by Jim Craig
I stumbled along the road behind Charlie trying to keep up. Even though I wanted to run in the opposite direction, I thought it best to play it cool. I swallowed hard wondering if I could hang onto my nerve. And my sanity.
Everything about Taroka Island was taking on a strange and warped life of its own. I couldn’t fly away, I couldn’t contact anybody, I couldn't do squat.
I needed information, and I needed to think. More than anything I needed to figure out what to do or something told me I was going to regret it.
With Charlie silence seemed like the best course. What would I say anyhow? I was only a bit player in this bizarre production, just a guy standing on the side of the road watching a car wreck happen right in front of him. And now I had an erratic man armed with deadly weapons and an attitude to use them. Should I try to take charge? Start telling Charlie what do I like I was the man? Sometimes a little structure could settle things down.
A little voice inside told me to keep my head down. Watch and learn first. Trying to be a big shot could be asking for trouble. I thought about how to play it. How to blend into the action and mold myself into a working piece of the strange machine that was Taroka Island. As if my survival depended on adapting a new shape and form until I could maneuver myself to the edge and then get free.
The lodge came into view before I developed any better plan. I desperately needed to get in touch with the real world again. Willie, Phil, the troopers, some connection with planet Earth at least. It wasn’t to be.
Greta was waiting for us on the porch. She was pacing back and forth but stopped when she spotted us. Her black leather jacket was zipped to her chin, and she had on matching gloves, white knee high boots with high heels and designer blue jeans. Her white face, red lipstick and styled blond hair blazed outward like a lighthouse on a stormy sea. She gazed in our direction with no expression.
“Hi, honey,” Charlie called out when he spotted her. "You look terrific."
“I heard shots,” she said, her eyes narrowing as she stared at him. I sensed a suspicion there probably born from experience.
“Yeah,” he said with a nervous laugh. “Damn road sign tried to get the drop on us. Had to teach it a lesson.”
Her face hardened. Her blue eyes could have flash frozen raw meat. Her jaw clenched as though her perfect teeth were biting back on a thousand razor blades of spite and disgust.
I tried to make myself invisible, but it didn’t matter. Without another word she turned on her heel and jerked open the door. It slammed hard behind her, and Charlie and I stood there listening to her heels hammering across the wooden floor of the lobby until the sound was gone.
“Aw, shit,” Charlie muttered. “Now she’s pissed off again.” He stared toward the lobby door, slammed one fist into the other and started to pace.
My eyes moved back and forth, watching him and looking around for an escape. I was speechless, dumbfounded and felt as out of place as a fully clothed delivery man at a nudist colony. Finally, Charlie let out a big sigh, and his shoulders dropped. He clumped onto the deck and headed for the front door leaving me standing by myself.
He opened the door and leaned in. “Sweetheart?” he called out before he stepped inside and closed the door gently behind him. He moved like a bomb disposal crew feeling for trip wires.
I heard someone pull the crank on a small generator somewhere nearby and on the second tug it began to purr. I turned to look across the circular drive and saw a light come on inside the small cabin. The troopers? I walked quickly toward the sound and the light. I could feel my heart pounding with anticipation. Finally.
But before I got to the cabin I felt the vibration of music and the chunking solid rhythm of an electric guitar. It was a familiar grinding riff echoing surreally from the mossy log walls of the low structure. Then low bass guitar joined in followed by drums. I was transported to the smoky confines of a thousand dark rock and roll bars and the screaming chaos of a Led Zeppelin concert. Robert Plant’s impossibly raw vocal chords began to sing Whole Lotta Love, the strangely lustful utterings usually reserved for a lover’s sensual whisper in the dark.
The volume soared to maximum and I walked closer and stepped onto the porch listening as a high hat cymbal solo began, then joined by bongos, psychedelic soaring guitar swales and orgasmic moaning. I looked through the window in the door and saw the kid with a purple sash tied around his forehead in the middle of the room standing on a chair playing air guitar with an old broom. His body was posed in a perfect rock star imitation, one leg bouncing to the beat. He wore a black t-shirt and tattered blue jeans, and his face was lost in concentration feeling every note of the timeless teenage classic.
I waited, watching and listening. I could feel my own body beginning to react. The sound took over, and every other thought fled overwhelmed by the power of the music.
I took off my pack, put on my sunglasses and waited for the guitar solo. Then I spun my hat around backwards, threw off my coat and burst through the door with a crash of cymbals. I dropped to my knees and flailed my arms in an imaginary drum solo in perfect time with the recording. I didn’t look at the kid at first but from the corner of my eye I saw his jaw drop. He gaped at me for a second, but then he picked up the guitar solo and we thrashed out our parts in unison trading the drum and guitar riffs back and forth like we were center stage at the Hollywood Bowl.
I was pounding away and grimacing with every wild smash of the cymbals. I started to sweat, but I couldn’t have cared less. I could feel the tension of the last several hours oozing out of my pores. When I looked up at him, he was grinning ear to ear and bobbing his head to the beat, his red hair whipping back and forth. As the vocals started again we belted them out together, shouting to hear ourselves over the stereo. My sunglasses slid halfway down my nose, and I didn’t care.
We rocked it out to the finish and when the volume began to fade I stood up and walked over still bouncing and smiling at him. He lifted his hand and gave me a hearty high five that stung my palm. Then we gripped hands in a firm shake and laughed out loud.
Just then the door smashed open behind us. As we turned to look Charlie burst into the room, his face contorted in rage.
“Tamby, what the fuck are you doing?” he bellowed. “Turn that shit off! You’re wasting the only gas we have left.”
Then he noticed me and seemed to freeze in place staring at me in disbelief. I turned my hat back around and sheepishly reached down to pick up my coat.
He watched me for a moment, blinking and scrunching his eyebrows together in confusion. Then he shook his head and left the room.
A moment later I heard the generator cut off and the lights went out. The room went dim and I turned toward the kid, but he had already picked up his jacket and was running for the lodge. The broomstick and purple sash lay in the dust on the floor.