by Tom Hanks
The last of the coffee went into the mugs, which Frank placed on the dash of the truck while Kirk pulled his board—all six feet six of it—out of the storage shed. He tossed it into the camper, where Frank’s eleven-and-a-half-foot paddleboard—the Buick—took up most of the room.
Six summers before, the camper was brand-new, purchased for a momentous vacation—a two-thousand-mile loop up the coast to Canada, across the two-lanes of British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, all the way to Regina. The trek was a long-planned Ullen Family Retreat and came off as promised, for the first few hundred miles, anyway. Then Mom started sharing her opinions and insisting on behaviors. She wanted to establish her rules of the road and began giving orders. Thus rang the opening bell, beginning the first of what became many punishing rounds. The verbal jousts became serious disagreements, escalating into full-throated, mean-spirited arguments that had to be won by the mother of the family. Kris, as was her wont, turned her rebelliousness up a few notches. Dora’s righteousness devolved into deep-crevassed silence, punctuated with outbursts so fast, loud, and vitriolic as to be near-Shakespearean. Frank, at the wheel, sipping on his cold coffee or warming Coca-Cola, acted as referee, therapist, fact-checker, and cop, depending on the point made or offense taken. Kirk, as his defensive stance, pulled out book after book, reading like he was a chain-smoker with a carton of menthols. For him, the psychodrama faded into a background din not much different from the wheels of the camper humming across thousands of miles of asphalt.
They argued their way across Canada, continued as they came south through the vast American Prairie, the space so open, so endless it was said to have driven some of the original settlers insane. The Ullen family went certifiably daffy in Nebraska when Kris bought pot from some guy living out of his car at a KOA campground. Mom wanted to call a cop and turn in both the dealer and her own daughter. She went DEF CON ballistic when Dad allowed no such thing by simply packing them all up and driving away, fleeing the scene of the crime. The camper went frosty, like a bitter family Christmas in July; no one talking to anyone while Kirk finished all of William Manchester’s books on Winston Churchill. By the time they turned due west in Tucumcari, New Mexico, everyone wanted off the road, out of that truck, and away from each other. Kris threatened to hop a Greyhound bus the rest of the way home. But Dad insisted they do some camping in the desert, which they did under protest. Kris got high under the stars, Dora went on solo hikes until after dark, and Dad bedded down outside in the tent. Mom slept in the camper, guaranteeing she’d be alone, in peace at last, by locking the door. That was a problem, as it cut off access to the bathroom. Thus ended the last family vacation for the Ullens. The last family anything for the Ullens. The camper stayed bolted onto the King Cab pickup, serving as Frank’s mobile office–surf buggy, one that had not been cleaned or vacuumed in 21,000 miles.
In his youth, Frank Ullen had been a real, shaggy-haired surf bum. Then he grew up, got married, had kids, and started an electrical wiring business that took off. It was only in the past year that he had once again begun to leave the house before anyone else was awake, to make the point break at Mars Beach, a tight right-hander best in a rising three-to-four-foot tide. When Kirk was a kid and a part-time beach rat, father and son would park on the highway shoulder and carry their boards down the well-beaten path to Mars. To young Kirk, hefting his original sponge board, the beach seemed as rocky and far away as the bottom of Valles Marineris on the Red Planet. The Economic Boom Years had drastically altered the place—there were inland luxury apartment complexes built on what had been marshes; and five years ago the state had paved over a square of weeds and dirt, creating a real parking lot for three dollars a car. Mars was no longer free, but it was conveniently accessible; surfers headed left at the sand, regular beachgoers veered to the right, and county lifeguards kept the two apart.
“You haven’t seen this.” Frank was exiting the highway at Deukmejian State Recreation Area. Kirk glanced up from his book. What had been a field was now flattened and surveyed; the little flagged posts were already planted, with a sign advertising the site of a future Big-Box Mart. “Remember when the nearest business was a taco stand back at Canyon Avenue? It’s now a Chisholm Steakhouse.”
“I remember taking a shit in the bushes,” Kirk said.
“Don’t swear around your old man.”
Frank pulled into the lot, parking in an empty slot one row away from the path gate. “Well, whad’ya know,” he said, as always. “Welcome to Mars!”
A collection of shops had evolved on the other side of the highway under low-slung roofs made to look like Mexican adobes. There was a surf gear shop, a recent and ubiquitous Starbucks, a Subway sandwich place, a Circle W convenience store, and the office of a lone insurance agent named Saltonstall, who had set out his shingle there so he could surf when the phone wasn’t ringing. An AutoShoppe/FastLube & Tire franchise was under construction at the south end of the shopping center.
“A lube job while you surf,” Kirk noted. “That’s environmental consumer integration.”
“Here’s your handbasket. Enjoy hell,” Frank said.
The parking lot showed a collection of aged and rugged vehicles—Rancheros and station wagons loaded with tools, owned by construction workers who were grabbing waves before work. There were old vans and self-painted VW Buses owned by surfers sleeping overnight, despite posted ordinances that exclaimed NO CAMPING. When the county sheriffs periodically rousted the surf bums there were always lengthy legal discussions about the difference between “camping overnight” and “waiting for daylight.” Lawyers surfed Mars, too, as did orthodontists and airline pilots, their Audis and BMWs strapped with roof racks for the boards. Moms and wives would be in the water, good surfers and kind people. Fistfights had once been frequent, when the high surf attracted kooks from all over, but this was a weekday and not all the schools were out yet so Kirk knew the crowd would be easygoing and manageable. And the Martians, as they called themselves, had all gotten older, mellower. Except for a couple of asshole lawyers.
“Sweet break this morning, Kirky-bird,” Frank said, eyeing the water from the parking lot. He counted over a dozen surfers already in the water as large waves—the Swell—were shaping in regular intervals outside the lineup. He unlocked the door to the camper. They pulled both boards out, and Frank’s paddle, standing them up against the truck as they yanked on their summer wet suits with the short legs and built-in rash guards.
“Got any wax?” Kirk asked.
“In a drawer in there,” Frank told him. His paddleboard had a mat, so he didn’t need wax anymore but kept some for those who might need some stick for their sticks. Kirk found a cake in a drawer full of junk including short-end rolls of duct tape, old mousetraps, a hot-glue gun but no sticks of glue, boxes of staples, and a set of channel locks that was going to rust in the salt air.
“Hey,” his father said. “Put my phone in the refrigerator, would you?” He handed over his mobile.
“Why the refrigerator?” Kirk asked. The thing had not worked in many years.
“If you broke into this camper and wanted to steal anything of value, would you look in the busted icebox?”
“You got me there, Pop.” When Kirk opened the door, not only was there the dank smell of years of nonuse but there was also the sight of a small, gift-wrapped box.
“Happy birthday, son,” Frank said. “How old are you again?”
“Nineteen, but you make me feel thirty.” The gift was a waterproof sports watch, a newer model than the watch Frank was wearing, all black and metal, a heavy-duty military chronometer already set to the correct time. Strapping it around his wrist made Kirk feel like he was about to board a military helicopter to go kill bin Laden. “Thanks, Dad. This makes me look cooler than I am. Didn’t think that was possible.”
“Hoopy boofy, Junior.”
As they carried their boards down the path to the beach, Frank said again, “I told you, I’m going to have to make a fe
w calls around eight thirty. I’ll holler at you when I get out of the water.”
“I will salute my recognition.”
Standing in the sands of Mars, they watched a set of waves play out as they attached their board leashes to their ankles with Velcro straps. About a dozen large, well-shaped curlers came along before the surf lessened, allowing Kirk to run into the tide and hop on his board and paddle out, duck-butting through the smaller waves as they broke over him. He’d be lining up just beyond the break with the younger surfers, those who shredded the faces of as many waves as Poseidon sent their way.
As a paddleboarder, Frank sought the larger waves off of Mars, those well outside, beyond the lineup, where along with the other stand-up surfers he’d wait for the larger sets of heavy water, the waves generated by storms in the South Pacific that grew muscular with mileage. Before too long, he easily caught the shoulder of a wave, rising up six feet or so above its floor, riding gracefully in wide turns. As he was the surfer closest to the curl, the wave was rightfully his own, the other Martians peeling off to leave him to it. When the wave closed out, he hopped off his board and held his position in the shallows until the set died. Then he hopped back up, his feet shoulder width apart, dug his paddle into the ocean, and crested each ridge of incoming water until he was outside again.
The air and water were cold, but Kirk was glad he had gotten out of bed. He recognized old Martians like Bert the Elder, Manny Peck, Schultzie, and a lady he called Mrs. Potts—the veteran long boarders. And there were kids around his age, some of the pals he grew up alongside who were now, like him, in college or the workforce. Hal Stein was in graduate school at Cal, Benjamin Wu worked as an aide to a city councilman, “Stats” Magee was studying for his CPA license, and Buckwheat Bob Robertson was, like Kirk, still an undergrad, still living at home.
“Hey! Spock!” Hal Stein called out. “Thought you’d died!”
The five of them waited in a circle between rides, comparing the notes they’d kept since adolescence. Kirk was reminded of just how good Mars had been to him. Living within driving distance of its waves had allowed Kirk access to a world all his own. At Mars, he grew comfortable in the powerful waves of the place. Mars was where, alone, Kirk tested himself and excelled. Onshore, he was a statistic, a tick mark smack in the middle of a bell curve, neither a dropout nor a scholar, not an ace or a deuce. Other than a couple of English teachers, Mrs. Takimashi the school librarian, and the crazy, gorgeous, honey-haired Aurora Burke (before her new stepfather whisked her off to a new family in Kansas City), no one had ever singled Kirk Ullen out as being special. But in the water of Mars, Kirk was master of all he surveyed. He was glad he’d been coming to the place for years and could be there this day as he turned nineteen years old.
After so many rides he had lost count, Kirk was pooped, so he rested in the lineup. When the morning sun came out, he could see the tops of the vans and his dad’s camper in the parking lot, the tile roofs of the shops across the highway, and the rocky, scrub-brush hills beyond. With the blue water against the brightening sky, Mars took on the look of a sepia-toned photograph of some legendary surf locale in Hawaii or Fiji, a color image long since faded to an amber tint, turning green mountains into yellow and brown hills. If Kirk squinted, the Mexican-themed shops became bures on a slip of beach, native huts on an atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Again, Mars became a different world and Kirk was its king.
Sometime later he heard his father calling him from the beach. Frank had laid his board on the sand, planted his paddle like a flag, and was making the hand gesture universally translated as “I am going to make a phone call.”
Kirk saluted his father just as Mrs. Potts screamed, “Outside!” Sure enough, a set was shaping up well offshore, the waves as visible as humps on a washboard, breaking at least fifty yards early, making for dozens of long, aggressive rides. Everyone paddled furiously. Kirk was tired, but he was not about to sit out a great set. He stroked hard and steadily until experience told him to wheel around and paddle toward the beach. He caught the third wave that came his way.
As he was rising up on the apex of water, instinct timed his springing to his feet for the drop into the wave’s trough. This wave was gorgeous, well shaped and smooth faced. And huge. A monster. Kirk kicked out of the trough and climbed up the face, just in front of the curl of white water, a compressed whisper of wind at his back. He jerked left and shot down perpendicular to the arc, pulled right at the bottom, and again sluiced up the face. He topped the very crest, bounced along the rim, then dug once more into the slot, retarding his speed to allow the break to catch up to him. He knelt as low on his board as his physique allowed until water was bending over his head and he occupied the little green room of the curl. Rushing water was on his left, the smooth glass of the surface on his right. He dragged the fingers of his free hand in the wall of green like the fin of a dolphin, a knife in the water.
As ever, the curl closed on him, the water smacked him on the head, and he wiped out, no big deal. Churning in the white water, he relaxed, as he had learned long ago, letting the wave roll beyond him and allow him time to find the surface and fill his lungs. But the ocean is a fickle mistress, Mars indifferent to human effort. Kirk felt his leash go taut in the Velcro around his ankle. In the foam and chaos his board snapped back, nailing him hard in the meat of his calf. The hit had the same blunt force as the blow from the croquet mallet Kris had once taken to him in the backyard, which sent him to the doctor and her to her bedroom. Kirk knew he was done for the day.
He felt for the sandy bottom, knowing the next monster was about to crush him. He lunged up for a breath, sucking in air, seeing seven feet of white water roaring down on him. He ducked under the wave, blindly felt for the Velcro of his leash, and ripped it off his foot so his board would get tossed toward the beach and away from him.
He floated in, no panic despite the pain in his leg. When he made contact with the sand again, he was farther inland and could hop on one foot to get his head above water. The next incoming wave pushed him closer to shore, another did the same, then a few more. He crawled out of the water and onto the beach.
“Fucker,” he said to himself. He sat on the sand, his leg so deeply gashed that white tissue showed along with torn flesh and pulsing blood. He was going to need stitches, sure as shooting. Kirk remembered a day when he was thirteen, when a kid named Blake got hit by his own board and had been pulled unconscious from the water. Blake had been nailed in the jaw and needed months of dental work. This wound was not as serious as that, and Kirk had suffered a few lumps in his time, but this chunk taken out of his leg was worthy of a Purple Heart.
“You okay?” Ben Wu had come out of the water after retrieving Kirk’s loose board. “Oh, shit!” he yelled at the sight of the cut. “You need a ride to the hospital?”
“No. My dad is around. He’ll take me.”
“You sure?”
Kirk stood up. “Yes.” There was pain, and blood was trailing down his lower leg, splattering drops of scarlet in the sand of Mars, but he waved Ben away and said, “I got it. Thanks.”
He took his board and limped on up the path toward the parking lot.
“You’re gonna need, like, forty sutures in that thing,” Ben called out before leaping back into the surf atop his board.
Kirk’s calf was throbbing in time to his heartbeat. He limped up the path, his leash trailing in the sand-covered walkway. More beachgoers had arrived, so the lot was two-thirds filled, but Frank had parked close. Kirk expected to find his dad inside the camper at the table, talking business on his phone with papers spread in front of him. But when he rounded the back of the truck, the camper door was locked and his father was nowhere to be seen.
Kirk stood his board against the door, then sat on the bumper to inspect his leg, which now looked like a kielbasa had exploded. Had the board hit him a bit higher it might have shattered his kneecap. Kirk felt lucky, but the sooner he got to an emergency room the better.
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His dad was probably across the highway, in a store grabbing a drink or a protein bar, the key to the camper in the zippered pocket of his wet suit. Kirk didn’t want to hobble across the highway carrying his surfboard, nor did he want to leave it for a thief in the parking lot. He looked around to make sure that no one was observing him, then he stood on the bumper on his nonbleeding leg, shoving the board up onto the camper roof, where it would be out of sight from the ground. The leash hung down, so Kirk knotted it into a messy ball and tossed it up as well. So much for protective measures, he thought, and then headed for the highway.
An overgrown bush provided shade as Kirk waited for an opening in the morning traffic. When a gap showed, he made his move, skip-hopping across the four lanes. He checked the Subway and the Circle W, looking through windows but not seeing his dad. The surf shop would make sense. Maybe he was picking up sunblock. Heavy metal music blared from inside but no one was in the place.
His last and best bet was the Starbucks at the north end of the shops. Coffee drinkers were reading papers and working on laptops at the outside tables and benches. Frank was not one of them, and if anyone bothered to look up at Kirk with his open wound, they didn’t say anything. He entered, expecting to find his dad, roust him off the phone, and set off for the appropriate medical attention. But Starbucks held no Frank.
“Holy shit!” The female barista saw Kirk standing there, bleeding. “Sir? Are you okay?”
“It’s not that bad,” Kirk said. Some customers looked up from their cups and laptops without responding.
“Should I call 911?” the barista asked.
“I’ve got a ride to the clinic. My dad,” Kirk said. “Has a Frank been in, ordering a Venti drip with a shot of mocha?”
“A Frank?” The woman thought a second. “A lady ordered a Venti drip with a shot of mocha a while ago with a decaf soy latte. But not a Frank.” Kirk turned to go back outside. “We have a first aid kit.”
