Journey to the Sea

by Gil McNeil

  Maybe I smoked too many double-enders or something, I don’t remember, but the guy had some weird kind of hold on me, that’s for sure.

  Anyway, going back to this experience in my eleventh year (I’m in my thirteenth now and hope to graduate soon), I was carrying two or three bags of groceries from my car (a ’65 Triumph Spitfire) around the side of the house when I ran into Don. He was pulling his 13-foot rhino-chaser out from under the house. It was dusty and dirty and grangy beyond belief, and I almost warned Don not to tuck it under his arm, but then I noticed that he was dustier and dirtier and grungier than the old surfboard.

  ‘Eh, watchit, where yer goin’, Cornflake!’ It was a typical unceremonious greeting, peculiar to ageing watermen, I figured.

  ‘Uh, sorry, Don,’ I mumbled, though he really irritated me. ‘I was just bringing down the groceries.’

  ‘Whatcha think, beagle brain, I ain’t got eyes ’n ears? Puttim’ behint th’ sofer, will ya? I got cump-nee comin’.’

  ‘Why do you want me to put the groceries behind the sofa if you’ve got company coming, Don Redondo?’

  ‘Cheeze! Ya dumpflake, whatuf he’s got yer munchlies or brings a gangle of friends er a hungry date? Ain’t got enuf fer one of us let alonely six er nine. So g’wan ahead an stick it back there behint yer sofa and don’t be given the Don none a yer Nth degree!’

  ‘Okay, okay . . . sorry I asked.’ He certainly wasn’t mellowing with time, though he did seem to be fermenting. As I stuffed the bags behind the rancid sofa, I pondered whimsically whether Don might merely be going through a stage. Why couldn’t he just become another Malibu bag lady and push a supermarket cart around all day collecting flattened aluminium cans and Slurpee containers? Why couldn’t he find a utilitarian niche in the scheme of things and leave me to finish my Associate of Arts degree in relative peace? Why couldn’t he just get out of my . . .

  These reveries were interrupted by a deep, hollow sound, like someone pounding on an empty oil drum. Don Redondo, as was his custom, had banged me on the head with one of his big, fat, grubby, clenched fists.

  ‘I ast cha whyncha vakkim the floor if yer jest gonna stant there an gawkle?’

  ‘Vacuum the floor?’ I asked, taken aback. Don never, ever vacuums his floor. Never ever. He has a vacuum, but he uses it only to get toast out from behind the stove when it falls there, which is rather frequently.

  In fact, the one time that I had previously attempted to vacuum the floor for him, he abused me viciously, tirading on about how hard he’d worked tracking in sand all those years to make his home as comfortable as the beach.

  And I’ll admit he had a point. You could make a sandcastle right there in his living room. You could track a man’s footprints through the house. You could cut your feet on glass even. So I was taken aback.

  ‘But, Don,’ I said. ‘You never, ever vacuum your floor.’

  ‘But, Dahnnn,’ he mimicked, ‘you nemmer, nemmer vakkim yer floooorrr. Cheeeese! Ain’a guy gotta right ta make ‘is own incisions? Ain’ I gotta right, hmmm???’ He was threatening me with the shovel he uses to pile up the briquettes in his barbecue, so I quickly agreed and went and dragged out the vacuum.

  Don grunted a ‘humph!’ and went out onto the patio. He started putting wax on the old board, and I noticed the ocean beyond him was snot-green and dead flat beneath the thick grey June overcast.

  I plugged in the vacuum and switched it on; the incredible rattle and ricochet of billions of sand grains and pebbles and glass up into the machine blocked out even the zhoom-zhoom of traffic on the Coast Highway just outside the front door. In fact, the racket was alarming, but I kept at it, mowing the beach on down to the carpet and wondering who was coming to visit.

  It took me about an hour to cut a path from the sofa to the sliding glass door. When I got there, I noticed that Don wasn’t on the patio any more and that the surfboard was gone. I turned off the machine, slid open the door and stepped out into the blessed silence just in time to see Don Redondo paddle out past the six-inch shorebreak towards an undefined horizon that blended into the squinty light of the grey sky. In fact, it was quite squinty and blinky out there in the indirect light. It felt all cool and hot at the same time. I felt a subtle wave of nausea, a flush of prickly heat, an electric shiver.

  I backed up, my head almost beginning to reel, until the backs of my legs touched brick, and I sat down on the barbecue grill. This had always been my power spot, my force-gathering centre, my safe place. This was where Don Redondo had led me through the neoprene ritual. This was the place where my pants got all those black, greasy stripes that I couldn’t quite explain to the cleaners on Van Nuys Boulevard. Still, if ever there was a time, now was . . .

  A weird howl – a bestial, eerie whoop – caught my head and spun it until I was looking out at sea and seeing Don Redondo dropping over the cornice of a 15-foot wave. He freefell the length of his board, somehow landed on it, made the ugliest fat-assed bottom turn I’d ever seen, and chattered towards the bellowing line of shoulder that was torquing off towards downtown Malibu. I couldn’t believe it. The guy was locked into the most incredible California wave I’d ever seen!

  As the curl threw over him, Don tried to squat down – though the wave was so big he didn’t need to – but his knees wouldn’t bend (the old fart’s really out of shape, but he’s lucky), so he just stooped over and let out another maniacal sound.

  ‘A-hem!’ a voice said right by my right ear, scaring my heart into suspended, then irregular, rhythm. ‘That cat is really good, huh?”

  There was a shortish, thinnish guy about forty standing next to me. He had curly brown hair and splotchy sideburns, the fuzz of a puerile moustache, and dark sunglasses. He wore a black leather jacket and jeans and low, zip-sided black leather boots. A few of his fingernails were a lot longer than the others. He looked pale, Jewish and familiar. I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded, looking back at the ocean. All that was left was a rushing tumble of white water. Don must’ve been nailed, I thought. Lucky guy. There wasn’t another wave in sight.

  ‘Uh, hey man,’ the guy said.

  ‘Huh?’ I answered, turning back to him.

  ‘Mind if I ask you somethin’?’

  ‘Me?’ I said. ‘Uh-uh.’

  ‘Why’re you sittin’ in the barbecue?’

  I was searching for the only possible answer that would make me appear sane, but I couldn’t find it. Then Don Redondo came sulking up all wet with his rhino-chaser under his arm, and I was off the hook.

  ‘Hey man,’ said the little guy to Don.

  ‘Good ja mate it down ’ere,’ said the Don. ‘There’s yer ovational waifs comin’ troo. Could be yer day, Bob.’

  Bob. That’s when it clicked. Bob Dylan! I’d heard he lived at Malibu, at least part of the time, but never really flashed on the possibility that I might actually run into him sometime. And here he was with Don Redondo, of all people! And somehow Don knew him. This was an anthropological, cultural crossover with implications that could blast my research right into the stratosphere. I could possibly get a grant to continue for another eleven years! Maybe I could sell my life story to Rolling Stone! Maybe . . .

  Excited, I slid out of the barbecue, my mind already working like a well-oiled computer. ‘Ah, Mr Dylan, isn’t it?’ I began, but Don dropped in on me right away.

  ‘This ’ere’s my requaintence, Mr Constipashun,’ said Don.

  ‘Constipeda,’ I interjected. ‘Careless, to my friends,’ I added.

  ‘Pleased ta meet cha, Mr Constipated,’ said Mr Dylan.

  ‘Me too,’ I said. ‘I was just wondering if—’

  ‘I gotta bort for ya unnerneat th’ hooch here,’ Don interrupted, leading Mr Dylan around the side of the bungalow. He pulled my 7-foot 6-inch Glenn Kennedy out from under the house and started wiping the dirt off with a wetsuit I kept there with it. This was a shock, too, as I had never seen Don Redondo wipe anything off in my life. ‘Star struck,’ I muttered as they pushed past m
e and out to the patio.

  Don started telling Dylan the lay of the land, so to speak, the same way he’d told me eleven years earlier – all about sets and paddling and the intricate ways of a waterman. I actually waxed a tad nostalgic hearing it all again. Don hadn’t spoken a civil waterman’s word of advice to me in years, I suddenly realised.

  Dylan took off his boots. He was wearing beige Gucci socks. Then he slipped off his faded blue jeans. Underneath, he wore a pair of electric-yellow Speedos. Then he took off his leather jacket, and there was the same Triumph motorcycle T-shirt he’d worn on the cover of Highway 61 Revisited. Either that or Triumph had paid him in T-shirts for the free advertising. Then he took off the T-shirt and I saw what few had seen before: a heart with Joan + Bob tattooed on his left hip. I noticed he was shivering, and I offered him the use of my wetsuit.

  ‘Thanks, kid,’ he said. ‘Kid’ was much better than ‘Mr Constipated’, I thought. I watched the two of them wax up and then walk out across the beach towards the dead-flat ocean: the huge, grubby, balding, bushy-headed old fart and the thin guy in the baggy wetsuit – he looked like any other surfer from Minnesota except for the sunglasses.

  As I watched them paddle out, I couldn’t resist the temptation – as an anthropologist – to rifle through Mr Dylan’s – Bob’s – pockets. Not to steal, just to learn. I found a Hohner Marine Band harmonica (key of A), a Hohner harmonica (key of D), a Hohner harmonica (key of C), a Fender flatpick (light), another pair of sunglasses, a phone number (Valley prefix), two ticket stubs from the Canoga Theater, 37 cents in change, and six $100 bills. I put everything back and left before they’d reached Don’s usual line-up (he used an old truck that he’d bolted to the side of the Coast Highway years ago). Maybe I didn’t want to see Bob Dylan take gas on a Colony close-out. Maybe I didn’t want to see him taking my place in the line-up with Don Redondo. Maybe I just wanted to get out of there before Don found out I hadn’t finished the floor (not to mention the ice cream that was melting behind the sofa).

  In any case, I was in an unusual mood as I drove slowly down the coast towards Rosa’s Cantina. I was craving a massive dose of her patented hot sauce, but I was also looking forward to an afternoon nap. Take time to digest the day’s experiences, to—

  I had to slam on the brakes to miss hitting the VW bus stopped in front of me. I was almost to the pier and traffic was at a standstill. People were running along the roadside, rushing up from the beach. I thought it must be a landslide or a ten-car crash. People were parking on the road and rushing ahead to see, so I got out and followed them, pressing ahead into the thickening throng.

  They were crowding around something. I thought I heard singing, chanting, something with a cadence, but by the time I broke through to the front, the crowd was dispersing right around the crosswalk by the pier. In a moment of panic I wondered if I should rush back and move my car, but just as I turned I saw a man with curly brown hair in a wetsuit walking out onto the pier. He was carrying my surfboard. I rushed after him.

  ‘Mr Dylan!’ I called. ‘Mr Dylan!’ But he wouldn’t turn. A group of people passed between us. I lost him. Then I saw him again. He was looking over the railing about halfway out on the pier. I came up quietly, humbly. I didn’t know what to say. Then I thought of it.

  ‘Mr Dylan,’ I said. ‘Did you catch any waves?’

  And then he turned to me, and my heart stopped. Completely. I looked carefully. My wetsuit. My surfboard. The same sunglasses.

  ‘Yes?’ the man said, taking off the glasses.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, backing up. ‘I’m . . . sorry . . . I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry . . .’

  I turned and walked away, back off the pier, my head reeling. It wasn’t Bob Dylan at all.

  It was Bruce Springsteen!

  I reached Coast Highway just in time to see a column of traffic rolling by; there went my ’65 Triumph Spitfire. Naturally, Don Redondo was driving. ‘Probably heading down to Rosa’s,’ I thought. He looked at me. He saw me. But he didn’t wave. As stupid as Don Redondo sometimes is, he isn’t dumb enough to acknowledge that he knows a guy with barbecue stripes on the seat of his pants.

  FAMILY HOLIDAY

  MIKE GAYLE

  DAY 1 – SATURDAY

  I’M THIRTY-THREE YEARS old and I have never been on a family holiday in the UK. My daughter (henceforward known as The Kid) is fifteen months old and she has never been on a family holiday in the UK, or anywhere else for that matter. My wife (henceforward known as My Wife) is thirty-two years old, has been on plenty of family holidays in the UK and is therefore something of an expert. In her role as accomplished UK holidaymaker, she suggested that we leave the relative comfort of our home in the West Midlands at 10 a.m. rather than as I had suggested ‘somewhere reasonably close to the crack of dawn’. I bowed to her greater wisdom, which is why four hours later we find ourselves sitting in a traffic jam just outside of Bristol. This, however, is no ordinary traffic jam. Its head, I suspect, is somewhere in Land’s End where a small boy is taking a herd of cows to market, which is holding up the local milkman and thereby causing a knock-on effect that probably finishes somewhere near John O’Groats where a family of five in a Ford Mondeo are on their way to Devon having completely miscalculated how long it takes to cross the entire country by motorway. I kid you not – this traffic jam is so long that it could be spotted from outer space without a telescope (were you to be orbiting the earth in a space shuttle whilst focusing on the M4 just outside of Bristol). To be fair to My Wife, I never in a million years thought that the traffic would be this bad. But then again, I’ve never been on a family holiday in the UK. And so, as we wait for the small boy with his herd of cows in Land’s End to move along the road a bit further, we have no choice but to finish off the last of the Starburst chewy sweets. And we only have two green ones left.

  Some time later, having escaped the traffic jam, we find ourselves close to our destination. And though cynical right to my rotten core, I can’t help but get excited as we drive along the snaky main road and contemplate our destination: Woolacombe in north Devon. I have heard nothing but good things about Woolacombe. Whenever I mentioned it to friends, the only reaction I ever received was one of amazement and envy. ‘Oooh, Woolacombe,’ they would say. ‘You’ll love it.’ And as spending over a thousand pounds on a holiday that doesn’t involve air travel intrinsically makes me miserable, it had better be everything they say it is.

  As we turn a sharp corner – like the flick of a switch, the madness of the motorway is forgotten – I can now see the sea. There’s no doubt about it. There it is sandwiched in our vista between the sky and a couple of dodgy-looking guesthouses. My Wife tells me that once you see the sea you finally feel like you’re on holiday. I look at her with genuine love in my eyes, and can’t help but think that she’s completely insane. Regardless, seeing the sea does bring some cheer to my heart, and whether I like it or not, the holiday has begun.

  DAY 2 – SUNDAY

  Even though The Kid is only fifteen months old, we have spent all morning explaining the concept of the beach. ‘It’s a place where there’s lots of sand,’ says My Wife. The Kid looks at her blankly. ‘And because there’s lots of sand, you’ll need a bucket and spade.’ The Kid looks at the bucket and spade blankly then looks back at My Wife. ‘And then there’s the sea,’ continues My Wife. ‘It’s like a gigantic cold bath only it’s green.’ At this The Kid looks at me with a worried look on her face as if to ask the question: Are you hearing what I’m hearing? I shrug as if to say: I hear what you’re hearing but not even I can save you. With that she escapes to her bedroom and closes the door behind her. ‘It’s not scary,’ yells My Wife through the door. ‘It’s fun!’ Though I can’t see my daughter’s face, my guess is she isn’t convinced because she still refuses to come out. My Wife just rolls her eyes to the Artexed ceiling, sighs and informs me that she’s going to have a shower.

  Ten minutes later and we’re all ready to make our first journey to th
e beach as a family. I am wearing a T-shirt and shorts and trainers, My Wife is wearing similar, and our daughter is sporting a rather natty bathing costume combined with multicoloured jelly shoes. I suspect she loves these shoes more than she loves me. She smiles at them and talks to them as we load up the pram with all the essentials for a day at the beach (three towels, two changes of clothes, kids’ sun lotion, adult sun lotion, a copy of the Guardian, two novels, five ordinary nappies, three ‘swim’ nappies, two mobile phones, nappy sacks, a beach ball and a bucket and spade).

  ‘Are you ready for the beach?’ I ask The Kid joyfully.

  She stops smiling at her jelly shoes and once again looks worried.

  ‘Well, if you’re not, it’s too late now,’ I say in reply to her doleful expression. And before she can make a run for it I scoop her up and strap her into her pram.

  As we make our way along the main road from the hotel we are joined by other holidaying families. I can’t help but look at these other families and compare them to my own. Most have more children than we do. Their children also appear to be older than mine (mostly in the seven-to-eleven age bracket). All of them without exception appear to be dressed in wetsuits.

  ‘When did wetsuits become fashion wear?’ I ask My Wife.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she replies. ‘Maybe people don’t like getting wet any more.’

  ‘But that’s the whole point of wetsuits,’ I say knowledgeably. ‘Water comes through them and they get wet. Otherwise they’d be called dry suits.’

  ‘If you know so much about wetsuits,’ spits My Wife, ‘then why are you asking me stupid questions about them?’

  I shrug. ‘Shall we just go to the park instead?’

  My Wife nods and my daughter laughs gaily at her jelly shoes.

  DAY 3 – MONDAY

  It’s a new day and we’re finally heading back to the beach again, but now we know why everyone in Woolacombe from postal operatives to the woman behind the counter in Londis is wearing a wetsuit. Unbeknownst to us, my family and I are holidaying in the second city of surfing in the UK.