Sideways (20 page)

“Oh, man, what is
up
with you?” Jack tilted his large frame toward me and whispered urgently, “This guy’s a cracker. I’m not getting in a car with him. What do you want to go off with him for?”

I whispered back, “Imagine seeing a wild boar right now. How many chances do you get, huh?”

“How many chances do I
want
is what you mean. You’re already sideways, man.”

“I’ve had a few glasses.”

“A
few
glasses?” Jack laughed, slapping me on the back. “A
few
glasses, my bar tab!”

I turned to the boar hunter. “Okay, Bradley, we’re going to follow you out to wherever your hunting grounds are and watch you in action.”

“All right,” Brad said, perking up. He pounded his meaty fist on the bar. “Fucking A, let’s get some pig.”

I turned to Jack, laughing at Brad’s gusto and the idea of doing something completely different. “It’s going to be fun.”

A dismayed Jack could see that I was dead serious. He dug his fingers into my shoulder, his face drained of mirth. “What?”

“You don’t have to come.”

“I need the car.”

“
I’m
taking the car.”

He scrunched up his face. “You’re in no condition to operate light machinery, Homes.”

“Oh, and you are?”

“Fuck,” Jack said, acquiescing. “Fuck.”

We settled up and went back to the room. Jack continued to attempt to talk me out of the boar hunt while we fumbled around for provisions.

“It ain’t on the itinerary,” Jack kept saying.

“Oh, and your Terra is?” I said, rummaging for my new Byron sweatshirt.

Outside in the parking lot, Brad blasted his horn a few times, urging us along.

“This is nuts,” Jack said, turning circles in the room while I rooted around in the boxes for a couple of bottles of wine. Then the phone jangled, unnerving both of us, Jack visibly more than me.

“All right,” Jack said, suddenly galvanized. “Let’s get the fuck out of here. We’ll go watch this cracker shoot a boar, then we’ll go over to Terra’s and party.”

“That’s the spirit.”

We tumbled outside laden down with coats and wine. Brad’s headlights were shining directly at us, momentarily blinding us. I waved, and Brad gunned his engine and turned around. We hopped into the 4Runner, Jack commandeering the wheel, groaning and complaining, and followed Brad out of the parking lot. We swung onto 246 trailing the boar hunter in his black Ford pickup.

“Do you have any idea where he’s going?” Jack said.

“I think he mentioned something about Jalama Beach.” I extracted the cork on the first Pinot, filled two plastic cups, and handed one to Jack.

“Is this my Byron?” Jack asked.

“What do you care? You can’t tell the fucking difference.”

He turned to me in the dim light of the cab. “Hey. I may not have your palate, but I can tell a good Pinot when I taste one.” He turned his attention back to the road. “Fuck, this guy drives fast.”

Out in front of us, Brad’s taillights were shrinking in the distance. There were practically no cars on the road so

“Come on, let’s blow this guy off,” Jack urged.

“I want to see if he’s for real,” I protested.

“He’s
obviously
for real. See those guns behind his head?”

“No, I mean when a boar comes charging, if he’s going to be able to bring it down.”

“Where are we going to be, huh?”

“We’ll be parked on a hill, drinking our wine, spectating, like at a bullfight. Olé!” I raised my arm, but forgot that it was the one holding the wine, and splashed some Byron over my jeans. “Oops. There goes ten dollars’ worth.”

“Jesus, Miles, get a grip. Come on,” Jack whined, as I refreshed my cup. “Let’s turn back. This is ridiculous.”

“No! I want to see this guy in action. He’s a true original. A local legend.”

“A local legend.” Jack shook his head reproachfully but kept driving. He knew I got nutty like this from time to time and his response was always to ride it out, get me drunk enough, and then make sure I made it home.

Just before Lompoc, we hung a left on Highway 1 and headed south. The road wound through a gorge in the Santa Ynez Mountains, whose towering slopes closed off most of the star-riddled sky. I rolled down the window and inhaled the fragrant night air, invigorated by its cool freshness and the impending adventure.

The boar hunter angled off at Jalama Road and we followed. Soon we were on a tortuous, unlit, single-lane road

“Fuck, man,” Jack said, as he nearly lost it on a dipping ninety-degree curve. “This guy’s a
fucking
maniac!”

“Yi
ha!
” I shouted, banging my fist on the dash in excitement. “Yi ha!”

“Give me that bottle,” Jack demanded, now that we were off the main highway. I handed him the bottle. He tilted his head back and guzzled it. He passed it back and then bore down on Brad’s retreating taillights in disgruntled pursuit, destination unknown.

Ten miles or so of careening on the relentlessly twisting road, we rounded yet another bend, but this time Brad’s taillights were no longer visible.

“Where the fuck did he go?” Jack yelled, slowing the 4Runner and searching the road ahead of us. “This is nuts. Let’s go back. I’m hungry. I want to hold that girl in my arms in front of a warm fire.”

“There he is!” I pointed. Jack craned his neck in the direction I was indicating. Above us, as if scaling the sky, we saw the headlights of Brad’s pickup coiling upward, perforating the darkness. “Take this turnoff,” I insisted.

“What?” Jack said, stopping the car. We idled in the middle of the desolate road.

“Here. Turn off here.” I gestured to an unpaved turnoff we could barely make out.

Jack looked skeptical, but he was eager to get this stupid adventure over with, so he fired off another execration
via regia
to Hell.

Branches whipped at the windows as we jostled along the rutted switchback. We had lost sight of Brad, but there was only one direction to move in and that’s where we were bound, barreling along in a murky tunnel of flora. Jack was angry and I felt a little crazy; the combination did not bode well.

We climbed the mountain in the lower gears of the four-wheel drive and eventually arrived at a large clearing. Brad’s truck was parked in full view of us, but there was no immediate sign of him. We clambered out of the 4Runner to figure out exactly where we were. I had the second bottle of Pinot out and was holding it between my legs to uncork it. The cork popped loudly in the silence and I chugged lustily. Jack—The Switch already flipped to the ON position in both of us—kept reaching for the bottle, and I kept pulling it away.

“Where the fuck is he?” Jack yelled. He swept his eyes over the terrain.

“He’s out stalking the boar.”

“Out stalking the boar,” Jack mocked. “Give me that bottle.”

I finally gave him the bottle and he took a healthy quaff. As our eyes adjusted to the moonlight it became clear that we were on a crown in the middle of a vast network of canyons. The air smelled of sage and rotting kelp and though we couldn’t see the ocean, we could hear its sighing waves. Above us, the night sky chandeliered us with stars. Everything felt free and wild.

“Where—the—fuck—is—he?” Jack said, getting royally pissed off. “Hey, cracker!” Jack shouted. “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

We wandered away from our car and scouted the knoll. Unseen animals migrated noisily about in the undergrowth, unnerving us. There was still no sign of Brad. Jack and I looked at each other and I shrugged and Jack made a face that displayed his utter disgust with our impromptu adventure.

He was about to say something about heading back to Buellton when, suddenly, the night echoed with a sharp report, like someone clapping his hands next to a live microphone. Almost simultaneously, the ground shuddered in front of our feet and a tiny cloud of dust puffed up in our faces. We were drunk and didn’t figure out what had happened right away.

“What the fuck?” Jack shouted, crouching and tensing.

A few seconds later, a second shot cracked like lightning in the cold silence. This one crashed through the branches of a nearby oak.

“Jesus Christ, he’s shooting at us!” Jack cried, a quavering fear in his voice.

“He’s shooting boar!” I let out a war whoop.

A third shot rang out, splintering the canyon silence.

“Bullshit,” Jack said, breaking into a trot. “He’s shooting at us!”

We took off running. Nettles tore at our clothes as we scrambled off the crown and fled tangle-footed down a narrow, twisting trail. A fourth shot sounded, echoing through the canyon, and we ran faster, hurtling headlong into the uncharted night.

“Over here,” I heard Jack hiss a moment later. “
Over here!
”

I clambered awkwardly down a steep embankment and found Jack hunched behind a thick cluster of scrub oak, clinging to a branch and furiously motioning me toward him. We were both winded and gulping air to get our breath, and I could feel my heart thumping against my chest, as if trying to escape.

“He’s a true original,” Jack ridiculed me. “A true original serial killer, you fucking asshole.”

“He probably mistook us for boar.”

“Do we look like wild boar?” Jack fumed. “Jesus.” He slapped his forehead so hard I thought he was going to knock himself over backward.

We both shifted anxiously in place, wondering what to do. This predicament was virgin territory. “Maybe I’ll just go up there and have a kind word with him,” I reasoned, still not a hundred percent convinced that Brad was shooting at us. I made a move to start back up the slope, but Jack yanked me back by my belt.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he reproved me.

“Go figure this out. The guy isn’t trying to kill us. That’s absurd.”

“How the fuck do you know?”

“He’s not trying to shoot us,” I insisted.

“Fuck, I could be sitting by a fire, eating a great meal right about now, and instead here I am, out with you, trapped in some fucking canyon with some cracker taking potshots at me,” he spat.

“I’m going to figure this out. Give me that bottle.” I grabbed the bottle from Jack, who surrendered it reluctantly, and took a swig to fortify myself. I passed the bottle back and started off.

“Where’re you going?” Jack demanded, not budging from the shelter of the copse we had been hiding in.

“Have a talk with him,” I said. Then, before Jack could restrain me, I scrambled on all fours up the slope. I thrashed my way through the undergrowth until I came to the rim of the clearing. I peered over but didn’t see anyone. No movement, nothing, just our two cars. I leveraged myself onto the crown and straightened, wobbling, to my feet. The cricket-song silence was suddenly eerie, but I’d had enough to drink to quash most of my apprehensions. Later, Jack would claim I had had a death wish.

I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Hey, Brad,” I shouted out in the direction of the cars. “What’s happening? We heard some shots.” I listened for a response. The chirring of crickets punctuated my entreaties. “Hey, Bradley! Yo, what’s up, dude?”

A few seconds elapsed and then another shot like a bullwhip cracking shattered the silence. I broad-jumped back into the brush and scrabbled off the crown, sliding and tumbling on my ass back to where Jack was cowering in terror.

“Are you all right?” Jack asked solicitously. “Did he wing you?”

“I don’t think so. But I probably wouldn’t feel it if he did,” I said, picking myself up off the dirt.

“Jesus,” Jack said. “I don’t think I’ve ever had anybody shoot at me before.”

I brandished a finger in his face. “Stick with me and you’ll experience things you’ve never experienced before.”

“Stick with you and I’m going to be six feet under fertilizing daffodils is more like it.”

I had a thought. “Did you bring your cell phone?”

“Why, do you want to call your agent?” Jack said, sticking his face into mine. “No, I don’t have my fucking cell!”

“I thought you always carried it with you.”

“I wasn’t anticipating an extended stay in the
fucking bushes
while some creep you met at a bar used us for target practice.” He stood threateningly over me like he was about to smack me.

“You never know when you’re going to need it,” I bantered, hoping to lessen the severity of the situation.

“Who’re you going to call anyway?” Jack argued. “I couldn’t even begin to direct the cops to where we are. Besides, they get one whiff of us and we’re down for the count. So, don’t get on my case for not having my cell.”

“All right. All right. Let’s figure this out.”

Jack made an X with his arms across his chest and shivered, both because of the cold and the extent to which he feared for his life. “What’ve you got in mind? Suicide? The guy’s got us pinned down here, for Christ’s sake.”

“We could hike to the ocean and wait him out till morning,” I proposed.

“Brilliant. Which way is the ocean, Magellan?”

“I’m not sure. We’ll follow the sound of the surf.”

“Do I look like Hiawatha, Homes?”

“‘By the shores of Gitche Gumee …’”

“Shut up,” Jack hissed. “Shut up. The guy can hear us.”

I giggled in spite of my fear, then clamped a hand over my mouth.

“Get a grip on your mug, man.” Jack cuffed me on the side of the head, not hard enough to really hurt. “This is
serious
shit here.”

“Do you think there’s still time to make the eleven o’clock news?” I slapped my hand back over my mouth before I gave away our encampment.

“It ain’t funny,” Jack said. “We’ve got to figure something out.”

“I’ve got it,” I said, throwing both arms into the air triumphantly.

“What?” Jack barked.

“Let’s go back up there, get down on all fours, start snorting like wild boars, and he’ll mistake us for humans.”

Jack sighed. “You’re gone, brother.
Way
gone.” He turned away.

“No, wait a minute. Wait a minute,” I said, suddenly calm. “Let’s just go up there and check this out. The guy’s got to come out eventually.”

Jack wheeled on me. “Let me explain something to you, Homes. He’s armed. We’re not.
Comprende
?”