Tapping the Source (17 page)

Ike felt that he should respond but was not sure about what to say. “You said you’ve been with him just over a year?”

“Almost two.”

“But you’ve known him longer?”

“Not known him. I knew who he was. This town was different back when he and Hound owned the shop. I mean, everything was smaller. There was only one high school; everybody knew everybody else. I think I was in the seventh grade when Preston moved to Huntington, but I used to spend a lot of time at the beach. Most people who hung out around the beach knew who Hound and Preston were.”

Ike took a drink of beer and stared at a slice of moonlight on the glass.

“I remember the day he won that big contest, the nationals or whatever it was. I remember standing on the pier and watching. It’s strange to think back to that now. I haven’t thought of it in a long time. But I didn’t meet Preston until recently, maybe two years ago.” She stopped. “You don’t have to listen to this,” she said. “I can shut up.”

“No. I’m interested.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Ike watched her take another drink and then rest the bottle on her knee. “I haven’t drunk this much beer in a while,” she told him. “Not since the night I met Preston, maybe.” She seemed to find that amusing in a sad sort of way and smiled at the floor. “We met in a bar, that place that’s the punk club now. I can’t even remember what it was called then, the Beachcomber or something. I had just gotten out of the hospital and wasn’t supposed to be drinking, though; I remember that. I’d gotten pregnant that summer and it turned out to be a tubular pregnancy. I almost died. They wound up having to take everything out. Everything.” She said it in a flat voice, the bottle resting on her bare leg, the moonlight finding one side of her face. Ike had not turned on any lights; the room seemed better in the dark.

“Anyway,” she continued. “That was where I was at the summer Preston came home. I’d just done two years at a local J.C. I had been planning to apply to this photography school up north, and all of a sudden it was like everything was over. I mean, I just couldn’t see the point anymore. Then Preston showed up. He’d been gone for years. First the war, then jail. He came back like he is now. That’s the only way you have ever seen him, so it probably doesn’t mean that much to you, but nobody else could believe it. He was a different person, completely.” She paused and took a drink of beer.

“But I guess I saw us as having something in common,” she said. “At least that was how I felt at the beginning, like the whole thing was without hope.” She stopped for a moment and looked at Ike. “But that wasn’t it really, now that I’ve had time to think, to be with him. I mean, I don’t know if I can say it very well, but what was really going on was that I was looking at Preston and I was seeing this tragic figure, but I was seeing something else, too; I was still seeing that young guy on the beach holding a big silver trophy over his head, and somehow I was still trying to be the girl on the pier. That might sound stupid, but the thing is, I was working at something. I was really believing that if Preston and I loved each other we could help each other, we could get back some of what had been lost, both of us. But what I’ve begun to see in the last year is that I’m the only one working at it.” She stopped. “Preston doesn’t care,” she said slowly. “About anything. So maybe you can see why I was surprised when he started talking about taking this kid he had met up to the ranch. I mean, he acted like he really wanted to do it. I don’t know.” She stopped again and shook her head.

“What do you know about the ranch?”

“Nothing. Just what I told you in the truck.” Ike was staring at the wall, but he could feel her turning her face to look at him. “Do you think this, tonight, had something to do with what happened up there?”

Ike didn’t answer right away. For some reason, he was reluctant to tell her. He supposed, however, that she would find it out on her own sooner or later. Perhaps it was better that she hear it from him. It had all come to seem clear enough. Barbara had told him that Preston and Hound had been partners. Preston had told him that Hound Adams had friends with bucks. Certainly whoever owned the ranch had money. And Preston had not had to break down any fences—he’d had his own fucking key. It seemed plain that Preston once had free access to the ranch, and that now he was no longer welcome there. When he and Jacobs had run into each other, they’d fought over it. And that was how it had started. This afternoon, at the Club Tahiti, they’d met again, and they had ended it. As for Preston’s willingness to risk it—to take Ike there, he had evidently miscalculated. It was just as he’d said to Ike that day Ike had seen the figure in white from the clearing, he had not expected so many people to be around. Ike worked his way through these ideas now, with Barbara. She looked away from him as he spoke. When he was finished, she sat with her eyes closed, her forehead on the heel of her hand. “Assholes” was what she finally said.

They both sat in silence for some time after that, until Barbara said she had to use the head. Ike watched her cross the room. When she came back, she asked him if he was ready to go to sleep. He shrugged. “Whatever you want,” he said. She put a hand on his arm. “It’s okay,” she told him. “And thanks.”

•   •   •

It was a strange night. Ike let Barbara have the bed. He slept on the floor below it, but he slept fitfully, waking time and again to think that she had spoken to him, that she was awake. But each time he sat up to look, he found her asleep. And at last he slept himself, soundly, he supposed, because when he woke he found her already dressed and poking through the cupboard above what passed for his kitchen sink. “No coffee?” she asked.

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Come home with me and I’ll make us some.”

Though he did not much care for coffee, he said okay. It seemed like the right thing to do. He pulled on his shirt and they went down the steps. There was a heavy overcast outside. The air was cool and smelled of the sea. It felt earlier than he had first thought and on the drive to her house they passed only a couple of cars.

When they got to the duplexes, the first thing he noticed was Morris’s bike standing at the curb. Morris was just coming down the walkway as they pulled up and got out of the truck. Ike thought that Morris stared at him for a moment with some surprise, then he looked back at Barbara. “The only thing they got him on now is drunk and disorderly,” Morris said. “They want him on the knifing, but nobody seems to be talking. I didn’t see it myself. I was at the other end of the bar. Frank and Hound were right there, but they ain’t said a word to the pigs.” He shook his shaggy head. “I don’t know,” he said. He looked tired and hung over. The sun was starting to burn through the overcast and it was starting to turn sticky. Ike could see the lines of sweat making trails across Morris’s big greasy face. There was a moment of slightly awkward silence. “I was going to make some coffee,” Barbara said. “Do you want any, Morris?”

Morris shook his head. “Just come by to let you know what was goin’ on,” he said. “Just thought you might be interested.” Ike thought he noticed a slightly sarcastic tone in Morris’s voice and he was beginning to get the idea that Morris thought there was something funny about Ike and Barbara being together at this time of day. Morris stood for a moment longer, then turned and swaggered off in the direction of his bike. Ike watched him go, then walked the rest of the way to Barbara’s door. But all of a sudden he just felt too funny being there. He didn’t want to go inside. “I think I’ll skip it this time,” he said. “I should check with Morris, see if he needs any help at the shop.”

She shrugged. “Okay,” she said. “But thanks. I needed to be around someone last night, somebody I could trust.” Then she went inside and closed the door.

He ran back down the sidewalk to see if he could catch up with Morris. He was too late; Morris was already pulling away as Ike reached the street. Ike suddenly felt very grimy and tired, as if he hadn’t slept at all. He decided to skip the shop and walked instead back to the Sea View apartments. The mailman was just leaving as Ike got there and Ike found that there was a letter in his box. It was the first piece of mail he had gotten and it was from San Arco. He carried it up to his room and read it seated by the window. The letter was from Gordon. Ike recognized the big, familiar scrawl right away. Gordon had apparently written a couple of letters, one to Washington, D.C., and the other to the American embassy in Mexico. Apparently there were no records of an Ellen Tucker having been found, either dead or in jail. Gordon wasn’t sure what this meant, but he said he figured Ike might want to know. That was it; Gordon not being much for small talk. Near the bottom of the page he told Ike to take care of himself.

Ike read the letter several times. When he was done, he folded it, slipped it back into the torn envelope and placed it near the scrap of paper with the three names on it. After that he walked to the window and rested his fingertips against the glass. He looked toward the ugly line of buildings that hid the sea and he imagined her here, in this town, walking the streets he walked now, seeing the same things, and thinking … what? He might have guessed that once. Because they were so alike then. It had been in fact one of their games—guessing what the other was thinking. Only it was somehow more than guessing, it was knowing and it was a special thing. He thought, as he had so many times before, how things had changed after that night on the flats. And how, when she’d left for the last time without bothering to say good-bye, he had by chance come to the front of the market and seen her go, in broad daylight, a ragged suitcase at the end of one arm, sun-bleached denims and red boots wading into those ribbons of dust and heat while he’d stood there on Gordon’s sagging porch, scared shitless of the loneliness to come.

He stood for a long time by the window, his fingers against the glass until the glass had gone warm and moist beneath them. He was struck by a sense of something he could not quite articulate. But it was connected to the way he had once felt in the desert, with Ellen, that he had helped to set something in motion—a chain of events he was linked to but unable to control. And it was like that again now, he thought, here, and he knew that Gordon’s letter had changed nothing, that he would not do as Preston had asked. He was reminded of those desert windstorms, a whirlwind kicked across the desert floor, only he could not say if the storm was outside himself, pulling him in, or inside himself driving him forward, just that he was locked in and that there was suddenly something more at stake here than his search for his sister. He could see that now for the first time. It was not only Ellen Tucker he pursued. It was himself as well. He stared out the window, across the small yard toward the ragged skyline of Huntington Beach, hearing once more in the dark recesses of his own mind the high electric whine of those neon letters above the Club Tahiti. And he saw again that dark stare he had been unable to meet.

PART II

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