Tapping the Source (16 page)

“The Trax Ranch. Sure. The place has been there forever. I remember guys going up to surf when I was in school. You had to sneak in or something. I didn’t know people still went, though, until I heard Preston talk about it the other day.” She paused and looked at him. “I was real surprised, I’m not sure how to say this, but it made me curious to get a look at you. I mean, no one has gotten Preston out on a board in a long time. And he seemed hot to go.” She stopped again and shook her head. “I might have known something would fuck it up.”

Ike squirmed at the edge of his seat. He watched a couple of small blackbirds pecking away at the Sea View’s lawn. “It wasn’t his fault,” he said again. He thought about asking her something else about the ranch, but then thought better of it. Perhaps it would be better to wait until he had talked again to Preston.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to keep you.”

Ike stepped out of the truck. He felt that there should be something more to say, but nothing came to mind. “It’s all right,” he said. “And thanks for the ride.”

She nodded. “Maybe you can get him to go surfing again,” she said. “It would be nice to see him get interested in something besides his bike. He used to be hot, you know.”

“He’s still pretty good, I was watching him at the ranch.”

“Yeah, but I mean really good. He used to win contests. He used to own that surf shop on Main Street. He ever tell you that?”

“No, he didn’t.”

She shrugged. “He wouldn’t. He never tells anybody anything. But he did own the shop, he and Hound Adams.”

Ike blinked back into the cab of the truck. He felt a little like he did that first day he hit town, as if the sunlight were going right through him, as if he were in danger of disappearing. “Preston and Hound Adams?” He repeated the names slowly, wanting to make sure he had heard correctly. Apparently Preston had not told her why he was in town, or about the scrap of paper with the names on it.

“The first of the local surf heros,” she said. “Come by sometime and I’ll show you his scrapbook.” She stopped to look at him. “But listen, I know you’re beat. Just come by, okay?” She pushed in the clutch and put the truck in gear.

“Okay,” he said. “I will.” He stood at the curb and watched her drive away. Going up the stairs was hard work. Once back in his room, he lay down on the bed, but he couldn’t stop thinking about what Barbara had said, and when he closed his eyes he was back at the ranch, the weight of that rock pulling at his hands, wondering all over again what it had been about.

15

Three days later he still did not know what it was about and he had seen nothing of Preston. It was late afternoon, hot but with a good breeze coming off the ocean. Ike was sitting on the porch of the Sea View and talking to the two girls, the short brunette and the tall blonde who had once come to his room looking for papers. Their names were Jill and Michelle, and now that Ike had grown his hair out and went surfing with the likes of Preston, he assumed that he looked less like a jarhead and was consequently a more acceptable person to be seen talking to. Conversation with Michelle and Jill was a little thin, however. They mainly seemed interested in meeting cute guys and scoring dope. Ike suspected they were sharing a brain. Still, he was mildly intrigued by Michelle, the blonde he had spoken to that day he bought the board. For one thing, she had these very long sexy legs, and he liked how she smiled at him, always meeting his eyes with her own. Her eyes were green, flecked with yellow, and there was a dark mark on one eye which she told him had come from getting hit with a stick when she was small. But of even more interest to Ike was the fact that both Jill and Michelle knew Hound Adams, or at least knew who he was. They knew, for instance, that he was a dealer. They also knew where he lived. They were both runaways, in town, as it turned out, only a few weeks longer than Ike himself, but they seemed to have gotten around. They had in fact already been to one party at Hound Adams’s house, where they were fairly certain Hound had given Michelle the eye. It was a source of endless speculation between them and they seemed to thrive on an audience. Ike was more than happy to oblige. He had learned more about Hound Adams from Jill and Michelle in only a few minutes of casual conversation than he had learned from Preston after days of prying. And with them it had all been accidental; he had just happened to be standing there when Jill mentioned the name. The ease with which the rest had come about was fairly mind-boggling. And there was even now the fair chance that when Hound Adams gave his next party, Jill and Michelle would be invited, that Ike might come as well. He was determined to go if he got the chance. And so that was what he was doing the afternoon of the fight, providing an audience for Jill and Michelle, and fishing for more information.

He heard Preston’s truck before he actually saw it. He heard the gears grinding and the tires sliding. He looked up to find it skidding to a stop in front of the Sea View. Then it lurched forward a little bit; the engine died, and Barbara got out. She came running toward him across the grass. She looked white and scared. “Preston’s been in a fight,” she said. “Downtown.” She sounded out of breath. “I didn’t want to go down by myself.

“Morris called,” she said as they got back into the truck. “He’s been in a fight with a knife or something and the cops are there already.” She was halfway crying and Ike was afraid she was going to run into something. She blew the stop sign at Main and finally parked out in front of some beer bar called the Club Tahiti.

There was a crowd on the sidewalk. Two police cars sat in the street and in the distance they could hear the growing wail of a siren. Barbara jumped out of the truck and ran into the crowd. Ike followed. He felt scared and useless. For a moment he lost sight of Barbara. When he spotted her, she had pushed her way through most of the crowd and was standing near the door, where a cop had grabbed her by the arm. Ike pushed his way to her and managed to get her other arm. The cop was telling her she had to stay outside. “It’s all right,” Ike said. He tried to say it loud so the cop would hear him too. He put his arm around Barbara’s shoulders. The cop let go and turned back toward the door. Ike could feel her trembling against him.

Later he would remember being aware of a lot of things at once. He was aware of his own legs shaking beneath him, of the sour feeling at the pit of his stomach, of the feeling of dread, and yet at the same time he was acutely aware of Barbara at his side, of the cool smoothness of her thigh as she pressed against him, of the scent of her hair. And then there was more commotion from inside and suddenly he could see Preston’s head. There was a helmeted cop on either side of him and they all seemed to jostle one another as they came through the doors. Ike could see Preston’s face was bleeding again around his still discolored eye. He had on his tank top and jeans, but the shades were gone. His hands were cuffed behind him. Ike and Barbara were pushed aside as the small group exited the bar. Preston passed within a few feet of them, but he did not turn his head; his eyes seemed pointed straight ahead and slightly skyward. Ike did not know if he’d seen them or not.

The siren was piercing now and was mixed with the squeal of tires as an ambulance pulled up into the middle of Main Street. The sun dipped behind the buildings. The breeze picked up and there was a patch of late afternoon fog rolling up the sidewalks from the ocean. The crowd had swollen, though Ike and Barbara were in the front now, part of the semicircle at the door. A couple of medics pushed past them into the bar. For a moment the door stood open, but it was too dark to see much inside. The cool stale odors of spilt beer and tobacco drifted outside. Ike was able to make out the colored lights of a jukebox, the corner of a pool table, a number of dark figures scurrying about, and then the door closed in their faces. It was a heavy wooden door, scarred and beaten. A small sign up near the top said NO ONE UNDER 21 ALLOWED.

For a while nothing happened. Ike could hear the crowd milling and murmuring around him. He could feel Barbara still trembling at his side. He did not know why they were still standing there, really. He’d looked once out toward the street, but Preston was lost somewhere on the other side of the crowd. He’d seen the red light of a police car start off down Main, however, and suspected they had already taken Preston away. But it was hard to move back through the crowd and so they waited with the others. Behind them he could hear more cops working to disperse the people. The crowd was mainly kids off the street, people on their way home from the beaches, a few bikers. People stood around holding beach towels and canvas backrests. Many were barefoot and bare-chested. Ike and Barbara were beginning to move back when the door swung open once more. This time it stayed open and people began to come outside. The first person through the door was Morris. He had a cop on one arm and looked at Ike and Barbara once, shook his head as if to say it was bad, and then moved away. Next came the medics. They were bent low and moving quickly. Between them was a stretcher and suspended over it Ike could see a bottle of liquid. The hum of the crowd picked up and people pushed back for a look and the cops shouted for them to clear a path. A cop pushed Ike in the chest, shoving him back into the crowd as the stretcher flashed by, but he’d seen enough to know who it was. He’d seen the great black puffball of Terry Jacobs’s head as it made a fierce contrast with the whiteness of the sheets and the coats of the medics, and they were gone, and the cops were breaking up the crowd and all around him Ike could pick up bits and pieces of conversation. “He’s cut bad, man …” someone said, and Ike looked back once more toward the still open door. Several more people walked outside and among them Ike recognized another face: sharp straight lines cut out of rock. Straight nose and mouth. Eyes set deep and a bit too close together, dark and quick, blond hair pulled back into a ponytail, stretching that tanned skin, pulling it over the bones until it was too tight somehow. And he was tall, too, so the face was above most of the others around it, not as tall as Preston, and not as wide, but lean the way a good light heavyweight is lean.

Hound Adams stood framed for a moment in the doorway and then stepped onto the sidewalk. Several people at once seemed to be trying to talk to him, but he was ignoring them, staring past them into the crowd after his friend. Ike could not make out what they were saying. He still had Barbara at his side. He was holding her hand and knew without looking that she was weeping. Suddenly one of Hound’s friends started away from him and Ike saw Hound’s hand reach out to grab the guy by the arm. His words were harsh and clear. “Keep your motherfucking mouth shut,” he said. “I want his ass on the street.” Ike could not hear much more. “But he jumped bad on him,” someone said, and Hound called for quiet. Ike strained to get closer, to hear more. He could feel Barbara pulling at his arm and then it was like he was aware of someone looking at him and he turned his head.

Hound Adams was standing with his back to the dirty brick wall. The fog was sweeping up through the streets and above them the purple letters of the Club Tahiti had begun to buzz. For a moment their eyes met; Ike met Hound Adams’s stare with his own. But it was only for an instant, and it was Ike who looked away, back into the crowded street.

16

Barbara did not want to go home, and she did not want to be alone. On the way back to the Sea View they picked up a six-pack of beer. The drank it seated on the floor of Ike’s room, their backs against the bed. Actually Barbara drank most of it. Ike had two beers and Barbara drank the other four. “You know the funny thing,” she said. “When I first moved in with Preston, I thought I was without hope; I mean, my life was pretty screwed up then. But I’m not. That’s what I’ve learned, living with Preston. Preston is without hope. I’m not. It took a while, but I’m beginning to understand that.”