Kem Nunn - Tapping the Source

Ike didn’t say anything right away. Preston picked up a stick and began poking the fire with it. “There’s another thing, too,” he said. “One more thing just in case you haven’t thought of it yourself—then I’ll shut up. You said your sister ran away. So if she ran away, how do you even know she would want you out looking for her? It’s a loser, man, all the way around. Either your sister’s out there someplace, on her own, and doesn’t want you along, or she’s dead and there’s damn little you can do about it. I realize it’s a bummer, but that’s the way I see it. And either way, if your sister’s not in Huntington Beach, then what the hell is? I mean, H.B.’s a damn sewer, man, you hang out in it long enough and you might just drown in it.

“You see what I’m trying to tell you? I’m not trying to sound like your old man; I’m just trying to run something down for you.” Preston had managed by this time to catch the end of the stick on fire and he had begun to play with it, seeing how close he could hold his hand to the flame. “Look,” he said, after a few moments of singeing his palm. “The smartest fucking thing you could do would just be to split. You sure as hell don’t have to worry about that job with Morris. Shit, I should never have talked him into it in the first place. I think I was half in the bag that day.” He stopped and made a kind of shrugging motion with one arm. “I’m not going anywhere. You could keep in touch with me; anything turns up, I can let you know. What did you say her name was?”

“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.