The Dogs of Winter (5 page)

When he had waited what he thought to be a reasonable amount of time, he closed the office and went outside. The wind had kicked in off the ocean, breaking up the clouds, driving them from the sky.
He found the morning awash in light. He checked the planter to make sure the old man had not stuck around, and found that he had not. In his absence, Travis passed through the town alone, coming finally to the bluffs overlooking the sea.

There were a pair of surfers out at the cove that formed the town’s main beach. The waves were windblown and confused and the surfers did not seem to be getting many rides, but he found that the sight of them reminded him of Drew Harmon. Travis understood he was something of a legend, another order of being, apparently, from the boys bobbing in the icy slop of the cove.

The man had not been on the river a week after Travis’s visit when there was an incident, somebody using his beach to launch boats. There had been words. Drew had roughed up a couple of men, Hupas come down river to fish Yurok waters. It was a dangerous thing to have done and Travis had spoken to him about it. In the process, he had made a last attempt to educate the man as to the politics of the reservation. But Drew had brushed the incident aside.

“It wasn’t much,” Harmon had told him. “Guys got out of line. I slapped ’em around a little.” At which point he had held up his hands for Travis to see. “I didn’t hit ’em. Not with my fists. I just slapped ’em.” Of the men in question, one had required hospitalization.

Travis looked once more into the windblown cove where the two rubber-clad figures continued to struggle against the chop. Surely, he thought, there were more sensible places to surf. One would have thought the Harmons might have sold their inheritance and gone back to the islands. Perhaps things would have gone better for them in the sunshine. At which point it occurred to him why Kendra’s tattoo had seemed familiar. The murdered girl, Amanda Jaffey, had one just like it. He would have to check with someone to verify this, but he was almost certain of it. The recognition settled upon him as might a cloud. Perhaps what he had taken as a mild neurosis was, in fact, a good deal more. Perhaps she was mad, he thought. He had already concluded something of the same with respect to her husband. Perhaps they were mad together. Maybe that was what they did, in their trailer on the river.

If so, Travis thought, he resented their madness. For it interfered
with the things that he had come here to do. He didn’t need Drew Harmon slapping around the locals any more than he needed the federal government fucking with the fishing rights on the river, or Kendra Harmon, wandering the woods in a dead girl’s clothes, making inquiries about
hee-dees
and private investigators. What he resented most, however, when all was said and done, was that even in light of such premonitions and resentments, he could not quite drive the ivory-skinned Mrs. Harmon from his mind, leading to his final conclusion that perhaps he was as mad as they were. Boredom and isolation had driven him to it, this unhappy positioning of himself between the worlds and he looked once more to the sea and to the north wind which had driven away the clouds. Very soon now and the winds would be out of the north each day, and with them would come the rains. The forests would grow dark along the banks of the river. The big winter swells would turn the cove beneath him into one great cauldron of churning white water. And Drew Harmon, perhaps, would ride the giant waves that broke a mile from shore along a remote strip of ceremonial land the Indians called Humaliwu, the place of the big water, the place where legends die.

It was a matter of some speculation among the locals. The man had been bitten there in the early spring. It was not clear if he would ride the big water again. Some were afraid that if he did, and did so consistently, others would follow, and the Indians would not only have the fisherman and one another to contend with, they would have the
wagay
in wet suits with jeeps and surfboards as well. But Travis had seen the big water. And he knew something of the land which surrounded it.
Oo-ma-ha,
to any who went there, Drew Harmon and his spooky wife among them, and he comforted himself in the belief that there would not be many takers.

T
he flight Fletcher expected to meet was due in at eight fifty-five. Eight fifty found him still inching along Century Boulevard on the last leg to LAX. It was a particularly ugly morning, vintage L.A., the sky thick with coastal haze and smog, the color of dirty concrete. Fletcher gazed upon it with some mixture of wonder and disgust as a steady stream of jets thundered above him—one of them no doubt bearing his charges from the islands.

The plan was relatively simple. What Heart Attacks required was a strong northern swell, of the variety that had made the North Shore of Oahu famous, and, in fact, they had selected Waimea Bay as one of their indicators. The Bay went off, Heart Attacks should follow, in approximately forty-eight hours. Theoretically, a man could surf the same swell in both locations. Sonny Martin and Robbie Jones would attempt it. It was Fletcher’s job to meet their flight and get them to Sweet Home where they would connect with Drew Harmon.

Fletcher still found it hard to believe that Drew Harmon would agree to such company. For that matter, it was hard to believe that Drew Harmon had asked for pictures. The man had, after all, been down that road before and Fletcher would have thought him done with it. When he had voiced this concern to Michael Peters, the man had shrugged it off. “Drew Harmon and Heart Attacks,” he’d said. “What was I supposed to do, say no thanks?”

Fletcher supposed this would have to be his position as well. What Harmon wanted with pictures was his business. Fletcher knew quite well what he wanted. A good spread and a good story. And though he had needled Peters over his choice of pros, Robbie Jones was, in fact, a smart move. They were lucky enough to get good surf, having sufficient talent in the water would prove critical to what Fletcher was after. There was little doubt Robbie would be up to it. As for Harmon, no one had seen him surf in more than a decade. He was certainly too old for the slash-and-burn antics of the pro tour. In big waves, however, strength and experience might make up for speed and flexibility. And if both men surfed well, it was like Peters had said—the young charger and the old lion, in mysto California surf. For Fletcher, it was the stuff of new beginnings. With luck, he might even get himself back on a masthead. There would be a monthly retainer. A salary. He had certainly been there before. And he would play it a little smarter this time around. He promised. He made a pact with the concrete-colored sky. He was a grown man and he intended to comport himself as such. And come the winter, he would go to the islands. He would get himself a pair of baggy shorts and a straw hat. He would get one of those big 600s and he would shoot from the beach. And in between sets he would chat with the other photogs lined up on the sand and in the evenings he would play some cards and smoke a little weed and retire early. No more off-beat commentaries on the sport’s demise. No more dumb moves. It was so simple, really, a small thing for which to ask.

•  •  •

Once inside the airport, Fletcher parked in one of the outside lots and hurried on foot toward the terminal. Checking the first screen he came to, he found the plane already down and went
directly to baggage claim. The first thing he saw upon entering the room were the boards. Two bright blue hard-shelled traveling cases, long enough to suggest guns, stood propped against a concrete pillar not far from the luggage carousel.

He soon picked out his charges as well. They were standing with their backs to him, dressed as if from the islands, in sandals and baggy plaid shorts and sweatshirts much like Fletcher’s own. Robbie Jones seemed recently to have shaved his head and the foolish thing, tanned by a tropic sun, shone like an acorn in the muted florescent light. Sonny Martin stood beside him, his shaggy yellow hair gone white at the ends falling to his shoulders.

It was Sonny who saw him first, turning to check Fletcher out with a pair of slightly bloodshot eyes Fletcher found emblematic of an entire generation—cool and dead and knowing, void of compassion; although it occurred to him as he approached the carousel that perhaps he was being too hard on the boy. They would, after all, be spending the next week or two together. Who could say? Perhaps they would even bond in the cold waters of the Pacific.

Sonny offered a limp handshake. Robbie Jones nodded, then turned to pull a brightly colored nylon stuff bag from the carousel.

“Check it out,” Sonny said, his hand falling loosely to his side as he nodded in the direction of Robbie Jones. “Dude’s had a tough flight, man. Found his ex dancin’ at the Staide.”

“Give it a rest,” Jones told him.

Sonny laughed and shook his head. “Chick was up there big as life, showin’ her snatch to some Japanese tourists. Peters kept trying to get her to come down to our end of the bar, but she knew it was us and wouldn’t do it. Peters was gonna give her a quarter to pick up with her cunt.”

Robbie Jones had managed to shoulder his gear. He moved with the stuff between Fletcher and Martin, addressing himself to Martin. “I said give it a rest.” He was the taller of the two surfers. In fact, Fletcher was somewhat surprised by his size. His most vivid recollection of the boy dated to the contest in Huntington Beach, the head-butting incident in the parking lot. The picture etched in Fletcher’s mind was that of a skinny white kid with shaved sideburns wobbling around like some Arkansas service boy high on crank, one step
removed from mental retardation and born to be bad. The youth now before him had filled out through the shoulders, acquired a suntan and an earring, and would not, Fletcher believed, have passed for one of the few and the proud. His progress, however, did little to invite optimism regarding the week to come. It was, Fletcher feared, going to be a long one, and he hoped that the storm indicators were right on, that they would not get weather with it, that he would be able to get the shot and get out. A kind of nightmare scenario presented itself: the weather no good for shooting, but another swell on the way. Days spent waiting out the rain in some crummy motel while Sonny Martin talked about girls picking up quarters with their cunts. For the present, however, Robbie seemed to have shut Martin up. Fletcher helped them with the gear and they exited the baggage claim area in silence.

“So how were the islands?” Fletcher asked them. They had come to a red light in front of the terminal. Cars crisscrossed before them. Horns blared. The air was heavy with the stench of traffic.

“They were the islands,” Robbie said.

Fletcher led them to his van. He put down the board case he was carrying and opened the rear doors.

“Whose ride?” Sonny asked.

Fletcher told them it was his.

“That’s too bad,” Sonny said. “If we had a rental we coulda rolled it.”

“This one looks like it already has been,” Robbie said. “A couple of times.”

Fletcher just looked at them. “It’ll get us there,” he said. It was his plan to head up Interstate 5, then cut over to the coast at Redding. He figured they were looking at anywhere from twelve to fourteen hours. He was assuming they would crash with the Harmons. By this time tomorrow morning, he might well be holding a world-class big wave in the viewfinder, looking for his shot. The prospect was enough to generate a few butterflies.

Across the sidewalk from where they stood an airport shuttle bus pulled away from a loading zone, depositing in its wake a pall of churning black smoke that spread quickly to envelope a pair of elderly white women standing at the curb.

Sonny Martin watched as the bus drove away, then turned, fixing
his companions with a glazed smile. “Bitches got dusted,” he said. “By exhaust.”

“I got shotgun,” R.J. told him.

•  •  •

The drive from Los Angeles into California’s endless midsection was in fact less painful than Fletcher might have imagined. His companions, spent from a night of cards and strippers and out of blow, went to sleep in a way that reminded Fletcher of the way his daughter had slept on drives with him and his wife. Martin crawled into the back with the board bags and gear and was not heard from for two hundred miles. Robbie Jones put his bare feet on the dashboard, his head against the side window. He drooled and snored but was otherwise silent, leaving Fletcher to contemplate the endless miles of farms and cow pastures and John Deere bailers casting unknown chaff upon the prevailing westerly winds, very much by his lonesome. In fact, there was not a word exchanged between them from Los Angeles almost to Sacramento, where Robbie Jones awoke with a pained look on his tanned face and announced it was time to clean out his dick. Also he had to take a leak.

Fletcher himself was hungry and made for the first restaurant he saw, an Anderson’s split-pea soup joint—a goofy concoction of rock and wood complete with pillars and steeples from which brightly colored flags snapped in a stiff, brassy wind above a parking lot filled with cars, minivans, RVs, and assorted citizens in tractor hats and jeans.

Robbie Jones pulled a backpack out from beneath his feet and began to rummage in it as the van bumped up the drive and rolled into the lot.

“What do you mean wash out your dick?” Fletcher asked. His curiosity had gotten the better of him.

Sonny groaned from among the board bags and camera gear. “Oh, man,” he said. “Wait till you see what this dude did to himself.”

Fletcher got a look at what Robbie had done to himself in the bathroom of Anderson’s, as did any number of horrified citizens. The guy had had his unit pierced. A golden penis stud protruded from the organ, right to left, exiting bloody holes on either side which oozed with some unholy combination of water, blood, and pus.

Robbie took his act to a sink where he proceeded to clean
himself with some sort of antiseptic wash. A pair of teenage kids stopped to gawk at it until a paunchy-looking guy in aviator shades and a tractor hat said, “Jesus Christ,” and ushered them out.