, stable but nimble. Wylie parked near the funicular landing, looked at the sleek silver car waiting beneath the tall pines with a futuristic air.
He helped Adam load in his fishing gear, again checking the sky for signs of the big Alaskan storm due to arrive later this Friday evening. The streets of Mammoth Lakes were already buzzing with weekend vehicles, and the ski shops had their rental banners out, and the young go-getters who sold and installed snow chains for incoming tourists were already staking out their turf. Traffic on Highway 203 was steady for late November, an inbound stream as Wylie and Adam headed down the hill toward Hot Creek Ranch.
As they came down into the basin at 395, Wylie saw that the sky had the hard white heaviness denoting a storm. Such skies had been one of his early pleasures as a child. He clearly remembered his first runs down the hill behind their house, executed on flattened pasteboard boxes. Then later the plastic snow dishes, and after that a sled. Then his first pair of skis and boots, a birthday present when he was four. He’d slid around the house on them and slept with them beside his bed for a month, anticipating the first snowfall. Something in him clicked when he was on skis. A gift. He never felt like a beginner.
“I met with brass from the Olympic Committee and the USSA yesterday. Their hero? April Holly. Their villain? You.”
“Claude said as much.”
“Their position is easy to see.”
Wylie headed to the airport/hatchery exit and followed the dirt road past the hatchery to Hot Creek. He turned onto the private ranch. Hot Creek was exactly that — a creek partially fed by thermal springs, which kept it relatively warm year-round, much to the delight of aquatic vegetation, insects, and trout. The fish were many, some quite large, most of them experienced at telling artificial flies from real ones.
Wylie parked by the lodge and the manager came out and talked to them while they rigged up. He liked the MPP, touched it lightly. He was an old friend of Adam and let them fish here for free. There were no other fishermen today and the manager said there had been Tricos mayfly hatches midmorning and pale morning duns when the sun hit the water. “Use the lightest line you can still see and lots of it,” he said with a smile.
Wylie saw Adam’s curt nod — the old man disliked jokes about his age from anyone but himself. Adam was ready to fish before Wylie had even gotten his line through the guides. Wylie tied on a PMD and mashed down the barb with his hemostat and they walked downstream, looking for rises.
“So I’ve been tasked with talking some sense into you,” said Adam. “What are my chances?”
“Good as they ever were.”
Adam smiled. “I told them to talk to you themselves. But there’s no end to the mess they can make, dealing directly with an athlete. Who knows what you’ll say or post? And they stubbornly profess to believe you’ll listen to me. I told them no young man in love is going to listen very closely to anyone.”
“I’ll listen, sir.”
“I like this run.”
They stood well back and watched. The long, glittering run came hard downstream, dropped over rocks, and tailed out, pooling against the far side. It looked deep. The water was nearly black under the pale sky, and the aquatic grasses swayed beneath. Wylie knew that the fish loved the vegetation for cover and for the healthy bug life it engendered. People from all over the world came here to test their skills. Wylie had seen trout thirty inches long in here but had never caught anything much longer than twenty. These were the pickiest and most annoying fish in the Sierras. Adam decided to change flies, and while he studied the contents of his dry-fly box, Wylie checked his eBay auction. The high bid was now five thousand dollars, with fifteen hours until midnight. Damn.
Adam cast upstream and mended early, letting his fly ride the current down. At this distance, it was a white speck. It drifted twenty feet without incident. Adam cast again. “Wylie, you know that April Holly is America’s biggest winter sports star, biggest money earner, a true showcase athlete, as the Austrians like to say. Salonne shampoo pays her three million a year for the ads and the helmet space. Her equipment makers come in at about that, too. Her apparel makers pay her roughly another two million just to wear the stuff. They pay and pray she won’t start her own line — though April has told them she might want to do just that. Her appearance fees are in the high five figures for no more than two hours of her time. Those amounts will double or even triple if she stays healthy and wins in Korea. Ah, a fish!”
Wylie watched as Adam played the fish, got it onto the reel, and brought it in. Wylie netted it and worked the hook loose and held out the net for the old man to see.
“I love the dark browns,” he said.
“That’s a beauty, Adam.” Wylie set the net deep in the water and the fish eased, then flashed away. Adam gave him his spot and Wylie fished the same run, but closer to the bank. The larger fish were assumed to lie along the cut, deeper banks, and in Wylie’s experience, this was occasionally true. Adam’s voice came from behind and beside him.
“Of course, Helene Holly has bent their ears,” said Adam. “She told them that April is emotionally far younger than her twenty-one years. This, due to her meteoric rise as an athlete and somewhat retarded social development. Helene says April is extremely vulnerable, if not gullible. Helene says that April is given to pronounced highs and lows. She says that as competitions near, April becomes extremely focused on the event. She eats the exact same foods at the exact same time, wears certain ‘lucky’ clothes and uses certain ‘lucky’ gear. She sleeps up to ten hours a day, including an afternoon nap. She listens to the same songs and watches the same movies. April has a ritual that she does in her bathroom the evening before a contest, in which she arranges every grooming product on her counter in pairs, in a long procession, so that the front labels of each pair face each other, while their backs are turned to the backs of the coupled products on either side. Or something like that. Helene believes that this obsessive single-mindedness is what sets April apart. Helene says that when April loses focus, she is injury-prone. Helene’s afraid — in a nutshell — that you’re going to fuck everything up and April’s going to lose the Mammoth Cup slopestyle to start her season. Which would be a disaster for her confidence. Or worse. April’s never had a major injury. She’s had minor ones, when she’s lost focus. Helene predicts that the longer she’s involved with you, the better are her chances for catastrophe.”