“The road ends at Rock Point,” Billy said out of nowhere, stating the obvious and pointing his beer bottle toward the river with uncharacteristic dramatic punctuation. “I used to come here all the time, that first summer when me and April got together. She didn’t understand the attraction-to her it was the place where she and her friends came to smoke pot and drink and screw when they were growing up-but there was something to it for me. Something about the road running right into the fucking sea.”
“What about now?”
“It went to seed,” he said, adding, with a bitter edge, “like everything else in this life.” Billy drank his beer and wiped the backwash on his jacket sleeve. “Rubbers and beer cans, and gooks fishing for spot. That’s all this place is now.”
I nodded in the direction of our new friends. “You know those guys?” The bearman had lit the joint and was stooping low as he shotgunned Ken, the Cubs hat now set far back on the little man’s head. Ken had cupped his hands around the bearman’s face to get it all, and the cloud of smoke emanating from their union was great and wide. Ken’s head appeared to be on fire.
“I’ve seen ’em around the island before. Barflies.” Billy looked at them and chuckled. “That’s just what April’d be doing right now, if she hadn’t met me. Gettin’ high and hangin’ out.”
“There’s more to this place than that. After all, she keeps coming back.”
“Most people don’t have enough sense to stay away from home, even after they outgrow it.” Billy finished his beer. “Come on, man, let’s get out of here.”
“What about those guys?”
“They’ll want to stay down here,” he said. “Come on.”
Billy and I walked back up the buckled fun house road and climbed over the barrier. Neil Young was shouting “Come On Baby Let’s Go Downtown,” backed by the primal electric rage of Crazy Horse; the wind kicked at our backs. I looked back to see if the bearman and Ken were following, but Billy was right-they had drifted. The bearman was doing a slow shuffle on the beach, and Ken had leaped out into the river to a slab of concrete that the tide had not yet covered. He was dancing some sort of whacked jig, and he appeared to be singi {d ta sng toward the sky.
We climbed into the Maxima, Maybelle appearing suddenly from the trees and taking her place in the backseat. Billy lowered the music and cranked up the heat, rolling the windows up as he did it. I looked back through the rear window. The music no longer reached his ears, but Ken continued to dance out on the concrete slab in the river. The bearman stood with his hands buried in his pockets, a stoned stare focused up at the full December moon.
The gravel road to April Goodrich’s property was at an unmarked turnoff two miles back up 257. We followed it straight into a wooded area, and then it turned to hard dirt as it continued out into several acres of plowed field. The road ran through a field bordered by woods on three sides and on the fourth by a wide, still creek. In the center of the field stood a hickory tree, under which a small trailer was mounted on concrete. It had a poured concrete patio in front and a corrugated Plexiglas eave hanging over it. The road from there went back through the field and down to a dock that ran out and into the creek. We passed the trailer and drove down to where the road ended at an open boathouse that stood near the first planks of the dock.
Billy cut the engine and the lights. I could hear Maybelle’s tail excitedly thumping the backseat, but beyond that there was just the deep silence that exists at night and only in the country.
“What now?”
Billy said, “Let’s get out and feel the water. Finish the whiskey.”
We exited the Maxima. Maybelle bounded out before us and ran out onto the dock. I waited for Billy to lead the way and then stepped out onto the vertical planks that bridged the severely eroded bank to the dock. Beneath my feet the wood was white with the excrement of gulls. The wind had abated here, though the air was damp and bitter.
The dock ended in the head of a T. I sat on a piling and buried my hands in my jacket pockets. Maybelle lay on her stomach to my right. Billy climbed down an aluminum stepladder that had been halved and lashed with thick rope to the pilings on the eastern corner. He was out of sight now, but I heard his hand splashing in the freezing water.
“Ice cold,” his voice said. “Not frozen yet, though.”
“I’m not comin’ in for your ass if you fall in.”
Billy climbed back up the ladder and said, “Sure, you would. If there’s one thing I know, that’s it.” Billy rubbed his hand dry on his jeans and had a seat next to me. He leaned back on one elbow and pointed at my jacket. “Let’s have a drink and a couple of those smokes.”
“Sure.”
I brought the pint and the Camels out from my jacket and rustled the pack in his direction. Billy drew one from the deck and put it to his lips. I fired his up, put one in my mouth, and lit it off the same match. The tobacco hit my lungs and I kept it there. I watched the silver exhale drift slowly in the motionless air like a ghost and spread out over the creek.
Billy took the Beam off the dock, uncap {e deekped it, and had a drink. He sighed comfortably and stretched like a waking animal. “Good night,” he said.
Across the creek one prefab rambler stood in a clearing in the woods. Mounted atop a pole in front of the rambler was a spotlight that illuminated the property. A horse stood beneath the spotlight inside a small grassy area framed by a split-rail fence. The horse’s breath, backlit and haloed, poured from its nostrils and widened into two even streams.
Some time passed. Billy pitched his cigarette out over the dock and into the creek. I followed the orange trail and listened to the quick, dull finality of the fire hitting water. Then I had a last drag of my cigarette and threw what was left of it in the direction of his.
“Your head’s rolling,” Billy said. “Let’s go on up to the trailer.”
I looked around at the dock. “Where’s the dog?”
“You’ve been noddin’. I was waiting for that smoke to burn down into your fingers-would have let it too. But you woke up.” Billy stood and reached for my hand. “Maybelle ran off. She’ll be all right.”
I stood with Billy’s help. “We ought to find her. She’ll freeze.”
“Not cold enough. Come on, let’s turn in.”
We walked off the dock and onto the dirt road that cut through the field. Some clouds had drifted across the sky; the darkness seemed denser now. At the trailer Billy jiggled a key in the lock and opened the door. I followed him into the narrow space and closed the door behind me. Billy found a candle in a drawer and forced it into the neck of an empty bottle of Rolling Rock. He struck a match and lit the candle.
The trailer appeared smaller lighted. An old double-barreled shotgun rested in the hooks of a rack mounted above a narrow kitchenette. I thought I heard something move beneath one of two bunks that end-capped the trailer’s interior, and raised an eyebrow in Billy’s direction.
Billy smiled and shook his head. “If there’s snakes in here, they’re sleeping. Field mice, if anything.”
“Oh.”
“Here.” Billy tossed me a rolled sleeping bag and pointed to the bunk where I had heard the noise. I ignored his direction and spread the bag out on the other bunk. Then I stripped naked and zipped myself in. I balled up shivering, waiting for the ache of cold to subside. The objects on the kitchenette and then the kitchenette itself began to move and float. I fell into an open-mouthed sleep.
I awoke some time later. A dull throb had entered my temple, and my mouth was glutinous and dry. There was a bit of natural light in the cabin now; dawn had begun encroaching on the night. I looked over at Billy.
He was up on one elbow, half out of his sleeping bag, smoking one of my cigarettes and staring into my eyes. His eyes reflected the flame of the candle that still burned in the green bottle. The lower right portion of his face was in shadow. We kept each other’s gaze for a while-then I drifted back to sleep. When I opened my eyes, Billy was {es, face w still staring. Now there was a cool smile across his smooth face. He dragged off the cigarette and thumb-flicked some ash onto a piece of foil set on the Formica counter that held the candle.