by Grant Farley
CHAPTER TWENTY
Tumbler
“RJ,” Leguin interrupts, “I am truly . . .”
“Don’t you dare say it.”
He nods and shuts up.
“So I stole the youre hooste sign. No one else would’ve wanted it, anyway. Yeah, I was shook. And don’t give me none of that father-figure garbage. If I’d wanted a father figure I wouldn’t have picked no drunk that hardly no one could get close to on account of the smell. I still make sure that cante bury stays lit.”
Who the hell is Leguin to feel sorry for me?
“Why do you even care?” I ask. “What do my stories mean to you?”
Silence.
“I have something to show you,” he finally says. “Help me up.”
I’m almost used to that loose skin as I pull him up by the wrist. The old man hobbles down the steps, not even looking back he’s so sure I’m following. There’s a pink tinge along the horizon. He’s walking straight for that root cellar and my mouth goes dry and drops into my belly and there’s a freaking earthquake in my head and my legs feel weak. But I’m right behind him.
Leguin shuffles past the root cellar and heads around to the front of the barn. The sun is doing its long slide into sunset. The summer heat is oozing out of the warped gray boards. The old man stops at this door hanging by one hinge. An animal sound whispers from the dark behind that door and I’m wondering if the old man’s secret hasn’t been in here all along. A smell of dry rot. No, this might be a piece of the secret, but the big chunk is still holed up in that root cellar.
He shoves the door open with his shoulder and this dank-animal-nest sort of smell lies in there. It’s cool, almost inviting. We step inside, facing a rustling, clicking sound. There’s a cooing that makes me think of lying on the porch in the dark and listening to my mom with one of her prospects in the trailer, but I won’t think about that. Light pokes through cracks between the boards, dusting the room in pink streaks. Of course, the sound is just some kind of bird. There’s a big square shadow in the far corner.
“Man, it’s a stupid old birdcage.”
“A coop,” he says, stepping over to it.
“What?”
“A coop. Not a cage. A coop.”
“I knew that.”
“Open the door.”
I can’t find the door in all that chicken wire. Finally, I feel the latch and flick it open. A head pokes from a hole in a box at the back of the coop.
“Shit,” I say. “It’s only a pigeon.”
“Watch your language.”
“Sorry.”
The old man’s claw reaches inside and taps on the wood floor. One of the birds—there’re two—hops over and rubs against his hand. He wraps his claws around it and lifts it out as gentle as holding a baby.
“Get the Old Tumbler,” he says.
“What?”
“Lord, child, you can be slow. Pick up the other bird.”
I reach in and grab it, but the sucker twists all around and I let go ’cause the wings feel so thin they could just snap.
“Wrap one hand around each side of his body, right over the wings. Do it firmly so that his wings are pinned down. His neck should stick out between your thumbs.”
I try. But the bird is freaked now and it has some pretty slick moves.
“Don’t be afraid. Just grab him.”
Well, I’m not afraid of a stupid pigeon. So I just reach out, catch it by a leg, and wrap my hands around the wings. “I did it!”
“Fine. Let’s take them outside.”
The sunset has faded into a deep blue. I feel that bird trembling in my hands like I’m holding on to a feathered heart.
“L’heure bleue,” Leguin whispers. He’s holding his bird with one of his clawed hands as we walk around the side, and he’s scratching that soft spot under its neck and the bird makes cooing sounds and rubs against him.
“What did you say?”
“L’heure bleue. The blue hour. That is what we called this time when I was a child.”
The thought of him as a kid is just too weird.
Leguin reaches in his suit pocket, pulls out a seed, puts it between his teeth, and that bird takes it right out of his mouth. Watching it feels kind of like looking down at a couple making out in their car at the Stardust. He’s nuts if he thinks I’ll do weird things with mine. But he just leads me around to the front yard. We reach the gravel drive, and the old man gives that whistle laugh and looks over at me like he’s surprised I’m still there.
He lobs that bird like he’s tossing a ball to a four-year-old. He looks over at me, so I throw my bird and step back, not wanting it to fly right over my head and shit on me. Both birds shoot straight up until they’re just specks at the tip-top of that dark blue. I squint so as not to lose sight. It looks like they come to a stop. Like that second when you reach the top on a roller coaster, and it just sort of nudges over the edge and you look down and down and down and there’s nothing between you and dying. Then the specks start sliding down that sky and I can’t take my eyes off them.
One of the birds flips over and starts tumbling out of control. I look around, thinking that maybe a Blackjack shot it. But the old man, he has that smile on his face, and I know it’s nothing like that. The other bird is flip-flopping down to the ground. I always figured people were the only kind of animal that killed themselves, except for maybe those lemmings. Flip-flop, flip-flop. There’s no way they’ll make it. Man, that old guy is one cold dude. Here, his birds that he’s raised since they were eggs are heading straight down to be sunny-side up, and he’s grinning.
I’m hooked. I don’t know whether to watch the birds crashing or that sick grin. They’re level with the trees now, going about a million miles per, and they’re having this change of heart, flipping over, trying to pull out. Of course, it’s too late. They’re about to eat it.
Then they pull back hard on their tail feathers into this beautiful slo-mo tilt and just a couple feet from the ground swoop back up and head for the sky to do it all over.
The old man looks over at me. “I had a feeling that you would appreciate it.” He says it almost like I’d just passed some kind of test or something.
“Why do they do it?” I ask when I get my voice back.
“There are a few theories based upon genetics and survival and the like, but I believe they do it simply for the pure enjoyment of the act.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Amazing.”
“Amazing Grace. That’s the name of the female.”
I look over to see if that was an on-purpose joke. But the old man is just staring up at the birds. We stand there watching until it gets too dark and he makes this clicking sound and they fly back to him.
We carry them to the barn.
“I want you to take them.” Mr. Leguin don’t look at me.
“I don’t want . . .”
Then I glance close at him and see there’s no point in arguing. He probably figures he’s getting too old to take care of them. And who knows, maybe if Amazing Grace has some eggs, then I could sell the babies. God, I need the cash.
Leguin shuffles through the dark barn and puts them in a portable cage he’s got next to the coop.
“During your days in grammar school, RJ, were you taught about the veneration of relics?”
“What does that . . . yeah, Father Speckler taught us something about them.”
“The Jesuit in your tale?”
“Yeah, him.”
“What did he say?”
“Well, relics could be things like a piece of the cross or the grail, or they could be saints’ bones, that kind of thing. People, mostly in the old days, gave money to a priest to worship the relic, and then they’d get absolution, or maybe even a miracle would happen to them. That sounded pretty awesome.”
“Indeed.”
“But the truth is that relics are probably just a slick rip-off. What do I know? I got kicked out in fourth grade, so maybe if I’d stayed around longer I could have learned more about it.”
Leguin hands me a fluffy gray pigeon feather.
“My favorite reliquary tale,” he says, “is the story of a medieval relic that was reputed to be the feather from the wing of an archangel. Imagine that.”
I wait for him to tell that story, but he just turns and heads out. That’s cold, leaving me hanging.
So I pick up the portable cage, stumble out into the night, and strap it between the Stingray’s handlebars. I walk the bike down to the main road and he follows me. He must really love these old birds.
“You don’t have a light on your bike,” he says.
“I got twenty-twenty night vision.”
“I’ll file you as a class-one insurance hazard.” That whistle laugh.
The bike wobbles a little with the extra weight as I start to pedal. Chain, don’t fail me now.
“Richard.”
I swoop back around to the gate, figuring he’s got some last-minute advice on their feeding or something. I can’t remember when someone used my for real name.
“Roxanne was here three times.” The way he wheezes, I’m not sure I hear him right. “I gave her the clock.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Grunion
Manny and me are walking along the frontage road, taking our sweet time in the heat on our way home after another delivery to the Blackjacks at Camp Roberts. We’re walking ’cause Nino-’n-Smitty are on a job outside the valley. This time I’d bought a sculpture of a pretty lady’s head to pretend I stole. Mrs. Elliot had called it a bust. I don’t know how it could’ve been a bust, because I had been told that “bust” was a word you were supposed to use instead of “tits,” but this sculpture didn’t go below her neck, so there weren’t no tits. I’d told Mrs. Elliot that if the tits weren’t showing, then it really was a bust. That’s a paradox. She didn’t get it.
“How long you think you can keep these deliveries up, RJ? It’s gotta end somewhere.”
“Yeah, don’t it?”
“At least you ought to get a new backpack.” Manny points at the crusty pig’s blood on the flaps.
Nino-’n-Smitty’s truck rumbles at us so fast there’s no point trying to dodge it. Smitty sticks his face out the window and shows crooked teeth at us.
“Thought you was in Monterey,” Manny says. “At that fish-packing place.”
“We got canned.” Smitty laughs at his own joke. With his crooked teeth, stringy beard, and giant Adam’s apple, Smitty’s got the ugliest laugh you’ll ever hear. You can’t help liking him.
“Grunion are running, hombres,” Nino’s gravelly voice booms from the shadow of the cab. “Hop in back.”
Manny climbs up the stake gates, but I don’t.
“We cleared it with your mom, RJ,” Nino says. “Hell, she said you needed the R and R. She’s worried about you, mijo.”
I crawl over the stake gate, and the shift of the gears throws me onto the truck bed. Smitty rides with his head out the shotgun side, that stringy beard blowing, the Dead blasting, and his tattooed arm pounding the beat against the outside door.
Smitty bangs on the back window and points to crabs sliding around the bed and at the trash can roped against the stake gates. The smell of saltwater sloshing and the sound of claws scraping plastic. As the truck rumbles onto the freeway, we’re sliding one way trying to grab the loose crabs by the feet and fling them with one move into that can without getting pinched. And the crabs are sliding away from us, wanting even more than us to get free. And all the time we’re dodging sleeping bags, duffels, and a cooler.
As we snag the last of the crabs, the truck eases off the freeway and up the grade to the top of Big Mama. We stand up behind the cab sucking in that cool air that hits just when the truck noses over the top of the grade and starts that long slide down to Highway One and the ocean.
Manny and me got a new favorite song, so we scream out to the sky: I want to fly like an eagle, to the sea. Fly like an eagle, let my spirit carry me!
We head north on Highway One, between San Simeon and Big Sur. You could get busted for camping out on the beach, but Nino-’n-Smitty know this spot where you can pull off on the land side, then drive the truck through this gully and then cross under the highway at this arched bridge, and pull the truck up behind these rocks along the beach.
Nino-’n-Smitty make us set up camp. They grab a couple beers and strip down to their jeans. I don’t remember ever seeing them without greasy old jeans. They sit by the water and let the waves slosh around their feet.
We’re in a long cove with the waves foaming over rocks at either end. Even on this sunny day, the water swirls all icy greens. That water is never warm. Manny and me strip to our boxers and jump in. We know that after a couple beers Nino-’n-Smitty will throw us in anyway, and this way we got some dry clothes when we get out.
After we can’t stand the cold water no more, we run along the hard sand at the edge, our feet going numb splashing in the foam. That funky kelp smell. The waves pounding. A breeze rips out of the ocean feeling like it’s sucking my skin inside out.
It’s still daylight, but Smitty has a fire going by the time we get back. There’s a rusty grill over some rocks and a pot of water set to boil. We put our butts up close to the fire. Nino tosses us our jeans, and I catch mine just before a leg hits the fire.
When the water gets to boiling, Smitty throws in some crabs and we sit back as the sun begins to set. There’s a rumble in the sand, and then from up the wash rolls this hippie bus that’s straight out of Nino-’n-Smitty’s good-old-biker-days stories. The front, all the way from the grill to the windows, is caked with dirt and grease. The body is so faded and dirty that I’m only a couple feet away before I make out the swirls of peace signs and animals and waves and all that kind of stuff.
I’m standing there staring when I finally figure out this one picture is a for real face staring down at me from one of the greasy windows. The head is shaved, but I can’t tell if it’s a him or a her. It looks young, but there’s something old, like around the edges, that makes me not sure. It just keeps staring down at me without any expression as that window glows redder and redder in the sunset. Finally, the sky is dark and the face is gone. The bus door sighs open and out steps a whole family of hippies that look like they’ve driven right out of some time warp. But the weirdest thing is their shaved heads. Nino gives them the invite to our fire and food.
We all sit around the fire and don’t say much. The mom and dad look older than Nino-’n-Smitty, but Nino knows the man from way back because the guy lived in Arcangel as a kid. The face that was in the window turns out to be a girl about my age. There’s a little boy, and a two-year-old with a T-shirt and nothing else, which I guess saves them on diapers.
They’re all skinny except for these little bellies. Their eyes are sunk-in black hollows in their faces. It’s like the creepiest clan this side of the Addams Family. The kids tear the crabs apart to get the meat, but the mother, she won’t touch them. I smile at the girl, who’s pretty in a freakish kind of way. But she just chews on the crab and stares at the fire. Nino holds out a beer and the man takes it and Smitty shares a joint with him.
I lie back in the sand outside the circle of bodies hunched around the fire, and I let the muffled pounding of the waves drown out these stories I heard before, like about the Merry Pranksters and that guy Kesey and the acid tests, and so my mind is wandering away from that stuff by staring at the girl’s pretty face in the firelight, picturing her framed by long blond hair, and a word jumps out of the talk and punches my gut—“Blackjacks.”
“So, the Blackjacks are still around?” the man asks.
“You expected different?” Smitty asks right back.
&nb
sp; “Nah. I was almost a Blackjack.” The man tokes his joint.
Silence.
“I ain’t proud of it. Then my dad got work in Salinas, thinking that was safer. But there’s parts of Salinas now that might be worse. The Soledad prison gang wars. Them dudes are so badass they could maybe clean out the Blackjacks if it came down to a turf war. But it feels like there’s something else up in that gorge, you know? Something that can take hold and twist anything.” He tries to laugh, but it’s fake. “Hell, Danny, I thought you’d end up a Blackjack.” It’s funny hearing someone call Nino by his for real name. “But I can see now, you didn’t. If someone wants to put an end to those creeps, I say more power to them. But a new gang will just take their place. Human nature, is all.”
“There ain’t much human left in them,” Smitty says.
I wait for Nino to stand up and shout them down, but he just shrugs. How can he sit there and agree with that? I stare at his huge shoulders and at the tattoos that in this twilight are just pools, and I want to jump on his back and hit him, but then I want Nino to laugh and shrug me off like he did when I was little, and I want it to be like it was when Manny and me wrestled with him in the grass as little boys.
The wind kicks up and we all huddle close around the fire. It’s creepy, all of us just staring around each other and not talking. Finally, the lady nods at us, stands up, and walks back to the bus. The man fumbles around in his pocket, digs out a couple of old joints, and hands them to Nino. Nino nods thanks, and the man and the kids shuffle back to the bus. Nino stares at the joints. Sniffs them. Rolls them around in his fingers. And then he does something I never thought I’d see. He throws them into the fire.
“Done with this shit,” he says. “Let’s get us some grunion.”
Nino-’n-Smitty head down to the water in about the worst mood I ever seen them in. We follow, running up and down the beach, playing our flashlights along the glowing fingers of waves, but finding no grunion. I don’t think Nino-’n-Smitty are even looking.