by Rex Bolt
That didn’t work apparently. “What’s your name, anyway?” she said.
“I told you. They call me PK sometimes, for short.”
“Your full name.”
“Pike Gillette . . . listen, I better be going.”
This Margie woman looked different suddenly. Kind of stunned. Something told Pike it wasn’t the I better be going part that got her.
“Why?” he said. “You do know me then?”
“Yes,” she said, continuing pretty darn unconvincingly, “you play football, right?”
“I did, yeah.”
She was recovering a bit, and she started to ramble all over the place.
“We watched you . . . I mean we didn’t physically go to your games . . . since we follow Bellemeade mostly, when we do go to one . . . but we kept an eye on your progress . . . you must be quite proud . . . And how silly of me not to have made that connection earlier, I mean there can’t be that many Pikes around, can there. ”
“Do you know my parents?” Pike said. He was starting to fear the worst.
“Hmm?”
“Alice and Bill? . . . Gillette?”
“That doesn’t ring a bell, no,” she said.
Pike said, “When you say that doesn’t ring a bell . . . The whole thing, or part of it, or what?”
“I’m sorry, I’m not following you.”
“Do you know my Dad?” he said.
Her answer was just a little quieter. “I don’t believe I do. Should I?”
“I’m not sure,” he said.
It hung there for a minute.
Pike said, “Just one more question, if you don’t mind. Where’s Jeff?”
“I’d like you to leave now,” Margie said.
***
Pike didn’t feel real good driving home. He felt like he’d been in a fight and had gotten sucker-punched, and then stomped on for good measure.
He remembered the library had late hours on Tuesday nights. His gut feeling was Frankie didn’t work those hours, but when he made it back into town he took a chance and stopped in.
There was another librarian at Frankie’s desk, an older woman, quite rotund, with an old-fashioned hair-do and wearing a lot of rouge.
“Is there something I can help you with,” she said, no warmth to it at all, but like a normal librarian.
Pike said, “I don’t suppose . . . Ms. Frankie is still around. Is she?” He was embarrassed that he didn’t even know her last name, or if she had ever told him, he forgot it.
“No,” the new woman said. “Would there be anything else?”
Pike said there wouldn’t be and left.
Now what?
You had one more day of school, one last paper he had to finish off tonight by midnight and submit online, which he wasn’t worried about, and then Boom, was he really going to Arizona?
There was suddenly a lot to digest.
Going back to the house right now wasn’t high up on his priorities, and he cruised around for a while, and then remembered a winter pre-season basketball tournament they kept talking up at school so he went over there and took a seat in the stands behind one of the baskets, which kept him out of the student section where he didn’t particularly feel like running into anyone tonight.
It looked like there were eight schools entered, and it was a double-elimination type deal, and Pike didn’t really care who the schools were, but the game going on at the moment between two of them wasn’t bad.
There was one kid out there who was definitely the star, and the other team tried to double and triple-team him when he got the ball, but he still scored pretty much at will. The kid was college material, maybe even big-time college material, who knows, and no one else on the court looked to be.
Pike couldn’t help thinking some more about his own situation, since he was college material too, at least in some shape or form. He was still getting the recruiting letters, though the ones from the better schools all had the same kind of automated vibe to them.
He was curious what might shake out at Utah State, whether any of the guys on the bus and in the dorm on his recruiting trip would end up there. He still couldn’t remember the guy’s name who he got into the mix with in that bar episode, the quarterback from Texas, but the guy was at least colorful Pike decided, and it might fun to track him down and catch up.
He observed the student section for a while. A bunch of smiling kids at center court with plenty of school spirit, which he himself never had, and kind of regretted.
An abbreviated version of the football band was sprinkled into the mix, playing short riffs to try to energize everyone during time outs. It was kind of like a party, school getting out tomorrow for a couple weeks, no one worrying about much of anything.
And you had to envy them . . .
But for Pike there was a reality, possibly several of them actually, and plenty of business to take care of, and it was what it was.
He stuck out the first game . . . the team with the good kid actually lost, as it became clear that none of his teammates were any good and he couldn’t quite do it all himself . . . and two more teams started warming up and Pike had about had enough and was getting ready to leave when his phone rang and it was Frankie.
He couldn’t hear her against the noise in the gym so he asked if he could call her right back, and he hustled outside. It was chilly and you smell people’s fireplace smoke, and Pike figured why not head over the field where it was wide open and quiet and plenty private, and he stood on the familiar emblem on the 50-yard line and called Frankie back, and as he did he noticed the letter H that he ripped down from what seemed like ages ago still hadn’t been replaced.
He thought about the timeline for just a moment, and remembered it being the last Saturday in November that he went back a day and ripped it down, and what were we now . . . December 2oth?
Holy Moly, that was only like a month ago? Unbelievable.
At any rate . . . Frankie was back on the line, coming in nice and clear this time.
“Boy,” Pike said, “You’re beyond the call of duty, I didn’t require you to tag me.”
“Not a problem,” Frankie said. “Mrs. Engleworth said a young man came in looking quite concerned, and she thought I should know.”
“Well in that case, if you do have a minute,” Pike said, “there’s one more thing now . . . Actually two more, but forget the second one.”
“And that first thing is . . . ?”
“The guy up the Bay Area, who I thought I just straightened out . . . I may not have, is what I’m discovering.”
“This was the fellow who had the accident?”
“Yeah. The guy you helped me with . . . What it is now, I think, he may not have had the accident, but something else may have happened . . . Which is kind of what I feared, that I was taking a chance dealing with it that simple.”
“I see. Do you have any notion what may have happened, and when?”
“No. The bad part, the reason I stopped by your desk I guess, is I can’t find the guy now.”
“Okay, I shall do my best,” Frankie said. “This was Jeffrey Geraghty, correct?”
“Yeah. Sorry to put more on your plate.” Pike knew she was checking something else for him too, and couldn’t place what it was for a just a second, and then remembered of course she was looking into whether it was on the record at all that the Milburns may have changed their name.
Jeez, how could you get mixed up on that?
Frankie said, “Well goodnight then . . . Unless your second issue is of significance.”
Pike figured on some level he wanted to blurt it out, so he did. “Not a dealbreaker, so please don’t waste any time thinking about it or anything, on my behalf . . .”
“But?”
“Okay. I mentioned my suspicions about my dad . . . he was seeing someone . . . She leaves, she’s out of the picture, but now I think I filled in the blanks . . . Or they got filled in for me a couple hours ago.”
“I’m sorry Pike.”
“All right, so you know where I’m going with it then . . . This is the way it’s been working, not just with my dad, but period, when I try to change things . . . For example you’ll run into someone random, and you think it’s out of the blue, but you find out of all the houses in town they could be visiting, that they kind of chose your key one.”
“I’m with you,” Frankie said. “I may have mentioned that I believe our old friend Julian expressed similar non-coincidental engagements.”
“So there you have it . . . What else is on tap for you the next couple weeks? You do anything special for Christmas, typically?”
“Just myself and Mom,” Frankie said. “We tend to keep it basic.”
“No outside adventures then?” Which was none of his business obviously, but he couldn’t help flashing on the two couples getting out of that Mercedes.
“Not particularly, I’m quite the homebody,” she said.
Chapter 20
Pike sprung it on his parents Thursday morning that he was going to Arizona. That seemed like the best way, don’t give them time to think about it and over-react.
His mom and dad were in the kitchen and his dad was running late, and his mom was hustling up Bo and Jackie because their school still had a half-day today, which was ridiculous, but it meant they’d all be out of here in a minute.
His mom normally did her routine at the fitness gym after she dropped them off, so if all went well, Pike would be on the road without having to deal with any collateral damage.
All he told his parents was, “I’m heading down south for a few days. There’s a kid I met at football recruiting who lives down there.” His parents seemed to listen, were okay with the general concept, and being preoccupied neither one asked any follow-up questions, much less seemed to realize that with today being the 22nd, ‘a few days’ meant he’d be gone for Christmas.
Not too much of what he told them was a lie, technically. Then after the few days was up, Pike would let them know that he was alive and well, and incidentally, would be extending his trip a bit.
It was around 9:30 and he had the truck packed up, which meant basically just a big duffel bag strapped down in back, and he’d checked the tires and the oil and was topping off the coolant when Hannamaker comes rolling up.
“Well now, look what the cat dragged in,” Pike said. “Early enough for you . . . or what?”
It did seem a little early to be practicing some drums, and it crossed Pike’s mind, given Jack’s recent track record, that he might be here to socialize with someone in The Box, though that seemed unlikely as well, first thing on a Thursday morning.
Jack stood there and rubbed his lower lip for a minute. “I thought I might come with you,” he said.
“Say what?”
“That is, if you have room . . . Unless you were planning to, like, meditate on the open road or something, and you didn’t want any company.”
One thing Pike for sure was not going to do was meditate, God knows he had enough of that, and with more to come most likely, which he really didn’t want to think about . . . but this was quite a twist, and frankly now that he’d convinced himself to go, he was kind of looking forward to hitting the open road on his own.
He said, “Well, what would you do, exactly? I mean I have someone I have to see, maybe a couple people . . . wouldn’t you just kinda be bored off your ass?”
“Probably,” Jack said. “The alternative though, my place during the holidays, it’s not always the smoothest.”
Pike could relate to this of course, and he felt a little bad for Jack, which he shouldn’t have, but he did, remembering when they picked up the drum set how the place had a dysfunctional feel to it, and with the step-brothers piled into the same little bedroom with him.
“In that case, it’d be good to have some company,” Pike lied, “if you really are serious.”
Jack appeared relieved, and genuinely happy. “Damn, dog,” he said, “if I ever bad-mouth you again, just smack me.” And he gave Pike a kind of a pat-on-the-back hug.
“That’s not funny.”
“What, the man-hug . . . or the bad-mouthing you part?”
“None of it,” Pike said. “But since I’m stuck with you, the sooner you throw your stuff in, the sooner we can beat it out of here and get on the gol-darn highway.”
“Which means stopping for something to eat,” Jack said.
“Yeah, well . . . I’m thinking Brayton, you got that truck stop, that’s around 20 miles. Think that’ll work?”
“Might be a little far,” Jack said.
“I know,” Pike said.
***
A couple hours into it, they were approaching Bakersfield.
Pike said, “Okay now, we got two options here. We can jump on 40, head to Phoenix that way, avoid all the LA traffic . . . or . . . we stay south on 5, get into some of the LA nonsense, though maybe not all of it if we’re lucky, and then veer off to Palm Springs.”
“What’s in Palm Springs?” Jack said.
“This person. It sort of occurred to me that was an option, but I wasn’t all that interested in seeing them, so I’ve been mostly dismissing the idea.”
“Them?”
“Her . . . Not what you’re thinking. This is a schoolteacher from Pocatello, Idaho.”
Jack was smiling, rolling it around. “Damn Gillette, you’re pretty slick . . . working a lot of angles, behind the scenes.”
“Okay, knock it off. The issue on the table, and we got about 5 miles to decide . . . which way?”
“I’ve never been to Palm Springs,” Jack said.
“Fine.”
“But what was the problem, before?”
“I don’t know. I’m kind of mad at this person. It’s a long story. Maybe with two of us there, it won’t get as serious.”
“What are you mad at her about?”
“Between you and me? . . . She killed a couple guys, and I’m pretty sure she’s going to jail this time.”
Jack reacted for a second like he’d received a shock from a 220 electric outlet, his head and arms jerking around, and Pike was glad he was doing the driving at the moment because otherwise the truck might have veered into the other lane.
Jack said, “I don’t know why . . . but the way you said it, matter of fact-like, I believe you’re actually serious.”
“I am.”
“Ho-ly Crap . . .”
“Okay don’t have a conniption fit,” Pike said. “This gal, she tends to gravitate toward the stalker types . . . I’m not kidding, not far off from what you got on TV and in the movies.”
Jack was still adjusting to Pike laying the first thing on him. “Wow,” he said. “You mean . . . so there’s like . . . built-in violence or something?”
“I don’t really get it. I stopped trying to figure it out, how you’d be attracted to someone like that. The woman seems reasonable, otherwise. You’ll see.”
“But . . . get outa here . . . she really wasted the dudes?”
“She did. The first one was self-defense it sounded like, and they cleared her. The second, a scumbag was hounding her, same type deal.”
“Except it may not have been self-defense this time.”
“Right. She’s doing some kind of house arrest at the moment. Trapped in Palm Springs.”
“Jeez Louise . . . She shot ‘em, or what?”
“Nah, it wasn’t like that. She knows some martial arts, I guess . . . and she’s very strong. Like, un-naturally strong.”
The open road was soothing, you tended to relax, and all the BS that was piling up from different directions didn’t seem quite as urgent right now, it was like it was pushed back a couple layers.
Pike was very tempted to tell Jack his secret. Maybe not all of it, no need to get into the time travel business probably, but it would sure be nice to tell a friend what happened in the Bellemead game that night . . . especially since Jack was on the very same field at the time.
And as unlikely at it
would have seemed, considering their past history, Hannamaker was becoming his friend. And Pike had come to grips with the fact that he didn’t have too many of those, that for whatever reason he could rub people the wrong way, especially kids his age, and if he looked in the mirror this may be why he angled toward the Frankies and Mitches, and he supposed the Danis of the world too.
You could tell Jack, get the whole shebang off your chest, and while you’re at it tell him about Dani as well, she most likely wouldn’t care, especially at the moment, given her circumstances.
Jack would be skeptical at first, and then he’d maybe wrestle with it, and then you’d have to do something physical to prove your point, and you would have opened up his world and now you’d have an ally who understands you.
All good . . . but of course you couldn’t tell Jack. Look what happened with Cathy, not just the her-breaking-up-with-him part, but the altering of her life in a sense, the turning her upside as far as the laws of the world. Luckily one of the re-sets straightened that out, but still . . . And look at the final outcome, she has to end up with Foxe.
So Pike kept his mouth shut and left it out there that Dani was real strong and a martial artist too, which Pike was pretty sure she wasn’t but that helped explain her doing a couple guys without using a weapon . . . though the details of the one guy ending up in the wall might raise a question for Jack, so no need to include those.
But of course Jack asked right away, “Wait a second . . . she knocked off two guys with her hands? How big is she?”
Pike said, “Not that big, but don’t worry about it . . . and do me a favor, if we do see this person, which is not a lock, since she doesn’t know anything about us showing up . . . don’t be asking her questions like that. Just chalk it up as an adrenaline thing.”
“A couple of adrenaline things, it sounds like,” Jack said. “But okay, I got ya. I think.”
***
They rode in silence for a while. Pike figured it was more just the hum of the highway conditioning you to think about stuff, than it was the Dani revelations, though that part was hanging there too, obviously.
