Quantum Leap - Random Measures

by Ashley McConnell

  “You did what?” Rimae’s arms dropped. “Say that again?”

  “I took the keg up there last night and found out they were all underage kids. So I took it back. I gave him his money back, but he’s . . . upset.” Sam could have used other words to describe Kevin’s state of mind, but the memory of his mother standing over him with a bar of pine tar soap, and the taste of that soap, remained sharp and clear in his memory. One did not use language like that in front of ladies or children.

  Absent evidence to the contrary, every female was a lady. Thelma Beckett was quite clear on this point. Young Sam had learned fast. As he’d gotten older, he’d absorbed the lesson into his bones.

  “He’d paid for it. He was of age. It’s none of our business what happens to it after we sell it. What’s wrong with you?”

  Sam took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He could always argue about it, but it wouldn’t do any good.

  “I didn’t think it was right,” he said.

  Rimae stared at him as if she thought her bartender had been suddenly possessed by some benign demon. Her anger was lost in pure bafflement.

  “Well, next time do a little less thinking and a little more business, okay?” She shook her head. “I swear I don’t know what’s gotten into you the last couple of months.

  “Where’s the keg? Still out in the truck? Go get it and bring it in here. No point in leaving it out there.”

  Sam heaved a sigh of relief and nodded, headed for the back entrance to the bar. He passed Davey and looked him in the eyes, still searching for some sign of life, of intelligence.

  The brown eyes looking back at him were blank, and Sam shivered inside.

  He didn’t realize he’d been followed until he was outside, trying to pull the door closed. The knob was pulled from his hand as Bethica stepped out.

  “Wickie, I wanted to warn you . . .” she began.

  But by that time he had seen the new bright red pickup parked next to the Polar Bar’s beaten-up old truck, and the two boys struggling with the quarter-keg, trying to get it over the tailgate.

  “Hey!” he yelled.

  One of the boys looked up, cursed, and ran like a rabbit, leaving Kevin standing in the back end of Wickie’s truck looking furious again. Or, perhaps, still.

  “What the hell do you want?” Kevin challenged.

  Sam stared in disbelief. “Well, for starters, you can put that thing down and get out of that truck.”

  “This is my property!”

  “He’s really mad,” the girl behind him said, as if Sam needed the clarification.

  “Yeah, I can see that,” he snapped, a little more harshly than he intended. “Stay out of the way, okay?” He directed his attention back to Kevin, who had set down his end of the keg.

  “It isn’t your property. You got your money back. Now come on, get out of that truck.”

  The boy was wavering between jumping out of the truck, which would make it appear that he was obeying Wickie, or remaining where he was, which would rapidly become untenable. Sam held his breath. If Kevin jumped out, he didn’t need Ziggy to tell him there would probably be a fight. If Kevin stayed, he had no more idea than the kid did what was going to happen next.

  Neither did Kevin. Hesitating a moment, he stared down at the man he knew as Wickie and at Bethica. He started to say something, and Sam stepped out from the building, away from the truck, giving him lots of space.

  Inviting him, in fact. And predictably enough, Kevin took the invitation, launching himself over the tailgate and landing with legs bent, scuffing the dirt and gravel. He picked himself up and kept coming.

  Once upon a time Sam Beckett had believed that the human animal, like other animals, needed some kind of incentive to attack—some signal from an opponent, some provocation. Somewhere along the line he had lost that belief, like so many other beliefs based in scientific innocence. Human beings didn’t operate like animals. Human beings responded like . .. people.

  Instead of taking the signal that the older man wasn’t offering any threat, Kevin kept coming, pausing only long enough to pick up a stretch of two-by-four and swing it in his direction. Sam ducked, farther away from the building, away from the girl, hoping she had the sense to stay out of the range of the length of wood. He risked a glance back to check, and only the whistling of air warned him to drop flat. Kevin yelled in triumph. Sam rolled, hitting him in the legs, knocking him down, and kept rolling, letting the inertia bring him back to his feet, kicking the board away from Kevin’s clawing fingers, dropping to his knees and snatching the boy’s left arm up between his shoulder blades, immobilizing him.

  “Now suppose we just talk about this,” he suggested, breathing hard. “You got your money back, right?” He yanked on the arm, just hard enough to emphasize his words, careful not to do any real damage.

  Kevin yelped. Sam yanked again. “Right!”

  “And everything’s fair and square, right?”

  He could see Kevin rolling his eye to try to look at him, and pressed the boy’s face into the ground exactly as hard and no harder than needed to keep him from lifting his head. “Everything’s fair and square, right?” he repeated. “You got your money back, and we got the keg. Right?”

  Kevin squirmed. “Damn you—”

  Sam leaned in on him a trifle. “Come on,” he said through

  his teeth. “Is this worth a damned quarter-keg of beer?”

  Kevin snarled something. Sam chose to interpret it as submission, waited one beat, and then let go, getting up and standing well clear. Kevin stirred slowly, getting first to all fours and then sitting back on his haunches, brushing the dirt out of his face with the back of his hand, not meeting Sam’s eyes. “You’re gonna be sorry for this,” he muttered. “You’re gonna pay.”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time,” Sam said under his breath. He watched as Kevin staggered to his feet, rubbing his shoulder and swinging his arm in a circle, and waited until the boy got into his own truck and pulled out, spraying gravel and broken bits of tar in a long arc across the parking lot. The red truck nearly sideswiped another car as it careened onto the main street.

  “He’ll come back,” the girl behind him said. “He hates you.”

  “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me at all,” Sam answered wryly, not turning around.

  So he was not in the least prepared when Bethica slipped her arms around him and laid her head against the middle of his back.

  “You were really brave,” the girl said, giving him a quick, tight hug. He could feel her breath through the cloth between his shoulder blades, and couldn’t help squirming at the sensation.

  “Ah, no, I wouldn’t say so,” he stammered, and reached up to remove her hands, stepping out and away and around in one smooth movement.

  “But you were!” Her eyes were shining, and she seemed to take no exception to his escape—possibly because he was still holding on to her hands to keep her from grabbing him again. “Wickie, you were great. Kevin’s really mean. He likes to beat on people.”

  “I noticed.” Where was Al, with the handy handlink to tell him who the devil this Kevin kid was? He had to have something to do with this Leap.

  Another thought occurred to him, and he looked at Bethica more carefully. “Does he—‘beat on’ you?”

  Pinkness gathered under her skin, and she looked down at the ground. “No,” she said. “Kevin wouldn’t ever hit me.” She raised her head to look him in the eye. “Besides, I told you, I broke up with him.”

  She was telling the truth, as far as he could tell. But he’d heard those words before from . . . from Katie, that was it. His little sister, talking about her first husband. “Chuck wouldn’t ever hit me. ”

  But Chuck had, and Kevin had too, he suspected. He resolved to keep an eye on Bethica—although from the way she behaved, he figured keeping track of Bethica would be the least of his problems. He wondered if Rimae knew her niece had a crush on the bartender, and what effect it would have on Rimae’s pla
nned entertainment for Friday nights. Wickie would be lucky to get out of this one alive.

  “If he ever tries, you tell me,” he said at last. “Promise?”

  She ducked her head again and nodded. “I’ll tell you,” she said gravely.

  “I’ll take care of Kevin,” he said firmly. And hoped that it was true.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Every other Saturday, Wickie had the night off, and it was an other Saturday tonight. Sam decided to remain in the bar anyway, watching, listening, picking up what information about Snow Owl he could, and giving himself a respite from Rimae, Bethica, and everyone else. He took over the piano bench, idly picking out a tune, nursing a beer along.

  The Polar Bar wasn’t very well patronized for a Saturday night. Perhaps a dozen couples, half that many unattached men and women, all of whom already knew each other, sat around and talked. They noticed his playing and started to tip him for requests. The Polar Bar wasn’t a sophisticated, swinging pickup place. It was a neighborhood bar, where everybody knew his name.

  He wondered if Wickie could play. If not, the bartender would have some explaining to do once Sam Leaped out. He’d done something like this before, Sam thought he remembered. He didn’t think he’d be involved in any car chases this time, though. At least nobody had waved a gun at him so far. But nobody was asking him to sing, either, and he distinctly remembered that he liked to sing.

  He decided not to push it. The tastes of the clientele of the Polar Bar leaned toward country-western, and he did the best he could. Between old Marty Robbins tunes he sneaked

  in some jazz, and nobody seemed to object.

  He would have liked to really cut loose, but he didn’t want to call that much attention to himself. Maybe tomorrow, when the bar was closed, he could come back in and practice awhile. For now he ran unfamiliar hands over the yellowed keys and hummed to himself.

  He’d spent a couple of hours that way when Rimae Hoffman leaned over him, chuckling deep in her throat. Wreaths of cigarette smoke surrounded her head, and Sam had to force himself not to make a face at the mixed smells of lilac perfume and tobacco.

  “You keep surprising me,” she said, making no particular effort to keep her voice down. “You’re a man of hidden talents.”

  “More than you could ever guess,” Sam responded, feeling a sudden need to watch where he put his hands.

  “Oh, I’m finding out.” She expelled streams of smoke from her mouth and nostrils, looked around for an ashtray, and discovered Sam had moved it several tables farther away. She brought it back with her, mashing the cigarette down. “Bethica says you got into a fight with Kevin Hodge about that keg this morning. I keep telling you, baby, don’t bruise the paying customers.”

  Sam shook his head, not sure what to say.

  Someone else came by, stuck a dollar into a glass on top of the piano, and requested “Please Believe Me.” He sighed and did the best he could from the memory of the melody and unskilled hands, only having to start over twice. Rimae waited until he was finished, leaning on the piano and smiling at him, her hand curled around a glass. She wore bright red fingernail polish on short, workmanlike nails. Worn down instead of piled up, and styled in a casual flip, her teased hair was medium length. Her skin was dark, almost leathery with repeated tanning, her face lined by character and weathering.

  She must have dyed her hair since last night, Sam thought. No gray roots showed now. Her makeup was less vivid than it had been the night before, too. She had character in her face, ironic humor in her bright blue eyes—not like Bethica’s, Bethica’s eyes were the soft blue of cornflowers while Rimae’s were crystalline, glittering, outlined in kohl and spiky lashes.

  And she was watching him as if she knew something about him and it amused her. At least she wasn’t furious at him any more. The look in her eyes wasn’t angry, that was for sure. Speculative, perhaps. Possessive.

  This was the time, he thought, that Al should pop in, making some snide comment about Rimae still having the hots for him. And she did, he could tell, even without the incident of the previous night. It was that look.

  But Al never showed. He kept playing, not meeting Rimae’s eyes, until she finally laughed her throaty laugh again and took herself and her cigarettes over behind the bar to talk to the woman handling the Saturday-night shift. He sneaked a glance after her as she swayed away. It was a shame Al was missing this; black satin toreador pants, a concho belt with sandcast silver links three inches square, a white blouse with layers of frothy lace at collar and cuffs. It might have looked cliche, but it wasn’t. Conversation swirled around her and followed her as she greeted the patrons that she passed.

  His hands rippled out a few bars from “The Girl From Ipanema” all on their own, and he shook his head in disgust and got up. He debated a moment about the tips in the glass, decided Wickie could probably use the money, took it and stuffed it into a pocket of his jeans. He could always count it later and leave Wickie a note of the total for tax purposes.

  Smiling, he finished his beer in one long swallow and waved away the two or three voices raised in protest as he slipped out the front door of the bar, closing off the noise of it with the closing of the door. He paused to take a deep breath of the chilly night air, clearing the smell of tobacco smoke from his lungs, and looked around at the litter of cars nuzzled up to the building. Family cars, most of them. The

  summer economy of Snow Owl didn’t lend itself to Jaguars and Mercedes.

  He could smell steaks grilling somewhere in someone’s backyard barbecue, tangy in the mountain air. He followed the smell away from the noise and lights and cars until he found himself standing in the trees, pine needles crunching under the soles of his shoes. The smell faded and was replaced by the perfume of pine trees as the breeze changed direction, and he stood still, eyes closed, listening to the night.

  The pine needles, whispering in the breeze. Some small creature rustling through the twigs. Behind him, the sounds of people laughing together. There, off to the right, a dog barking.

  He turned thirty degrees, tilted his head to catch other sounds: the almost inaudible thrumming of wind in an owl’s wings, the chirping of a cicada. A car door slamming far away. A rustling, gurgling sound of a mountain stream, only a few feet away.

  How often did he get a chance to just stand alone in the darkness, not thinking about anything, just listening? How often did he have the chance to breathe deep of clean air, feel the movement of air on his face and not be afraid?

  Sometimes it was good for a man to be alone.

  For a little while, anyway. Shaking off the mood, he opened his eyes again and oriented himself on the neon lights of the Polar Bar, sighed and stuck his hands in his pockets and began to trudge back.

  He was beginning to wonder about Al. He couldn’t remember—well, he couldn't, eidetic memory notwithstanding, and a lot of good it did him with holes punched into it—the last time Al had let more than twenty-four hours go by before renewing contact with him. Sometimes it took a while for Ziggy to find him, but once the computer locked on, Al was always prompt to appear. And once he made first contact, he maintained it.

  Not this time, though. Well, granted that he’d chased the Observer off, but that was an old story by this time, and it shouldn’t have kept Al away this long.

  He rounded the back of Wickie’s cabin, wondering, and a pile of bricks fell on him.

  Well, it felt like a pile of bricks, anyway. It was Davey, jumping from the roof in the darkness, a sheet tied around his neck to make a great, flapping, lightweight cloak. He grunted as he hit Sam, flailing around and getting more and more tangled up in the sheet. Sam picked himself up, brushed himself off, and looked from the boy still sprawled in the dirt to the low roof of the cabin and back again.

  “I did that once,” he admitted to no one in particular.

  Davey stopped thrashing long enough to give him a sidelong glance and went back to fighting the sheet.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” S
am said, becoming alarmed as the sheet, as if with a mind of its own, twisted around the boy’s neck. “Hold on. Calm down.”

  He found himself using the same tone he’d use to a frightened animal, even, soothing, steady. Davey responded in much the same way. His face was curiously blank through it all, showing no anger or fear; he held still while Sam worked the knot loose and unwrapped the material, then he got up and grabbed the sheet away.

  “Hey, wait a minute!” Sam repeated. “Where do you think you’re going with that?”

  “Gonna fly,” Davey said. He stepped away.

  “Not with that, you’re not. It doesn’t work. Didn’t you just figure that out?”

  “Gonna fly.” Now the boy was shaking the sheet out, taking two of the corners to tie around his neck once more. Sam had a sudden chilling vision of it getting caught on something, of Davey hanging—

  “No,” he said. “Give it to me, Davey.”

  “Gonna fly.” Davey swung the sheet around behind himself.

  “No," Sam said again. He caught at the boy’s hands. “No, Davey.”

  “Fly.”

  “No. This won’t help you fly.” When Sam was three, he tested a Superman hypothesis. He wondered what cartoons Davey watched that still featured superheroes who wore capes and flew, for truth, justice, and putting things right that once went wrong.

  Davey was still looking at him blankly. He wasn’t getting through. Sam took a deep breath and a good hold on the sheet and tried to take it away.

  Davey was small, and wiry, and tough, and not about to give up his dream. He fought back, or rather pulled away, and Sam found himself engaged in a tug-of-war across the half-empty rear parking lot of the bar. Against Davey’s wiriness he pitted Wickie’s size and weight. In short order he was nose to nose with Davey, who would not surrender his last few inches of cotton sheet. Sam had to pry his fingers loose, one by one, and then hope the kid wouldn’t come around behind him to pick up the excess and start the whole thing over again.

  But Davey didn’t. He looked down at his hands once the sheet had been prized loose, and then at the swath of cotton material, and turned and shambled away without speaking, leaving Sam with his hands full of bedsheet, feeling silly and sad and a lot like a bully. All the kid wanted to do was fly, after all. It wasn’t so very much.