Funland (13 page)

He lowered himself onto a nearby slope. “Are you a Puck or a Pip?”

“A Robin.”

“Ah, Cock Robin. Cockless, as the case may be.”

The remark unsettled her. Maybe this man wasn’t just a harmless eccentric.

“Born to be hanged, mayhap, but not hung. Words. Words are Poppinsack’s passion. The music of the mind. Twenty-six letters, infinite realms.”

“I write some poetry myself,” Robin told him, relaxing somewhat. “Songs.”

His eyes lit up. “A bard?” He slapped his knees, and dust popped from the faded plaid of his pants. “We’re kinsmen, then. Sing me a song.”

Smiling, Robin shrugged. “I don’t have my banjo.”

“Fetch it, then, and sing for your tea.”

“Why not?” She got up and hurried off. Descending the sand bank to her camp, she was struck by the close proximity of the two sleeping places. She wondered whether Poppinsack had been aware, all night, of her presence. If so, he hadn’t tried anything. She realized that she felt more comforted than troubled by knowing he’d been nearby.

She hadn’t been completely alone, after all.

If the trollers had found her, would Poppinsack have come blustering to her rescue, brandishing his staff?

Banjo case in hand, she returned to his “estate.” She took out the instrument and sat on his bedroll.

“Was it you I heard yesterday?” Poppinsack asked.

“It might’ve been. I was playing on the boardwalk.”

“While I played words on the strand.”

“Played words?” she asked.

“Beowulf,
Tennessee Williams, Mickey Spillane. Smiting Grendyl, flying with the bird that never lands, plugging a dame in the guts. ‘It was easy.’ And you, my dear, performed the background score. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Now, sing me a song.”

“There’s a new one I’ve been working on. I’ll test it out on you.”

Smiling, Poppinsack closed his eyes, folded his hands on the lap of his buckskin coat, and leaned back against the sand.

Robin’s fingers flew over the banjo strings, lifting out a quick, spangled tune. After running once through the melody, she started to sing:

Darling, I’ve been here and I’ve been there
And I’ve been next to nowhere.
I’ve been upside down, and inside out,
Topsy-turvy and tossed about.
I’ve been flying high, and crashing low.
I laugh and cry wherever I go
—
And it’s all from looking for you,
And it’s all from looking for you.

You ain’t got a face and you ain’t got a name,
But I’m gonna find you just the same.
I’ll know you by your swaggering walk
And the way I tremble when you talk.
You’re the guy with the sunlight in your eyes,
With the laugh that makes my goose bumps rise
—
And I’ll keep looking for you,
And I’ll keep looking for you.

You’re the moon and stars and the sunlit sea,
And yabba-dabba doo and diddly dee,
I ain’t writ more so I gots to stop.
Boppity hoppity dibbidy dop.

Nodding and grinning, Poppinsack applauded. “Minstrel girl,” he said. “The Robin is a bardling sure. ‘Laugh that makes my goose bumps rise’—oh, dear.”

“You think that line sucks?” she asked.

“Fetching.
You’re
fetching. And I shall fetch the tea.” He pushed himself off the sand, went to his duffel bag, and searched inside it. After a few moments he came up with a glove and two plastic mugs. Wearing the glove on his hand, he poured steaming tea into one of the mugs and brought it to Robin. He smelled as if he’d doused himself with cologne, but under its sweet aroma lurked a dark musty odor. Purple capillaries webbed his cheeks. His veiny, bulbous nose was so pitted that it reminded Robin of a huge strawberry decomposing. Trapped in the hairs of his mustache were bits of old meals.

Poppinsack, she decided, looked better at a distance.

“Care for cream?” he asked.

“You have cream?”

“Not a drop. Care for a dollop of rum?” he asked, and pulled a plastic flask from a pocket of his coat.

“Thanks, anyway.”

He filled a mug for himself, splashed some rum in, and returned to his seat on the dune’s slope.

Robin inspected her tea. She was glad to find nothing afloat in it. She took a sip. “Good,” she said.

Poppinsack drank from his mug, sighed, and smacked his lips. “Tell me, minstrel girl, what curse has brought you to this blighted beach?”

“I’m just wandering, seeing the world.”

“Fleeing from what, and whom?”

She shook her head. “What makes you think I’m fleeing from something?”

“Your hurt and haunted eyes.”

“You’re nuts.”

“I’ve seen all things in the heaven and in the earth. I’ve seen many things in hell. How, then, am I nuts?”

“Poe, right?”

“Mercifully butchered. And what tale has your heart to tell?”

She saw no reason to keep the truth from Poppinsack. “My father died. My mother had a fiancé more interested in me. I hit the road. End of story.”

“And how have you fared on the road?”

“I’m still kicking,” Robin said. “What’s your story?”

“To outmatch the wit of your brevity, I am a book bum.”

“Are you really a professor?”

“I have ceased to profess. ’Tis far more pleasurable indeed to hoard pearls than to cast them before swine.”

“So you gave up teaching and now you read all the time?”

He nodded and drank his spiked tea.

“How long have you been here in Boleta Bay?”

“Forever and a day.”

“Aren’t you afraid of the trollers?”

He gazed at Robin and lifted his thick gray eyebrows. “Are you not afraid of the
trolls?”

“We’re trolls, aren’t we? I mean, I guess the kids might think so.”

“Thar be trolls and thar be trolls,” Poppinsack said, sounding a lot like Robert Newton playing Long John Silver. “Thar be them that’s harmless, and thar be them that ain’t. Poppinsack could tell such tales of madness as would turn a wench’s blood cold and freeze the chambers of her heart.”

Robin wrinkled her face at him. “You trying to scare me, or what?”

“You’re a roving bard and minstrel,” he said, dropping the pirate growl. “You’re a smart dame, and long on moxie. But under it all, you’re a kid and you don’t know the score.”

“Maybe I know more than you think. I’ve been around some.”

“And have you been God’s spy in the court of the damned?”

“Whatever that means,” she muttered.

“Hie thee away from here. Take a powder, hit the road, ride your thumb to Frisco or L.A., hop on a bus to Palookaville.” And in a voice suddenly void of borrowed rhetoric, he said, “Get the hell out of town, Robin. If you stick around, you might just disappear.”

She stared at him.

“Everybody knew Cock Robin. Nobody knows where she’s gone.”

“You really are scaring me.”

“The robin that flies today won’t be a dead duck tomorrow.”

“If it’s so dangerous around here,” she asked, “why do you stay?”

“Why, indeed? Perhaps because the mermaids sing to me.” Poppinsack finished his tea. “Farewell,” he said.

Robin nodded. “My cue to exit?” she asked.

“Your company has been much appreciated. Heed my warning and flee.”

“I think I will,” she told him. “This place gives me the creeps anyway, and you’re about the fourth person to warn me so far.” She drank the last of her tea, set the mug down on the ground, and closed her banjo case. “Thanks for the tea,” she said, standing up.

“And I thank you for the song.”

With a wave, she turned away and climbed the dune out of Poppinsack’s encampment.

In a coffee shop two blocks east of the boardwalk, Robin ate a breakfast of fried eggs, sausage links, hash browns, and toast. While she worked on the meal, her mind kept straying back to the strange old man and his warnings.

Evil trolls. Disappearances. The court of the damned.

Weird stuff. But he might’ve made it up, just wanting to scare her away. Maybe he felt that she had invaded his territory or something. Perhaps he simply enjoyed scaring people.

But he’d seemed a little spooked himself.

Maybe he believed what he’d told her, but none of it had any basis in reality. After all, he was a boozer.

Whether or not the stuff was true, Robin’s experiences with trolls last night had been unnerving, and the kids were an actual threat.

Reason enough to blow this town.

When she finished eating, she picked up the tab. Breakfast had cost four-eighty. She pulled the pack of money from her jeans pocket and folded it open.

She spread the bills.

Her mouth fell open. Her stomach sank.

She looked through the stack again and again.

Every bill was a one.

Yesterday, after she left the downtown bank, six of them had been twenties, one a ten.

Between last night at the movie theater and right now in the coffee shop, somebody had taken her money, substituted singles for twenties, and returned it to her.

And there was only one possible time when it could’ve been done.

While she slept.

In spite of the restaurant’s warmth, chills crawled up Robin’s back. She squeezed her legs together.

She saw Poppinsack kneeling beside her in the dark, sliding open the zipper of her sleeping bag, maybe after already searching her boots and pack and guessing that whatever money she might have was kept on her body. She imagined his hands roaming over her while she slept, not just seeking the money but feeling her up, finally slipping a hand inside her panties and taking out the bills and touching her there too.

Cockless Robin.

The dirty bastard.

And he gave me tea and I sang for him, and all the time he had my money and
he knew what he’d done to me.

Robin’s face burned. Her heart pounded. She trembled.

He robbed me and groped me while I slept, and then he pretended to be my friend.

So much for his warnings to leave town.

Hoping I’ll be gone before I find out what he did.

She left her tip on the table, shouldered her pack and picked up her banjo case, and went to the front counter. After paying the cashier, she had only seven dollars.

She stepped outside.

Wouldn’t dare leave town now, she thought, even if I wanted to.

Seven dollars was as good as nothing. That short, she’d be too vulnerable on the road.

Feverish with humiliation and outrage, she strode toward the boardwalk.

Funland hadn’t opened yet, but workers were there getting ready for the crowd. Down on the beach, clean-up crews were dumping trash barrels and raking debris out of the sand. A few bums were also going through yesterday’s litter. But not Poppinsack.

Several joggers were out, running along the shore. A man in leotards was doing a peculiar routine that looked like slow-motion ballet. A little kid was on her knees, parents watching, father snapping photos while she dug in the sand. There were no sunbathers; there was no sun. The surfers were gone. No one was in the water. The lifeguard was at her station anyway. She wore red shorts and a white sweatshirt.

Robin trudged on. She left them all behind. Finally, forty or fifty feet from the chain-link fence marking the boundary of the public beach, she turned away from the ocean. She climbed up and down the dunes.

In a sheltered depression, she set her banjo case on the sand and slung the pack off her back. She took her knife from the pack and slipped it into a rear pocket of her jeans.

He’ll deny it, she thought. What’re you going to do, cut him up?

We’ll see.

Dammit, nobody messes with me!

She found the place where she had slept, where Poppinsack had crept up on her in the night and…
handled
her.

From there, she knew where to find him.

She rushed over the dunes. Charging up the last slope, she jerked the knife from its sheath.

And then she reached the top.

He was gone. All that remained were two sodden brown tea bags lying in the sand.

Thirteen

Jeremy climbed down the stairs to the beach. The sun had broken through, back around noon, and a lot of gals were sprawled out, sunbathing. But they held no interest for him. His eyes swung toward the lifeguard station.

She was there.

Tanya.

Even at this distance he recognized Tanya by her size and curves, her tanned legs and golden hair.

The sight of her made him ache.

He wished he could go to her, take her in his arms, kiss her, feel her body pressed against his.

I can at least go over and say hi, he told himself.

But he didn’t move. He couldn’t force himself to take even one step closer.

He gritted his teeth hard.

Such a goddamn chicken.

He climbed back up the stairs to the boardwalk. Cowboy had said to meet him here this afternoon, but hadn’t been specific about the time. Jeremy turned in a circle, trying to spot his friend.

He suspected that Cowboy was somewhere along the south end of the boardwalk. The good rides and attractions, including Liz’s dunk tank, were in that direction. But Jeremy hadn’t seen much of the north end. He had all afternoon to find Cowboy, so he headed that way.

The people passing near him looked much the same as those he’d seen yesterday: many were sleazy; plenty were slobs; there were tough guys and rowdies; he saw wild groups of teenagers; there were a few, but only a few, people who looked harmless and well-groomed and nicely dressed. Those were mostly couples and families. Probably on vacation.

Yesterday, before meeting Cowboy, he’d felt intimidated by the assortment of unsavory characters. But not today. Though he was alone, he didn’t
feel
alone. He knew that he had friends nearby. Not just Cowboy, but Liz in the dunk tank, Tanya out on the beach, even teenagers who were strangers to him but probably were friends of Cowboy or the others, and therefore almost like Jeremy’s own friends, though they didn’t know him.