Nick's Trip (18 page)

Billy and I found two empty red vinyl stools on the west end of the U and bellied up. A large jar of pickled pig’s feet rested on the bar between us. I signaled the barmaid, a woman in her sixties with steel gray hair flipped on one side. She moved slowly to our curve in the U as she wiped an aquamarine bar rag across her hands. When she reached us she kicked her chin up just a bit to signal for our order. One of her spotted hands, with short, hard nails painted apple red to match the color drawn across her lips, rested on her hip. That hip, which still had a shape distinct from the rest of her, was slightly cocked. Grandma, with a fistful of rolled nickels.

“What can I get you fellas?”

“Two beers and two whiskeys,” I said. “Make the beers Budweisers and the whiskeys Grand-Dad.”

“I suppose you take your bourbon straight up,” she said, and tilted her chin up once again to let her eyes look us over.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She served the beers at once and rooted around the rack for a couple of shot glasses. While she did that, Billy and I tapped bottles and drank deeply. Then I had a look around the Pony Point.

On the east curve of the U sat three drunken men, their shoulders touching as if joined. The man in the middle was young, with a flattop and pale skin and an over-the-lip wisp of light brown hair masquerading as a mustache. He was bookended by two older men, one of whom was a well-worn version
of flattop. Several beers sat in front of the three of them. The two older men looked quickly over to flattop and sang, in ravaged unison, “I’m gonna stick… like glue.”

Flattop looked into my eyes from across the bar and yelled, with a crooked smile, “Tomorrow ah’m a fuckin’ marine!” The Pony Point was filled with noise, but I could have heard the kid from out in the parking lot.

Our bourbons were served, and I raised my glass to Flattop before tapping Billy’s and tipping the shot to my lips. The warm liquor slid down with slow-jazz ease. I savored the afterburn, then asked the barmaid her name.

“Wanda,” she said.

“Wanda, buy those two older ones their next round. And give the soldier in the middle whatever he wants.”

“Sure thing.”

Billy said, “And we’ll take a couple of those pig’s feet, honey.”

Wanda said, “You got it.”

A hand wrapped around my arm. It was attached to a little man in a Cubs cap who was sliding onto the stool to my right. The man was not very old, but he had lost his teeth and on this night at least was not wearing the replacements. He used my arm for support as he adjusted his butt to the center of the stool.

“Thanks,” he said, and removed the cap to wipe a fuzzy, rather bullet-shaped head.

“No problem.”

“I see you’re buyin’,” he said matter-of-factly. He was trying to look up at me, but his gray eyes were missing the mark, shooting up toward the beamed ceiling.

“Why not? What are you drinking?”

“I’d love some whiskey. You like Conway Twitty?”

“No. But I dig Merle Haggard.”

“My name’s Ken.”

I shook his hand and said, “Nick.”

Wanda served our pig’s feet on paper plates set next to
plastic forks and then poured Ken a shot of rail whiskey. Ken knocked back half of it posthaste and cupped his hand protectively around the glass as he set it down on the bar. Billy ignored the fork, picked up the pig’s foot, and began to chew meat off the bone. I tasted a sliver of mine, rejected the texture, and pushed the plate in front of Billy. The juke was playing Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” I lit a cigarette and ran my hand back through my hair.

Two men stood by the kitchen door at the far side of the room. One was heavy and dark-skinned and wore an eggshell apron stained brown around his waist. The other was tall and lean and wore Wrangler jeans and a brown flannel shirt unbuttoned once to expose a triangle of white T-shirt at the base of the neck. Both of them stared at me until I looked away. When I looked back their attention remained fixed. I turned to Ken.

Ken said, “You like Randy Travis?”

“Uh-uh.” I said. “You ever listen to Gram Parsons?” Ken’s eyes traveled back up to the ceiling as he thought it over and shook his head. “How about Rodney Crowell?”

“That’s that boy married to Johnny Cash’s girl, right?”

I nodded. “Had a great single on the country charts, seven or eight years back—‘Ashes by Now.’”

“Yeah,” Ken said. “I remember it. He’s pretty damn good.”

I turned my head to the left. Billy dropped what was left of the pink-and-yellow pig’s foot to the plate and wiped a paper napkin across his mouth. He chin-nodded the two by the kitchen door. The tall one nodded back without emotion.

I said, “I don’t think those two like us.”

“They’re all right.”

“You know ’em?”

Billy had a long, even taste of the bourbon and winced. He set the glass back down on the bar. “Black dude with the apron’s named Russel. Local boy, knew April when they were young. The tall hard guy’s Hendricks—a state cop. Grew up in Nanjemoy on the other side of Three-oh-one. Rides out of La Plata
but spends a lot of time around the island. Don’t take it personal. It’s me they don’t like.”

“Maybe I should talk to ’em.”

“Suit yourself. Want an introduction?”

“No.”

I killed my bourbon, stubbed my smoke, and picked up my beer. Ken suggested another round, but I ignored him as I pushed away from the bar and followed the curve of the U. I swerved by two old guys with winter sunburns and dirty hands and was clapped on the shoulder by one of Flattop’s crew as I passed his back. His crossed eyes zeroed in on my chest as he sang, “I’m gonna stick… like glue.”

The one with the apron, Russel, turned on his heels as I approached. By the time I reached the end of the bar, he had retreated into the fluorescence of the kitchen. That left me and Hendricks.

Hendricks looked in my eyes evenly and for a long time. I studied his as he did it. He had the clean, open face of a man who works hard every day and likes it. His eyes were dark blue, framed by short bursts of lines and set wide; his broad mouth stretched out across a stone jaw. I put him at about my age, though weathered by the elements.

“How’s it goin’?” he said.

“It’s goin’ good.”

“You about done nursin’ that beer?”

“Yeah.”

“Let’s have another.”

“Sounds good.” I finished off the bottle. “But I’m buying, okay? Makes sense to buy the local cop a beer when you’re in his county.”

Hendricks grinned just enough to lift one cheek. “I won’t stop you,” he said.

“My name’s Nick Stefanos.”

“Hendricks.”

I signaled Wanda with a sweeping victory sign and had her
serve another shot to Ken. Billy was off and talking to a huge bearded man in a Red Man cap who stood blocking the front door like a bear in overalls. The bearman’s narrow eyes were obtusely pointed to the floor as Billy talked. When the beers came I raised mine to Hendricks and had a swig. The floor tilted somewhat beneath my feet. I wrapped a hand around the curved lip of the bar.

Hendricks said, “Which one of you lovers is drivin’?”

I pointed the neck of the Bud at Billy. “We’re not going far. Sleeping at April Goodrich’s farm tonight.” I closed one eye a bit to focus on Hendricks. “You know her?”

“Knew her before she was named Goodrich,” he said.

“Seen her lately?”

“That what you came down here for? Lookin’ for April?”

“That’s right.”

“What’s it about. Personal?”

“It is for him.” I glanced quickly toward Billy and back to Hendricks. “For me it’s a job.”

Hendricks said, “You’re no cop.”

I shook my head. “Private.”

Hendricks thought about that over a long, slow pull of beer. He placed the bottle softly on the bar, looked my way, and relaxed his shoulders. “So what happened to your face?”

I rubbed it and felt the swell. “To tell you the truth, I don’t remember. We made a night of it, I guess.”

“It’s not a bad face,” Hendricks said frankly. “But you can’t tell a thing about a man when you meet him on a drunk. And right now I don’t know nuthin’ about you but your name. You want to talk to me, I’ll be around the island tomorrow.”

“Fair enough.” I shook his hand.

“You take care, now.”

Just then Hank Williams, Jr., roared out of the juke and Ken began to yell, from across the bar, “Bocephus! Boceeeephus!” He was pointing at me and smiling and with one hand keeping the cap on his head as he bucked like a rodeo clown on
the red vinyl stool. I weaved recklessly across the smoky bar, past Flattop and his send-off crew (his uncle or father appeared to be holding the young man upright now at the bar), and made it over to Billy. Ken was off his stool and at my side by the time I reached Billy and the bearman.

“Let’s get out of here,” I said.

Billy tried to focus one eye. A block of his blond hair had fallen over the other. “Had enough?”

“Yeah.”

“One more stop, though.”

“Where?”

“Place called Rock Point.”

Ken let out a small whoop and I thought I saw the bearman break a tobacco-stained smile. I handed Billy some bills and he put those together with some of his own and left them all in a leafy heap on the bar. Wanda flicked her chin at him and then at me by way of thanks. Hank Williams, Jr., was still pumping out the bar-band jam as the four of us proceeded to fall out the front door. When I turned around for one final glance at the joint, Russel and Hendricks were standing in the entranceway to the kitchen. They were talking to each other, but they were looking dead straight at me.

THE FOUR OF US
crashed like a wave into Billy’s Maxima and headed north on 254. I handed a tape I had lifted from the Spot over the seat to the bearman and had him slip it into the deck. Steve Earle’s “I’m the Other Kind” immediately boomed out of the rear-mounted speakers like some Wagnerian, biker-bar anthem. The bearman turned up the volume and clumsily moved his head to the beat. I watched it bob from behind like a hairy, floating melon. Ken sang the romantic wind-road-and-bike chorus (in between screaming praise about Earle’s band, the Dukes—he called them the “Dee-yukes”) and passed beers all around.

At 257 Billy turned sharply right, spit gravel, then recovered his course onto a crudely paved road that soon narrowed to one lane. We passed a shack of a general store—an old man in a down coat sat in a lighted telephone booth and waved as we drove by—and some screened bungalows set far back on properties bulkheading the Wicomico. The road ahead, veined now with deep fissures and cracks, seemed to narrow even further. And then, without warning of any kind, the road simply ended.

We parked the car in front of a steel guardrail serving as a barrier. To the right, on a raised plot of dirt and naked turf, stood a post office the size of a tollbooth. Billy and the bearman got out of the Maxima, and Maybelle scrambled over my legs to follow. Ken was next out, and then me. I felt the temperature drop sharply as my face met the winter wind that was coming out of the southeast and off the river.

Billy cut the engine and the lights; the music still played. I trailed the group—Maybelle had trotted off into a wooded area to the right—and climbed over the barrier, on which was posted a
NO TRESPASSING
notice peppered with buckshot. What was left of the concrete road continued, buckled and in pieces, on a downward slope to the river. The swells of the Wicomico shimmered from the light of the moon and moved diagonally toward the shore in rough cadence with the wind. South beyond the point the Potomac merged with the Wicomico in cold, deep current. I zipped my jacket to the collar.

Ken and the bearman stopped at the waterline; one of Ken’s fists dug into his jean pocket, the other gripping the neck of the Bud. The bearman appeared to be rolling a joint—he was carefully twisting it now, his muttonchop hands working the papers very closely to his small eyes—and Billy, with the cheesecloth bladder that had plagued him since childhood, was pissing like a filly near a grove of sycamores on the edge of the gravelly beach. I drew the pint from my jacket and knocked back an inch of bourbon.

Down on the beach I joined Billy and passed him the bottle.
He had his taste and then we both followed it with beer. The wind was lifting Billy’s hair off his scalp and blowing it about his face. Music came from the road and through the trees—Steve Earle had yielded now to Neil Young on the tape. The feedback and grunge of twin Les Pauls and Young’s wailing vocals pierced the rush of the wind.

“The road ends at Rock Point,” Billy said out of nowhere, stating the obvious and pointing his beer bottle toward the river with uncharacteristic dramatic punctuation. “I used to come here all the time, that first summer when me and April got together. She didn’t understand the attraction—to her it was the place where she and her friends came to smoke pot and drink and screw when they were growing up—but there was something to it for me. Something about the road running right into the fucking sea.”

“What about now?”

“It went to seed,” he said, adding, with a bitter edge, “like everything else in this life.” Billy drank his beer and wiped the backwash on his jacket sleeve. “Rubbers and beer cans, and gooks fishing for spot. That’s all this place is now.”