But there was more to it than that alone, and it had something to do with what they’d been talking about these past months. Ram was beginning to feel placeless, that his Endymion days were numbered, that the Mad Dog chapter had run its allotted pages, and was coming to a close. Was Ram better or bigger or more complex than the Endymion jester that Vera accused him of being, or was he just gravitating to the same kind of grandiose pretentiousness that Fran and certain members of the Endymion family accused Vera of leading him?
They were driving through San Ardo while Ram was thinking this, and at that moment, Tor turned and looked at him, sliding his sunglasses down his nose so Ram could see his eyes.
“This is my last run, Ram. I think Suzie and I are splitting up. Fran has the Endymion account now, and he intends to move it to Carmel Valley with him.”
Ram didn’t say anything. His answer had been handed him, the information coming through the back door. Fran wouldn’t say so directly—he was incapable of head-on confrontations. Ram could pursue whatever it was he was going to pursue.
At Paso Robles, they stopped for gas. Tor went to the liquor store and returned with a six-pack. “We might as well enjoy ourselves. We’ve had good times. Let’s not turn this into a fucking wake.” They popped the bottles, toasted each other, eased back and laughed, reminiscing without enthusiasm. The road through the desert stretched out straight ahead of them.
Chapter Seven
The sky was a dull anthracite color with darker blotches bruising the horizon as the ferry left Anacortes. By the time they were out in the islands, an orange sun broke through the gray and the weather began clearing. To the right, Mt. Baker was gleaming white with the sun painting gold streaks on the malachite-colored water. Ram stood in the back of the ferry, smoking on the second deck. Alongside the boat, a pod of Orcas escorted them outward while a band of bald eagles circled overhead.
He was exhausted from the past weeks following the unhappy return to Refugio from Las Vegas, and when Tor called and asked Ram to come visit him and discuss business for a week at Tor’s new home on Orcas Island, Ram immediately agreed. Ram told Vera that he had to go, that he needed a break. When she looked at Ram and saw he was resolved to make the trip, she didn’t say much, even offering to help him pack. It was uncharacteristic of Vera to do so and reflexively indicated to Ram the fact that she was fully aware they were in trouble.
The next morning, Ram rose early, well before Vera would stir, and blasted north on I-5 as fast as the Roacho would take him, stopping finally at Stella, Washington, near the mouth of the Columbia River, where he spent an uneventful night and left early the next morning to make the midday ferry from Anacortes. As he stood on the top deck, smoking and watching the whales and eagles, Ram thought back on the past several weeks that seemed somehow longer than that, much longer than one simple summer beginning in San Francisco, tracing through the disaster of Las Vegas and winding up back in Refugio.
What Ram most remembered were the flames shooting through the roof of Z’all’s trailer. Vera had come out for a visit after Ram had been there for three weeks. When they left four days later, Z’all’s trailer and part of his home were uninhabitable from the fire. He and his wife Ann stood off to the side as Vera and Ram backed out of their driveway, their hosts not turning to acknowledge them as they left. “That woman is a fucking curse, Ram,” were the only words Z’all would say after the fire had been extinguished. “Take her and get the hell out of here.” Ann was near breakdown—from the fire, Ram thought. Ram gathered together what little they’d been able to salvage and Vera told him not to worry, that Z’all would eventually forgive him, Ram knowing that he never would. Z’all shook his head as Ram backed out, their friendship in ashes. Z’all blamed Vera, and as Ram stood on the deck looking down at the white foam wake circling back from the malachite water, he did too.
When he disembarked at Orcas Island, Ram followed the map Tor had sent him and drove out to Doe Bay where Tor and his new girlfriend were living. Las Vegas hadn’t been a happy trip for Tor either. Tor told Fran that he needed time away, then moved up to Orcas Island where he found a new girlfriend to keep him company and help him ease the pain of losing Suzie.
When Ram turned into the driveway of the cedar-sided cabin matching the one in the Polaroid Tor had sent him, Red Fox was waiting to greet him. Tor’s dog, Red Fox, was a living legend. He was smart as a whip and was Mad Dog’s mascot and visual inspiration, a black long-haired shepherd that looked Belgian but wasn’t. Red Fox burst out the front door, barking and dancing, jumped on the Roacho and gave Ram one of the low howls he reserved for special friends. Tor came through the door after him, dressed in faded overalls and smoking a Pall Mall. His hair was long again, but he’d trimmed his beard since Ram last saw him and now wore it in a goatee, making him look like a Hell’s Angel. “It’s good to see you, Ram,” he said, hugging him hard and slapping his right shoulder twice. “You’re looking kinda ragged though.” Tor helped Ram with his bags, showed him into his room, then left Ram to sort out his things and went to the kitchen. When Ram entered it a few minutes later, there were two cans of Budweiser on the table and two shot glasses filled with tequila, a bottle of Herradura standing between them. “Here’s to happier times,” Tor said, raising his glass. Ram raised his tequila, clicked Tor’s glass, and they tossed down the shots. Tor refilled them. “Another,” he said.
Ram threw that one down as well, the effect of the tequila climbing up his spine, then drained half his beer and sighed. “Let’s hope so. They can’t get much worse and I don’t know how much more I can take.”
Tor looked him hard in the eye for a moment then softened and laughed.
“You’ll be okay. It’ll turn.”
“When?”
“As soon as you stop making stupid moves.”
Ram looked at him, quizzically at first, then angrily when he became aware of what Tor meant. Finally, he ignored it and let it drop. “I guess so,” he said, watching Tor refill his shot glass again. “Salud,” Tor said.
“Y pesetas,” said Ram, for hard times were upon him and he didn’t feel much like thinking about it then.
They spent the rest of the day drinking. When Tor’s girlfriend, Shalleen, got home from her job at the hotel she joined them. Tor and Ram had kept the conversations simple, avoiding mention of anything unpleasant, respecting the privacy of each other’s separate entangled hells until Shalleen went to bed. Then they started to get closer to it, starting with Fran and the business that both Tor and Ram were still nominally a part of.
“What’s the new shop like, Ram?”
“It’s nothing like the old one. It’s more like an office complex with one-room big enough for the table saw and radial arm. Fran and Hooper run the crews out of there. They meet there in the morning then go off in groups of three to the houses they’re working on, leaving me and Sandy to work on the Endymion fixtures.”
“Is it still steady? Blair’s still expanding, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, but something’s off. Fran thinks they might be in trouble and we only build for them when we’re paid fifty percent in advance.”
“How are he and Blair getting along?”
“Not well. Fran can’t stand him and Blair knows it. Fran isn’t as easy for Blair to work with as you were.”
“Well, Blair and I go back a long ways,” Tor laughed. “He’s not so bad once you learn how to handle him. He and Fran never got on that well.”
“Well, it’s not good between them and everybody feels it. It’s become awkward for me. I feel it every time I’m at the main office in Refugio.”
“How do you like working with Hooper?” Tor asked, referring to Fran’s new partner, Bill Hooper. Hooper was from the east, a Bostonian who’d come west ten years before and hooked up with Fran while Fran was still framing houses before he went to Europe. Hooper was short, square, and bluff, with a natural gift of gab. He knew everybody who counted on the Monterey Peninsula and soon knew most of their sec
rets, always eager to engage Ram in conversation, probing him for personal details—on whomever or whatever, didn’t seem to matter so long as it was juicy. Ram learned his Hooper lesson early when something that Ram said to him about Tor and Suzie leaked back to Fran.
“I don’t have much use for him,” Ram said. “He’s a snake in the grass. Fran’s the one who’s gonna feel his bite eventually.”
Tor nodded, not saying anything, but Ram could tell that he likely agreed with him.
“What are we gonna do about our shares, Ram? The last check I got was two months ago, and that was for a lot less than I thought it would be.”
“We could try and take it back from them—the shop I mean. Buy Fran out or give him a share in our new shop.”
“Where’s our new shop, Ram?”
“Right here on Orcas Island.”
Tor laughed, shook his head, and exhaled a plume of smoke. “It’s too far away. Besides, I’ve had enough of Endymion. I don’t know what I’m gonna do next, but that’s over for me. I just wanna make sure that I’m being paid for what you guys are building.”
“Hooper banned me from the shop unless there’s a major production run, and then he’s an asshole, watching me over his shoulder, listening in on me and Sandy to see what he can filch.”
“Maybe I should call Fran while you’re here.”
“Do what you want, Tor, but don’t expect a straight answer. Fran’s fallen under Hooper’s spell. Fran plays rugby now, and he’s trying to learn how to skate so he can play hockey with Hooper.”
Tor laughed. “Are you serious?”
“Dead serious. I don’t know. It’s kind of disgusting.”
Tor and Ram dropped the serious talk and spent the rest of the evening reminiscing about Refugio or their times on the road with Endymion out in the desert. Those times were clean and simple and easy, filled with the promise of an expanding future with further profit. But somehow, now, without seeing or suspecting it in advance, Tor and Ram felt the blight and mildew settling on Endymion Records. They circled around the specter of it for the rest of the evening, never enunciating it fully as a scenario that was coming to pass, but not dismissing it as one that was implausible either. It stood there in the shadows hiding, testing its readiness to emerge. Tor got up and threw a fresh oak split on the fire. They watched the licking yellow flames for hours until Ram passed out. When he finally awoke, he came to in a gray dawn.
Ram could hear Tor snoring in the nearby bedroom, the house, otherwise, still and silent. He put the kettle on to boil, turned on the television, and watched a weekend news program where important opinion makers were interviewed. It was someone from the Carter administration talking about energy and oil dependency, and it bored Ram so he turned it off when his tea was ready. He poured himself a cup and walked outside to look at the weather. The air was moist with dew and the sky was still a threatening color, although it didn’t smell or feel as though it would rain. Ram whistled for Red Fox. He came out and vaulted into the back of the Roacho.
Ram backed up the driveway, and cruised around Orcas Island, following the signs that read Olga and stopping at a general store for coffee and a doughnut, half of which he gave to Red Fox. He drove the island aimlessly, passing through the settlements of Deer Point and Depot Bay, then passing again through the main town, Eastsound, not far from the ferry stop. He stopped at a grocery store, bought cigarettes and the Seattle newspaper to check the box scores and see how the Giants were doing. They were faltering, their lead down to a game-and-a-half. Nothing else in the paper caught Ram’s attention, so he started the car again, heading back to Tor’s. When he was nearly there, he saw a sign that read “Mount Constitution, highest point on Orcas Island.”
Ram took the turnoff, climbing the mountain in the mists under the impossibly tall hemlocks and spruces. When he neared the crest, he entered a fog bank, the bottom of the sky, silver, spectral, and ghostly quiet, slowing just in time to avoid a herd of deer that were almost white and near invisible, so closely did their color match the ash-colored sky. At a parking lot just below the mountain peak, Ram parked the car, then followed the signs indicating the trailhead to the crest, throwing sticks to Red Fox as they climbed upwards into the cloudbank. When they reached the peak, a sign marked its elevation at 2,500 feet. The sky still wouldn’t clear and it was bitter cold, so Ram went back to the car, let Red Fox join him in the front seat and turned on the radio, adjusting the tuner until he found a local station. They were playing Baker Street, the song he’d been hearing all the way north. Ram’s mind drifted to Vera and the trailer.
He smoked cigarette after cigarette until he was dizzy, waiting for the sky to rain or clear. When it did neither, he grew restless and restarted the Roacho, heading back down the mountains to Tor and Shalleen’s. When he arrived, the house was alive again with smoke rising from the chimney and the smell of bacon and onions greeting him as he walked through the door.
“There he is. I told you.”
Ram saw a look pass between them and looked to Tor for clarification.
“Shalleen thought you found our place so crude that you went into Eastsound and checked into a hotel. I knew you were somewhere nearby because Red Fox wouldn’t come when I called him. Where’d you guys go?”
“We cruised around a little, went up the mountain, walked around a bit.”
“How do you like our island?” Shalleen asked.
“I like what I see, but I can’t see much.”
“You have to wait a while. This mist burns off around noon or so and then it’s usually nice until late afternoon, although sometimes it rains.”
Over breakfast, Shalleen told Ram her story and how she and Tor had met. She was a Mormon girl from Salt Lake City who’d come to Seattle six months ago to visit her brother and got a job tending bar in a downtown club. “One night, Tor walked in, and we wound up talking. He came back a week later then took me to breakfast when my shift was over. Three weeks later, he found the house in Doe Bay. I came out and spent a weekend. A week later, I went back to Seattle to collect my things. I don’t know if you could say he swept me off my feet, but he sure sucked me in,” she laughed. “But I’m not complaining, even though he does leave crumbs in bed.”
Ram looked at Tor, who shrugged, and said, “Well…” causing them all to laugh.
After breakfast, Ram helped with the dishes while Tor went on a grocery run. When he got home, they watched a college football game while playing Scrabble, Shalleen winning two out of three games, Tor the other. They were about to start a game of Risk when the phone rang. Tor answered. After a while, it became clear he was talking business. He excused himself to go into the bedroom, emerging from it fifteen minutes later and handing the phone to Ram. “Your brother wants to talk to you,” Tor said. He didn’t look pleased. Ram took the phone and said hello.
“I’ve given Tor the rundown on where things stand with Endymion,” Fran said. “He’ll fill you in. But I thought I should tell you a couple of things directly.”
Ram paused, wondering where Fran was going. “Go ahead.”
“First thing, you can’t work in the shop anymore, not at all. That’s over.”
“What do you mean, that’s over? We had a deal that I could work on the fixtures and do other cabinet work when it came in.”
“Well, you can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because Hooper doesn’t think it will work out with Biff,” said Fran, referring to Hooper’s brother-in-law. “Biff says he can’t trust you to work alone and Hooper and I don’t want to carry the workers comp for you.”
“That sucks. You gave me your word I’d always be able to work in the shop.”
“Well, things have changed.”
“Obviously. And what about Sandy?”
“Sandy’s still working here.”
“Let me get this straight. You’re keeping Sandy on, who doesn’t have half my experience and canning me because Hooper and his brother-in-law don’t like me?”
>
“If you want to see it that way, Ram, I guess so.”
“How else can I see it? You gave me your word when we started that shop.”
“Well, that’s how it is.”
“What about the Endymion stuff and my percentage of the profits?”
“Talk to Tor. I told him about that and I don’t want to repeat it again.”
Ram could see from Tor’s expression that this particular news wasn’t good either. Ram and Fran argued for another five minutes or so, but Fran was stonewalling, cutting Ram off in mid-sentence, not budging from his position, his voice cold, methodical, surgical. Then the discussion grew more heated. Ram called Fran a double-dealing, backstabbing son of a bitch. “I don’t have time for this,” Fran said in dismissal. Then he dropped another bomb on Ram before slamming down the phone. “By the way, Jaime’s dead. He od’d.”
Ram’s ears were burning, the last bit still echoing as he struggled to accept it as fact. He dropped the phone into its cradle and walked out into the backyard. He could see Tor and Shalleen talking, Tor not allowing her past him so she could come outside to Ram.
‘Well, that ties a black ribbon around it,’ Ram thought. He walked over to the woodpile, placed an oak round on the splitting block, lifted the axe, and began splitting. He’d mowed through maybe a quarter of a cord or so, the axe keeping time with each stroke for the first hour or so, the blows he struck were hard and sure. Then he began losing steam and started getting sloppy. He saw Tor watching from the kitchen window, then he felt him behind him, Tor’s hand on the axe handle restraining Ram from striking any further blows. “Come on, Ram,” he said, “that’s enough.”
…There was a bonfire shooting orange flames thirty feet high from the pebbly beach, the night was black, except for a string of opalescent lights marking a ship heading south close to the French coastline. At the bar close by the waters’ edge, the throng that gathered was so thick it took them thirty minutes to place their order. When Ram and his friends were served, the barman refused their money.
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