Tapping the Source (32 page)

They came upon the duplex from the backside this time and stood near a small hedge that separated the yard from the alley. There was a gate in the hedge and Barbara stopped with her hand resting on it.

“I should come in,” Ike said. “I should talk to him.”

She had taken her shades out of her purse and slipped them on. “Not now,” she said. “I’m sure he’s sleeping. He had just taken some medication when I left. It always knocks him out for a while. Then he wakes up and starts drinking.”

He told her about seeing Preston in front of the shop.

“Happens all the time,” she said. She turned away for a moment, then looked back toward him. “I’m leaving him for good, Ike. I’ve put some applications in at some schools. My father’s going to foot the bill. But I’m getting out.”

He wasn’t sure what to say. He waited.

“You think that’s terrible, running out on him when he needs me? Something like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t handle it anymore. It’s like I’ve woken up to what I told you that night in your room. I’m not going to sit around and watch my life go down the tubes any longer. I’m going to get on with it. And he’s killing himself, Ike, for sure now. It’s just a question of time. I can’t watch any longer.”

Ike felt the sunlight on his shoulders. He felt very tired and somehow unmoved by what Barbara was saying. After all, it was his fucking karma, wasn’t it? Damn him. All he wanted now was to talk to him once more. Let him live long enough for that, at least. “I’m coming by,” he said. “Tonight.”

“Not tonight. His parents are supposed to be coming by later today. And I’m packing. They’re going to give me a ride into the city. That should be a scene.”

“I’ll come by late.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said. “I don’t know what to tell you to expect. He’s bad, Ike.” She dropped her cigarette in the alley and stepped on it. Then she reached into her purse and took out a matchbook and pen. She scribbled a number on the inside cover. “Call me if anything happens. If you’re still around. Good-bye, Ike.” She put a hand on his forearm, then turned and started down the walkway without looking back.

Ike stood for a moment in the alley, watching her. He felt irritable and slightly dizzy as he walked back toward the Sea View apartments; there were times when he actually thought he was disappearing in the heat waves that rose from the pavement at his feet.

He climbed the stairs to his room, aware now that his shoulder had begun to throb again, and he went to the bathroom to peel the gauze from the still bloody-looking act of madness. He felt the breeze, cool on his hot skin. He wondered what had happened to him. He wondered who he was and was frightened to discover he could not recognize the crazy face and tattooed body caught in the ancient discolored glass above the sink.

32

“The cunt left me” was how Preston greeted him. Ike came in from the alley, through a cluttered kitchen where a single naked bulb provided the only light for the rest of the apartment. He walked between half a dozen bags of trash and into a dark living room where Preston sat, sunk into a sagging couch surrounded by empty beer cans. A slightly medical odor seemed to come from the living room to mix with the sour scent of garbage, the smells of sweat and beer. Ike had waited until late to come. He had been tired and he had done the last of his coke just to keep awake. Now he felt wired, on an edgy kind of high.

Several weeks earlier, while Preston was still in the hospital, Ike had worked out some ideas for converting the Knuckle to a suicide system—a plan he figured would make it easier for someone who had lost his fingers to ride a bike. He had almost come without them, but had at last changed his mind. Perhaps it was a failure of nerve, the drawings providing some excuse for the visit, a buffer between himself and Preston. And now, standing at the entrance to the dark, stuffy room, his head spinning, he was glad he had brought them.

He took a few steps into the room and placed his drawings on a chair near the front door. “Mind if I turn on a light?” he asked. “I want to show you something.”

“Suit yourself,” Preston told him. “Turn every motherfucking light in the house on if it makes you happy. But get me another beer while you’re at it.”

Ike got the beer. He walked back into the living room, flipping on lights as he went. Preston did not look good in the light. His face still had that new dark look about it Ike had noticed at the shop. And the pale blue eyes seemed to have retreated somehow, to have sunk farther into the face until they were like distant chips of ice. There were the reddish tracks of stitch marks across the bridge of his nose, and another thin red scar running across his forehead just below the hairline. He needed both hands to take the beer from Ike, and the hands rose up until they were practically pushed into Ike’s face. Ike studied the scarred stumps and he felt more than saw the sneer on Preston’s face.

“Pretty, huh? Well, fuck it. It’s not a fucking thing. A man sows what he reaps, or some such shit. That’s what my old man would say. You know that fucker was here? You know that?”

Ike didn’t answer. His resolve to question Preston, the nervous high that had carried him here, were dissipating quickly in the heavy air and he was reminded of what he had thought only the night before, when those punks had chased him into the alley and he had scared them off, that business about people not wanting to mess with a crazy person. He guessed it was that way for him now, because he did not doubt that Preston had at last gone over the edge, that he was as crazy as you would find them.

“Yeah, he was here, the self-righteous bastard.” Preston raised the can to his mouth and Ike noticed the open Bible, facedown among the litter on the coffee table at Preston’s knees.

“But he showed me something,” Preston continued, his head cocked to one side now, those blue chips of ice burning in their deep wells. “What do you do when a thing is rotten?”

Ike stared back, trying to imagine what kind of answer Preston might want.

“Come on, what do you do when something’s no good? It’s right here.” He made a move to pick up the book, but it slipped away from him and fell on the floor. Ike started to retrieve it, but Preston waved him back. “Doesn’t matter. Fuck it. I know what it says. ‘What communion hath light with darkness?’” He laughed. “Didn’t know I could quote Scripture, did you? Shit. You don’t know shit. ‘If thy hand offend thee, cut it off.’” He held the ragged stump of a hand up to the light. “Cut the beggar off,” he said. “Rip it out by the goddamn roots. Get it? If it’s rotten, you get rid of it.” He rocked back on the couch and sat waiting for some reply.

Ike had taken the seat by the door and he sat there now, fingering the drawings in his lap, knowing it made little sense to show them to Preston. But still he was here, and he had brought them, and he had to say something. “I want you to look at something,” he said.

Preston stared dumbly back, as if they were talking in different languages.

Ike walked across the room and knelt at the coffee table. He pushed aside enough trash to make room for the drawings. “You can still ride your bike,” he said, and realized as the words left his mouth what a ludicrous thing it was to say. In Preston’s condition he would be lucky to make it across the room, much less across town on a bike. But he had started now; he continued: “I figured a way to alter the grips,” he said. He tried to force a bit of enthusiasm into his voice, but his throat and mouth were dry as cotton. “With a suicide shifter you can shift with the palm of your hand. All you’ll have to do up top is work the throttle.” He looked up to see how Preston was taking it.

Preston wasn’t even looking at the drawings. He was leaning back on the couch, the beer resting on his thigh, his eyes closed. When Ike was silent, Preston opened one eye and squinted down his nose, across the red tracks. “You dumb shit.”

Ike blinked back at him.

“You stupid shit, you think that makes any difference now? You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you? Shit. You don’t know shit. Working for Hound Adams. You think I don’t know what goes down? What’re you doing for him, pimping or letting him fuck you in the ass?”

Ike stood up. He felt slightly dizzy and there was this funny screaming sound in his ears.

“You don’t know shit,” Preston repeated, looking up now.

The screaming continued, like a kettle about to boil over. He reached down to collect his drawings, then flung them back at Preston so they floated in the air all around him. “If I don’t know shit, it’s because you never told me shit.”

For a moment the sneer died on Preston’s face. He blinked hard and stared back at Ike. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just what I said. You never told me shit. You never told me that you knew Hound Adams, that he was your fucking partner. You never told me there had been another trip to Mexico, another girl who didn’t come back. You never told me about Janet Adams, or Milo Trax, or why we went to the ranch.”

Preston’s face had been getting darker as Ike spoke. Suddenly he made an awkward attempt to get up, banged his knees against the table, and sat back down, managing only to knock his beer to the floor, where it lay spraying foam onto the carpet. “You little fucker,” he croaked. “You little son of a bitch whore asshole.”

Ike wasn’t inclined to stay and listen. He wanted out, away from the stench, and the screaming in his head. He leaned over and shook his middle finger in Preston’s face. Hell, Preston couldn’t even get off his damn couch; he didn’t know what he’d been so scared of. “Go fuck yourself,” he said, and started away. That screaming sound was going crazy now, but above it he could hear Preston fighting to get off the couch. He could hear the coffee table hitting the floor and all the shit sliding off of it, Preston cursing and kicking his way over it. And suddenly Ike was running for the kitchen door and Preston’s boots were tearing up linoleum to get there ahead of him.

Actually, Ike did reach the door first, but Preston was just a split second behind him, punching the door closed as Ike was trying to pull it open, and Ike saw that stump of a hand hit the wood with enough force to leave a bloody smear where the hand slid across the yellowed paint. And then Ike was turned around and staring up into those crazy eyes and Preston was holding the door shut, blocking Ike’s way with his arm. And Ike noticed all of a sudden that the screaming sound had stopped, that there was just the sound of his own breath, and Preston’s, coming hard in the silence. “You little fucker,” Preston said, between breaths, leaning against the door. And it appeared to Ike as if maybe some of that crazy light had gone out of his eyes, as if the race to the door had sobered him just a bit. “I said you don’t know shit and you don’t. Hound Adams. Milo Trax. What’s all that shit supposed to mean? You think you’re really on the trail of something, right?” He paused for breath and to wipe his forehead on the sleeve of his shirt. “You wanna know about Janet Adams? I’ll tell you. She killed herself. She found out she was pregnant. She took too many drugs and she fell off the damn boat. She took her own fucking life.” He swung his big head from side to side. “Now what does that tell you about your sister? What does that tell you about anything? I tried to tell you at the ranch, man. You’re not going to find out anything around here.” He waved at the room with his free arm, but it was a gesture meant to include the town. “Your sister’s not here. But what did you do? You hung around, started whoring around for Hound Adams. And what has it gotten you?” Preston paused for more air, sucking it down, suddenly looking more beat than crazy. His question went unanswered.

Preston stepped away from the door. The tattooed arm swung down. He lurched back to the refrigerator for a fresh beer. “You’re blowin’ it, Jack. You should’ve left when you had the chance. Now you can get the fuck out of my sight.”

Ike put his hand on the doorknob but did not go out. He felt that maybe he had been wrong again, that something was slipping away from him here.

“Hey. I said split, man. You’d better start movin’ while you still can.”

Ike turned and went out the door, down the walkway and into the alley.

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