“Sky told me Robert is going to his mom’s,” said Brandon.
“We thought that would be best for him.”
“I don’t know why Adam puts so much faith in your judgment.”
“You don’t know a lot more than that.”
“Adam is getting older.”
“Just as sharp.”
Brandon glanced down at the application, riffling the twenties with a thumb. “I can’t fast-track this app. It’s up to the Mammoth Racing Committee, not just me.”
“That’s Adam and you, like before, right?”
“Not anymore. We had to bring in Vault Sports and Chamonix. And Gargantua Coffee, big-time. Gargantua just stepped up as lead sponsor for all of the Mammoth ski and board teams, and the Mammoth Cup. So next year’s race is now officially the Gargantua Mammoth Cup. You’ll be seeing Gargantua’s logo everywhere you look around town. Even in your dreams, my friend. And so will all your loyal customers at Let It Bean, which, of course, is the whole point. The Gargantua guy is Jacobie Bradford the Third, one of the coolest corporate weenies you’ll ever meet.”
Wylie recorded this bleak data with a sinking feeling in his gut. His mother hadn’t been kidding about Let it Bean’s getting run out of town. “So now three companies decide who skis for the Mammoth team and who doesn’t?”
“Plus me and Grandpa. Money talks.”
“Screams.”
“Depends. If money ever comes your way, you’ll think it has a strong, smooth voice.” Brandon tapped the bills on the application and gave Wylie an amused look. “Sky says you’ve promised to win the Gargantua Mammoth Cup. To honor Robert.”
“That’s why I need to use the X Course.”
“Wait just a minute. You win the cup five years ago, ditch us, then show up and expect to win it again? That’s your plan?”
“It’s become my plan. I have to get on the X Course, Brandon.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Brandon leaned back and crossed his arms and offered Wylie a tight smile.
Wylie managed to control his basic instincts, including the desire to strangle this man. “Fuck it.”
“The usual Welborn answer.”
Wylie snapped the money off the application and walked out.
Wylie looped back to Let It Bean to pick up his mother, as agreed. His nerves were still buzzing when he walked in.
“Okay?” she asked.
“Just thinking.”
“You have that look.”
“Even the marines couldn’t beat it out of me.”
They dressed out in the Let It Bean bathrooms and Kathleen collected her skis and gear from the kitchen. Steen smiled and waved as they headed out. At Main Lodge, Kathleen insisted on paying for the two half-day tickets that would get them the one remaining hour of skiing. The way we ski, thought Wylie, an hour will be enough.
They rode chair 25 to the black-diamond run at the top of Mammoth Mountain. With the cold wind in his face, Wylie studied the snow-covered Sierras cascading down toward the flat plate of silver that was Crowley Lake, and the White Mountains beyond, hunched in snow. From this perspective, there was no real vanishing point except the featureless pale sky behind the Whites. The immensity boggled him. Wily felt his mother’s gloved hand digging into his knee and saw that she was seeing what he was seeing.
They slid off the chair and gathered themselves at the top of the run. The earth knelt below them and the wind blew the snow against their backs. Wylie felt the sharp shards of it needling through his ski mask and he pictured Robert in his bed, life withdrawing from his body.
With a sharp cry, Kathleen dropped onto the Cornice. Wylie heard the rasp of her skis and saw the first burst of snow rise behind her. He counted five and launched. First came the sudden head-spinning pitch from horizontal to vertical, the brief second when the body senses free fall. The cure is commitment, so he leaned back nearly flush to the mountain, landed, and angled left, away from the trampled middle of the run. It was powder here and he found his rhythm, sweeping past his mom with a war whoop, but she quickly carved inside him and threw a rooster tail of sun-spangled crystals back his way. Wylie used the wider angles and kept Kathleen in front of him, and he was surprised at his age, his ponderous weight, his uncertain reflexes, and his general foreignness.
Down the mountain they braided. Wylie felt the altitude as a thin absence in his lungs, his pulse climbing, his respiration deeper and faster as he straightened out on a long, straight run and let the speed build. He heard the rush of his skis, felt the freedom, the magic of parting air. Coming out in a hard right carve, he drove his inside shoulder downhill and felt the crunch in his side. Kathleen was a blur at the far edge of his goggles. For a moment, he had everything right and felt like he used to, but then it was gone, and halfway through the mid-run moguls his thighs were burning and he sensed little joy between himself and the skis. The moguls almost did him in. Far down, the downhill run leveled into a wide expanse, at the end of which stood the lodge. Wylie saw the miniature figures streaming into the building, and more miniatures moving across the parking lot at this late hour, trudging for their cars, sun glinting off the skis and boards slung over their backs.
He stopped at the railing, breathing hard, and his mother swooshed to a stop beside him. “You might have to take things up a notch to win the cup.”
“Roger that.”
“You still ski beautifully.”
“It’s still inside me. Somewhere.”
“How come you decided to enter the race?”
Wylie thought a moment. “To honor Robert and shut up Sky.”
“Is it more to you than a simple grudge match?”
“I think so.”
“You know the Carsons and us are fine. Finally. There’s nothing that needs settling anymore. It’s all over.”
“It doesn’t feel over to me. It’s us and them, and most of them like it that way. It pisses me off.”
“Oh, Wylie — I forgot most of that years ago. I had to. When you were gone, Sky seemed to get smaller and the others less obnoxious. But now, with the Mammoth Cup, there’s a new... conflict.”
“I’m going to win that race, Mom.”
“It certainly has the town talking. I heard two customers making a bet on it this morning. Guys from San Francisco — bet each other five thousand bucks. One for you and the other for Sky.”
“I’ll bet on me.”
“For myself, Wylie? I’d be happy for you to win. But I’m even happier that you’re here. I know these last five years have been, well, challenging. I know you’ve seen good and bad, and I’d like to hear about some of that, when you’re ready. But there’s one thing I want you to know: If this little town gets to feel too little, or if for any reason you want to leave and go to a bigger world, I’ve got your back. I always saw you in the world, Wylie. Not necessarily in Mammoth Lakes, population eight thousand four hundred and thirty-four.”
“I’ve got your back, too, Mom. And the girls’. I heard about Gargantua. All the stuff they’re pulling on you.”
“You are not responsible for us.”
“I disagree with that.”
“I want you to be free. To have something of your own.”
“I’m getting something of my own, Mom. Jesse Little Chief and I are going to build a place for me to live. A kind of trailer I designed.”
“Oh?”
“I drew up some plans last month at the monastery in Germany. A good idea — you’ll like it. I got just enough money to get it started.”
“Do what you need to do. Remember when we used to ski just to ski? Because it was fun?”
Wylie nodded. “Those were the days.”
The PA system announced last lift. Wylie and his mother shoved off for the line, but it wasn’t much of a line at all, just three adolescent diehards elbowing each other for position on the chair, and a young attendant with a sunburned face and her hair spilling from her cap, awaiting them with a smile.