A Thousand Steps

39

It’s been six years since Matt has seen his father, minus the four days when Bruce took the kids on day trips for four consecutive summers to Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, the Alligator Farm, Disneyland again, racking up thousands of truck miles only to vanish back into his world for another year.

“Good to see you, Dad.”

“Thanks for keeping a window cracked for me. I don’t deserve it.”

They meet in a brief, stiff hug.

“Food and drink on the table, son. We have much to discuss.”

He returns from the kitchen with two mason jars and they take bar stools across the spool from each other. The main room light fixture hangs directly above, throwing a warm incandescent light on them.

Bruce pushes a white Husky Boy bag across the table, then an empty mason jar.

“Pour some bourbon if you’d like.”

“I’ve never tried it.”

“You still like fries over onion rings?”

“Right, Dad.”

Bruce pours some bourbon, lifts his mason jar to Matt, then sips.

“Son, I came here to find Jazz. What has happened to her here is absolutely predictable and unacceptable. I will not let my daughter become a victim of these times and this place. And let her become a symbol of all that has gone wrong in our republic.”

“No,” says Matt. “We can’t.”

“She’s been consorting with the scum of the earth. We’re going to hose that scum into the sea until we find her.”

Bruce Anthony sips his bourbon. Matt senses the hardness in him that has always been there. Hardness, and the conviction that he is right. Matt feels the anger coming off his father just in the way he moves the liquor to his mouth. It can get to be a roar, he thinks, the anger. Both the hardness and the anger seem stronger now, or at least more obvious. He wants to know what his father has been doing for the last six years.

Matt pours a finger of the Colonel Givens, feels the sharp reach of fumes as he brings the mason jar to his nose. Wow. Sets it down.

“Based on what I know, she’s somewhere here in Laguna,” says Bruce. “It sounds like we’re up against at least three experienced individuals — the men you saw abduct her that night. Also, we have Jordan Cavore, Rene DeWalt, and Mahajad Om to consider, as possible vectors between Jazz and Bonnie Stratmeyer. If those connections hold, then we’re dealing with murderers.”

“How do you know what Jazz was doing, and Bonnie?”

“I still have friends in the sheriff’s department. I’ve been in touch with Darnell and McAdam. Good people.”

“Furlong?”

“Less so.”

Matt has long assumed that his father knew of Furlong’s rebuffed advances on his mother, but he’s never directly asked and isn’t about to. Furlong versus Father is nothing Matt wants to witness.

Bruce sips from his mason jar, eyes locked on Matt’s across the spool table. His father’s eyes are gray, set deep under hard dark brows. His hair is wavy and blond, like Matt’s. It’s surprisingly long now, much longer than Matt has ever seen it, almost to his shoulders. The hippies are winning him over, Matt thinks.

But not completely. Bruce’s sideburns are long, wide and razor-straight at the bottom. His mustache has the Earp droop, Wyatt Earp being one of his heroes. The legendary lawman/gunfighter/gambler had actually lived not far from here, in San Diego, in his later years. Matt remembers his parents taking the family to the site of Earp’s San Diego brothel downtown for Sunday brunch. Bruce and Julie had had cocktails and laughed and the food was great and Matt liked all the photos of the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson and the hard-faced ladies of the house. But the drive back to Laguna — parents up front in the Country Squire, Matt and Jasmine behind them, Kyle commanding the entire rear section — erupted in a brief but heated mom-and-dad screaming match. The radio got turned way up and Matt remembers little that was said, but he remembers Julie’s bared teeth point-blank to Bruce’s ear, and Bruce, ramrod straight in the driver’s seat, both hands on the wheel, guiding the great station wagon north, slapping Julie on the cheek with his open hand. The crack. The radio-filled silence between Encinitas and home.

Now, eleven years later, looking at his father across the table, Matt repeats Bruce’s favorite Wyatt Earp saying.

“Fast is fine, but accuracy is final.”

Bruce smiles. “We’ll get to that in a minute.”

They eat the Husky Boy double cheeseburgers, Matt the fries, Dad the onion rings. Chocolate shakes. Matt sniffs the bourbon again. Bruce sips twice and pours another. He’s wearing a white Western shirt with snap buttons, tucked in, sleeves rolled up. Jeans and boots. Sitting across the round spool table with the bourbon before him and the light directly overhead, he reminds Matt of a saloon gambler.

“What have you been doing all these years for work, Dad?”

“Oh, that. Well, as you know, I left this cutesy place for the sheriff’s department in Clay County, Texas. Which was somewhat on account of lovely Sharon in payroll having family there. You never met Sharon. Just as well, we didn’t get on. Clay County and I didn’t either, so I worked the Odessa oil-patch boom-to-bust, then proceeded to the Tulsa PD. Talk about a law-and-order city. I had me a sweetie named Betsy but she turned out to be not so sweet after all. Then El Paso PD. They had me buying heroin undercover from Mexican poppy growers. That was one helluva scene.”

Matt notes again the accent that has worked its way into his father’s speech. He can’t tell one accent from another but he likes them. They’re subtle and invite you to listen. And not just how they sound, but the phrases, too. Like “on account of” and “didn’t get on,” and “had me a sweetie.”

“After Tulsa came Abilene, Kansas, for skip tracing, which some people call bounty hunting. Michelle. I tried. Then to San Antonio with some old Air Force friends on the PD. Annie, a Lipan Apache. Great gal and a bit wild. Then there was Kansas City, Dodge City, Fort Worth. I liked the look of Tombstone but couldn’t find work. I went anywhere from my outlaw books when I was a kid. Anywhere I liked the sound of. Weird, kinda, for a full-grown man to wander around like that. My hope was always to find work in the genuine West, and a woman to make a life with after Julie. Somewhere I could say my piece, carry my piece, and be good to good people. Away from cute, fairy-tale places like this. Away from phonies.”

Matt feels very strange right now, talking to a man he has barely known “after Julie.” A cop in Tulsa? A bounty hunter in Abilene? Mexican heroin?

It’s like a deputy/gunman has ridden into his life on some dusty trail from history.

Matt’s got a million questions. “What’s your work right now?”

Bruce smiles, sips. “I’m in-between. A little money in the wallet. I don’t intend to budge from here until we find Jasmine. I rented your old Third Street place from that Pedley guy. You’re welcome there. He told me you’d been living in the garage.”

“That bedroom was never big enough for Kyle and me. He’ll be home in twenty-five days.”

“That makes me very happy.”

“He’s really worried, short like he is.”

Bruce nods in silence. A moment between soldiers is how Matt reads it.

“I like what you told me on the phone about your knock-and-talks for Jasmine,” Bruce says. “But it’s too slow. So, this is what we’ll do. We’re going to skip all the houses with kid stuff in the front yards or porches. That means trikes, bikes, skates, skateboards, surfboards, Hula-Hoops, jump ropes, toy trucks, and horses — anything that signifies a family. And we’re going to skip the old people, college students, and young couples, too. Just tell them we got the wrong address and skedaddle.”

“That’s half the houses here.”

“Then we’ve made up some lost time already.”

“I think we should knock another hour in the evenings, too,” says Matt. “We’ve been stopping just after sunset.”

“Absolutely. Tell me about the ‘we’ part of this.”

He’s happy to: Laurel Kalina, fourth-grade crush at El Morro, now in the Gauguin at the Pageant of the Masters, enrolled in a college writing program, really pretty and smart, dinner just last night with her family.

Bruce listens with a poker face that turns into a wry smile.

“Sounds like a terrific girl. Sex yet?”

“No, sir. Second base last night.”

Bruce considers. There’s a stony cut to his features and he doesn’t blink much.

“Clear this table, son. You have an important decision to make.”