The Triggerman Dance

"I got Playboy too. You wouldn't believe this one where the girl's in a hammock eating an apple. It's Miss December."

They walked through the brush and into trees growing close together near the center of the island. They went into the cave. It was a big cave, with a mouth wide enough to drive a car through, thought John. As soon as he went in he could hear the warm water gushing up from the earth and echoing off the walls and he remembered how easy it was to sleep with that sound next to you. Carlos lit a lantern.

John set his things on the damp rock cave bottom. He walked to the deepest part and looked down between the rocks at the water coming up. It looked black. It was warm when he touched it and had a soft, silky feel. Carlos showed him the fold out of the girl in the hammock eating the apple. The seam between the pages was soft and broken in places. John felt that sweet little tickle in his stomach, the same feeling he got once ii an elevator with his mother and used to get all the time in the station wagon when his dad drove fast. Stan didn't drive fast enough to make it feel that way.

He and Carlos walked through the woods to the other side of the island. There was a small beach of dark sand just beyond a thick stand of California lilac. They crouched down in the bushes and looked toward the big mission house.

"Don't let 'em see us," said Carlos. "I'm not supposed to be here."

John peered over the bush tops like a spy. He could feel the dampness of the ground seeping into the knees of his jeans. He felt a sudden affection for Carlos.

Then he saw some people walking along the lake on the far shore. At first they weren't there, and then they were. It was man and a woman and a small boy. When they reached the point opposite him, John could see that the man and woman were about his parents' age. The boy trailed a little behind his mother holding her hand. The woman trailed a little behind the mar holding his hand. The man had the same stout bearing and erect posture as his father. The woman had bright blond hair and she wore a loose white dress from which her stomach protruded roundly.

"That's the owner's son," said Carlos. "He's in the FBI an he's got a gun. Mrs. Holt looks like Miss March when she isn't pregnant. They come here sometimes, but not very much."

John watched the man and his wife and son walk along the shore. The boy got tired and the man picked him up and carried him.

"That's a good family," said John.

"How do you know?"

"They're like mine."

"What makes yours good?"

John looked at Carlos, then back to the shore. "Just is. We do lots of things together."

"Then why'd you run away?"

"They took a trip for awhile. They're coming back. I'll see if Dad might want to live here someday."

"The rancho isn't yours."

"He could buy it. He bought an airplane."

Back at the cave they sat just outside and ate the cookies and fruit cocktail John had packed. While Carlos looked at his magazines, John lay down in the late afternoon warmth and looked at the sun through his eyelids.

For a brief moment he felt that the sun out there was his sun. He felt that the cool earth under him was his earth. He felt self-sufficient, contained and welcome. He was certain he belonged here in a way he no longer belonged in the old house, or in Stan and Dorrie's. It was the best feeling he knew, this attachment to a place, because a place never went away. But the feeling was over quickly, like the one in his stomach when he looked at Carlos's picture.

Look down on that county, son. It's yours. That's a nice thought, isn't it?

It's not really mine, dad.

No, it is. It belongs to whoever puts down his roots there. Your mother and I have. You will. . .

"I want to live here someday," he said out loud. "Right here on this island. Right in this cave."

"It's not yours."

"It belongs to whoever puts down roots here, Carlos."

"Here's the one that Mrs. Holt looks like."

Carlos brought over the magazine. John steadied the fold-out page in the afternoon breeze. It was Miss March and she was up on her knees, on a bed, wearing a tattered old workshirt that cast her middle in shadow but parted conveniently around her big tan breasts. She had a pretty face and she was smiling. She looked like John's mother, and his stomach dropped and tickled sweetly. She looked like the woman on the shore, too.

That's just exactly what a lady is supposed to look like, he thought. Just like the one that's going to belong to me someday.

CHAPTER 26