Sky stopped before the stage and released his good arm from that of the woman to point his forefinger at Wylie. “I couldn’t have been more clear or honest with you. Account for what you did.”
“I won’t.”
“I’ve tried very hard to accommodate you.”
“Give it up, Sky. You’ve stirred things up enough.”
“You decide whose mountain this is to die on.”
Wylie tried to check his anger, but he was already moving toward Sky. The winners’ bodies slowed him and he felt April’s hands lock onto him from behind. But his adrenaline was spiking and he was stronger, so he dragged April hoppingly along. Then she swung herself in front of him with the same gifted lightness she used for slopestyle, dug in, and pushed him back toward the stage. “No, Wyles, this is when you let it go. You let it go right now.”
Looking past her shoulders and through her bouncing curls, Wylie saw Sky reach his left hand into the sling and withdraw a dull black thing. The sleek woman screamed and grabbed at it. Wylie powerfully swept April away as a gunshot cracked the thin alpine air. The crowd exploded as if a bomb had gone off. People screamed and charged away in all directions, while others fell flat and covered up. Wylie charged into another shot and another — feeling nothing — and he saw through the smoke and the riotous commotion that Sky’s eyes were wide as he waved the gun. Then the horrified scream of someone shot. More screams, the sleek woman now hitting at Sky, the flare of her black hair in the lights. Fighting against the exodus, Cynthia Carson waded toward her son, and Steen tried to hold Kathleen back, and Adam barged toward Sky, and Sgt. Grant Bulla crouched in a two-handed shooter’s stance, angling for a clear shot, his voice sharply audible through the gunfire and shrill panic: “Drop it, Sky!”
Wylie focused on the gun in Sky’s hand. It went off again, muzzle flashing at the canopy overhead. Sky wheeled on Bulla. Two rapid concussive booms then, and Sky dropped heavily, as if the force that had held his body together had been yanked away.
Wylie turned and looked for April but couldn’t find her. One of the half-pipe skiers headed toward the street, bleeding from his hand and escorted by two other medalists. Wylie barged into the big throng gathered to his left, where he had flung April to safety. People huddled and crouched, their attention drawn downward, their gestures frantic and emphatic, sending up a weird concatenation of questions and answers, orders and silence, outrage and consolations. In the middle of them lay April, spread-eagle on her back, with her head on Belle’s lap and a pile of coats and jackets randomly piled on, a swamp of blood loosening around her. Wylie knelt and leaned over her and looked down at her white face flecked with red and her wide blue eyes. Within the bloody garments, he got her hand and found her rapid pulse. Her eyes seemed to locate him at a great distance, and her pupils tightened.
“Hang on now,” he said.
“’kay.”
“I love you very much.”
“Good.”
“What’s going to happen is the medics will be here in a minute. And we’ll get you on a gurney and to the hospital. It’s a good one, here in Mammoth. I’ll be with you every second and I’ll never let go of you.”
“’kay.”
“Think about Solitary Meadow, April. Picture the wildflowers and the creek. And the runs we made. And think about tomorrow and where we’re going and what we’re going to do together. We’ve got a busy schedule, girl. So much to look forward to.” Wylie’s throat clenched tight and he saw the frost trying to seize the blue of her eyes, saw the swoon of the black pupils, small to large to small.
“They robbed us, Wyles.”
He touched his lips to hers and prayed for breath. Breathe April, please breathe. Do not stop breathing. No. Please. No. An immeasurable piece of time later, he pulled back and looked into her eyes and saw that she was gone. He lowered his forehead to hers and felt the hot outrush of tears. More time stole past, her face cold against his.
Belle touched him. He could hear her crying. “I saw you get her out of the way, but Sky was shooting everything.”
Then more planes of chaos were intersecting above him — the ascendant screams of sirens, and hands and voices upon him. Mother and sisters. Steen and Adam. Teresa and Claude and Grant Bulla, ordering the people away, making way for the first responders.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
I held Sky as his last breath quivered away. I felt a heartbreak I had never known, not even over Robert. Sky, my most talented and troubled. My most me. I tried to get him up into my arms and carry him away, but Sergeant Bulla would have none of that. I was thankful, because I wasn’t sure I could lift Sky, or for how long, or exactly where I should take him anyway. I wanted to shield him from prying eyes. The worst is everyone watching you, after. So I rocked him until the paramedics arrived. They blitzed in, did their tests, hooked up the oxygen and saline, refusing to admit the obvious, which is their training. It is not theirs to pronounce.
I climbed into the ambulance after my son. Before the doors closed, I saw another crew racing April Holly into a second truck. Wylie, stone-faced and white, got in with her. I got just a quick look at April, that poor, sweet, talented girl. All her crazy grace and courage. A shining star. Wylie had tried to get her out of the way, but Sky was shooting wildly because he’d lost his nerve, as he had in racing. So there was no safe place. Only chance. On the gurney, she looked lifeless, and I hoped that I was wrong, but I was not. Either way, my heart broke for her, a true innocent, like Robert. The doors slammed shut and the big boxy vehicle slowly ground along through the snow toward the hospital, lights flashing on the white world and the sirens howling.
What that Adrenaline show host never asked me, and what I’ve thought about all my life is, if I had it to do all over again, knowing what I know now, would I? Shoot Richard, I mean. I’ve had roughly a quarter century to ponder that question. Having walked my long, steep road, I must say that I would not do it again. Because there’s no way to foresee the consequences of violence. You can’t predict the many sad spokes that will branch outward from such a hub. But they will. I would not again burden the futures of my children, and their children, and so on, down the line. Of course, I knew none of that then. I knew only my own blind rage, and my betrayal by the man I had loved with all my heart.
Over my life, I’ve seen a pattern. But violence is not only a Carson curse. It is everywhere, within us and without us. The more I look the more I see it. The more I read, the more I find it — all the way back to when one of Earth’s first two brothers rose up in the field against the other.
Rose up.
Why?
I’m not qualified to say. I have read the Bible and most of the so-called great books — plenty of time for that down in Chowchilla — and I have learned nothing decisive from them. Are we born to violence? Or forced into it? Scripted by jealous gods, or part of our nature? I don’t know. But I do know that I am somehow not surprised that Sky rose up against Wylie. And Wylie against Sky.