by Jack Lopez
It wasn’t crowded or anything, far more observers than actual surfers, but with guys in the water, it actually looked appealing. Until a set would roar through, wreaking havoc on the surfers in the water.
I hadn’t intended to fall victim to one of Jamie’s taunts, but I did. Already Jamie was much larger than I was, but we were both just skinny kids then. Still, I overcompensated to let him know he couldn’t get inside my head. So I began waxing my board, pretending I was going to paddle out. All the while taunting Jamie. “You’re such a woman,” I said.
“At least I’m not a chicken shit bitch like you,” he shot back.
“Who’s waxing up? Not you, pussy.” That got him in motion.
And on and on it went.
Before we knew what had happened we were both paddling for all we were worth to make it out over the massive shorebreak, the inside waves that were larger than anything we’d ever surfed. And, still, we paddled to make it beyond them and out into deeper water where the really large waves were.
Taking more than a half hour to make it outside, I knew that the only way in now was to catch a wave. Unless I totally chickened out and paddled back in before the huge crowd, which I wasn’t prepared to do.
Thus we began making our way south toward the sandbar, though much farther out. I had never before been in such a disorienting mess! Just to maintain my position I had to paddle full out. Like paddling against a river. To make headway against the current I paddled like hell, and all the while the swells lifted me up and then set me back down, my stomach fluttering with each drop. Swells that weren’t even close to breaking!
As I paddled south I broke from the pack of guys who were surfing directly in front of the bluffs, where Jamie had the good sense to remain. When a particularly huge set approached I found myself all alone trying to get out over the waves. I blasted through the last wave of the set, almost getting pulled back over the falls by the wave’s momentum. My heart was in my throat. I had never before been so scared, thinking I was going to die.
Get it over with quickly! was my thought as I took off on the first wave of the next set. Jamie was north of me, hanging with the older guys, a much smarter move. I figured I would catch the wave, get crunched taking the drop, and then get pushed into shore by the rest of the waves, where I would be alive. I’d get creamed, but I’d survive. My heart was racing as I paddled to catch the wave that would save my life, or so I reasoned, because no sane thought could rationalize my even being on the ocean in these waves. I was lifted up, up, and then the bottom fell out, but I was on my feet on the board and my arms were straight up over my head and I’d made the drop! I cranked a backside bottom turn just like Kelly, then leaned forward, trimming my board, crouched, and tucked into the slot of the beast. I got tubed for a second and shot out on the shoulder of the wave and flew over its back and into freedom and immortality. The older guys in the water howled and yelled, and when I looked up onto the cliff I could see the gallery pumping their fists, though I couldn’t hear their shouts. I had goose bumps, and felt queasy from all the adrenaline but the strangest thing was that I was no longer afraid. I wanted more and bigger waves. So I paddled back out.
Unfortunately for Jamie the later waves in the set are usually the bigger ones. He took off on the last wave and didn’t make the drop. Later he told me that he didn’t want to look like a wuss after I had gotten such a good ride. Jamie went straight down on the wave, his board’s nose going directly into the water, buried until it was just too buoyant and then it launched itself straight back up into him. He’d made it to the surface and just as he was taking a huge gulp of air his board bumped his head a second time, closed his mouth with such force that all his front teeth were chipped (the doctor said that had his tongue been in the way it would have been cut off!).
As I got closer to him I could tell that he was in a daze. He wouldn’t respond or anything. Another older and really good surfer was right there with me. He helped Jamie onto his board, even held on to him and the board through whitewater while I dove for the bottom.
“Can you get him in?” the older guy said.
“Yeah,” I said. I undid my leash and let my board fend for itself.
Jamie just looked at me and the other surfer as if he were stupid; he wouldn’t say anything.
“Let the whitewater push you in,” the older guy said to me as we were hit by an incoming wave. I had a death grip on Jamie, and even with the initial blast of the wave. I held on to him and guided him into shore and safety.
Somebody on the bluff must have called the lifeguards, for there was a Jeep on the beach and a lifeguard took Jamie from me in shallow water. He lay Jamie flat on the sand. I told him that Jamie’s board had hit him on the head.
Lifeguard: “What day is it?”
Jamie: “July.”
The lifeguard then looked in Jamie’s eyes. “His pupils are dilated.” He looked in his ears. “No blood, so that’s good. I’m going to call an ambulance. He needs to be checked out by doctors.”
We were soon surrounded by other surfers and beachgoers. Some of the guys told me that I’d done really well. Jamie became sort of famous for getting whacked in really big surf. But he remembered that it was I who had surfed and surfed well, it was I who had brought him in. Still, it was the day that James Watkins left the beach in an ambulance.
He couldn’t surf anymore that summer, and when I rode my bike back down to the cliffs a week later (Claire wouldn’t drop me off, she’d never take us to the beach again), I was treated with deference and respect by the older guys. When school started, everyone knew of the event, and Jamie bestowed the title of “best surfer” on me. It had worked because Jamie, of course, was really the best surfer. It had been cool for a time.
Now, no sunlight shone on the ocean and it was dark down there, the surfer a black shape on top of the water. He reached far forward with every stroke, Jamie’s stroke, as he made for the lineup where he could catch a wave. I wasn’t sure how long Jamie’d been in the water — he’d been known to surf at night, if the waves held, even though nobody else could see a thing. “You don’t need to see,” Jamie would say. “You can feel the wave.”
I watched the ocean, and watched Jamie ride a set wave as I walked back to the car. I knew I should be worried about what I had done, but wasn’t. I wanted to get in the water! Yet Amber showed no signs of waking.
By the grace of God some locals came, making a bunch of noise, waking her. She seemed disoriented at first but when she saw me she smiled a big smile and then stretched slowly and luxuriously, all the time looking at me.
I nonchalantly took our boards from underneath the car; the locals checked me out, not saying anything, mostly looking at our boards.
“Wow,” Amber said in her deep voice, which was deeper from sleep. She was brushing out her long hair so that it looked silky in the fresh morning light. When finished she rustled through her Hello Kitty backpack, pulling out a Strawberry something bag from which she took a small mirror. With her ring finger she patted some lotion on the fleshy part under her eyes. Then she just stared at me.
“What?”
“I can’t believe what’s going on. I can’t believe what we’re doing.”
I couldn’t either, so I changed the subject. “I’ll go with you to a McDonald’s or something.”
Amber bared her teeth in front of the mirror and then looked out at the guys in the parking lot, and appreciated my chivalry, I hoped, because I really wanted to get in the water. There was no other choice when you traveled with a girl, I figured.
“Okay,” she said, zipping the backpack. “How long’s Jamie been out?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Thanks for staying with me, Juan,” she said, and it sounded as if she meant it.
While Amber was in the restroom I bought orange juice. I looked outside for a pay phone, even walked over to a gas station next door, but there wasn’t one around. When I got back to the car she was wearing a T-shirt
over her bikini top, sitting in the front seat. I handed her the juice. She took a large gulp, spilling some on her shirt.
“Shit,” she said.
When we returned there were more cars in the parking lot, though it wasn’t yet crowded for the building swell. But it was a Monday morning, a school day, and September. Still, it was really odd that it wasn’t more crowded, and word would travel quickly about the good waves that were lining up far outside at this fun break — hell, the damn surfcams would let everyone see! Now, the tide was dropping, the swell was increasing, and there were few surfers in the water. We took our boards from the back of my mother’s car and waxed them on the grass that overlooked the parking lot. Again, the new arrivals checked us out, but we just went about our business.
Had I gotten out of the car alone, I would have been checked out and vibed out as well, probably. But with Amber it was different. They were checking her out as a girl more so than a surfer. Wait till she got in the water. She had Jamie’s fearlessness, though wasn’t yet up to his technical ability. She was improving, her confidence growing.
Descending the stairs to the sand, I counted the waves in a set. The horizon where the sky and ocean connected was a wavy mass of ripples, another indication of a swell. And the full force of the hurricane’s waves wasn’t supposed to hit the coastline for two days!
The shorebreak was large, making Amber somewhat restive as we waited for a lull in the waves to try to get out into the channel. We’d walked down the beach a good way so that we wouldn’t have to paddle out through the whitewater of the breaking waves, a luxury you had when surfing a reef break.
To lighten up things, I ran into the water, gliding on my board for a time, and when a large shorebreak wave approached I paddled hard and stood up and jumped over the back of the wave, flopping in the cool sea.
“You’re a fool,” Amber yelled as she passed me by. She hadn’t gotten wet getting through the shorebreak.
My trick had worked, however. Amber now paddled out, so I too began the long paddle out toward the break. The sun felt good on my back, heating the black wetsuit. Beyond the shorebreak the surface, as the depth increased, became a mysterious blue-black. Soft riffles on top of the water showed the path of the rip current as it headed back out to sea, where it had come from. Water in, water out. Eternally.
Some other surfers were behind us, paddling out. Suddenly Jamie took off far back in a breaking wave, dropping in and climbing up and down the face of the wave until it walled up in the shallow water. He trimmed his board, crouched, and blasted through the foam that hit his body and would have knocked off a less balanced surfer. Amber and I shouted encouragement to him as he continued on the wave, passing us, heading in toward shore. He backturned and pumped his board up and down into the shore-break, then kicked out. “Yeah!” he shouted.
Amber and I raced to the lineup in the hopes of catching one of the waves of this set; I’d not yet timed the sets, so didn’t know how long a wait we’d have between them — get it while you can! She took off on a nice little four-foot wave as the peak feathered over. I lost sight of her as she took the drop, then saw her again as she climbed the face of the small but well-formed wave. Once back up by the curl, she was again lost from my sight as she banked off the top and took the drop again. I watched her as the wave raced in to shore, watched her working the wave the same way Jamie had, trimming, casually withstanding the whitewater hitting her. When she came out of the whitewater she sometimes fiddled with her wetsuit because the bathing-suit straps would move on her shoulders. She did this in the same nonchalant way that some surfers grabbed their nose, or ran their hands through their hair, after making a wave.
I was comfortable. I was happy. Salt-smell permeates everything. The world is wet. Hump on the horizon heading toward you. Hump moving faster as it passes underneath your board. Your board moving as fast as you can get it to go with only your arms for oars — like a sprinter ending the hundred-yard dash — and there’s a second, a moment frozen in eternity, when you’re not going forward and you’re not going down the face of the wave, just before you take the drop, that moment when you are weightless, and everything is frozen, time has stopped, and that’s the moment, I swear! The bigger the wave, the more intense the weightless time, the more your existence MEANS something. Out of existence, back in existence. The board flies over the surface of the wave, moving at its own speed times the speed of the wave moving in toward shore. On top of the wave, at the bottom of the wave, in the trough, moving toward the coastline at the speed of the wave. Ride up the face to the crest, whip the board back down the face to the bottom, each time somewhat weightless, though never as intense as the initial drop when you enter wavetime. Over and over you do this, until the wave closes out in the shorebreak, and you kick out, or do a floater wipeout, or jump off your board out the back of the wave, because it just doesn’t matter; it’s a blast!
After I kicked out I hustled to catch them. Jamie was slowly paddling out toward the lineup, Amber was paddling faster to catch him, and I sprinted to catch them both. One of the reasons you surfed with friends: so you’ll have someone to talk to while paddling out, or while waiting for waves, or when revisiting the waves you’d just ridden.
“Did you see me get air?” Jamie said.
“Did you see my snapback?” Amber said.
“Did you see my floater?” I said.
We discussed our waves as we paddled back out into the lineup. Now, however, there were many other guys waiting for waves, guys who lived here, and who would have to share “their” surf with us. They would share, no doubt about it. Because surfing is all about what you can do. Not what you talk about doing, but what you actually do on the wave. And theoretically the guy who takes off closest to the curl of the wave, the position that is the most precarious, has the right of way. Jamie would take off as far back as possible, and so would I, and Amber could hold her own with these guys, I felt sure. Things could get tense if the proper rotation wasn’t adhered to. In other words, if any guy from a group dropped in on members from another group, wild things could happen. I’d kicked out on a guy who’d dropped in on me. I’d seen Jamie launch his board just inches from a guy who’d snaked him. I’d seen him actually nail a guy with his board, a guy who’d had the audacity to snake him twice. I wouldn’t drop-in on Jamie. He was six feet two inches tall, not one ounce of flab on him, and his lip was fat and his eye a little swollen from his fight with F. There were welts on his face and upper body. His nose was kinda big anyway, and now it seemed swollen, probably broken from F’s punches on the beach yesterday. Jamie looked like a criminal, and maybe was one, for all I knew. Maybe he’d really injured F.
The tension was lessened when we got out to the lineup and one of the guys sitting on his board said to Jamie, “Excellent.”
Jamie was the kind of surfer who inspired respect, appreciation, even, he was so good, his surfing special, rather than the competition a less accomplished though good wave rider attracted. He could be sponsored, if he wanted. If he’d enter contests. But he wouldn’t. He said contests are pure bullshit. Contests have nothing to do with surfing, Jamie said. They’re the opposite of what surfing is about, he said. Our high school surf coach said there was a spot on the team for Jamie. But Jamie said he wasn’t a performing monkey, that surfing for him was a spiritual thing, and he wouldn’t cheapen it by competing. The surf coach said no more.
Because of that dude’s comment, when the next set came we held back, letting those guys catch the first waves, since we’d already had rides, and a nice rotation was established, one which worked until it was too crowded for any order, and by then the wind began to pick up. It started out as a riffle, tiny puffs of wind skirting the smooth surface but increasing steadily, the way the sun makes for the low horizon at sunset with the tenacity of a slow-moving tortoise. Soon the waves toppled over in an uneven fashion, and then the wind rippled the waves’ faces, making for a bumpy ride. That, coupled with all the surfers in the water
, and we knew the best part of the day for surfing was over. The strong west wind made the waves unmakeable, finally, and it was no longer fun.
Besides, I was tired and hungry and cold, what with the big chop that covered the horizon, making whitecaps out to sea. Kelp beds just beyond the reef kept the waves rideable far longer than would have been possible at our beach break. Still, we’d surfed a number of hours, all morning, from what I could tell by the sun’s position in the sky, and we’d surfed some good waves, though not as big as I hoped they would be.
By the time we got back to the parking lot at Swami’s, it was relatively empty, our car one of the few remaining. Down below, the surfspot was blown out, the reason nobody else was around. As we toweled off I thought of my mother. A deep sinking feeling struck me right in the gut. I shouldn’t have taken the car. Not in a strict sense. But shit was going down last night. True, right now, we’d just gotten out of the water after surfing fun waves all morning. At present, things didn’t seem so crucial. But last night they had been. And Jamie was safe. I was thinking that I’d get in trouble, but when I explained the immediacy of the situation my parents might not punish me. My father would be very angry — you’re not supposed to steal the car! Yet Jamie was still around, not arrested last night. And the bonus was I didn’t have to be at school, either. The surf was only going to get bigger, as one large blown-out set of waves crashing on the reef indicated.
Still, in spite of the fun waves, there was a melancholy feeling among us, for we knew that a parting of the ways was inevitable. Jamie would have to do what he was going to do. I’d have to get my mother’s car back. Amber could return with me.
Jamie and I changed out of our wetsuits using towels wrapped around our lower bodies to hide that which needed to be hidden. Amber put on a T-shirt so she could remove her stuff and then did the same thing with her towel hiding her lower body. After changing we were all standing in the stiff breeze, not knowing what to say, what was to come next.
