There were, at Fallbrook Union High School, three large, rectangular, concrete planters between the administration buildings and the band room and the gravel student parking lots on one side, the Senior Area and the majority of the school’s classrooms on the other. The planters featured flat tops for seating. The sides were angled in for leg dangling. The gymnasium, cafeteria, and the boys’ locker rooms were on the downhill side, beyond a paved parking lot. Closer to the planters were two trailers that offered chips, pre-made sandwiches, and ice cream bars, and milk, and apples, at lunch time and the mid-morning ‘nutrition’ break.
Since my sophomore year, I was the ‘fly’ part of ‘you fly I’ll buy.’ I usually went up the ‘out’ side of the shortest line. I was only challenged a few times, never twice by the same boy. Reputation, mostly. Most acted as if they were fine with it.
The express service happened often enough that it became a standard for me to offer the girl who let me cut the line a creamsicle or a fudgesicle, her choice, with a nod toward my friends, Gary and Roger. “On him,” I would say. If the girl asked which one, I would answer, “Your choice.” One or both of my friends would smile, perhaps flipping the offended girl a peace sign, often returned with a giggle for any other girl in the line and a sort of stern look toward me. I returned any thank you with a “not my money.”
From my first days in high school, I spent most of my non-class time, non-library time standing, usually with a book or notebook in my hands, next to the spindly tree closest to the action; studying, memorizing, and not-exactly-secretly observing the rites and rituals, the fights and romances, the cliques and the loners. Eventually this became the spot where the surf crowd, those who tried it and gave up, those who stuck with it, friends of my very few friends, hung out. On, but not in the planter. That was my spot.
It was lunch time. Murder was the topic. Gary was talking. A crowd had gathered and grown. Too big. I pulled Gary up onto the downhill side of the planter. I moved over to my tree, a Pee-Chee open, listening, trying to appear as if I wasn’t. Gary continued talking about the blackened wall and the cops and the TV crews; not loud, but for Gary, who rarely broke his cool, he was borderline enthusiastic.
And Gary was receiving great feedback. There was a rhythm. Words, response. The volume was increasing, the pace quickening. Enthusiasm building.
Someone jumped up next to Gary, pumping his arms as if he had been in the Swamis parking lot. The rhythm was broken. Gary looked at the chubby kid with the big, black-rimmed glasses. “Squintz?”
“Ray Saunders.”
“Oh, sorry… Ray Saunders; did I call you… Squintz?”
Some in the crowd repeated, “Squintz.” Ray Saunders couldn’t just jump back down. He took two blind steps backwards, into the dirt and redwood bark, bumping against me.
Gary, resuming his story, said something about the lingering smell of burnt flesh. The crowd reacted. Ray Saunders and I didn’t join in. “Brain DeFreines,” he said, “you’re the head dude of the surf dudes; why weren’t you there?”
“Because, Ray Saunders,” I said as I looked down at his feet, one of his wing-tipped shoes crushing one of the ground cover plants, “I was here.”
“Sorry, Joey,” Ray Saunders said, moving his foot off the plant, removing his glasses, leaning in toward me. I may have shrugged. I did close the folder. Ray put his glasses back on, looked at the top of the folded Free Press that was sticking out of the top of the PeeChee. “Are you in this week’s… edition?”
“Not by choice.”
“So, Joseph DeFreines, Junior; you, all cool and shit; you probably blew your GPA by not giving your oral… presentation in Poly Sci.”
“I don’t do oral… presentations. Ray Saunders.”
“Today’s mine.” I nodded. “You’re afraid? You?” I nodded again. “Well, Brain DeFreines, I am scared shitless; and I’m doing mine… anyway.”
“Call me… not that. Ray Saunders, you are… too close to me. And you are staring.”
“Kindergarten. Before your… accident. Morning classes.” I was staring. “We were friends. You, me, Frankie Terrazas, Danny Turner, and, oh yeah, Grant Murdoch. Friends. Do you remember… anything about… us?”
I visualized a tall kindergartner pulling a red wagon with a much smaller kid inside; another kid, in glasses, running alongside, carrying a too-big-for-him American flag.
I tried to see past the reflection in Ray’s lenses; “What was I… like?”
“You were five. We were all… five.”
“Frankie Trousers,” I said, after a longer than usual delay. “What happened to him?”
“Terrazas.” Ray hit me on the shoulder. “Shit, man… Joey; you do remember.”
“Bits and pieces.” I looked at the students below Ray and me. Several were looking at us. “Don’t do that…” I hit Ray on his shoulder with my left hand. “…again.” We both shook our heads. Slightly. “But, Ray, we were all… friends?”
“Then? Yes. You know… Fallbrook. Dads get transferred… other shit.” He took a big breath, adjusted his glasses. “Grant turns into a dick. Shit like that.”
The rhythm of Gary’s lines, and the crowd’s reactions, had been ongoing.
Carefully avoiding the plants, I stepped around Ray Saunders, onto the flat concrete surface, and next to Gary. Gary stopped talking. The crowd noise stopped. I pulled Ray forward and pushed him against Gary. “New nickname for Squintz,” I whispered.
Gary looked at Ray Saunders, looked at me. “Joey DeFreines has an announcement.”
“Fucker,” I whispered, putting my left hand up and over my eyes as if it was to lessen the glare. “Ray Saunders… here…” I raised my voice. “He will be… hereafter, known as ‘X-Ray.’” There was no immediate response. “Oral presentation,” I whispered to Ray as I took a step back into the bark, aware of where the plants were.
Dangerous Doug and then one of the Billys, Billy ‘The Hawk,’ started chanting, “X-Ray.” Others followed. Ray Saunders raised both arms. Gary pushed him off the planter. The two students closest to the falling students separated. X-Ray, stumbling forward, caught his balance by crashing into the Hawk in a sort of full-frontal hug. The crowd reacted. The Hawk spun Ray around, grabbed him around the waist and lifted him up. X-Ray flexed his arms again.
The response, the loudest to that point, was almost instantly muted. Someone said, “Greenwald.” Most of the students looked toward the administration building.
The crowd of students parted. The vice principal, coatless, came through. “Gary. I saw you on TV. Where’s your running mate?” Gary pointed behind his back at me. “The other one.” Gary didn’t move. Greenwald pointed at me. “DeFreines, out of the planter.”
Other students moved aside to reveal Roger, sitting with a sophomore girl, one who had chosen creamsicle, on the Senior Area side of the planter. Gary did a hang five pose on the edge of the planter, slid his right foot up to make it a hang ten pose, with a bit of an arch, and jumped down. Roger leaned over, gave the sophomore girl a kiss on the forehead. The Hawk yelled out, “Overshow,” looked at Vice Principal Greenwald, and whispered, “Overshow.”
The sophomore girl ran around the far end of the planter and joined three giggling classmates. She held her next giggle for no more than three seconds. Roger approached the Vice Principal with his hands out in front of him, wrists together and up. Greenwald shook his head, looked at Gary, then looked up at me.
The bell announcing the end of lunch rang. “DeFreines, out of the planter.” I started to do a salute, dropped my hand onto my chest instead. The Hawk shouted “Freedom!” Dangerous Doug shoved him aside. Greenwald led Gary and Roger toward the administration building. Neither of my surf friends looked back at me.
X-Ray Squintz Saunders hung back near some wooden benches, looked at me. I walked to the corner of the planter, squatted, and jumped, both feet even. I said, “Parallel stance.” Ray Saunders chuckled as if he knew what I had meant.
…
The arrow in this map of the actual Fallbrook Union High School campus pretty much points to the place where most of this chapter in the fictional story takes place.
…
Ray Saunders and I turned into a breezeway in the middle of the second block of classrooms. Lockers, two high, lined both sides. The locker I had claimed since my freshman year was in the middle, top row, west side. Optimum location. Scotch taped to the door was a drawing, pencil and ink, partially colored in, scotch taped to the door. It was almost a cartoon, someone behind a window, expressionless. “Surf’s down, Jody” was written at the bottom in red crayon.
Ray moved closer to the drawing, pulling up his glasses. “Oh. Grant fucking Murdoch.”
“Yeah.” My books and notebooks were tucked under my left arm. I pulled out the latest North County Free Press from one of the folders with my right hand, stuck it under Ray’s right arm. He took it out, unfolded it, held the front page up to the locker next to mine. He looked at the photo of me at the window during the wake for my father, looked at me. I tucked two fingers under the right side of the drawing and pulled. I allowed the drawing to roll up and fall to the concrete. I turned the combination lock, opened the locker.
I put my stuff, and the drawing, into an already stuffed locker. I took out a yellow notebook, “Political Science” on the cover. I pulled out several other newspapers, handed them to Ray. He looked at them quickly, folded them neatly, handed them back. I tried not to slam my locker but did.
“Lee Ransom didn’t have any photos from the murder.” I took a breath.
“You could just read yours… your presentation.” Ray took a breath. “You probably have it memorized. You could… Hey, Joey; I know you’re going to go… to the scene. Can I, maybe…? I have a car. I could act like I don’t know you.”
“No. Ray. See…? I am glad we were friends, Ray, back… then.”
“X-Ray. Yeah. Then. I get it. You’re… you surf, you’re cool. You have enough friends. You…” Ray took several breaths. “Everyone is afraid of you. You know that… don’t you?”
“Are you?” Ray shook his head. I moved closer. My eyes were close to his glasses. “I have hurt people; I have struck out… because…” I closed the locker, spun the combination lock. “You see it, don’t you… X-Ray? Life. I’m scared shitless… and I’m doing it… anyway.”
All rights to “Swamis,” copyright 2020, and all subsequent changes to the manuscript are claimed by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. Please respect these rights. Thanks.
ALL RIGHT, now that the internet at my house is back and running at its usual speed, it is as if the three day lull was easy. SPEAKING OF LULLS… Hope to have some surf-related stuff available on Sunday. Meanwhile, spending too much time on SURF ROUTE 101.
IT ISN’T AS IF I had some really compelling content to post on Sunday, but not having internet for several days is somewhere north of irritating. No, it’s not like life threatening- I could, and did, find buoy reports (down) and surf forecasts (continued downness) on my phone.
STILL, checking the wires, restarting the router, wondering if some line between me and the towers and the satellites is down, and when it might be back in order.
NOW. Maybe last night. BUT, now I have to go.
Tomorrow, or even later tonight, I will post the next chapter of “Swamis.” I think it’s two days after Chulo is murdered at Swamis, and Joey’s surf friends, Gary and Roger, are sharing the story at Fallbrook High. AND OTHER STUFF, of course, because “Swamis” is overstuffed.
My room was on the wrong side of the house for late afternoon light. It isn’t like I needed windows for studying. Still, when the phone rang, I closed the two books that were open on the thrift shop desk, pulled out the latest copy of The North County Free Press from under a third book, stuck it inside a Pee Chee folder, and hustled up the hallway.
“DeFreines residence.” Pause. “Roger and Gary?”
In a phone scam we had devised and successfully worked twice before, “Gerry Lopez” meant the waves were good, “Micki Dora” meant they weren’t. “Jim Morrison” and “Jimi Hendrix” hadn’t worked on two other occasions.
“Joey!” I had to move the handset away. “Accept the charges! Joey!”
“Okay. Thank you, operator.”
Between Gary screaming some indecipherable series of syllables, I heard, “You should… have… been… here.”
“It can’t be that good, Gary.”
I let the long cord at the back of the phone base drop. The cord unwound as I walked into the living room. I set the base on the top of the stereo console. If I had set it on the coffee table, the cord to the handset would reach my father’s lounger. He designed that way. I walked toward the big window. Four feet short.
Outside, Freddy was walking backwards, leading Tallulah around the corral, dropping pieces from a leaf of alfalfa. On the phone, Gary and Roger were yelling over each other at me.
“What? Wait; burned up? Swamis? At the wall. Who was it?” Pause. “Okay.” I walked back to the console, turned on the television. “Channel eight?” The TV took a while to warm up. “They’re there?” Pause. “No news. Old movie. Dialing for Dollars. Bob Dale.” Pause. “Detectives? Which detectives?” Longer pause. “Langdon, and… fuck no, he’s not in charge.”
Gary and Roger were both inside the phone booth at the 101 side of the original parking area. Others were waiting to use it. “Roger, how many is ‘an amazing number of people?’” Pause. “That many? And they’re… crowding up to the rope?”
In my imagined image, a hundred people were standing on the asphalt, looking over the rope. Most of the grassy area along the wall to the SRF compound was behind the line. There was, according to Gary, on the wall, twenty feet or so from the Southeast corner, a burn mark that “pretty much matched the gold bulbs on top of the wall. That was where the guy was burned up.”
“Who?” Pause. “No, of course the cops aren’t saying. I mean, someone’s saying… something.” Gary interrupted Roger. “Someone said… who? ‘Limpin’ Jesus.’ Fuck, man!”
“Fuck!” I took a breath. “Chulo.” I ran several images of Chulo through my mind: Chulo with the robe and the wooden cross around his neck, Chulo behind the wheel of the Jesus Saves bus, Chulo at the wake, Chulo with Portia in the Swamis parking lot. “Chulo?”
“Chulo. Yeah.” Other voices were demanding time on the phone.
“Call me back. When you get home. When it’s… free.”
Outside the window, Freddy, his face close to Tallulah’s, looked up and flipped me off.
“Good evening, San Diego.” I refocused on the TV screen. “Phillip Reed. I usually cover Criminal Justice… court activities, that sort of thing.” Phillip Reed almost winked, almost smiled. “I will be standing in for a week or so. A little deserved vacation time for our esteemed colleague… the real anchorman. So, to begin: Whoa! Horrific murder overnight at Swamis, a beach park in the North County. We have a crew on site. Film at eleven.”
…
Our porch light and the weak lamp from the foyer were pretty much all the light. Gary and Roger were practically dancing in and out of my shadow. Our shadows extended down the slope of the yard.
“So, Joey,” Roger said, “There was a station wagon. In the lot. Like, nine passenger size. Painted-out windows. ‘CBS’ and ‘Channel Eight’ were lettered on the side.”
“But it, the murder, it happened… last night?”
Gary shoved Roger out of the light. “Yeah, but there were still a couple Sheriff’s Office patrol cars, a motorcycle from the Highway Patrol, and a tan Buick with a Del Mar Fair decal on the back bumper… Obvious cop car. And the tall detective, he’s…”
“Wendall.”
“Yeah; and the chunky one… he showed up in a stripped-down VW. Practically a dune buggy. Can’t be street legal. He…”
“I’ve seen it. Dickson. But what about… Langdon, Roger; what was he doing?”
“Creepy guy,” Gary said. “Mostly he was walking back and forth, acting like he wasn’t checking everyone out who was hanging on the rope.”
“He did talk to this black chick; not, like, nicely. She has to be the one who… She’s taking photos, maybe she’s talking to, you know, Wendall. And…”
“Langdon wasn’t stoked on that. He was mostly giving your guy, Uncle Wendall, shit.”
I ignored Gary’s comment. Roger stepped in front of him. “So, then, the chick from channel eight… very cute, she and a cameraman, and another dude, they’re over at the bluff.”
“So, of course, we all cruise over there. Everybody did.”
“All the… local surfers… Joey.”
“Roger means… you know who; she was there.”
“I didn’t ask.” Gary moved to one side of my shadow, Roger to the other. “Okay, so she’s there. Julia Cole. Thanks. Her boyfriend… he there, too?”
Roger punched Gary in the shoulder. “Julia Cole. Told you he’d ask. Pay up.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“He didn’t ask.”
“How did she… seem?”
“Hard to say,” Gary said.
“Hard to say, Joey.”
…
“Joey, you awake?”
“No, Freddy, I am not.”
I opened my eyes. I was on the couch, leaned back, a notebook spilled open on my lap. Other papers and books were spread on the coffee table. The television was on but the sound was off. Freddy moved several more notebooks and sat down to my right.
“Me, neither.” Our mother was just visible in the kitchen. The phone was on the coffee table. “He’s up,” Freddy yelled, half leaning over me. “But are you… awake? I mean, really.”
“Atsushi, the news is…” Ruth DeFreines walked over to the television, turned up the sound. “The news is… bad.”
“Atsushi,” Freddy said, “Mom called you by your Jap-a-nese name. At-su-shi.”
“Middle name, Butt-lick.” Freddy tried to grind his elbow into my right leg. I shoved him away. “Oh, I believe your Jap-a-nese middle name means ‘guy who licks butts.’”
“No, Atsushi.” Freddy shoved me, harder. I stood up and assumed a fighting stance. Freddy laughed. “Hakaru means ‘better son.’” I dropped my hands, slid my feet next to each other, and fell back into the couch. Freddy leaned over me. He whispered, “And also, ‘guy not to be fucked with.’”
“Okay,” I said. We both smiled. I shoved Freddy away.
“Boys.”
“Our top news story…” It was Phillip Reed. “The horrific murder, last night, in Encinitas. You will, no doubt, remember our intern, Pamela Hodges. Well, she’s graduating from San Diego State, and she led a crew up to the North County… today. We now have the film.” Phillip Reed let out a noisy breath. “Stand by.”
My mother was in position, standing in front of the console. Freddy moved to her left, I to her right. The screen went blank for a moment, followed by a shot of the ocean on an obviously sunny and cloudless day.
“Pipes,” I said. “Down from Swamis.”
“It is a very sad day here at a very lovely spot.” It was a woman’s voice. Pamela Hodges. The image panned to the right, north, past the wave line at the beach break, past the waves at the point. The image refocused on a palm tree hanging on the bluff.
The image abruptly switched to a young woman in a sport coat and skirt, standing, seemingly alone, on the bluff, a microphone too close to her face. Pamela Hodges looked to her left, possibly a signal to the cameraman. “Although the information we’ve received from the Sheriff’s Office detectives is… minimal…” The young woman repeated the eye shift, adding a head nod toward her left. The camera angle stayed on her. “What we do know is…”
The camera panned away from Pamela Hodges and through a crowd watching her. Someone, off camera, had the onlookers move aside. Still, some were caught looking as the angle zoomed in on the white compound wall at the far end of the parking lot, then continued panning to the right.
“The Jesus Saves bus,” I said. “It’s usually there.” Stupid. “No, of course. No.”
Close to the highway end of the wall, three uniformed deputies, out of focus, were standing behind a rope stretched between wooden sawhorses. There was a burn mark, almost matching the gold lotus blossoms on the top of the wall. The scene was as Gary and Roger had described it, as I had imagined it would be.
“Behind this wall is the Self Realization Fellowship. A place of peace and meditation. All that was shattered when, last night…” The image pulled back. The deputies were in focus for a moment. Members of the crowd were in focus for a moment. All strangers, then Gary, Roger, Julia Cole, Duncan Burgess, Rincon Ronny. Pamela Hodges was out of focus for a moment. “Last night a young, so-far-unidentified man, was beaten, positioned near the wall and set alight.”
The image stayed on Pamela Hodges too long. She couldn’t hold the expression. She looked down, let out a breath to keep herself from smiling. She was on TV.
The image switched to Phillip Reed at the station. He did look serious. “We do have some further information. We also have more from Pammy… Pamela Hodges. Pammy just graduated from State… San Diego State… It’s coming up, after these messages.”
“Phillip Reed.” The phone rang. “He knew your father.” She looked back toward Freddy and me as she walked toward the kitchen. “Too late for… cocoa?”
Freddy elbowed me. “Did you see your ditching-school, dickwad friends?” I nodded. “Gary and Roger? Truant… and smoking.”
I didn’t answer.
As our mother was returning, a mug in each hand, Freddy said, “He’s gone, mom.”
“Leave him alone, Hakaru.”
I had been gone, replaying the few moments from the coverage: Gary and Roger, front and center as the camera panned and zoomed. Both were smoking. Gary was smiling. Julia Cole, Duncan Burgess beside her, was taking photos of Pamela Hodges and her crew. Julia lowered her camera when Gary, rather than just passing in front of her, stopped. Duncan extended a hand to push Gary further. Gary looked at Julia. Roger looked at the TV camera and lowered his cigarette. Both of my surf friends moved into the crowd.
It was Julia Cole’s expressions that ran through my mind, again and again.
Freddy elbowed me again. “Pammy’s back, Atsushi.”
“The name of the victim, evidently beaten, possibly, according to witnesses from last night, posed in a sitting position next to the wall, has not been released. There is…” Pamela Hodges moved her microphone around in a sort of wave. “There is speculation among the local surfing… community that the victim is… one of them.” The reporter looked to her right. She appeared angry but quickly reset her practiced neutral expression. “Speculation.”
“It was Chulo,” my mother said.
“You get that from Wendall?”
“Larry? No. Someone at the station. Betty Boop… your father called her. Margaret.”
“Why would… Margaret… call?”
“Larry. Wendall. We were supposed to… He had to go on base, anyway. We were going to have lunch. Just at the PX. Snack bar.” I tried not to react. “He didn’t, of course. This. Chulo.”
On the screen, Pamela Hodges took a deep breath. “We do have a witness, someone who was here last night.” The TV reporter turned to her right. There was a space between her and the witness. “Fred Thompson.”
“Gingerbread Fred! Shit!” I didn’t look around to see my mother’s reaction.
Fred Thompson didn’t move. He looked straight into the camera. Pamela Hodges, also looking into the lens, sidestepped toward him. “Can you tell our viewers what you saw?”
Gingerbread Fred blinked, looked at the microphone in front of him, looked sideways for an instant at Pamela, then looked back at the camera. Intently.
“Fred,” Freddy said, moving closer to my side. “Like me.”
“Not like you, Frederick Hakaru DeFreines,” our mother said, putting a hand on Freddy’s head, “You’ll get a haircut.” She gave Freddy a push, turned and looked at my longer-than-the-dress-code-allowed hair. “Not like you, either.”
Gingerbread Fred moved his hands toward the camera. “Light. Bright light. Poof. In the air.” He paused, blinked several times. “Damn fools. Gasoline, the vapors… they… flash.” He started to cry. “I knew Portia was… waiting. I tried to help. Can’t run… anymore.” Pause. Blink. “They were running. Away… to their car. Black. Lights… out.”
Still looking straight at the camera, Gingerbread Fred Thompson went from a low growl to engine sounds. “Loud muffler.” He got louder. The reporter started to pull the microphone back. Fred moved with it. He didn’t look at her, he looked at us. “The… other guy was on fire.”
Fred threw his hands out to his sides, spreading his fingers. Pamela Hodges stepped back. The camera stayed on Gingerbread Fred, but the field of vision widened. Lee Anne Ransom, behind and to Fred Thompson’s right, was taking photos. Julia Cole, Duncan, Ronny, and Monica were to his right. Petey Blodgett stepped between Ronny and Monica. Fred dropped his hands and took a step back. Petey took two steps forward and, once even, put an arm around Fred’s shoulders. Fred looked at Petey for two seconds, then half spun toward him, his head dropping to Petey’s chest.
“No, no!” Pamela Hodges stepped between the two men and the camera. She was out of focus, the microphone in her left hand, her right hand making a slicing motion across her throat. The image went fuzzy, then black.
Phillip Reed appeared. “Stand by folks.” He looked to his right. Questioning look. He turned back to the camera, flipped his left hand up. “Okay then, folks, we’re following this drama a bit longer.” The camera stayed on an angry Phillip Reed a half second too long.
Our phone rang. Loud. Freddy and I both jumped. Our mother stepped away and answered it. “You’re, oh, downtown. Yes, Larry, we are watching it. Channel eight.”
On the screen, Deputy Scott Wilson pushed between Julia and Duncan, stepped between Petey and Gingerbread Fred and Pamela Hodges. He turned his back to the camera. A man wearing dark glasses and a black coat with a Nehru collar was just visible, standing behind and between Duncan and Ronny.
“Langdon,” I said, looking at my mother, still on the phone. “Gingerbread Fred.”
“Yes. They…” She put her right hand over the speaker. “Larry says it was a major… mistake, letting him… be… there.” My mother, listening to Larry Wendall for a moment, had a half smile on her face. She took her hand off the speaker. “Langdon’s mistake.”
“No one will know that” I said, loud enough for Wendall to hear.
“No,” she said, repeating Wendall’s word. She dropped her half smile, picked up the phone base, walked toward the dining room.
On the screen, Detective Langdon stood to one side as the locals followed Deputy Wilson and Gingerbread Fred through the crowd. Non-surfers filled in the gaps. Pamela Hodges tried to regain her composure. Lee Anne Ransom stepped into the shot and took several photos of the TV reporter. Pamela flicked her left hand at Lee Anne. A ‘go away’ gesture. Langdon turned and walked away. Lee Anne followed him.
Pamela Hodges let out a big breath, put on a smile. “And now, will this lovely weather continue? Back to Phillip Reed in the studio.” She waved. “Pamela Hodges reporting.”
Ruth DeFreines, without the phone, came back into the living room. She turned the television off, pulled the louvered doors from each end of the opening. She put a hand on her younger son’s head, turned it until his body followed, pushing him toward the hallway.
“Mom,” I asked, “what about… Portia?” My mother stopped. She didn’t turn around. “What did Wendall… Larry, what did he say about… her?”
Ruth DeFreines turned back toward me. She tightened the knot on her silk robe. “She is safe. We must be… patient.”
“Must be?”
“You are not going over there tomorrow, Atsushi. Larry says…”
“Friday?”
“Saturday is the soonest. Earliest. Only because you have to go to work. Mrs. Tony will know all about it by then.”
“I’m sure she will. Saturday.”
OH, Yeah- “Swamis” and all revisions are Copyright protected. All rights reserved by the author. Thanks for reading. Remember to check for other content on Sundays. Check forecast, check out realsurfer.net.
ROAD TRIPS, it’s all a journey from where we are to where we hope the waves are. Pretty much all of my friends have hit the road recently, to various destinations. And I ventured out on the roads, despite the summer road closures and the annoying number of traffic accidents involving folks, not realizing the journey is part of the story, hitting the road just a bit too fast, too aggressively, and often, stupidly. That’ll fuck up one’s zen. Not mine.
Get there; get waves (or not); enjoy (or not) others in the water, the trails, the parking area; check out some other spots on the way home; go to Costco/Home Depot/QFC (not optional for me) and maybe FRUGALS Drive Through (part of the deal when I had to beg friends to take me with them, before my new stealth rig got roadworthy- not included if I’m alone); get home.
MEANWHILE, and all during and after the trip- We are anticipating, enjoying, assessing, picking out the most relevant waves, rides, interactions in the water, quotes worth repeating (Me, after backing off wave-“Did you really think you were going to make that section?” Guy who yelled at me but didn’t make the section-“I was trying to.”) when we tell the adventure story.
And somewhere, some time, if it’s comparing notes with another surfer who surfed different spots, or with non surfers who ask if we’ve been surfing lately, we will.
Maybe we find waves, maybe we find the sort of experience that enriches us spiritually, purifies us, transports us, changes us into someone… better.
Probably not.
I always have and can’t seem to stop taking mental notes on surf vehicles and Kooks and costumes and first class equipment owned by Kooks in costumes, rather than pretend my best ride was, like, world class, and that an old guy on a thrashed board might have a touch more soul than… yeah, I am working on all that stuff. Despite my pettiness, I can and do appreciate any surfer who gets a great ride. Mostly, faking humility, I’m just happy I can catch some waves and make some sections.
I was looking for an image of surf vehicles stuck in traffic. This photo from Heckle Photography was too cool to pass up.
MY ORIGINAL thought for this piece was what I got out of a recent video of NATHAN FLORENCE. I am a huge fan- more because of his froth/stoke/enjoyment level than that he makes money surfing killer slabs all over the world- he earns his money. Nate and his brother, IVAN, and his support crew, and his mom, and his wife, were at SKELETON BAY in Namibia, long lefts with long walk-backs. Rather than focusing on the rides, he kept track of, and went on about the workout. True enough, very impressive. At one point he had surfed and walked (or ran) a marathon distance. And then he kept going.
After years of surfing before or after work, or taking a break from work, I do try to dedicate an entire day to any surf adventure. During that day, I do try to exhaust my surf lust, build up my wave count. This is, partially, economics- waves per dollar. It is also a sort of reserve, not knowing when my next adventure might happen. No real surfer has even been SURFED OUT.
Still, I could mention surf exhaustion is part of my story. The good kind of exhaustion. In the next chapter…
SPEAKING OF CHAPTERS, I have moved ahead in the latest, hopefully final rewrite of my novel, “SWAMIS.” I will be posting Chapter Nine on Wednesday. Joey’s surf friends Gary and Roger call him from Swamis. Chulo had been killed there the night before.
Film at eleven.
Check it out.
NOW, I usually put something about copyrights with each post. This one, yeah, if you want to take it and say you wrote it for some or any reason, go ahead. OTHERWISE, see you out on the road.
I was driving my mother’s 1964 Volvo four-door. Because I never told the DMV I had a history of seizures, I did get a license, I did drive. Because my mother believed I was getting better, she allowed me to drive. Still, she looked in my direction frequently. Because my father believed I was getting better, he taught me. If I did, indeed, have some kind of brain damage, I could force myself, will myself to control the freezes my father called ‘lapses,’ and the outbursts he called ‘mistakes.’
There are stories for each sport I was pushed to try, each team I did not become a part of. Each story involved my lack of attention at some point of time critical to practice or a game. More often, I was asked to leave because, while I had not been what my father called ‘fully committed,’ I had committed violent and unsportsmanlike attacks on an opponent. Or a teammate.
I was, initially, pushed toward surfing. My father’s answer to my fears was, “If you have a lapse, you will drown. So… don’t.” It was the same with driving. “Concentrate. You’re always thinking behind. You have to think ahead. Got that, Jody?”
We were heading down the grade and into La Jolla. “Favorite part of the trip, Mom; the ocean’s just spread out… so far.”
“Eyes on the road, please.” I glanced past her, quickly, hoping to see some sign of waves around the point. She gave me her fiercest look. I laughed, looked at the road, but looked down and out again on a curve. Scripps’s Pier. Waves. “Are they testing you again, this time?”
“I don’t think so. The new doctor. Peters. She’ll, I guess, analyze whatever they found out last time with the wires and the fancy equipment.” I looked over at my mother as we dropped down through the eucalyptus trees at the wide sweeping right-hand curve that mirrors the La Jolla Cove. “So, maybe we’ll find out; either I’m crazy or brain damaged.”
“Eyes on the road, please.”
…
I was in the examination room, standing under a round ceiling light installed a few inches off center. I had a history book and a notebook set on a long, thin, empty walnut table. Both were closed. The cabinets on two of the walls were cherry. A tile countertop featured double sink. Porcelain. This was a rented space, easily converted.
The six windows on the south wall extended from about a foot-and-a-half from the floor to eight inches from the ceiling. Four of the windows offered a view of tropical plants up against a mildewed redwood fence, eight foot high, no more than three feet away. The light that could make it through the space between the eves and the fence hit several, evenly spaced, colored glass and driftwood windchimes. The sound would be muted, nowhere near tinkly.
The fourth wall had a door, hollow core, cheap Luan mahogany; with a thin frame, and several white lab coats hanging on it. There was an added-on closet, painted white, with another mahogany door, this one rough at the hinge side. Cut down and re-used. There four framed copies of diploma certificates from three universities. Two unmatched wingback chairs, each with an ottoman, were canted, purposefully, toward each other, facing the window wall.
Group practice. Shared space. I had seen two of the other doctors. One of them had done the tests; electrodes, wires, multiple requests to “just relax.” Results pending.
The mahogany door opened. Dr. Peters entered, carrying a large stack of medical records folders. She kicked the door closed, dropped the stack on the table. She removed her white lab coat, hung it on the door, turned and pointed, with both hands, at the Gordon and Smith logo on the t shirt she was wearing.
“More of a San Diego… city thing, Dr. Peters.”
“Susan. I met Mike Hynson once,” she said. “He was in ‘Endless Summer.’ I figured you’d be either put at ease or impressed.”
“Once? Mike Hynson? Professionally?”
She shuffled through the stack, breaking it into thirds. Roughly. “Funny.”
“Is it?”
“No. It’s… funny you should come back with… that. If he was a… client, I couldn’t say so. I nodded. “So… I’m not saying.”
“No.”
Dr. Peters shook her head. “I went to his shop. Really cool. It’s not like I surf or… I am petrified of the ocean.” She pulled out a folder from what had been the bottom third of the stack. “You?”
“Sure. There’s… fear, and there’s respect. A four-foot wave can kill you.” She may or may not have been listening. “Is that my… permanent record?” Dr. Peters laughed as if the remark was clever or funny; it wasn’t either. I didn’t laugh. She looked at me, nodded, and let the laugh die out. We exchanged weak smiles.
“Okay.” She pulled an adjustable stool, stainless steel, on rollers, from the corner on the far side of the closet. She motioned toward it. An invitation. I shook my head. “Or… we can both stand.”
“If it’s… okay with you, Ma’am. Dr. Peters.”
“Call me Susan. What do your… friends call you?”
“Trick question?”
“Maybe. Okay. Trick.” We both shrugged. Dr. Susan Peters waited for an answer.
“Surf friends. A couple.” Her reaction was more like curiosity rather than disbelief. “Friends call me Joey. So… Joey, Dr. Peters. I… I’m not… accustomed to calling my superiors or my elders by their first names. Respect.”
She leaned in toward me. “I’m fucking thirty… thirty-one. Joey. Okay?”
“Now I am… impressed and at ease. So… okay.” The Doctor squinted. “But, uh, Dr. Peters; you’re, I’m guessing, my doctor of record?” She nodded. “Seventh… by my count.”
Dr. Peters restacked the folders. “Court mandated. Your, um, your father set that up. How do you feel about that?”
“I was too close to turning eighteen. This was a… choice. An option. He and I… discussed it. How do you feel about… another smart ass trying to get off easy?”
“Me? Fine. Job. Most of the smartasses I deal with aren’t so… smart.” I nodded. “So, okay, Joey… your dad. He didn’t want to…” Dr. Peters backed away from the table. “No what he called ‘Psycho drugs.’” She sat down on the larger of the two wing chairs. She used one foot to pull the ottoman into position and put both feet up on it. She looked at the other chair, then at me. Another invitation. I remained standing.
“How long since you had an episode? Full?” I glanced at her folders. “Okay; three years ago, lunchtime, evidently out on the square at Fallbrook High School. Embarrassing?” I shook my head. I must have smiled. “Okay. Different topic. When you… took this option… November of last year. You had another student pinned down, foot on his throat.”
“Grant Murdoch.”
“And he was… faking a seizure?”
“He wouldn’t have done it if… I never went to Friday night football… activities. My surf friends… persuaded me… to.”
“So, you took the… prank thing… personally?”
“Prank? Yes, I did.” I closed my eyes, envisioned the episode. Ten seconds, max. I sat on the metal stool, spun around several times. “He was… really good at it. Foaming at the mouth and everything. I was… Dr. Dan, the ‘electrode man.’ Do you have any… results?”
“Inconclusive.”
“You’re… disappointed?”
“No; but skipping over how you just now called another doctor, a grownup, by his first name… the tests. it was… bad timing.”
“Because I didn’t have, like, a seizure, or even… a… spell? So, by inconclusive, you mean normal.”
“Pretty much.”
“That is… disappointing. Maybe it’s like the doctor, two doctors back, said.” I pointed to the files again. “He insisted I was just faking it.”
“Are you?”
“Inconclusive.”
“You didn’t have a… you know about the most common seizure, right?”
“Petit’ mal. Absence. Thousand-yard stare. Yes.”
“Of course. You study… everything.”
“No. Things I’m interested in.”
Dr. Peters looked toward the stack of files. She took a breath, looked at the plants outside the windows, at the chime swaying slightly and silently, then back at me. “You went back into… regular, public school, in the third grade. Tell me about that.”
“One of the… teachers… decided maybe I might not be a… retard; maybe I’m… a genius.” I waited for her reaction. Her expression was hard to read. Blank. I danced the stool around until I faced the windows and the plants and the mildewed fence. “I’m not.”
“That’s why you turned down the scholarship?”
I made the half spin back toward the Doctor, waited for her to explain how she knew that. “School records came with a note.” She had to add more. “Vice Principal Greenwald.”
“Sure.” I spun around one more time before I stood up. “I turned it down because I am a faker, a phony. I… memorize.” I gave the seat of the stool a spin. Clockwise. It moved up about three inches. “I wouldn’t be able to compete with assholes with real brains. Susan.”
Dr. Peters leaned forward, then threw herself back in the chair. “Okay. We’ll… forget about the competition aspect… for now. This… memorization. Yes. In medical school, I had to… so much is repetition. Rote, little mnemonics, other… tricks.”
“Tricks.” I swept one hand back toward the table. “Files. Pictures. Little… movies. I… wouldn’t it be great if we could…?” I walked closer. Dr. Peters pulled her feet from the ottoman. She leaned toward me. I continued. “There are the things we miss. They go by… too quickly. If we could go back, just a few seconds, get kind of a repeat what just happened. See what we missed.”
“And you can?”
“Can’t you? Don’t you… you take notes, you… Do you… rerun conversations in your mind, try to see where you were… awkward; where you… didn’t get the joke?”
“I try not to. I’m more of a… casual observer.”
“That’s me, Dr Peters; Casual.”
“Observant.” Dr. Peters stood up. The ottoman was between us, but she was close. Too close. She was about my height. Her eyes were what people call hazel. More to the gray/green color used in camouflage. “Tell me…” she said, quite possibly making some decision on the color of my eyes, “I’m trying to determine if there’s a trigger, a mechanism. Tell me what you remember about… the accident?”
“The… accident?”
“When you were five.”
“I don’t… remember that one. I was… five.”
“No, Joey, I believe you do.”
…
This wasn’t a brief remembrance of past events, this was a spell I couldn’t avoid, couldn’t think or will myself out of, and couldn’t stop. I stepped back, turned away. I shook my head as if that would keep the vision from taking hold. I tried to concentrate on… plants, the ones outside the window. Ivy, ferns, the mildew, the grain of the wood… “Like Gauguin,” I told myself, “Like Rousseau,” I said, out loud. “There’s a lion in there… somewhere.”
“Can you tell me what you remember, what you… see?”
I could not. The Doctor stepped between me and the window. She started to say something but stopped. She looked almost frightened. The image of the Doctor faded until it was gone. I was gone.
Everything I could remember, what I could see, was from my point of view.
I pulled down my father’s uniform jacket that been covering my face. I was in my father’s patrol car. Front seat. He took his right hand off the steering wheel and put it on my left shoulder.
“Our secret, huh Jody boy? Couldn’t put you in the back like a prisoner.” I didn’t answer. “Too many of you Korean War babies. I can’t believe… if they’re gonna have half-day kindergarten, they should have… busses both ways.” No answer. “Best argument for your mother getting her license.” No answer.
The light coming through the windshield and the windows was overwhelmingly bright. There was nothing but the light outside.
My father yelled something, two syllables. “Hold on!” His hand came across my face and dropped, out of my sight, to my chest.
His arm wasn’t enough to keep me from lurching forward. Blackness. I bounced back, then forward again, and down. Everything was up, streams of light from all four sides, a dark ceiling. My father was looking at me. His shadow, really, looking over and down. “You’re all right. You’re… fine.” He couldn’t reach me. The crushed door and steering wheel had him trapped. His right hand seemed to be hanging, his fingers twitching. He groaned as he forced his arm back toward his body. “We’re… fine.”
There were three taps on the window beyond my father. “Stay down,” he said. I could see my father’s eyes in the shadow. He looked, only for a second, at his gun belt, on the seat, coiled, the holster and the black handle of his pistol on top.
“You took… everything!” The voice was coming from the glare. “Everything!”
The man stepped back. The details of the man’s face were almost clear, then were lost again to the glare. Like a ghost.
“If we could just…” my father said as the suddenly recognizable shape of a rifle barrel moved toward us. Three more taps on the window. “If we could… relax.”
I could hear a siren. Closer. I tried to climb up, over, behind my father’s shadow.
“Everything!”
“No!”
There was a shot. My father screamed. Glass in front of and behind me shattered. The pieces that didn’t hit my father, seemingly in slow motion, blew at me. A wave. Diamonds. My father’s left hand was up, out. A bit of the light shone through the hole. I could hear the siren. I could see a red light, faint, throbbing, pulsing. The loudness of the siren and the rate of the light were increasing. I could see the man’s face, just beyond my father’s hand. His eyes were glistening with tears, but wide. Open. His left cheek was throbbing. I could see the rifle barrel again. It was black, shiny. It was moving. It stopped, pointed directly at me.
My father twisted his bloody hand and grabbed for the barrel.
I could see the man’s face. Clearly. His eyes were on me. Bang. The second shot. The man looked surprised. He blinked. He fell back. Not quickly. He was a ghost in the glare, almost smiling before he disappeared.
Tires slid across gravel. The siren stopped. The engine noise was all that was remaining, that and something like groaning.
“Gunny?” It was a different voice outside the car.
“I’m fine,” my father’s voice said.
“Bastard!” It was the new voice, followed by a third shot.
Dr. Susan Peters came back into focus. She looked quite pleased.
…
My mother was driving. I was looking past her, out at the horizon, down at the pier. I couldn’t help but catch her eye as we approached the top of the hill. “UCSD,” she said, “You could go there. Second semester, maybe, if it’s too late for fall.”
If I gave a verbal response at all, it was weak and meaningless agreement.
We were going down the hill at the north end of Torrey Pines when my mother said, “It’s the waiting rooms. I’ve spent too much of my life… waiting.” She reached over and patted my shoulder. This was unusual. We were both aware of this. “Next week, you can drive yourself.”
She swept her hand across the dashboard, as if touching my shoulder had been incidental. I nodded and smiled. If I wanted to reach over to touch her shoulder, I didn’t.
“Mom,” I said, somewhere near the one traffic light in Del Mar, “Would you prefer to have a son who is crazy, or one who is… damaged?”
“I have two sons,” she said, with a sound that was almost like someone clearing his or her voice, my mother’s version of a laugh. Controlled, as if she would be embarrassed to show real emotion. I laughed. Semi-controlled. “You are neither. Gifted, I would prefer to call you.” She cleared her voice. “Gifted.”
Out on the flat area north of Solana Beach, approaching Cardiff Reef, my mother said, “We could have met at Mrs. Tony’s. Then you could have surfed. Are the waves… good?”
“Pretty good. Not crowded.” The waves, at a medium tide, were really good. “She… Dr. Peters, did ask me about… when I was five?”
“Of course.” Almost to Swamis, waves visible even in the northbound lane, my mother added, “Your father does… did… take responsibility for your… problems. Blame is… different.”
“I should take responsibility for…”
“No.” She wasn’t looking at me. “We are sticking with the plan. You weren’t… there.”
“But…”
“I believe Larry is trying to… protect me.”
“Larry?”
She looked past me and out the window as we passed the Swamis parking lot. “There are very few cars. So, the waves aren’t… the way you like them?”
Before I could visualize the variety of surf conditions I had faced, from flat to out of control; glassy to blown-out; fog-bound, gray-bound, to brilliantly blue, to glaring white, I said, “Actually, Mom, the waves are exactly the way I like them.”
…
I couldn’t find an image in a quick search that showed the building when it was the Surfboards Hawaii shop back in 1969. In real life, it was my favorite, not that I didn’t feel like a kook at it or any other shop. Probably the Surfboards by Heck shop in Carlsbad was one where I felt a little more at ease. When Trish and I lived in Encinitas ’74-77, we did frequent the La Paloma, usually with guests. We saw “Harold and Maude” several times. Only recently did Trish admit she hated the movie. She did like the lay out seating.
…
Mrs. Joseph DeFreines and I were in the lobby at the Surfboards Hawaii shop. There were a few dazzlingly shiny surfboards leaned against the walls; each, regardless of the color of the tint, with perfect rail overlap lines. There were three nine foot and longer boards, on sale. The new ones were in the seven-to-eight-foot range, still long board thick. There were v-bottoms, the big thing from the previous year, and several twin fins. I had to touch the red twin fin. Six-eight. Concave under the rounded nose, downrail to fifty-fifty to downrail at the tail. Slight V-bottom.
My reaction to the board may have seemed like lust to my mother. She looked around the rest of the lobby. There was a display case with an already thumbed-through copy of the latest “Surfer” bi-monthly on the counter. There were stickers inside, including the newest one for Surfboards Hawaii; with an outline of, I guessed, the island of Oahu. There were bars of wax designed just for surfing, spray cans of Slipcheck, a few colorful fiberglass fins, removeable.
There were posters and photos on the back wall. Hawaii, mostly; a couple of framed shots of locals at local breaks. One was of Sid, hanging ten. There was a photo of Jumper Hayes doing a stylish drop-knee cutback. 1966 or so. Another photo, black and white, was of Julia Cole, arm back, leaning back, in position on a back-lit, almost transparent wave. Perfect.
My mother was looking around the shop. I had it memorized. The young woman working the front was new; attractive, of course. Surfer’s girlfriend was my guess, though her slightly softer version of the hairspray-stiffened sixties bouffant may have been to make her appear more professional. Maybe.
In past visits, some with Gary and Roger, others with embarrassingly kooky friends of theirs, the lobby area was staffed by teenagers, locals, automatically cool, and presumably, because they worked in a surf shop, good surfers. Usually there were friends of the duty sales guy hanging out. They always stopped talking when I or we came in. Judgment in a surf shop, or at any surf spot, is harsh and instantaneous. Someone else’s word, a reputation, are not enough. Proof of proficiency is required.
Despite the young saleswoman’s hip outfit, this wasn’t a boutique surf shop. Surfboards were being shaped and glassed in the larger, back part of the building.
When my mother was looking for a parking spot, three guys were sitting out on the south side of the building, white foam dust all over them, squatting or sitting, leaning against the wall in the afternoon sun. A kid, younger than me, was nearest the open side door, drinking a coke. Rodrigo. Little Rod. Half Hawaiian, half Portuguese. We had discussed our heritage in the water at Grandview. Music and foam dust were coming out of the darkness of the doorway. Enviable work, I thought. I wouldn’t have even nodded if Rodrigo, or any of the three, had looked up. That would have forced someone to acknowledge my existence or shine me on, to admit or deny ever having spoken to me.
This sounds overdramatic now. Then, it was critical.
The shopkeeper didn’t have charm to waste on kooks and hodads and teenage cowboys who come in with their mothers. Dismissive. She was sitting on a stool in the corner farthest from the front door. She had looked up from her reading when we entered, mumbling some version of, “just look around.”
It was the North County Free Press in her hands. She put it down when my mother and I approached the display case. I had waited for any sign that the young woman recognized my mother or me. She tried to hide that she had. I pointed to the closed door behind her. “Used boards,” she said, “and consignments. Go on in.”
The young woman noticed me looking at the photos on the back wall as I stopped at the door. “Sid,” I said.
“Sid. Yeah. Team rider.” She reluctantly got up, walked over, and opened the door. Doesn’t much care where he surfs.”
“He… yeah, Sid has that reputation.” I turned away, half hoping she might wonder what else the cop’s kid might know.
My mother slipped the keys to the Volvo and some cash into my hand as we followed the young woman into the back room. It was stuffed with boards; all sizes, most with dirty wax still clinging to them. The young woman walked over to the long boards; three stacks; four in one, five in the other. She looked up, spread her arms between the stacks. I tried to give the money back to my mother. She closed her hands into fists.
The young woman looked a bit disappointed when she turned around and I had pulled a quite thrashed six-eight single fin out and was leaning it against several other boards. “Sid’s?”
“Sid. And he’s called dibs on the red board you were looking at. Twin fin. Latest thing.”
“Maybe I should wait until Sid trashes that one.”
The saleswoman wasted a second determining whether I was joking. Patronizing smile.
“Do you sell trunks?” My mother looked at me to see if she had pulled a surf shop faux pax. By this point, it didn’t matter.
“We don’t,” the young woman said, with an expression my mother would later describe as ‘prissy face,’ “but… Hansen does.”
…
The surfboard fit in the back seat of the Volvo, the nose sticking out of the passenger side window. I looked at the young woman, standing outside the shop, as I loaded it. “Good,” she said, “I wasn’t… sure.” The phone rang inside the shop. She went back in.
I replayed the time at the counter: Money offered, change returned; complimentary bar of Surf Research wax and one of the rectangular Surfboards Hawaii decals. The young woman caught me looking at the photo of Julia Cole. “Julia Cole,” I said. “You must know her.”
“If I must, then, I… must. Sure. Julia. Surfs with, and kind of like… the guys.”
My mother was already in the car when I got in. “Miss Prissy doesn’t surf,” she said. “It would… damage… her hair.”
I laughed first. My mother couldn’t help herself. It wasn’t a big laugh, but it was real.
…
Wearing my new nylon Hang Tens, I paddled my new-to-me trashed and patched board all the way to the outside peak. Two surfers had caught waves on the last set. One surfer remained. “Hey, that’s Sid’s board.” It was a kid, younger than me; blonde, freckled, sunburned, and obviously ditching school to get one over on pretty much everyone.
“Was. He, uh, broke it in for me.”
“Ha.” That was it for actual conversation. Uncrowded waves were available for a short period of time before school got out and work got over. Four surfers, three wave sets. We shared, pretty much; the older guy got the best waves. All too soon there were fifteen surfers in the lineup. No hoots, little eye contact, but I was in a rhythm, ride, paddle, short wait, ride. I had some decent rides, a couple of memorable ones; and I finished up with one from the outside peak to a calf-high but fast section on the very inside.
My mother had been left in the parking lot long enough for me to feel a bit guilty. I could make out her silhouette at the edge of the bluff as I stepped over the slippery rocks and onto the sand. A woman walked up to her; a woman who made my mom seem smaller than I knew her to be. Her long dress, her shawl, her dark hair, all were moving in rhythm with the updrafts. Portia.
The silhouettes were lost as I hurried to the stairs. When I reached the top, out of breath, my mother was waiting, holding one of the towels she kept in the Volvo “to protect the seats.” Portia was at the far end of the bluff section, talking to a young couple. Beyond them, the Jesus Saves bus was parked at its usual spot, squaring-off the far end of the lot.
“You spoke to her.”
My mother followed my eyes. “Patty? Yes, yes, I did. She’s very… she’s nice.”
“Portia.”
“She spoke to me. Yes. I meant… Portia. Yes. She’s… waiting.”
“Waiting. Oh, for Chulo. Yes.”
“Yes. Flowers. Portia told me there’s an A&W here… in Encinitas.” I looked at Portia and the couple. She was taking something from the young man. Money. Change dropped from a fist; several bills unfolded and placed into Portia’s palm. An offering, perhaps. Portia pulled her hand back, put the offering into a pocket on her skirt, gave the young girl a kiss, gave the young man a hug. “Freddy,” my mother said, “We can get something for Freddy.”
“What? Yeah. Food. Freddy. Yeah.” I took the towel, moved to the edge of the bluff, felt the moisture in the whisps of air coming up the bluff.
My mother came up beside me. She followed my eyes. We looked at the crowd spread between the inside and the outside lineup, the kelp a bit farther out, the water starting to shimmer if not sparkle. “I see why you like it here,” she said.
“Portia; did she try to evangelize… you?” My mother smiled and shook her head as if the very notion was ridiculous.
“I’ll drive.”
“Do you know how to get to the A&W?”
“I know how to get to the Jack in the Box in Carlsbad. Gourmet fast food.” She shook her head. “And Mom…” She turned back toward the water; as did I. “You can pay for Freddy.”
My mother walked toward the Volvo. She opened the driver’s door and waited until I was almost at the front of her car. She pointed at the white walls of the compound, following them from where they disappeared into the shrubbery to our left, to a series of angles and large gold flower sculptures on higher sections at the highway.
“Tulips,” I said.
“Lotus blossoms.”
“Lotus. Yes.”
“Yes. I took you there. Inside. You and Freddy. He was a baby. It was… before. You were four years old, so… you probably don’t remember.”
I didn’t. I followed my mother’s eyes. Gingerbread Fred Thompson was riding his one speed bicycle from 101 and onto the grass alongside the wall on his one speed bicycle. He extended his left hand as if he was on the road, dropped over the slight curb and onto the parking lot. He cut straight across to the bluff.
“Gingerbread Fred. He comes here… every evening,” I said. “Sundown. Ritual.” My mother tilted her head and squeezed her lips together in a gesture that usually meant something was a good thing. “That’s what religion is,” I added. “Mostly. If you do something religiously, faithfully, when you’re afraid not to do it, it’s more ritual than… belief.”
My mother looked back and forth between Gingerbread Fred and me several times, then just at me. I was aware. Still, I scanned the lot again before I refocused on her. “Everyone, Atsushi, all the religions… it is merely people trying to find some answers in some… much larger mystery.”
“No, Mom, you’re… right.” I leaned over, tapping all my fingers on the roof of my mother’s car. “We… don’t… know.”
My mother held a single key, jangled the others a bit, smiled, moved into the driver’s seat. I looked at Gingerbread Fred for a moment. He was scanning the horizon. Ritual.
I DO HOPE everyone got some waves in the recent past. I DID. So, next time…
“SWAMIS,” copyright 2020, and all rights to any and all changes to the manuscript are claimed by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. THANK YOU for honoring this.
With summer comes a more than usual lack of swell, everywhere. Usually. The season Ialso brings road construction, No, I don’t really have to surf-splain that to you. We all check the same forecasts, dream the same dreams of wave after wave after… yes, and then something like traffic, and traffic accidents, and road closures for construction and mowing and cleaning road signs.
SO, we alter our plans.
Not that we want to. I check the forecasts, Trish checks road conditions. It isn’t like she tries everything she can to dissuade me from surfing, always mentioning how the next swell isn’t the last one, that it just seems like it. The argument has never, for me, held water.
SO, while I’m altering and readjusting and trying not to buy in to the ‘next time’ dealio, particularly because I made promises to myself that ‘next time,’ I’m going, let me clue you in to what some of my surf friends are up to:
TRAVELING, Yes. Mexico, New Zealand, Oregon (even California), the far West End, surfers are hitting the road and the air to get into the water. I did manage to get invited on a road/hike/camp trip with some local Peninsula rippers; the invitation contingent on my not actually going (it’s the hiking/camping part, mostly, but sharing more waves with hungry, competitive, and aggressive surfers did play into the decision- plus, as always, work).
It’s not as if they wanted to wait for me on the trail or worry about whether a helicopter might be needed for getting me out… so, yeah, save yourselves, Rippers. But thanks for the sort of invite.
However, I can report that TOM BURNS, contemporary of mine, is on surfari in South Africa. Yeah, Jordy Smith territory, Cape Saint Francis land, Jeffry’s Bay. He did text that he was hoping to surf Cape Town. I did ask him to send photos.
While Tom texted that the elephants raised his adrenalin level, he wrote that the lion(ess, I have watched some ‘Wild Kingdom’) “came a little too close.” Now, I am trying to imagine Tom in the requisite safari gear; hat, jacket with way too many pockets, reeling back from the window on the bus.
Part of the imagery comes from having recently seen a video of the Florences in the bush, or outback, or game park/reserve, whichever is appropriate. John was, if I remember correctly, Ivan was barfing, Nathan was laughing. I just stuck Tom in there with them. Still, I’m imagining him soul arching away from the window.
I’M KIND OF THINKING I might see way too many friends the next time I find some waves. MAYBE you are frothed out. ME? Definitely.
THANKS for checking out “Swamis” on Wednesdays. I am going to try to set up a second page just for the manuscript. If I’m not mistaken, I think Chulo gets killed in the next installment.
Some people come to the bluff at Swamis just for the sunsets. Carpenters and insurance salesmen mixed in with the surfers, just out of the water, who had to have one more look. On this afternoon, I was one of those.
“After school, after work surfers. Medium crowd. No hassles. Sunset watchers took over the bluff. One lady, business outfit, thanked LA smog for nice orange sunset.”
It was through this crowd of sunset watchers that Portia walked, right to left, from the Jesus Saves bus at the far west end of the parking lot, to the new brick bathroom and shower facility on the 101 side of the stairs. With something bulky under her left arm, she walked as a dancer, perhaps, would, right hand out, palm down, as if floating across the horizon.
Portia was wearing a blouse that went lower than her hips, set off with a cloth sash, wide, purple. Her skirt stopped just above her ankles. Her feet were bare and tan. Portia’s two main pieces of clothing were in dark and almost competitive prints, Gypsy/Peasant/Hippie look. Her hair was long, straight, dark brown, almost black, accentuated with a band around her head that almost matched the sash. No jewelry, just a smaller version of the cross Chulo wore, hers a conveniently shaped piece of driftwood, hanging from hemp twine.
What I couldn’t describe, at that time, was Portia’s face. Pretty from a distance, she seemed to defy a closer look. Inexplicable. Or perhaps it was that, if you were close enough, she was looking at you with an intimidating intensity you couldn’t match.
You might look at her mouth rather than her eyes.
In the very middle of the pack of sunset watchers, Portia stepped between the sun and a man straddling a bicycle undersized for him. Gingerbread Fred. Portia blocked his view of that moment just before the sun exploded and spread at the horizon. It took another moment before she hugged him. I could see her face over his right shoulder. Dark, shadowed. She looked at me for another moment. Blue. Her eyes were a blue that didn’t match anything else about her.
I saw her, there, and I saw an overlapping image of her from another time. Mid-day, I was taking a break from surfing, just around Swamis Point at an area called Boneyards. Lying on the largest, flattest of the big, soft edged rocks, I was close to being asleep. Portia’s shadow blocked the sun. “Do you know Jesus?”
I didn’t open my eyes. “Whose version?”
“Yours,” she said, without any hesitation. She dropped a pamphlet on my chest and moved back, allowing the sun to hit me full on, again. I blocked the sun with a hand and opened my eyes. The pamphlet was hand drawn, hand lettered, eight-and-a-half by eleven, folded, with some vague message about some vague but wonderful Jesus. I sat up. Portia backed away, turned into the glare, danced up to two young women in street clothes, handed them pamphlets, and danced into the shallows.
This Portia, on the bluff, held Gingerbread Fred’s hand as she stepped away. I would save this image: Hands stretched between them, nothing but light behind them.
I had heard stories about Gingerbread Fred. Almost myths. Tijuana Sloughs, breaks outside of Windansea; Fred was on a list of names of surfers from the pre-Gidget past. Legends: Simmons, Blake, Holder, Edwards, Richards; their stories further enhanced with each retelling.
This was the current version of the man. He was damaged, burned out, not fully there. Korea was the rumor. Or Vietnam. Or both. Yet he was here, the bluff at Swamis Point, as he was, seemingly, religiously, for the sunset.
Legends are one thing, parking is another. Someone pulled a car out of a space two spots over from the optimum location. I ran to the Falcon, parked on the far side of the center row. Not taking the time to retrieve my notebooks and binders from the hood, I unlocked it, got in, and eased, counterclockwise, around the other cars and past the Jesus Saves bus, narrowly beating someone else, coming in clockwise, for the spot. Exciting. A little victory.
I was aware that something had blown off the hood. I opened the door carefully, to avoid hitting the car to my left, and got out. A man was holding that week’s edition of the North County Free Press, eight pages, stapled in the middle, open and up to his face.
There was an ad for a farm cooperative on the back page, a photo of me on the front. Me, behind the plate glass window. “Local Detective Killed in Mysterious Car Accident.” The heading for the lead story, right side, balanced by the photo, was “Joseph J. DeFreines, Heroic by Nature.” The by-line was “Lee Anne Ransom.” I had chuckled when I read that the first time.
I imagined what the man was looking at; the coverage and the photos from the funeral. In the featured photo, top right, page five, my mother was looking down, holding the folded American flag with Freddy, on one side, crying, me, on the other side, looking at my mother and not crying. Or he could have been looking at the photo of the crowd, San Diego County Sheriff O’Conner and a group of detectives and deputies, all in uniform, Detective Wendall holding the department’s show horse, a magnificent Palomino, the saddle empty. Wendall looked honestly broken. Or the man could have been reading the testimonials. Or he could have been reading the article on the bottom right, “Is Marijuana Now the County’s Top Cash Crop?” Also written by Lee Anne Ransom.
The man lowered the paper, held it out, still open, with both hands. He was of East Indian descent, I guessed. I had seen him before, different setting, different clothes. He was, on this afternoon, wearing workman’s clothing, heavy blue-gray pants with worn and wet knees, lace up boots with the toe areas scuffed, a long sleeve shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He had a faded red bandana half hanging from his left front pocket. His hair and beard were black, both reaching just below his collar.
I looked at the man long enough to take in those details. He looked more at the paper than at me. “I can get another… copy,” he said. “They are, of course… free.”
“No. Keep this one. I have… another copy.” I shook my head. “Free. The free thing.”
“Then, thank you so much.” The man folded the paper, folded it again, tucked it under his arm, did a slight forward tip of his head. “I do some… gardening.” He moved his left hand behind him, pointing. “Outside the compound.” I returned the head tip. “Volunteer.” I did notice an accent. English accent with East Indian rhythm. Perhaps.
“Oh,” I said, looking along the white stucco wall of the Self Realization Fellowship compound, and suddenly remembering where I had seen him, “You’re a… member.”
He smiled, one of those half face smiles. Right side in this case. “Member?” He shook his head. “Loosely… connected.” English, for sure; but I couldn’t discern anything more about place or status. “I saw you once. Inside.” He nodded toward the compound, but out and up, toward the point. “The… meditation garden.”
I tried not to visualize. It didn’t work. I closed my eyes, opened them again. It was the double exposure thing, the vision. I could still see the volunteer gardener, along with another version. Same man, this one dressed in a robe. He was standing next to an older man, with even longer hair and beard, gray, and dressed in a robe made from a silkier, more colorful fabric. That man was possibly an actual Swami, or Yogi, possibly even the Swami. They were smiling. At me. Appreciative smiles. I didn’t want to explain. Anything. I jumped up from the bench and ran, down the manicured paths with hand-set stones, perfectly cared-for plants, flowers year-round.
I blinked. I opened my eyes. “I… ran.”
“You did. Yes, you do remember.”
“I was… studying. Not… anything else.”
“Perfectly fine. Meditation is… one’s own time.”
I followed the man’s eyes back to the bluff. Portia was returning from the bathrooms with a different bundle under her arms, with different clothing, a very different look. Braided strands from the front of her hair were wrapped around to hold the rest in place. There was, perhaps, a ribbon. She was wearing a loose top, long, with long sleeves, a subtly patterned or even one-color Pendleton, with bellbottom pants and sandals.
Portia was walking behind the sunset watchers. “Conservative,” I said, pretty much to myself, but expecting some comment from the volunteer gardener. No. He was gone. He was crossing the lawn by the white stucco compound wall; and was halfway to Highway 101 when the Hayes Flowers van entered the lot.
…
From FLICKR under “Sunsets at Swamis images.” Great photo. Love the glow.
I walked back to the bluff, slightly behind the row of people watching the burnt orange in the wispy cirrus clouds at the horizon fade, toward Portia. Watching the yellow van go down the far row, she took three quick steps and then stopped. I was watching Portia. The van stopped at the squared off end of the asphalt, engine idling, next to the Jesus Saves bus.
I stopped, turned, walked back ten paces, squeezed past the door on the car to the left of the Falcon. I opened the front door to my car. I stood there too long, watching Portia. She was not moving closer to the bus and the van. Waiting. She glanced toward me. I am certain she smiled. Something about our shared hesitancy.
Because I had to say something, I said, “I got a good… spot.”
“Good,” she said. “Great sunset.”
“Yes.” I glanced toward it, then back toward Portia. Her face was shadowed, but this Portia, in regular clothes, seemed younger.
“Chulo… and I, we have to go to Balboa, the, uh, Naval hospital. His friend… you must know him. He surfs. Surfed. Juni. That’s what Chulo calls him.”
Portia walked closer. She set her bundle on the hood of the Falcon. I kept the door between us. “Jumper. Jumper Hayes. He’s… there? Balboa?” She nodded. “He all right?”
“He’s alive. He was transferred there… here, from Hawaii.”
Portia, keeping her eyes on me, moved closer. Sunset watchers beyond her were looking toward the Jesus Saves bus and the Hayes Flower van. Two men, raised voices, short bursts back and forth, not quite distinguishable words. I didn’t look around.
“I have never met him. Jumper.” Portia came up, even closer. Her eyes were, with her usual dark eye makeup gone, that surprising blue color. Her hair was not naturally black. It was, at the roots, lighter. “We’re going… with Mr. and Mrs. Hayes… their car. Good citizen car. It’ll get us through the front gate.”
“The Cadillac. Yeah. That’ll work.”
Portia had to say something or walk away. The muffled back and forth at the Jesus Saves bus continued. “Your father…” I kept my eyes on her. “Chulo and me…” She touched my left hand, slid her right hand on top of it, both of our hands resting on the top edge of the door. “He… introduced me and Chulo. ‘Troublemakers,’ he called us. Got me a job. Then I got on with Mrs. Hayes. Consuela. Arrangements, mostly. Shop work.”
Portia paused to make sure I was listening or that I understood. “The religious thing. That was Chulo. Converted and all. Work camp.” She had a ‘taste’s bad’ expression, just for a moment. “Jail. East County.” You probably knew about that.”
“In Fallbrook it was known as, ‘The Great Avocado Robbery.’”
Portia laughed. She was younger than I’d thought, barely over that line I’d set between me and adulthood. “They love their avocados,” she said.
“They do. Chulo and Jumper and some mysterious guy from… somewhere. A buyer. Supposedly. Never caught him. I got that from the papers. Never… my father didn’t tell… ‘war stories.’” I laughed. “Of course, he did; just… not to me.”
Portia moved her hand to the vertical edge of the door. “Your father…” I was trying to think of a word for the look she was giving me. Earnest. Sincere. “Chulo says he did his best. The Deputy… Bancroft… Well, sorry God, but… fuck him.”
It was my turn to speak. I didn’t. I was picturing Deputy Bancroft from the few times I had seen him at the Vista Substation. Once was before he had crippled Chulo, all smiles and backslapping his fellow deputies, once, looking worried and angry, when he was trying to get the other deputies to support him. Most of them did.
The light had become grainy, the smog-enhanced colors at the horizon had gone gray. The few lights around the parking lot, just coming on, had to compete with the advance of night. The sunset show was over. Most of the watchers moved away from the bluff and, at various speeds, toward their vehicles. A few stayed on as if, perhaps, they were waiting for closing credits.
Not yet.
“Really?” It was loud. There was a softer, muffled response, followed immediately by, “Fuck you then, Chulo!” Loud and clear. Both Portia and I looked over. The Hayes Flowers van blocked the view of Chulo and the other man, but one occasional column of cigarette smoke raising up beyond the two popout surfboards revealed where the man doing the yelling was standing.
A skinny man wearing a cowboy hat went up the stairs of the Jesus Saves bus, closed the doors, started the engine, revving it quite unnecessarily.
“Asshole,” Portia said. She looked up and whispered, “Sorry. Again.”
The guy in the cowboy hat was honking the Jesus Save bus’s horn, flashing the headlights. The running lights and the inside lights in the driver’s area were flashing between the honks. The bus’s engine was racing. The Asshole rode the clutch, then popped it.
Chulo limped around the front of the van, and got in. “Different clothes,” I said. The engine was still running. He pulled the van forward and started down the bluff side lane. Counterclockwise. I stepped back, closed the front door, walked to the back of the Falcon to allow Portia room to get by. The van stopped, front doors even with me.
Chulo nodded. I nodded. “Get any… good ones?” he asked through the open passenger side window.
I could hear the Jesus Saves bus heading north on 101, grinding again between second and third gear.
“A couple,” I said, to Chulo, as Portia walked past me. She opened the van’s passenger door, set her bundle of clothes on the bench seat, held the door open, and looked at me as if she expected me to ask a question. “Different clothes,” I said, more to Portia than Chulo. “I mean,” I said, looking directly at Chulo, “this is not the, um, Jesus look.”
“People get that wrong,” Chulo said. “Jesus, way classier dresser. It’s more like, it’s a John the Baptist look.”
“Oh. Sure. Jesus. Whole cloth. Yeah.” I stepped away.
“You know the gospel.”
“Partially by choice.”
“Holy Spirit, man,” Chulo said, moving his fingers like a piano player. “Mysterious.” Portia closed the door. Chulo looked at her before he looked past her and at me. “I told them, Jody; Wendall, the State Patrolman, everyone… Plymouth. Gray Plymouth. Old guy, I said; probably didn’t even realize… what happened.”
“What about Langdon?”
“I can handle… Langdon. God… God love him.”
“He means ‘fuck Langdon,’” Portia said. “Asshole.”
“That’s how I… interpreted it.” Portia looked at me I looked away and then up. There was something about the popout surfboard on the right side of the van. It was blue, darker on the top, fading out on the rails. Different board. I took a step back to check out the skeg. “I mean… God love… him.”
“Assholes… everywhere.” Someone was beside me. Directly in front of the closed door. Gingerbread Fred. Threadbare sweater over a once white t shirt; maximum fade on his Levis, sewn-on patches of different fabric at the knees; no shoes; long and once-red hair, I assumed, grayed-out and as stringy as his beard; glasses patched and listing to the left; Gingerbread Fred was looking up. He was looking beyond the blue surfboard, beyond the palm fronds. I had to follow his eyes.
A gauze of cloud had caught the last of the day’s sunlight, impossibly mixing pink and blue in a colorless sky. Gingerbread Fred had been watching me, he had moved close to the passenger side door, and was looking between Chulo and Portia. At me.
“Boy gets it,” he said.
“Fred,” Portia said in the kindest sort of voice. “Fred’s here for the show.”
“As always.”
“Fred Thompson, the legend,” Chulo said. “Fred. Man, me and Portia; we have to get going. Juni… Jumper, he’s… they got… overrun. His platoon. He’s… wounded. He’s in Balboa.”
“Oh,” Fred Thompson said, “so Petey was right. That cocksucker DeFreines did get Jumper to fuckin’ join up. Semper Fi, motherfuckers.”
Neither Chulo nor Portia looked at me. Chulo looked at Portia. She shook her head. Chulo said, “It was supposed to be a secret, Fred.”
Fred Thompson’s expression said he wasn’t surprised. “At least Jumper had a… choice.”
“Mister Thompson. I heard… sorry; I heard you went back in.” I realized, even as I was saying the words, that I had said too much.
“Mistake. Crashed twice, shot down once.” Fred Thompson seemed to drift away for a moment. I had to look, had to see what that looked like. He came back with a snap. “Sometimes, like, the right wave can make the wipeout and the swim in… just part of the price. Worth it.” He looked at me. I nodded. He shook his head. “Sometimes… not.”
“Bad knee or not, I still wouldn’t have chosen the Marines, Fred.”
Gingerbread Fred Thompson said, “I’m no Catholic, but…” He made the sign of the cross, then threw his right hand out, fingers spread. “I do like the gesture.”
“It is a… good one.” Chulo shook his head, only slightly, did a version of the sign of the cross between the steering wheel and his chest, and revved the engine. “He’s coming back.”
“Jesus?”
“Yeah, Fred,” Chulo said, laughing. “Him too.”
Portia kissed the palm sides of the fingers on her right hand before folding them into a fist. She tapped her fist on the middle of her chest, three times, opened her hand, placed it over her heart. After five or six seconds, she wrapped her fingers around Fred Thompson’s right hand for another five or six seconds.
…
As the van pulled away, Fred held out his right hand. He looked at it, refocusing on me, beyond it, as if, perhaps, he was supposed to know who I was; as if we had, perhaps, spoken before. “We come back. We just don’t come back the same.”
I copied Fred’s smile.
“You one of their… followers?” He pointed roughly toward the highway. I shook my head. His hand staying in pretty much the same place, he turned the rest of his body toward the remains of the sunset. “So, you’re here for the… finale?”
I wanted to ask Fred Thompson about Tijuana Sloughs, about Windansea and Simmons’s Reef and San Onofre before foam boards, about Malibu and surfing before ‘Gidget,’ about Korea and Vietnam, helicopters before they were gunships. I wanted to ask why he went back in the Army after Korea.
I didn’t. I followed him through the now-empty space next to the Falcon and to the bluff, his bicycle on the ground, too close to the edge. When Gingerbread Fred looked up, I looked up. “It’s darkness, for sure, but it’s not… night. We’re in the… shadow.”
Fred Thompson, facing the horizon, extended his left arm and hand forward, level, cocking his hand back at the wrist. He extended his right, creating an almost ninety-degree angle. “Perpendicular,” he said, holding that position for a second before throwing both arms back until they were straight out at his sides. “Parallel.”
He clasped his hands behind his back. I had to step back as he spun around, one, then another revolution. “You’ll get it,” he said, regaining his balance. “You know why?” I shook my head. “Because you… are… looking.” He turned to what was left of the sunset colors.
“Shadow,” I said.
“Ha! Yes. Shadow.” Gingerbread Fred came close enough to me that I could smell his breath. Milk, perhaps, soured. I tried not to react. “You probably heard. I’m… crazy.”
“There’s… a lot of that going around, Mister Thompson.”
“Yes!” He stooped down a bit, still too close to me. “You get it.” I nodded. “This one night, clear, like now. Now, I was raised on the Bible. Not a Catholic. Not a heathen, either.” He made the sign of the cross, laughed, and raised his right hand straight up. “An explosion. There was a… rainbow. So high up… the zenith… that high. The sun was still on it. ‘Every eye shall see him,’ the Book says. End of the world. People here, in this very parking lot… they were panicked.” He lowered his right arm, stretched out his fingers, brought his arm back until his hand was between us. He, then I looked at his palm. He lowered his hands just enough to look at me. “None of us are ready for that… that Jesus.”
“I saw it! Here! I was… here, Mr. Thompson! Swamis!”
“Whoa-aaaa-ooooo!” Fred Thompson’s voice dropped from rather high to gravelly. He closed his eyes and looked up. “Can you still… see it?”
“I can.”
I couldn’t see it. I could remember, perfectly, what I saw from the back of Gary’s real dad’s Chevy Ranchero in the Swamis parking lot. My back was against the back of the cab, three towels wrapped around me, ballast for three longboards, stacked, longer to shorter, and extended out the back. Gary, Roger, and Roger’s second girlfriend were in the front, the girlfriend in the middle. I was the only one to see the bright glow, expanding, somewhere between the clear sky and space, the zenith; high enough the sun was still on it. Rainbows.
I had thought about Jesus, returning in glory, as advertised. I was sixteen. I wasn’t ready.
When I was dropped off, I peered into the cab of the Ranchero and pointed to the spot in the high sky. I described what I had seen. Roger and Gary and the girlfriend got out and looked up. The glow was almost gone, a ghost of what it had been. I got a ‘sure,’ an ‘okay,’ and a ‘sorry I missed it.” The girlfriend. She was nice. She didn’t believe me, either.
I opened my eyes. Gingerbread Fred Thompson was six feet away. “I’m sure you know this,” I said. “Vandenburg Air Base. Rocket. Explosion.”
“Sure.” He turned toward the stairs. “I have chosen to believe it was a… a glimpse at what is… beyond, that it was a tear… in the shroud.”
“I’m… fine with that. But… we… you and I, we saw it.”
“We did.” Gingerbread Fred twisted the frames of his glasses, put a finger in his left ear, and yawned. He pulled at his sweater. He clawed at his hair. “I do hope you will excuse me. I am going to… quick dip. Therapeutic.” As he was dropping down the stairs and out of sight, I looked back up at the highest part of the sky. Zenith. Shadow. Stars, planets. Closing, and later, opening credits for the next show. “A tear in the shroud,” I said, out loud.
I repeat the phrase often.
THERE ARE NO UPDATES ON SURF ON THE STRAIT. Maybe, like, October.
REMEMBER to check out realsurfers.net on Sunday. Maybe there will be an update; or some hope for waves. MEANWHILE, there are always waves somewhere, just not, like, near here.
The waves, even on the northwest coast, continue to be weak. At best. Still, people seeking some kind of float are journeying out, past the usual summer road work delays, and behind the usual hordes of leather-bound motorcyclists and the EVers making ‘the loop’ on Surf Route 101, the RVs and the folks with boats and already-blown-up blow-up SUPs, the campers and trailers.
Yeah, it’s summer. I haven’t ventured west yet, but my so-far stealth surf rig is up and running, and I am so, so tempted.
Here’s a story: I should add, non-fiction.
If you do happen to see Jacob…
…tell him he is loved.
I came around from the lake side of the house. I was standing at the open back doors of my van, considering whether I should break out another drop cloth. A car on the road that does a half circle on the south side of the lake stopped. It didn’t pull over.
The window on the front passenger side of the car came down. The woman behind the wheel said something. I was too far away to hear. I came up the slight bank and stopped at the edge of the road. “Have you seen a kid come by here?”
There was a blond-haired kid, probably nine or ten, in the back seat, hard to see through the tinted windows, straining on his restraints.
“I was… on the other side.”
The woman was smoking, not inhaling deeply, blowing the whisps out the open window on her side. “He… we had a… disagreement. A thing. He’s fifteen. I’m the stepmom.”
“I’ll keep an eye out. Does he… look like… this kid?”
“No. He’s… he looks native. Big for his age.”
“Not bigger than me?”
“No.”
“What’s his name?”
“Jacob.”
“Oh, like… I need something… I have a hard time remembering names… like Jacob’s ladder.”
“Guess so. Yeah.”
The woman could have driven on. She might have if another car had come up behind her. Though it’s summer, hot and sunny, a major closure on highway 101 has made traffic detour. I took two back roads to get to the lake house, located close to the public fishing dock, across the street from a farm, and adjacent to a small public campground.
The woman started talking about herself. She was a local, she said. She gave her family name.
I knew the name. I had dealings with a man by that name. “Oh. He’s my father.”
Her father had been a contractor. Roofer, mostly. Kind of thuggish. Our dealings had not all been pleasant.
He bad-rapped me, years ago, to a mutual client. I have a tough time forgiving this; mostly I just move on. I don’t forget.
I knew a few things about an uncle who inherited some money, bought a lot of new tools, vehicles, and equipment, and went into business with a couple of other guys. One partner had some health issues and moved to Hawaii. The other had a severe drug issue that was more important to him than completing jobs. The woman’s uncle died before, or just after the money ran out.
“Sad,” I said. “He was a nice guy.” Another uncle was described and written off as “Just… so fat.”
My mind went to someone I had just run into who was dangerously overweight.”
Her father, she said, lighting another cigarette, and her mother, sold the company, got divorced, “He met some woman on the beach. He’s got a seven-year-old. He’s doing the right thing, though, raising him on his own.”
“So… the woman from the beach? Gone?”
“Yeah.”
An SUV with a Costco kayak on top pulled up behind the woman’s car. After a moment, it went around.
“Hey, uh, if I see him… Jacob, I’ll tell him to get his ass over and… I’ll tell him you’re looking for him.”
“Thanks.”
Image ‘borrowed’ from Google. Thanks.
The woman never did ask my name. She wouldn’t know that, thirty years earlier, I had come to this very lake, a first responder with the local fire district, in response to a call for a teenager drowning. Drowning. I know how to swim. I live three miles away. I could beat the ambulance. I could do something. I could…
I couldn’t. The teenage boy wasn’t in the water, floundering. He had been underwater for too many minutes. He was on the beach, dragged by someone. On his back. He was already gone. Obviously. Visibly. He had thrown up. His airway was compromised. There would be no rescue, no heroes.
Still, I would be doing compressions all the way to the hospital, a nurse picked up at Four Corners. Desperate. Futile.
The boy’s mother showed up just after he was pronounced dead. I was headed out the Emergency Room doors, back to the aid car. I looked as the mother’s mouth opened, as her hands went to her face, possibly to block a scream. I looked away.
“If you do happen to see Jacob, please tell him he is loved.”
If I had seen him, I would have. I didn’t. I had work to do before the sun hit the lake side of the house.
HOPE YOU’RE GETTING SOME WAVES!
REMEMBER to check out the latest installment of “SWAMIS” on Wednesday. This week, Joey goes to the psychologist, has a spell, gets a new board. Or maybe that’s next week. Still, the story continues.
NOTE: Copyright protection claimed on all original work on realsurfers.net. All rights reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. Thanks.
Fallbrook Union High School was letting out. Gary and Roger and I were standing in the big dirt parking lot behind the band room. Johnny Dale, in his daddy’s restored 1957 Chevy Nomad station wagon, two girls in the front seat with him, slowed down, then popped the clutch and spun out directly in front of us. Gary, then Roger, then I flipped the asshole off. I used both hands. “Double eagles,” I said.
The next two cars that passed us got three sets of double eagles.
“Friday, March 14,” I said, writing the date into a page about a third of the way through a red notebook sitting on the hood of a yellow 1968 Super Beetle with two surfboards, side by side on the Aloha racks; my bruised and patched nine-six pintail and a brand-new Hansen ten-two. “Finally enough light after school to go to, at least Oceanside. Gary and Roger bailed.”
“We’re not bailing, Joey; we have dates.” Roger mouthed, “Dates” while running his hand along the rail of the board on the rack on the driver’s side.
“With girls,” Gary added. “Friday night! And besides, where is Doublewide Doug?”
“Doug-L-ass has… art seventh period,” Roger said. I nodded, looked at my watch, wrote something in the notebook.
“Why is it,” Gary asked, running his hand down the rail of the Hansen, “that Dingleberry Doug has a new fucking car and a new fucking surfboard?”
“Why is it, Gary, that Joey is such a whore that he’ll ride with Dipshit Doug?”
“Why is it, Joey, that everyone’s getting shorter boards, but your buddy, Ditchdigger Doug, is going aircraft carrier?”
I looked around the lot. “Because, gentlemen, Doug’s… working, one, and his father’s running irrigation for all the… new ranchettes, two, and three, I’m a whore for the surf, and three, again… gas money.” I stepped back from my friends. Both were wearing Levis, Ked’s boat shoes, J.C. Penny’s white t shirts, and nylon windbreakers. As was I. “Why is it that we all don’t have… matching windbreakers like we’re on the Dork Neck Surf Team?” Both gave me ‘fuck you’ looks. “You guys, with the blonde hair and… people who don’t know better might just believe you surf better than I do.”
“Fine with me, Joey. Gary? You?”
“Yeah. Fine, but… Hey, Joey; here comes your date now!”
Doug, varsity offensive lineman, was on the sidewalk, still a distance away, slow running toward us. He had a couple of notebooks under his right arm, his left arm out and ready to straight arm anyone in his path.
“Joey DeFreines, surf slut.” Gary blew a kiss toward Doug with a big arm movement. Roger put both hands out as if expecting a pass. Doug didn’t see it. Gary’s mom’s Corvair pulled in between us, trailed by its usual puffs of black smoke. Gary’s sister, the Princess, was driving. There was another girl in the front seat, two more in the back. Sophomore girls. Giggling. The Princess peeled out just as Gary went around the back of the car.
“Better remember to put some oil in it, Princess.”
The Princess honked as she cut another car off, pulled out and onto the side road in a cloud of black smoke.
Doug touched his car, leaned against it, breathing heavily. “Made it!” Neither Gary nor Roger acknowledged Doug. He laid a piece of drawing paper onto the hood. “Check this shit out!” It was a drawing, pastels, of cartoonish people and cars on the side a road. A red light was glowing from beyond and below the cars and people. “Pulled over” was written in the same red as a sort of caption.
“Where’d you get that?”
“Well, Roger, someone in my art class wanted me to scotch tape it on…” He pointed toward me. “Jody’s locker.”
“Grant Murdoch.”
“Grant fucking Murdoch.”
“Bingo! It’s from one of the pictures of Jody in the Free Press.”
“Hey, um, Doug-l-as,” Roger said, extending the ‘ass’ part, “Don’t wear that fucking letterman jacket to the beach. Joey wants all the hodads to think he’s from somewhere else.”
“Laguna… specifically,” I said as I rolled up the drawing, using the scotch tape at the corners to secure the roll. “Or San Clemente. Santa Cruz. Just… not… Fallbrook.”
Douglas yanked on the Warrior’s jacket, tossed it, inside-out, onto the hood of his car.
“Oh, and fuck Grant Murdoch,” Gary said as he and Roger turned and headed toward Roger’s stepfather’s Mustang.
…
Doug was driving. I had a book open, paper bag cover with unreadably psychedelic pencil lettering. “Civics” and “Grandview” and “Joey DeFreines.”
“Shit, Jody, I could just cheat off of you.”
“Or… you could… I’ll just give you the… shit I think’ll be on the test.”
“Close your eyes, Jody.” Doug pushed the book back toward my face.
I knew exactly where we were. Three corners west of the little village of Bonsall, the last straightaway before the sharp left and the narrow bridge across the wide valley that held the thin line of the San Luis Rey River. I looked over the book and Doug just in time to see the construction site for a strip mall.
“Building it quick, Jody.”
“Yes. Quick. Doug.
“Um, uh, Jody; you know, my sister… she taught me how to drive. She said, if there’s a truck or something coming… on the bridge… she just closes her eyes.”
We made it across. No vehicles coming our way. A choice had to be made. It was a soft right hand turn and a straightaway or a steep hill. “Which way? Vista or Oceanside?”
“Oceanside’s faster… I think.”
“Faster then, Doug.”
Doug downshifted, made the soft right-hand turn. We were thirty seconds or so along when Doug said, “Um, you know; Gary and Roger call you Joey.” I didn’t look over the Civics book. “Instead of Jody.” I did look over the Civics book. “I’ll call you that if you call me…”
“In the name of world peace,” I said, lowering the book, “I will, in the future, always refer to you as… Dangerous Doug. Okay?”
“And you can tell Gary and Roger that I’m, you know, really good, surfing-wise. Joey.”
I lifted the book back up to my face. “Or… I can give you a dollar for gas… Doug-ie.”
“Oh. No. That’s all right… Jo-ey.”
…
Doug cut off an oncoming pickup truck as he made the thirty-five-degree turn onto the El Camino Real cutoff, southwest, out of the valley. So, no Oceanside. We hit the highway on the other side, merged onto I-5, got off at Tamarack Avenue. High tide. Shorebreak. We didn’t even drop into the lower parking lot. Doug missed the turn for Grandview. So, Beacons. Doug pulled in next to a green-gray VW bus with a white roof.
“Last chance, Doug. Sun’s down in… forty minutes.”
The tide was fairly high but dropping. There were five surfers out, two of them girls. There were four guys in street clothes on the beach. Two were watching, one was standing, one was doing some sort of surf pantomime, a beer bottle in each hand.
“Jerks,” I said.
Doug opened the trunk on the front of his super beetle. I moved to the bluff, wrapping Doug’s extra towel around me. I turned my shortjohn wetsuit back to outside out, peeled off my Levis and boxers, pulled the wetsuit up partway, wrapped the clothes in the towel, pulled the sleeveless suit up the rest of the way. One arm through, I connected the opposite shoulder with a stainless-steel turnbuckle. Custom, from a sailmaker at Oceanside Harbor. The first one, December of 1965, cost fifteen dollars. Christmas present. This one was seventeen-fifty, plus tax. But they were custom, two weeks from measuring to pick up.
Doug unstrapped the boards. I pulled out a cigarette, showed the pack to Doug. He shook his head. I lit the Marlboro with three paper matches. Throwing my clothes into the trunk, I stashed my wallet, cigarettes, and matches in one shoe, stuffed the other shoe inside that one, slid the shoes under my clothes.
“Yes, Jo… Joey; I will lock the car.”
Halfway down the first section of the path, I saw that the two young women surfers, Julia Cole and her friend, were out of the water. The four Jerks had moved halfway across the sand. The pantomiming Jerk, apparently the leader, the Head Jerk, was saying something to his friends I couldn’t quite hear. They all laughed. Loudly.
“Monica,” Head Jerk said. Loudly. He repeated the word, stretching it to, “Mon-ee-ca. We have some be-er, San-ta Mon-e’-ca.”
Monica, her head down, pushed past the Head Jerk, looked the other three Jerks off. The Head Jerk, walking backwards toward the bluff in front of Julia Cole, stopped at the bottom of the trail. Julia Cole stopped; her face very close to the Jerk’s. Monica, three steps up the trail, stopped and looked back. Head Jerk stepped aside.
“Juuu-li-a. Juuuu-lee-ya; you are so cold. Soooo coooold. Ju’-li-a cold.”
Doug and I, boards under our arms, made the turn at the trail’s upper switchback.
“What you think, boys; Monica’a ass, or Juuu-lie’s?” The Head Jerk increased the volume. If any of the boys responded, it was more like growling or laughing than with any discernible words. “Brrrrrrrr. Water’s got to be as cold as you, Juu-lie. And now, I’m wondering, if you’ve got anything on under that wetsuit. I saw… skin.”
More laughter. One of the three other members of the Jerk Crew said, “Come on, dude; cool it.”
Head Jerk moved both beer bottles to his left hand and shot his right hand out. Pleased that the subordinate Jerk crew member flinched, Head Jerk said, “And don’t fuckin’ call me dude… dude.” He started up the trail. His cohorts hung back, possibly because they saw me, looking quite displeased, and the much bigger Doug, behind me, also displeased.
Monica and I met at the lower switchback. I stopped. Doug stopped. I stood my board up, holding it with my left hand, and moved to the uphill side. Doug did the same. Monica nodded, quickly, but looked down as she passed. Julia Cole had an expression as much determined as pissed-off. Defiant. Looking at me, she didn’t seem to adjust her expression one way or the other. I did notice the chrome turnbuckle on one side of her wetsuit was undone and her bare shoulder was exposed. Skin. She noticed I noticed. Another asshole. Another jerk. Her lower lip seemed to pull in, her upper lip seemed to curl. Disappointment. Or anger. Julia blinked. I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Julia Cole passed me and then Doug. “Joey’ll get ‘em,” Doug said. No response.
I may have been replaying Julia Cole’s expression for the third or fourth time when Head Jerk approached the tight angle at the switchback. I may have missed the first few words he kind of spit at me. I did catch, ‘fuckin’ retard.’ It was in the form of a question.
I replayed his words. “What’s the deal, asshole? Huh? You some sort of fuckin’ retard?”
“Possibly, Dude,” I said. “I do believe, Dude, you owe Julia Cole and Monica… don’t know her last name… a sincere apology.”
“You do,” Doug said. “Jerk.” Doug looked at me. I mouthed, “dude.” He said, “Dude.”
Dude looked past me and at Dangerous Doug in his new O’Neill wetsuit, his custom Hansen leaning against his left shoulder, his spotless white towel over his right shoulder.
“Okay.” Dude looked back down the trail. His cohorts hadn’t moved. “Come on. We have us a fuckin’ farm boy and some sort of retard Gook.”
“Oh, no. Jody; Dude there called you a Gook.”
“Common mistake.”
“Step aside, fuckers!” Neither Doug nor I moved.
“Jody,” Dude said, leaning in way too close to my face. “Girl’s name. Well. Fuck Monica! Fuck Julie fuckin’ Cole. And… fuck you, Jo-dee… And your fat-ass friend.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, Joey. The Jody thing. And… I don’t think Dude is gonna apologize.”
“I wish he would.” I extended my right arm out, my palm toward the Head Jerk. I allowed my board to fall against the bank.
Doug pushed the tail of his board into the decomposed sandstone, laid his board down, carefully, uphill, against the scrub and ice plant on the bluff. He wrapped his towel around his neck and pointed at each member of the Jerk Squad, now partway up the lower portion of the trail. “Devil Dog, assholes! Come on up and help out your friend here. Dude. But, warning, Joey’s a, for real, fucking, by-God, Devil Dog!”
Devil Dog didn’t register with Dude. He looked up the bluff for a moment. I would describe his expression as a sneer. Holding the two beer bottles by the necks, he smashed them against each other. The open one shattered, the remaining beer running down his arm. He held the raw edges up against the palm of my right hand. He was smiling. “Gook!”
I closed my eyes. I imagined an eleven-year-old kid, sneering at me. My opponent. He had padded fabric head gear and a heavy pad on his body, a padded pugil stick in his hands. He was sneering. Other voices were cheering. I could hear myself crying. Big sobs, inhaling between each one. My father’s voice said, “Eyes open, Jody! Open!” The kid in the head gear, still sneering, was about to hit me again, this time with the right-hand end of the stick. I could also see Head Jerk, his beer bottle weapon pulled back. My father’s voice screamed, “Get in there! Jody!” I did. I saw my pugil stick connect, saw the opponent fall back. His sneer gone.
As was Dude’s.
Both beer bottles were on the path, both now broken. It would be a moment before Dude reached for his nose; before the blood started flowing from there and his upper lip. It would be another few moments before the other three Jerks turned and ran.
“Devil Dog,” Dangerous Doug said.
“Devil Pup,” I said, keeping my eyes on my opponent. “Marines, Dude… may I call you Dude?” There were tears in his eyes, blood seeping between his fingers. “Or… your name? No? Well, Devil pups, Dude; it’s kind of like… summer camp with hand-to-hand combat.”
Doug pulled his towel from his shoulders and handed it to Dude. “Apology, then?” The Head Jerk, Dude, fluffy towel to his face, nodded. “Not to us.” He nodded again. “Promise?” Third nod. “Okay.”
“And, if you would, pick up the glass. Dangerous. Huh, Doug?”
“Dangerous,” Doug said. “Keep the towel. Souvenir.”
When we got to the beach, Dude was still at the same spot, placing pieces of broken glass into Doug’s towel. The other three Jerks were partway up the bluff, climbing through the patches of ice plant.
“You going to cry, Joey?”
“I thought about it.” I looked up at the parking lot. There was a flash off a window on the VW bus. An open door. Julia Cole was behind the passenger side door. It was too far away. I couldn’t see her expression. I could remember hers from earlier.
“We surfing, or what, Jody?”
“I thought, Dangerous Doug… you said you’d call me Joey.”
“We surfing, or what… Joey?”
…
I left my shoes on the porch, stacked my books on the side table in the foyer. My mother was on the couch, listening to some blues record. Seventy-eight rpm. The photo of her husband was leaned up against the console. She may have been looking at it as the record ended and another one dropped onto the turn table. “South Pacific,” original Broadway cast.
She got up, adjusted the record speed, and walked into the kitchen. I followed. “Doug. Who are his… people?” She turned off the oven and pulled out a foil covered plate, set it on the cast iron trivet on the kitchen table. “Would you like milk?”
“I’ll get it. Doug’s father has the irrigation company. Football player. That Doug.”
“Irrigation. Football. Doug. You and he… you are… friends, now?”
“It’s just… it’s not me. Surfing’s cool. I surf.” My mother gave me a look I had to answer with, “Yes, mother; friends are… nice to have.” She nodded and walked through the formal dining room and into the living room.
Freddy ran into the kitchen from the hallway, half pushed me against the counter. “She called,” he said. “The reporter. Asked for you… after I told her mom wasn’t here.”
“Lee Ransom?”
“Yeah. Her. Mom was here. Outside, grooming Tallulah.”
“Okay.”
“I told her…” Freddy switched to a whisper. “I told her what you told me to say.” I nodded, tried to push past my brother. He put a hand to my chest. “She asked what kind of car mom drives.” I did one of those ‘and?’ kind of shrugs. “She said she asked one of the detectives, and he pointed to a different car than the one someone else had pointed to… not the Volvo.”
“Which one?”
“Which car?”
“Which detective?”
“Boys!” I looked around Freddy. Our mother was in the dining room. I couldn’t tell from her expression how much she had heard. I had to assume too much.
MEANWHILE, in the real world, I’m cruising around (still cautiously) in my still super secret stealth surf rig, alternator purring properly, new gas filter and fuel additive added (thanks George Takamoto and Stephen R. Davis), waiting for the new hubcaps Trish ordered, and waiting for some waves, even on the coast, somewhere over knee high.
REMEMBER, new content on Sundays.
“Swamis” and revisions to the original work are protected by copyright, all rights reserved by the author.
Real Surfers 