Tapping the Source (9 page)

8

It got bad again after that, after his conversation with Preston. In a way it was even worse than before. He knew now that Hound Adams was real, that he was around, and that Preston knew who he was. But Preston’s words had revived all of his uncertainties. He had this feeling that whatever move he made next was bound to be the wrong one.

He spent the following day alone in his room and that evening he went out for a walk, thinking that perhaps he would run into Preston, that they could talk. It didn’t happen and he wound up at the very end of the old pier seated with a handful of Mexican fishermen as the night turned cool and damp beneath a heavy mist. The iron rails and painted benches grew wet and the yellow lights that lined the boardwalk drew lines upon their slick surfaces. Still, Ike remained there for some time, staring back toward the highway and the town, which from here had been reduced to a thin band of lights beneath a moonless sky. He kept thinking about Preston, of the way he had grown angry over Ike’s story. He was puzzled by the anger and yet, in an odd way, comforted by it as well. It was perhaps selfish of him to think so, but the anger, it seemed to him, was like some tool just resting there, waiting to be used, if only it could be better understood. And though he could see that doing so would require time, he was against blowing Preston off too soon. The best course, he felt, was to be patient a bit longer. And in the meantime he could continue with his own idea of learning to surf. But he would take Preston’s advice on avoiding the pier, at least until he was better. For the present, he would trust in what Preston had said.

He took some comfort in thinking through these things, in deciding on something. His sister perhaps, or Gordon, might have said he was too cautious, and perhaps he was. It was just that he did not want to blow it from the very beginning.

•   •   •

It was late when he left the pier. He crossed Coast Highway and headed inland on Main. He did not know how late it was but noticed that the bars had closed and the streets were empty. As he neared the intersection of Main and Walnut a lowered Chevy rolled past on chromed rims, its tires making a soft swishing sound on the wet asphalt. He could not see how many people were in the car, as the windows were tinted, but it cruised through the intersection a few yards ahead of him and seemed to slow a bit, as if someone was checking him out. He had been about to turn on Walnut, but that would have put him walking in the same direction as the car and he decided against it, thinking suddenly of Hazel Adams’s warning. He crossed instead behind it and continued up Main, walking quickly with his hands jammed down into the pockets of his jeans.

There was a vacant lot at the top of the next block, and some trees. He waited there a moment in the shadows just to make sure the car was not circling around. It did not appear to be and he was just about to leave when something else caught his eye. There was an alley that ran parallel to Main, just behind the buildings that faced the street, and from his position at the end of the block he could look back across the lot and see down the alley for a fair distance. And that was how he happened to see the bike.

He moved out from beneath the trees and walked slowly along the eastern end of the lot. The bike was a big one, and drawing closer to the mouth of the alley, Ike could see that it was Preston’s Knuckle. Then he saw Preston as well. He was standing at the side of the alley, in what looked to be the beginnings of a driveway, only there was no driveway there, just the back of a building—rough, darkened bricks and a naked bulb maybe ten feet off the ground. The bulb was lit and cast a pale light onto the broken asphalt and gravel beneath it.

Preston was leaning, his arm out and braced against the wall, talking to another guy. Ike could not see much of what the other guy looked like because Preston was quite a bit bigger and was blocking Ike’s view. All that Ike could really see of the other man was a bright spot of blond hair above Preston’s outstretched arm. Ike got the idea, however, that Preston was doing the talking, the other guy the listening. There was something about the way in which the blond head appeared to be cocked a bit to one side and tilted down, that gave Ike this idea. But he was too far away to hear and he could not take the chance of moving closer, nor did he want to stand for long at the mouth of the alley where either man might turn and see him. There was something in the scene, he thought, that suggested he keep his distance. What was most bothersome, however, was the location of the building behind which they stood. As near as Ike could tell, it was the back of the first surf shop he had gone into that day he’d gotten his board.

The implications of this could of course be interpreted in more than one way and the task of doing so was enough to disturb the peace he had found at the end of the pier. It had him guessing as he moved away from the alley and into the night, and it kept him that way far into the first gray hours of morning. For the present, however, his resolve held and he was up with the dawn, dressed in cutoff jeans and a ragged sweat shirt, a towel slung over his shoulders, his board beneath his arm. A sleepless night behind him, he was headed for the Coast Highway and the beaches north of town.

•   •   •

It was different at the north end of town. There was not the sense of light and movement one got around the pier. From the beach you could not see the highway or the town. There were only the cliffs, which were bare and rocky, capped by the gray squeaking forest of oil wells and by the black oil-spattered earth. It was a landscape of grays and blues, dull browns and yellow ochres, of blackened fire rings and litter. And on every available chunk of rock and concrete there were spray-painted messages, swastikas, Chicano names, for he had been told that the northern beaches were the domain of the inland gangs when the sun went down, gangs out of the landlocked badlands back of Long Beach and Santa Ana. It was a strip of beach the cops did not even bother with at night, and there were grisly tales told by surfers of ghastly early-morning finds. One surfer Ike spoke to claimed to have found a human leg, bloated and discolored, floating in the shallows. But the beaches were empty in the mornings. There were only the painted messages, the litter, the blackened fire rings like stone altars, and Ike made no terrible finds.

He was growing accustomed to a kind of dichotomy he had discovered here, a contradiction between the bleakness of the landscape and the beauty of the sea. There were times when the sea was like the land, flat, barren, the color of concrete. But there were other times when its surface was alive with light, times when the wave faces were like polished stones and the white water seemed on fire with the setting sun. And nowhere was this contradiction more apparent than along the beaches below the cliffs. In spite of the stories he had heard and the evidence of human filth in the sand, he came to love those stretches of beach, empty in the first light, silent except for the sounds of the surf and the cries of the gulls. He went there for the first time the morning after he saw Preston in the alley, and then every other morning for the rest of the week. He took great pleasure in the mornings, in walking along the cliffs, close to the edge, the ocean smooth and glassy beneath, the air still and soft against his face and yet laced with the salty dampness of the sea. But what he found most pleasure in was that certain rush that began as he picked a trail and started down, watching the swell lines as he went, anticipating that first explosion of cold, the first line of white water breaking over him, washing away everything save the moment itself.

•   •   •

The waves beneath the cliffs had a way of breaking far outside. The white water would then roll toward the beach in long, churning lines. There was a point, however, where the white water began to re-form, to swell up into a new wave that would go on to break only yards from shore. It was in this second, inside break that Ike did his practicing. He would paddle out just beyond the shore break, let the wall of white water catch his board, and then try to stand up as the wave was re-forming. He usually fell off shortly after the inside wave had begun to form. His board would shoot straight down the small wave and he would fly off the front, or he would catch a rail trying to turn and slip off the side. Then one morning something happened that was different. Ike got into a wall of white water from a large outside wave. It grabbed his board, sent it skimming across the surface of the water. Ike got to his feet. He was carrying more speed than he was used to, but he found the speed actually made it easier to stand. The wall slowed slightly, began to re-form. Ike leaned into the wave and the board swung easily beneath him. A wall of water rose ahead of him, its face glassy and smooth, streaked with white. He was angling across it. The bumpiness of his rides in the white water was gone; it was smooth, fast. He was riding a wave. The wall rose rapidly, began to pitch out, his inside rail caught and over he went, headfirst into the shore break, his board sailing into the air after him.

He had to swim back into the shore to get his board. But all the time he was swimming, he wanted to stop and shout, to raise his arms over his head and shake his fists. He knew now what the hoots and screams he had heard from the surfers beneath the pier were all about. He had gotten into a wave. He ran through the shallows, kicking up great rooster tails of water with his feet. He didn’t go back out right away. He sat down on the nose of his board in the wet sand and stared out into the lines of white water just now turning a kind of gold in the rising sun and tried to remember every detail of how it had felt.

He thought about it for the rest of the day, going over each sensation as he strolled past the empty lots and scarred palms. Fences formed ahead of him like green walls. He performed imaginary maneuvers of great skill, ducking now and then beneath the lip of an occasional hedge, his hand raised to ward off invisible spray.

He felt like talking to somebody about it and so decided to look for Preston. He still had not seen him since that night in the alley.

•   •   •

He found him at Morris’s shop. Morris was out and Preston was alone in the back lot. He was sitting on the wheel of an old flatbed bike trailer, staring at the alley. His back was turned to the drive and as Ike came up it he could see a sixer of tall cans at Preston’s side.

Preston looked up as Ike came around the fence that separated the drive from the lot. He watched Ike come around the fence and then stared back toward the alley. “Look here,” he said. “It’s Billy the Kid.” Ike passed behind the spray booth and came up to the trailer. He noticed there was already a sixpack’s worth of empties at Preston’s feet. “Thirsty?” Preston asked him, and then tossed him a can without waiting for a reply. Ike caught it and pulled the ring. Beer foamed out white and cold, running down the sides of the can and over his fingers. He took a drink and then looked at Preston. Preston was still watching the alley.

“I took your advice,” Ike told him. “I’ve been going farther north, by the cliffs.”

“My advice was that you leave town.”

Ike took another drink and looked down on that head of Christ that covered Preston’s forearm, at the bloody crown of thorns radiating birds and lizards. He felt the beer burning in his throat. “I got a ride today, man. I mean, a fairly decent one.”

“Yeah?” Preston looked up at him with one eye. He poured the rest of his beer down his throat. He had a way of doing it, of opening his mouth and holding the can about two or three inches away and just pouring it in, like dumping oil into a crank. When he was done, he dropped the can and stomped it with his boot, added it to the pile at his feet and reached for another.

“You were right about that board, it’s a lot more stable.”

Preston just nodded again and sat looking across the lot. Ike stood beside him. He was tempted to say something about seeing Preston in the alley, but he didn’t. It was Preston’s business and Ike did not guess Preston was the type to appreciate prying.

“So you really like it out there,” Preston said at last. He made it more of a statement than a question, but Ike answered anyway. “Yeah, I do. It’s different. I think about it a lot. Like when I’m working, or doing something else, I find myself wondering about conditions, about what the tide’s doing, thinking about what to work on next time I’m out. I need some new stuff. I want to get a wet suit and a leash for my board.”

“Buy a wet suit. Fuck the leash. Learn how to hang on to your board.”

“It’s hard.”

“Come on, man. I thought you were Billy the Kid. I thought you were here to take on Hound Adams. It’s hard,” he added, mimicking Ike but making his voice high and whiny. He looked up at Ike after he said it, sort of one-eyed, like he had before. He was squinting because the sun was in his face, but it looked to Ike like he was grinning some too. “You ready for another beer?”