Reef Dance

by John Decure

  “You look like the invisible man out here, J!” Jackie shouted as he burst over the back of an inside closeout. He was paddling hard, head down and in perfect form, his strokes deep and clean, every movement swift and assured. The others took instant notice of him, as if his presence had charged the air with millions of ions. Several riders backed away to a more respectful distance as he clawed by me and took up a position ten feet beyond the edge of the pack.

  A sizeable peak loomed outside. “Yahaa!” Jackie cried as he paddled closer to the pier and into position. His cry had let the others know he’d marked his prey, and none of them dared make a move to challenge him. He stroked twice, found his feet beneath him, and swooped into the steepest section of the wave. His inside rail flashed with swordlike flourishes along the mirrored crest, fanning sheets of water far out the back of the bowling left wall. Loud, raucous whoops sang out from the gallery on the pier as the wave went hollow and Jackie’s form compressed into a tube stance. Another big cheer rained down as he burst free of the collapsing hook with speed to burn, buried a final, flying cutback just short of two frozen paddlers on the shoulder, then drifted casually over the back to begin paddling again.

  Another wave rolled through, but no one made a move and it peeled by unridden. The other surfers seemed temporarily paralyzed, as if a man-eating shark were basking in their midst.

  “You’re amping too much, Master J.,” Jackie said.

  “It’s a zoo out here,” I said. “I’m ready to paddle up the beach.”

  “No way,” he said. “Fun stuff. Just be cool, my man. One of the things I didn’t cover in our little chat about winning is that you can’t always do it all by your very own.”

  A clean left lifted in front of us.

  “So take advantage,” he said over his shoulder as we dropped to our decks and began to paddle.

  A guy in a red wetsuit vest who’d been hogging a lot of waves shot into view and dug hard in front of the building swell, but Jackie cut directly in front of him and sat up, blocking his path. “Go, J.!” he said loud enough for the entire pack to hear.

  The red-vested surfer sat up and splayed his legs out to keep from colliding with Jackie. “Hey, hey, hey!” he yelled, but he was already out of the action.

  I spun around, unchallenged by the others, and slid down the rushing peak. Banking back up the face, I climbed and dropped, my back tight and cupped against the wall, my rails connecting a series of momentum-building turns with the familiar rhythm of a favorite dance step as the falling sections ran down the sandbar and away from the pier. The wave held up beautifully, losing none of its shape as it raced to shore. When it finally reared and dumped in the shore-pound, I floated on its back and plunged over with the falling curtain as the whitewash bounced in a foot of water. Outside, Jackie powered into a head-high right and gouged his way toward the pier, scattering paddlers as he went.

  I dug hard through the rolling swells, greedy for another peak. The brilliance of the midday surface sheen temporarily blotted my vision. For the first time in many days, my mind unclenched. I had a sudden inspiration.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier, in the car,” I told him when he reached the sandbar and sat upright on his board beside me.

  “You have,” he said. “I see. Well hey, listen, I didn’t mean to piss you off by—”

  “No, it’s okay, man,” I said. “I’m all right with it. In fact, I agree with you Jack. I’ve gotten too used to losing.”

  He didn’t seem ready for this revelation. “You have.”

  I brushed the wet hair out of my eyes. “I need your help. I want you to work this case with me. The baby selling case. The one the TV people are interested in.”

  He smiled. “The big one?”

  “You owe me from the party,” I reminded him. I needed a commitment.

  “Yeah, but—”

  “No buts,” I said. “No big discussion. Enough said.”

  He nodded as if he was too tired to disagree. “Amen.”

  “I want to win this case, and, bizarro as it sounds, you’re gonna help me. Come Monday, you’re my chief investigator.”

  This time he didn’t argue.

  A low-flying pelican glided by us, air-surfing the updraft from a rising line of swell.

  Jackie turned and began to dig for the wave at the same instant that I did, but we both pulled up short, thinking the other would go. Too late—the wave passed beneath us unridden. It was the only tentative move Jackie had made all day.

  “Teamwork,” he muttered.

  Nine

  The waitress brought Grog over to our booth and cleared away a clutch of empty beer bottles as he sat down across from me.

  “Moondoggie,” he said. Grog likes using corny surf-monikers from the fifties and sixties.

  “Kahuna,” I said. “How’s it hangin’?”

  “With authority.”

  He was dressed in blue jeans and a red T-shirt with horizontal blue and white stripes that made his midsection look as solid as a battering ram. His coarse gray hair was pulled back into a short ponytail.

  “¿Quieren mas cervezas?” the waitress asked. She was slight, with straight black hair and a glint of silver in her mouth when she smiled. She looked a lot like a mother I’d represented last year, a woman whose husband had beaten their infant to death with a rolling pin. The baby had colic and cried too much.

  “Dos botellas de Carta Blanca, por favor,” I said. “Y si puede, mas tortillas.”

  “Esta bien.”

  The kitchen was closed, so the waitress didn’t offer Grog a menu. She added the beer orders to her little white pad and left.

  “Dusting off the español, eh?” Grog said with a grin. “Very nice.”

  I thought of the darkly lovely Las Palomas social worker, Carmen Manriquez, and wished she could have seen me now. “Making an effort.”

  Grog and I sat alone at opposite ends of an immense table strewn with rumpled napkins and red-stained dishes left over from dinner. Across the dining room at a dimly lit corner bar, Jackie held court with his back to us in a crowd of contest-goers. He’d defected from our table halfway through our meal when a semi-famous rock ’n’ roll band who’d stopped in for drinks spotted him. They sent over a pitcher of margaritas and a bottle of mescal, gratis, with a message that it would be an honor to have a drink with the great Jackie Pace. The Legend had quickly obliged.

  The waitress brought on the reinforcements. Grog inhaled a half dozen chips and slugged at his beer, lifting two fingers at the waitress before she split. “Haven’t seen you since Vic and I opened the new warehouse in Costa Mesa,” he said.

  “How’s that going?” I asked, which took some courage. Just last month, the phone in Grog’s new apartment had been disconnected because his account was past due.

  “All right, man, quite all right,” he said as if to convince himself as well as me. “Now that we got the manufacturing part wired, all we need is orders. But we’re going for it, man. Got a booth at the golf products convention next month. That’s when we unveil the ‘Kovr-Kleaner.’ ”

  “Outstanding,” I said.

  His face lit up. “Fits any size club head, vinyl or real leather on the outside, specially treated chamois on the inside that shines while it protects. We’re gonna sell a million! Comes in black, white, red, navy, cocoa brown . . .”—he paused as if to hear himself—“sorry, J. You don’t need the full-on pitch.”

  “Sounded solid, Grog.”

  “Thanks for the loan last week.” He picked up a fat red candle from the middle of our table and used it to light a cigarette.

  “Consider it an investment,” I said. “You can put it toward the shares I’m going to buy when you guys get organized.”

  We watched Britt leaning on a pinball machine near the bar, body-torquing the flipper buttons as a few other amateurs from the Christianitos High surf team looked on.

  “Your boy surfed well today,” I said.

  Grog smiled.
“Did he? Right on, it’s in the genes.” We tipped our bottles. “Hey, J., thanks for bringin’ him down this morning. Vic and I visited several stations of hell yesterday. Our manufacturer in Mex missed his shipment of materials. Twelve people standin’ there with nothin’ to sew.”

  I sighed. “Nightmare.”

  “Britt was pretty P.O.’d when I rang you last night,” Grog said. “He all right?”

  “He’ll get over it,” I said. “I can’t stick around for the main event tomorrow. I’ve got a house that needs some serious attention, so you’re his ride back.”

  Across the room, a chant went up among Jackie’s group: “Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!” Four guys arching their backs like limbo dancers as four young ladies shoveled pitchers of beer down their throats.

  “Won’t be long before those lightweights start returning some groceries,” Grog said. “By the way, I heard Mister Surf Legend trashed your pad recently. That why it needs some attention?”

  I nodded but didn’t explain, not wanting to relive the night of the party again. The waitress appeared with two more Carta Blancas. I wasn’t through with the last one yet, but I raised my new bottle. Grog knew how to put it away. “Cheers,” I said.

  Suddenly Grog’s smile drained from his face. He sank into the deep bucket seat as a man whom I didn’t recognize wove his way through several empty tables and headed toward us. “Ah, shit, this is not good. That’s David Rausch, guy who runs the amateur circuit.”

  “Mr. Baker?” Rausch unsmilingly extended a hand. He loomed over the table, with wide but slouching shoulders under a royal-blue windbreaker and a face chapped and rosy from a full day on the beach. I couldn’t take my eyes off the flat, shiny tuft of hair resting above his forehead—I’d seen indoor putting surfaces that looked more natural than that rug.

  “You got him,” Grog said. “A pleasure.”

  “Hi, I’m J. Shepard,” I said to the man.

  “Yes, hello,” Rausch said, his eyes on Grog. “Mr. Baker, I hear you haven’t been returning my accountant’s calls. Your check for your son’s yearly membership dues was returned due to—”

  “Insufficient funds, yeah, I know,” Grog said. “I told the guy I’d send him another check, but he won’t even take one now.”

  Rausch looked agitated. “It’s our policy to—”

  “Listen, partner,” Grog said, already losing his cool, “you’ll have your precious dues money.”

  “When?” Rausch said. “The season is already underway. It isn’t fair to the other competitors who’ve paid their fair share.”

  “Soon,” Grog said. “Next month at the latest.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough,” Rausch said. “I’m pulling your son from the main event tomorrow”

  Jackie stepped up to the table and stood between Grog and David Rausch. “Evening, ladies and Doberman. What’s the haps?” He eyed their standoff postures. “Trouble in paradise?”

  “Stay out of this,” Grog said to Jackie without looking away from Rausch.

  “Britt’s not surfing tomorrow unless we come up with his yearly dues, Jackie,” I said. Rausch’s face changed when he heard Jackie’s name. He briefly studied Jackie’s features in the dining room’s flat, anemic light. “You mean . . . you’re Jackie Pace,” he said in a pale voice.

  Jackie clapped a hand on Rausch’s shoulder. “Damn glad to make your acquaintance, uh . . .”

  “David, D-David Rausch. I’m the president of the . . . but David’s, um, okay.”

  Jackie grinned. “David-O, The Prez, I can dig it. So tell me, are we talking mondo problemo here? You’re looking a mite stressed-out, David-O.”

  Rausch’s mouth hung open. “Jackie Pace. You don’t know this, but I saw you surf second-reef Pipeline in ’seventy-two, the day they called Huge Monday. I was there.” His voice had swelled as if he was recounting one of the seminal rites of passage in his life. “My first . . . well, my only winter on the North Shore. The things you did that day . . . incredible. I, I’ll never forget that big one you rode all the way through. Fifteen feet and hollow, top-to-bottom when it hit the inside reef, and you, you were stalling to get in the tube. I couldn’t believe you even paddled out that day. Incredible.”

  “I was itching to get wet,” Jackie said. “As I recall, the whole week before was flat.”

  “Yeah, flat,” Rausch said, still semi-dazed.

  “Anyway, Mr. Rausch,” I said, “what if we paid you half next week and the other half the following week? I can get a cashier’s check, and—”

  “J.,” Jackie said, “let me handle this.” He put his arm around Rausch’s shoulder. “Now David-O, you love the kids, I can tell this about you, am I right?”

  “Of course,” Rausch agreed. “It’s why I do it. I’ve got a Junior and a Menehune of my own. They’re both still alive in their brackets. I can’t wait ’til tomorrow.”

  “Fantastic, David-O,” Jackie said. “We do this for the kids. But business is business, am I right? The organization needs its dues.”

  “That’s right,” Rausch said, nodding.

  Grog’s eyes briefly met mine from across the table. He’s keeping awfully quiet, I thought, considering that Britt was the subject of conversation. But Rausch was obviously awestruck, and I remembered that Grog Baker was familiar with the scheming side of Jackie.

  Grog just isn’t much of a wheeler-dealer. He’s an earnest but socially clumsy man, and I can understand his resentment of Jackie’s vast persuasive talents. But there’s something more, a wall between them, a history neither will confirm nor deny when I ask them why they so dislike each other.

  Bad blood.

  “Dues are critical to our operations, Mr. Pace,” David Rausch said, nodding like a windup doll.

  “Call me Jackie, my friend.”

  Rausch looked positively spellbound as Jackie drew him into his web. I cracked a tiny smile at Grog, to which he responded with a surreptitious thumbs-up with the hand that held his beer. For now, at least, he was letting any hard feelings ride and standing aside to give Jackie room to work.

  “Now David-O,” Jackie said, “I love the kids too. But I’m a businessman when I have to be—that is, when the situation calls for it. And David-O, now’s one of those times when I’ve gotta be all business.”

  “How do you mean?” Rausch asked.

  “The Oceanside Pro-Am contest poster you guys are selling on the beach this weekend? Ho, man! Quite a beauty! Very nice the way the artist overlaid those two scenes, the one with a contemporary guy going off the top of the wave and the other one, the retrospective image of the guy on a longer board carving a cutback. You know, I still remember whipping that carve like it was yesterday. Beautiful day, fall swell at Rincon. That photo made the cover of Surfer magazine.”

  “Come to think of it, you’re right,” Rausch said. “It does look like you.”

  “The artist must have used the photo when he painted the cutback scene,” I added.

  “Tell me, David-O, what would it take to settle Britt’s account right now?” Jackie said, leaning closer to him.

  Rausch was ready with a total. “Three hundred eighty-six dollars, Jackie.”

  “Now J. here, he’s my lawyer,” Jackie said, motioning at me, “and he watches pretty closely for situations where people use my likeness and profit from it without old Jack’s ten-four.”

  Rausch gave me a panicked glance. “Hey, wait, you don’t mean . . . you’re not going to—”

  “Hold steady, David-O,” Jackie said. “J. and I are a tandem act, brother. We want to work this out with you. We want to do what’s right for the kids.”

  “I would like that,” Rausch said.

  Jackie nodded. “Good man. My proposal is simple: you forget about Britt’s fee, I’ll forget about the poster.”

  “That’s terrific,” Rausch said. “Well, alrighty! I was a little concerned there. I got two hundred more posters in the trunk that we were gonna try to sell tomorrow.”

  Jack
ie grinned. “Well, alrighty! Bring ’em on in and I’ll sign ’em all for you.” He winked at me. “Oh, and meet me at the bar, David-O. We’ll be putting the next few rounds of debauchery on the presidential expense account.”

  Rausch smiled at Grog and me. “Pleasure meeting both of you,” he said.

  “And you,” I said, tipping my beer bottle, but Rausch was already scuttling toward the exit.

  Jackie winked at me. “We can sue the fucker later, right man?” he said. Then he turned and retreated to the bar area.

  “Kinda wish Jackie wouldn’t have done that,” Grog said. “I don’t need his help.” He gave me a hard stare. “I wasn’t gonna let you pay Britt’s way either. Hope you know that.”

  “I know,” I said. “We both just want Britt to surf tomorrow.”

  When it comes to borrowing money, Grog had his pride. He hates to accept funds when the prospects for repayment are slim, which is just about always. When my mother departed, he put me up in his home for months, so I don’t mind helping him out. No disrespect intended, but I just don’t plan on seeing the money again. Grog is like a salesman who has gone so long without a sale he’s forgotten how to close the deal. But he wasn’t always this way.

  Grog was one of the few men my father truly respected. They’d both fought in Korea, but though my father saw little combat, Grog survived some heavy action, saving the lives of four soldiers he freed from the wreckage of a burning schoolhouse. Awarded a Silver Star and a Purple Heart, he came home to Christianitos with no plans beyond surfing and drinking and surfing some more, waiting for the mosquitoes that loitered behind his eyes at night to cease their incessant buzzing.

  My father needed a sander, so he hired Grog. They surfed together daily, swapped design ideas with other builders, and somehow sold just enough boards to keep things going. Grog lacked my father’s fluid grace in the water, but he, too, was relatively fearless in big surf, especially in the Islands. An old magazine photo, framed on the wall in my garage, captures Grog’s staunch figure barreling down the face of a solid twenty-footer at Sunset, driving hard off his inside edge as a mammoth section looms ahead like a cliff wall. The caption reads “Greg Baker, going for broke.” No wave he’d ever faced had broken him.