Willow confirmed for me that the goons usually hung out at a dive bar by the beach.  I woke at six-thirty, and now fully conscious enough to know how much my head actually hurt.  I took a couple of aspirin, put on a pot of coffee, and thought about dinner.  I’d gotten a call from my old buddy, Seth, while I was napping, but I’d turned off the ringer. He said we needed to talk, but that we needed to talk in person. He said he’d be in the office in the morning after ten. 

By nine, I was fueled up on turkey burgers and salad, showered, more or less recovered from the night before, and ready to go. Gray looked up at me from the couch as I grabbed my jacket, but I ignored him. The bar I was going to was on the north side of Newport, just a few doors up from the seawall.  I didn’t know if I would see my two visitors from the night before, but I expected to see at least a few of these “good Christians.” And I knew I would know them when I saw them.

I walked over in the chilly evening air, my light jacket on to cover my revolver holstered over a hoodie.  The cold, moist, lightly salted air seemed to dance a bit more than usual as I walked north on Bacon, like maybe the spirits in the cliffs were laughing at me, or maybe it was just nerves.  Not wanting to look too obvious, I wandered over to the pier and watched the water roll in for a bit, grabbed a quick espresso at Jungle Java, then made my way to the bar.  As I expected, some eyes made me as soon as I entered the door.  Two guys at a table in the corner looked up, and the one closest to the back walked over and said something to one of the guys playing pool.  None of the were from the Neighborhood Watch Committee visit to my door, and I took this as a bad sign.  There might be lots of them. Pretending not to notice, I walked over to a stool in the middle of the mostly empty bar and ordered a beer. The place was familiar to me.  Every bar up and down the block was, though I hadn’t been in this one for years.  Bars were not Sara’s place.  She said she didn’t like being stared at.  She never really was.  I felt that she was beautiful, but no one else really did, and as I took a swallow of my beer and looked at the two young things at the end of the bar, I wondered if everybody else was right.  I recognized the two girls.  They were part of the Hippie contingent, probably going to State, or one of the JC’s, out slumming for a couple of drinks on a week night.  I looked longer than I normally would have and when one of the girls caught my eye and smiled, I smiled back and gave a little wave.

“Hi,” I said.

They returned with two hi’s, and the conversation went lazily and easily from there to pleasantries and talk of the town, as you might imagine it would, and just as I had predicted, before I would have even had time to paddle out for a third wave, two guys from the back of the bar had made their way over to either side of me and were flexing and looking tough, or attempting to.  I purposely pretended not to notice, talking up the ladies with old surfer and lifeguard stories, when finally, at a lull in the conversation, but not much of one, the guy on my left leaned over the edge of the bar a bit and looked past me toward the ladies.

“How you girls doin?” he said, smiling, but not attractively.

“This guy’s not bothering you, is he?” said the other one, between the girls and me to my left.

Neither guy was especially horrible looking, but they had an ugly hardness about them, like you could break a brick across their face, and they wouldn’t notice.  They were both probably ten years younger than me, and a bit overdressed for this particular bar in this particular beach town on a Wednesday.  The guy nearest to me was tall and lanky, a couple of inches taller than me with short-cropped black hair and a cold, stupid, glint in his eyes.  The other guy was shorter and stockier, maybe an inch shorter than me, dark haired with a mustache and looked like he made a passing attempt at lifting weights.  I wasn’t impressed, though the slight tug of my shoulder holster over my hoodie was reassuring.

“Oh no,” said one of the girls, “Not at all.”

“He’s not bothering us at all,” added the other.

“Did it look like he was?” added the first, a bit puzzled, but her friend jabbed her. 

“We’re just checkin,” said the mustached guy.

“That’s right,” said the other.  “Just checkin.”

“We like to keep an eye on this community,” said the first.

“That’s right, we do,” went on the taller one, with a dramatic pause that fell to the floor like an overturned drink trickling off the table.  “Can we buy you girls a drink? You look like you could be models.”

At this point, my flesh was crawling. I mean, I’ve seen swarms of jellyfish coming toward me and been more comfortable, and I could see it was having the same effect on the women.  They lied and said they were meeting some friends and had to go, but thanks, some other time, and were gone in less than five.  More like two. Two flat.  When they were gone, I ordered a second pint, took a long swallow from it and counted an even sixty, then turned to face my bar mates.

“I’m Jay,” I said putting my hand out, knowing they wouldn’t take it. They stared back hard at me, and I tried to seem like I might be a bit impressed.

“We keep an eye on things in this community,” said the one nearest me, while the other played absentmindedly with his beer, apparently not concerned with the fact that his friend was repeating what he’d said just two minutes before.

“Yeah,” I said, cutting in as he appeared to be opening his mouth to say something again and afraid that I might faint from boredom.  “I’ve been meaning to talk to someone about something...I’ve seen …going on…”

“Oh yeah,” said the tall guy, looking up sideways from his beer, as the mustached guy closest to me tried to process the fact that I hadn’t been raptly interested in what he’d been about to say.  “What’s that?”

“Well,” I said, “You see,” being careful not to go too fast for my newly found drinking buddies, “I can’t believe it, but it seems that there are people practicing...doing...witchcraft…in Ocean Beach. Did you guys…know about this?”

At this, my two new friends screwed up their faces, each in turn, then exchanged a look and the one closest to me decided to speak, but the tall one behind him beat him to it, like the faster of two snails to the center of a flower pot.

“Actually,” he said, drawing the word out much longer than needed, “we did.”

“That’s right,” broke in the closer one, finding himself. “So how did you find out…about this?”

“Well,” I said, trying to measure my words carefully and not use any big ones, “There’s this woman who hired me for… a job, and it seems that she is into…witchcraft.”  I said this last word with a calculated amount of fear and horror, which apparently was effective.  We had a nice talk after that, labored and boring though it was.  I got quoted some Bible verse, wrongly, I’m pretty sure, and lots of talk of protecting the community.  They wanted me to turn Hope “over to them.”  I told them that I’d gotten in close with her, earned her trust, and that maybe I should “stay on her.”  Fortunately, they agreed without much resistance -- at least for the moment.  I knew I was paddling out for a very dangerous wave, and if things didn’t break just right, neither Hope nor I might live to paddle out again.  At this point, the second one got up and went and said something to one of the guys at the pool table, an ugly short guy with a shaved head and tattoos on his forearms.  In two minutes he was back.

“We’re gonna keep an eye on you, and to see if we should let you join us yet. But if you ever do,” he said, leering at his buddy, then back at me, “it’ll be something special.”  At this his buddy chuckled ugly and added, “Yeah, special,” and they exchanged a glance and chuckled some more in a way that made my skin crawl like I just wanted to peel it off and start over.  I finished off my second pint and said, getting up, “I’ll be in touch.”  At this the first guy got a stern look on his face and said, “Christ is Lord.”  And the one behind him repeated, “Christ is Lord.”  Thanking God for that last long gulp of beer, I repeated their oath, half-expecting to be struck down by a lightning bolt from heaven, and walked out.  I made sure not to look back at the guys at the pool table, though I knew they were looking at me.  As I exited the bar into the chill evening air and headed toward the seawall and then south toward home, I said, though I couldn’t believe it, “Blessed Be,” and as I did, I looked down and saw that my fists were clenched. The tide was out, so I made my way along the cliffs in the light of a fading quarter moon.  Patting my revolver resting safely in its shoulder holster, I silently called out to the spirits that I’d believed in childhood lived in those cliffs, and when an errant wave crashed against the rocks and a lone gull called, it seemed as if they were calling back to me, with a warning.

Chapter 8 coming 4/1!!