Free A Plunder by Pilgrims by Jack Nolte Page A

back and spent the last decade sleeping outdoors.  His face was lost within a wooly cloud of gray hair and beard and behind tinted glasses so large they could have once been portholes in a submarine.  He wore a blue rain slicker, gray sweatpants with patches in the knees, and heavy black boots covered with duct tape—all coated with years of grime and grease and who knew what else.
    He teetered on his feet like a man on a boat in rough seas.  Outside, visible through the window, was a rusty red bike attached to a homemade wooden trailer, both loaded up with bulging shopping bags and cardboard boxes.
    "Ya got any cans?" he said.  He was missing a few front teeth, and the teeth he did have were as yellow as old wax.  Even across the room, his breath reeked of alcohol—it hit them like a swarm of flies.
    "Dude," Tim said, "I thought I told you never to bring your sorry ass in here any more!  Get the hell out!"
    Gage cringed.  He guessed that "liking everybody" only extended so far.

 
    Chapter 6
     
    IT WAS GOING ON ONE O'CLOCK when Gage left the tattoo shop.  Thin vapors streaked the sky like scratches on blue enamel.  A plastic Safeway bag bounded over cars and concrete barriers, a pair of cawing seagulls in hot pursuit.  He caught the scent of grilling beef from the fifties nostalgia joint on the corner of the parking lot and his stomach grumbled.
    Realizing he hadn't eaten anything since the bagel that morning, he grabbed a burger, then used the phone book at a pay phone to make a list of all the tattoo shops up and down the coast.  He was already exhausted—so much had happened during the day already—but there was no point in stopping now.  A cold trail would only grow colder with time. 
    After a quick call to make sure Mattie was still fine (she complained about the food, but did so with plenty of gusto), he got in his van and headed south on Highway 101.  He planned to start with the two shops in Sandy Cove, and continue snaking down the coast, hitting the other half dozen shops through Waldport, Yachats, and Florence.  If that didn't work, tomorrow he'd head north up towards Tillamook, Seaside, and Astoria.
    Usually, Gage enjoyed the drive.  The coastal highway in Oregon was one of the best in the world; he remembered a long ago road trip when Dad piled them all in the station wagon and they drove from Montana to Oregon to see the ocean.  The impressive vistas along the coast had made a lasting impression on him.  It was no different now.  The two-line highway slipped back and forth from the high bluffs over the water and the dappled shade of firs and pines.  The ocean, wrinkled with white seams, stretched out like a newly made bed.
    But instead of enjoying the view, he drove in a silent funk.  He'd decided to take the case, and once he'd decided he always saw it through, but he felt far more uncertain than in years past.  Where was his usual confidence and verve?  Too much time holed up in that cave had made him uncomfortable outside it.  He felt like an old sailboat left tied to a dock, ignored for years, covered with grime and scum from disuse, and now was out in the open water without anyone even unfurling the sails.  He didn't feel ready.  He didn't know if he could handle the open seas.
     The first stop, at Zander's on the outskirts of Sandy Cove, left him even more dispirited.  None of the three tattoo artists recognized the tattoos or the girl.  They wouldn't even let him look at their release forms.  The second one, Ink and Exile, down at the seaport where the smell of fish was heavy in the air, yielded no better results, though they were more friendly. 
    It was only when he was getting back into his van that he finally got some information.  A rail-thin woman in black clothes and blond dreadlocks—one of the tattoo artists he'd talked to inside—charged out of the store, waving her tattooed hands at him.  He rolled down the passenger window.
    "Glad I caught ya," she