Turbulent Wake

by Paul E. Hardisty

  ‘David rode it all the way to California and back just before he shipped overseas,’ she said. ‘It was the last time he used it. My Emerson put it away after…’ She paused, breathed awhile. ‘After.’ The old lady stood there looking at the motorcycle as a crescent moon rose over the rooftops.

  After a while the young man said: ‘I don’t think I could, ma’am. It wouldn’t be right.’

  She took his hand. ‘You hush now,’ she whispered. ‘I’ve asked my Emerson and he agrees that it’s what David would have wanted.’ She nodded. ‘Yes. You have it.’

  That night, the young man lay in bed and thought about the bike and its previous owner, the circumstances of his death and the old lady’s life. He realised that she couldn’t be much more than sixty-five. She looked so much older. And though he was young still, he knew, closely and in detail, how death stole years from the living.

  Later, he opened the letter. It was typewritten, like the address on the envelope. It said: Leave town. We know you are here illegal. If you stay, the cops will hear about it. There was no signature. He slid it back into the envelope and put it on the table beside his bed. He read deep into the night and tried not to think about the letter or its author or the motorcycle or the old lady’s tragedies.

  Early next morning, he opened the garage and inspected the bike. He found an old oil pan and some rags, then drained the crankcase and inspected the plugs and the chain. There was an ancient hand pump in the garage which he used to inflate the tyres. He walked to a nearby gas station and bought a can of gasoline and a couple of quarts of thirty-weight motor oil. It was just after ten o’clock when he straddled the bike for the first time. He flipped out the starter lever, gave the throttle a twist and gave it a kick. The engine fired first time. A throaty Harley roar ripped through the quiet Sunday street.

  He put the bike in gear and started it down the driveway. It was a big machine, and heavy, but it was well balanced and smooth. Soon he was rumbling down the pre-war streets of the town, past the Eisenhower-era store fronts along Main Street and then, further out, through the bright primary-colour wonderland of Exxon and McDonalds, Burger King and K-Mart. He turned on to the pike and opened the throttle. The bike powered ahead, the cracked and fraying LBJ-era concrete unspooling beneath him, burnt yellow fields a blur to each side, the heat haze on the horizon pierced by the disappearing highway. He came to a bridge over a small creek lined with willows and ash. He stopped and put the bike on its stand, then ran his hand through his hair and stretched his legs a while. It was a beautiful machine. Could he accept it? He didn’t have enough money to pay her what it was probably worth, not if he wanted to go back to university in the fall. She’d said she wanted him to have it. But did she even know what she was offering?

  He rode on for another half-hour or so and then turned back. It was mid-afternoon by the time he turned into the driveway of the old house. The old lady was waiting for him, sitting in a garden chair on the newly mowed and trimmed lawn. He rolled the bike to a stop, killed the engine, dismounted and strode towards her. As he got closer, he could see she was crying.

  He crouched beside her, took her hand. ‘Are you alright, ma’am?’ he said.

  She looked up at him and wiped her cheeks with her hands. ‘David,’ she said. ‘I heard you leave this morning. I was taking a little nap. When I heard your bike, I thought I must have been dreaming. But it’s you.’

  ‘Mrs Jackson, it’s me. Warren.’ He looked into her eyes, sought recognition, held her hand there in the garden.

  ‘I’m so pleased you’ve found a nice girl,’ she said. ‘You know I always wanted grandchildren.’

  ‘Mrs Jackson, I think you’ve been dreaming.’

  She looked into his eyes and squeezed his hand. ‘Seeing you ride in just now, well, it’s the happiest I’ve been in years.’

  He stayed with her for a while and then walked her back to the house.

  The next morning, the young man again rose early and packed his work clothes and boots into a small backpack and rode the motorcycle to the yard. He went to Foy Lawson’s office and asked to be put back on pipe-laydown duty for a while. He was having a coffee in the crew room when Rodney and Earl arrived.

  ‘Whose hog is that out front?’ said Earl.

  ‘The old lady I’m renting from,’ said the young man. ‘It was her son’s. She said if I could get it running, I could use it. I’m going to get it licensed and insured this week.’

  ‘Save you walking through nigger town on yo’ lonesome?’ said Rodney. ‘Well ain’t that nice.’

  ‘Nice bike,’ said Earl.

  ‘Well, it ain’t right, to my thinkin’,’ said Rodney.

  ‘Since when you done any thinking, Rodney?’ said Earl, looking at the young man. ‘He’s just pissed on account of he don’t own a car, and can’t drive anyhow since he got DWI’d.’

  Rodney glared at the young man. ‘Takin’ avantage of an old lady livin’ all on her lonesome. He cuts her grass and she gives him a Harley? No, sir. Sets a fella wonderin’ what else he’s doin’ for her, if you get my meanin’.’

  The young man walked up and stood square in front of Rodney. He looked him straight in the eyes. ‘Don’t say things like that, Rodney. It just makes you sound stupid.’

  Rodney tensed, and for a moment, the young man thought he might throw a punch, but instead he hunched up his shoulders and stepped back. ‘You hear that, Earl?’ he puffed. ‘Iceback here called me stupid.’

  ‘That ain’t what he said, Rodney,’ said Earl. ‘He said ya’ll is making yo’ own self sound stupid, not that you was stupid.’

  ‘Well they ain’t no difference,’ said Rodney.

  ‘Well I suppose they ain’t,’ said Earl. ‘Now shut up and start loading the trailer, both of youse.’

  They loaded the long trailer, stacking lengths of pumping rod, ninety-four in all, and securing them at each end with belt strapping. Neither spoke. They drove to a well site east of Santa Anna. Foy put Rodney back on tongs. It was mid-summer now and the days were long, temperatures in the high nineties and occasionally well into the hundreds. The young man kept his mouth shut and worked hard; and in the evenings, he rode the Shovelhead back to the old house and showered and read and slept and did it all again the next day.

  Weeks passed. There were no more anonymous letters. On his days off, the young man finished painting the house and started on the garage and took long rides out into the flat-baked country of the plain.

  And then, one morning, Foy called them together in the office and said that they had landed a special job up near Abilene. A good client of theirs was planning to sell off part of one of their fields. Ten deep wells needed complete workovers. Normally, it would have taken them two weeks. But the work needed to be done in a week to meet the sale deadline. They would have to work eighteen-hour days. He was offering them time and a half for anything over twelve hours a day. They all agreed.

  ‘And Rodney, I’m putting you back on the rack,’ Foy said. ‘We work a hell of a lot faster with Warren on tongs, and you know it. We don’t make the deadline, we don’t get paid.’

  The first few days went well. They were ahead of schedule and the young man could tell that Foy was pleased. Then, as they were loading up one day, a police car drove into the yard and rolled to a stop outside the office. Two deputies got out of the car and walked towards the work shed.

  ‘We’re looking for a Foy Lawson,’ one of the cops said. He wore a black gun belt strapped around his waist and a big Stetson. Sergeant’s stripes creased his shirtsleeves.

  ‘That’d be me,’ said Foy, wiping his hands on a rag. ‘What can I do for you fellas?’

  The cop flipped open his notebook. ‘We have a report of an alien working illegally on your premises.’

  The young man could feel himself reddening.

  ‘Well this would be him right here,’ said Foy, pointing at the young man. ‘He’s workin’ for us alright, officers.’

  The cops took a step forw
ards. The one with the Stetson started pulling a set of handcuffs from a pouch on his belt.

  ‘But the thing is,’ said Foy, tucking the rag into his back pocket, ‘we ain’t payin’ him nothin’. He’s studying engineering back in Canada where he comes from, and he’s volunteering, so to speak, to get experience. Pays his own way entire. Nothin’ illegal in that, so far as I know.’

  The cops looked at each other a moment. Silver cuffs dangled in the sergeant’s hand.

  ‘Y’all can eyeball our books if you like, officers.’ Foy pointed to his office.

  ‘Well, if that’s the case, I don’t see a problem,’ said the sergeant, tipping his hat back on his head. ‘We’ll check back with the lieutenant. If we need to, we’ll call in again.’

  ‘Any time,’ said Foy.

  After the officers had driven away, Foy turned and faced Rodney and looked at him hard. ‘That was just the plain stupidest thing you ever done, Rodney Early.’

  Rodney shrank back. ‘I don’t get yo’ meanin’, Foy,’ he said.

  ‘I mean tellin’ the police about Warren here workin’ with us.’

  ‘I never done it, Foy,’ said Rodney, eyes bulging.

  Foy pulled the rag out of his pocket and threw it at Rodney. It hit him in the face. ‘You don’t get it, do you? If yo’ pappy was alive, I’d call him right now, tell him to whop yo’ ass. Stupidest thing you ever done and you done a lot.’ Foy turned and walked to his office. He was at the doorway when he stopped and faced them again. ‘It’s our business that gets hurt, if the cops and whatnot come pokin’ around. We could get fined, or just plain closed down. Then where you gonna work, Rodney Early? You think anyone else gonna hire you? You like you is? God’s truth, if it weren’t for that promise I made yo’ pappy and us being related, so to speak…’ He turned and walked into his office and slammed the door shut.

  The young man walked outside and sat on the Shovelhead.

  A while later, Foy reappeared, they finished loading the trailer and drove to Santa Anna. No one spoke on the way out. They worked eighteen hours, the young man still on tongs.

  After work, back at the yard, Foy called him into his office. ‘I’m payin’ you cash,’ he said. ‘So there shouldn’t be a problem for you, son.’

  ‘I’m sorry about what happened, sir,’ said the young man. ‘I’ll leave as soon as we finish this job.’

  ‘That would be best,’ said Foy, nodding, counting out the cash on his desk. ‘Not how I want it, but the way it’s gotta be.’

  ‘I understand, sir.’

  ‘You see, young Rodney, he’s not right, and he got no one else to look after him.’

  ‘I understand, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. I’ve learned a lot.’

  Foy nodded. They shook hands.

  Later that night, the young man woke from a dream. Someone was hammering at the door. He could hear wood splintering, and then a bang as the door broke open. He sat up, ran his hands over his chest. He was covered in sweat. The room was pierced by a strange, flickering yellow light. He stood and went to the window. A fire was burning on the driveway, near the garage. Bright orange flames reached into the night.

  He jumped up and flew down the stairs. He attached the garden hose to the spigot at the side of the house, cranked the tap and ran towards the fire with the streaming hose. Twenty feet away, the heat was like a wall. He put his thumb over the end of the hose and directed the water at the base of the flames. The fire hissed as the water hit. Steam billowed yellow, lit by the flames. He doused himself in water and moved closer, keeping the jet of water steady at the base of the fire, hosing down the front of the garage to prevent the wood from igniting. Slowly, the fire abated. Shapes emerged. The square cut of a fender. A wheel rim.

  It was the Shovelhead. David’s beautiful Shovelhead.

  By the time the fire department arrived, the fire was out. He stood with the old lady in the glare of the truck’s floodlights and looked at the smoking skeleton. When the gas tank exploded, it had taken most of the front cylinder with it. The frame around the engine was melted, the wheel rims charred and warped. The old lady cried.

  The next morning, the young man rose early, packed his few belongings and laid out a month’s rent in cash on the dresser. He walked across town to the yard. When Foy arrived in the pickup with Earl and Rodney, he was waiting at the front gate. Earl got out of the truck and unlocked the gate and the young man walked with him to the shed.

  ‘Where’s yo’ hog?’ said Earl.

  ‘Gone,’ said the young man.

  Rodney was standing near the job board with a cup of coffee. The young man walked up to him and hit him twice hard in the face. Rodney went down, his misshapen mouth leaking blood. The young man stood over him and looked into his eyes. But of what he’d hoped to see, there was nothing. He considered hitting him again and wanted to. But instead, he turned and walked to the front gate and along the pike to the bus station and took the next bus to Abilene.

  March 7th. Geneva

  It’s early afternoon by the time the taxi drops me at the lakeside hotel. I check in, hang up my suit and shirt, stand out on the balcony and breathe in the cold air. The lake is shrouded with mist. A passenger ferry chugs towards the far side.

  I think of him there as a young man. I remember vaguely hearing him mention Texas, working in the oilfields. All that’s gone now, of course. I drove through there a few years ago; nothing but dead wells and silent, unmoving pumpjacks, miles and miles of them, everything used up and turned to rust, relics from another time.

  My phone buzzes. An incoming text message. Maria’s number. I open it, read. She wants to meet me as soon as I get back to London. She has made a decision. She has talked it over with Rachel and Troy. But she can’t tell me this way. Despite everything, she owes it to me to tell me in person. That’s it.

  I close my phone and throw it on the bed. There has been a late change of plan and now I’m not due to meet with Borschmann until tomorrow morning. Never a good sign. I pull on my jacket and walk out to the quayside, start walking south, away from the city centre. The traffic along the corniche is heavy now, a countercurrent of white and red.

  I have spent most of my life feeling vaguely misplaced, as if something elemental was missing. Let me try again: my life was not supposed to be like this. The conviction is as hard to shake as it is to explain. Wrong people, wrong places. Wrong me. And yet just thinking about it makes me feel guilty. I mean, by the time I was fifteen, I’d been all over, with Dad’s work and the holidays we took together, especially when Mum and Adam were still around, and then that first year after Dad sent me to boarding school, we spent Christmas together. We went to Australia and snorkelled on the Great Barrier Reef. All those fish. The layered forests of coral. We watched a dolphin chasing a shoal of trevally in the shallows. I can still see the big smile on Dad’s face under his mask, hear his cry of delight as the dolphin came up for air between us. It was less than a year after my mother went away and I recall thinking: you do not deserve to be so happy.

  I remember we saw a red-tailed tropicbird nesting under the low, spreading branches of a grove of reef-side octopus trees. I read later that this species lives at sea, spending weeks on the wing, returning to the island to breed and nest every few years. The female lays one egg, and the parents take turns staying with the chick after it hatches, feeding and protecting it for up to four months. And then, one day, the chick is ready to fly. Driven by hunger and instinct, it launches itself into the unknown. The adults follow soon after.

  Now, of course, the reef is mostly dead. All that we saw back then is gone.

  The feeling of displacement intensifies as darkness falls. It’s colder now, and I turn up my collar, wish I’d brought a hat. I keep going, walking quickly now, feeling the cold air flowing through my lungs. I think about Maria and Rachel. I wonder what she wants to tell me, what she has decided. Maria is one of the things in my life that was never right. Problem is, by the time I realised it, I’d lost the courag
e to do anything about it.

  There was a woman once, not nearly as beautiful as Maria, probably not as smart. But lovely, so lovely, inside. Sweet and caring. Adventurous in herself and encouraging of it in me. Julia was her name. Julia McIntyre. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about her. I didn’t know her long – a year and a half maybe, during my last year of university. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier than I was then, heading out on a camping trip, Julia snuggled up behind me on my old Honda 750, arms around me, head on my back. Late one night, after we’d made love, lying in that old two-man tent I still have but haven’t used for years, she told me she never wanted to turn off the flame she saw burning inside me. That’s what she said. I know now, too late, that she was perfect for me. And the more I think about it, the more I realise that I knew it then. It sure felt like that when we were together. But I wasn’t brave enough. I let her go. I know I hurt her. I hurt myself. And now I’m here in Geneva, walking this darkened pathway alone, and while I should be preparing for this meeting tomorrow, the further I walk, the less important it seems.

  I stop, light-headed, and look out across the lake, so cold and black now, the lights from the far shore skipping over the surface like throw-stones back when I was a kid and Dad took us to the coast of BC to visit my grandparents. I loved it there. Misty forests rising from the sea. Rocky islands and fjords, so deep and cold and black. Whirlpool Point where Grandpa and Dad would take me fishing for coho and chinook, up before dawn and into the boat, speeding along a coastline so deserted that it seemed the last untouched place in the world. And now I am here, in my fallback job, with my fallback life, and my fallback ex-wife has just summoned me to what I can’t help feeling will be the start of an ending.

  Yuruk