A gaunt old man in a rattle-bang Ford pickup stopped at high noon and picked me up. He wore banker’s clothes and a peaked cap that said Oakland Raiders.
“Only going as far as Lake Mendocino, friend,” he said.
“Is that past Isaiah?”
“Next door. I can drop you off before I make my turn. Get in.” He looked back, waiting for a hole in the traffic, and when one came along, he jumped into it with surprising acceleration.
“Don’t know this country, oh?”
“Don’t know it at an. This is the ilrst time for me.”
Hunting work?”
“Well, I might have to do some to keep going. But mostly I’m trying to get some kind of trace of my little girl. I think she’s out here somewhere.”
‘`There’s a lot of young girls out here somewhere. There was a time in the sixties when they’d come drifting up from San Francisco. Communes and farming and all. What they call alternative life” styles. Potheads, mosey. No offense. I’m not saying your girl is one of those. She missing long?”
“Six years.”
“Hear anything from her in all that time?”
“One time, and that was four years ago. She’ll be
The Green Ripper twenty now. Peg and me, we married young. Kathy was sixteen when we got those cards from her. They came over a month or so. They never gave an address we could write back to. They were mailed in San Francisco, and then the very last one was from Ukiah. It said she was joining up with some kind of church and we should forget about her forever. You know, when you’ve got just the one kid, you don’t forget like that. It took the heart out of Peg. She died a while back, and after I sold off a little piece of land and the trailer and an old skiff, I thought I might as well use the money trying to find her.”
“Friend, this state is chock-ful1 of religions. You can find any kind you are looking for. There’s some that’ll take you to Guyana and teach you to raise oranges and how to kill yourself quick. They start in the north and go all the way down to the Mexican border, and to my way of thinning, the further south they go, the crazier they get. People are hunting around for something to believe in these days. All the stuff people used to believe in has kind of let them down hard. You’d have to know the name of the religion first, I’d say.”
“I learned it by heart. The Church of the Apollo rypha.”
“I’ve lived pretty close to Ukiah for ten years, and I can’t say I ever heard of it. But I’ve seen some strange ones drifting around the streets there, selling flowers and candy and wearing white robes.”
“I can ask around there, I guess. Big place?”
“No. I’d guess maybe twelve thousand. What kind of work you do?”
“I fish commercial. Net work, mostly. Mullets usually. When they’re hard to find, it pays good. When they’re easy, it isn’t hardly worthwhile going out, you get such small money. What kind of business are you in?”
“Investments.”
“Oh.” From the way he said it, I knew that was all I was going to learn. He moved the pickup right along, tailgating the people who wouldn’t move over into the slow lane.
“Where would be a good place to ask in Ukiah?”
“Maybe the police. Police usually }now about the crazies and where they live.”
He dropped me off at the Uldah ramp. The wind felt cool and fresh. I found one gas station that wouldn’t let me use the rest room, and another one that would. I shaved off the stubble and put on my wire glasses and looked into the mirror. In the hard fluorescence, my deepwater tan looked yellowish Deep grooves bracketed my mouth. The gold glasses did not give me a professorial look. I looked like a desert rat with bad eyes.
He was an officer of the law. Not too long ago he had been a fat, florid, hearty man. The balloon was deflating. He had made a couple of new holes in his belt. His color was bad. His chops sagged. He