Kem Nunn - Tapping the Source

She gave him a rather sour look, as if it were a stupid question. “Sure, I’ve wondered about it. But he was gone a long time, two tours in Vietnam. I mean, a lot of people came back from that place changed.”

“I guess I was thinking more about why he went in the first place, why he chucked the business. Maybe it had something to do with Janet Adams. You said he and Hound were into dealing.”

Barbara got up and took the scrapbook from his hands, returned it to the cupboard. When she had closed the door, she leaned back against it, turning to face Ike. “Maybe,” she said, “maybe it did. Six months ago I might have been more interested in thinking about it. Now it all seems beside the point, somehow. If someone doesn’t care about himself, you begin to lose interest after a while.”

Ike pushed himself away from the table and stood up. There was suddenly a lot of things he wanted to think about, and he wanted to be alone. Still, he wished there were something he could say to Barbara. There wasn’t. He said good-bye, told her he would keep in touch, and she let him out the side door.

The sunlight was dancing on the sidewalk and houses seemed to float in the heat waves, like scraps of colored paper. He walked in the general direction of the town, scarcely paying attention to where he was going, thinking about what Barbara had told him. He kept seeing the girl in the photograph, one arm around Hound Adams, the other around Preston, and he was certain she was the key. The death of the girl was what had come between Preston and Hound. And somehow, though he could scarcely put his finger on a reason, he was certain Janet Adams had been the reason for the strange expression that had passed over Preston’s face the day Ike had told him about his sister, shown him the scrap of paper with the names.

He was walking rapidly now, and before he knew it he was already downtown, walking toward Main along some shabby side street, past a collection of weedy lots and stray oil wells, a lone beer bar. He was almost at the entrance of the bar when Morris suddenly stepped out of the doorway and onto the sidewalk. Morris was wearing a trucker’s hat with the bill turned around to the back and a set of wire-rimmed shades. He was wearing his sleeveless Levi jacket and looked to be fairly well crocked. He seemed to sway a bit in the bright light as Ike walked toward him, and there was something distinctly belligerent in the way he blocked the sidewalk, in the half-assed grin back of the matted blond beard. Yet somehow it seemed crazy to turn and run away. He knew Morris. He was being overly paranoid. Ike came a couple of steps closer and said hello.

Morris methodically removed the wire-rimmed shades, folded them with great care, and slipped them into the pocket of his jacket. He put his right fist into his left hand and popped a few knuckles. Ike took a step backward. Morris came after him, grinning broadly now, and swung.

It happened very quickly. Getting out of the way was somehow never even an issue. There was just this fist that dropped out of the heat and the sky went dark. Ike realized that he was suddenly on his back, but for a while nothing hurt. Everything was numb. He knew that there was blood on his face. It was very hard to focus his eyes. It was like he couldn’t decide whether to be knocked out or not. His vision kept getting dark and then light and then dark again. Morris’s big dirty face appeared above him and he was aware of a thick finger aimed at his chest. “I knew you’d fuck up,” Morris said. He grabbed Ike by the front of the T-shirt and it looked like he was going to get hit again. He thought of the concrete behind his head. Then he heard someone else talking to Morris. “I thought you said you could knock him out, chump.”

“Aw, man, I slipped.”

“Bullshit.”

Ike’s vision had begun to clear slightly and he could now see the other figure standing behind Morris: Preston, dressed in the old tank top, the red bandanna wrapped around his head.

“Give me one more, man,” Morris pleaded. “I’ll fracture his fucking skull this time.”

“Fuck it. You lost. You owe me a beer.” Preston turned and went back into the bar. Morris released his hold on Ike’s shirt. “Get the picture, queer bait?” Morris asked.

Once back in his room, Ike examined himself in the mirror. He’d bled all over everything. The punch had caught him flush over the right eye and there was a nasty-looking cut close to the brow. It was all puckered open and red with a thin piece of white showing. It made him sick looking at it and he puked in the sink. He packed some ice cubes in a towel and lay down, holding the ice to his head, which had at last begun to throb. He was too disoriented to think very hard. Mainly he felt betrayed and he did not know why. Had Morris said something to Preston about Ike and Barbara? Would Preston believe it if he had? But that was not it. There was something else and he did not know what it was.

He must have gone to sleep, because when he jerked his eyes open again he saw that the sky had turned red beyond the window. The room was dark and stuffy and stank of barf. The ice cubes had melted, soaking his shirt and pillow, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. When he got up to open the window he nearly fell back down. He clutched at the bed and waited and finally got it done on the second attempt. After that he lurched to the door and opened that too, hoping for some kind of cross-ventilation. Then he lay back down. He lay there for what seemed like a long time, thinking, watching the sky go purple and then black, watching the moths flutter about the naked bulb in the hallway. There was something about that bulb, the whir of moths in the yellow light, the darkness beyond. He was reminded of the desert, of the hard-packed dirt back of Gordon’s, the run-down porch where the nightlight burned a hole out of the darkness, drawing insects from the whole town to ping in the metal shade.

He dozed again, thinking of the desert, and when he opened his eyes it was because Michelle was staring at him. She was standing just inside the doorway, dressed in her uniform. She had her hair pulled back in barrettes and he couldn’t remember seeing her wear it that way before. It made her face seem rounder, not so grown up.

“I got hit,” he said.

She turned on a light and bent down for a closer look, then she went to his dresser and fished around for a clean T-shirt and a pair of jeans. “Put these on,” she said, and tossed them on the bed.

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to get Jill’s car and drive you to the hospital.”

“I don’t have to go to the hospital.”

“Yes, you do, you have to get stitches in that.”

“I don’t need stitches,” he said. He was up on his elbows now, watching her heading out the door. She stopped and looked back at him. “Not if you want a big scar. Don’t argue, okay? My mother’s a nurse.”

“Shit. You can’t drive.”

“I can too. Just get up and get your clothes on. Now.” She closed the door behind her and he could hear her walking down the hall. He sat up on the edge of his bed and pulled off his shirt. He was still sitting there when she came back in. She finished dressing him. He took an absurd pleasure in watching her do it, in looking down on her hands, her arms that were just as big around as his own, perhaps stronger. When she had finished, he stood up and followed her outside.

Jill’s car turned out to be a ’68 Rambler, and Michelle wasn’t too good with a stick shift. It was five or six miles to the hospital and she ground gears all the way. She took him to Huntington Community, the same hospital they’d taken Terry Jacobs to the night of the fight.

The whole process wasn’t as bad as Ike had expected. They sat him on a white table in a brilliantly white room and examined his head. When it had been cleaned and stitched, they gave him a shot and a prescription for some Nembutals.