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  “Oh, thanks,” Hippie said, taking the gloves.

  Maude looked chagrined. She had offered him the gloves in jest. “Umm, I have to make my delivery. Where should I drop you off?”

  Ignoring the question, Hippie asked, “Oh, what are you delivering?” This was the first time he had asked. What she delivered was her business, not his, but curiosity had finally edged its way forward.

  “Plants, logs, glass, and minerals,” she replied.

  “But there are plenty of those here.”

  “Not the type I have.”

  This piqued his curiosity, an occurrence that rarely happened. “How so?”

  “Well, I sell petrified logs and precious minerals, amongst other stuff,” replied Maude. “And that’s all you need to know right now.”

  Were these items stolen? Or were they illegal in some other way, such as being produced in an unlawful factory or taken from a protected natural resource location? Were the minerals some sort of new trafficked drug on the market? Was Maude being paid a large sum of money to get these items into the wrong hands? Whatever the case, Hippie let it be.

  “Okay, drop me off at the ski boat rental place. I have to get my water sport on.” And with that, he forgot about the items in the back of the truck.

  “You really going?”

  “Damn straight, I am,” he replied, automatically entering Aspen mode as if he had just flicked a switch in himself. As a teen, before he became the hippy he was, Aspen had a phase wherein he tried all types of water sports, from Marco Polo to surfing, from water volleyball to synchronized swimming, from tubing to waterskiing. Aspen tried them all, and sometimes he still had a hankering to do one or more of them.

  They pulled up to the rental place. The first person he saw was a long-haired blonde, blue-eyed lad with a waterproof necklace around his neck, who was carrying a surfboard under his arm. The surfer was so stereotypical looking that he could see him “acting” in a lame-brained B movie, where the surfer saves the world and gets the girl.

  “Have a blast,” said Maude. “Be back around later. If you’re still here, maybe I’ll have some beef jerky for ya.”

  “Thank you. That would be great!” Hippie exclaimed as he departed the truck while waving goodbye.

  Aspen (no longer thinking himself to be Hippie till his sporting activities finished) didn’t go to the rental counter. Instead, he waited outside for someone to walk out. “Hey, dude,” said the surfer boy. “You ready for the water?”

  “You know that this is Lake Tahoe, not an ocean. I doubt you’ll be seeing many waves,” replied Aspen as politely as could be.

  “Dude, I know that. Just came back from the coast. Bringing the board to my truck and then will be renting out a boat with my buds.” He pointed to the group of people just exiting the rental place. “You with us?”

  And just like that, he joined their group.

  The boaters were a ragtag team. Aspen and the blonde surfer-dude, named Joe, were accompanied by a young cook who slaved over a pizza oven at night and was the captain of the rental boat by day; a long-haired thirty-something woman who looked much older due to being out in the California sun for most of her life; a pothead drifter; and a teenaged boy, who happened to be Joe’s younger brother. All of them welcomed Aspen as if he had always been one of the gang.

  As it turned out, the sun-soaked woman was an advanced water skier. “How is your technique?” she asked Aspen when they were out on the lake.

  “Don’t have any technique. I just go where the boat and the ripples lead me.” That was his way, whether he was sporting Aspen or fun-loving Hippie. He just went with the flow. He didn’t possess any formal training in anything. While he did graduate high school, had taken a few college classes, and had an acuity to learn, he never stayed at anything long enough to acquire an actual trade or talent, although he was good at most things.

  “Well, let’s see how you do it. Are you ready?” she asked with her gray eyes open wide. Had the sun drained all the color from her eyes?

  “I’m game,” he said. He was nearly always game.

  Before long, Aspen found himself on the skis, ready to rock. The drifter had decided to play an album from the band, Van Halen, which came out when Sammy Hagar was the lead singer. “Standing on Top of the World” blared from his small box. This pothead, for a fatty rested between the drifter’s fingers, probably hadn’t even heard of an iPod. Oddly, the others of the group never asked him for a hit.

  Standing on top of the skis, Aspen was ready. When the boat set off, Aspen was less ready. When the boat sped up, Aspen was ready for trouble. When the boat reached full speed, Aspen readied himself for a tumble.

  Before the tumble, however, a duck quacked into view. He skirted the mallard but lost his balance as the boat tugged forward. His skis flipped over, and for one solid second he flew through the air with only the tip of the skis touching the water, like Aquaman if he could fly. Aspen reached forward with his poles still in his hands, facing forward, and dived into the water. The skis slammed the surface of the water after he was completely underwater and then snapped off his feet. Meanwhile, he zipped to the lake floor, poles sticking into rock and slime. Aspen released the poles only after his momentum had reversed. He surfaced before having the inclination to start swimming.

  “That was epic,” said Joe when he saw him.

  “Totally rad,” added his brother.

  “Couldn’t have done that even if I were Aquaman,” the captain cheered.

  “Quite lucky you’re not hurt,” the sun-soaked woman said, telling it like it was.

  And the man with the joint stared into space, apparently missing the entire sequence.

  Treading water, Aspen spoke apologetically. “I’ll go swim down the equipment, don’t you worry,” he said to the woman. “I guess I need those lessons, huh?”

  “Damn straight,” said the woman. Until then, Aspen had thought he was the only one who still spoke that idiom.

  For the next fifteen minutes, Aspen retrieved the skis and poles, diving here and fro to find the poles and swimming with the trifling current until he finally gathered the skis. Neither had been damaged. The skis had come off his feet but had not snapped as he had originally thought. After a bit of doing, he was able to uncork the poles from the bottom of the lake.

  “That was fun! Got my heart rate up more than the actual waterskiing.”

  “You got to clean up your own mess, Aspen. That’s one of my rules of the boat,” the captain decreed.

  “He has many rules,” said Joe.

  “Many, many rules,” his brother added.

  “Too many rules,” said the sun-soaked woman.

  The drifter just stared at the sky.

  Aspen heard many of those rules during the next few hours while he was boating with them. Some made sense, such as rule number one: “Don’t fall off the boat, especially when sharks infest the waters or where sharp rocks can impale you.” Some made partial sense, such as rule number forty-two: “The sail is your friend, unless there’s wind at your mast in the rain.” And some were just inane, such as rule number eighty-three: “The soda bottles on my boat love me.”

  The woman of the boat gave Aspen some pointers on waterskiing, but he only went out on the skis one more time, skiing without incident until the boat came to a standstill. Even though he had learned about stopping from past lessons and from a few of the woman’s pointers, he still didn’t get it right. He skied into the boat and keeled over its side. He wasn’t injured, but the incident did prompt the captain’s rule number fifty-six: “Too much upheaval could lead to ruin.” Aspen thought this one made some kind of sense but seemed also to be inane. As the numbers got higher, the more ridiculous the rules seemed to get. Perhaps there was a reason for the captain to number them the way he did, but Aspen doubted it.

  ‘Are you having a good time?” Joe asked at one point near the end of the day.

  “I always do,” replied Aspen, but in truth he was beginning to mis
s his Hippie self. Aspen could only come out to play for so long. Not that he was schizophrenic, for he knew full well when he wanted to partake in Sporting Aspen activities. That’s why he had come waterskiing in the first place.

  “Time to dock,” the captain said, as if no one else knew what was happening. Even the smoking drifter seemed to notice that the boat was docking—in-between his empty gazes and his munching on M&Ms.

  Joe slapped Hippie’s shoulder (for Aspen had finished his fun). “Why don’t you come with us again one of these days? You’re a fun guy, and we welcome that.”

  Hippie was used to these invitations and always accepted them gratuitously. “Yes, we may meet again for boating or whatever comes our way.” And Hippie believed this because he did seem to run into the same people again and again, although it could be days, months, or years between visits.

  However, this visit with this particular group was about to come to an end, for as soon as they returned to the boat rental place, Maude pulled up in her truck. “We gotta be going,” Maude spoke hurriedly through the window and opened the passenger’s side door for him. Anxiety was apparent in her brutish face.

  He got in without much thought. If he had been thinking, he would have realized that he wasn’t involved in the trouble that Maude had likely gotten into, that he had no reason to go with her, and that he was hungry; Maude had no food, not even jerky, in the truck. And if he had stayed in Lake Tahoe longer, he could have avoided everything that was about to happen. But Hippie always seemed to find himself in interesting situations. So why should this be any different?

  Maude peeled out with Hippie in tow. Where they were going now, he couldn’t guess. He knew, however, that he’d be in Wyoming eventually.

  He always ended up there.

  Chapter 8

  Faulkner

  George Cramwell had not always been the standup guy he was today. As a mischievous youth, he had gone astray on a number of occasions. In elementary school, he had vandalized a mosque, not knowing that it was a Muslim place of worship. In the middle of the night, he and a couple of “friends” had broken a window to get in even though the front door was open. Then, he sprayed paint all over the floor. He had meant to paint a cute dog on a dare from one of those so-called friends, but his artistry lacked talent and the painting looked nothing like a cuddly dog. Instead of the whole thing being a cute joke as he had intended, the imam of the mosque had been offended because he thought the graffiti represented a symbol against Muslims, although George still did not know what the imam thought had been drawn. Of course, art or no art, offensive or not, what he did was still vandalism. There was a lot of hoopla about what had happened until no more acts against the mosque quieted things down. And he hadn’t got caught. While he didn’t vandalize the mosque again, his crime spree was just beginning.

  He was such an impressionable youth that he copied what his “friends” did, so one day he robbed a convenience store just for a few packs of gum, some Combos, and a crisp one-dollar bill. He did it for the thrill and from the insistence of the riffraff he hung out with. On many occasions, he did small acts of theft, from stealing a Walkman from his father’s friend’s house to taking fireworks from fellow kids.

  His vandalism didn’t stop either, and the need to do it again increased each time he didn’t get caught, but his luck finally ran out. When vandalizing the playground of his childhood elementary school for no other reason than because he felt like it, a custodian spotted him, so he ran. To escape, he jumped a fence, but his pants got caught on the wire coils at the top of the fence and ripped. His favorite pants had been ruined, and that marked him. Thus, because of this travesty with his pants, the impressionable sixteen-year-old had stopped his crime spree. In retrospect, however, what happened right after that was what truly changed his life forever. In his haste to escape, he had run the back trails and smashed right into a teen by the name of Aspen Mitchell, who he came to know later as Hippie.

  At first, George was startled by bumping into the unkempt young man, who was smoking something or other in the middle of the woods. George suspected marijuana, but the substance didn’t smell anything like it, and if it were some strange variance of it, it was a pleasant one. Upon closer inspection, George saw that the young man was not smoking at all. He was chewing on eucalyptus leaves.

  “You seem to have lost your way,” Hippie had told him.

  “I’m not sure I ever knew the way,” George replied, thinking about how his escape had led him to these woods.

  “Apropos,” replied Hippie. George had just run into him but was immediately impressed by the young man’s demeanor and atypical sophistication. Although he looked rugged, there was a sort of quality to him that made him both friendly and wise for his years.

  “What brought you here?” George asked.

  “Nature and tranquility. You should try it some time.” Hippie took another chew before spitting out a few of the eucalyptus leaves from his mouth. “Tranquility beats acting out any day of the week.” That’s all Hippie said on the subject, but George took it to heart nevertheless. The next time he thought about committing a petty act of graffiti, he found himself wandering into nature instead, and later, he took up paint and brush on canvas instead of on someone’s wall.

  “Why are you eating those leaves?”

  “Cures the cold, my friend,” but Hippie spit the rest of the eucalyptus leaves away. “Too much of it, though, can be poisonous,” he continued. “I think I’ve chewed just enough to feel its homeopathic effect. No sense in taking any chances with it when I’m feeling good.”

  George found himself wanting to discover more of what Hippie had to say. Eventually, he would find out that seeking Hippie’s advice was a common occurrence. There was just something about him, unexplainable but there nevertheless. “Where did you learn about these leaves?”

  “16 ½ Street,” Hippie replied as if he were saying, “Main Street,” but then writing the mixed number in the dirt.

  “Where’s that?” George asked.

  “California,” Hippie answered and then began to talk about his friend Faulkner.

  Thus, a dozen-plus years ago, George first found out about the street that would lead him to the man they were now visiting on Main Street in Secaucus, New Jersey.

  Now, when you first encountered someone on 16 ½ Street, that person would not be considered normal in society. Since George had only visited, he could still pass in society, but Faulkner had a lot more trouble with normalcy because he grew up on 16 ½ Street somewhere in a tiny town in Central Valley. At fifty-two years of age, living on 16 ½ Street for forty of them and in New Jersey for the other twelve, Faulkner believed that the world revolved around Joshua trees, Camaros, and the sun. For a person who lived in the two places he had, at least he cared about the sun, and therefore, the environment by association.

  Though his name would suggest otherwise, Faulkner wasn’t much into literary pursuits. As a matter of fact, he was not one to read much at all, for picture books seemed to be his limit. In this way, he fit in perfectly with Jersey culture.

  However, when George and his friends walked into his apartment, many copies of William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury were enshrined in his small cluttered apartment. So, it seemed that the person he was named after had influenced his life after all, but George still doubted that his friend had read the masterpiece. After all, the man also displayed a rather large Joshua tree in the middle of his living space with toy Camaros encircling it, like a new dimensional solar system that could only be seen in Jersey or the desert parts of California.

  “Welcome, my friend,” Faulkner greeted. “Long time no see. When did we meet last?”

  “Saw you in Jersey City once last year. You were selling things on the street and singing folk songs with your banjo.” George remembered that day with fondness. Not only had he heard him play a jamming rendition of “Foggy Mountain Breakdown,” he had also bought a cool Matchbox car from him, one he hadn’t seen sin
ce he was a kid.

  “Oh, yeah. Still play there on occasion, although people there no longer know good music when they hear it.” Maybe that was the case, but it didn’t help that Faulkner looked scruffier than ever with a half chopped-off beard and dirt on his nose. Oddly, however, he didn’t smell all that bad.

  Meanwhile, Bobarino switched off his cell phone. “Looks like we’re here for the night. A tow truck can’t get to the cab until the morn.”

  “Welcome to stay,” said Faulkner, always willing to lend a hand. “Be crowded. Most of you hafta sleep on the floor. My bed is big enough for two though,” and he gave a seemingly lewd look toward Maria.

  Maria stepped up, ready to sock him when Faulkner added, “George and Jade can take my bed. I’m sort of used to the floor anyway. Maria can take the couch.” George noticed Maria relax then, no longer sure what to think. Faulkner might seem lewd, but George remembered him as a more of a eunuch than a hound dog.

  “We’re no longer together,” Jade said quickly. “Not that you should have known that we were together in the first place.”

  “All right then. Just figure out the sleepin’ arrangements amongst yourselves. If you want anything to drink, there’s beer and water in the fridge.” Faulkner picked up a copy of The Sound and the Fury and began thumbing through it. It seemed that he had had enough of the current conversation.

  “You read the book?” George asked.

  “Yeah, a bunch a times. Only novel I ever read.”

  “I heard that book is kind of difficult to read.” George knew nothing about the book except that this was a common opinion of it.

  “Na, what do you mean? It’s only four chapters about brothers obsessing over this girl, Caddy.”

  “You know, Faulkner, that Caddy’s their sister,” chimed in Maria, who evidently knew more than George did.

  “Of course. You think I stupid or something,” Faulkner replied, speaking grammar wrongly. On purpose or not, George could not be sure. He did tend to talk with some bad grammar, but this one could have been intentional.