by Jack Lopez
The wave hit the reef, jumped up, and then cascaded down upon itself in a tumbling wall of whitewater moving in both directions, right and left, increasing in speed and getting more hollow as the water became shallower in toward shore. Finally the entire wave would close out in a massive shorebreak. So we’d had to time our paddle out to make it over the shorebreak, which was larger than the largest waves I’d ever surfed.
We paddled over and into the lineup at the tail end of a set, but Jamie sprinted into one of the last waves, catching it, and howling as he took the drop, lost from sight for a very long time.
Amber and I watched for his board to pop up, but it didn’t, he rode on and on; toward shore we could see his head when he’d climb back up to the top of the wave. After he kicked out I relaxed, though he was so far away he looked too small, like a mountain climber who has left the group to go it solo, and is very far up the mountain.
“Richtering,” Amber said, her first comment on entering the lineup.
She was right, and I chuckled rather than shit my pants. “It’s makable, slow, until the shorebreak. You can do it.”
The back of the wave Jamie had caught was huge, like a round pipe, like something those big trucks on the freeway haul and take up two lanes and go really slow. From behind, our perspective, the wave was at least eight or ten feet. The face must have been at least fifteen feet, maybe larger upon hitting the reef and spewing up and out.
When we’d first entered the water the dolphins had gathered their young, herding them out and away from our approach. Some of the larger ones had stuck around, checking us out, though none of them remained in the lineup.
Amber sat on her board, alternately looking in toward shore and then out to sea. Since we were in the lineup, if we miscued our position in relation to the break we’d get hit full force with the breaking wave’s impact. Every set would be slightly different, as would each wave, cascading over itself in a slightly different place, depending upon size, tide fluctuations, wind conditions. It was a tricky business just being in the lineup in large surf, not to mention a place you’d never even heard of the day before, a day that was so far removed from our ordinary consciousness as to be dreamlike all the way.
At our own beachbreak you can duck dive under waves that break in front of you. Just bury your nose, diving underneath the whitewater and thus maintaining your position, as it were, rather than getting pushed in too far by the breaking wave. If the waves are too big, they simply rip your leash right off your ankle or the board, though I’d never been in waves that big. Duck diving under these waves was not an option — you couldn’t get deep enough! And they’d tear the leash away in nothing flat. I’d once read that storm waves breaking on the North Shore of Hawai’i, if harnessed, could light a medium-sized city for a day. That was a lot of E, and I wouldn’t want to get zapped by it, that was for sure! So stay away from where the impact was, at all costs, even if it meant a very long paddle. And there was another issue. Even if you could make it with your board, you wouldn’t be able to breathe. The whitewater would be really high, and even though it wasn’t all technically water, you wouldn’t be able to breathe in that much turbulence.
“Amber, if you wipe out, just dive for the bottom. It’ll be calmer down there. Remember, no matter how long you stay down, your board will float; it’ll want to surface; just climb up your leash. Stay in the whitewater and get pushed into shore.”
“Thanks, Juan. I’m going to eat it, is that what you’re saying?”
A set was coming, wavy lines on the horizon getting closer, and the only thing to do was to ride one. We were surfers, and this was what we did.
“The first wave will be smaller,” I said. “You catch it. I’ll be right behind you.”
Squinting into the sun, trying to get a fix on the approaching waves, she sat with her board buried in the water, her hair glistening, her strong shoulders contrasting with the horizon. I wanted to paddle next to her, put my arms around her, and kiss her before God and the sun, before Jamie, before everyone, and declare my love for her. I was in love! Maybe it was just this day, or the freedom of leaving everything behind and being in a different country. Yes, that was it, a different country, the country of love, and here came a wave so I didn’t do any of the above things.
You jockey for the most expedient position: you need to be close to where the wave will begin to curl over itself as it breaks. If you’re too far back from this point, you won’t be able to paddle into the wave. Too close to the breaking place and the wave will eat you, or you won’t be able to take the drop. Too far out, no wave. Too far in, disaster. And this: what the wave itself is doing not in relation to shore, but in relation to the reef. The way it peels off, right and left. These are your considerations, and all you really have to go by is the paddle out. But Jamie has successfully ridden one already, and he is almost back in the lineup, but he’s moved too far over toward the peak, and is not far enough out; and you can’t worry about Jamie — he’ll take care of himself.
“Do you want to wait, Amber? I’ll take off first.”
“I’m going for it.” She swiveled her too-small board, got it planing on top of the water, and began stroking for shore. The hump she raced caught her, lifted her high, high, and then she was gone.
I watched too long, because I wanted to catch the next wave but wasn’t in position. Nor for the next two waves. I caught the fourth wave of the set, and it was larger than the previous ones, I figured, for it seemed forever that I took the drop. But I took it smoothly, and when at the bottom of the wave, I rolled my knees and cranked my whole body right into the enormous wall of green that was my life, and it was then that I felt more so than heard this echoing clunk! A huge and old dolphin broke the surface, right beside me, nudging my board. We made eye contact, and I saw his gray muzzle, saw his wise eyes that seemed to know the very secrets of nature, and I was so surprised I hesitated, and my hesitation threw me off, literally, for next thing I knew, I’d hit the water, and it felt like cement. I skipped forward a few beats, and then the whitewater crunched me. In an instant I hit rock. Right on my shoulder.
I was out of breath, and just a little scared, for it’s not every day that you ride the biggest wave of your life and wipeout and hit bottom because of a playful dolphin. But there it was, I’d already done the worst thing that could happen, and I was still kicking, as they say. I clawed my way to the surface, meeting turbulent resistance all the way. When I reached air, I hungrily gulped it down, grateful to be among the living and the noisy. My board was gone, the leash ripped right off. You wouldn’t think that a resounding energy noise would permeate everything, but it did. It roared, like listening in a conch shell, but the conch shell is the universe, and the sea is angry. The next wave was on me so I dove once again, but this time I headed in to shore at the same time. Each successive wave became easier, and soon I was away from the impact zone, where the energy was, and I was able to enjoy the water and the air, and the foam that enveloped me in toward shore.
After that first wipeout we all relaxed somewhat. Someone had to catch the first wave and make it. Someone had to wipe out and survive. After that the mystique was broken, so to speak, and we knew that our ability would take us through the rough spots. Swimming ability, surfing ability. Now we could relax and have fun, which was what we did, even though the waves seemed huge to us.
And in small increments more and more dolphins returned to the lineup, like inquisitive and shy dogs, checking us out, somewhat leery, but riding waves with us. While we talked in between sets, they would sometimes bump our boards, bump our legs, and when we took off they would shadow us, riding up and down on the face of the wave, breaking the surface, and then going under the sheen of the moving surface, chattering, always chattering.
CHAPTER 11
Sometimes when I dream, I dream of dolphins. Being tugged and pulled and played with. Once, I dreamed that a dolphin was giving me artificial respiration. In all the dreams water is the medium. And
the dolphins are benign.
It was late afternoon, an early dusk. The reason for the dusklike conditions was because of all the water particles filling the air. It was almost like being at the foot of a gigantic waterfall, with so much water detonating right over the reef. The sun was lower in the sky; the swell had increased with a regular and consistent pattern, so that the last wave Jamie had caught and that I had watched while paddling out was at least three times as big as he was —maybe eighteen feet! The largest wave I’d surfed that day had a twelve-to-thirteen-foot face, over twice my height. Our confidence level was great, and we were riding the waves not just to make them, but with abandon and style. Amber too was caught up in our exhilaration at riding big surf—I’d seen her make some rides that were ten feet at least, though she’d just taken a bad wipeout and was at present tentative.
We’d talked about it on the paddle out. And she agreed that she was now frightened — she had been held under too long — and that it would be best to go in. The day was about over anyway. I beat Jamie back out into the lineup, caught a nice little ten-foot wave, and began the paddle out for one more wave, since I was thoroughly exhausted.
Jésus’s name for this break had been something about Las Nubes, something I didn’t quite catch. The clouds? At the time I made a cloud connection. How a fisherman would know that such good surfing waves existed here I couldn’t say. But he did, and we were on cloud nine. No matter how much trouble I’d be in for coming down here, for taking my mother’s car, it was worth it. These waves were perfect. I was still having trouble envisioning myself on a fifteen-foot wave that looked like Sunset Beach, Hawai’ian North Shore winter. Had a photographer been with us, Jamie or I might have been on the cover of a surf mag. The last wave Jamie had ridden should have been a “cover” wave. It towered over him, and the face was so large that the top tumbled over itself two or three times until it hit the trough. And Jamie rode it with his casual, stoic style, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. As if he were bored, almost.
I thought all these thoughts while paddling out for the last time that day. I did become aware of the fact that the dolphins were no longer around. Probably gone to that communal dolphin sleeping place. And as I paddled out, at peace, Jésus’s name for this break hit me like a hard tackle in football. Clouds. The clouds. Jésus had said a Spanish idiom whose meaning I didn’t get, something I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t have understood it. Nobody could have. And I supposed the clouds was the appropriate sentiment regarding this wave. The real wave. The wave Jésus meant. For looming way outside, maybe a quarter mile off the beach, was an approaching monstrosity of water. We’d been surfing the inside reef! The small stuff. Now, the second reef was going to break!
And this: Jamie had caught that last huge wave quite a bit farther out than the previous ones.
The wave that now formed walled up the entire bay, threatening to close it out. The swell was so large, from my perspective, that the entire horizon was cut off by the rising wave. The surf had been building all day, I figured, and it would culminate with the “real” reef breaking, the second reef, coincidentally at sunset.
Jamie had deduced all this well before I had, and he was paddling like a madman, heading north and out. Out to sea, out to beat the breaking wave. North toward deeper water, if the bottom held true. I was sort of in the middle. I didn’t really want to surf that outside wave, not in the way that Jamie did. (Die in big surf, ha!) But I was too far out in the bay to be safe. And if the wave broke right on me, I didn’t think I’d be able to survive its force. I began paddling faster, not wholly committed the way Jamie was, so small and now far away. At that moment I wished that we were together, and that we hadn’t disagreed about Amber and me. I looked in toward shore but couldn’t see her.
The approaching waves moved so fast and were so large that I had nothing in my experience with which to compare them. Surely I would not be far enough out to make it over their crests. Because of his commitment early on, Jamie was okay, and he was now paddling toward the center of the bay, where our takeoff point had been, though it had been much farther in. He was far, far away, in deep water, at the outer reaches of the cove, maybe parallel with the two jutting points that created the bay. I was inside where the new waves would break. Where the impact would be.
It’s daunting to find out that the whole day’s big-wave surfing was a warm-up, a passing of time, a pause, for the real thing. And Jamie was in position to ride the real thing. Jamie was committed. I was scared, stuck halfway in, halfway out, in never-never land. Not far enough out to make it over the waves, and not far enough in to be safe when they broke. Jamie could paddle right out of the bay, if he chose, and be entirely safe. Amber should be on the beach by now. I was fucked.
Though committed. I was paddling for all I was worth … in. Chicken of the Sea. But there wasn’t a choice, I reasoned later. And there wasn’t. The result of my hesitation early on. I was, for sure, a surf coward.
The first wave’s whitewater roared over me like an exploding locomotive, ripping my board from me as easily as you lift a newborn. I didn’t know which way was up or down; I was in a swirling mass of turbulence, and I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t swim.
I’d planned on bailing off my board and diving for the bottom, but since I was paddling in I couldn’t see the wave behind me. When there’s that much water and it’s all moving toward land, and it’s just released all its energy — the energy that it stored on its long ocean trip — the forces are very great indeed. The water moving in toward shore must have been traveling at the rate of an automobile, say, getting on the freeway, and I was in the water and had no inkling of such power. No previous experience.
I swallowed ocean water, and coughed, and panicked, and don’t remember much from the experience. Except one visual: Jamie taking the drop on the largest wave I could ever imagine. One, two, three, four, five times his body’s height. Or maybe I made up the size, I don’t know. Thirty, forty feet on the face? I don’t know. I was in the water. Disoriented. Adrenaline flooding. On autopilot survival mode. In the clouds, for that amount of water going up and going down and exploding sideways gives you the feeling of being in the air at twenty thousand feet in clouds, weightless, yet unable to breathe.
Jamie freefell, with his feet still on his board, though it wasn’t grounded in water. Down and down and down he went until the preternatural barrel covered him on his descent.
CHAPTER 12
“Juan,” Amber whispered.
My head rested in her lap. We were on sand. My throat burned. My head ached. She rocked me back and forth. I shivered a full-body shiver. As I came to I moved out of her embrace.
“Where’s Jamie?”
“I didn’t know if you were coming back,” she said. She looked out in the bay.
I looked there too. It was almost dark, and huge white explosions Richtered the sand, vibrating the entire bay. It was closed out, a solid white wall of nuclear foam from point to point. Closed out!
“Where’s his board?”
“Jamie’s not in yet.”
Maybe he’d swum outside to deeper water. I’d heard of guys getting their boards after tremendous wipeouts in big waves, waves in which you didn’t wear a leash. Some sort of big-wave phenomenon in which the board sort of gets “stuck” close to the wipeout spot. Maybe that happened. Maybe Jamie was outside.
“Did you see his wave?”
She shook her head. “I can’t see out there. Must have been some wave you lost your board on.”
“I thought I saw Jamie take off,” was all I said.
From shore, and in this light, nobody could get what was happening outside. I couldn’t explain to Amber what happened to me, much less what I’d seen her brother do. “He probably paddled out to deeper water. He’s not around?”
“No. But I’ve been with you. A dolphin swam you to shallow water.”
“Say what?”
“A dolphin swam you in.”
“Don’
t give me any shit, Amber.”
“I’m not.” She was serious. Her jaw was set and her eyes hard, and her hair was blowing about her back and face.
“Let’s scan the beach.” I stood up, feeling sick to my stomach, and I ran away from Amber, retching as I ran, and it felt good to get the saltwater out.
Amber’s board was way up on the beach. Mine was getting hit by whitewater, coming in and then going out and crashing on the sand. Amber grabbed it and pulled it close to hers. As she lifted it I could see that the entire nose had broken off, the fiberglass dangling yet still clinging to a chunk of foam like a banana peel holding onto a chunk of banana.
Looking alternately out to sea and up on the dry sand, we walked to the far point; Jamie’s board was not visible. So we went to the other point, the direction toward camp. Nothing. And we could no longer see the outside reef break, only hear it, feel that tremendous blast of energy unload in the bay — there was water everywhere, the fog coming back in, the light fading.
A helpless, desolate feeling began to sink in as I felt just how far removed we were from civilization, from things known and loved, things familiar.
The air was warm, but I was cold. I put on my shirt over my wet-suit and looked at Jamie’s T-shirt and sunglasses lying on the dark sand. Not so many hours ago he’d had it wrapped around his head; I could still hear him shout “excellent!” if only as an echo.
“Is he outside? Is he beyond the break?” She squinted, trying to see through the fog.
“I bet he is. His board’s not on shore. If he’s with his board he’s okay.”
