Kem Nunn - Tapping the Source

He didn’t know how many people were watching him as he trudged out of the shallows; he supposed they all were. He supposed everyone on the beach had seen him make a fool of himself, had seen him get punched out and washed in like a drowned rat. He sat in the wet sand, his back to the beach, his eyes fixed on the horizon where the waves still sparkled in the sunlight. He had certainly blown that, blown it damn near as badly as he’d blown trying to ride the Knuckle. But he was too worn-out even to think much about it. He felt somehow betrayed but was not exactly sure by what.

He sat that way for some time, afraid to turn around, to walk back through the people who may have seen what happened. He tried to get his body to stop shaking. And yet he was afraid to stay there too long. He was worried the guy in the water was going to come in and finish kicking his ass. So finally he got up. He took one more look out to sea, where others glided effortlessly, dropping and climbing on the faces of the small waves, a fraternity whose membership he had been denied.

The board was heavy beneath his arm, but he tried to assume some semblance of dignity as he plodded through the warm sand. At last the board grew too heavy to carry and so he let the nose drop to drag along in the sand behind him, no longer giving a shit about how he looked. And by the time he got to the asphalt near the pier, he had begun to feel like he was going to puke, or pass out; he could not tell which. He sat to rest on a curbstone in the sun, and that was when he saw the bikes for the second time.

He was certain it was the same group of bikes he had seen on his first day in town. There were more of them now, but he recognized the Knuckle, and the engine was still missing. He was sitting only a few yards away from them. The sunlight was blinding as it jumped off chromed forks and sissy bars. He could still feel his pulse in his ear. He dabbed at it with his fingers and found a little blood, but everything was still pretty numb. He didn’t suppose he was hurt very badly.

He had been sitting there for a couple of minutes, his board at his feet, when he began to pick out the voices above the roar of the engines. “I thought you fucking tuned it,” one yelled, and Ike saw the owner of the Knuckle swinging himself off the bike to stand in the parking lot.

“I did tune it, man.”

“Then why is it still fucking up?” the rider wanted to know. He moved around to the side of the bike, away from the others, and Ike got a better look at him. He was big, taller even than Gordon, not so thick perhaps, but wider across the shoulders. And his arms were sure as hell bigger. Biggest damn arms Ike had seen, bigger than any of the guys around Jerry’s shop. And he had more tattoos than anyone around the shop, too. There was a big American eagle tattooed on one shoulder with a coiled snake coming out of it some way and winding its way clear down to his forearm, where it wrapped itself around his wrist like a bracelet. On the other arm there was a man’s head, like maybe the head of a Christ because it wore what looked like a crown of thorns, and there were rays coming out of the thorns and spreading up into his shoulder, where they turned into lizards and birds. And along his forearms and hands, in between the tattoos that had come out of parlors, there were others, what he’d heard Jerry call jailhouse tattoos, the kind you did yourself with a penknife and ink. The guy was dressed in a grimy pair of jeans and had on a set of black broken-down motorcycle boots that looked thick and heavy enough to kick even a Harley to pieces. Up top he wore a faded tan-colored tank top that looked too small and above that he wore a pair of gold-rimmed aviator shades and a red work bandanna tied around his head. His hair was black, combed straight back and long enough to cover a collar, held in place by the bandanna, and there was a diamond stickpin in one ear. Ike could see it catching the light along with the thin gold rims of the shades.

The biker was standing only a few yards away from where Ike sat and when he bent down to take a look at the engine, Ike could see how the dark hair was beginning to recede just a bit above the red cloth. The guy squatted down, peering into the engine, but Ike could tell by the way he moved that he didn’t really know what he was looking for. The other bikers sat on their machines and watched. Suddenly the guy stood up. He did it a bit too fast, though, and wobbled around some so that Ike could see he was fairly well pasted. “God damn it,” he shouted at no one in particular, and Ike could see a couple of the other bikers wearing grins. All of a sudden, though, the guy raised his fist and brought it down on the fuel tank. The blow didn’t look like it had traveled very far, but a good-sized dent appeared in the black-lacquered tank and the smiles Ike had noticed only moments before disappeared. He heard somebody say, “Shit,” and the biker closest to the Knuckle walked his own bike farther away, as if he were expecting some sort of explosion. “God damn it to hell.” The owner of the Knuckle shook his head, swayed a bit, then paced back to the far side of the bike and stood staring down on it, his aviator shades flashing in Ike’s direction, so that for a moment Ike had the feeling that the biker was looking past the bike and staring right at him.

“It’s the carburetor,” Ike said, and was surprised at the sound of his own voice. There followed a moment of silence in which half a dozen shaggy heads swiveled in his direction.

“The what?”

“The carburetor.”

The biker put his hands on his hips and walked back around the bike to get a better look. He sort of turned his face up into the sun and laughed out loud. He pointed at Ike, then looked back toward his friends. “What’s this, Morris, your brother?”

The others laughed.

Ike shifted his butt on the curb. “I can fix it for you if you’ve got a screwdriver.”

The biker just looked at him. He pushed his shades up and over the bandanna so they rested on his hair.

“Shit,” somebody said. “I wouldn’t let him near it.”

The owner of the Knuckle raised his hand. “What if I do have a screwdriver?” he asked. “What are you going to do if you fuck it up?”

“I won’t fuck it up.”

The biker grinned. “Come over here, Morris. Bring your screwdriver and see how it’s done.”

A bulky-looking biker with blond hair walked over and tossed Ike a screwdriver. He tossed him a sullen look, too. “Don’t fuck nothin’,” he said.

Ike left his board at the curb and knelt alongside the big engine, inhaled the familiar hot odors of fuel and metal. It took him about three minutes to adjust the mixture. “There it is,” he said. “And I can take that dent out of the tank for you, too.”

The biker stared at him and Ike could not tell if he was pissed or not. He swung himself up on the bike and roared off down the stretch of asphalt that ran away from the pier. Ike waited with the others. He was feeling better now; he had stopped shaking. He did not look at the other bikers, but stared into the heat waves at the end of the lot and waited for the Knuckle to come back. A few minutes later it returned. Ike listened for the miss but couldn’t pick it out.

“Fuck me in the ass,” the biker yelled above the engine. “It’s runnin’ like a charm. The kid’s a better mechanic than you are, Morris.”

Morris just walked over and got his screwdriver. He spat on the ground dangerously close to Ike’s foot and swaggered back to his bike.

The Knuckle’s owner shut down his engine and got off. “About that dent,” he said, “how much?”

“The bodywork, the paint, the whole shot,” Ike figured quickly. “Fifty bucks.”