Kem Nunn - Tapping the Source

He thought along these lines, polishing off the last of the malt liquor, occasionally punching out a chair or kicking the wall, the thought of Michelle’s sweet ass in Hound Adams’s bed spreading like some cancer through his system until the room was too small to hold him. He was reaching for the door when he saw the fucking board propped against the wall, and was somewhat surprised that he had not turned his attention to it before now. The fucking board. The fucking hot stick with its tucked-under rails and flashy airbrush job. Looking at it made him sick, and he laughed out loud when he remembered his reasons for going to see Hound Adams about it. Shit. It had been like everything else, a lie. He had wanted the board and had found a way to get it. He snatched it away from the wall and lurched out of the room, bashing the board against the doorjamb, running the pointed nose into the wall in the hallway with enough force to create a tiny explosion of plaster. He didn’t know if the board had gotten bigger or the hallway smaller, but he couldn’t seem to take a step without running into something, and by the time he reached the darkness that waited at the foot of the stairs there were people yelling for quiet and cursing him. He stopped just long enough to yell back, to flip off the whole fucking building, and then he was gone, lurching through the streets of the town, the board tucked beneath his arm, headed for Hound Adams’s house.

All sorts of grotesque scenes took shape in his mind as he walked, unspeakable perversions that he might interrupt. But he was not in the mood to consider consequences. He did not bother to knock, but dropped the board on the porch and pushed wildly through the door.

The living room was dark, but he could see light coming from one of the back rooms. And that was where he found them. So many crazy scenes had filled his head getting there that it took a moment for the real scene to sink in. He stopped in the doorway and stood looking at them, the single loudest sound the rush of his own blood in his ears.

It was very simple, really. Michelle was seated on the floor near Hound Adams. One of the Jacobs brothers sat on the couch. Everyone was fully clothed. The room smelled of grass and some kind of incense. Everyone seemed to be looking at him; their faces swam before him in a watery haze. He lurched a few steps into the room, fighting to maintain that singleness of purpose that had driven him through the night.

“Come in,” he heard Hound Adams say. “Sit.”

He looked for a moment at Hound and then at Michelle. He was certain he did not want to sit down. “I want to talk to you,” he said to Michelle. His throat felt very tight and he was able to force out the words only with great difficulty.

Michelle seemed to be floating somewhere in front of him, in that thick haze that filled the room. Her face was blank. He could not tell if she was angry or embarrassed.

“What do you want?”

“We have to talk.”

“We can talk here.”

He saw her look at Hound, then back at him. He wanted to step forward, to pull her to her feet. It was like the whole situation was slipping away from him, like he was drowning in the thick smoke.

“God damn it.” He was aware of his voice being much louder now. “I came here to talk to you. Will you get off your fucking ass or what?”

She didn’t get off her ass. She just kept sitting there, floating there, this slightly blasted expression on her face. It was a terrible expression, the sort that needed to be erased with the toe of one’s shoe. He started toward her with no real idea of what he was going to do when he got there, only that it would be something she deserved. But he never reached her. Hound Adams was up quickly, standing between them. He put a hand on Ike’s shoulder and Ike knocked it away. He was fairly certain that Hound was going to kill him, but the malt liquor had washed away most of his fear; he was determined to go down swinging. Hound, however, only took a step backward, his hands at his side. “Jealousy’s a very negative trip, brah. Think about it.” His voice was calm.

Ike stood still, watching Hound Adams, never hating him more than at this particular moment.

“What is it?” Hound asked. “You want to jump bad? Spill some blood, maybe? We can fix that.” He turned abruptly and stepped to the dresser at the side of the couch, leaving Ike to stand there like he was nailed down, to stare at Michelle, who had turned her face to the wall. Then Hound was back, pushing something into Ike’s hand. It was a gun. The metal was cold against his skin and he looked down at it stupidly. It seemed to be sort of dangling from his hand, as if it were attached in some way and he was not really holding on to it. Suddenly Hound snatched it back from him and pointed it at a wall. The gun went off with a deafening explosion. A new odor hung in the room and Ike’s ears rang with the sound of the blast. Hound put the gun back into his hand. “You’ve got the bullets,” he said, “and you’ve got the gun.”

Ike felt as if he had a high fever, as if nothing in the room was quite real.

“You think you own me,” Michelle said suddenly out of the silence that had come to fill the room. She was looking up at him now, her face twisted with anger. “Boys are so fucking stupid, they think they can own you, that you’re supposed to be their property or something while they do any fucking thing they want to. I know all about your little parties. So why don’t you take a walk, because you don’t own me. Nobody does. Why don’t you go back to the sticks where you belong?”

“You fucking cunt.” He couldn’t keep his voice from shaking now. It was like her words struck too close to home and he wanted to strangle her for them. He called her a fucking whore cunt and she was up on her knees screaming back at him. He didn’t know what they said. If there had been nobody else in the room, he would have fought her. They could have rolled on the floor and clawed at each other’s eyes. At least Hound’s presence spared them that; it was bad enough as it was. His stomach was a knot of pain. The floor spun beneath his feet. He threw the gun at the couch and staggered back through the house, across the wooden porch, and into the night.

There was no relief in sight and no place to go. He stomped through lawns, kicking flowerpots, cursing small yapping dogs. He stumbled down alleys, trash cans tumbling in his wake. People yelled at him: disembodied voices reaching him in the darkness. And he screamed back, his voice going hoarse, losing itself among the run-down buildings.

He finally wound up down by the tattoo parlor on the Coast Highway and a brilliant idea came to him. He suddenly realized why certain people had tattoos all over them. It was because they were fuckups and they knew they were fuckups. He could suddenly see how guys in jails could get into sitting around carving on themselves. They knew they were assholes and they defaced themselves for it. It made perfect sense. He might have gotten into that himself, a little ink, a penknife, but then he figured he probably wouldn’t have the guts to go through with it and it would be disastrous to try and fail. No, he would get one from the shop. He would climb into that chair and it would be all over except for the buzzing of the needle. He’d seen how it worked. You just picked the one you wanted and gave the man your money. He checked his pockets to see how much he had. It would be nice to get a large one, preferably a very stupid one to boot, the larger and stupider, the better. A member of the fuckup club for life and there would be no hiding it.

The shop was stuffy and warm, filled with a peculiar odor, a kind of medicine smell, as if he’d stumbled into some third-rate doctor’s office. He went up to the wall and examined the selection. He finally settled on a set of Harley-Davidson wings. Only in the middle, instead of that little shield and the word Motorcycles , this one had a skull and crossbones, and beneath the bones it said Harley-Fuckin’-Davidson . There was another one that was even better. It had the same wings, the same skull and crossbones, only on top of the skull there was a naked woman, her legs spread so you could get a good look at her big hairy snatch. But the price on the second tattoo was too steep. He asked the guy if he could pay him some now and the rest later, but the guy said, “No way.” He was an old guy with a bald head and heavily tattooed arms. He stood around chewing a cigar while Ike made his selection, then he sat Ike down, checked once to make sure of the design, and went to work.