CHAPTER THREE- WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1968

            It was Christmas vacation. I had surfed, but I wanted a few more rides. More. I had the time, I had the second-best parking spot of the now-full lot at Swamis- front row, two cars off center. It was cool but sunny. I was dead center on the Falcon, leaning over the hood. I checked the diving watch on my wrist. It was fogged up. I shook my wrist, removed the watch, set it on the part of the Falcon’s hood my spread-out beach towel didn’t cover, directly over the radiator, the face of the watch facing the ocean and the sun.

            Spread about on the towel was a quart of chocolate milk in a waxed cardboard container, the spout open; a lunch sack, light blue, open; an apple; a partial pack of Marlboros, hard pack, open, a book of paper matches inside; and three Pee-Chee folders. One of the folders was open. A red notebook, writing on both sides of most pages, was open to pages five and six.

            A car stopped immediately behind the Falcon. Two doors slammed. Two teenagers, sixteen, I guessed, to my almost eighteen, ran between my car and the car to my left and to the bluff.  Jumping and gesturing, they gave one-word assessments of the conditions. “Epic!” and “So… bitchin’!”

They looked at each other. They looked over me at their car, idling in the lane. They looked at me. The taller one, with a bad complexion, his hair parted in the middle, shirtless and with three strands of love beads around his neck, walked toward the driver’s side of the Falcon and asked, “Hey, man. You going out or been out?”

            “Both. Man.”

“Both?” Love Beads guy moved closer to me.

“Good spot,” the driver, with bottle bleached hair, Beach Boys striped shirt, and khaki pants, said, coming up the passenger side of the Falcon. I nodded. Politely. I smiled, politely, and looked down at my notebooks. “You a local?”

I shifted the notebooks, took out the one on the bottom, light blue, opened it, turned, and looked out at the lineup, half-sitting on the Falcon, I may or may not have scoffed.

 Short Guy stayed on the bluff. A car honked behind us. Not at me, at the Teenage Non-Locals. “At least go get the boards.” Love Beads Guy walked around me, close enough to give me what could have been an accidental nudge. “You fuckers down here are fuckin’ greedy,” he said, giving Beach Boys shirt an on-purpose nudge.

Beach Boy said, “Fuck you, Brian,” and, joined by Short Guy, ran out and into the lane to remove the boards. Love Beads Brian, moved directly in front of me. He puffed out his chest a bit. His expression changed. He looked a bit fierce. Or he attempted to. I twisted my left arm behind my back and set the notebook down and picked up my diving watch. When I brought my arm back around, very quickly, Brian twitched. I smiled. 

My left hand was on my watch band, close to its face. I shook it. Hard. Three quick strokes, then tapped it, three times, with the pointer finger of my right hand. “The joke, see, Brian, is that, once it gets filled up with water, no more can get in. Hence, Waterproof.” I put the watch on. “Nope, don’t have to leave yet… Brian.”

Brian was glowering, tensed-up. “Brian,” Short Guy said as he carried two boards over to the bluff and set them down, “You could, you know, help.” Brian raised his right hand, threw it out to his left and swung it back. I took the gesture to mean ‘shut up and keep walking, Short Guy.’ I chuckled. Brian moved his right hand closer to my face, pointer finger up.

I moved my face closer to his hand, then leaned back, feigning an inability to focus. “Brian,” I said, “I have a history…” Brian smirked. “…of striking out, and quite violently… when I feel threatened.” I blinked. “Brian.”

Brian looked around as if his friends might back him up. “Quite violently?”

“Brian. Yeah. Suddenly and… violently.” I nodded and rolled my eyes. I moved closer to his face. “My father says, there are times to react and times to… take a moment, assess the situation. I’m trying. Everyone… people are hoping the surfing is… helping. I am not… sure.”

“Brian,” Beach Boy said, “we’ll get a spot.”

“I can… watch your boards for you. Okay?”

“Okay? No! Fuck you, Jap!” It wasn’t loud. Brian moved back as he said it.

“Brian. I’m, uh, assessing.” I folded my hands across my chest. Brian was mumbling and swaying back and forth, closer and farther away. I couldn’t make sense of his words. His face was not in focus. He had become background, overlapped by, superimposed with, the faces of a succession of bullies, kids from school, third grade to high school. Each of the faces, each of them taunting, was too close to mine. I couldn’t hear them, either. I knew the words: “Retard!” “Idiot!” “What’s wrong with you?”

 I could hear my father’s voice. “They don’t know you, Jody. It’s all a joke. Laugh.” In this vision, or spell, or episode, each of my alleged tormentors, all of them boys, fell away. Each face was bracketed, punctuated with a blink of a red light. Every three seconds. Approximately.

One face belonged to a nine-year-old boy, a look of shock that would become pain on his face. He was falling back and down, blood coming out of his mouth. Red light. I looked at the school drinking fountain. A bit of blood. Red light. I saw more faces. The red lights became weaker, and with them, the images.

The lighting changed. More like silver than blue. Cold light. I saw my father’s face, and mine, in the bathroom mirror. Faces; his short, almost blond hair, almost curly, eyes almost impossibly blue; my hair straight and black, my eyes almost black. “Jody, just… smile.” I did. Big smile. “No, son; not that smile.”

I smiled. That smile.

Brian’s face came back into focus, two steps back from where he had been. He wasn’t going to challenge me. Short Guy was behind him and to his right. I asked, “Surf friends, huh?” Short Guy nodded. I unfolded my arms, looked at my watch, looked past the two teenagers and out to the kelp beds. “Wind’s picking up, Brian.”

I turned toward the Falcon, closed the notebook, set it on one side of the open Pee-Chee, picked up the light blue notebook from the other side. There were crude sketches of dark waves and cartoonish surfers on the cover. I opened it to the first page.

“Wind is picking up.” I may have spun around a bit quickly, hands in a pre-fight position. It was Rincon Ronny in a shortjohn wetsuit, a board under his arm. Ronny nodded toward the stairs. “They’re gone.” He leaned away and laughed. I relaxed my hands and my stance. “The one kid was carrying both boards. Scared shitless.”

“Oh.” I closed the notebook. Ronny nodded. I looked around to see if any of his friends were with him, then back to him. “I was… really… polite.”

“Polite. Yeah. From what I saw.”

“What you saw?” I had to think about what he did see, how long I was… in whatever state I was in. Out. I started gathering my belongings, pulling up the edges of my towel. “I just didn’t want to give my spot to fuckers from… I don’t know. Where are you parked… Ronny?”

“I’m… close enough.” Ronny looked at my shortjohn wetsuit, laid out over my board. “One thing; those two… fuckers, they won’t fuck with you in the water. Junior.”

“Joey.” I said, “Someone will.”

Ronny mouthed, “Joey,” and did a combination blink/nod. “Yeah. It’s… Swamis. Joey.”

Ronny looked at the waves, back at me. A gust of west wind blew the cover of one of my notebooks, a green one, open. “Julie” was written in almost unreadably psychedelic letters across pages eight and nine. “Julie.” Hopefully unreadable.

I repeated Ronny’s words mentally, careful not to mouth them. “From what I saw.”

“Swamis” copyright 2020. Erwin A. Dence, Jr.