Normally it was about a forty-five-minute drive from the city to what was now my place. For it was just beginning to sink in for me that with Big Luke having owned the property free and clear, and me being his only child, it probably belonged to me now. Still, I knew better than to just waltz up to the front door. Instead I cut off the county road half a mile before our driveway and circled around, coming in from the north, via a neighboring parcel known as Murphy’s farm, despite the fact that there hadn’t been a Murphy there, or a farm, for nobody knew how long.
Murphy’s house had collapsed long before my time, but the barn still stood. When I was younger, I’d spent hours swinging from the rope swing attached to the rafter over the hayloft. Grab the rope, jump off, swing out into thin air, try not to smash into the side of the barn on the return swing. What a rush!
Leaving the van hidden in the barn, I walked the rest of the way home, through the woods. It was nearly dark when I reached the northern edge of the property. I wanted to cry when I saw what the cops had done to the place. My bus was torn up like it had been hit by a tornado. My clothes and belongings were scattered all over the place, they’d unraveled my cassettes and taken my priceless vinyl records out of their sleeves and tossed them around like Frisbees, and slit my mattress and all my pillows. What a fucking mess!
Down the hill things were even worse. The shed and the trailer were completely trashed, the trailer jacked off its moorings and the ground dug up underneath it, and the yard looked as if they’d gone over it with a rototiller or something. They’d dug up the fire circle, too, but at least Teddy was gone, trunk and all. Which made sense. It was only my subconscious that had half-expected to find her still there, rotting away along with the turkey vultures I’d shot.
I returned to my bus feeling kind of raw and sad. I restuffed my mattress as best I could, dragged it up to the roof, and spread out my sleeping bag on top of it. Dinner was a warm can of Mountain Dew and a package of cheese-and-peanut-butter crackers from a vending machine at a highway rest stop, dessert was a spliff-size joint, and on my last night as a free man, the night sky framed by graceful pine boughs was my bedroom ceiling.
4
I woke in the middle of the night, chilled and wet. The sleeping bag was damp and the flashlight batteries were dead. By moonlight, I climbed down from the roof and cleared a space at the front of the bus. I dragged the mattress inside, unzipped the sleeping bag, and covered myself with the half that was still dry.
After a few hits off the roach from my bedtime joint, I had no trouble falling asleep. When I awoke again it was daylight. I was lying on my right side with my head pillowed on my arm. Opening my eyes, I saw a skinny guy with fading reddish brown hair grinning down at me from the bus driver’s seat.
“He lives, he wakes-’tis Death is dead, not he!”
I started to sit up, but my right arm, the one I was lying on, jerked me back down. The guy, it seemed, had handcuffed my wrist to the railing above the front stairwell. “Sorry about that,” he said. “You were snoring away so peacefully I didn’t have the heart to wake you.” He stuck out his hand like he expected me to shake it. “Skip Epstein.”
I rattled my handcuff. Epstein, who was wearing shorts and an old green T-shirt, chuckled at himself, then changed hands and we shook lefty.
“You a cop?” I asked him.
“Bounty hunter.” I could tell from the way he said it how much he liked saying it. “Like Steve McQueen in
I knew who Steve McQueen was from
Epstein, though, didn’t look nearly as tough and mean as the bounty hunters Big Luke had described. “How much is my grandfather paying you?” I asked him.
“Enough.”
“I’ll give you twice as much to let me go.”
Epstein shook his head slowly, like he really regretted having to turn me down, then reached for the gun in his belt holster, and racked the slide to jack a round into the chamber.
I thought he was going to shoot me then and there, but he only used the gun to cover me while he removed the handcuffs so I could take a piss and get dressed. After recuffing my hands behind my back, Epstein marched me down the hill. That’s when I realized he was a cripple, with a withered left leg, a built-up shoe, and a head that bobbed up and down like a yo-yo with every step.
Epstein had parked his car, a black Camry, at the bottom of the driveway, in the blazing sun. By the time we reached it, the interior was so hot you could have baked bread on the dashboard, then toasted it on the vinyl upholstery. I got in first. It wasn’t so bad for me because I was wearing jeans, but Epstein, in his cheap cotton shorts, would have seared his ass good if I hadn’t warned him. I wasn’t going to at first, but I guess I felt kind of sorry for the guy.
Once the air-conditioning kicked in, we had a pretty nice ride, considering the circumstances. We bopped along shooting the breeze, admiring the scenery, stopping at fast-food drive-thrus when we were hungry. You know, just two buddies cruising the Golden State, except that one of us was wearing handcuffs.
Epstein never did say where he was taking me. All he told me was that I was blind-ass lucky that he had found me before the cops did. When I asked him
We crossed over Pacheco Pass late in the afternoon, continued north and west on 152, then north on Highway 1. When it became obvious that we were heading toward Santa Cruz, I found myself indulging in a pitiful fantasy. I imagined that Fred and Evelyn had hired Epstein to bring me back to live with them. Internally, I made a shitload of promises. I’d get clean and stay clean, find a way to get along with my grandfather, work hard in school, make them glad they’d changed their minds.
After which world peace would be declared and everybody would shit ice cream in their favorite flavor. Because instead of heading into town when we reached the infamous Highway 1 fishhook, Epstein swung around to Graham Hill Road, and on into the growing darkness we drove, onward and upward until the Santa Cruz Mountains closed around us, swallowing me up like a haunted forest in a fairy tale.
5
You know how people are always joking about the men in the white coats? Guess what-sometimes it’s not a joke. Somewhere around Bonny Doon, Epstein pulled up to a pair of high wrought-iron gates set into a stone wall that stretched off into the deep, dark woods in either direction as far as the eye could see. MEADOWS ROAD, read the sign affixed to the wall.
Next to the gate was a square stone cottage. A uniformed guard leaned out the window, Epstein gave him our names, and the gates swung open. We followed a winding driveway uphill to an ivy-covered three-story brick building with green awnings and a white portico.
From the front it looked like a very nice retirement home, the kind rich folks wouldn’t feel bad about sending their aged parents to. But we didn’t go in through the front, we drove around to the back of the building, where the windows had security grilles an anorexic hamster couldn’t have crawled through, except on the third floor, where they were bricked up entirely.
