Tapping the Source Read Online Free PDF

time he had seen it that way; and from that angle, the betrayal was somehow not so huge.

5

     
    It was hot and sticky when he opened his eyes. He sat up in bed and immediately began to think of reasons for putting off his decision to buy a board. Then he took a look around the room. The place was a mess. His clothes stank. It was like the grotesque holiday he had imagined was taking shape around him, and the new fear swept back over him, blotting out everything else.
    •   •   •
    He was not sure how much a used board would cost. He slipped four twenties into his pocket and left the room.
    It was a hot day, smell of summer in the air, sky clear, ocean flat and blue. In the distance he could make out the white cliffs of the island someone told him was twenty-six miles away. The wind was light, slightly offshore, standing up the waves, which were small and clean, like jewels in the sunlight.
    The town was full of surf shops. Surf shops, thrift stores, and beer bars, in fact, seemed the principal enterprises of downtown Huntington Beach. He hung around the windows of half a dozen shops before picking one and going inside. The shop was quiet. The walls were covered with various kinds of surfing memorabilia: old wooden surfboards, trophies, photographs. There was a kid out front wiping down the new boards with a rag. Apart from the kid and Ike, the place seemed deserted. The kid ignored him and finally he drifted back outside and into another shop closer to the highway.
    The second shop was filled with the same kind of music that he heard around the hotel: a hard, frantic sort of sound that was so different from anything he had ever heard in the desert. There were no memorabilia in this shop. The walls were covered with posters of punk bands. There was a pale blue board covered with small red swastikas hanging at the back of the shop. Near the front was a counter. There were a couple of young girls in very small bathing suits sitting up on the glass top and a couple of boys sitting behind it. They all looked at Ike as he walked in, but no one said anything. They all looked alike to Ike: sunburned noses, tanned bodies, sun-streaked hair. He went to the back of the shop and began looking over the used boards. Pretty soon one of the kids he had seen behind the counter walked up to him.
    “Lookin’ for a board?” the kid asked.
    “Something I can learn on,” Ike told him.
    The kid nodded. He was wearing a thin string of white shells around his neck. He turned and headed down the rack, stopped and pulled out a board, laid it on the floor. Ike followed.
    The kid knelt beside the board, tilted it up on one edge. “I can make you a good deal on this one.”
    Ike looked at the board. The board looked like it had once been white, but was now a kind of yellow. It was long and thin, pointed at both ends. The kid stood up. “How do you like it?”
    Ike knelt beside the board as the kid had done and tried to pretend he knew what he was looking for. Around him the frantic beat of the music filled the shop. He was aware of one of the girls dancing near the plate glass, her small tight ass wiggling beneath a bikini bottom. “This would be good to learn on?”
    “Sure, man. This is a hot stick. And I can make you a good deal on it. You got cash?”
    Ike nodded.
    “Fifty bucks,” the kid said. “It’s yours.”
    Ike ran his fingers along the side of the board. On the deck there was a small decal: a silhouette of a wave within a circle—the wave’s crest turning to flame—and beneath it, the words Tapping the Source . Ike looked up at the kid. The kid looked fairly bored with it all. He was staring back toward the front of the shop, watching the girl. “Fifty bucks,” he said again without looking at Ike. “You won’t find a better deal than that.”
    It was the cheapest board Ike had yet seen. “All right,” he said, “I’ll take it.”
    “All right.” The kid picked up the board and headed for the counter.
    Ike