Nick's Trip

by George Pelecanos

  WE CONTINUED SOUTH. THE road ahead was free of commercial activity and hilly once again as we neared the Potomac. I lodged my beer between my thighs and withdrew the pint of Beam from my jacket. I twisted the cap, broke the seal, and handed the bottle to Billy. He had his and then passed me the bottle as he chased it with some beer.

  “That’s good,” he said, wiping his mouth with his shirtsleeve. “Been a long time since I took whiskey from a bottle.”

  “Listen, Billy…”

  “What?”

  “I was looking at you, back there, pissin’ on the highway. I saw you for a second, like it was you, man, fifteen years ago.”

  “Yeah?” Billy looked at me briefly with a blank smile and returned his gaze to the road.

  “I’m trying to apologize,” I said. “That’s what I’m trying to do. I’ve been kind of ice cold, man, since you walked into the Spot. I expected things to be like they were with us, when we were kids—like you were. You understand?”

  “You’re drunk, Greek,” Billy said, turning his face in my direction again. Half of his was lit green from the dashboard lights. “You are drunk, aren’t you?” He smiled. “Or are you trippin’?”

  “I guess I’m just drunk.” I had a slow pull of bourbon, then beer. “Not trippin’, though. Last time I did that I was with you. Right before you went away to school. Remember?”

  Billy reached for the bottle. I put it in his hand. “That time in the park, right?”

  I nodded, thinking back. The blurred dark limbs of trees rushed by against the night as I stared through the passenger window and recounted that night for Billy.

  ON A LATE AUGUST afternoon, at the tail end of the summer of 1976, Billy and I had eaten a couple of hits of blotter that I had copped through the back door of Nutty Nathan’s from Johnny McGinnes. We smoked a joint on the way down to Candy Cane City and once there began a round of pickup ball with a group of Northwest boys we had come to know. For the first hour we were on our game, but that ended when the acid began to seep in, and after a while our laughter caused us to drop out. I went home and took a shower, sneaking around my grandfather, unable to look him in the eye. Then Billy came by and picked me up in his Camaro.

  That night had started like any other—we had no clue at first as to where we were headed, only that we were headed out. Neither of us talked about the buzz—that would have been uncool—but when Billy asked me to drive I knew he was tripping as hard as I was; he had never let me drive his car, even on his most twisted nights.

  Billy was wearing straight-leg Levi’s that night, rolled up once at the cuff, and one of those glitter-boy rayon shirts, from a store named Solar Plexus, in Silver Spring. The red lid of a Marlboro box peeked out over the top of the shirt pocket. On his feet were the denim stacks that he had bought at Daily Planet, a pair of shoes that he knew I had always wanted to own.

  For some reason we ended up on Beach Drive in Rock Creek Park. I had begun to hallucinate mildly, but it was under control, and my driving up to that point had been okay. But then Billy popped Eat a Peach into the eight-track, and he turned up the volume, and when “Blue Sky” came on, and Dickey Betts moved into his monster guitar solo, I lost my shit. It was at that point that I was convinced that the car was going to lift up and fly right off the parkway.

  I pulled over at a picnic area, Billy laughing over the sound of the tape, and he walked me down to a patch of dark, gravelly beach at the creek. I lay down by the creek and stared at the top branches of the oaks that lined the east side and listened to the rush of the brown water over the rocks and the loopy liquid guitar that was still flowing through my head. Then Billy took my shoes off and put his—the denim stacks I had coveted throughout our friendship—on my feet. And he talked to me for at least two hours. By then the branches had melted into the flannel gray of the sky, and there was a small throb in my stomach, and I had begun to come down.

  “THAT WAS A NIGHT,” Billy said when I was finished. “After that we went down to some hippie bar, right next to the Brickskeller at Twenty-second and P, second floor, got sober on alcohol. Some band was playing, some cat blazing on lap steel, right?”

  I nodded. “Danny Gatton.”

  “How do you remember all that shit?”

  “The funny thing is, I almost forgot. And the thing is, the thing you did for me that night, those kind of things are the only things worth remembering. Am I making any sense?”

  “Yeah, pardner, you’re making sense. Hang on.” Billy eased off the gas and swung the Maxima into the turn lane. He pulled left across the highway onto Route 257. We passed a gas station and liquor store, then drove southeast, into a shroud of darkness.

  THIRTEEN

  WE FOLLOWED 257 for a quarter-mile, blowing by a hardware-and-bait shop lit only by a John Deere sign in the window. Then Billy abruptly veered left off the interstate, onto a roughly paved, unlit road that swept up into a grove of high shrub and pine, then opened to acres of flat field.

  “Where we goin’? I thought April’s property was off Two-fifty-seven.”

  “It is. Mount Victoria road parallels Two-fifty-seven. We’ll come back out onto it at Tompkinsville.” Billy winked. “Watch this, Greek,” he said. Then he cut the headlights of the Maxima.

  For a couple of seconds Billy and I were green, and everything outside the car was black. I grabbed the handle of the door and gripped it until the road ahead began to appear, slowly, in a bluish light. The moon was bright and almost directly overhead.

  “You sure you want to do this, man?”

  “Like we used to do, on that stretch of Oregon Avenue, down in the park.”

  “We knew that road.”

  “I know this one,” Billy said. “Roll your window down, man, it’s not too cold. Enjoy it.”

  I did, as Billy maxxed out the heater fan, then rolled his own window down. Maybelle came forward and laid her head partly on my arm, partly on the door, leaving her face out, letting the wind blow back her ears. She closed her eyes.

  The sound of the heater meshed with the wind. I had a slug of bourbon and passed it to Billy. Through the glass of Billy’s roof the moon shimmered above as if it were submerged in water. We passed a small gas station with an old Sunoco sign lit and suspended from two chains at the corner of a two-lane intersection, then moved on. No headlights approached from ahead or from behind.

  Low trees began to appear on either side of the road, and the road grew darker. Billy saw something just ahead of his path, or maybe he didn’t, and he laughed piercingly and swerved, and we drove onto a shoulder of loose gravel. There was a sharp, screaming metallic scrape. Maybelle yelped, and there were sparks, and I drew back my face just as something shaved it like a quick, cold razor. I turned and looked through the rear window, and saw a roadside mailbox uprooted and tumbling back onto the shoulder in the fading rouge glow of our brake lights. I checked Maybelle and she was all right, though now she was lying bellyflat on the backseat, her head resting firmly between her two front paws.

  Billy’s laughter was softly manic. I cackled with him and rubbed my right cheek, feeling raw skin but no blood. Then we were in a forest of pine, and there was almost total blackness, except for the light through the space between the tree line above, a light that snaked parallel with the road. Billy’s laughter ebbed and he shifted his sight from the road to the tree line and back again, navigating the course while negotiating the serpentine curves. At the bottom of a steep incline the road seemed to end in a finality of shadow, but Billy turned the wheel sharp right just as we seemed on the edge of the chasm, and then we were suddenly out of the trees and on the flat blue road again, the vast, open, moonlit fields on either side.

  After another mile Billy tapped on the headlights, and we merged back onto 257, turning left. I cracked two more beers, handed one to Billy, and lit a cigarette for myself. We passed a Methodist church and several bungalows with screened porches set back from the highway, Pontiacs and Buicks parked in the yards. A couple of markets that s
old gas and liquor and lottery tickets slid by. Both the markets and the houses were closed and unlit.

  Two miles later Billy turned right at 254 and accelerated down a straight stretch of highway toward the lights of Cobb Island. He slowed as we neared the water and drove by two crab houses and bars on opposite sides of the road. The bar on the right had lit Christmas lights strung around its low-rise white facade, with lights that ran along the dock as well, out into the channel beyond a gas pump and boat ramp. The road rose as we crossed a bridge with cement rails that arced over the channel and connected the mainland to the island. When we rolled onto the island, Billy pulled the car into a lot past an IGF grocery store and killed the engine in front of a small bar called the Pony Point.

  “A nightcap?” Billy said.

  “How’s my face?”

  Billy grabbed my chin and turned my head into the light. “You’ll make it.”

  “Let’s go.”

  We chugged the rest of our beers and put the empties in the backseat, where Maybelle now slept. Out in the lot I tripped stepping up over a concrete divider and felt Billy grab my jacket and yank me back into balance.

  “Keep your shit,” he said. “Let’s have some fun.”

  We stepped into the Pony Point. The place consisted of one small room paneled in knotty pine with a U-shaped bar extending out from the wall that divided the front of the house from the back kitchen. The bar was nearly filled. “Tight Fittin’ Jeans” by Conway Twitty was shrieking out of the tinny jukebox. I felt heavy and slow as I moved toward the bar, but by now I had acquired that singular glow of imagined invincibility that is bestowed upon certain drunks during particularly blessed binges.

  Billy and I found two empty red vinyl stools on the west end of the U and bellied up. A large jar of pickled pig’s feet rested on the bar between us. I signaled the barmaid, a woman in her sixties with steel gray hair flipped on one side. She moved slowly to our curve in the U as she wiped an aquamarine bar rag across her hands. When she reached us she kicked her chin up just a bit to signal for our order. One of her spotted hands, with short, hard nails painted apple red to match the color drawn across her lips, rested on her hip. That hip, which still had a shape distinct from the rest of her, was slightly cocked. Grandma, with a fistful of rolled nickels.

  “What can I get you fellas?”

  “Two beers and two whiskeys,” I said. “Make the beers Budweisers and the whiskeys Grand-Dad.”

  “I suppose you take your bourbon straight up,” she said, and tilted her chin up once again to let her eyes look us over.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She served the beers at once and rooted around the rack for a couple of shot glasses. While she did that, Billy and I tapped bottles and drank deeply. Then I had a look around the Pony Point.

  On the east curve of the U sat three drunken men, their shoulders touching as if joined. The man in the middle was young, with a flattop and pale skin and an over-the-lip wisp of light brown hair masquerading as a mustache. He was bookended by two older men, one of whom was a well-worn version of flattop. Several beers sat in front of the three of them. The two older men looked quickly over to flattop and sang, in ravaged unison, “I’m gonna stick… like glue.”

  Flattop looked into my eyes from across the bar and yelled, with a crooked smile, “Tomorrow ah’m a fuckin’ marine!” The Pony Point was filled with noise, but I could have heard the kid from out in the parking lot.

  Our bourbons were served, and I raised my glass to Flattop before tapping Billy’s and tipping the shot to my lips. The warm liquor slid down with slow-jazz ease. I savored the afterburn, then asked the barmaid her name.

  “Wanda,” she said.

  “Wanda, buy those two older ones their next round. And give the soldier in the middle whatever he wants.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Billy said, “And we’ll take a couple of those pig’s feet, honey.”

  Wanda said, “You got it.”

  A hand wrapped around my arm. It was attached to a little man in a Cubs cap who was sliding onto the stool to my right. The man was not very old, but he had lost his teeth and on this night at least was not wearing the replacements. He used my arm for support as he adjusted his butt to the center of the stool.

  “Thanks,” he said, and removed the cap to wipe a fuzzy, rather bullet-shaped head.

  “No problem.”

  “I see you’re buyin’,” he said matter-of-factly. He was trying to look up at me, but his gray eyes were missing the mark, shooting up toward the beamed ceiling.

  “Why not? What are you drinking?”

  “I’d love some whiskey. You like Conway Twitty?”

  “No. But I dig Merle Haggard.”

  “My name’s Ken.”

  I shook his hand and said, “Nick.”

  Wanda served our pig’s feet on paper plates set next to plastic forks and then poured Ken a shot of rail whiskey. Ken knocked back half of it posthaste and cupped his hand protectively around the glass as he set it down on the bar. Billy ignored the fork, picked up the pig’s foot, and began to chew meat off the bone. I tasted a sliver of mine, rejected the texture, and pushed the plate in front of Billy. The juke was playing Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.” I lit a cigarette and ran my hand back through my hair.

  Two men stood by the kitchen door at the far side of the room. One was heavy and dark-skinned and wore an eggshell apron stained brown around his waist. The other was tall and lean and wore Wrangler jeans and a brown flannel shirt unbuttoned once to expose a triangle of white T-shirt at the base of the neck. Both of them stared at me until I looked away. When I looked back their attention remained fixed. I turned to Ken.

  Ken said, “You like Randy Travis?”

  “Uh-uh.” I said. “You ever listen to Gram Parsons?” Ken’s eyes traveled back up to the ceiling as he thought it over and shook his head. “How about Rodney Crowell?”

  “That’s that boy married to Johnny Cash’s girl, right?”

  I nodded. “Had a great single on the country charts, seven or eight years back—‘Ashes by Now.’”

  “Yeah,” Ken said. “I remember it. He’s pretty damn good.”

  I turned my head to the left. Billy dropped what was left of the pink-and-yellow pig’s foot to the plate and wiped a paper napkin across his mouth. He chin-nodded the two by the kitchen door. The tall one nodded back without emotion.

  I said, “I don’t think those two like us.”

  “They’re all right.”

  “You know ’em?”

  Billy had a long, even taste of the bourbon and winced. He set the glass back down on the bar. “Black dude with the apron’s named Russel. Local boy, knew April when they were young. The tall hard guy’s Hendricks—a state cop. Grew up in Nanjemoy on the other side of Three-oh-one. Rides out of La Plata but spends a lot of time around the island. Don’t take it personal. It’s me they don’t like.”

  “Maybe I should talk to ’em.”

  “Suit yourself. Want an introduction?”

  “No.”

  I killed my bourbon, stubbed my smoke, and picked up my beer. Ken suggested another round, but I ignored him as I pushed away from the bar and followed the curve of the U. I swerved by two old guys with winter sunburns and dirty hands and was clapped on the shoulder by one of Flattop’s crew as I passed his back. His crossed eyes zeroed in on my chest as he sang, “I’m gonna stick… like glue.”

  The one with the apron, Russel, turned on his heels as I approached. By the time I reached the end of the bar, he had retreated into the fluorescence of the kitchen. That left me and Hendricks.

  Hendricks looked in my eyes evenly and for a long time. I studied his as he did it. He had the clean, open face of a man who works hard every day and likes it. His eyes were dark blue, framed by short bursts of lines and set wide; his broad mouth stretched out across a stone jaw. I put him at about my age, though weathered by the elements.

  “How’s it goin’?” he said.

&
nbsp; “It’s goin’ good.”

  “You about done nursin’ that beer?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s have another.”

  “Sounds good.” I finished off the bottle. “But I’m buying, okay? Makes sense to buy the local cop a beer when you’re in his county.”

  Hendricks grinned just enough to lift one cheek. “I won’t stop you,” he said.

  “My name’s Nick Stefanos.”

  “Hendricks.”

  I signaled Wanda with a sweeping victory sign and had her serve another shot to Ken. Billy was off and talking to a huge bearded man in a Red Man cap who stood blocking the front door like a bear in overalls. The bearman’s narrow eyes were obtusely pointed to the floor as Billy talked. When the beers came I raised mine to Hendricks and had a swig. The floor tilted somewhat beneath my feet. I wrapped a hand around the curved lip of the bar.

  Hendricks said, “Which one of you lovers is drivin’?”

  I pointed the neck of the Bud at Billy. “We’re not going far. Sleeping at April Goodrich’s farm tonight.” I closed one eye a bit to focus on Hendricks. “You know her?”

  “Knew her before she was named Goodrich,” he said.

  “Seen her lately?”

  “That what you came down here for? Lookin’ for April?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s it about. Personal?”

  “It is for him.” I glanced quickly toward Billy and back to Hendricks. “For me it’s a job.”

  Hendricks said, “You’re no cop.”

  I shook my head. “Private.”

  Hendricks thought about that over a long, slow pull of beer. He placed the bottle softly on the bar, looked my way, and relaxed his shoulders. “So what happened to your face?”

  I rubbed it and felt the swell. “To tell you the truth, I don’t remember. We made a night of it, I guess.”

  “It’s not a bad face,” Hendricks said frankly. “But you can’t tell a thing about a man when you meet him on a drunk. And right now I don’t know nuthin’ about you but your name. You want to talk to me, I’ll be around the island tomorrow.”