Bluebird Rising

by John Decure

  I waited a little longer for my manager’s decision.

  “Okay,” Eloise said. “We have a meeting at nine. I’ll talk to him after.”

  “Outstanding.” I gave her my home phone number. “When will you call?”

  But she had already hung up.

  Twenty-five

  The sun came out a little after eleven. I was in the front yard in my oldest pair of disintegrating Levi’s, pulling weeds from the rose beds while the dirt was chunky and soft and scooping displaced earthworms off the walk. Carmen was inside, getting Albert ready for a few games of bowling. I’d begged off during breakfast, saying I had to wait for Eloise’s call, but the phone hadn’t rung all morning.

  The wet street echoed with the haggard sound of an overtaxed muffler. Wiping the sweat from my eyes, I looked up in time to see a little Nissan pickup with a battered shell and big back tires chug to a halt just beyond my gate. Stone Me Stevie jumped out the driver’s side and gave me the howzit nod. I didn’t react.

  “Finally got it running,” he said, closing the gate gingerly behind him. He wore a white tee beneath a wrinkly Pendleton shirt, a faded red Bay Surfboards ball cap on his head. His jeans were low on his hips and wet at the ankles. Despite the weather, he wore only black rubber thongs on his feet. “So, what’s the haps, man?”

  “You tell me,” I said.

  “Good fuckin’ news, bro, I found ’em.” Grinning.

  “Watch your language around here.”

  He glanced about vacantly, as if he were trying to glimpse a winged fairy floating on the breeze. “Sure, cool.”

  I wiped my hands with an old rag, still gripping the gardening spade I’d been using. “Let’s hear it.”

  “They been hanging down by Warner, the free parking lot behind the Jack in the Box. You know, where the buses turn around.”

  I knew the place. It was only ten minutes south of town down PCH, a big cul-de-sac where Warner Avenue, a street that originated a good twenty miles inland, came west until it petered out in the sand. Mediocre sand-bottom waves broke there—ridable waves, but the place was not really a surf spot.

  “You talk to Leanne?”

  “Yup.”

  “You tell her what I said?”

  Stevie rolled his head a bit, searching for those flying fairies again. “Yeah. She’s pretty pissed about everything. Her boyfriend’s not too stoked that you kicked his ass.”

  “But you set him straight on that little misunderstanding,” I said, not believing Stevie possessed the sack to have done any such thing.

  “Um, yeah. Well, kinda.” When I glared at him he took his hands from his pocket and extended them like a saint appealing to a higher power. “Fuck, J., gimme a break. There were like, five guys there, a couple of ’em were pretty beefy, too. They would’ve worked me.”

  “Gosh, that would’ve been tragic.” I wished those guys would have known the truth about what Stevie had done and taught him a lesson he’d remember forever. Then I had an idea. I set the rag and spade down on the walk. “Wait here,” I said.

  I went inside and made a quick phone call. Then I went upstairs and asked Carmen and Albert to come down in a few. Five minutes later, Mickey Conlin pulled a black Ford Thunderbird right in behind Stevie’s minitruck.

  “Mickey, howzit,” Stevie said, his face bright.

  Mick was in a navy mechanics jumpsuit. His hair was pulled into a tight ponytail and his fingernails were ringed with black. He nodded at Stevie without comment, shooting me the stink-eye. We all looked to the porch as the screen door creaked open.

  Carmen and Albert didn’t advance more than a few feet onto the porch. “Hello, Mick,” Carmen said.

  “Carmen.”

  Albert squinted into the sunlight, his head cocked slightly to the right.

  Mick’s arms were folded, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His forearms were as thick as a menacing genie’s.

  Stone Me Stevie was so still, you’d have thought he’d stopped breathing.

  Carmen eyed me with suspicion. “What’s going on, J? We’re going bowling.”

  “This is Stevie,” I said. “He’s from the neighborhood. He surfs the pier a lot. Couple nights ago we bumped into each other, and he told me a story about how he was out one morning recently, carving a re-form to the beach, and some guy cut him off. After that, he sort of lost his head, because the other guy never even saw him coming and probably had no idea he’d gotten in anybody’s way. Right, Steve?”

  Stevie hung his head and took a few tentative steps toward the brick porch. “Hey, man,” he said to Albert, “what can I say, I’m fuckin.’”—stopping himself—“I mean, I’m really sorry I punched you. It was a totally uncool thing to do.”

  Carmen’s face was taut with constricted fury. Her mouth opened, but she withheld comment. Albert looked past Stevie in the distracted way he often does when he carries on conversations, but I was certain he understood what he had just heard.

  “O … k-k-k-kay,” he said. Then he looked at his sister. “H-he s-s-said he’s s-sorry.”

  Carmen came down the porch steps and stood before Mick. “I misjudged you,” she said.

  “No problem,” Mick said.

  They stood very still, looking into each other’s eyes just a tick too long, and I felt a tingle shoot up my spine. Damn, I thought, I know that look. I should. It’s the kind I’ve shared with Therese Rozypal lately.

  Carmen hoisted her black purse on her arm, motioning to Albert. “Let’s go, hon.” Then she regarded Stevie at close range. “I don’t want to know what J. did to get you here, but thank you for coming.”

  Stevie shrugged. “Okay.”

  Then she stepped into Stevie’s face, startling him. “I don’t believe in an eye for an eye, it’s too Old Testament. But if you ever touch my brother again, I swear, you’ll have hell to pay.”

  Stevie swallowed. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Carmen turned and put on an instant loving smile for her brother. She surprised me by leaning over and kissing me on the cheek. “We’ll be back in a couple.”

  Stevie, Mick, and I watched Carmen and Albert clack through the gate and onto Porpoise Way.

  “So,” I said to Mick. “The night I saw Stevie on the pier, he was telling me he thinks he’s becoming something of a tough guy.”

  Mickey’s eyes were unblinking as he surveyed the twitching Stevie. “No shit.”

  “That being so, I think he should quit bugging guys like us to fight his little battles for him, don’t you?”

  “Sounds reasonable.”

  “Seems to me,” I said, “if he’s gonna be on his own now, maybe it would help him to get a little conditioning. Maybe we could show him a few moves.”

  Mick played along beautifully, cracking his knuckles as he widened his stance.

  Stevie was in full brick-shitting mode, his palms outstretched again. “Whoa, hey, man,” he said, his voice cracking. “Like, I really appreciate the offer, but I mean, fuck, it’s cool!”

  “I guess another possibility might be …” I paused, savoring the moment.

  “What, man?” Stevie begged.

  “Well, you could take a different tack altogether. Share a wave now and then.”

  “Give the other guy the benefit of the doubt,” Mick added.

  Stevie puzzled for a moment. “I dunno. I mean, shit, man, you try it on a Saturday morning, good day at Northside. It’s a fuckin’ zoo out there.”

  He was right, in part. Surfing an overcrowded break will test one’s patience in a hurry, and on plenty of occasions, if you’re looking for trouble, some inconsiderate bonehead will supply you with enough reason to start something.

  Then Stevie tugged down on the bill of his cap, and caught me rather by surprise.

  “I’m gonna try, though,” he said. “Balls out, all the way.”

  “You mean it?” I said.

  Stevie put his hand over his heart, his breathing still coming too fast. “Swear to God, you guys. Fuckin’ swear to
God.”

  Mick stayed for some reheated pot roast. We talked about his shop, how business had picked up last week with three bearing repacks, a handful of major tune-ups, and a full engine overhaul and tranny replacement on a Winnebago—a six-thousand-dollar job.

  The phone on the kitchen wall rang. Eloise Horton. “Tomorrow morning, eight o’clock. You, me, and the chief.”

  “Eight, you got it, I’ll be there. Thanks for—”

  “Just don’t screw it up,” she said, cutting me off. “And try to ignore the impulse to make me look bad.” She hung up, the sharp click jolting my eardrum. Awkwardly, I put the receiver back without another word, not quite fathoming what the hell that woman had to be so angry about. It would be my ass in that meeting, not hers.

  Mick must have sensed my discomfort. “Trouble at work?”

  The phone rang again. “Nah. There you go,” I said, “calling back to apologize already. I love this job.” I picked up the phone again, feeling like a punching bag. “This is J.”

  It was a long-distance operator, asking if I’d accept the charges on a call from Dale Bleeker. I said yes.

  “J.! Thank God you were home.” He sounded half out of breath. “I’ve been driving for hours. This is the first chance I’ve had to call you. They came back to the house early this morning, with Rudy.”

  Dale’s little stakeout had paid off. “How did he look?” I asked.

  “A little bewildered, but you know him. Otherwise I’d say he was fine.” A large roar that sounded like a big truck passing on a highway rose up, then faded away. “They only stayed a couple hours, then they took off again.”

  “Where are you?”

  Another roar, so loud that Dale had to wait for it to subside. “At a truck stop in a little place called King City Not quite to Salinas.”

  Salinas is a long way from L.A., a good four- to five-hour drive north, toward San Francisco.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Eating. Carlito stopped at a hardware store first, carried out what looked like a tool set, stuck it in the trunk of the Lexus. Can’t figure that one out, but I’m darn glad they pulled over when they did. I was practically out of gas.” More noise from the highway. “J., I think you need to get up here. I think they’re headed to that cabin in Big Sur.”

  So did 1. If they went west toward Carmel and Monterey, Big Sur would be easy to access heading south on Highway 1.

  We waited again for the highway noise to die. “How far you think the cabin is from here?” he asked.

  “An hour, more or less.”

  I looked at my watch: 1 P.M. The sun had been setting at around five-fifteen lately If I left right now and drove like hell, I’d still pull up in total darkness. I couldn’t picture searching for a remote cabin in the coastal mountains at night. Big Sur is a rugged place still mostly preserved in its natural state. No fast-food joint and 7-Eleven on every corner, no minimalls. No streetlamps, either. I would have to drive up tonight, check in somewhere, and set out for the cabin early tomorrow morning.

  And I would have to take Kimberley. She would insist.

  “I’ll watch them till you get here,” he said, assuming I’d made the decision to come up. Damn, I thought, Eloise is going to have her panties in a bunch over this one.

  “Dale,” I said, “don’t crash in your car tonight. You’re a long way from Glendale. You could freeze.”

  “No, no. Got a blanket in the trunk. I’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t do anything but watch them until I get there.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he shouted over more highway thunder. I couldn’t tell if he was being glib.

  I hung up, then picked up the phone again, held it, put it down. Just now, I didn’t quite feel up to dealing with Eloise Horton’s rage. Mick finished off another biscuit, apparently content to mind his own business. Having heard parts of both conversations, he probably knew I’d just put myself in a wicked bind.

  “Thanks for coming over,” I said.

  He grinned. “Think little Stevie had to change his underwear when he got home.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “But you could’ve put the scare in him yourself, J.”

  “Wouldn’t have been as much fun, though.”

  “Fun, my ass,” he said. “I know why you invited me over.” He was talking about Carmen.

  “What can I say? You’re my friend, and she was wrong about you.”

  “Please.” He dropped his napkin on his plate. “Don’t give me the false loyalty shtick.” Then he stood up and looked about the kitchen. White curtains facing the backyard fluttered before an open window. Slowly he crossed the room, stepped into the afternoon sun that streamed in through the window over the sink, then crossed out of it again, leaning against the counter. “She’s yours,” he said. “That’s exactly as it should be.”

  “How’s that?”

  Mick’s eyes seemed to fix on an unknown point across the room. “You’re different from me. Always have been. You remember when we were just learning, and started getting good enough to surf the outside break?” I nodded yes. “Well, I still remember how pissed off I was that you were the first one to paddle outside to give it a go.”

  I said, “You were good. Right with me, at least.”

  “Followed you outside the same day, not that I was ready. But even after that, you were always … different.”

  “Oh sure, I had quite the eye-catching style,” I said. “Six-two and a hundred and forty pounds of overcooked rubber. They called me the Spastic Tic.”

  Mick laughed. “That’s not what I mean.” He waited. “I remember how, when we got good enough to sit with the pack, you always sat the farthest outside.”

  “Missed a lot of good ones that way.”

  He was looking right at me. “Yeah, but it always seemed that whenever the biggest deep-water wave of the day rolled through, you were there. I’d scratch over the first wall with the pack, and there it would be, this big, beautiful bluebird rising out the back. More often than not, you’d be the only one in position to catch it.” His gaze shifted to somewhere far away again. “That was always your approach. And I envy you, man.”

  We drove up that night and crashed at a place called the Travel-Inn near Carmel, a desperation move when the punishing rain became too great a hindrance to cruising around and comparing the area’s hotels. The Travel-Inn was an unfortunate choice, combining high prices with warped mattresses for a uniquely torturous lodging experience. I’d awakened in the dark several times with the distinct impression that somehow I’d managed to crawl inside a satellite dish to sleep. Kimberley said she’d slept poorly in her room, staring at the ceiling as she second-guessed the way she’d dealt with her father the last two years. We met up again at seven in an ugly little hot-pink lobby full of plastic plants and complimentary breakfast rolls that could break your teeth.

  But we were here, and it was time to take back Rudy Kirkmeyer.

  Kimberley pointed to the sign that said Rocky Point. “Slow down, this is it.”

  It was a dull gray, blast-the-car-heater morning, wet fog clouding over the yellow lines like a new storm’s heavy breathing. I’d driven this stretch of coast highway several times before and knew the ocean was just below us, but it was completely invisible for now. The cars streaming north on Highway 1 all had their lights on, telling me that the weather they’d encountered to the south was no better. I waited, the Jeep wagon’s blinker ticking. The clock on the dash clicked over: 7:57. Damn, I thought, I should be at the state bar right now, settling in at the chief’s private conference table up on the top floor. Oh well.

  Kimberley was wearing her shades, even with all this gloom. “So, what’s the plan?” she said as I finally cut a left and headed up the canyon road.

  I didn’t have a plan but wasn’t about to rattle her. “We’re getting your father back,” I said.

  The road ran steadily uphill and straight inland. To our left a creek full of rushing brown water sliced along the base of t
he hills. Modest A-frame cabins and vacation homes were set on the near bank among a web of gravel turnoffs and dirt driveways. The trees thickened with our ascent—pines, coastal redwoods, aspens, their trunks mossy and strung with deep green, climbing vegetation. The canyon walls seemed to rise up higher and steeper with every switchback. The stream had now gone out of view, well hidden by the overgrowth. Heavenly rays of sunlight sliced through the high branches. Apparently we’d risen above the marine layer. The road narrowed and I kept the Jeep wagon in low gear; we were still climbing.

  “Your ears pop yet?” Kimberley said.

  “They just did.” I was amazed at the transformation. We’d driven no more than three or four miles, but it was as if we were somewhere high in the Sierras.

  “I always know we’re close when they pop.”

  Without warning, a shiny black sedan swung into view just ahead, blasting me onto the dirt shoulder with its horn. I caught a brief glimpse of the driver as the car shot by, strafing my wagon with loose pebbles. Kimberley wheeled around, watching the car disappear through a plume of white dust. We idled there, my wagon half off the road, a fresh coat of dirt settling onto the hood.

  “It was them,” she said. “I saw her, I saw Angie.”

  “So did I.”

  “And that prick with the beret, I saw him too.” She took off her tiny sunglasses. “But I didn’t see anyone in the backseat.” Still studying the last, empty curve in the road behind us. “Did you?”

  I wasn’t going to lie to her. “No.”

  She leaned forward, those long white fingers coming up to shield her eyes. “We’re too late, aren’t we?” Verging on some kind of a breakdown. “This is all my fault.”