Kem Nunn - Tapping the Source

The bikers made no attempt to fight their way out, and suddenly, as suddenly as it had begun, the whole thing was over. It could not have lasted more than a couple of minutes. Ike found himself standing beside Hound Adams as the bikers were spread-eagled over the hoods of the two cars.

Jacobs, though able to get up under his own power, had been taken away in an ambulance, and Ike and Hound now stood alone on the sidewalk that ran above the parking lots. “Stupid,” Hound said. “Very stupid. And those are his friends.” Hound was not looking at Ike but gazing out at the sea. The strange part was that Ike knew exactly whom Hound was talking about, and he found it strange as well that there was a note of disappointment in Hound’s voice, almost the way one would talk about a family member who had gone bad. Hound shook his head and continued to squint out to sea. The delicate lighting of dawn was gone now. The horizon was a straight blue line, the sun high and bright above the water. “The guy used to kill me,” Hound said. “He was so fucking innovative, but he never knew what he was doing. Like he had a way of making bottom turns when it was big; he would switch rails, roll to his outside rail a split second before setting the inside edge. It was a way of getting more curve, more projection out of the turn. I picked it out of some films once and mentioned it to him. He didn’t know what the fuck I was talking about. He just did it, by instinct or something. I don’t think the guy ever knew how good he really was. And he threw it all away, man, chucked the whole thing. Now he’s got friends like Morris.” By this point, Ike was not certain if Hound Adams was talking to him or to himself. The only thing he was certain of was that it was the first time he had listened to Hound Adams and not gotten the idea that Hound was playing a part or putting him on; it was like he was just talking. The first honest words Ike had heard him say, and they were about Preston.

Later that afternoon, Ike sat on the steps of the Sea View apartments, watching the sun dip behind the buildings that lined the highway, waiting for Michelle to come home from work. All day long he had thought about what had happened at the beach, trying not to imagine what might have happened had Hound not slowed the bikers down, had the cops not come when they did.

He was still there when Michelle came home. He followed her to her room while she changed clothes and tended her plants. He told her about the fight, about the way Hound Adams had stood his ground against the bikers.

“Maybe you were wrong about him,” she said.

“I don’t know. He saved my ass today, though. He could have split. There was this moment when he could have run, but he didn’t. He stayed. I know that much.”

“I told you, he likes you.”

“Why?”

“Have you ever thought about just asking him?”

“It crossed my mind.”

“And?”

“Not yet.” He went to the mattress and sat on it. “He wants me to come by tonight,” he told her. “He says he wants to see me about something, working off that board, I suppose.”

“Take me.”

“I don’t know. I think maybe I should go alone.” Michelle had been changing clothes. He watched her pull a faded pair of jeans up over that white triangle of skin that was the mark of her bathing suit on her bare ass, and suddenly what he wanted to do was stay with her. He was certain he didn’t want to take her with him, have to watch Hound Adams giving her the eye.

She sat down beside him. “Come on,” she said. “I want to go.”

“Shit, you just want to get high.”

She fell back on the mattress, letting herself bounce. “So what’s wrong with that? At least Hound’s always got good dope.”

“I just think I should go alone, that’s all.”

“You just don’t want to take me to Hound’s,” she said, “because you’re jealous.”

“Shit.” He got up and went to the window. He hated it when she sounded like a goddamn little kid. He looked back at her spread out on the bed, propped up now on her elbows, hair resting on her shoulders; he wanted to walk over and slap the smile off her face. And one of the reasons he wanted to was because he knew that she was right. He was jealous. Hound Adams was too slick. If he wanted to put the moves on some chick, he was going to make it work. He looked away from her and into the dark glass of the window. Then Michelle was up and standing beside him, her voice softer. “You don’t have to be jealous,” she said. “I know he likes me. I can tell, but I know what he wants. It’s too easy to get hung up on guys like that.”

He wished she would shut up. It was crazy how it went. Sometimes he felt so close to her, like they were so much alike, and other times it was as if they didn’t even speak the same language.

“I mean, I’ve had boyfriends like that and…”

“All right, all right.” He didn’t feel like hearing her get started about all her past boyfriends.

“Why does that make you so mad? You know I’ve had lots of boyfriends. It’s just because we grew up in different kinds of places. You think it means I don’t like you?”

She was still beside him and he put his arm around her shoulders. “No. Look, I’m not mad, but I just don’t think you should come with me tonight, okay? I didn’t mean to make such a big deal out of it.”

She turned back to her bed and sat down. “You never ate anything,” she said.

“I’ll get something later.”

“Come by, okay?”

“Okay, if it’s not too late.”

“Come by anyway.”

He stood in the doorway looking at her. She was still on the bed, sitting up straight with her arms out behind her. With her long arms and legs all tanned and her sun-streaked hair, her tank top and cutoff jeans, she looked just like all those girls he saw every day around the pier, sitting on the railings, walking with their transistor radios, but she wasn’t just like them; for him she was special, and that could never change.

The house on Fifth Street was dark. He almost turned and left, thinking he was too late, thinking too about Michelle and wanting very much to go back to her. But he figured he should not leave without at least knocking.

To his surprise the door was opened almost at once by a slender brown-haired girl he had not seen before. She let him in without a word and led him to a back room where Frank Baker, Hound Adams, and two of the Jacobs brothers sat on sagging couches, passing a pipe. Ike looked for the brother who had been beaten but did not see him. He stood in the doorway, feeling out of place, awkward.

“Enter,” Hound said. “Sit.”

Ike took a place on the floor and waited.

They finished what was in the pipe. No one offered any to Ike and he kept quiet, feeling more uncomfortable by the moment.

“How’s Michelle?” Hound asked him.

He heard one of the Jacobses chuckle. “Okay.”

“Just okay?”

“He means on a scale of one to ten,” Frank said. There was another soft chuckle. The dark-haired girl smiled.

Hound Adams stood up. He was wearing turquoise jewelry and a heavy Mexican shirt. “Let’s you and I go for a ride,” he said. He was looking at Ike.

He led him across the back lawn toward the alley and a small wooden garage. The moon was a sliver high above them. The night was windless and still. There was a StingRay convertible parked in the garage. Ike waited in the alley while Hound started the car and backed it out, then he closed the garage door and got inside.

They cut through the dark residential streets, down to the Coast Highway, then north toward the cliffs and oil wells. The lights of the town were far behind them when Hound swung the car around in a U-turn and parked it on the sea side of the highway. They were among the oil fields here, somewhere above the beaches Ike had seen only during the day, the domain of the inland gangs.