The Dogs of Winter (27 page)

This done, Robbie Jones prayed while Drew stretched. Eventually, the big man stopped long enough to look at Fletcher. “Grab a stick, man. Get yourself a few waves.”

Robbie Jones was done praying. He looked at Fletcher and laughed. “Guy’s a pillhead, dude. What if he drowns?”

Drew just looked at him. “This ain’t a contest, ass munch. It ain’t a photo shoot, either. This here’s a little go out among friends.”

“I didn’t know he surfed,” Robbie Jones said.

“There’s a whole shitload of stuff you don’t know,” Drew told him. At which point, Robbie Jones got mad and went into the water by himself.

Drew looked down on Fletcher once more. “What about it, Doc? You gonna get wet or you gonna stay on the beach and pop pills?”

“The pills sound good,” Fletcher told him.

“Screw it,” Harmon said. “Get a stick, man. Get wet. It’s good for the head.”

So saying, Drew jogged off toward the water’s edge and Fletcher was left alone on the beach. He watched as the two men paddled off toward the point. The sight pained him, for it was approaching what had always been one of his favorite hours of play—that hour in which the sun was low in the sky, so that in paddling out, one was apt to lose it now and again behind the lines of approaching swells, only to find its light burning through the lip of a translucent face, an hour when the winds might be seen as blowing sparks from the tops of the waves.

As a consequence of Drew’s words, of the time of day, of some instinct latent within him, Fletcher began to study the break before him with some degree of seriousness.

The right-hander Drew intended to ride appeared as a sly little fucker, with boils still showing on the faces where the waves passed above the rocks. But right out in front, a mushier little wave had begun to develop, peaky enough to allow one to go right or left, mushy enough to promise a forgiving take-off, yet sectioning into a shorebreak just fast enough to be fun, maybe, for an aging hipster with a bum ankle and a bad back. So that in time, without ever
having anticipated that he would, Fletcher too was naked on the beach, struggling into a wet suit as the wind washed his chest and shoulders, and where, after performing a few quick stretches, he picked up one of Drew Harmon’s big guns with which he might have ridden waves in excess of thirty feet, and marched off with it toward the four-foot slop now shimmering before him in the cool fall light.

•  •  •

As anticipated, the take-off was forgiving, which was a good thing because Fletcher felt himself rising in sections, unbelievably slow, but once on his feet, it was all there—the board planing across the face of the wave, collecting speed as the face steepened, and suddenly he was into a little crouch, pushing the board through the fastest part of the wave like a bird in flight, without a sound, save for what the lip made striking the water behind him.

Fletcher continued to work his wave. The rides multiplied. He grew accustomed to the way the big board planed the surface of the water. He found that with its weight, the line of its rail, he could get in early, then hold a high fast line.

The cold was punishing at first but in time a kind of clarity set in. He saw with a fresh eye the lines of the cliff, the sharp angle of the rocks, the last light finding reflection upon a purple bank of sand. But it was more than seeing these things, it was a joining and therein lay the rush. It failed to matter that he was middle-aged and out of shape, practicing little more than the fundamentals on an undistinguished wave. He had come to a place of great beauty but it had taken the waves and the act of riding them to grant him communion. It was a simple truth and it was ever so and he had been too long without it.

Eventually, he lost his take-off spot to the tide. But by now, his confidence was up and he paddled out to the north end of the cove, in front of the rocks, though the boils had by now disappeared from the faces of the waves.

“Dr. Fun,” Drew Harmon said, as Fletcher pulled himself up to straddle his board. “Where you been hidin’ out?”

They surfed for perhaps another hour. They did so mostly in silence, trading waves as the sun passed from behind a thick band of
cloud to sit opposite them on a far horizon, a great orange buddha losing his shit to the sea. Afterward, they built a fire on the beach and stood around it with their wet suits peeled to their waists, warming their hands and chests, then turning to warm their backs before peeling off the cold, wet rubber and pulling on clothes in a hurry, as the wind had grown stiff and cold.

It was while they were yet dressing that Drew called their attention to a sudden boiling and splashing off the point not far from where they had surfed, and it seemed to them that at least one dark shape broke the surface, although with the wind chop and declining sun, it was, from their angle of observation, not totally clear what had transpired.

“Shark taking a seal,” Drew said. He was squinting in his customary fashion toward the darkening sea.

“No way,” Robbie Jones said.

“What do you think it was?” Harmon asked him.

Robbie Jones looked at the spot. “You really think so? That’s right where we were sitting, dude.”

“No shit.”

They looked toward the water once more.

“That’s right about where the reef would be. That’s their way, you know. Fuckers love ledges and shelves and reefs, deep water close to shallow, gives ’em something to hide in. Never know the son of a bitch is there till he bumps you, or bites you, whichever comes first.”

Drew seemed to find in this some cause for amusement and stood chuckling to himself as the flames of their fire scattered sparks to the wind.

“Mother nature for you,” Drew said. “Bitch is just full of surprises.”

Fletcher pulled a parka on over his sweatshirt. Robbie Jones was still looking at the water. Drew, still bare-chested so they could see the scars, squatted before the fire, stoking it with a stick.

“Japs caught themselves a pregnant female,” Drew told them. “Three, four years ago. First one, ever. Seventeen-footer. They cut the bitch open and guess what they find? Ten full-term, four-foot long embryos. And guess what else they find? In the babies’ stomachs? Teeth. The babies’ stomachs were full of these tiny teeth.”

Drew looked at them and smiled. “Little fuckers are swimming around in the womb, eating each other. Eventually only a handful of the strongest survive. The thing is a predator before it’s even born.”

Drew poked at his fire a last time and looked at Robbie Jones. “What does that say about the old peaceable kingdom?” he asked.

When Robbie didn’t say anything right away, Drew laughed one more time. “I saw somebody had done a parody of that painting,” he said.

“Which painting is that?” Robbie asked him.

Harmon shook his head. “The peaceable kingdom. You know, all about how the lamb will lie down with the lion and the child will play upon the hole of the asp. That’s the painting. What I’m talking about is a print. A parody of the painting. All the animals in it were eating each other. Kind of how it is, don’t you think? You or them. And only the strongest survive.”

“Hey, man. What you see around you isn’t God’s plan. Man fucked up, the whole deal went wrong.”

“What? You’re telling me animals didn’t eat each other, fish didn’t eat each other, bugs didn’t eat each other till man fucked up?”

Robbie Jones shrugged. “What I know is this, dude. The world is in the power of the wicked one. That’s why it’s stored up for destruction.”

“The fire next time.”

“Damn straight.”

Drew smiled. “So tell me this, hot shot. The Man burns the place down, what are you gonna do for waves?”

Robbie Jones just looked at him. “Well, shit, man. I guess I’ll just have to play me a tune upon the hole of an ass.”

“That’s asp, dickweed.”

“Same difference,” Robbie Jones said.

Drew Harmon looked at Fletcher. “How do you talk to a man like that?” he asked.

“I don’t,” Fletcher told him, and he walked off a little from the others and stood watching the dark ocean, stained with blood, and his thoughts returned to the boy in the red-flannel shirt, even as the moon began to strike the water with a silver light. When he turned
to see it, however, thinking that, in fact, it might be quite full, he found he could not, that given his position on the beach, at the foot of the cliffs, the moon itself was hidden from him and he was left to imagine it, moving like a thing of prey among the gibbet shapes of trees which marked the ledge high above them and which, together with the sea and rocks, made their prison complete.

T
hings went badly for her that night in Neah Heads, almost as badly as they had gone the night before, with the exception that one abstained, and of the two who did not, she was able to note a change in their demeanor. They were less raucous though more inclined to violence as if now there had been an upping of the stakes, an engagement of wills. It was a frail thing, this barometric change she claimed as victory. She supposed it had been purchased at some cost she could not yet name but she would think about that later, and when they had left her for their fire and drink, she turned her attention to her surroundings with a sense of purpose she had not known before.

There was no way out of the box. She had grown used to that idea. For though it was a ridiculous thing to behold, it had been built by someone who knew how. The narrow sliding-glass windows might have been broken but they were too small to crawl through. The rear door was solid as a piece of oak, leading her to wonder if
she was the first to be held prisoner in this place, and if she was not, what had become of the others.

The hole which had been cut between the driver’s compartment and the camper was even smaller than the side windows. One might, however, get an arm through, and this is what she did. She had the idea that she was after something and she would know it when she found it. By getting her shoulder into the small opening she was able to paw about over much of the front seat.

Save for the tears in the vinyl upholstery, there was little to feel. In time, however, she came upon what felt to be a paper bag. She could just touch it, with the tip of her little finger. She twisted and stretched, pushing the plywood edges of the hole into her armpit and neck. For a moment or two, she worried that she might get herself stuck and be found out, though she supposed there was not much more they could do to her. In the end, she managed an edge of the bag between the tips of two fingers. It was enough to drag it closer, and finally to pull it through the narrow opening.

It was quite dark in the box now. When she had spilled the contents of the bag across the mattress, she set about examining each object, guessing at its nature as might a blind person. Among these things was a book of matches and when she found this she sat with it in her hand for some time. After some consideration, she drew the curtains. She put the articles back into the bag and placed the bag in a corner until she had managed to get enough of the mattress off the floor to cover the window which faced the shack. This done, she struck a match that she might see more clearly what she had found.

What she had, aside from the matches, were these: a bag of peanuts, a pack of cigarettes, a set of Desert Storm flash cards, a plastic harmonica, and a man’s wallet. She put her back to the mattress, struck another match, and examined the contents of the wallet. She found that it contained forty-two dollars, a Band-Aid, and a driver’s license.

It was the license of the skinny Indian. Surprisingly enough, he wore false teeth in the picture and looked slightly less deranged. She saw that his name was William Longtree. He was five feet, ten inches tall and weighed 150 pounds. He was thirty-five years old. She found this difficult to believe. She would have guessed he was
fifty, at least. And yet, upon reflection, it seemed odder still that he should have any age at all, that someone had once thought to give him a name, that indeed he was some mother’s son, or that he had ever been anything other than the mutant shape she had observed in the night. The observation caused in her a momentary pang of sorrow, though she could not immediately say what this sorrow was connected to, or from what well it had sprung, for in her eyes he had ceased to be a man. And yet even so, she thought, he was not so very much older than she. And thirty-five was young to die.

It was of course, a rash plan, but she was past caring about any of that. She had come to a place beyond the reach of reason. Her deal had been cut and it was with the darkness. She might have burned down the camper and herself with it, if only to cheat the men from their sport, but that would still leave the men on the beach with no one to warn or protect them, and whatever Drew might be, or what he might have done, he had taken her once from a bad place, only to be repaid with her silences, her spasms and hallucinations. And so it was that she tore a piece of cloth from the blanket. In this she wrapped the matches and the driver’s license and tucked them into the waistband of her pants. The rest of the things she put back in the paper bag and returned it to the front seat of the truck, and after she had done that, she took the mattress away from the window and lay in the dark. “Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft,” someone said. But she answered, “I am a secret agent of the moon.
Spirita sancta.
Holy, Holy, Holy.”

T
he surfers rose in darkness, as they had on the previous day. Once again, Drew was pushing them. The first low tide came early and it was his intention to be across the rock field by midday.

They passed almost without seeing, and certainly without being seen. They went among stone corridors and fishers slick with lichen. They went among rocks sculpted into every conceivable shape and form. Some were as sharp and pointed and perfectly round as if they had been fashioned for the railway spikes of a world much larger than the one into which they had so fallen. Others were huge and round and smooth as marbles, while still others had been broken into shapes too fantastic for the naming, and they passed among these as if they were portals or doorways to other times and other places, though always on the other side, the scene was the same as that which they had left behind.