Kem Nunn - Tapping the Source

It was the beginning of October when he came back to Huntington Beach. Michelle was gone. There had been a letter waiting for him at the Sea View. She had gone to live with her father; he had sent money. Somewhere up north, along the coast. There was the name of a town, an address. He could come, she said, if he wanted to. He folded the letter and slipped it into the hip pocket of his jeans. She was, after all, one of the reasons he had come back. There was also that business of loose ends. He would find Frank Baker and they would talk one last time.

He moved out of the Sea View and took a room in a small motel near the corner of Main and Pacific Coast Highway. It was a newer building than the Sea View, a low white stucco affair with small square rooms done in turquoise and orange. A small kidney-shaped pool remained deserted, sunk forlornly into a barren rectangle of concrete. From a window he could see the highway, and beyond that the beach. The tourist season was over now with schools back in session and though there were still crowds of surfers in the early mornings and evenings, the beach had taken on a different character. It was cleaner and emptier, sometimes almost deserted in the afternoons with a brisk onshore wind kicking across the sand, turning the surf to junk.

He was without a board and he did not bother with a new one. He would surf later, he knew, in other places, but not here. It was just that there was something to be finished here and when it was, he could leave. He would be done with Huntington Beach, as he was done with San Arco. That was where he had gone after the funeral, back to the desert. The way he figured it, no one in his family had ever left that place without running, or taking the time to say good-bye. He wanted to be the first. And so he had gone. He had spoken to Gordon and they had stood in the ever-present heat of the gravel lot and he had told Gordon as much as he knew, the old man taking the news in his customary stoic fashion. And Ike had shaken hands with him, and thanked him, and he had looked, once, across the town toward the house, toward that cool, rotting porch, the great halo of dust-choked ivy, and there had been no reason to go there.

He stayed in San Arco for another couple of days, sleeping in the back of the market, working a few cobwebs out of the Harley, then getting on it and riding it, practicing, up and down the town’s main drag, blowing past the old woman’s house like an empty freight blowing out of King City on a downhill run. And when he figured he’d practiced enough to feel comfortable riding into King City, he went to the market for a pair of scissors and cut the sleeves out of one of those damned long-sleeved T-shirts. He’d put on a good fifteen pounds over the summer, and what with all that paddling and swimming, the weight seemed to have found its way mostly into his arms and shoulders. He still wasn’t what you could call big, but he wasn’t so much the runt anymore either. And then he had gone back outside and he had ridden the Knuckle clear to King City, a new pair of aviator shades giving back the sunlight, and he had walked into Jerry’s shop and told them the bike was for sale, because Jerry had asked him numerous times about selling it, and he had stuck to his price and gotten it and he was finished.

The last look he got of San Arco was from the bus bound for Los Angeles, from the freeway, and from there the place was no more than a reflection—like some bit of glass or metal catching sunlight somewhere far back among the dry hills—and then he had closed his eyes, rested his head back against the seat and remembered the look on Gordon’s face when he’d seen that damn tattoo, and remembered as well how the old men had stared after him, watching him blow past them forever while the tattered sleeves of his T-shirt beat time in the wind.

He stayed in the white motel for a week. He spent time on the streets. He even asked around a bit, after Frank Baker. No one had seen him, or at least would not say so to Ike. But the shop was still there, locked and dark. And it was Ike’s guess that Frank would have to deal with it, sooner or later, that he would be back. In the afternoons Ike walked on the beach, long walks from the pier out to the cliffs and the oil wells and back along the edge of the sand where it was wet and steep.

It was strange talking to people. He realized that here, as in the desert, he had not made many friends. Michelle, Preston, Barbara, they had been his friends and they were gone. Even Morris, he had heard, had packed it in and moved inland, all the way to San Bernardino or some such place. And the others, those closer to his own age who he had seen often enough in the water to nod at, did not seem eager for conversation, or even to meet his eye. But then he had, he supposed, been Hound Adams’s boy—at least to them, and so he did not really blame them.

A young girl came up to him one afternoon on the pier. He did not recognize her. She was small and dark, not unattractive in a small washed-out sort of way. She claimed to remember him from some party and she wanted to know if he had any dope. He stared at her for what he guessed was too long a time, forcing from her a rather nervous bit of laughter. When he told her that he didn’t have any dope, however, and that he didn’t know who did, her smile turned cynical and made it plain that she did not believe him. But she didn’t push it—a small favor for which he was grateful. She hugged herself against the wind as if she had noticed it for the first time, then she shrugged and started away. He watched her go, down along the empty boardwalk with the wind at her heels, her thin summer dress whipping about her legs. He stared after her until she was gone, lost in the distant blur of sunlight where the pier joined the town.

One more day passed, and then another. It was toward evening of the second day that he saw Frank Baker. Frank was standing in the parking lot of one of Huntington Beach’s few expensive bars, a large glass and concrete structure that had recently been built near the entrance to the pier. He was standing in the lot talking to two other men. All three were standing near the side of a low-slung yellow sports car.

Ike was on the sidewalk that ran along the edge of the highway, above the parking lots that extended down into the sand, not far from the lot in which Hound Adams had once fought the bikers. There were palm trees along the sidewalk and Ike stood close to one, slightly behind it and down off the curb. He stayed there for what felt like a long time but what in reality was probably not more than four or five minutes. At last he saw the three men shake hands. Two of them got into the car. Frank watched them go and then started away himself, alone and on foot.

Ike followed. He was certain Frank was on his way to the shop, and Frank did not disappoint him. They went up Main Street, made a left at Walnut, and then another right at the alley.

From the mouth of the alley Ike could see Frank’s van at the back of the shop and for a moment he worried that Frank had only parked there for convenience, that he would now just get in and drive away before Ike could reach him, but he did not stop at the truck. He crossed behind it and moved along the right-hand side, toward the rear door of the building.

Ike was in the alley now himself, moving quietly, hugging the backs of the buildings as a fat, pale moon rose in the sky. He listened as Frank moved across the gravel. He could hear the sounds of keys hitting a lock. A yellow wedge of light fanned out from beneath the van and he knew that Frank was inside, alone, and that it was what he had waited for. He moved very quickly now, and in what felt like almost a single step he was there, at the back door, facing Frank Baker for the first time since the ranch.