In the Break (5 page)

So we sat, two thirteen-year-old boys on the beach. And watched. Like everyone else.

Until an older guy actually paddled out. He timed it in between sets, making it look relatively easy. He took off on the first
wave of a set, and rode a huge blue beautiful peak all the way into the shore-break, where he kicked out. Everybody on the
clifftop yelled their approval. And soon more older guys were on the beach, waxing their boards before paddling out.

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.