Kem Nunn - Tapping the Source

Ike was in the shop. There was not much of a swell and he was taking care of a few things for Hound. He was putting a leash on a board at the time. He was on his knees near the counter when he happened to look up and see Preston. The change in Preston’s appearance was shocking. His skin looked darker somehow, but an unhealthy sort of darkness, the way winos get that dark look that comes from too many broken blood vessels, too much sun and dirt. He wore a beat-up-looking army jacket and a dark cap. There was something about the cap that was familiar, a dark green beret with a small gold shield sewn into one side near the front, and Ike recognized it as the cap Preston was wearing in one of the photos Barbara had shown him, a picture Barbara told him had been taken just before Preston went overseas. Ike noticed too that Preston’s hair had been cut very short. Even though it was a hot day, Preston had the jacket zipped to the neck. He was standing with his hands pushed down into the pockets, and he was listing to one side. With the beret and army jacket and unshaven face, he looked like some burnt-out revolutionary. He looked out of sync. And there was something frightening about seeing him there, like a ghost in broad daylight.

Ike did not get up but remained kneeling by the board. He could not tell if Preston saw him or not, or if he did, if he recognized him. He was just standing there, staring into the glass out of his new dark face. Then, as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone, jerked offstage.

Ike stood up quickly; he felt as if someone had slapped him. He walked to the front door and watched Preston moving down the sidewalk, toward the Greyhound depot and coffee shop. Ike could see there was a whiskey bottle jammed into the hip pocket of Preston’s jeans, and that the jacket, which should have hung down to at least keep the bottle covered, was hung up on it, tucked behind it so that the bottle was flashing in the sunlight. And then Ike was aware of someone else standing beside him. He turned to see that Frank Baker had come out from the back room and was standing at the door. Together they watched as Preston lurched toward the corner, zigzagging his way down the sidewalk until at last he collided with a rack of newspapers in front of the depot. There were actually several racks, held together with chains, and Preston seemed to have gotten his leg tangled in one. They could see him cursing and kicking at the racks. People closest to him were moving away, though a few others, at safer distances, stopped to laugh. Then some old man in a white apron came out of the restaurant and started yelling. Ike couldn’t hear what he was saying; he couldn’t tell if the guy was more pissed off about Preston creating a disturbance in front of his place, or about Preston’s cap. Ike could see him point at his head, then back at Preston. And then suddenly, Preston pulled a hand out of the coat and swung at the guy. And even half a block away, Ike could see that it was a strange-looking hand, somehow more like a club than a hand, and that was how Preston seemed to use it, swinging it in an uncharacteristically awkward fashion. More a swat than a punch, the blow caught the old man on the collarbone with enough force to knock him backward into the restaurant. But Preston went down too, apparently from his own momentum, and Ike could hear the whiskey bottle busting up as he hit the pavement. Ike watched a family who had begun to cross the street, moving in the direction of the depot, stop in the middle and go back to the other side. He figured he should do something but was not sure what, and when he turned to look at Frank he was nearly as shocked by the change that had come over Frank’s face as he had been by seeing Preston. He did not know when he had seen such a look of disgust, though he was not sure disgust was the word for it; it was more than that. But Frank had apparently seen enough. He shook his head and disappeared into the shop.

When Ike looked back down the street, he saw that Preston had succeeded in getting to his feet, and that the old man had returned with a broom. The man was trying to get close enough to get in a lick without getting hit again. But Preston was not paying much attention to the old guy. He was shooing him away with one arm while staring back up the sidewalk toward the shop. And then, as Ike watched, Preston raised one of his strange-looking hands into the air, the back turned toward Ike as if Preston were flipping him off, except that there were no fingers there to do the job. But somehow, just now, they were not needed. The meaning of Preston’s gesture was clear. And then he was gone, around the corner and out of sight, leaving the old man alone at the edge of the street.

Ike walked back into the shop on shaky legs. He found Frank Baker in the back room. He was standing in front of the Labor Day photograph. Ike stopped beside him. Although he had worked with Frank a number of times, Frank had never had much to say and Ike had always assumed that Frank did not think much of him. But now Ike had this odd feeling that they had both been affected by the sight of Preston, that it was all right to ask something he had often wondered about. “Were you the one who took it?” Ike asked.

Frank looked at him for a moment then back into the faded colors of the photograph. “I took all of them, all the photos in this room.”

Ike was silent, wondering how much he could ask. He wound up asking about another photograph that had always interested him, a shot of Preston carving a bottom turn from the base of a huge dark wall. It was a good picture in that you could sense the power of the wave, the speed with which he was coming out of the turn, feel the force that was driving him down into a crouch. It was a backside bottom turn and you could see the lines of concentration on his face, the way in which his hair was swept back, as if he were riding into a strong wind, and you could see the great fan of white water thrown back into the face of the wave by his board. “I like this one,” Ike said, pointing to the photograph, and he told Frank what Hound had said about Preston’s bottom turns.

“Surprised he remembers,” Frank said, and Ike was surprised by the bitterness in Frank’s voice.

“Hound says he was good.”

Frank continued to stare at the wall. “He was good.”

“Better than Hound is now?”

“Preston was the man. You know what I mean? He was the guy who won the contests, the guy who made it work.”

“Made what work?”

“The business. If you want to make a living out of surfing, you’ve got to have somebody with a name. That was Preston.”

“And Hound?”

“He was good, but he was more into the business end of it. He was the one who brought in Milo.” Frank suddenly stopped talking when he said that, almost in midsentence, as if he’d caught himself actually having a conversation with a wimp like Ike, and answering too many questions. But the added note of bitterness that had crept into his voice at the mention of Milo Trax had not gone unnoticed.

Frank shrugged it off. “Ancient fucking history,” he said. “It’s over now. You saw what was left of the star today.”

Ike did not have the opportunity to ask any more. Frank left him alone with the photographs and walked outside. Ike went to the window. He watched the thin, blond-haired figure of Frank Baker cross Main Street and go into a bar.

If Preston’s return was the beginning, then what happened with Michelle was the end. She had been, he supposed, the fly in the ointment for some time, the one aspect of his life that did not compute, that was not colored by what went on with Hound Adams—or so he liked to think. The matter of his sister was rarely mentioned, and when Michelle did bring it up, he would just tell her that he was still working on it, still trying to learn something from Hound, and that it would take time. And when she asked him about what he had learned, or what he did, he would get vague, and he would look for ways of changing the subject. Pretty soon she stopped asking. But she had this accusing way of looking at him sometimes, as if she thought he was copping out. But to tell her the whole story, to tell her how what he had really learned from his association with Hound Adams had affected his perception of his own past, seemed an impossible task. It was easier here, too, just to party down, get high on Hound Adams’s stash, to make love and lay plans for some distant future when they would be on their own, together, visiting exotic places. And he loved her hard. Because in one part of himself he still believed in their plans. He still believed that Michelle was something special, and that he could still keep their relationship separate from what went on at Hound’s, from how he made his living.