2,000 Miles to Open Road (Barefield)

by Trey R. Barker

  Knife handle sticking out of her chest.

  Lannie took a steadying breath, tried to keep the camera still. Don't blow it now: light touch on the button, sixteen-millimeter film humping through the aperture at twenty-four frames a second, other hand fumbling with the pawnshop Uher tape recorder slung over his shoulder--positioning the microphone to advantage, ambient sound the in thing these days. How you told the real stringers from the wannabes.

  "Jesus, Crowell, can't you think of anything better to do at four in the morning? Damn ghoul."

  He'd seen the cop before at other scenes, a pompous fat white guy in a nylon jacket--Richard Blakley on the tag over his left pocket. Writing something now on a sheet of paper attached to a clipboard.

  "And step back."

  "Whatever you say, Officer Blakley. Any suspects at this time?"

  "No comment."

  "Somebody she knew?"

  "For the last time, back off."

  "Yes sir."

  Lannie moved back, focused in again--all pro, cool under fire. Whatever happened here, the cops had their jobs, he had his. And being known to them pleased him. It meant he was on his way--KNBC caliber, sky the limit then. National news, traveling with the president or somebody, on-the-road features, room service--make Mom-o whirl around like a tornado in her little box. The one he brought out occasionally to impress girls, knowing she was right there as they did it. Those that stuck around, anyhow.

  "Just serving the public's right to know," he added.

  "Right to know, my ass--and kill that damn light." Blakley head-gestured to a man and woman standing quietly off to the side with a boy about thirteen. "That's the family," he said in a lowered voice. "They came home and found her. How'd you like it?" He walked away, disgusted.

  What served for press relations these days, Lannie thought. No respect for a man's chosen profession. He regarded the three people, breaths further fogging the night air, expressions frozen in shock. Small was his first thought--small father, small mother, small boy--diminutive Hispanics dressed in light cotton windbreakers. Pale-looking small people huddled in the fragile light. He edged over in that direction, smiled sympathetically. Tried to look simpatico.

  "Lo siento mucho para su pérdida, señor y señora.Lannie Crowell, KTVB, hoping you'll let my viewers know what happened--what you're feeling." He said it quietly so the cops wouldn't hear, call him on what he actually was, a freelancer with no real business asking questions of anybody, let alone acting as an official KTVB news guy. But in this trade you made your own breaks, picked stuff up and went. If you didn't, somebody else damn well would.

  For a moment the trio just stared at him, his eye to the camera lens, the shouldered Uher picking up sound on its quarter-inch tape. Like he was from another planet. Then the father spoke--slowly as if it were an effort--heavily accented, fighting for control: "Look at what he did to her, that Van Zant boy," the father said. "He murdered my baby--a poor little Mexican girl. Hijo de puta thinks he can do anything because of his money. You tell your viewers that."

  An irate-looking neighbor started over, Lannie could sense it with his other eye, kept open and scanning like all the good ones did. Still he kept the B&H grinding, seeing the father put an arm around his lost-looking wife, the two of them turn away in tears as the boy glared at him, all protective rage and confusion.

  "You happy now, spook?" the big cop Blakley said. "I sure hope so. Now take a hike."

  Lannie was backing up, lowering the camera, wondering where he'd heard the name Van Zant before, when the sun-gun picked it up. A brief glint in the wet grass beside the walk. Quickly he shut off the light and the camera, lowered it, and knelt, pretending to fuss with the mount. Reaching a hand sideways, he took the thing in, the metal cold on his skin.

  Why he did it wasn't clear to him exactly, maybe it was the word spoken by the girl's father: money. A sense of something. Of possibility. At any rate, it wasn't until he was in his old V-Dub Kombi, revving away from the house, that he risked a look.

  It was a medical bracelet, one of those things that had the red caduceus on one side and the information on the other, in case there was an accident and you were unable to tell the medics you had a condition--diabetes or something--so their treatment wouldn't kill you. Phone number they could call to find out who you were, your doctor or close relative.

  Somebody who might pay to get it back.

  Lannie tried to see what it said on it, but the streetlight was uneven and his dash lights had burned out a summer ago, some short in the system. Thinking he'd check it out later, he pitched it in the ashtray and goosed the Kombi, hoping to beat the morning crew to the developer, see what kind of shots he had. Maybe use them to land a permanent job or something. Make Mom-o proud.

  ONE

  Waipio Valley, Island of Hawaii, Present

  They were out there, all right--the Night Marchers, ghosts that stalked the valley floor on their way back to the netherworld through the secret doorway down by the beach. He'd seen them before and knew they must have seen him, but they didn't bother him. One ghost to another, so to speak.

  Still, it was nothing he took for granted.

  Roy Voelker knocked back a slug of dark rum, picked at a mosquito-bite scab, the fucker still itching like crazy, probably half-infected. Like himself, he thought. Rain dripped off the big mango out behind his shack, made hollow sounds on the rusting tin and curled plywood. Light from the hissing Coleman bounced a gleam off the plastic bags that served as interior decor, his Purple Heart tacked to a stud, the .45 ammo looking like little warheads as he loaded them into the clips.

  The evening air gave off damp smells: earth and outhouse, sweet decay from the compost Voelker applied to the taro patch revived while claiming the abandoned shack as his own. There hadn't been even a front door on the one-room ruin then, but he'd made one. Palm fronds tacked over a frame of two-by-fours scrounged up on the road to Honokaa; the plastic bags out of a topside dumpster.

  Home sweet home.

  Luckily it never got cold enough to be a problem. Like the winters in Lansing, his other lifelong filed away, this old dead letter at a post office. Quite the opposite: As in Nam, here the problem was growing mold--jungle rot. And right now the air felt like it: close and dank in the hooch, the inside of a car at the drive-in with the windows rolled up. Humidity putting a wet shine on his skin.

  Outside the rain was finally letting up, steady drip tailing off into free-form rhythms, a grumble of retreating thunder.

  Voelker took a last swig, wiped ninety-proof from his beard, and stuck the cheap cigar back in his mouth, his right eye squinting against the smoke. He eased a clip into the .45, worked the slide and the safety, wiped excess gun oil on his T-shirt and fatigue pants. Keep it oiled or kiss it off: Echo Company drill--his own admonishment still loud in his ears.

  Ex-Marine First Sergeant Roy Voelker stepped out into the clearing.

  It was still light enough to see, the clouds breaking up now, and Voelker set about checking the perimeter, the monofilament trip line strung with corned-beef-hash and refried-bean cans. Following the line as it dipped under croton and pandanus, wild ginger and thimbleberry. Wiggling it occasionally for the reassuring sound it gave--old habits, permanently imprinted. Like the spitting glare from a phosphorus shell.

  Not that he slept much anyway. But just knowing the line was on duty helped. Peace of mind of a sort.

  Voelker smiled at the thought. Fat fucking chance; hell, not even the VA medication helped anymore. All that seemed to work was the smoke he grew and the ever-increasing slugs of cheap booze, now over half his disability check. Not an encouraging scenario. Unless you took into consideration what he had riding: all the booze and dope he'd ever want before long. The check in the mail, so to speak.

  Finished with the line, Voelker brought out dry wood from the shack and made a fire in the ring of stones. Light from the flames flickered around the now dim clearing, casting shadows on the shack and the jungle foliage behind
, ghosts passing by like flotsam around a rock. Kamehameha kills, most likely, their heads bashed in by the big man's war clubs--regulars out here for two hundred years.

  He saluted them with rum, opened another fifth.

  Ten klicks down the valley, a few lights came on as the darkness deepened. Not much there, he knew, several houses, some beach campers. Outsiders--more than enough to suit him; hell, blowing up the damn one-lane in'd be fine by him.

  Voelker reached in, pulled out a burnt twig. Letting it cool, he lined the char under his eyes, smeared his forehead and cheeks; felt it coming on. Felt them out there--small men in NVA uniforms just beyond the light. He thumbed the safety off, pointed the .45 at the jungle, and fired. A phantom went down and he spun and fired again; one reaching the perimeter jerked back into the blackness. More rounds and more imaginary targets blown away. Reload and fire, firing until the slide locked open--the targets all down now, gone in a mad minute of blue haze and near-erotic release.

  All but one.

  It was as though a shadow had materialized, emerged against the green, shifting and undulating now in the breeze that had sprung up. It stood there as Voelker blinked, the empty gun at his side.

  "Hey, Top, how's it hanging? Nice wire, by the way."

  Voelker felt his throat constrict, fingers of ice on his sac. The figure with the blackened face held a K-Bar lightly, its eight-inch stainless-steel blade catching the firelight. Without seeming to move, the apparition came closer.

  "Not too chatty, huh? Funny, that's not what I heard."

  From someplace far off, Voelker heard the rum bottle drop from his hand. "Stay back, goddamnit. I'm warning--"

  "They can kill you but they can't eat you--remember that one? Quang Tri, I think it was." Closer now.

  "Get away from me. You're not real."

  It shook its head. "Guess that makes two major fuckups in the same month, Top. I look like some ghost to you?"

  Everything in Roy Voelker screamed get out of there--survive--but he couldn't. His legs were bad-dream-leaden. He was vaguely aware of hard eyes, black pullover and pants, and the feeling he'd just been hit by lightning--even though the storm had left the valley.

  TWO

  As it turned out, the guy who'd snaked his wave, then made a big issue of it when Wil Hardesty protested the drop-in, was all mouth. Even so, they'd almost gotten into it on the beach, the guy coming on as if he'd been wronged, freaking locals thinking they owned the world, on and on until Wil left the argument to the younger dudes who'd picked up on it, shouts and curses and testosterone rising all around until a gem set arrived that had everybody scrambling back out for position.

  Everybody but him.

  Since the trouble with Lisa, all of it was an effort, just getting through the day most days. Let alone tilt at what the Rincon was becoming--regular zoo when the big winter swells made it the prize of California surf spots. Perfect right point break that sometimes let you rip down the entire length, wind raising spray off the lip like the smoke from a prairie fire.

  Still, even the occasional forays into Hollister Ranch--gated turf with no lineups and often jacking breaks, courtesy of a property-owner friend--lately were leaving him deflated. As though he had a slow leak in his thirty-year passion for the sport, flaccidity now where tumescence had once reigned undisputed.

  Hard to remember a time when he hadn't surfed. First at The Wedge, this skinny squirt who had to be fished out gasping and upchucking, but who'd left his heart out there and soon was eclipsing his dawn-patrol pals with wild rides under the Newport Beach pier. There'd been seconds and thirds at Huntington then, La Jolla and Santa Cruz, the setup to turn pro and run the circuit before he'd pulled the plug, realizing it was somebody else's ambition. That it was he and the water--nobody else. Juice surging in there like a private tide in his veins, tremolo chord on a surf guitar.

  Until now. Until the divorce.

  Since he was close by, Wil made a Viennese run to the Coffee Grinder, couple of scones and a loaf of herb bread for later, then hit the road for home. Past the Rincon, around the two-mile sweep of coastline that led to Mussel Shoals and Ventura, left across the northbound traffic heading for Santa Barbara's red-tiled coziness, and into La Conchita.

  Oil roughnecks had lived here in the twenties, rumrunners in the thirties, drug smugglers, surfers, and retirees since then, La Conchita now about four hundred souls. Plus California's only banana plantation, its Javas, Brazilians, and Ladyfingers ripening in blue plastic bags encasing the green clusters. And that sweet curve of beach just beyond the highway. Worth the price alone.

  But La Conchita lay just under a coastal bluff that nearly ate it a season ago--as it was, devouring an unlucky line of homes when rains turned the substrata into wet soap. For days, national media and locals maintained a twenty-four-hour vigil, flooding the area at night with a cold eerie illumination.

  This time, the bluff held.

  Warning tape and wire fencing still marked affected structures; mud lingered in berms and piles. Residents backed cars into their driveways, quick getaway in case of further slippage. Sandbags and legal wrangle over the cleanup were further legacy.

  Life in a geologic hazard area.

  Wil parked his '66 Bonneville, repainted now with some of Holly Pfeiffer's expense money--Holly of the urban terrorists and the secrets from hell; woman-child Holly; pang-in-the-heart Holly. He retrieved the Southern Cross--his longboard--from the port he'd cut in the back seat, and stowed it. Climbed the stairs to the kitchen, started the Viennese going; thought how little he even thought about the mud anymore. Partly because his house was closer to the beach, out of range unless the slide decided next time to stop at the islands. But more because he'd been flattened by another force.

  Lisa's little tsunami.

  The divorce left him a long swim back to the surface and serious doubts about making the payments on the house. He'd refinanced, needing the equity just to take up the slack. But reality lay as close and hungry as the unstable mass up the street, and the investigations business was sporadic: accident reconstructions, occasional insurance work, some under-the-table stuff, legacy of the garbage he used to take in after Dev's dying. Devin Kyle Hardesty, child of water and to water returned--eight years now, the time like thin gauze. As for the work, lucky to get it these days.

  But it wasn't enough. Even though Lisa had given him the house minus her share of the equity, her accounting practice still expanding. She'd taken next to nothing. Clean break, she called it, fresh start--hoping her spin would infuse him. They still spoke, Lisa helping him sort out the finances she'd handled for the two of them. Adjunct of her work now.

  Politeness was the operative mode. But it was more a scab over the wound, masking the torn root holes still bleeding inside. Sometimes they'd see each other in Santa Barbara, awkward at first then more routine. They'd smile, have dinner when more came up than they could handle by phone. Each time he swore it would be the last, her almond eyes and black hair cut short since the split searing holes in his carefully applied exterior--delaminating it, making him want her back. Knowing it wasn't going to happen.

  Typical conversation--him: "How're your folks, the orchid business, your new place, accounting." Her: "Fine, thanks--the house okay? Surfing? Your work?" Scripted stuff, like the football coach who wrote out his first plays from scrimmage. Nothing from either of them about who you're seeing, Devin memories, what's it like without me--anything of real importance. Just ice skating: smiles without warmth, nonengagement. Bullshit he'd seen so many of their friends perfect.

  The big empty.

  He'd been out once--twice if you counted Claire from the gym, where he signed up for an off-peak-hours membership. Forcing himself out there as much as anything. The other had been a disaster, all self-conscious talk and gestures, edgy glances. Perfunctory sex he finally called off, as much to her relief as his.

  Some life, Hardesty. Possibilities galore.

  Feeling the need for something in which to
lose himself, he settled on building a telescope--a big astrological scope like the one his father constructed when Wil was in grade school. Looking at the faraway stars and planets, he and his father became close: visited Griffith Observatory, charted the heavens by season. Created something that still resonated.

  So he read up, scrounged a five-foot piece of ten-inch cardboard tubing, a pair of eight-inch glass portholes, and started in. First task was fashioning the primary mirror. Which meant grinding one porthole against the other, using wax to fix the increasingly fine grit to the grinder as the headphones torqued out Beach Boys and Beethoven, Sheryl Crow and Branford Marsalis, Roy Orbison--CDs impulse-bought or borrowed from friends.

  Poorman's therapy.

  Five months later, after getting the glass to the required convex mirror shape, he had it aluminized. He secured the mirror, set the focal length, fastened an eyepiece purchased from an enthusiasts' journal. Finally he took the monster up to the top of Camino Cielo--renewed an old acquaintance with the stars in Orion's belt, saw the rings of Jupiter, peered into the Milky Way. Remembered the way it was before his mother veered drunkenly into a busload of El Toro recruits in 1967, taking the telescope man with her.

  After two trips, he stowed the scope in the basement.

  Then there were the well-meaning invitations that finally stopped coming: western-dance classes, adult ed, fixer-uppers, fun-runs, organized mixers--parallel universes as remote feeling as the craters on the moon.

  The gym was an exception. At least something positive came from that, the chance to work off some of the flab accrued from his post-split torpors. And nonthreatening human contact--hi's and hellos from the morning workouters who simply vanished into another dimension after ten A.M.