Tapping the Source (12 page)

He awoke sometime later to the sound of boots on the stairs. The boots belonged to Preston and he didn’t bother to knock but barged right in and right away Ike could see there was something different about him. He propped himself up on one elbow and rubbed his face with his hand. The main thing that was different, he decided, was the shirt. It was a ridiculous shirt, covered with bright blue pelicans and flying fish, the kind of shirt you would expect to see on some flabby, camera-toting tourist and it was the first time Ike had ever seen Preston dressed in anything besides a dirty tank top. He was still wearing motorcycle boots and greasy jeans, but that shirt made a new man out of him.

But then Ike could see that it was more than the shirt. His face looked clear and sober, the way it had that day he’d come for his tank, and his hair was wet again too, like he’d just showered, and it was combed back flat against his skull. He was rubbing his hands together and pacing back and forth in front of Ike’s bed. “Well, don’t just lay there diddling yourself,” Preston told him, “let’s get some waves.”

Ike hauled himself out of bed and touched his feet to the cold floor. The memory of last night was still with him. He felt washed out in the gray light, hung over, though he’d had nothing to drink. He blinked hard and tried to adjust to Preston’s enthusiasm, which seemed not to mesh well with the rest of the morning but was rather forced and just a bit mechanical. He pinched his nose with his fingers, between his eyes. The room was full of blue pelicans and flying fish.

“Well, come on,” Preston was saying. He had stopped pacing now and was standing at the foot of Ike’s bed. He was standing with his hands on his hips—a stance that reminded Ike of Hound Adams. It was the way Hound Adams had stood on his porch the night before, staring into a dark yard. He thought for a moment about telling Preston about it, but then decided against it. He decided to go along with whatever Preston was up to and see where it led. Besides that, forced or not, it was the most jovial he had ever seen the guy and he hated to put an end to this new mood so soon. He got up and started looking around the room for his cutoffs. Then he remembered he was supposed to help Morris overhaul Moon’s Shovelhead. “I promised Morris I’d help him on another Shovel,” he said.

Preston stared at him, pushed his shades up into his hair. “I thought you wanted to learn how to surf.”

“I do.”

“Then fuck Morris. Let him tear down his own Shovelhead. You wanna be somebody’s nigger for the rest of your life?”

“It’s Moon’s Shovelhead,” Ike said. He seated himself on the edge of his bed to pull on his cutoffs. But he was finally waking up now, and some of Preston’s enthusiasm was beginning to rub off on him. He grinned back up at Preston. “I thought you were retired.”

“Shit. I’ll retire your ass if you don’t make up your mind. I’m gonna get some waves. You wanna come with me or what?”

Ike stood up and buttoned his pants. “Where we going?” he asked.

Preston grinned and pulled his shades back over his eyes. “Where it’s good, ace, where it’s good.”

•   •   •

At the foot of the stairs Ike was surprised to find an old Chevy pickup. The truck was primer gray. There were signs of body work on the front fenders. A homemade camper shell covered the bed and a set of Harley-Davidson wings decorated the window at the back of the camper. Preston lifted the rear door so Ike could slide his board in and that was when Ike saw the other board and the camping equipment. Preston’s board looked old, a little yellowed around the edges, but before sliding his own in on top, Ike noticed the decal on the deck of Preston’s board, a wave within a circle, and the words
Tapping the Source
.

They drove all morning and Ike didn’t ask any more questions about where they were going. He climbed into the cab beside Preston and they headed north, out through the oil wells, above the cliffs where Ike had caught his first wave. Preston rolled down his window and let the morning air in to whip about their ears. The air was clean and cool and Ike was happy for it. He began to feel really awake now, and to wonder about where they were headed and what Preston was up to, and he thought as well about that board he’d seen in the back. But he didn’t ask any more questions. He watched the road as it rushed toward them, as the first bright rays of sunlight began to pierce the grayness.

They stopped once for coffee at a small doughnut stand on the seaward side of Coast Highway. They stood in back of the stand with Styrofoam cups in their hands and watched the swell lines moving across the ocean far below them. When they were back in the truck, Preston leaned out the window and hooted. “It’s going to be good, ace,” he said, and then leaned over and jabbed at Ike’s knee. Ike felt his leg pop under the blow and even though he knew Preston was just kidding around, it still hurt some. He looked at the coiled serpent running along Preston’s arm, disappearing beneath the sleeve of his crazy shirt, and he couldn’t help but wonder why they were doing this. It still seemed to him that there was something out of sync in Preston’s enthusiasm. He wanted to talk about Hound Adams. He wanted to ask Preston about that blond-haired guy he’d seen him talking to in the alley. But he restrained himself, as he had earlier in his room. He did not want to disturb the delicate balance of the morning. So he kept his mouth shut and stared into the dashboard, where a rusted key swung on a rawhide cord from one of the knobs. He watched the morning as it slipped past them and he began to enjoy himself. This was, now that he thought about it, practically the first time in his life that anyone had ever taken him along on something—aside from all the driving around he had done with his mother when he and Ellen were small, but he figured you couldn’t count that. He thought back to those hunting trips Gordon used to make once in a while, how he had always wanted to go but had always been left behind—Gordon saying he was too young, or too small. He wondered what Gordon would say now, if he could see him riding shotgun in an old pickup with a set of Harley-Davidson wings on the back and a guy like Preston at the wheel. He pulled himself up straight in the seat and rested an arm out the window, like Preston. He guessed maybe he didn’t give a fuck where they were headed or why, at least for the moment. It was still a trip, God damn it. Just kick back and listen to the highway hum.

By noon they were in Santa Barbara. The sun was slanting off red tile roofs and whitewashed walls on a street called South State. There were a lot of Mexicans and winos taking in the sun and hitchhikers sitting Indian style on the green strip of grass that ran along the highway.

Preston found a run-down-looking Mexican cafe where they ate burritos and rice. Preston ordered a pitcher of beer and an old Mexican woman brought two glasses without asking Ike for an ID.

“We’ll kill the afternoon in town,” Preston said. “I don’t want to go in till after dark.”

“After dark?”

“The one thing about this place. The waves are great but it’s all on private property. They’ll shoot your ass if they catch you surfing it.”

Ike felt the beans lumping up in his throat and used a long drink of beer to wash them down. Preston grinned at him and killed the pitcher without bothering to pour it in a glass.

Later they went to a pool hall Preston knew about and then out to a grassy hill with a six-pack to watch the sun slip into the ocean. Finally Preston stood up and brushed his hands off on his pants. He sailed a bottle off the side of the hill. They waited for the sound of breaking glass, but it never came; it was lost somewhere in the breeze and the distant sound of the sea. Preston took off his shades, folded them, and slipped them into the pocket of his shirt. “All right,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

•   •   •

They wound through a series of grassy hills, bouncing along a dirt road that skirted the crests. The moon came up fat and yellow and trailed them among the hilltops. Abruptly they rounded a curve and stopped in front of a long iron gate. Preston snatched the key from the dashboard. Ike could see him wink and for a moment Preston held the key up in front of Ike’s face. “Take a look at a real heirloom,” Preston told him. “There’s been blood spilled over keys like this one. You’re lucky to know a cat who’s still got one.”

“How did you get it?”

Preston jerked at the key and snapped it up in his big fist. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.” He jumped outside and Ike could hear him chuckling to himself in the moonlight.

Past the gate, they drove for another ten minutes, then pulled the truck off the road and into a kind of gully where a few sparse trees twisted into the darkness. The grass was tall. It rustled about their hips in a light breeze that smelled of the ocean. “We walk from here,” Preston said.

The night was not particularly cold, but Ike found himself shivering at the back of the truck as Preston unloaded their gear. There were two packs filled with canned goods and bottled water, plus the wet suits and boards. Preston loaded them down and they started off through the high grass. At the road, Ike turned to look back and found that the truck was completely hidden from view.

The night was filled with the songs of insects, the earthy scents of grass and sage, the damp salt smell of the sea. The moon lit the road and threw a silver light upon the blades of grass, the polished rails of the boards. They walked for what seemed to Ike a long time. His arms ached and each felt about a foot longer when they finally put everything down. They rolled the bags out between the roots of some thick trees on the side of a hill. The ground fell away into darkness, more trees. The moon was straight overhead now. In the distance Ike could hear the sound of surf. “Waves,” Preston whispered. “It’s been a long time.” And it was the first thing Ike had heard him say that day that did not sound like part of an act.

•   •   •

In the morning Ike saw that the hillside was higher and steeper than he had guessed in the night. A clump of trees obscured the view directly in front of them, but off to the left the ground dropped away to reveal other hills, great patches of mustard and wild flowers, green grass and dark trees, and below it all, the sea.

The beaches here were different from those Ike had gotten used to. The beaches in Huntington were wide and flat, colors kept to a minimum. Here the scenery was wild, the colors lush, varied. Long lines of hills rolled toward the sea then broke into steep tumbling cliffs, patchworks of reds and browns. Below the cliffs were thin white crescents and rocky points that reached into the Pacific. There were no traffic noises here, no voices. There were only the calls of the birds, the breeze in the grass, and the surf cracking far below them.

They pulled on trunks and wet suits in the crisp morning air. They knelt on the rocky soil beneath the trees and waxed their boards. The smells of rubber and coconut mixed with the smells of the earth and grass. “We’ll get some morning glass,” Preston told him. “Surf till ten or eleven, then back here for some food and sleep, surf again around sunset.”

They stashed the bags and gear and started down the slope. Ike could see a set of railroad tracks winding through the hills below them at the edge of the sand.

“It’s a ranch,” Preston said, waving at the hills. “The owners don’t like trespassers, but there’s usually no one around except a few of the cowboys that work the place. At least that’s the way it used to be, in the old days.” He looked at Ike and grinned, and it seemed to Ike that some of Preston’s biker traits had fallen away from him this morning. Perhaps it was just that he was wearing a wet suit and carrying a board, but it was suddenly hard to imagine that he was the same wild man Ike had seen punch out a fuel tank. He seemed younger this morning, more like a kid himself as he led Ike down through the tall grass, talking of cowboys and perfect waves. “The cowboys can be unpredictable,” Preston was saying. “Sometimes they won’t do shit and sometimes they will. Had a friend once who lost his board and had to swim in to get it. Turned out there was a bunch of cowboys waiting for him on the beach.” Preston paused. “It was a bad scene,” he said. Ike waited for him to say more but they walked on in silence.

When they had cleared the trees, they stopped and looked down. “Look at that,” Preston told him, and he did: the unmarked crescent of white sand, the rocky point, the perfect liquid lines waiting to be ridden, and he figured that perhaps he knew after all why they had come. He touched Preston’s arm as they started down. “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks for bringing me.” Preston just laughed and led the way, and his laughter rang among the hills.

•   •   •

They entered the water near the middle of the crescent-shaped beach. Ike followed Preston, and when they had pushed through the shore break, Preston angled his board toward the point. Ahead of them the horizon was a straight blue line. The sun sparkled on the water and the water was like glass, smooth and clear so you could look down and see small schools of fish and tendrils of seaweed reaching for the sun. Soon they were paddling over shoulders, the waves lifting and lowering them, and Ike could feel his heart beginning to thump against the deck of his board. He had never paddled out this far or been in waves like these.

At last Preston dug his legs into the water and drew himself up to straddle the board. Ike did the same and together they looked back at the green hills, the white strip of beach. It all seemed very far away. They could see much more of the coastline from here and Ike picked out an area where the vegetation seemed the thickest. The spot was well back into the hills and at first all he noticed was the vegetation. Then he saw the house, not a complete house for most of it was hidden, just a corner of red-tiled roof above a brilliant flash of white. He was about to ask Preston about the house, but Preston spoke first.