Kem Nunn - Tapping the Source

Preston’s duplex faced the east and it was bright and warm on the porch when he got there. Barbara did not look good. Her face was pale and somewhat blotched; there were dark circles under her eyes. She did not look particularly pleased to see him, but then she didn’t look pissed about it either. She mainly just looked tired. She invited him in. She was dressed in what he guessed was one of Preston’s flannel shirts. The shirt came down to just above her knees and the sleeves were rolled into big wads above her elbows. He sat in the kitchen while she made coffee. She looked tired and small and there was something about sitting there watching her that made him feel guilty about having come. He thought of his night with Michelle and he wondered if it had ever been that way for Barbara and Preston too.

Barbara had already heard about Terry’s death. He asked her about Preston and she told him that there were still no witnesses. Apparently, Hound Adams had even told the police he did not think Preston had done the knifing, that someone else had been involved and had escaped out the back. She also said that the police had been unable to find a weapon, and that Preston should be out soon. “He may be out already,” she told him, “for all I know.”

“But wouldn’t he have come by here?”

“Not necessarily; he might be at the shop.”

“I’m afraid they just want him on the street,” he said, and he told her about seeing some of Terry’s family. She seemed shocked by the news, as if she hadn’t guessed why no one was talking, and he immediately felt stupid for having mentioned it.

They sat for a while in silence, Ike staring at the scarred linoleum beneath his feet. “Listen,” he said. “One of the reasons I came by this morning was because I wanted to ask you about something.” He looked at her, and she stared back, her elbow resting on the table, a coffee cup in her hand. “You told me once about Hound and Preston having been partners. What do you know about that? I mean, do you know what happened between them?”

She got up and went to a cupboard over the refrigerator. She moved some things around and finally stepped back with a large, beat-up book, a kind of folder with cardboard covers, held together with a dark ribbon. “His scrapbook,” she said. “He cleaned out a bunch of stuff when I moved in here with him and I found this in the trash.” She placed the book on the table in front of Ike. “I don’t know if you’ll find anything in there that interests you, but you’re welcome to look, because I really don’t know anything about what you’re asking. I don’t know what happened, with Hound, with the business. I know they don’t speak to one another now. I’ve been with Preston a couple of times when Hound Adams has showed up, I mean like on the street or something. They go by each other without even looking, like they’re trying to pretend the other one is not there. It’s strange, but I don’t know what it’s about.”

Ike opened the cover and began leafing through the book. “You said Preston wasn’t from around here, that he moved here by himself.”

She nodded. “He grew up someplace back of Long Beach, I believe. At least that’s where his parents live now. His old man’s a minister of some sort, if you can believe that.”

“He tell you that?”

“Not voluntarily. When I moved in with him, he told me his parents were dead. Then one time this old lady called up here asking for him, saying she was his mother. I pestered him about it for a whole day and he finally admitted that his parents were alive. That was when he told me about his father being a minister. I asked him why he had told me they were dead and he just shrugged. You can’t keep asking him about anything or he gets pissed off.”

“I know,” Ike said. There was some interesting stuff in the scrapbook. There were a few old pictures of the shop and he could see that it had once been about half its present size—the brick wall that now separated the showroom from the rest of the building having once served as the storefront. In one photograph the wall was bare, in another it had been painted and bore the shop’s old logo—the wave within the circle and the words Tapping the Source .

The book was also filled with shots of Preston, many cut from the pages of surfing magazines, the same dark young man Ike had seen in the photograph at the shop, and he could understand now what Barbara had told him, that everyone used to know who Preston was, and he guessed he could see too why people had been surprised by the way he had changed. Clean limbs and graceful moves. Mr. Southern California. There were no tattoos in the scrapbook. He was about to turn one more page when a name caught his eye. The name appeared in an ad for a surf film, an ad that read: Senior Nationals champ, Preston Marsh, in Wavetrains, a Milo Trax surf film . “This guy,” Ike said, “Milo Trax. Is it the Trax who owns the Trax Ranch?”

Barbara leaned over the table and stared at the name. “I don’t know. I don’t think I ever noticed that before.”

He told her about the photographs in the shop, described Milo Trax as he looked in the pictures. She shrugged. “Doesn’t ring a bell, but then there was a time when a lot of weird people started hanging out around that shop. I mean older guys, city types, people who looked like they were from L.A., not the beach. I remember the place got to have a bad reputation. That was back when a lot of people were just getting into drugs, that was part of it. Hound and Preston supposedly did a lot of dealing then, made a lot of money. Like you would see the two of them riding around town in brand new Porsches and all that. I think Hound’s still into it. He owns a number of houses around here from what I’ve heard, and you don’t make that kind of money running a shop.”

“What about Preston?”

“His money? I don’t know. Pissed it away. I think I told you he was in the service. I remember that surprised a lot of people. I think everybody figured Hound and Preston would be smart enough to get out of it, but I remember standing on the pier one day and hearing some girl say that Preston had gone into the Marines, that he was going to fight and that no one could believe how stupid that was. Then he was gone, and then he came home and that was when I met him and it was like I told you.” She had been talking rather quickly and paused now for a breath, a sip of coffee. Ike continued to stare at the book. “There’s a picture in the shop,” he said. “A picture of Hound and Preston together, and there’s a girl with them. Her name’s Janet.”

“Her name was Janet.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“I’m assuming it was Janet Adams. Was she nice-looking?”

He nodded. “Hound’s sister?”

“She’s dead. It happened quite a while ago. I was still in high school at the time and I didn’t know her. But I believe she OD’d or something. I remember it was drug-related and that was supposed to be a big deal.”

Ike was silent for a moment. He found it an oddly disturbing piece of information. He thought back to the photograph at the shop, thinking of the girl’s laughter, her hair caught on a breeze and swept to one side of her face. “Do you know any more about it?”

Barbara shook her head. “No. I didn’t know her. It was a long time ago. I just remember the event, that everyone was so shocked to think that a girl like Janet had been on drugs.” She paused for a moment, looking at the table. “Do you mind if I ask you something?” she asked. “Why are you so interested in all of this?”

Ike closed the book and shrugged. There was a moment in which he considered telling her, but then the moment passed and he had decided against it. “I don’t know,” he said, “I guess I’m just curious. I mean, you’ve talked about how different Preston used to be; haven’t you wondered what made him change?”