“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.
“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.”
“Fair enough.” I shook his hand.
“You take care, now.”
Just then Hank Williams, Jr., roared out of the juke and Ken began to yell, from across the bar, “Bocephus! Boceeeephus!” He was pointing at me and smiling and with one hand keeping the cap on his head as he bucked like a rodeo clown on the red vinyl stool. I weaved recklessly across the smoky bar, past Flattop and his send-off crew (his uncle or father appeared to be holding {o bn the young man upright now at the bar), and made it over to Billy. Ken was off his stool and at my side by the time I reached Billy and the bearman.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
Billy tried to focus one eye. A block of his blond hair had fallen over the other. “Had enough?”
“Yeah.”
“One more stop, though.”
“Where?”
“Place called Rock Point.”
Ken let out a small whoop and I thought I saw the bearman break a tobacco-stained smile. I handed Billy some bills and he put those together with some of his own and left them all in a leafy heap on the bar. Wanda flicked her chin at him and then at me by way of thanks. Hank Williams, Jr., was still pumping out the bar-band jam as the four of us proceeded to fall out the front door. When I turned around for one final glance at the joint, Russel and Hendricks were standing in the entranceway to the kitchen. They were talking to each other, but they were looking dead straight at me.
The four of us crashed like a wave into Billy’s Maxima and headed north on 254. I handed a tape I had lifted from the Spot over the seat to the bearman and had him slip it into the deck. Steve Earle’s “I’m the Other Kind” immediately boomed out of the rear-mounted speakers like some Wagnerian, biker-bar anthem. The bearman turned up the volume and clumsily moved his head to the beat. I watched it bob from behind like a hairy, floating melon. Ken sang the romantic wind-road-and-bike chorus (in between screaming praise about Earle’s band, the Dukes-he called them the “Dee-yukes”) and passed beers all around.
At 257 Billy turned sharply right, spit gravel, then recovered his course onto a crudely paved road that soon narrowed to one lane. We passed a shack of a general store-an old man in a down coat sat in a lighted telephone booth and waved as we drove by-and some screened bungalows set far back on properties bulkheading the Wicomico. The road ahead, veined now with deep fissures and cracks, seemed to narrow even further. And then, without warning of any kind, the road simply ended.
We parked the car in front of a steel guardrail serving as a barrier. To the right, on a raised plot of dirt and naked turf, stood a post office the size of a tollbooth. Billy and the bearman got out of the Maxima, and Maybelle scrambled over my legs to follow. Ken was next out, and then me. I felt the temperature drop sharply as my face met the winter wind that was coming out of the southeast and off the river.
Billy cut the engine and the lights; the music still played. I trailed the group-Maybelle had trotted off into a wooded area to the right-and climbed over the barrier, on which was posted a NO TRESPASSING notice peppered with buckshot. What was left of the concrete road continued, buckled and in pieces, on a downward slope to the river. The swells of the Wicomico shimmered from the light of the moon and moved diagonally toward the shore in rough cadence with the wind. South beyond the point the Potomac merged with the Wicomico in cold, deep current. I zipped my jacket to the collar.
Ken and the bearman stopped at the waterline; one of Ken’s fists dug into his jean pocket, the other gripping the neck of the Bud. The bearman appeared to be rolling a joint-he was carefully twisting it now, his muttonchop hands working the papers very closely to his small eyes-and Billy, with the cheesecloth bladder that had plagued him since childhood, was pissing like a filly near a grove of sycamores on the edge of the gravelly beach. I drew the pint from my jacket and knocked back an inch of bourbon.
Down on the beach I joined Billy and passed him the bottle. He had his taste and then we both followed it with beer. The wind was lifting Billy’s hair off his scalp and blowing it about his face. Music came from the road and through the trees-Steve Earle had yielded now to Neil Young on the tape. The feedback and grunge of twin Les Pauls and Young’s wailing vocals pierced the rush of the wind.