Tapping the Source (35 page)

The figure was little more than a black shape silhouetted against the yellow background formed by the open door. But it was immediately recognizable as Preston. No one else was quite that big, or stood in just that way. He seemed to be dressed in the same bulky army jacket that Ike had seen him in on the street, and there looked to be the same cap on his head. The elevation of the yard, the height of the step, the way in which he was silhouetted in the light of the hall, all conspired to make him look somehow even bigger than he was, a dark shadow rising above them out of the shadow of the building. It was a strange moment, a moment frozen in time, in which the two men did not speak but stared at each other across the ragged lawn. It was Hound Adams who at last broke the spell. He turned to close the trunk lid, then walked to his door. He looked once more at Preston across the roof of the car, then got in and drove away.

•   •   •

Ike did not know what to expect as he walked across the lawn. He stopped short of the step. Preston was leaning on a doorjamb now, hands pushed down into the deep pockets of the coat. It was too dark to make out the expression on Preston’s face. “Stash your gear,” Preston told him. His voice sounded steady and sober. “I’ve got something I want you to see.”

•   •   •

It was late and the streets of the residential section were quiet. Preston did not speak again. He walked quickly, his heavy boots ringing on the pavement, and Ike had to work to keep up. They cut across Main Street and into an alley and Ike did not have to ask where they were headed. He could see a light burning in front of the shop and then he spotted the dark shape of Morris propped against a telephone pole near the gravel entrance.

Morris said nothing, but fell in behind them as they walked toward the shed, and the night was full of the sound that boots make sinking into gravel. Preston pushed the door open with his foot and they stepped inside, Preston first, then Ike and Morris.

The shed was small. There was a dirt floor and in the middle of the floor there was a bike. It was not a chopper, not even a Harley, but a BSA Lightning Rocket. It was nearly a stock machine, but not quite. Some lettering had been removed, the tanks lacquered and rubbed out until they sparkled like dark jewels, a kind of gunmetal gray, in the light of the small shed.

“I wanted you to see it,” Preston told him. “What do you think?”

“It’s all right. He did a good job.”

“All right, my ass,” Morris said from behind them. “That’s a bad motherfucker.” And it was—a bike capable of a hundred and twenty plus off the showroom floor. Ike shook his head, walking around the machine for a better look, and getting a better look at Preston now, too. He looked better than the last time Ike had seen him. At least he was relatively sober, and he was on his feet. But there was still a certain wildness about the way those pale eyes had retreated into the dark face. And there was also an abruptness of manner, a hyper quality in the way Preston carried himself, that Ike had not seen before. He did not stand in one place but paced back and forth, from one end of the shop to the other. “I want you to listen to it,” he said. “Check it out.”

“Shit, man, I checked it out,” Morris said. “What do you want?”

“I want him to hear it. I want it right.”

Morris had been standing by the door. He now took a couple of steps toward Ike. “Man, you’re crazy. I should waste the little fucker right now.”

Preston stopped pacing and looked at Morris across the machine. “Forget it. I want him to hear it.”

“But he’s with them. He was with Hound and the Samoan on the lot. I want his skinny ass, Prez.”

Morris was looking at Ike as he spoke, a sort of glazed, hungry look creeping over his features—almost as if he was working himself into some trance, and Ike had to wonder if Preston would be able to stop him even if he wanted to, in his weakened condition. Ike took his hands out of his pockets and let them fall against his sides, a gesture that was not lost on Morris. “Oh, look at this,” Morris said, his voice coming out of a sneer. “He’s ready for it this time. Look at him, the little scumbag. I bet he’s pissin’ his pants right now.” He chuckled. “Come on, queer bait, let’s see your moves.” Morris took a quick step forward and swung, a kind of openhanded roundhouse designed to rupture Ike’s eardrum. But Ike was ready for it this time, after a fashion. He’d never been in a real fistfight in his life, but Gordon had once bought him a pair of gloves and had spent some time knocking him around in back of the market, trying to show him a few things. One of the things Gordon had taught him was that a lot of guys carry their right too low when they throw a left, and that if you come up under it, hooking, you can often land a good punch. And that was what Ike did. He wasn’t exactly sure why. He knew he hadn’t a prayer of winning a fight with Morris, that he would be smarter to let it end quickly, but there was just something about that fat, greasy face, the half sneer, the memory of lying on the sidewalk in front of that beer joint swallowing his own blood. He stepped under the blow and hooked for all he was worth, throwing it off his hip the way Gordon had taught him, what Gordon would have called hooking from the ankles, and he felt the punch land with a sharp pain and jolt that ran clear up his arm and into his shoulder.

Morris just grinned at him. But he stopped coming forward and looked at him for a moment. “How do you like that?” he asked. “The little pussy’s gone and got himself some balls.” Then he reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a set of pliers. “Let’s see how he likes it when I pinch them off.” His laughter rang in the shed, but Preston was around the bike now and his voice was a low snarl.

“I said drop it. You’re not gonna bust him again.”

“Fuck that, man. I want him. You can see he’s beggin’ for it. I want his ass so bad I can fuckin’ taste it.”

Ike stood his ground. He still had his hands up the way Gordon had taught him and he was staring over them into Morris’s hungry grin.

It looked as if Morris were set to come after him once more when Preston suddenly shot out a hand, thumping Morris square in the chest and knocking him backward so he had to backpedal quickly to retain his balance, and Ike was once again surprised at Preston’s strength, in spite of what he had been through.

“I’m warning you, Morris. You fuck with me right now and I’ll tear your goddamn throat out.”

For a moment the two men stood facing each other, Preston’s gloved hand still pressed against Morris’s chest. Suddenly, though, Morris spun away and threw the pliers. He threw them more or less in Ike’s direction, but the throw was high and they crashed into the sheet-metal wall. Morris went to the door and stood looking into the blackness outside. “All right,” he said. “But get that little cocksucker outta my sight.”

Preston laughed. He threw back his head and his laughter had a crazy sound to it. He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and walked to the bike, swung himself on and looked at Ike. “Come on,” he said. “Get on.”

Ike stood staring into the six hundred and fifty cubic inches of death and destruction. It was not the kind of bike you wanted to climb on behind just anybody. But with a half-crazy alcoholic with crippled hands … Morris turned from the door and smiled and Ike could see that he picked up perfectly on what Ike was thinking. There were two choices: a ride with Preston. Further conversation with Morris. Ike got on the bike. He found a certain sense of satisfaction, however, in noticing the mouse that had risen beneath Morris’s eye. Gordon would have been proud.

Preston kicked the bike to life and the roar of that power-jumped engine threatened to blow the tin walls of the shed into the sea. Ike put his arms around Preston’s waist. He stared into a set of broad shoulders covered in green army cloth and he noticed the same slightly medicinal scent he’d first detected in Preston’s apartment. Preston pulled the beret down tighter on his head and walked the bike to the door where Morris stood waiting. “ ‘Behold a pale horse,’” Preston croaked above the roar of the engine. “ ‘And his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.’” Then he laughed and hooted into the blackness and they were off into the night, ripping the backside of surf city, carving turns out of empty streets, finding the Coast Highway, where they blew past a string of low riders like they were standing still.

•   •   •

They must have been halfway through the oil fields before Preston, taking it all the way out in every gear, jammed it into high. There was nothing for Ike to do but hang on, to think about sand and curves, and he figured that at least at this speed death would come quickly. They found it somewhere on the north side of the oil fields, that place bikers called the edge, and it was black and hollow and silent because the roar of the engine was lost behind them, a memory on the wind.

Then they stopped. They found the edge and left it, stopped at the side of the highway, where the air was warm and the night smelled faintly of tar and machinery and the sea. It was very dark here. The only lights in sight were the distant yellow dots of the offshore rigs, caught between a black ocean and a starless sky. The sound of waves they could not see echoed from the beaches somewhere below them.

They stood on a hard-packed dirt shoulder and Ike tried to adjust to the sensation of stillness. Preston seemed filled with a jumpy enthusiasm, as if the speed of the ride had blown some spark of life back into him. “Hey, what about it, ace?” Preston wanted to know. “Runs like a champ. Right? I shit you not.” Preston seemed to find that phrase amusing and repeated it again, cackling to himself as he paced the dirt. He stopped long enough to pull a bottle from his jacket, and took a long drink. He passed the bottle to Ike and Ike drank too. Tequila, burning all the way down, heating up the night, and somehow, though he had not been glad to see the bottle, he was no longer scared. It was as if his fear had been blown away, lost somewhere with the roar of the engine. He even felt a rather bizarre sense of elation of his own that he supposed only a trip to the very edge could bring. So he stood there, passing the bottle, talking engines and speed, letting the tequila burn away any residue of fear that might have lingered in his guts.

It was too late for questions. He knew that now, at the side of a dark road; he knew he would not ask Preston again about the trip to the ranch, or about Terry Jacobs, or Hound Adams. It was past, and Preston, this Preston, was not the same one who had taken him to the ranch, who had wanted to show him what it could be like. Ike suspected that Preston had been fading for a long time, that the beating in the shop, the operation, the steel plate, were final nails in the coffin, and that whomever Ike had once sat talking to by a campfire at the end of one perfect day had passed away and now there was only this stranger, and the ride back to town.

•   •   •

Preston left him at the curb in front of the Sea View apartments. It was hard to believe that only a couple of hours had passed since he stood here last, with Michelle and Hound Adams.

“I want to tell you one thing,” Preston said as Ike stood waiting. “That time Morris dumped you. I was wrong to let that happen. You were my partner, man. And I never stood back and let a partner get dumped on like that before. I was kind of hoping it would scare your skinny ass out of town. But I was wrong to let it happen.”

“You were right,” Ike said, his voice sounding too loud and hurried. “I should’ve gone. But it’s Michelle, now.” He suddenly felt that perhaps he had been wrong out on the road, that he could talk, tell Preston everything. He wanted to tell someone, but it was hard to know where to begin. “Michelle’s my girl,” he said. “Was my girl. Now she wants to go to Mexico with Hound Adams and Milo Trax… .” But something made him stop short. He saw that Preston was not really listening, that he was only nodding, and that there was this very distant look on his face, as if what Ike had to say was all beside the point somehow.

When Ike stopped talking, Preston looked at him. “I was wrong,” he said again. “I owe you one, Jack. And you’re looking at a dude who pays his debts.” And then he was gone, the big engine spitting fire into the night, and Ike wondered if there had ever been a time, even in the emptiness of the desert, when he had felt so alone.

•   •   •

He saw Preston once more that week. It was the night before he was supposed to go to the ranch. He could not sleep and he was walking, down along the Coast Highway, past the old tattoo parlor, and that was where he saw Preston. It was very late and all the other stores along the highway were closed, but Ike saw this yellow light coming out of the shop, spreading across the sidewalk, and he stopped to look through the greasy glass as those punk chicks had once stopped to look at him. And he saw with a start the heavy black boots and ragged, fingerless hands hanging from the sides of the chair. Preston was tilted back and staring at the ceiling. The old man was bent over him, his thick back bowed as he concentrated on his work. And he seemed to work very slowly, and it was different somehow from the way he had worked on Ike. He was not sure exactly what the difference was, or what it meant, only that he was not supposed to see it, and he stepped back into the shadows. He thought about waiting for Preston to come out, doubting once again the conclusions he had reached at the side of the highway. But he did not wait. For some crazy reason his teeth had begun to chatter and he hurried back to his room through the streets of Huntington Beach, which he could no longer quite see as part of some smoothly running machine, but which instead had become a labyrinth, a dark maze from which he feared there was no escape.