Halfway House

by Weston Ochse

  “Drop the wood,” he snarled.

  Bobby felt his arms begin to shake, not from fear, but from unused adrenaline. With more effort than he thought it would take, he forced himself to drop the wood. The only concession to his anger was to say Motherfucker three times fast.

  The man with the pistol gestured to a log near the fire. “Sit down. We don’t have any business with you.” He waited for Bobby to comply, then returned the pistol to the small of his back. After Bobby sat, the man stepped forward, picked up the length of wood and threw it on the fire. He knelt to check the pit bull’s pulse, feeling around the impact area for cracks. Finally, “You did a number on Boonie. He’s gonna be pissed when he wakes up. Kanga already bested him and now this.” He shook his head. “We weren’t introduced last night. You can call me Vincent. I’m Marley’s son.”

  Tripping along the chasm-edge of hyperventilation, Bobby fought to control his breathing. As it slowed, so did his anger. “You’re Marley’s son?”

  “Yep.”

  Tiffany came down the path slowly, each toe pressing the sand before the rest of a foot. Her thumb was in her mouth. She gazed at the ground. She walked right by Boonie, sidled up to Vincent and leaned against him. She was no longer herself, but a part of him. She fit perfectly.

  “What did you do with Kanga?”

  “We didn’t do anything with Kanga.” Woody Woodpecker giggled, his buckteeth dancing across his lower lip.

  “Then where is he?”

  “He’s out there.” Vincent pointed to sea.

  Bobby followed the finger and eventually made out the shadow of Kanga sitting on his board staring toward the West and the risen moon. Strange how he was facing into the waves, rather than facing the shore. That was no way to surf. But then it hit him. “He knows,” he whispered to himself.

  “Yes, he does,” Vincent said.

  Bobby turned to stare at the lean man. “You told him?”

  Vincent nodded.

  “How do you know? How did you find out?”

  The other man shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. What matters is what are you going to do for Kanga?”

  Bobby was taken aback by the odd turn of events. Vincent seemed concerned about Kanga’s well-being. Why? Was it Marley? Of course it was. Why did Marley want to help Kanga? Bobby wasn’t born yesterday and knew enough about human nature that hatred didn’t get better with age. “What do you care?”

  “What you do to yourself is your business. You want to get drunk and sleep in the park, then do it. But Kanga is protected. He’s to be treated special. You are his closest friend, so now it’s up to you.”

  “But I barely know him.”

  “You see anyone else around?”

  Bobby shook his head.

  “How long have you been around?”

  “About two months.”

  “So for two months you’ve been the only one in his life besides his daughter, and now she’s gone. If he had any other friends, you’d have seen them. Face it. You’re his touch with reality. You’re the one who’s going to keep him from trying to surf across the Pacific. You’re the one who’s responsible.”

  Bobby was about to whine about not wanting to be responsible, but held the words back. Vincent was right. Bobby was Kanga’s only friend. He stood. With one hand he wiped sweat from his face, with the other he adjusted his cap. He turned to Vincent. “You guys need to go. I’ll take care of this.”

  “We’re not going any—”

  Vincent silenced Woody with a flick of his hand. “Sure. You need some privacy.” He pulled out a card and held it out. When Bobby took it, Vincent said, “Call my father if you need anything. And I mean anything. Having Kanga alive and well is in my father’s interest.”

  Bobby pocketed the card without looking at it. Vincent began walking. Tiffany lingered for a moment. “Those footprints,” she began to say, before she was pulled away by Vincent. “They—” and the words were lost to the waves.

  Woody helped Boonie to wobbly feet and both of them stumbled across the sand. Soon they were climbing the hill.

  Bobby’s hair whipped about his face and his hat lifted, threatening to fly away. The wind had picked up, and with it the waves. Some storm far off to sea had sent its remnants to die against the California shore. The waves were large enough that Kanga was temporarily lost from view as he sunk into a trough. Clouds crowded the moon. What had been a bright evening had turned as dark as the events that had transpired.

  Bobby grabbed six Tecates from their stash and headed to the rock Kanga loved to sit upon in the mornings. After a balancing act that would steal the envy of Cirque de Soleil, he made it to the top without losing a beer.

  From this vantage point he could see Kanga clearly as he bobbed up and down, still staring out to sea. What had Vincent said? Bobby was to keep Kanga from surfing across the Pacific? He knew it then as a metaphor for suicide. Would Kanga do it? Would he just take off?

  But after two hours, a shivering, miserable Kanga allowed the waves to push him to shore. He landed beside a clump of pungent green seaweed gripped by mussels, shells and an anonymous tin can. Bobby leapt down from his perch and relieved Kanga of his board. Together, they went to the fire. Bobby added some driftwood and soon revived the flames. He found some dry beach towels and laid them atop Kanga’s shoulders.

  Nothing was said.

  They merely stared into the flames.

  * * *

  “This is getting old,” a voice said from far away.

  “Don’t they look like zombies?”

  “You and your zombies. You got zombies on the brain.”

  “No, really. Check it out. This one just stares straight ahead, and the other is laid out flat. He couldn’t be comfortable. He’s gotta be dead.”

  “I swear to God. You were never like this before you went to work at the video store. Now you’re comparing everything to everything.”

  “Was it my fault they always had the TVs on? I didn’t want to be there anyway. Was Grandma who made me do it.”

  “She didn’t make you. You could have hung with us.”

  “Bullshit. You know my grandma. Would you go against her?”

  Split chuckled. “No. I think even Lucy is afraid of her.”

  Bobby heard the surf, the crackling of the fire and the two gangbangers and wished to God that he was deaf. He couldn’t have gotten more than a few hours of sleep. Maybe if he kept his eyes closed they’d leave him for dead and move on.

  “So you see why I had to go.”

  “I hear you. But sometimes it seems like you attended some freaky white boy reeducation camp. You scared the hell out of Lucy last week talking about John Hughes and how he was responsible for forming the minds of all white boys in the 1980s because of all those puto movies like Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

  “You got to admit Ferris was a Mack Daddy.”

  “Then you talked about Pretty in Pink and how it was a statement of—”

  “I had a thing for Molly Ringwald.”

  “She’s got to be fifty by now.”

  Blockbuster shrugged.

  “Then you got all crazy marica and started going on and on about wearing a bra on your head to bring to life a Barbie doll.”

  “That was Weird Science and I didn’t say I was going to do it, affeminado lambiosso. I said how fucking babaso would a Mexican have to be to do something that blanco loco.”

  “Will you two please shut the fuck up? I’m trying to die here.” If Bobby had a grenade, he’d have pulled the pin. He could feel the sun on his forehead. The breeze felt like midmorning. At the most, he’d gotten four hours of sleep. Dawn was creeping over the cliff face by the time he’d finally fallen into his sleeping bag, exhausted from caring for Kanga and trying to get him to talk.

  “It’s alive,” Split shouted dramatically.

  “Come on Bobby. We got to go to Van Nuys.” Blockbuster snatched up his baseball cap and boots. “Get dressed.”

/>   “Van Nuys. Why should we go to—” Suddenly the previous night’s events avalanched through his memory. A bolt of electric pain shot through his heart. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing but a strangled cry escaped.

  “Come on. Lucy said none of that shit. You want to mourn, you can do it later. We got a line on the puto who stole your thing. We got to go today or never.”

  “I don’t care.” Bobby twisted into his sleeping bag and buried his face.

  “Bloods gave us a small window and we got to take it.” Blockbuster pulled Bobby to a sitting position and jammed the cap on his head. He thrust Bobby’s boots onto his lap. “Put these on.”

  “And hurry up,” chimed Split. “Traffic’s already building on the 110. Last thing we need is to hit a jam.”

  Bobby wanted to shove his head in the sand. He wanted to take Kanga’s board and paddle out into the ocean to be away from these two gangbangers. He wanted anything other than to go with these two. He felt the need to stay close. Kanga was still unresponsive. From what Bobby could tell, the old man hadn’t moved from where he’d been sitting since last night—since this morning, he corrected himself. Catatonic. That was the word. The man was catatonic.

  Split reached out and prodded the old man twice on the shoulder.

  “Leave him alone.”

  “Just seeing if he was alive.”

  “You and your fucking zombies,” snarled Bobby. “One of these days you’re going to come face-to-face with one and pee your baggy fucking pants.”

  Blockbuster snorted.

  Split whirled, his upper lip curled into a snarl far enough to reveal the gold tooth. He moved quickly, but not quick enough to escape Blockbuster, who put a meaty hand in his smaller friend’s chest to hold him back.

  “Now that you’re awake, get your boots on.” Blockbuster pointed to the boots in Bobby’s lap.

  After a moment’s hesitation to make sure that Split wasn’t going to get by Blockbuster, Bobby jerked on his boots, tied them, then grabbed a windbreaker. He stepped over to Kanga and leaned over the old man’s shoulder. “I’ll be back in a bit, man. Take care of yourself. When I return we’ll go talk to someone and make whatever arrangements we have to make.”

  Bobby glanced at the cove. Only a few diehard regulars bobbed in the water, taking advantage of last night’s storm. He recognized one. Mark Nunez, who ran the Hawaiian Martial Arts studio, stared in their direction, most likely aware of what had happened because of his local connection. Bobby trudged to the water’s edge and made eye contact. The solemnity of the connection confirmed his thought.

  “Take care of him.”

  Mark nodded from atop his board.

  Bobby thought of saying more, but couldn’t think of anything. He waved, then returned to the two bickering gangbangers.

  “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Chapter 10

  If any town is greater than the sum of its parts, Los Angeles is that town. Los Angeles boasted four million souls, but the population of the county of the same name, inclusive of all the suburbs, crested ten million. Bordered on the south by Orange County, the east by Riverside County, the North by Ventura County, and the Pacific Ocean on the West, Los Angeles County had more residents than forty-three states. With more than twice the amount of people than Tennessee, and twelve times larger than his hometown of Memphis, it was easy for Bobby to feel overwhelmed.

  But San Pedro was different…manageable. San Pedro hugged the coast near the harbor, and although it was a terminus of the 110, so many of L.A.’s four million souls weren’t aware it existed. Responsible for less than one percent of the population of Greater Los Angeles, San Pedro was a hidden nook of privacy. No one passed through the small town. They either planned on coming to San Pedro or were lost.

  One thing that Bobby noted was that San Pedro was a demographic anachronism. Fifty percent of the population was white. Forty percent was Hispanic. Seven percent was black with the remaining three percent a mixture of Asian and Pacific Islanders. The numbers of blacks and Asians were significantly down from the Los Angeles average of ten and twelve percent, respectively. Some blamed it on the union that controlled the port. Some blamed it on the longtime Hispanic gangs that controlled the streets surrounding the port. Whatever the reason, as Bobby rode in the backseat of the old Chevy and watched the streets tick down from 36th to 1st, he didn’t see a single Asian and only two blacks. Memphis was completely different with a black population greater than sixty percent black.

  He’d grown up with lots of black friends in the home. Many, like him, were considered unadoptable. Most found their way to an uncle or aunt’s house, but a few, like him, stayed to their legal majority. The home had an aggressive program designed to send boys into military service. Quite a few of his friends had joined the Army or the Marines, but with his medical condition, Bobby hadn’t had that option. He’d left on his own terms, in search of a promised ancestry that seemed, day after day, more farfetched and desperate.

  Blockbuster leaned out and pointed savagely at the front hood of a Lincoln as Split leaned on the horn. The car next to them finally slowed, and Split immediately swerved the Chevy in front of it. Just in time to make the last twenty feet of the exit lane before it ended at a bridge abutment, they passed under the Welcome Bridge and entered the 110 Freeway heading north. They left San Pedro for Van Nuys. And if he was lucky, Bobby would come home with a record and a father.

  Chapter 11

  The sun was directly overhead when Kanga felt himself being moved. He was vaguely aware of the smaller man carrying a bag and pushing him up the path. Halfway up Kanga, recognized him. Mark Nunez, the stocky surfer who knew Hawaiian bone breaking. They’d sparred on the beach, more often than not with Mark twisting Kanga into a knot. The young man was into freestyle and flowed with his art. He was good. Real good.

  Kanga didn’t care about that now. Instead, he returned inward to where things were happening. He’d just met his daughter. Could there have been a more special time? Could there have been a more special girl? He hastened to continue where he’d left off. Six months ago. He’d followed her for a full month. She’d even noticed him a few times, once hurrying to her car, fearful that he might cause her harm. Silly girl. He’d already caused her harm, only she didn’t even know it. So why had he continued to stalk her? Selfishness. Did she deserve him? Pure hubris to think she did. Did she even want him in her life? She should have never been put in the position to ask the question. But then he remembered the startled look in her eyes as he sat behind her and tapped her on the shoulder at the Point Fermin Park band shell where Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night was being acted out.

  “Excuse me.” He remembered how his heart felt so small, confined in the space of a needle, decidedly larger than his self-esteem. He wanted to scoop her up and hug her, tell her that he was her father. But what right did he have? He’d left without a by-your-leave, never knowing she was born until a party girl mentioned it while passing a joint at a beach party in La Jolla two years later. Two years. He shook his head. He’d had a child for two years and hadn’t known.

  “Yes?” She turned with a smile, but when she saw him it slid. Grabbing her sweater, she pulled it tighter, covering the area he’d touched. Her gaze went to Viola on stage, the woman disguised as a man.

  “Excuse me, Laurie?” His heart felt ready to explode. His skin was abuzz with energy. He’d dreamed of those words and now that he’d said them, he felt empowered.

  “Do I know you?” Her frown shifted to concern. When he smiled, she returned it automatically, not realizing the curve of her lips was the same as his.

  “No. But you should.” He removed his hand from the back of the chair and put it in his lap. When he looked down trying to figure out what to say next, she shrugged and returned her attention to the stage where Duke Orsino was speaking with the disguised Viola about the nature of love.

  *DUKE ORSINO* And what’s her history?

  *VIOLA* A blank, my lord. She never told h
er love, but let concealment be like a worm in the bud. She sat like patience on a monument.

  *DUKE ORSINO* Did she die of her love?

  That was the question he needed desperately to answer. Should he challenge the possibility of her rejection, or remain forever on the outside watching her, never letting her know of his existence, never making it possible for them to become what he wanted more than life itself, to be father and daughter? Or would he remain the vision of the woman who Viola described to the count, and be that mute statue of want, struck marble by the fear of a nonreciprocating love, undying and dead for lack of trying?

  He leaned forward, drawing the glares of a couple next to him who shushed and gestured toward the stage. He ignored them, gripping the back of her seat with both hands. “I meant to come sooner. I wanted to be here a long time ago.”

  She turned halfway, politely listening but reluctant to remove her gaze from the actors. Her lips pursed unspoken words.

  “I’m sorry about your mother. I should have been here for you.”

  She turned to look at him now, her heavy-lidded gaze gone, and her eyes wide with apprehension. But instead of a smile, she frowned. “How do you know my mother?”

  This was it.

  All he had to do was speak the truth.

  Those simple words.

  Darth Vader had done it.

  But he couldn’t. His mouth was stuck in the open position. He held her gaze until she stood, grabbed her sweater and walked briskly into the night, heading for 25th Avenue. He stared after her, cursing himself for his inability to act, finally forcing himself to rise and follow. Behind him the scene had changed, and Sir Toby Belch was making mincemeat of Malvolio. That’s okay. Malvolio was a Fop. He deserved it.