Berserk (36 page)

Watching Dale squirm, Jonah asked, “What in the hell did you do that got you banned from a whole state?”

Dale snorted, rolled his eyes and tossed his spoon into his chili.

Jonah had the sinking feeling that that was all the response he was going to get on the matter. He opted for a softer approach. “Come on, big guy. You can tell me. I know you don’t like to talk about California, but it might make you feel better. I can keep a secret.”

“It’s not a secret,” Dale said. “It’s just… it’s sort of embarrassing.”

It took everything Jonah had not to drool. In the grand scheme of things, an embarrassing story beat a secret any day. “Come on. You know plenty of embarrassing things about me.” Which was true. “And you know a lot of my secrets.” Also true. “I trust you like I trust my own flesh and blood.” Not true. “I promise I won’t tell a soul.” Anything but true. “’Fess up. What did you do?”

Dale pursed his lips a moment. He then opened his mouth, on the verge of confession, but before uttering a syllable, he narrowed his eyes and closed his mouth again. A quick shake of the head signaled his final answer on the matter.

Jonah switched gears, from worry to whine. “Aww, come on. I tell you stuff all the time. You know everything about me. What’s so bad you can’t tell your best friend?”

“First of all,” Dale said, “I never ask you to tell me anything; you just seem to think everyone wants to know your very boring life story. And secondly, I won’t tell you because you’re my best friend.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I don’t want to burden you with it.”

The only thing that kept Jonah from laughing aloud at this was the pure sincerity in Dale’s voice. The man was never serious about anything. This earnest attempt at benevolence had the opposite effect on Jonah. Now he
really
had to know. “But that’s what I’m here for—”

The entire restaurant fell quiet in the echo of Dale’s outburst. Jonah grew acutely aware of the pressure of many eyes upon his person, as everyone in the place looked their way. But the men ignored the crowd, and each other. Slowly, the restaurant filled with hushed whispers about the argument. A waitress came to refill Jonah’s coffee without uttering a word. She didn’t have to. Her sideways glance and tight-lipped grin said everything she didn’t.

At length, Dale cleared his throat. “I left a lot of demons behind in Cali, okay? Demons I don’t want to face again.” His voice dropped to a near whisper as he added, “Demons I can’t face again.”

Jonah opened his mouth to ask why, but before he could, Dale cut him off.

“Don’t ask why,” Dale said. His eyes glistened with moisture that couldn’t be tears, because everyone knew Dale Jenkins never cried. Did he? “I can’t go back, Jonah. Just leave it at that. Please.”

“Oh,” Jonah said, because that was all he could really think to say. Between the two of them, Dale was supposed to be the strong one. The powerful one. The ‘fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke’ one. Yet here, at this moment in time, in this donut-topped wart on America’s ass, Dale was all at once stripped bare of his titles, bare of his defenses, bare of his machismo. This was a new side Jonah had never seen before. The effect was chilling. “Okay, buddy. I won’t bother you about it anymore.”

“No, I don’t want to know about that.” But in truth, he did. “I just wondered why you booked us a job in Reno if you can never return to California. Isn’t that a little close to the state line?”

Dale rubbed the back of his neck as he looked away, a classic sign of embarrassment for the man.

“Well?” Jonah asked.

“Well,” Dale started. “I kinda thought it
was
Vegas when I answered the ad. They said we were playing a casino. I just assumed.”

“Only Dale Jenkins would assume that all casinos lead to Vegas.” Jonah smiled at his friend’s unease. Something about seeing Dale squirm always made him smirk. “I guess that also explains why we are driving two hundred miles instead of playing someplace local.”

“No, we are driving two hundred miles because everyone within a hundred miles has heard us already.” Dale broke into rowdy laughter at his own joke.

Jonah joined Dale’s laughter, knowing that in some respects, the joke was funny because it was oh so true. While each on his own proved to be an able musician, the pair of them never seemed to get it together as a band. Or a duo. Jonah preferred soft rock and folk music as opposed to Dale’s obsession with hard rock and speed metal. Their united sound was tantamount to a caterwauling ballad sung by a donkey with his genitalia trapped in a vice. Jonah was surprised when Dale announced that he had suckered a place—aside from the local bar—into letting them play at all, and then immediately felt sorry for the folks who might make the mistake of attending their performance.

“Okay, then,” Jonah said, after their laughter wound down. “Let’s get back to the question of where we’re headed after Reno. And before you start, the answer is still no to the chickens.”

Putting away his book, as well as his dreams of visiting new and exciting places, Jonah gave another dejected sigh, then agreed. “Vegas.”

“Good. I’ve gotta take a leak. Don’t leave without me.” Dale stood and headed to the bathroom, leaving Jonah to deal with the bill, as usual.

Jonah tucked the book under his arm as he watched Dale retreat from responsibility yet again. This was the Dale he knew, the real Dale. Jonah tried to forget about the whole thing, but something had happened during that conversation, something Jonah had never experienced in all the years he had known Dale. It wasn’t just the level of discomfort that his friend showed, or his unwillingness to talk about his past. It was something deeper. Something primal. A spark flashed in Jonah’s very soul, a spark that leapt to a flame, which smoldered into a slow burn of worry.

Jonah sighed. He disliked it when employees tried to hold personal conversations with him. Well, he disliked it when anyone tried to talk to him, especially women. “He did, too. He just doesn’t want to go back.”

“Sounds like he needs a good prodding.”

Jonah glanced up to the cashier, who he now realized had been his waitress, and furrowed his brow. “A what?”

She smiled, obviously pleased to have caught his full attention after being ignored for the last hour. “A prodding. Someone to push him into it. Someone who can help him face whatever he left behind.”

“How did you …”

“Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing you two. Seriously, the only way to deal with something is to face it. A real friend would help him do that. A real friend owes it to him. Don’t you agree?”

That concern sparked again as the flame of worry burned brighter than ever. “Yes, yes I do agree. Thanks.”

The waitress was correct. Jonah owed it to Dale to help him face his past and sort out his problems. As Dale was surely flushing away his worries, Jonah formulated a plan.

It was as easy as falling asleep.

Or rather, it was as easy as waiting for Dale to fall asleep. Which, after the meal and with the steady rhythm of the highway, took no time at all. There was almost a kind of eerie coincidence to the happenings, a poetic timing to the proceedings. They were barreling down I-80, headed toward Reno. I-80. The very same artery that pumped traffic into the heart of the forbidden zone. Was it coincidence that they should land their first out-of-state gig in Reno? Perhaps, but maybe not. Maybe some force had been guiding their path all along, pulling them toward California and the life-altering revelations therein.

Jonah let the sleeping giant rest through the hour, as they passed sign after sign declaring the approaching city of Reno. But instead of taking the agreed-upon route, Jonah drove blithely past every single exit, ignoring each path in favor of his new one. They weren’t expected at the hotel for another day or so, which left them plenty of time to dip into California for just a few hours so Dale could face his so-called demons. Jonah watched Dale with a cautious eye until they were well past Reno altogether. Then Jonah pressed on, toward California.

Now it was a matter of keeping Dale asleep until they arrived at the state line.

What horrible act had Dale committed that would keep him from returning to an entire state? Jonah’s head filled with depraved doings and disgusting deeds, but nothing came to mind that he hadn’t already known Dale to have done. The guy was a shameless one-man sinning machine. And besides, Jonah supposed there was nothing under the sun that was so illegal in California—of all states—that engaging in it would leave a human being banned from returning. This meant the trouble was more personal, something from Dale’s past.

For some mysterious reason, his father sent him to Idaho to live with his aunt. His dad never followed, and they hadn’t spoken since.

Jonah’s life was dull by comparison. He was born and raised in the same small town, went to college in the big city of Boise, where he obtained a useless degree, and then moved just a few miles from home when it came time to flee the nest. To top off his exciting life, he landed a job in the grand world of retail sales. Jonah was, in all essence, a hometown kind of lad, whereas Dale was an out-of-town transplant who never quite seemed to fit in. (How the two complete opposites became fast friends was a whole different kettle of fish.) With a heartfelt need to help his friend, Jonah was convinced that Dale needed to return to San Francisco to sort out whatever ‘demons’ he’d left behind.

And by ‘demons’, Jonah meant Dale’s father.

Less than thirty minutes later, Jonah’s pulse quickened as they approached the huge ‘Welcome to California’ sign. He white-knuckled the wheel once more as his attention split between the giant sign and the snoring giant. One mile.
Snore
. One half mile.
Snort
. One quarter mile.
Snooze
. As the distance closed and the state line drew near, anxiety gripped Jonah’s heart with palpable dread. This was wrong. He knew it, yet he kept on driving. Dale had asked him, as a friend, to let it go, but here Jonah was, driving straight for it. He couldn’t let it go. He had to know what was wrong with California.

“It’s too late now,” Jonah whispered.

The state line was a beacon of mistrust and lies. Jonah had broken his promise, and did it matter that he done so with the best intentions? No, he supposed not. They say Hell is paved with such attempts, and so, with a weary heart, Jonah cast his stones along that much-traveled path. He pressed his foot down, pushing the Ford ever closer to its dreaded goal. Twenty feet. Ten feet. One. None.

Two things happened in the single moment Jonah drove Dale into California.

First, Jonah swore he could feel the state line as they passed over it. Like some invisible thread that bisected him to the core, or a thin wire of awareness that passed through his being. And, on the heels of this awareness, there came a flood of guilt, a drowning sensation that Jonah had done something very, very wrong.

The second thing that happened was simpler and more realistic.

Dale awoke with a sudden jerk.

“Where are we?” he asked. From dead-asleep to wide-awake in a split second, Dale pressed his face against the passenger window and took in his surroundings. His attention snapped back and forth, from car to road to landscape, like an overexcited dog. After a few seconds of silence, he asked again, “Where are we?”

“Nowhere,” Jonah squeaked. He had hoped that Dale would remain in hibernation until they were entrenched in the state. “We’re an hour from Reno. Go back to sleep.”

They watched in silence as a passing sign made a liar out of Jonah. It proclaimed that the sunny state of California was very pleased to welcome them.

“Did it?” Jonah half asked and half said—half hoping Dale would think this was all just a dream and go back to sleep. “You’re imagining things.” As he said this, they passed a billboard that assured Dale that Jonah was indeed a liar by offering the cheapest hotel prices available in the sunny state of California. Exit seven, only five miles on the right!

“Jonah?” Dale asked.

“Dale?” Jonah asked.

“Are we where I think we are? And you better not say what I think you are going to say, or God help me, I will rip your head from your shoulders and shit down your neck!”

Jonah thought long and hard about this question. There was no use denying it anymore, as Dale was eyeing a steady stream of highway markers and billboards that revealed the lie for what it was. He would rather not have Dale make good on his head ripping, neck shitting promise, but the jig was indeed up.

Jonah drew a deep, soulful sigh, and said, “California.”

Dale said nothing in response, which surprised Jonah. Jonah was further surprised when Dale grabbed the steering wheel and tried to flip a bitch against the four lanes of busy interstate traffic.

“What are you doing?” Jonah screamed.