Tapping the Source (14 page)

“Ellen.”

“Ellen.” Preston repeated the name, then tossed the stick back into the fire.

•   •   •

Ike lay back flat on the ground and closed his eyes, feeling the way his sister’s name hung there, in the night air, above the orange flames. What was there beneath the surface of Preston’s words? Preston himself had said that everyone had a scam. So what was his? Why had he taken an interest in Ike? Brought him here? Was it as simple as he had said: Ike had done him a favor and he wanted to return it, that he was simply trying to turn Ike on to something that would get him away from Huntington Beach and off a bum trip? He would have liked to believe that. But it was not that simple for him—even if everything Preston said was true, it was not that simple. He owed something to Ellen. She’d been all he’d had for a long time. And finally, when she’d needed him, he had not really been there—not in the right way. When she’d needed him that night on the flats, he let some other need in himself come between them and it had never been quite the same afterward. Maybe if he’d been different then, things would not have worked out as they had. And maybe that was really why he’d come—not what the old lady had thought, and not even because she was family, but because he’d let her down and he owed her. He could not quit that easily. And yet, for the moment, he was not sure what else to say to Preston. His guilt, he felt, was a private thing.

He lay there for some time without talking, or commenting further on Preston’s offer. He thought again of what he had seen in the alley—Preston talking to the blond-haired surfer. But somehow, bringing that up just now seemed pointless. Preston had stated his position. She’d moved on or she was dead. Either way there was not much he could do. It was, of course, all ground he had been over in his own mind. But it struck him now as particularly depressing, perhaps because he was hearing someone else say it, out loud for the first time. He closed his eyes and he fought to hang on to some of that plugged-in feeling he had gotten back to the beach with, to remember the waves, the rush of smooth faces in the last light, the sense of camaraderie that had grown out of the shared day. He turned his head and watched Preston still seated near the remains of the fire. The reddish light of the embers crept up his tattooed arms and into his face, which was bent down toward the coals. He was not like the other biker types Ike had met around Jerry’s shop. He could be loud and violent, as Ike had seen that first day in the lot, but there was something else there too, something that, like the eyes, did not quite fit with the rest of the disguise, and he found himself wanting to say one more thing. “Why’d you quit?” Ike asked him. “Why don’t you go to some of those places you were telling me about? You still could.”

Preston seemed to think about it for a minute. “I guess it has to do with wanting something to be a certain way,” he said. “And if it can’t be that way, then you don’t want it at all.”

Ike thought about it. He would have liked to ask what had changed it, but he didn’t. He supposed it was not the kind of thing you should ask, that it was private like his guilt.

“It’s just different now,” Preston went on. “I’ve got too many good memories, too many good waves.” He poked at the coals with a fresh stick. Ike watched him, hunched up, squinting into the ashes, and somehow he didn’t get the idea that Preston was thinking back on good times. He looked to Ike more like someone who had lost something and couldn’t see the way to get it back. Maybe he was just tired, but Ike didn’t think that was all there was to it. And then it came to him what there was in the face, in the eyes that did not seem right, what he’d noticed that first day—a kind of desperate quality, almost as if Preston was afraid of something. And maybe that was what was wrong. Fear did not belong in that body any more than the eyes did. But there it was. Or perhaps it was only in Ike’s mind, a product of his overworked imagination, but he did not think so and he suddenly found himself wondering what Preston would think if he tried to tell him about that feeling, that certain time of day when the silence grows too great and it is as if the land itself is about to cry out. And though he did not tell him, because it did not really seem like the kind of thing you could put into words, he did not think that Preston would laugh as Ellen had done. He had this crazy notion that Preston would know. He flattened back out and watched the sky, cut by dark branches above his face. He closed his eyes and saw countless lines of waves moving toward him from a distant horizon and he waited for them to rock him to sleep.

•   •   •

Sometime in the night he woke with a start. He could not say what had disturbed him or how long he had slept. The fire had gone out; the ashes looked cold and dead in the moonlight. Ike sat up in his bag and looked around. Preston’s bag had been unrolled and lay on the ground maybe ten yards away, but Preston was not in it. Ike stared hard into the darkness that surrounded the camp. He listened, but there were only the sounds of the forest, the beating of his own heart. For a moment he felt something like panic rising in his chest. He lay back down, forced his breathing into a regular pattern. He was certain Preston would be back. Perhaps he had only gone to take a leak. He forced his eyes to close and at last he slipped into sleep once more. When he woke again, the sky was gray and Preston was asleep near the circle of ashes.

The second day passed much as the first: surf until late morning, sleep and eat in the afternoon, surf again at sunset. They saw cowboys again, this time from the water, a red pickup truck at the edge of the cliff. They paddled back around the point, out of sight, and waited until the truck had gone.

On the second afternoon, while Preston slept, Ike explored a section of trail they had passed on their way down to the beach. There was a place where the trail forked, one branch going down, the other up, toward what Ike guessed would be the edge of the cliff overlooking the point. He was not sure that Preston would approve of his looking around, but he did not plan to be gone for long and the trail was not anywhere near where they had seen the truck.

It was a warm afternoon. Insects sang in the brush. A light breeze whispered in the high grass and the hills seemed to move in the wind, to ripple as if they were alive. Wild mustard cut yellow slashes across great fields of green. He moved along the narrow trail, the ground hot against his bare feet where it was smooth and exposed to the sun, cool and damp where it wound beneath the twisted limbs of the squat dark trees that grew in clumps throughout the hills.

The trail did not go on for long and soon, emerging from a thicket of trees, he found himself in a large clearing at the edge of a cliff. He at first stepped into the clearing but then drew back among the trees. There was something unusual here, a sudden feeling that he had violated some private space. He stood in the shade and looked out at the circular patch of smooth hard-packed dirt. In the center of the clearing there was a stone ring. The smooth dirt, the slight rise of the ground, made it seem as if the earth rose here to cut a great half circle out of the sky. The stone ring was blackened with soot and ash. A series of strange symbols had been scratched into the stone and he was reminded of the fire rings beneath the cliffs, the graffiti of the inland gangs. Those rings, however, were made of concrete. This ring was made from individual stones, and as he inspected it more carefully he saw that the stones were held together with mortar, which in spots still had a rough, almost new look to it, as if the ring was of recent construction. Looking farther around the circle, he saw that along the far edge, closest to the cliff and the sea, there was also evidence of some recent digging—some kind of trench, with mounds of dark earth heaped to the side of it.

He stepped into the clearing once more, intent on examining this work in progress. As he did so, however, he happened to look back over his shoulder and discovered that he could once again see the house he’d glimpsed that first morning from the point. It was a better view from here, and he stood looking back at it, listening to the heat moving in the brush, the sound of the surf drifting up from the beaches below. The house was still very far away, but he could see windows and what appeared to be a balcony. And as he watched he became aware of a tiny speck moving on the balcony. A figure dressed in white? Yes, he was certain of it. There was a person there. He ducked quickly back into the trail, hoping he had not been visible to them as well. He waited for a few moments, listening to the surf below him. It was hard to see much from the trail, but he did not want to risk going back into the clearing now. At last he turned and started down, back toward the camp.

•   •   •

Preston was awake when he returned and Ike told him about the clearing. He told him about the house and the tiny figure in white. Preston listened, a scowl on his face, eyes turned toward the ground as he scratched circular lines with a pointed stick. “It’s been a long time since I was here last,” Preston said. “Things have changed. Maybe there are more people around now.”

Ike wondered how smart it was to stay. They had seen ranch hands both days now. There was someone in the house.

“Swell’s still good,” Preston said. “One more day. We’ll give it one more day.”

13

By the end of the third day, Ike felt that they had been there forever. His skin was burned dark and his hair was tangled with salt, streaked almost blond at the ends. His back and shoulders ached from the long paddles, but that plugged-in feeling had not deserted him. He felt alive in a new way, and more confident now than at any time he could remember. He still had occasional doubts about why they had come. Perhaps it was as simple as Preston had said: They had come for the waves.

The third day passed without incident. It was agreed that they would spend one more night, leave in the morning. Ike went to sleep quickly after eating; the last he saw of Preston, he was seated by the fire, a joint held to his lips, his dark hair loose, resting on his shoulders, so that he reminded Ike of certain airbrushed drawings he’d seen on the fuel tanks of bikes, the covers of magazines: the dark scowl beneath the long hair, the heavy tattooed shoulders and arms lit by the orange light of the fire. He looked like a figure out of some remote past, a slayer of dragons.

And once again, as had happened on the first night, Ike woke in the blackness to find that he was alone, the fire dead, Preston’s bag unrolled but empty. This time, however, Ike had the feeling that he had been disturbed, that there had been a sound. He strained his ears against the silence, the distant buzz of insects, the far-off crash of waves. Then he heard it again: the barking of a dog. He pulled himself out of his bag and stood in the center of the small clearing. He was uncertain about what to do. He put on sneakers and stepped to the edge of the camp, staring down the trail that led to the beach, that forked off toward the clearing. Could Preston have gone to check out the clearing for himself? Would it be foolish to leave the camp? A half-moon melted down on one side rested far above the trees. He heard the dog again. It would not take him long to reach the clearing. He had just started down the trail when suddenly there was a new sound: a voice. A man’s voice ripping the night. He began to run.

•   •   •

Somehow the trail seemed longer in the night. The branches often blocked what light there was and in one place he collided with a low branch that jutted across the trail. He turned his face at the last second and caught the blow across his jaw, driving the skin of his cheek into his teeth. The taste of blood crept into his mouth. He paused to rest, his hands on his knees, his head ringing. The voice came again. Was it the same voice? Or had this one come from behind him, cutting him off? He was uncertain. His head ached. He heard the dog again, a first voice and then a second, and suddenly the night seemed full of sounds, of violence. A light flashed somewhere among the trees that lay on the inland side of the trail, a single white spot jumping, appearing and disappearing, someone running. Ike put his head down and began to run once more, running now out of panic, afraid to cut back toward camp, his breath like flame. He ran up a steep section of trail he could not remember and suddenly he was back at the edge of the cliff, the clearing, and Preston was there, but he was not alone.

Preston was nearly facing Ike, the cliff edge at his back. And between Ike and Preston there was another man, a big man with a wide back and a huge head of black hair and there was one crazy moment in which Ike stood there, struck dumb, like a rabbit caught in a light, eyes wide and stupid, as he tried to remember where he had seen that back and hair before, then realizing it was the same back he had followed through the streets of Huntington Beach just three nights ago. And even as he stood there, remembering, making the connection, Terry Jacobs and Preston collided near the center of the empty space. There was a great dull thud, a cursing and groaning as the two men fell to one side. And then they were up, Jacobs bent at the waist, Preston holding him in a kind of headlock, one arm under Terry’s chin, trying to cut off air, the other across the back of his neck, Terry making huge efforts to break the hold. In one such effort he brought Preston completely off the ground, driving him against the stone ring. Preston’s back slapped against the stone with a heaviness that made Ike wince. But Preston did not let go and now Ike could see him pulling, arching his back, forcing that forearm up into Jacob’s throat. He could hear Jacobs gasping and spitting, fighting for air, and then he could hear something else as well: voices, on the trail now below him, and though it looked like Preston might win, it was all happening too slowly. There would not be time.