Kem Nunn - Tapping the Source

Ike watched as a body materialized after the face and soon the man was standing on the deck, walking to meet them. It was the man Ike had seen in the photographs at the shop. He recognized at once the small straight mouth and pointed chin. Certain features were the same and immediately recognizable. But there were changes. The body seemed much thicker than in the pictures, not fat, but thick and powerful in a way that did not match up well with the face, which had an almost elfin quality in its small chiseled features, and small dark eyes.

The man was dressed in a blue shirt and a white pair of shorts. His legs were well tanned, short, and heavily muscled, flexing in the sunlight as he came toward them. His height was deceptive. It was not until Ike stood looking him in the eye that he noticed that the man was only about half an inch taller than himself, though probably outweighing him by a good fifty pounds of muscle.

“Ike, Michelle,” Ike heard Hound say. “I would like for you to meet a friend, Milo Trax.”

And though Ike had known it was coming, there was still a slight chill that ran down his back upon hearing the name. He thought back to the bitterness in Frank Baker’s voice, to his words: Hound was “the one who brought in Milo,” as if that had been the beginning of the end.

Ike took the offered hand. It was a thick, firm hand, like the body, and he felt that his own was thin and frail by comparison. He met the eyes, which were very dark and bright, almost boyish, features that had not been apparent in the photographs.

“Yes,” Milo said, and there seemed a genuine enthusiasm in his voice. “Ike Tucker, I’ve heard a lot about you. Pleased to have you aboard.” Then he turned to Michelle, leaving Ike to wonder what he possibly could have heard.

They went out of the harbor under power, Milo at the large silver wheel in the cockpit, Michelle at his side, Ike and Hound Adams on the deck. The harbor seemed to go on forever, winding out of waterways into ever-widening channels. The water went from deep green to a blackish blue, and looking over the side, Ike could see small schools of fish darting beneath them, like silver coins cast into the water. They glittered and fell, passed from sight.

The closer they got to the harbor entrance, the bigger everything seemed to get, the size of the beaches, the homes, the yachts, and Milo Trax seemed to know whom everything belonged to. He pointed out a number of famous racing yachts, other boats and houses owned by certain movie stars. Like some wonderland, it slipped past them, a world of money Ike had never even imagined in the desert.

At last they were moving down a channel, passing between two long jetties and then out into open sea. Milo got them all moving now, telling them which line to pull on and when. At last there was a great rattling of rigging, a tremendous explosion of sail as the sky went white and yellow. The hull seemed to leap beneath them, shuddering as it met the ground swell. Suddenly Ike’s face was wet, his lungs full of a fresh sharp wind. They were under sail. He scrambled back into the cockpit, where Milo stood grinning and Ike could not help but grin back. The ship heeled. Spray swept the deck.

“You can go anywhere on a boat like this one, Ike,” Milo told him. “Hound says you like to surf. You would be amazed by the places we’ve seen.”

They spent the day far from land, the coastline a distant mirage glittering on the horizon. Around noon they ate sandwiches and beer. When they had finished, Michelle took the things below. Ike volunteered his assistance and followed her down.

She was standing at a small sink in the galley, rinsing plates; the sea had grown calm and the boat rode easily, no longer bucking a ground swell. She looked over her shoulder as Ike came down the steps, then back into the sink.

He stood beside her. She had pulled her hair back into a small ponytail and he studied the wispy strands of hair that curled about the back of her neck. “I’ve been looking for you all week.”

“I’ve been at Hound’s,” she said, her voice flat, eyes still turned toward the sink.

“Michelle, look, I’m sorry, about everything.”

“I thought you were different,” she said. “You’re just like all the rest.”

“I know it was wrong. I thought it would be a way of finding out something.”

“Sure. About your sister.” She said this in a sarcastic way.

“I did in the beginning,” he said. “I know it probably doesn’t look that way to you, but I did in the beginning. And I had already taken that damn board. I had to pay for it.”

“With the movies?” Her voice was still sarcastic and she was still staring into the sink, although he noticed she had stopped washing dishes. Her hands were still, floating in the soapy water. He was a little afraid of saying too much, of upsetting her in a way that would let Hound know something was going on. “Look, Michelle, just listen to me a minute, okay?”

She did not answer and he went on. “I was looking for my sister. I wanted to find out what had happened, but I wanted to find out some other things too, about Preston and Hound. And I got sidetracked. I know that now. I mean, I just got caught up in some things I couldn’t handle and it was stupid. I know that. But I never thought you were like those other girls. I mean, it was different with us. It could be that way again. It’s what I want, just to be together.”

She looked up at him and her eyes were glassy, slightly red. “What you want?”

“We had something special. Don’t you see? That’s all that matters. And there’s other things I can tell you, but not here. We can’t really talk here. Just say you’ll think about it, that we can talk again, later.” He was talking fast now, worried about staying down too long. He put his hand on her shoulder, and she turned to face him, her hands dripping water on the floor between them. She looked him square in the eye and there was something in her stare that made him want to flinch. “I’m all that matters? What about your sister? She doesn’t count anymore?”

“No, it’s not like that. It’s not that simple. Damn it, Michelle, I know I’ve fucked up. I mean, you don’t even know how badly I’ve fucked up. But I have learned a few things too. Just say we can talk someplace, soon. Tomorrow.” He waited, watching her face, but then the silence was broken by the sound of another voice. Milo Trax. He must have been lying on his stomach on the hatch cover, because his head was upside down, hanging into the cabin, grinning. “Whale off the starboard bow,” he said. “Come look.”

The head disappeared. Ike was silent. He stood watching Michelle at the sink.

“We should go up and see,” she said.

He stepped away from her, waiting, when he noticed something lying on the seat near the galley table. It was the cardboard box he’d seen Hound take from the trunk. He went to it and pulled a bit of the cardboard where it was starting to come undone. Film cartridges. The box was full of them. He pointed this out to Michelle.

She looked at the box. “So what?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I’ve always wondered what he did with these things.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know anything about it.”

There was something in the way she said it that annoyed him. “Like you never made any yourself.”

“That’s right,” she said, going by him, stopping to look at him with those eyes that still made him want to flinch. “And you want to know something else? I’ve never even gotten it on with Hound Adams. He’s just been really nice to me, nothing else.”

She left him standing in the galley, watching her legs disappear into the sky above the hatchway. He looked once more at the box of films on the seat, then followed her into the light to see Milo’s whale.