Tapping the source, p.18
Tapping the Source, page 18
After what seemed a very long time, Ike was aware of movement on the beach side of the car. There were several figures there, moving among the oil rigs and pieces of chain link fence.
“Come on,” Hound said, “let’s go.”
Hound reached behind his seat as they got out of the car and grabbed a large paper bag. The doors slammed shut and they walked toward the edge of the cliffs. There was a handful of people there, among the shadows. Ike counted six, all dressed in white T-shirts and dark pants.
When they had moved closer, he could see that it was a group of boys—maybe high school age, or younger—and that they were Mexicans. They were spread out in a loose half circle. As Hound and Ike reached them they turned and moved closer to the edge of the cliffs. Ike and Hound followed, across a set of railroad tracks and then back behind one of the rigs. They were hidden from the road here, near a ravine that split the cliffs and revealed a section of beach below. Looking down, Ike could see a fire, couples dancing in the orange light, and beyond it, the white lines of breaking waves moving across a black sea.
The boys had money for Hound. Hound gave them the bag. Ike was surprised at how young these guys looked, not at all like the people he had imagined. Somebody had a pipe going. It was passed to Ike and he took a hit, passed it on to Hound Adams. “Hound,” one of the boys said. “Tony wants to know can you get more of those pictures, the good ones, man, like this.” He flashed a picture toward Hound and Ike. There was a chorus of laughter from the circle. They were squatting in the light of a rig, but still it was hard for Ike to make much of the photograph. He could see that it was some kind of porno shot. He’d seen a set of spread thighs, a dark patch of hair. Hound nodded. “Sure thing, you got the bread.”
“You should give them to us free, man, bonus for your customers.” There was more laughter.
“Nothing’s free,” Hound told them. Ike was still thinking about the vanished photograph. What was there? A splash of color across the skin, red like blood? He would have liked another look, but the picture was gone and Hound was standing up to leave. The boys got up too, and soon they were out of sight, vanishing among the shadows of the trail that led through the ravine, back to the beaches. Ike brushed at the knees of his pants, tried to recall a single face from among the group and realized he could not. He could only remember the voices, the white flashes of shirts, and the splashes of light on the black pointed shoes.
• • •
When they were back in the car, Hound passed Ike the roll of bills. “Count it,” he said. He leaned over and put his handgun back into the glove box as Ike counted the money.
“Not bad for a night’s work?”
Ike agreed.
“Now it’s your turn.”
They drove back toward town with Ike wondering what Hound had meant, back toward the cluster of light that marked the intersection of Main Street and Coast Highway, toward the long, graceful line of light that was the Huntington Beach pier stretching into the Pacific.
They cruised slowly by the pier entrance on their first run, then looped around to come back from the other direction. This time Hound made a left turn off the highway and pulled into one of the long rectangular parking lots beneath the pier, the same lot in which he had fought the bikers. When they had parked, he killed the engine and turned to face Ike, his hand resting on the console between the seats. “How’d that board work for you today?” he asked.
“Okay. I’d like to try it in some easier waves.”
“End of the swell.”
Ike nodded.
“You’ve got potential,” Hound told him. “You stayed out there today. Surfing is as much a mental activity as it is a physical one.” Hound paused and Ike stared across the hood toward the dark stretch of beach. “I brought you with me tonight,” Hound said, “because I wanted you to see some things. There’s an idea I want you to think about.” Hound paused again and Ike looked at him for a moment, finding something disconcerting about the intensity with which Hound Adams seemed to be studying him. “You work on engines,” Hound said. “That requires a certain skill, and a certain knowledge. You have to have an understanding of the various systems that make up the engine, how the systems work together. Basically, what you have to understand first are the principles upon which the thing operates, so that it, like surfing, like everything else, is mental as well as physical. There is always this problem of understanding certain underlying principles. Am I right? Are you following me?”
Ike nodded. He was staring back toward the dark beach now, wondering where this new flight of Hound’s would lead, how it might connect with the new surfboard he had assumed he was to begin paying for tonight.
“Well, look around you,” Hound continued, “I told you there were other ways of making a living around here besides working on bikes. I might have said there are other sorts of machines you can work on, because you can work on this town just like it was an engine. You can make it work for you, make it do what you want it to. And you don’t have to get greasy doing it. You don’t have to get shoved around by some Neanderthal like Morris. What you do have to do is get a grasp on the underlying principles upon which the machine operates.” Hound paused again, waited a moment, and then went on. “Now you’ve seen one principle in operation tonight. A very simple one: supply and demand. I had what those greasers out by the oil wells wanted. I know what they want and I know how to get it. All they know is what they want. They’re in the dark about everything else. They’ll bust their asses at some job all day long, always at the mercy of the machine. Now admittedly those guys are at the bottom of a certain process, but the principles apply all the way to the top. That principle of supply and demand is always around. You lose a board and want another. I can give you one. I can give you your pick, in fact, but now you can do something for me.”
Hound opened the console between the seats and produced a small plastic bag containing perhaps half a dozen joints. “What you can do tonight,” Hound said, “is hang around the pier for a while and find some young girls who want to party.”
Ike stared stupidly at the plastic bag. It was somehow a request that did not make much sense. He had never guessed that Hound Adams wanted for girls to party with, and he did not think that was the case now.
Hound seemed to tap into what he was thinking. “The Samoans like young tail.” He smiled. “Not an uncommon like. So I could buy it. I could also get girls I already know. But then neither of those possibilities strikes me as being very interesting right now. There is a constant turnover of girls in this town, and I like meeting new ones. It has become another aspect of the machine I’ve learned how to use, and I can use someone like you, some good-looking young guy who can meet chicks with no problem.”
Ike continued to stare at the joints. A thin line of perspiration moved along one temple. For the first time since arriving in Huntington Beach, he felt that he was really close to something, something more than anyone had yet told him, perhaps more than anyone knew. The prospect seemed to hang there before him in an almost palpable way.
“Is something the matter?” Hound asked.
“No, I . . .” Ike was suddenly sweating profusely. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Nonsense. Let me run something down for you. I’ve given you the board. It’s yours. I don’t want it back. Giving it back would mean nothing to me. The board is just an object. What we’re talking about is the spirit behind the giving. Now, I’m asking you for something, a very simple thing, but it’s a beginning. Find some girls, bring them to the house. If you can’t make that work, maybe you can go get Michelle and her friend. The thing is not to come back alone. But you’re making a big thing out of it. It’s simple, really. Find a few chicks, do a number with them, tell them you know where there’s a party. There’s nothing to it.” Hound Adams put his hand on Ike’s knee. “See you at the house, brah.”
27
Ike stood in the parking lot and watched the taillights of Hound’s Sting-Ray vanish into the night, acutely aware of the weight in his shirt pocket. As he began walking slowly toward the pier it seemed to him that he’d reached a moment of decision. He could either do as Hound Adams asked, or he could leave town. There was no in-between now. And yet, wasn’t that what he wanted, to get next to Hound Adams, to find out what went on, to find something that could be used against him? Damn. He let his breath out slowly between his teeth as he walked. The strange thing was, that somehow, played off against all of his anxiety, against the slightly gritty feeling that he had been put up to some unwholesome task, there was a part of him that had not gone unmoved by Hound’s vision of the town as some great organic machine one might learn to make work to one’s own advantage. And there was something else, too, a kind of crazy curiosity about himself. Here he was, Ike Tucker, some hick out of nowhere walking around on the edge of the Pacific Ocean with a pocketful of dope on a mission to deliver girls to some party. There was something about that that was both terrifying and at the same time wildly exhilarating.
He mounted the concrete steps that led to the pier. The boardwalk was crowded: people on skates, couples strolling arm in arm, suntanned young punks leaning on the rails. Music spilled from the fish-and-chips joint at the pier entrance and from a number of transistor radios. Across the highway, the town was a string of light set against the blackness of the sky.
He turned up the pier, walking now out to sea. He felt drunk, but he was not, still a bit high maybe from the dope he had smoked at the oil rig. But it was a different feeling, almost like something in him had snapped and set him free, though free from what he could not say. He did not feel the boardwalk beneath his feet. He felt instead the blood pumping in his arms, in the palms of his hands. Two girls glided past him on skates and he racked his brain for an opening line. He spotted a group of four girls. These were on skates as well and like him were headed toward the dark end of the pier. He fell in behind them. They stopped at a place where the pier widened out, and began leaning over the rail to watch some surfers below them.
Ike walked up and stood beside them. His heart was beating with such force, he was surprised they could not hear it. “Nice swell,” he said. This statement seemed to bring all conversation to a halt and all four girls turned to look at him, then at one another. Finally one of them said, “What?”
“I said, it’s a nice swell.”
There was no response. The girls continued to look at one another as if it was necessary to confer on what he had said.
“Good waves,” Ike went on, figuring it was too late to stop now. “I mean, it’s pretty big and all.”
Still no one responded to him, and he was beginning to feel that something was terribly wrong. Maybe he only thought he was talking, perhaps he was just staring.
The girls stared back. One of them giggled. Now that they were no longer moving targets but standing in one spot, giving him time to look them over, he was beginning to suspect he had misjudged their ages. The biggest of the group looked to be about twelve. He guessed the skates made them look older, or at least taller.
He was rescued from further embarrassment, however, when some old man came walking toward them from the opposite side of the pier. “Come on, girls,” the man said, “let’s get some food.” He gave Ike a dirty look and the four girls rolled off after him. One of them said good-bye as she was leaving.
Ike slumped against the rail. His heart was still pounding and he’d broken into another sweat. He stood at the rail for some time, letting the breeze cool his face, trying to collect his thoughts, watching the machinery of Huntington Beach as it hummed around him.
At some point he became aware of three girls standing at the railing opposite him. These looked like better candidates right away. They looked young, but they were plainly not with their parents. Two of them, dressed in very tight jeans and skimpy tank tops, were leaning against the rail smoking cigarettes. The third, a redhead, was standing with her profile to Ike. She was dressed in a pair of silky running shorts and a light-colored tube top.
Ike walked across the pier and said hello. He walked toward the redhead and it was to her that he spoke. She was the prettiest of the three. Her hair was very red, a dark, blood red, and her skin was very white. Her lips and nails were red as well. The other two might have been sisters. They were thin with blond hair, but it was a peroxided, brittle-looking shade. The redhead smiled and said hello. The other two smiled at each other, as if they knew exactly what he was up to. Ike moved to one side and put his hand on the rail. They were all looking at him now. “You want to get high?” he asked. He had decided not to beat around the bush.
The girls looked at one another. One of the skinny blondes flipped a cigarette butt over the rail. “Maybe,” the redhead replied. “Where ’bouts?”
“Anywhere. The beach.”
“You got good stuff?”
“Colombian.”
The redhead looked at her friends and raised her eyebrows.
“Why not?” somebody asked.
• • •
It was like Hound had said, there was nothing to it. They smoked a J and he told them his brother was a dealer, that there was supposed to be a party going on at the house, later. They huddled on it while Ike stood off to the side, waiting, trying to look bored. They were standing in the sand beneath the pier and he could hear their laughter mixing with the sound the white water made as it wrapped around the pilings. They finally decided to go, and he could hear one of them say, “I think he’s cute,” as they walked toward him from the shadows.
So that’s how it’s done, he thought. He walked beside the redhead, who would have been quite a bit shorter than him without her shoes. The shoes made her nearly as tall as Michelle, made her legs look long and sexy, and he thought of how Michelle’s looked like that all the time, even when she was barefoot. Perhaps it was thinking about Michelle that did it, but suddenly, walking along Coast Highway toward Hound’s street, he was set upon by a great wave of guilt. It washed over him in flashes of hot and cold. The excitement he had felt earlier seemed to have vanished completely, leaving only a gritty, unwholesome clammy feeling in the palms of his hands. What was he doing? He had no real idea of what would happen at Hound’s. He flashed again on the picture he’d seen in the light of the oil rig. What if something bad happened? He flashed on his sister. Somehow the skinny blondes reminded him of her. She was like that. He could see her at the rail of the old pier, a cigarette between her lips, looking wild, an easy pickup. How had she fit into the great machine, the system of supply and demand? A chill ran up his back and spread across his shoulders, and he was finding it difficult to think of anything to say. What if he should run into Michelle or Jill? He wondered if he was running the risk of blowing everything. Would Michelle believe that this was what Hound Adams wanted by way of repayment? But he thought of another thing, too, in terms of repaying Hound, and that was the sight of Hound Adams standing his ground against the bikers in the parking lot, standing between him and Morris. Where did you draw the line when someone had saved your fucking life? Or was that only a rationalization, an excuse for his own lack of conviction?
He was feeling fairly miserable by the time they headed up Hound’s street. Behind him, the two blondes had begun to bitch about somebody’s mother’s boyfriend. One of them had begun a rather lengthy story about how the guy tried to get a look at her when she was in the shower or something. She was talking in this very loud voice and Ike got the idea that it was partly for his benefit. The redhead looked at him once and rolled her eyes. Before they reached the house, though, the subject changed and they all started talking about some party they’d been to the night before. Seems some boys had invited them over for a party, except there wasn’t a party, just a bunch of horny guys sitting around waiting for some chicks to show up. “That’s all those guys do,” one of the girls said. “They just go down to the beach every day and tell a lot of girls there’s a big party at their place. Then when you get there, it’s just them, sitting around, trying to act cool.”
“And it’s not even their house,” someone said. “It’s just a summer rental. They’re from Santa Ana, or some dumb place, I heard them say.”
“And they never have any decent dope,” the redhead added.
Ike was getting a little nervous with this line of conversation. Suppose he got them home and they got scared, or pissed off? What would Hound have to say about that? Would he send him back after Michelle?
• • •
The house was dark when they got there. There were just a couple of candles lit in the living room and some music on the stereo, some of the punk sounds Ike heard around the Sea View but had not until now heard at Hound’s. The girls seemed to like the house, though. They could see it wasn’t just some summer rental. “You live here?” the redhead wanted to know. Ike said that he did. Hound and Samoans were not in sight. But the girls did not seem to mind. They didn’t even ask him about the party. The redhead sat on the couch and the other two started looking through the records.
Ike sat next to the redhead. His palms felt cold and damp. He was still having a hard time thinking of anything to say and he’d used the last of his joints. Then Hound came in. He looked much as he’d looked the night of his party, the night Ike met him. He was decked out in a pair of white cotton pants and one of his fancier Mexican shirts. He wore a necklace of beads and there were more beads on the front of his shirt. His hair looked straight and clean and was held in place with an Indian-looking headband. Ike introduced him as his brother. Hound smiled at the girls and seated himself on the floor. He produced a pipe and a match. He told Ike there were some beers in the kitchen. Ike went to get them, and by the time he got back the other two girls were seated on the floor with Hound and the pipe was making the rounds. Ike rejoined the redhead on the couch and started opening the beers.
The pipe was loaded with hash and soon everybody was pretty stoned. Ike was getting wasted in a hurry. He’d skipped dinner and now he was getting his share of hits off the pipe and pouring beer down fast to cool the burning in his throat. The two girls on the floor got up and started dancing and their bodies were like slender flames licking the walls. The redhead reached across Ike once in a while for the pipe or a beer, pressing her breasts against his arm, and pretty soon he was necking with her. At some point, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that one of the Samoans had showed up and had started dancing with the skinny blondes. He noticed, too, that Hound Adams had left the room. He’d already forgotten all the girls’ names. He’d even forgotten the redhead’s name, but he was feeling no pain at the present and the redhead’s top had somehow gotten down around her waist and she was grabbing at his cock, and nothing had ever happened exactly this fast for him before. It was like one minute they were just sitting there, and the next minute they were going after each other like mad and he had forgotten all about Michelle waiting for him at the Sea View apartments.
