The Dogs of Winter (40 page)

Fletcher felt his knees go suddenly quite weak. He could not say if it was because he had just survived something or if he was about to witness something. Nothing would have surprised him at that moment. There could have been a gunshot, or a scream. He had no idea what he would do in these circumstances. He only knew that he would not be surprised by them. It occurred to him for the second time that night that he might run. He might enter the room himself. He might do any number of things. What he did was stand in the rain, rooted to that soggy soil before the dripping house as surely as if he had been planted there.

Time passed. The fire in the doorway had all but gone out. Fletcher took up a position near the opening. If there were to be sounds of distress, they would not pass unheard upon the wind. But the night was silent save for the patter of the rain, and when, on occasion he would turn to peer into the sweat lodge, there was little to see but shadow.

There was, however, a single exception to this routine, a moment in which, by accident or design, his turning was set in concert with a sudden flaring of the meager fire, its flames fanned perhaps by a gust of wind before settling back into little more than glowing embers. And it was by this light that Fletcher caught sight of an odd tableau, one which seemed, perhaps because of its strangeness, to be conveyed as if by reflection—an image blurred upon an imperfect mirror—for what he saw was Drew Harmon. The man appeared to be on one knee, his head bowed. His back was to the doorway. Kendra was seated almost in front of him. One hand was placed upon the mat they had made for her, as if to steady herself. The other appeared to rest on the back of her husband’s head.

Fletcher looked away. The light flickered and went out. It was their moment. Not a thing to be witnessed. And yet, even as he turned from it, it seemed to him as if some accommodation had been reached, though how this could be or at what cost it had been procured he could not guess. He knew only that it spoke to him of blood and recompense. And in thinking these things, alone and in the rain, he found himself quite suddenly thrown back upon his own ties to this unlikely chunk of rock, to a father long since laid to rest, to a distant mother, an ex-wife, a daughter waiting somewhere miles away through the night. And he wondered at what accommodations there might be reached, and for what sins he might yet be called upon to atone. He witnessed a dark-haired boy in red flannel going before the wind, then, drawing the hood of his parka tightly about his head, managed, in that soggy night, to procure for himself a little sleep. He slept as might a soldier in the field, in the face of a storm, at rest before an uncertain morning.

T
he day broke cool and crisp. A light breeze carried the scent of pine, suggesting high pressure inland, an offshore flow. Fletcher felt it upon his cheek. He opened his eyes to a thin band of color spreading above the coastal range to the east.

The sweat lodge was quiet. Turning to look inside, Fletcher found that someone had hung a towel across the opening. At the edges of this article, there was nothing to be seen save blackness. He rose slowly, stiff to the core. Water ran from tiny pools which had collected in the folds of his parka. He was shaking it out when he saw someone walking toward him across the grass. He started, but quickly realized that it was Drew. The man wore a T-shirt, jeans and boots. The clothes were wet and muddied, all of a color in the early light. His long hair was wet and matted, his beard as well. Moving up through the ankle-high grass, he might have passed for something not altogether human. Fletcher watched as the big man moved steadily toward him through the old cemetery.

“Check it out,” Drew said, as if he’d fully expected to find Fletcher up and ready for some new adventure. “We got offshores. And guess what else?”

Fletcher felt it then. The waves. Somewhere close they were breaking. One felt their detonations through the ground, as if great pieces of machinery were rumbling across the grassy bluffs. He might have been twelve years old, camping on the beach at Salt Creek. The call was the same. The taste of old metal at the back of one’s throat.

Except, of course, that he wasn’t twelve, and Salt Creek was a long time gone. He had no idea how long he had slept, or at what point Drew had gone past him to wander the bluffs; probably, he supposed, not much before first light.

“How is she?” Fletcher asked.

Harmon stopped, looking at him as if the question was in some way a surprising one. “She had just woken up when I left,” he said, finally. “She was looking around for more of those pills you gave her.”

Drew had reached him by now. The two men stood before the lodge as the first rays of sunlight splintered upon the black face of a rocky peak.

“I’ve just been down to look,” Drew said. “Those reefs I told you about, north of the Hoof. You can’t quite see the breaks from here but you can see what’s out there, corduroy to the horizon.” By which he meant swell lines, which, in turn, would mean waves, and, yet, there was, Fletcher thought, an odd note in Drew’s voice. It was as if the man were asking, rather than telling, pleading perhaps, that Fletcher share this moment with him, share his enthusiasm for offshore flows and blue corduroy and secret spots, as if, by so doing, the two of them might turn back the hands of time. Just a kid from the South Bay and one from old HB, high on waves, without regrets.

Fletcher was not unmoved. It was simply unclear to him at this point just how much he had to give, and how much was gone forever. “I’d like to see her,” he said.

Drew made no answer. He went to the big stuff bag which had been placed outside once more. Fletcher could see there were wet suits inside, and something else as well, the old Minolta in the water
housing with which he had shot R.J. and Drew Harmon at the place they had dubbed Thunder Bay. Then he turned and went inside.

•  •  •

Kendra was indeed awake. She had laced her fingers behind her head and drawn up her knees. She turned as Fletcher made his way to the back of the room. “Got any more of those pills?” she asked.

“You should take it easy with those,” he said. “Don’t take any more until we get you some real food.”

“There’s waves,” she said. “Drew will want to surf. He’ll want you to take pictures.”

“I don’t think he needs them now.”

She said a strange thing to him then. “He needs you,” she said.

Fletcher was not sure what to say, but then the girl saved him from it. “I know,” she said. “But I think you should. It will mean something to him to have you there.” She looked to the ceiling, leaving Fletcher to contemplate afresh the little tableau he had seen by the firelight, if, in fact, he had not dreamed it. But then, of course, one did not ask about such things. Not even Fletcher who, after all, had been made privy to more than he would ever have bargained for in setting out from Los Angeles in the company of Sonny Martin and Robbie Jones. He could not have guessed then the nature of what he would be asked to witness here, or the part he would take in it, for surely he had taken one. He was a player now and it seemed to him as if one more thing was about to be exacted. He listened to the distant muffled explosions of big waves. In the early light beyond the door, he could see Drew Harmon struggling into a wet suit.

“I’ll be okay,” she told him. She said this in response to a question he had yet to ask. “And anyway, it won’t be for long.”

“There isn’t much film.”

“See.”

He was about to leave when she put a hand on his arm. “You asked me something once,” she said. “Or maybe you didn’t. I can’t remember now, but then I guess it doesn’t make any difference anyway.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

“That guy in the red long-johns, where you found me.
You wanted to know, I believe, what he was up to. I saw you looking. That was it. I saw you with that hose, trying to figure something out. Am I right?”

“Jesus,” he said. “What a thing to remember.”

“Am I right?” she asked.

“I suppose so.”

He could feel her fingers, exerting a new pressure upon his arm. “It’s in the trees,” she said. “The money is in the trees. And I don’t want you to forget it. Now can I have a couple of those pills?”

He gave them to her, then leaned forward to kiss her forehead.

“It won’t be long,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

•  •  •

Drew was waiting for him on the grass. The wooden guns were there too. They rested on their decks, side by side. One was the board Harmon had ridden throughout the trip, the other was the one Fletcher had ridden in the little cove, on the evening of the second day. Harmon was suited up by now. He was holding the old Minolta and when Jack Fletcher walked up to him, he held it out for Fletcher to take.

“There’s something I’ve been meaning to say to you, Doc,” Drew said. “That movie of yours. Tits on a bull.” He grinned as Fletcher took the camera. “Tool of your trade. The rest of it’s bullshit.”

Fletcher stood with the camera in his hands, the sun breaking above his back. It was clear to him that if he was to get pictures, he would have to do so as he had at the bay, from the deck of the board, and he looked at it now—ten feet of balsa and redwood, at rest in the rain-wet grass. He could not say that he was unafraid. He supposed that without the protection of the Devil’s Hoof, the sea would be more turbulent here, the beaches more exposed. He had not been out in rough water since the drowning of the boy, and he had nearly drowned then himself. Drew seemed to pick up on what he was thinking. “You can shoot this place from the rocks, if you want to, Doc. ’Course you won’t get much—”

Fletcher interrupted him. “How many wet suits you bring in that bag?”

“Should be two left. Yours and Robbie’s.”

Fletcher nodded. As Drew watched, he pulled one of the suits from the bag and set about dismantling it with a pocket knife.

Harmon watched him with great interest.

“Had this idea once,” Fletcher told him, “a long time ago. Seems like now’s as good a time as any to try it out.” It was his intention to use the body of the suit like a big rubber band, to hold the camera to the deck of the board. It would save him from having to hold it with his chin, providing him with a better position from which to paddle.

When Harmon saw what he was up to, his face broke into a ragged grin. “And they told me you were all washed up,” he said.

Fletcher slipped the piece of rubber onto the board, then slid the camera beneath it—a good, tight fit—and when he had done that he took off his clothes and struggled into a clammy wet suit and got to his feet to face Drew Harmon. He stuck the board beneath his arm, feeling its weight, the edge of its rail against the palm of his hand. “Fuck ’em,” he said. “Let’s go surfing.”

•  •  •

The morning went before them, giving light to the sky. The air, washed by the rains, was filled with the scent of wet earth and the closeness of the sea.

“You know you can’t always believe what she tells you,” Drew said. He was not looking at Fletcher when he spoke and Fletcher did not answer. They continued, side by side, eyes fixed upon the sky at the edge of the bluffs.

“It’s not exactly her fault. Men have not always been so good to her. She ever tell you about her old man?”

Fletcher started to say no, then checked himself. “She said something about being her father’s girl,” he said.

“Yeah, she thinks that. At least, I think that’s what she thinks. It’s not always easy to know. At any rate, the man spent his days in and out of the loony bin, as near as I can tell. He used to take Kendra to seances. She was a little kid, for Christ’s sake. Even had her exorcised once. I asked her what that was like. She told me they got her bag of tricks.” Drew shook his head as he walked. “She’s funny,” he said. “You’ve got to give her that.”

“She’s more than funny,” Fletcher said.

Harmon seemed to give this some thought. At length, he nodded. “Yeah, she is,” he said. “Anyway, when the old man wasn’t in the nuthouse, or going to seances, he liked to chase women and gamble.”

“So he wasn’t all bad.”

“He had his good points. He lost, of course, heavily. Eventually he got himself between a rock and a hard place. Apparently, it had come down to a race. Who would get to him first. The men in white jackets, or the knee breakers. So one night, he tells the wife he’s going out to the barn to feed the horse. What he does is eat a shotgun. When he doesn’t come back, Kendra goes outside to look. She finds him in the barn. She was twelve at the time. The next one, her stepdad—I guess he was some kind of perv. The old lady could really pick them. I’d’a known that at the time, I would’ve offed the little weasel myself.”

“How did you meet her?”

Drew did not respond right away. It was as if he held the time in question up to his mind’s eye that he might examine it for a moment without comment. “I was doing some East Coast promotional stuff,” he said finally. “I was looking for a boat. I’d heard about some surf that required one. Her stepfather had one to rent. I went to look at it. There she was. Tell you the truth, I think she just went out with me to piss off the old man.”

They had come now to the end of the grass and Drew led them into a steep gorge filled with brush and a particular species of stunted pine, shaped in accordance with the wind, and the ocean lay visible before them, its ridged surface like a great piece of corrugated blue metal laid flat at the foot of the cliffs. For a moment, both men paused to look at it.

“I guess I should ask you something,” Drew said. “She told me about you two spending the night in some shed. Anything happen there I ought to know about?”

“She wanted me to hold her.”

“Put your hand on her stomach. Here.” He placed a hand on his own.

Fletcher nodded.

Drew nodded as well. “You fall in love with her?” he asked.

Fletcher gave it some thought. “I suppose I did.”

Harmon looked at him, then laughed. “I got to tell you, Doc. I always have admired your lack of judgment.”

“Well,” Fletcher said. “I suppose every man wants to be admired, as he gets on in life.”