Free Tapping the Source by Kem Nunn Page B

reflected in Preston’s shades. “What you need’s a good point break,” Preston told him. “Some kelp beds out there to cut the chop. Huntington’s not the only place with surf, you know. Shit. You don’t know the kinds of places I’ve seen.” He looked off toward the alley. “Was a time I’d never let a day go by without checking it out.” He stretched and flexed the muscles in his arms—holding the pose like he was waiting for a picture. “Shit, I ought to walk down there with you and have a look,” he said, but made no move to leave the drive. Ike guessed that it was time for him to move on. He did not really want to talk in front of Morris. For the moment he was content to know that Preston was still on his side, that they could talk again. He said good-bye and started toward the street, but Preston called to him and he turned back.
    “You won’t tell anybody else what you told me, will you?”
    “No. I won’t. I haven’t.”
    “Good,” Preston said. “Don’t.”
    Ike stood for a moment and waited, to see perhaps if Preston would say more, or decide to walk down to the pier after all, but Preston showed no sign of leaving. He stayed with Morris near the entrance of the shop. Morris had peeled off his shirt and slipped on his spray mask. The mask hung down around his neck and his big hairy gut was hanging out over his belt, twisting the buckle so it pointed at the ground. Preston tapped Morris on the chest with the back of his hand, as he had tapped Ike a short while before. “The kid got his first ride today, Morris. What do you think of that?”
    “Right in the shore break,” Ike put in. He was still feeling somewhat elated about the ride.
    Morris had already pulled his mask up to his face. He now jerked it back down and glared at Ike across the top of it. “Big fucking deal,” he said.

9

     
    Morris put him to work in the afternoons, leaving his mornings free to surf. They spent the first few days on the Shovel. The work and getting along with Morris required concentration and by nightfall he was beat. He went home tired and slept. He had looked forward to talking some more with Preston, but the week passed and Preston did not come around. Toward the middle of the second week he began to worry once more.
    There was more work and he spent his afternoons staring into the oversize valves of Shovelheads and Panheads, laboring over Fat Bob tanks with Morris’s new Badger airbrush, leaving in his wake a rainbow of imron cobwebbing, pearl-silver lace, and candy-blue flames. Mornings were still spent in the water. But he was thinking about time now—two weeks since he’d talked to Preston in his room, a month in town and he still did not even know what Hound Adams, Frank Baker, or Terry Jacobs looked like. He had told Preston he would keep his mouth shut, but now—nothing was happening. It was getting harder to think about the work. He needed another break. And then came the fifth week—twenty-nine days since he’d stood on the gravel at the edge of the road and said good-bye to Gordon. It was the fifth week that brought the swell.
    It began with the sound, a distant thunder repeating itself at regular intervals somewhere beyond the hum of the highway, waking him in the night so that he turned for a moment to listen, to wonder, before slipping back into sleep. But in the morning, when the sound was still there, louder than before in the first gray light, he did not have to wonder again. He pulled on his clothes and ran from the room, down the wooden stairs and across the lawn, past the oil well and down the alley, south on Main so he was running toward the ocean and he could see the white water even before he crossed the highway.
    •   •   •
    The first thing that struck him about the swell was how different it made everything look. He might have been in another town, on a different pier, staring out at a stretch of beach he had never seen before.
    The waves did not just rise up