The Dogs of Winter (6 page)

Fletcher himself viewed the operation with a kind of horrified fascination.

“Fool had to sign a waiver when he had it done,” Martin told him. “The thing never works again, he can’t sue.”

“When does he get to find out?” Fletcher asked.

“Check this,” Martin said. “The fucker can’t have sexual intercourse for nine months.” The kid laughed and shook his head, as if the idea were unimaginable. Fletcher feigned incredulity as well, but, in fact, the idea was not unimaginable at all. He had about a six-month run of celibacy going himself, though it was not something he would have ever admitted to the likes of Sonny Martin.

“Women weaken legs,” Robbie Jones said. He stuffed the bloody organ into his pants, and swaggered out of the bathroom in search of food.

Half an hour later saw Martin and Jones well into a serious soup-eating contest. They had discovered “The Traveler’s Special”—burgers and all the split-pea soup one could guzzle. They were currently on bowl number seven, with no end in sight and the waitress getting nastier by the bowl.

The waitress was a plump blonde with glasses and the kind of beehive hairdo Fletcher had not seen in his end of the state in fifteen years. At bowl number eight, she ventured to tell Robbie Jones that he reminded her of Beltar, the cone-headed alien from the
Saturday Night Live
television show.

“She means the one into mass consumption,” Martin said. He turned his bloodshot eyes on the waitress, wiped a trail of split-pea soup from his chin, and grinned.

The waitress placed a hand on her ample hip. “That’s the one,” she said.

“Hey, baby,” Robbie Jones said. He said it without looking up, still focused on the bowl of soup before him. “I did it for your precious love.”

The waitress grimaced and started away.

“Oh, hey.” It was Sonny Martin who called to her. “Miss. You want to bring us some more of those crackers? These are all gone.” He
held up a small wicker basket from which a few crumbs tumbled to the tabletop.

The waitress kept walking, her nylons rubbing together with an audible swishing noise which brought a smile to the face of Sonny Martin.

Fletcher addressed his food.

“So, Doctor,” Sonny said. “Did Harmon really throw some bouncer out of the Biltmore in Waikiki?”

It was the first any of them had spoken directly of either Drew Harmon or the wave they intended to ride. Fletcher looked at the youth seated opposite him in the green Naugahyde booth. “He did,” Fletcher said.

Sonny looked at him with some wonder. “That fucker’s what, twelve, fifteen stories . . .”

“Actually, he didn’t throw the guy off the top.”

“I thought it was the observation lounge.”

“They called it that. It was really just this patio area off to one side.”

Sonny looked disappointed.

“The thing was still a couple of stories up there,” Fletcher pointed out. “There was a pool below it and Harmon managed to hit the thing with him.”

But the light had gone out of Sonny’s eyes and he’d gone back to his soup. Fletcher supposed that anything short of twelve stories would simply not suffice. The kid had seen too many movies. He had become a sophisticate.

“I saw that guy in the water once,” Robbie said. “It was about my first trip to the islands. He was still there. It was the year he rode Himalayas for the first time. He was paddling in from some place. I don’t even know where. The Bay was happening and he had been out someplace else and he was paddling back in. He went for this wave and some guy snaked him. Didn’t know who it was, I guess.”

“Wha’d he do?” Sonny asked.

“He waited for the guy to paddle back out, knocked the fucker off his board, and broke off all the guy’s fins with the heel of his hand.”

Sonny Martin laughed. “All-right!” he said.

Robbie Jones chewed thoughtfully on the last of his burger, then addressed himself to Fletcher. “How you gonna shoot this place?” he asked.

“Harmon told Peters there would be a boat.”

“What kind of boat?” Sonny asked.

“Peters didn’t say. He just said there would be a boat.”

“Yeah, well, that would be okay with me,” Sonny said. He looked at Robbie.

“Be okay with me too. But I’m not so sure you can believe the fucker.”

“Why’s that?”

“ ’Cause Harmon’s known as something of a bullshit artist, isn’t he?” The boy was looking at Fletcher.

“He’s been known to fuck with people now and then. But I would suggest you don’t say that to his face.”

Robbie sneered at him around a mouthful of food. “There’s not a boat, you’re in deep shit, aren’t you, Doc?”

In truth, that was exactly what he was in, but he was reluctant to discuss it with Robbie Jones. “No boat, I’ll have to paddle out and shoot it from a board.”

“Tricky,” Robbie said. “You gonna double check your film this time?”

“Don’t worry,” Fletcher told him. “I got you covered.” At which point he left them to their gruel and went outside. He made for a phone booth he’d seen in the parking lot.

A stiff wind whipped at his clothing. It came as a welcome relief after the murky restaurant with its stench of recycled air and fried foods. He found the sun already in the western half of the sky, the shadows lengthening upon the asphalt, the cars aglow in reflected light.

He stood in the booth which was open on one side. He stood with the wind in his face and dialed the harbor patrol in Crescent City. The outside buoys, he was told, were showing at seventeen feet with fifteen-second intervals. Small-craft warnings had been posted from the mouth of the sound to Mendocino Point. It was going to be a big one, and it was on the way.

•  •  •

Having little desire to return to the restaurant, Fletcher elected to wait out the soup-eating contest in the van. He swallowed a pill and got out his old road atlas, opening it to a map of Northern
California. One could see at once why the place they sought had proven so elusive over the years, for it was situated somewhere at the edge of a large extant of land which swept gracefully into the Pacific. The northern reaches of this expanse were colored in green to indicate national parkland. Much of the coast, beginning in the north at a point called Neah Heads, was colored in pink, as were the banks of the big river which spilled into the sea near the southern end, and these were named as three distinct reservations—the Hupa, the Yurok, and the Tolowan. As for the rest of it, there were simply great expanses of white—public lands, uncut by roads, empty save for the two black dots near the southern end, south of the big river. Of these, one was the state correctional facility at Scorpion Bay, the other, the tiny town of Sweet Home.

The face which this piece of land presented to the sea was craggy and broken. The possibilities for surf were obvious. Most inviting, however, was a long, narrow point ending in something resembling a foot. It was the westernmost tip of the westernmost section of coast the state of California had to offer. A wide, natural bay ran back along the instep of the foot, and one might well imagine a large north swell hitting somewhere along the heel then running down the sole to break upon the bay. Fletcher took this configuration as what his book had called the Devil’s Hoof, though on the map it was named as Humaliwu and colored in pink.

The town of Sweet Home maintained its lonely vigil over this land from the edge of a small harbor situated very near the mouth of the Klamath River but some miles south of the long point. All in all, it seemed to Fletcher a wild and lonesome enough place, home no doubt to eccentric pot farmers and Big Foot, the beast. And now home to Drew Harmon as well, if the man was not just fucking with them, if there was really a wave there to interest him. If there was, Fletcher sincerely hoped that he’d found a boat to go with it.

•  •  •

Fletcher had put away the map and was checking his film when Sonny Martin and Robbie Jones exited the restaurant.

“Thirteen bowls,” Martin said.

“Two full cartons of soda crackers,” Jones added.

“Only one drawback,” Fletcher pointed out.

“What’s that?”

“Stuff will give you gas.”

Sonny Martin just looked at him.

“What he means,” Robbie Jones said, “is the stuff will make you fart.”

Martin offered Fletcher one of his glazed smiles. “No way,” he said.

Fletcher sighed. He was already behind the wheel when Sonny Martin spoke to him again. “Yo, Doctor,” Sonny said. “Looks like your ride just sprang a leak, man.”

Fletcher wanted to believe that he had not heard this correctly. He looked into his side mirror. He could see both of them back there. Robbie had gotten to his knees and Fletcher could see the boy’s bald head pointed in his direction like some giant, flesh-colored dildo.

“He’s right,” Robbie called. “Shit. I knew we shoulda had a rental.”

Fletcher got out and looked beneath the old Dodge. What he saw was a huge puddle of water from which a tributary of modest proportions ran a short distance to the right before dribbling into some kind of drain. Had the lot been angled in the opposite direction, Fletcher might have seen the water when he walked out of the restaurant. Not that it would have made much difference. He would have been spared the boy’s commentary, was all.

At last, Fletcher straightened and looked around. There was a Union 76 station about a quarter mile away, near the freeway on-ramp. With luck, the van would need nothing more than a hose, the station would have one. He said as much to the boys. Sonny was already in the back, supine on a board bag. Robbie had gotten a wrist rocket from one of his packs and was looking around for something to shoot. “Yeah, right,” he said.

Fletcher started toward the station. He went among the more fortunate vehicles of the other patrons, past gleaming Winnebagos and Kings of the Road replete with radar screens and television antennas and lawn chairs and bicycles strapped to their roofs. He
passed an outdoor fruit stand where snow birds dressed for golf clamored for fresh strawberries and the scent of newly picked peaches was heavy on the fall air. It was an uphill walk, and he moved as if on a collision course with an enormous sun before whose face a patchwork of vaporous cloud had already begun to spread. The clouds rose from the coastal range that skirted the freeway to the west. They spilled over the crests of the ridges and sank among the canyons and lent blue shadows to the folds of the hills, where Fletcher took them as some advance column of the storm they had come to track.

B
etween her seventh and tenth years, Kendra’s father had taken her to seances and there were times when she believed that she had picked up something at one of them. It occurred to her, on the morning in question, that the something was in the room with her. The realization startled her and she woke from an unsound sleep. Upon waking she found it gone. There was only a troubling shadow across one part of the room that she did not care to look at, and not till the shadow had dissipated entirely, she knew from experience, would she feel it safe to get out of bed.

She was still waiting it out when the telephone began to ring. She rose with some trepidation. The shadow retreated before her, gathered itself into a small dark place at that point where the walls and floor all joined, and remained there, a stain upon the morning. Kendra lifted the receiver and placed it to her ear.

“Jesus H. Christ, don’t tell me, you’re sleeping days again.”

Kendra recognized the voice as that of Pam, the cook from
Cassady’s. Pam was one of the few people with whom Kendra had become friendly since moving to Sweet Home. Pam was a part-time cook, a part-time bluegrass musician, a dart enthusiast, and a New Age witch.

Kendra looked at her clock. To her dismay she found that it was two o’clock in the afternoon. “Apparently,” she said. In fact, she had spent the night with Travis’s books, with sorcerers and shamans, and retired with the dawn. She could hear the other woman laughing. Kendra stared from the small window above the sink in her kitchen. Beyond it lay the fog, making even the potted plants on the deck difficult to see. Beyond the deck were the trees. But she could not really see the trees. Just a dark place in the fog. The sight of the afternoon displeased her and she looked away.

“Well,” Pam said, “I guess maybe I don’t blame you. I lived in the death coach, I would probably stay up all night and sleep all day too.”

“You’ve already got the stay-up-all-night part down.”

Pam whinnied, then coughed loudly into the phone. “You got that right,” she said.

Kendra said nothing. She looked once more into the fog. Upon reflection, she supposed Pam was calling to tell her about her gig at Bodine’s.

“So,” Pam said. “You going to be at Bodine’s tomorrow? Or are you going to sit up all night and pitch the cork for the cat?”

Kendra tried for a moment to think of something clever to say, but nothing came to mind. In the end she simply said she would be there. “Be there or be square,” Pam told her.

•  •  •

When Kendra had replaced the phone she went rather unsteadily to the sink. Drawing water for tea, she saw the note Drew had left for her the day before, reminding her to get butane for the trailer. They were already on the last tank and the little red flag at the top indicating the tank was nearly empty had begun to show two days ago. The note was damp and stained and stuck to the drain board, almost lost amid the clutter of soiled dishes.

Above the sink, she saw that Drew had taped one of his weather
charts to a cabinet door. She found the charts unreadable, a grid of swirling lines and tiny numbers. Drew cut them from the paper. He often photocopied them and made marks on them. The one before her had a series of small red lines drawn across the humps of several isobars. At least she thought they were isobars. One could never be sure. She could, however, interpret the red marks. The marks meant Drew had found something to interest him. They meant he was tracking a storm. It might mean that they would have company as well, for she knew that Drew had been talking to some people from a magazine. There were going to be visitors, a photographer, professional surfers. Kendra found the whole thing vaguely distasteful.