Kem Nunn - Tapping the Source

As far as Ike knew, he had gone completely unnoticed by the men in the clearing. He now ran closer, toward the ring, trying to warn Preston, afraid to shout. He saw Preston turn to him over the great rounded hump of Terry’s back. His face was twisted and there was blood streaked across one side; one eye was badly swollen. “Well, do something, then, God damn it,” Preston hissed at him between clenched teeth. “A rock, anything.” The voices were closer. Ike looked wildly around and that was when he saw the dog. It was on its side near the edge of the cliff, and it was dead. Its mouth hung open, the dark tongue spilling over teeth that were white in the moonlight. Blood lay in a dark pool beneath its skull. The broken piece of a shovel lay nearby. Ike looked at the dog, the shovel. For some ridiculous reason he was afraid to go near the dog. One dead eye watched him in the moonlight. He heard Preston curse him. He heard voices. He heard the sound of surf swept up out of the darkness beyond the cliffs. He saw that there were rocks near the edge of the ring—black charred rocks the size of softballs and larger. He picked one up. It was heavy in his hands. It was the first time in his life that he had tried to hurt someone. Where did you hit him? He raised the rock over his head with both hands and threw it against Terry’s hip. It landed with a soft thud and dropped to the ground. Terry Jacobs grunted and went down on one knee. Suddenly Preston released his grip and stepped to one side. He punched with both hands, fast, one punch landing high on the side of Jacobs’s head, the second behind his ear. Sharp cracking sounds. Terry pitched forward, caught himself against the edge of the ring, but made no effort to pull himself up. He leaned against it, breathing hard, and then Preston was across the clearing, had Ike by one arm and was driving him into the high grass, down through a steep ravine, dancing and sliding, cutting arms and hands on sharp rocks and branches. At last they were on the ground, side by side, flat with the smell of dirt and grass in their faces, and they could hear the voices above them, see a white shaft of light cutting lines out of the night, finding the branches above their heads.

They began to inch their way down, clutching at anything to keep from sliding too fast, to keep from making too much noise. Finally they were on a thin rocky trail and Ike was aware of Preston’s voice in his ear. “Okay,” Preston was saying, and his breath was coming hard. “It’s just like out on the point now. You stick behind me. Do what I tell you. We’ve got to forget about the stuff, understand?” Preston’s face was close to his, the pale eyes held his own. “Do you think you could find the truck again, alone?”

He began to say he didn’t know, but Preston waved him silent. “Forget it,” he said, his voice a quiet hiss in the darkness. “Just stay with me, and stay close.”

Ike could not say how long it took them to reach the truck. They seemed to make good time and the voices grew more distant, were finally lost altogether. The engine kicked over with what seemed like an inordinate amount of noise, but at last they were bouncing along the twisting dirt road, lights out, jumping through unseen potholes, Preston swerving and cursing, his big arms spinning the wheel first one way and then the other, trying to see out of one good eye, checking his rearview mirror. “Damn,” Ike heard him say. “I think I just saw some headlights back there. I think they’re behind us.” He reached down and pulled on the switch. The lights lit up the road and Preston picked up speed, jumping and sliding. Ike banged his knees on the dashboard and poked a hole in what was left of the headlining with his head. He rolled his window down for a better grip on the door and hung on. At last they were on a straight piece of road and Ike heard Preston suck in his breath. Ike squinted through the windshield, across the bouncing hood, and he could see the gate. It was wide open, swung back to one side, and the road was clear. They were through. Another five minutes and they were back on paved road, no one behind them and Preston cursing himself now. “So fucking stupid,” he said. “Fucking stupid. I practically walked right into Jacobs and that fucking dog. Fucking moron stupid.” By dawn they were on the highway and headed home.

The drive home had been accomplished in near silence, and Ike stared once again into the drab landscape of Huntington Beach, even flatter and more colorless than he had remembered after a few days at the ranch. Beyond the highway, the Pacific was like a sea of lead in the midday glare. The surf was blown out, thick and gray, and angry with whitecaps churning in the glare.

All the way back he had thought about the fight and tried to figure it. Still, it took him until the outskirts of Huntington Beach to work up enough nerve to say anything about it to Preston. Preston had been in an understandably foul mood on the way back. Ike’s own jaw still hurt from running into that branch and he was certain Preston’s face was hurting much worse than his own. He had offered to drive once, but Preston only shook his head. And now, when Ike asked him about Terry Jacobs, about what he had been doing at the ranch, all Preston had to say was that he didn’t know, and that Ike should not worry his fucking head over it.

“What you’d better start thinking about is getting the fuck out,” Preston told him. They were swerving through midday traffic, too fast, Preston with one hand on the wheel, the other out the window to flip off some guy with a carload of kids who had pulled out in front of them. “I don’t know if Jacobs saw you up there or not. But I can tell you he’s not one to let something like this slide. More shit will hit the fan. Count on it. If Jacobs sees your ass on the street, he’s gonna hang it, ace, and I might not be around to stop him.”

Ike thought back to the fight. He tried to remember if Jacobs had seen him or not. He was pretty sure that he hadn’t. It had been dark and Terry’s head had been down. He said as much to Preston.

“Suit yourself,” Preston said. “It’s your funeral.”

Preston had called the Sea View a dump, but his place did not look much better to Ike. He got his first look at it as Preston pulled up in front of a small set of duplexes. There were two scrubby-looking palms and a beat-up square of grass in front. The two apartments were identical stucco affairs—a sun-bleached shade of turquoise that clashed badly with some sort of large orangeish industrial building that rose up behind them from the other side of a narrow alley.

Ike decided to try one more time. “Just tell me one thing,” he said. “At the ranch. What were you looking for?”

They were parked now, in front of the duplexes. Preston sat with both wrists on top of the wheel. He turned to face Ike and Ike got his first good look at the side of Preston’s head. The sight made him wince. Preston looked dead tired and in a way Ike was sorry he had asked.

“You’re a persistent little motherfucker, aren’t you? I took you to the ranch because I wanted to lay something out for you. That’s it,” he said. He cut the air with his hand. “Anything else is my business. But I’ll tell you this. I don’t know what Terry Jacobs was doing up there. But it’s not that unusual to see people from down here up there. I mean, people sneak in from time to time to surf. They have for a long time. But I don’t know what that big asshole was doing. I got up to take a leak and decided to have a look at that place you told me about. I fucking walked right into him on the trail. Him and that damn dog.” Preston held one arm up now, away from the wheel so Ike could see it, and Ike could see that he had been bitten on the arm. The bite was already looking nasty, swollen and discolored.