Monthly Archives: November 2023

The Usual Surf Season Tragedy

Posted on by under surfing blogs, surfing the strait of juan de fuca, writings of Erwin Dence

“So, where is the HEAT… ERWIN?”

It’s our cat, ANGELINA, quite disappointed if not super pissed-off, resting on MY pillow (darker blue in real life), in the living room, because it’s the room with (some) heat, that provided by space heaters powered by a very noisy generator.

Not to argue whether or not there is a surf season on the Strait, but… Oh, first, I’m posting this a day later than the days I am trying to get folks used to, Sundays and Wednesdays, due to the power panel in my, hm, hmm, cottage, pieced together and added onto since the 1930s, kind of, um, having an issue.

AN ISSUE is my explanation for reduced power and… I AM working on it.

Not this skinny, of course, but rideable waves and no surfboard… frustrating.

Again, not discussing (potential, possible, hypothetical, possibly imagined) waves I can’t get to for a reason other than the usual, ‘got to work,’ thing. A few years ago it was the water leak between the pump house and the, you know, house I couldn’t find, even cutting holes in the floor to track it down, not finding it leading to the pump fifty feet down going out. Yes, I missed some waves I would have, according to reports that included, “You would have loved it, Dude,” and “Where were you?”

The thing is, these kind of issues, quite a ways outside of my knowledge zone, my limited areas of expertise; OR the use of professionals to solve the issue being way outside of my budget; just make me so… tired. Disappointed, pissed-off, frozen in body and mind. Rather like Angelina.

BUT, I am making some moves. It’s only been about thirty hours with no coffee and inadequate heat. I felt pretty good that I replaced the burnt-out main shutoff switch (not fun). I’ve done testing, possibly closing in on the areas of extended damage. Always tough. Electrical logic is way more involved than painting logic (paint is a liquid, gravity is involved). I have some ideas. YES, I am aware almost any problem is solvable if one throws enough money at it.

YES. This drama, something short of a tragedy, will be a story. Eventually. Not yet.

MEANWHILE, I did discover I can’t run a space heater AND a coffee maker at the same time.

NOW, I DO have some new artwork, several possible t-shirt designs, more from “Swamis” I wanted to post, AND I WILL, once I’m back to full power. So, soon. I’ve got to work.

If you do happen to get a few waves; it’s fine; I’m sure they’re the kind (rideable, possibly makable) I would love, Dude; it’s fine if you let me know. Good luck. May all your breakdowns, breakups, accidents, tragedies, meltdowns, panic attacks, mind freezes, etc., happen when the waves aren’t going off

I will be posting something new on SUNDAY.

A Short Story (Not Directly Connected to Surfing)

Posted on by under northwest surfing, real surfers, short stories on surfing, surf novels

A few years ago I wrote a series of stories and, yes, poems that I put together in a collection I titled, “Mistaken for Angels.” Yes, I got a copyright. Vanity. Ego. Just in case. As with everything I have written, my plan for a novel or interconnected stories lost some of the connective-ness, random ideas popping in to complicate matters.

The underlying premise was that the story is more important than the telling, the style and the proper adjectives and structure less memorable than the absolute desire each of us has to tell our story.

It’s not my story; it’s fiction; and my remembering this story caused me to search through multiple thumb drives. The current portion of ancient struggles caused me to remember that I had written it; not about a particular place or time, but of many places and many times.

Tragedy begets tragedy.

I was raised to be a pacifist; yet, turning the channel, turning away, I do nothing. Nothing except, perhaps, to try to calm if not control my own confusion, my own outrage, my own anger.

OH, since the location could be anywhere, on this (new) illustration (sketch if you must), I put in some waves in the background, making, possibly, A GOOD HOUSE that much better.

A Good House

We had a good house. This, you see, was the problem. It was, also, too close to the border. Some, those who think themselves brave, who think others will follow them, they call the disputed land on which the good house sits the ‘frontier.’ I call it ‘bloodlands.’ There has always been trouble. Wars go this way, then back; like waves on a lake.

My Father, he went to war- one of the wars- he pushed forward very bravely (so we were told), but came back very broken. The next wave took him for good.

Wave. Yes. Like a wave. We all knew he was already drowned. He was waiting for the next wave to wash his body away from… This is difficult to explain. “No faith left” he would say, staring toward the horizon.

My Mother, she had faith, and, with it, that certainty… I have heard it called fatalism. Ah, fancy term, that. It’s that knowledge that the darkness comes to each of us, to all of us. Fate and faith, they are, I think, related. “To have faith,” my Mother told us, my Sister and me, after our Brothers went, or were taken, made to fight, “you must have faith.”

This means, I think, that you must believe that having the faith sometimes works. Sometimes what we have the faith in, that things will be all right, can happen. I don’t know if I do believe this. My Mother did. Truly.

The snipers had done damage to the troops from our country. That is why they, our Soldiers, took to the houses. “Like a jar of water,” one of them told my Grandfather, who was weak and old, and had survived, he said, by never flying anyone’s flag, never taking a side. The Soldier held my Grandfather’s head against the rocks of the fireplace. He tapped it with a branch meant for the fire. He, the Soldier, explained this thing to my Mother, who, because she refused to cower as her Mother was, obviously was in charge.

He threw his hands apart to describe how a sniper’s bullet reacted with a soldier’s skull. “pheuuuuuuuh!” Then he laughed and let my Grandfather go.

“Okay,” he said, “your land; you don’t care what country it’s in. Fine.”

There was blood on this Soldier’s uniform. It (blood) dries almost black on the green. He smelled of gunpowder and body odor and death. They all carried sometimes multiple guns, and each had what you might call a machete. They called them something that would be more like ‘sword,’ and attributed a certain righteousness to its use. The Soldiers burned the blood from the blades in our fire, ate our food, complained about my Sister’s crying, and waited.

Soldiers, I now know, spend much time waiting. This is where their brains tell them many stories of why they should be afraid. They tell each other that they are not afraid, should not be afraid, they are and must be men. Yet, I could see these Soldiers had fear. Fear, someone else’s, looks like anger. I could feel my own fear. Like the Soldiers, I would hide it. I made my fear look like calmness. I could see everyone’s fear. Except my mother’s. She had the faith. I wanted to have the faith. I was ashamed to have, instead, the fear.

Fear is like a prayer, I think; or, maybe like a heavy, dark blanket, wrapped like a cloak, ready to be cast off, cast off quickly, when it is bravery that is needed.

Bravery, I’m afraid, is the ability to disregard what is known to be right. Bravery is a vicious thing. I no longer wish to be brave.

For some, it is better to be dead than brave.

Sorry. I must laugh a bit. The brave and cowardly are often thrown into the same grave.

“This is a very nice house,” another of the Soldiers said. He stood close to the window, lit a cigarette. “I think,” he said, “after the war, when we are free, I will take this house.” It was then the sniper’s bullet hit his neck. Both sides at once, it seemed. He was still smiling his dirty smile when his head snapped back. He rocked only a bit, and fell, crumpled, beside me where I sat. The cigarette was still in his mouth.

The first Soldier, and the others, ran outside, then away, leaving the dead one, blood splattered on our walls, making pools on our floor. We could hear guns going off, closer, then farther away. We thought, we hoped we were safe.

Briefly, we were.

These were the, it gets confusing; you might call them counter-insurgents. At dawn the insurgents came closer. Same smell, same uniforms (I thought at the time), different caps. They laughed when they saw how poor we were at trying to drag the body out. They kicked at it, shot it several more times, took things from it, threw it onto a truck with other bodies, some not in uniforms.

You can tell when the soul is gone, when a person becomes a body. Less. Almost nothing.

I don’t know where a soul goes. Somewhere better. I have seen those whose souls are gone, their bodies still…walking, eyes too wide open, too squinted down.

We would have been all right if the war had not slowed, the fighting ‘bogged-down’ in the hills; if the troops of our country had not fought so fiercely; if we had not had such a good house.

We had new guests not of our country. They thought themselves of a better country; bigger, older. This was not actually true, the bigger part, except for this short while. How small and pitiful our country must be, they said, to be so easily conquered.

I have no patience to explain why things went wrong. My Sister cried too much. It became night. Perhaps it was the darkness, the length of the nights. One of the soldiers said his grandfather might have worked on the masonry on our house, back when our country was still grand.

“If so,” my Grandfather said, “I would have paid him well. I always paid the workers well. They ate at our table.”

The mason’s Grandson looked at our table, smiled, but not nicely. Another Soldier, suddenly angry, perhaps because of how his Grandfather was treated, because of where his Grandfather took his meals, grabbed my Grandfather and pulled him outside. My Mother knew what this meant, and begged for her Father’s life. The Soldier slapped her for begging. Because she stood at the door and screamed “Butchers, murderers,” my grandmother was also pulled into the darkness. My Sister, holding onto our mother, kept crying. My Mother did not.

This is the fatalism of which I spoke, the belief that all will be tested.

And most fail.

I also did not cry. This is the faith, faith I had because my Mother had faith. The mason’s Grandson pulled my Sister away, shoved her toward me, told me, in my own language (they are really only slightly different) to keep her quiet. He moved his face close to my Mother’s, touched her breast. He said, Whores beg. Are you, then, a whore?” This was to humiliate her further.

I have learned this from war: To kill is not enough for some. To only, to merely kill is not enough to make the anger and the fear and the hatred cease.

“If I must be,” she said.

At this he laughed. “I am also the whore,” he said.

“My Children,” my Mother said to him. It was like a question. He, and the other Soldiers, now back from outside and leaning against our walls, shrugged and laughed together. The mason’s Grandson took his pistol belt off, holding the pistol in his left hand, moving it close to my Mother’s cheek.

“God will send a miracle,” she said to me. “Turn away,” she said.

I almost cried out at this moment. My Sister did. I put my hand over her mouth and prayed that I could have a man’s strength.

Prayers. Excuse me for laughing; just a little. Prayers are not answered as we expect.

It’s rare, I have learned, that a first mortar round can hit precisely. This one did, precisely where it was intended to land, and when I asked for it. The Soldier’s Grandfather had not been a roofer. No, not at all. Ha!

Like a jar of water, burst.

I kicked at his body when it was over, when the others ran, when more mortars rained down on the houses on the frontier.

Of prayer, I should add, speaking of the partial nature of the realization of prayer; my Mother did not survive this…this…I don’t know what they call this. It’s a tide, a tide, and we are the shore. I carved our Family’s name onto the mantel, underneath, to mark a claim when I return. I took the Soldier’s machete. After I’d chopped him with it; splattered his blood with it, I burned his blood from the blade in the fire.

By the time the Peacekeepers came, the roof was already patched, by my Grandfather and me. We also buried my Mother, dragged the soldiers’ bodies away from the house. My Grandparents would not leave. This was their home. That they were not soldiers was honored. That time. My Sister became one of the many refugees. Refuge means safety, of course. I prayed she would be safe. Yes. I told myself she was safe and fed and happy. That was my hope. Perhaps it is partially true. I became, as you know, a Soldier, a brave one, they say. I am still a Soldier; I wait, but I do not fear. I no longer even hate. I know what bravery is.

Oh, I see you don’t believe there could have been two miracles, two dead Soldiers in one house. Well, perhaps I lie. The results would be the same; the dried blood as black. Prayers answered.

When I was captured that first time, taken like a fool during one of the many truces, they called me John Doe number four hundred and thirty-four. I was, I now guess, eleven years old.

No “Swamis” Today; “Laundromat”

Posted on by under Uncategorized

CHIMACUM TIM (or CHIMACUM TIMACUM), the ferry worker and surfer who seems to believe this site is somehow important, or viral… oh, yeah, Tim is, or has been, viral himself (get well, Tim, and don’t give whatever it is to me- strict orders from TRISH not to get too close- “Oh, no; I don’t, it’s mostly text harassment.” “Good.”), has been telling me for a while that it is difficult-if-not-impossible to read my manuscript broken up into still-oversized chunks. “Why don’t you just print it up?” “Because it’s still not done.” “Why don’t you finish it, man?” “Been trying, man.”

It just might be close enough on the many-ist edit, to stop posting. NO, but this week, different thing.

BUT FIRST, Nickname of the week: “Bubble B” for guy who shows up with a blowup SUP. Credit, until proven otherwise, goes to KEITH DARROCK. “Why not Bubble Boy, Keith?” “Bubble B is better.” “You know, if he keeps showing up, it’ll go to Kevin.”

HIPSTER/KOOK of the week: RALPH, according to some, more gregarious than the ultra-gregarious ADAM WIPEOUT JAMES (which, no offense meant, I dispute), took this photo somewhere northwest of Sequim. Yes, Ralph is, inarguably, cool in his own right; not trying to start an argument in the shellfish/surf subset, just… I’ve been saying Adam is the most outgoing dude I’ve come across for a long time, and Ralph, who everyone seems to know, has enough supporters. Again, not purposefully stirring any pot here.

COOL RIG, has a few dents.

HERE’S a piece I wrote recently: But first… I hit the wrong key and got this (below). I can’t seem to delete it or do anything else with it. Keyboard errors. Shit!

laundromat-stories

LAUNDROMAT STORIES- All Children Should Sing

The hand-drawn sign, white chalk on light gray cardboard, taped to the inside of the driver’s side back window of the gray compact SUV read, “Milk for Sale- LOCAL.” The sign on the passenger side mentioned goat milk. A decal on the back window called for supporting local milk producers; and there was, of course, a “Got Milk” sticker and the locally ubiquitous Chicken logo from the Chimacum Farm Stand. 

I had not allowed myself enough time to casually finish painting the trim and fascia on three sides of the Laundromat before I would have to quit because of rain or darkness, or both; both so common, yet surprising, in the early days of November.

So, I was hustling, painting, moving the ladder, jumping up to get another six feet coated, drop down. I wasn’t taking time to really observe the vehicles parked just out of splatter range, or the people in them.

Not true. I did give several sideways glances to the guy in the passenger side of a pickup, window rolled down to allow his cigarette smoke to roll out. He was clutching an uncovered beer can. I may have looked too long when he yelled something to a woman, pulled forward by an oversized dog, as she passed between me and the truck.

He might have been saying something to me. No, he was saying something that had to have been rude; quick, guttural, two syllables smashed into one bitter contraction, to the woman. I’m a working man, working; no way another blue-collar dude would say something demeaning to me, unless we know each other. We don’t.

To drop such a phrase to the woman walking the dog, doing the laundry… maybe she forgives him.

I had to go inside the laundromat to retrieve something to prop the side door open, hopefully preventing customers from brushing against the wet paint on the frame. A ‘Wet Floor’ tripod sign worked perfectly. That is when I saw the amazingly large stacks of clothing off to one side. Obviously, the dirty clothes; there was plenty of counter space for clean clothes. Four loads would be my guess, and a young man with a reddish beard and a greenish hat squatting among them. Goat farmer was my guess; young, hip farmer, sorting whites and colored, a pile for work clothes, hopefully pre-hosed.

Among the piles was an overly padded combo baby carrier/car seat, with a baby inside; awake, looking up into the lights. A young woman, black hair and top and pants and shoes, came over and picked up the baby. Both hands. She tweaked her wrist to give some change to her man, then pushed her hand out a bit farther to point to a particular pile. “Too many,” she may have said; “Two loads.”

Outside again, the oversized dog was in the front seat of the pickup. In the middle. Watching me. The man was smoking, again, beer in the hand around the dog’s neck, also, I believed, looking at me. The woman had used the front door. I moved the ladder and allowed her room to place her two large trash bags of laundry in the bed of the truck.

She said, “Looks nice… The paint.” I would have said something if the man hadn’t grunted, smoke forcibly blown out his window. I shouldn’t have looked, even for the half second it took to move past the hood of the truck, past him and the dog. I smiled at the dog, still staring at me, and gave the woman the same smile, probably, and a ‘thank you’ nod when I looked back at her.

It was truly dark when I went back inside to thank the woman who seemed to run the place, to give her the key to the doors to the room with the water heaters. Painted, gaskets reinstalled, touch up paint put inside, locked.

Five wash machines in a row of six were running. The young man in the green hat was leaning against the ‘out of order’ one, the empty baby carrier on top of it. His woman was carrying their baby, close, both hands, looping around the wash machines and the dryers, past the people folding and sorting, past the people waiting, looking at their phones. She was singing something soft and low, something, a lullaby only her baby could hear over the spinning, whirring machine noise.

All good mothers sing to their children.

All children should sing.

AS ALWAYS, please respect copyrights for all original material on realsurfers.net. AND, AS ALWAYS, GOOD LUCK in finding the waves of your dreams. OH, and HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

The Fifty-fifth Anniversary of TRISHA’S Sixteenth Birthday… and other stuff

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel

Tomorrow is the fifty-second anniversary of Trish and I getting married with, really, no idea how it would all go. She was nineteen years and ten days old. I was twenty years and two-and-a-half weeks old. Yeah, long time. Not looking for Kudos on my part in this. No one has ever asked me how I could stay so long with Trish; she’s been asked, well, a lot of times.

SO, a week or so ago, nine days, probably, marked the fifty-fifth anniversary of Trisha’s sixteenth birthday. There was a party. I was there. It didn’t go well, for me; another suitor was way slicker than I was, but I did, somewhere in the confusion of being barely seventeen, I did ask her if she wanted to go surfing with me the next morning. And she agreed.

Image borrowed from teeuni. Pretty much covers it.

AND, as part of my celebration, I went surfing on the day after Trisha’s most recent birthday, and, lucky me, again the next day. NO, Trish wasn’t on the beach watching her man, getting hit on by other dudes; I mean, really, what kind of woman is willing to do that… over time.

WE have THANKSGIVING coming up, a world in chaos, and I’m trying to decide what to do on a first day without work that HAS to be done, trying to decide where there might be waves, whether to stay home and deal with maintenance too-long deferred. Tomorrow, I’ve cleared the schedule and promised Trish she and I would be hanging out. Let me check the forecast. Oh.

SINCE it kind of relates, here’s a portion of an original poem…. or song, depending…

I’d like to have a day where I can simply vegetate, find my thoughts and store a few away; Nowhere I must go to, so there’s no way to be late, Wish I had a day where I could hide, but I don’t have that day, so let it slide.

I wish I had an ego not as fragile as a glass, shatters when somebody looks askance, I could strut and swagger, I’d exude self-confidence, On my lips, I’d still seem dignified, My ego’s not that strong, so let it slide.

I’l like to have one night that I could spend alone with you, maybe underneath a naked moon; I’d whisper “I love you” probably half a million times, hoping that our wishes coincide; And when we get that night, we’ll let it slide.

Let it slide, slide, slide, there’s no way that I can linger, work to do that must be done today; Let it slide, slide, slide, please unwrap me from your finger, you say you’ll be happy if I just stay, Perhaps for just a while, then… satisfied? Maybe, just this once we’ll let it slide, slide, slide, maybe just this once we’ll let it slide.

THANKS, AS ALWAYS, for checking our realsurfers.net BEST OF LUCK for all your sliding wishes.

“Let it Slide” is from a copyrighted collection of poems/songs, “Love Songs for Cynics,” all rights reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr.

AND, and, and, please, in counting our blessings, may we not ignore the truly epic tragedies throughout the world.

“SWAMIS” Excerpt Plus Flyer/Business Card for…

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, Erwin Dence illustrations, real surfers, surf fiction

SO, JACOB WHYTE is the son of a cousin of JIM HAMILTON, a very interesting individual (timber-frame house builder/ski patrol/world traveler/more) who lives off Center (Road) and close to SURF ROUTE 101 in Quilcene. Jacob also has an interesting story. He has returned to Forks, Washington after an extended stay in California, Ventura area, during which he worked doing ding repair, most notably (to name droppers) for Channel Islands Surfboards, living frugally (growing his own food, that kind of thing), always, he says, planning to move back home to Washington State’s WEST END.

Now, the PEASANT thing: Jim, in asking (more like hiring/bribing) me to do some artsy stuff for Jacob, pondered the name. “Oh,” I must have said, “Maybe it’s like, you know, peasants, serfs, vassals, that kind of thing; I mean, like an allusion to… that.” “That would be… yeah, maybe that’s it.”

“It isn’t,” Jacob said when I actually got in phone contact, he at a far northwest secret surf location, me in the depths of a housing tract in East Bremerton. Didn’t matter, so much, I’d already done a drawing, black and white, printed a copy and colored it, either suitable as a flyer, or, reduced in size, a too-busy business card. “Yeah, Erwin, maybe the ‘serfboard’ thing is expecting too much of… surfers.” “Okay, how about the ‘serving the West End and the Olympic Peninsula’ part?” “Yeah. Sure.”

I ran a couple of other ideas past Jacob. Mostly about t-shirts; what would be appropriate, assuming surfers on the West End are not necessarily trying to invite more surfers over. I have ideas. LATER. It’s not like I can’t keep a secret.

  IN MY CONTINUED attempts to produce a decent drawing of the fictional JULIA COLE, or, actually, a portrait of any woman, I came up with this. Attempts and failures. I should throw away the versions that got me to this one, possibly more useful to depict Julia’s mother, and stick this in some file with the other failed illustrations. BUT, wait, maybe if I just… Yeah, I have some ideas. ALWAYS. And I always want to get… better.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN- MONDAY, MARCH 31, 1969- PART FOUR

The two carpenters were carefully walking between the Karmann Ghia and the edge of the bank. Lee Anne turned toward them. “Joey, this is Monty, lead carpenter on the project.” Monty was sunburned, with a receding hairline and an almost orange Fu Manchu mustache. Early thirties.

Monty stepped in front of Lee Anne’s car, put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. Black, muscular, no older than eighteen or nineteen. “And this is…”

“Not a carpenter. Yet. Helper. Nickname… Digger.” Monty had only left room for his helper to stand on the very edge of the bank.

Lee Anne looked at Digger, shook her head, looked at Monty, and back at Digger. “No. Unacceptable. You have to… insist… on a different nickname.”

“Temporary,” Digger said. “Thought I’d be something like ‘Hammer.’ Nope. Got to earn your nickname ‘round here.” Digger slapped at a pair of gloves folded over his belt. He held out his hands, palms toward me, rubbed two fingers of his left hand across the palm of his right. He slapped his hands together. “Could’a been callin’ me ‘Blisters.’”

Lee Anne extended her right hand but didn’t accept Digger’s. “Blisters,” she said. “Not good, but… better.”

            Monty gave Lee Anne a sideways nod and said, “Blisters, then.”

The younger carpenter had been rather boldly checking Lee Anne Ransom out. She looked him off with a quick widening of her eyes and a very stern expression. “Real name, please, for the record.” 

Blisters backed up, put his hands out and up, his arms closer to his body. If he was impressed with Lee Anne’s response, he wasn’t apologizing. “Greg,” he said. “Or Gregory.”

“Gregory, then.” She turned back to Monty. “Or Greg?”

“Greg, then,” Monty said. He pointed to the parking lot. “We heard the cop car, didn’t see it ‘til it tried to turn in. It wasn’t the brakes. It was… the gravel. New, like b-bs; no way he wasn’t gonna slide.” He turned toward me before he added, “No way.”  

…

The San Luis Rey Riverbed was probably half a mile wide. I had never seen the water more than a stream, a creek, even. The ground Monty and Gregory and Lee Anne and I were standing on was gravel and round river rock, with the usual scrub, some still green but rapidly fading grasses and weeds, and a few stunted trees. Taller trees in the center of the valley were mostly dead. Ghosts. Killed in the cycles of flood and drought. More likely flood. Drowned.  

Monty pointed to the stump in the river bottom, probably fifty feet from the base of the fill. “The concrete had been poured. The leftover rebar should’ve been fuckin’ gone.” Though no one asked, he added. “Contractors. Separate. Not our job.”

Lee Anne said, “Separate. Not your job.” She attached a telephoto lens to her camera, aimed it at the road on the east side of the valley, focused it, snapped a photo, and handed the camera to me. “So, after your dad’s accident; the traffic was rerouted… over there. Correct?”

The lens was out of focus for my eyes. I twisted the ring at the base of the lens as Lee Anne had. “Correct.” I turned the camera past the carpenters and toward the journalist. Distorted. Out of focus. I snapped a photo. “Accident.”

Lee Anne took the camera and advanced the film.

…

Gregory and Monty and Lee Anne and I were standing next to the concrete box. There was a galvanized pipe in, another, perpendicular, out. Gregory, now gloved, had a shovel, upright, in his left hand. “You see, all the rebar got pushed out the way by the car… except for one piece. Jammed against the… stump.” He looked at me. “You get me?” I nodded. “They cut it. The… stump. Little later. Fire department.” I nodded. “Like a bullet, it was. Through the door and right through the guy. I seen him, right after. He was alive and all, like he was trying to pull the rebar out. No fuckin’ way.”

“My father… the guy.”

“Yeah.” The shovel handle fell against Gregory as he moved his hands into a prayer position and raised them to his eyes. “Sorry, man. No disrespect.”

Monty stepped between his helper and the stump. “We were trying to get it loose. No way. I’m smacking the stump with a framing hammer, trying to get the rebar loose. Or, even, pull it through the stump. Something.”

“Then this other cop; tall guy, he showed up, slides down the bank, lights up a cigarette. He was laughing, says, ‘Shit, Gunny, your car’s still on its wheels.’” 

Monty turned to me. “Wendall. He stops laughing when he comes around, sees the rebar and the… blood. Not that much. Me and… Wendall, second later; we’re at the door. Your dad says, ‘Larry; could you tell Ruth…’ That’s all I got, ‘cause just then this Japanese lady, your mom, she shows up in…” Monty pointed to the Falcon before moving his finger toward the incline from the parking lot. “She slips as she comes off of the grade.”

“I ran over, helped her up.”

“You did, Digger; yes. Greg. Me and Wendall, Greg, too; we tried to keep her back, but she pushes between us, gets in the car on the passenger side. She seemed pretty… calm. Wendall wasn’t. Your dad says, ‘it’s fine, Larry.’ Wendall grabs the shovel.” Monty grabbed the shovel from Greg, thrusting it downward, hard, several times, into the stump until it stuck.

Monty was gasping for breath. “By this time, there’s so many cars, people, up, up on the highway. More sirens. I look in the car. The siren was off, but the light… it had popped off the roof, wire and all. It was still spinning; the engine was still… running. The, uh, your dad, he looks over at me, like maybe he knows me. He don’t.” Monty was breathing in gulps. “He looks at your mom. He says, ‘I always believed I rescued you.’ She reaches over, turns off the, the key, twists around, puts her arm, the same arm… around… him. And your mom kisses him, and she’s got blood… on her.”

Monty caught his breath. Most of it. “Then he, Wendall; he pulls me away from the window, pushes me back. He has this look in his eyes; it’s like he’s shaking his head, but he’s not. It’s just his eyes saying, you know, that it was over.”

The stump, somewhere around fourteen inches in diameter, had been cleanly cut with a chain saw. The part that had been removed was only a few feet away, visible in the heavy-bladed grass in a patch of green that surrounded the concrete box.

I looked at the slide marks and the crushed plants, the track we had come down. I imagined my mother coming down the bank, slipping, having to be helped back up. I imagined her in my father’s patrol car, reaching over, turning the key. I extended my right arm, moved it up until my hand was pointing up and at the highway. I moved my arm to the left, to where my father’s car slipped, sideways, on the new gravel. My flat hand represented the car as it slid, still sideways, to the bottom of the grade, plowing into the ancient river bottom, hitting the pile of rebar, one piece jammed into the stump, penetrating the door and my father like a bullet. I looked into the sun hanging just above the parking lot. I cupped my right hand, moved it, and then the left, above my eyes.

The shadow, the darkness, lasted but a moment. Another blinding light, and the spinning red light, and a vision of my father’s face as I passed him took over. Everything else was gone.

…

I was in shadow when the vision faded. I was on my knees. Gregory was directly in front of me. Monty was gone. I looked up toward the highway. Lee Anne Ransom, still in the light, had her camera aimed at Gregory and me. She waved. Gregory waved back as the reporter got into the Karmann Ghia and pulled away.

Gregory offered his ungloved right hand. I took it with both of mine. “Blisters,” I said as I stood up. “They turn into… callouses.”

“Not soon enough.”

“Gregory. How long?”

“How long you out for? Hmmm. ‘Bout a minute, I’d guess.”

I tried to remember what I had seen, or what I had imagined. Nothing. I remembered nothing. Not at that time. “Was I… shaking. I mean…”

“No, man; it was… weird; you were… it was like you was really… still. Like… church.”

“Did I… say anything?”

Gregory shook his head. I looked at him long enough that the motion turned into a nod. “You said ‘sorry’ a couple a times. Pretty much it. Hey, you good to… drive? I live in Oceanside, but I could…”

I followed Gregory to the corner between the parking lot’s fill and the established fill along the highway. Half-way up, he asked, “Who is… is there a… Julie?” My left foot slipped on the gravel. I caught my balance and continued up to the highway.

THANKS FOR READING. “Swamis” is copyrighted material, All changes are also protected. All rights are reserved for the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. THANKS for respecting that.

GOOD LUCK in finding the spot, the time, the right wave. More non-Swamis stuff on Sunday.

Kooks and Hipsters and Bears, Oh, My!

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There’s a lot I am trying to cover today. May as well start with a strained allusion to “The Wizard of Oz.”

STORY: A friend noted that “some dude in a jacked-up Toyota with lots of stickers” was checking it out at a ‘surf spot’ on the Strait. A prominently displayed decal read, “Kooks Only Not Locals.” My friend, as close to being a local at that spot, responded with, “People who complain about locals obviously have never been local anywhere.” I, someone who has been a local and an inland cowboy at various times, am responding with… well, see above.

I KIND OF wanted it to be, “Kooks Rule the lineup… in the parking lot; not as precise, perhaps, but it goes along with, “Every surfer is a badass… on the beach.”

STORY: SUPER BAD ASS SURF RIG in the lineup. I have often pondered the proportion between surf rigs, fancy boards included, and surfing ability, and how much the HIPNESS FACTOR comes into the formula.

“I really wanted to make my car into a van,” this woman said. I really wanted to get a shot of the guy coming out of a sani-can, and I did, his outfit being… well, fun for sure; but this shot might say more. I do bring a thermos and some sort of food when I head out (salad and cookies on this occasion), but I do take note of those who either, one, prepare a full breakfast before surfing, and two, those who see others in the water and automatically suit up. This couple didn’t seem to object to my saying I’m trying to take more photos, particularly of HIPSTERS. Usually those I identify as hipsters deny their hipster-ness.

AGAIN, THE HIPSTER/RIPPER FORMULA.

SPEAKING of which:

The guy on the left, KURT TICE (or Kirk, not sure) is, by any definition, not a local on the Olympic Peninsula. He is a definite ripper. THE OTHER GUY is a definite local at this particular beach. He doesn’t surf, and I have been identifying him for a few years as the TRUMP LOVING, DOPE SMOKING DUDE, mostly because he used to wear a red Trump hat. It’s legal, as is… you know, smoking. Maybe the Trump hat just kind of, you know, wore out. He’s eighty-years old, says he loves being a local. “What do you do when there’s no surf and no surfers?” “Oh, there’s always someone around.” “Okay.”

STORY: KEITH ran into KIRK/KURT and one or both of his sons, also rippers, at a surf spot. Several times, perhaps. Turns out they are from Newport, Oregon, and know some people Keith, originally from the Oregon coast, also knows. THEN they ran into ADAM “WIPEOUT” JAMES. And then, on one of the times Adam and I headed out looking for surf (and BEARS or deer or cougars or mushrooms for Adam), the ripper family ran into us at the pullout for some difficult to access spot.

AND THEN, I’m out trying to make the best of the occasional waves on an outgoing tide when the ripper dad comes running down the beach with a tiny board, waves, paddles out, and… whoa,, a set shows up. “Thank you,” I said. Then his two sons show up. They ripped. One of them asks if I’m a friend of Adam. “Adam James?” “Yeah, from the Hama Hama. I think we saw you guys a couple of months ago.” It was more like ten months, but, “Yeah.” The father and the sons were so polite on a day when, at its most crowded, few surfers were making eye contact. I get it. GHETTO MENTALITY. I already forgot the names of the two kids. Sorry. NEWPORT RIPPERS will have to do for now.

HERE’S MY TAKEAWAY: Attitudes can change the vibe in the water. It’s like watching a surf music with one kind of music, and then changing the tune. There is something very uplifting about surfers who can be polite, friendly, and enthusiastic. Yeah, yeah, yea!

Make no mistake, this trio could dominate a break. So, the STOKE/RIP FORMULA. Hmmm. I’m not a mathamatician, can’t even spell it, but I do believe there’s something there. See you in the parking lot.

Another chapter or sub-chapter from “SWAMIS” will be available on Wednesday. Thanks for reading.

“Swamis” Chapter 14 Continued

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There were lulls in the water on this afternoon, time when watching the horizon took priority over trying to out-position the other surfers. Images. Conversations to rerun. I surfed an hour and fourteen minutes. I took my time showering and going up the stairs. I stopped at the top and watched Portia and Judith at the Jesus Saves bus. Numerous individuals came up to them. No, they came up to Portia. Judith stood in the doorway to the bus, arms crossed, standing guard. When she looked at me, seventy yards from where she stood, I looked away.

San Dieguito High School would be letting out around three. I pulled up to 101 at two-fifty-five. I did look across and up, beyond the railroad tracks, past several rows of houses. I saw two dormers on the roof of the first Mrs. Cole’s house. One of them must have been Julia’s room. Julie’s. I imagined her looking out the window, seeing lines approaching, the light from the sun or the moon bouncing off moving liquid fields. The car behind me honked. I looked left, right, left again, and pulled out.

The Simon’s Landscaping truck, heading south, passed me just beyond the Sunset Surfboards shop. Both Baadal Singh and I looked to our left.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

CHAPTER 14- MONDAY, MARCH 31, 1969- PART THREE

There were three vehicles ahead of me at the stop sign where highway 76 connected with the road to and from Vista, just west of the Bonsall Bridge. Traffic coming down the steep hill had priority. There were two sharp turns. Many drivers, over the years, had mistimed or misjudged the slalom-like run down and around the cliff face and onto the narrow bridge.

There was a pullout to my left. Dirt. Potholed. A truck overloaded with stacks of firewood was parked, idling, driver’s door open. A roughly lettered sign on raw plywood serving as a sort of fence on the sides of the truck’s bed read, “Firewood. Oak. Dry. Split. RA-8-1074. Reasonable.” The woodcutter was out, checking the tires and suspension. He pulled on each of the three ropes that went over the logs. He looked over at me.

I was visualizing my mother in this lot, standing outside the Falcon as I approached from the bridge, coming even with, then pulling beyond the Falcon. I was just jumping out when Wendall’s Buick, red dashboard light spinning, siren wailing, came screaming down the hill. His brakes screeched when he was forced to slow down to make the curve and recurve.

My mother studied my face for a moment or two before she started screaming. Questions. I couldn’t focus. What I heard was, “What did you do?” She was throwing bags out of the Falcon and onto the ground. “Open the trunk!” She was shouting orders I couldn’t process. “Take the back road to Bonsall. Go to town. Fallbrook. Buy some pizza at the, the restaurant… over by Ammunition Road. Make sure they… see you. Keep the receipt. You, you, you… were never here.” I was frozen. “Oh my God! Is he all right?” Still frozen. “Open the trunk. Open the god-damned trunk!” I did. My mom started tossing the bags into the Volvo. “Of course, he’s all right. He’s always all right. Always fine.”

I wanted to visualize, remember, perhaps, if I had observed my mother putting the papers and the bag with the gun under the seat. I hadn’t. It had to have been when she heard the sirens on Wendall’s car, or when she saw the lights. Or both. That had to have been why she pulled over. She didn’t lose control until she saw me. Me. Out of control. 

The woodcutter’s truck pulled out. As it hit the last pothole, two split pieces of oak fell off the pile. I looked both ways and continued; hard left, soft right, soft left, and onto the bridge. “Always,” I said, out loud, as I eased into the right-hand corner on the east side of the bridge. “Always fine.”

Why she hadn’t taken the Volvo back to the accident scene was only a vague question I hadn’t thought through. Chaos of the moment. The Falcon was more recognizable. She wanted to protect me. There were other explanations, possibly; she never explained, and I never asked.

…

The yellow Karmann Ghia, top down, was most of the way off the highway on the right-hand side, just beyond the almost completed strip mall. Lee Anne Ransom was standing in front of her car, a notepad and a camera on the hood. The older of two workers, carpenters, was walking away and toward the two vehicles parked in the middle of the lot, a fairly new pickup truck and a fairly thrashed, oversized American car. He looked directly at me as I passed him.

 Of course. He recognized the Falcon. I didn’t look at Lee Anne as I passed her. “Fuck!” I pulled into the parking lot at the tavern just under a mile down the road, still contemplating whether to go on or go back.  

…  

The older carpenter and I exchanged nods when I turned into the strip mall lot. I pulled a lazy u turn, clockwise, on the now-paved surface, parking spaces painted on it. ‘Opening Soon’ signs were painted in bright tempera paint on the windows of the partially painted store fronts. I turned back onto the highway and ten yards past the Karmann Ghia before I pulled in. I didn’t back up to get closer. Both carpenters were walking toward us as I walked up to Lee Anne. Her camera was aimed at me. I put my head down, looked at the scrape marks on the asphalt and the crushed foliage from when my father’s car had been winched twenty feet across the river bottom and twenty feet up to the road.

Perpendicular to the highway, gravel and fill that formed the base for the mall had been covered with topsoil and planted with iceplant and what was supposed to appear to be randomly spaced bushes. A shiny galvanized metal pipe, probably a foot in diameter, came out of the bank, about ten feet below the parking level, and ran above ground and down, at the same angle. The pipe made a bend probably five feet off the flatter bottom of the valley. It extended at an angle five degrees or so off level, and into a square concrete box, three by three, three feet high. A stump of a long dead tree was about four feet beyond the box.

I had read about all of this. I had seen photos. It became real.

When I got close enough that Lee Anne Ransom didn’t have to raise her voice, she said, “Thought you’d be coming the other way, Joey.”

“Thought you’d be, um, working on your yellow journalism for this week’s… edition, Lee Anne. Chulo’s the story. Isn’t it? Not who killed him. Just… him.”

“I’ve got stuff on his funeral, his family. I wanted to get with you on… the guy your father didn’t hit… here, he called us, the paper. He said he didn’t trust the cops. The sun, he said, was…” Lee Anne faced west, put her hand up and in a salute position. “Like now. He just followed other vehicles… around the bus. Even when the… when your father pulled to the right, he thought he was in the clear. So?”

“So?” I can’t be sure I even said that.

“So, trying to avoid the Vista guys, Dan and Larry, and Langdon, my editor took the… let’s call him the Driver… he took the Driver downtown, found out they really didn’t care all that much about who was responsible, and, and the downtown boys turned my editor over to… he was there… fucking Langdon, anyway. He was concerned about Judith Cole, wanting to know what we, meaning me, knew about her. She and her daughter were there, after Chulo was killed. The daughter, Julia, was taking pictures, and Judith was trying to calm… Portia. Langdon was pissed that Wendall didn’t try to get her film, wondered if someone tried to sell it to us.” Lee Anne laughed. “Sell?”

“When did Langdon get to the scene? To Swamis?”

“Soon enough to cart off the mysterious guy, supposedly East Indian, guy who either tried to save Chulo… or kill him. Langdon almost denied the guy existed; said he couldn’t comment on an ongoing… same shit there… but he did ask about you. So?”

I looked toward the sun, closed my eyes, and tried to recall what I had seen. My father looked at me as we passed each other. “So, Lee Anne Ransom, you must have heard I’m kind of slow, so… I have to process.”   

 “Then, Joey, process.” Lee Anne raised her sunglasses, widened her eyes, bigger with the lenses on her regular glasses. “And… it’s more like… orange journalism. Sensationalist Commie shit. So, orange.” I nodded. “Maybe you didn’t know this. They kept Chulo and Portia here until Langdon got in from Orange County, closed the road for seven hours.”

“Standard. Someone… died.”

“The Highway Patrol is the… usual choice. Right? Standard procedure.”  

 “My father… knew those guys, their… detectives, too. Also.”

Lee Anne moved in closer to me. “Yeah. That’s the official line from Downtown. But… Langdon was on the scene, here, in fifty minutes. Mario Andretti couldn’t do that from Orange County. And he was at Swamis… my boss has a radio that gets… you know; ten minutes after the initial call.”

“Who made that? The call?”

“Someone, from the phone booth at Swamis. Okay, Fred Thompson. He called the fire department. Point is, Joey, and I’m trying to process all this shit myself, Langdon was already around. It’s all, I’m thinking, about drugs.”

I blew out a breath, took out a cigarette and lit it with my father’s lighter. “With you, Lee Anne Ransom; it’s always drugs and/or corruption.”

“Holy trinity of investigative… anything, Joey; sex and/or drugs, money and/or power, and… corruption.”

“And/or?”

 Lee Anne took a breath. “And/or guilt. No, guilt fits in with…. Shit, just tell me what you know about Judith Cole, Julia Cole, the mysterious Indian dude, Portia Langworthy, Chulo Lopez, and yeah, new edition to the list of ‘who the fuck are they?’, Chulo’s old partner in crime, Junipero Hayes.”

“Jumper… Hayes. I… thank you for sharing, and waiting for me, Lee Anne, but, even if I knew… something, I can’t… comment on…”

“Ongoing investigations?” She shook her head. “I’d say ‘Fuck you, Joey,’ ‘cept you’re, what…. Seventeen? And… you might just take it literally.”

“I did say ‘thank you,’ didn’t I, Ma’am?”

“Ma’am?  Damn right. Ma’am. And… don’t go givin’ me that ‘I’m slow’ shit Joey.”

THANKS for reading and for respecting the copyright… stuff. All rights reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr.

OH, and good luck in finding and riding some waves!

That Wave’s Gone, Man… cont.

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I am often unsure as to whether I wrote about something, talked about it (more likely), or just thought about it. In a prolonged period of not surfing, and if one (presuming I can serve as an example) waits for waves on the Strait, this can be an extended time between swells, rumors of swells, and just swells that have no chance of threading the needle; a comparatively tight fit if you’re looking from space; and hitting a spot I’m willing to go to, the desire to surf and the frustration… builds.

In addition to predicted swells not behaving to the forecast models, there are the other factors, adverse winds, mostly, chopping up whatever swell is heading east.

Tensions mount, and even the mellow-ist surfer is ready and planning to go for as many waves as possible. So, if a swell, forecasted well ahead, that doesn’t do the drop-off as the actual day approaches, people, surfers of all ability and stoke levels, show up ready to rumble.

Resentments, to narrow this, are what I’m attempting to focus on here, specifically holding on to them. In my most recent session, not that it was all that recent, with the window closing, I had the opportunity to, possibly, run over a guy who ruined two rides, like, a year ago, and, not only didn’t apologize for not even trying to get out of the way, but actually may have not even noticed, or cared, or may have even thought he was, somehow, getting even with me. No, I didn’t yell or try to push him back, I just rode past him.

EVEN? Who knows. Happy? Not really, but it was important enough to think/talk/write about it.

This photo is, obviously not current. Yeah, I remember Thorpe. And Bellore is still playing. Here’s how it relates: I watched some YouTube last night, MIC’D UP segments. The one from two weeks ago featured Pete Carroll. At one point, he talking to running back Dallas, who had just made some mistake, possibly even a fumble, and was obviously upset. “It’s over,” the coach said, “Keep playing.”

I’m trying to remember the times I’ve been resentful of someone in the water. Having five guys show up on stand up paddleboards when I’m on a regular longboard was one. Tough to compete. I got out of the water and went somewhere else. They won. If there is winning in surfing.

Because I watch too many YouTubes, I recently saw one in which Matt Archibald was on the beach at very crowded Lower Trestles, discussing how, when he started out, the less experienced surfers got the scraps and worked their way up the pecking order. It is a competition for the best waves, and reaching a certain skill level allowed one to challenge those at the peak. Now, he said, eight-year-olds are going for bombs.

Fully realizing that I have caused others to be frustrated because I’m competitive, riding a big board, with a paddle, I… really, I’m not sure where to go with this. I’ll have to think about it.

OKAY, having thought for about two minutes, here’s an example: There were three good surfers at the peak, waiting for the sets. There were six or eight surfers on the down-wave side of the peak. Unwilling to wait, I had to watch as the surfers went for the (relative) ‘bombs’ I would have loved to have been riding. On the beach, I was sort of pleasantly surprised when others were grumbling about someone other than me. Several surfers were visibly pissed, talking about ‘backpaddling,’ and such crimes.

The truth is, if they wanted the set waves, all they had to do is paddle outside and wait. Turns were taken, mostly. Not that I defended the surfers at the peak too stridently. I was thinking about the rides I had gotten. Happily.

Still, the froth is building. If we’re in the water together, come sit by me. No, really.

“Swamis” excerpt on Wednesday, come hell or high surf. OH, and I’m working on some new t-shirt designs. Thanks for reading.

“Swamis” Continues Apace

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I’m so late. I will add some Halloween stuff to this later. Promise. Remember, copyrighted material. Hope last night went, well, well.

                        CHAPTER FOURTEEN- PART ONE- MONDAY, MARCH 31, 1969

            Dr. Susan Peters and I were sitting on opposite sides of the table in treatment room. I had an unopened PeeChee folder in front of me. There were two stacks of manila folders in front of her. She was laughing. She wrote something on a legal pad inside the open top folder.

            “Your father telling you to smile, or laugh rather than… punch someone or, um…” Dr. Peters pointed to another folder. “Slam someone’s head into the water fountain. Did you try his, that… technique?” I smiled. Big. Fake. The doctor returned a gritted-teeth smile. “Scary,” she said. We both laughed, her more than me.

“So, Dr. Peters if this neural feedback dude does show up with his own equipment; we… I’m assuming Dr. Dan will be here. Also. We, I’ll do the testing and all; then you three can decide if I’m, what, insane … or damaged?” She fluttered her hand and wrote something else. Two or three words. “Or, I mean…” She looked up. I smiled.  Can’t I be both?”

            “Of course.” She removed a legal pad from the folder, set it on a clean area on the table, and closed the folder. “Dr. Dan’ll do the, uh, testing… again. The neural feedback; it’s… therapy. As far as… you’re probably neither crazy nor damaged. Just…” She laughed for no obvious reason. “The drunk dad at the baseball game story. Love it.”

            “Loving something; it’s neither clinical nor objective. You’re not that kind of… doctor.”

            “No. I’m that kind of… person, Joey. Stories. Yes. Just tell me if I’m getting this right.” Dr. Peters was ready to write. “So, Freddy’s on third base, one drunk dad, from the other team’s drunk dads, is hanging on the outfield fence and giving your brother shit, another one jumps in your father’s patrol car. Unmarked, right?”

            “Cop car. Instantly recognizable. My mom guilt-tripped my dad into going to the game. The game was in Vista, as is the substation. My dad showed up fifth inning.”

            “Out of six.”

            “Seven, I believe. Pony league.”

            “Your father asked Drunk Dad to kindly get out of his car?”

 “According to him. The ‘kindly’ part. I had heard yelling. Not my dad. He never… yelled.”

“You’re running over, outside the fence, your dad yanks Drunk Dad out of the car, and another drunk dad…”

“Handed the guy a baseball bat… with which Drunk Dad hit my father, breaking his arm. Left arm. Radius. Distal.”

“Okay. Technical. I love the ‘with which’ part. Your dad pulls the bat out of Drunk Dad One’s hand, jabs him in the sternum.”

“Below it.” I pointed to a spot just below my rib cage. “Xiphoid process. Straight shot.”

“Ow! Okay. Not trying to kill the drunk dad.” I shook my head. “But Joey; you’re running over, you call out, your dad looks over at you, and that’s when he got… hit.”

“It was.”

Dr. Peters slid her finger up the page. “My question is…” Dr. Peters stood up, walked to the door, opened it, leaned into the hallway. “He here, yet?” I couldn’t hear the answer. It took longer than yes or no. The Doctor pulled herself back into the room, closed the door. “Accident on the freeway. And Dr. Dan wants to wait. So, next time.”

I stood up. “Your actual question: Was my father distracted, and do I feel responsible for my father’s broken arm? He was. I do. Drunk Dad got some sort of settlement… from the County. Eventually. My father got a week off, went back to work with his arm in a cast.”

“Another chapter in the… the legend,” Dr. Peters said. I may have smiled. “Should I have said ‘myth?’”   

“My father was everything anyone says he was.” She had purposefully and successfully provoked me. Shit. “Not, Dr. Susan, everything everyone says.”

Dr. Peters stepped toward the door; made a fist she probably didn’t think I saw. She opened her hand before she turned back around. “Then, Joey, next week; I would like to… revisit… the accident… Perhaps we can catch one of your… spells.”

“You think you caused, induced it, that you’re… responsible… for it?”

“No. Maybe. Sorry. Yes, but… maybe you allowed it, rather than you couldn’t control it. You try so hard to… Can you describe what it’s like? I mean, that kind of… self control, you with the impulsive… behavior.”

“Shocking.”

“No, not even surprising. Your… pauses. I put them into two categories. Short ones, you’re doing the one step forward, two back thing, considering the previous moments. Six to ten seconds. The absences, where you visualize some event, and you can still be aware of… where you are, whatever else is… those are longer.”

“The double-exposure thing? Yeah, I’m still… there… in those. Present. Aware.”

 “But the one I… witnessed. It was… intense. Whatever you were seeing, was everything else… gone?”

“Gone.” I put both hands up to my face, palms in, fingers tight.   

Dr. Peters sat down, pointed to a chair on the opposite side of the table. She pulled a second, empty legal pad closer. I didn’t sit down. “I talked, on the phone, to the professor at UCLA, the neural feedback… dude. I told him I thought you… you observe… everything. If you had an overload of… input. I mean, the absence thing, being gone. Maybe it’s…”

I sat down in the chair she had offered, slid the Pee-Chee folder over and in front of me. “These spells. The one you saw. They’re different than… when I had seizures. They’re like, like an 8-millimeter movie. Really, I couldn’t tell you if it was a dream or a memory.”

“Let’s call them… visions. Visions?”  I nodded. “Are they in color?”

I had to laugh. “Oh, because men, supposedly, dream in black and white. So… no. But… what did the feedback dude say about your… theory?”

“Not total bullshit, actually. He said anyone, with that much… stimulation, be it from epilepsy or another neurological disorder, would be on the ground, most likely in a fetal position. Gone.”

            “And I wasn’t… I mean, on the ground.”

            “No, just… gone. As you said. Yourself.”

            “I do… try to, to not react. Not have a spell, not end up… gone.”

Dr. Peters wrote a few more lines, slipped the notepad into a folder. I opened my Pee-Chee folder, opened the notebook, spun the enlargements Julia Cole had left on the Falcon around and toward her. “What do you believe being an actual witness to something like this would do to that person?”

            “Holy fuck!” The doctor pushed away from the table. Too forceful a push, she had to grab the edge to keep from going over backwards. “Joey! Fu…uck! Where’d you get these?”

            I shook my head and blew out whatever air I had in my lungs.

            …

            Dr. Peters followed me to where the Falcon was parked, still shaded by the overhanging eucalyptus trees. She looked back toward the building and pulled a single cigarette from the bottom left-hand pocket of her lab coat. I set my folders on the roof, lit her cigarette with my father’s lighter, took out a Marlboro, lit it.

“Our secret, Joey?”

            “Client/Doctor… sure.” We both inhaled. Twice. Susan Peters inhaled deeper, held the smoke in longer, let it out more slowly. “My mother,” I said, “not sure you knew this; she works in the photo lab. Camp Pendleton. Secretary. I’ve been there… a few times. The photographers are Marines or ex-Marines. The older ones were at every landing, every battle. Most are… so… sad, so… damaged. Ruined.”

            “Most, not… all?”                                                                         

            I leaned against the driver’s door of the Falcon. “Hard to say. People… hide it.” Dr. Peters raised the lower back of her lab coat and leaned against the bumper. “I’m hoping, since I do… I do remember images, do file them, rerun them; I do… maybe I’m just… weird, and not…”

            “Next week, Joey; we’ll know more.” I shook my head and arms as if I was electrified. Dr. Peters dropped her cigarette butt, stepped on it, stepped away from the bumper. “It’s just like that. If your… friend, with the… photos, needs to talk…”

Dr. Peters pulled a business card from her coat, offered it to me. I took the card, stuck it into the Pee-Chee. “I know your number, Dr. Peters.”

            “Susan. Please, Joey.” I looked at the cigarette butt until Dr. Peters picked it up, held it out toward me, and closed her hand around it.

            “Susan,” I said as I unlocked the door, “In the parking lot… yes, Susan.”

            “Yes?”

“Yes. Susan, I’m not gone, but I am… going.” Dr. Peters didn’t respond. “It’s a joke. You’re supposed to… smile.” Dr. Peters smiled.

            …

It was just after noon. I was on 101. I had seen decently sized waves at the various low spots. I could see, over the guard rail between Pipes and Swamis, unbroken sets. Still, I glanced several times to my right and up the hill. I passed Swamis, turned right at D Street. Cars were parked on both sides. The door to David Cole’s office was open. I couldn’t really see inside. I turned right again on Vulcan.

I drove slowly past Julia Cole’s mother’s house. No Jesus Saves bus. The VW bus was in the driveway. Two houses down, I could see waves forming in the kelp beds, but I couldn’t see the actual lineup at Swamis. I could see the entrance to the lot, the gold bulbs on the white walls. I considered turning around and going past the house again. A car came toward me from the south. It may or may not have slowed down. Their neighborhood. I looked down, allowed the car to pass, pulled back out.

…

My remaining change, eighty-five cents, was arranged in three stacks on the little corner shelf in the phone booth, along with my keys and wallet and cigarettes and my father’s lighter. The handset was perched on my right shoulder. I was in my trunks and a t shirt; barefoot. I put the handset to my face. “No, I just want you to… tell Mr. Greenwald. Hello? Oh. Hi. I was trying to explain that it’s late and…” I took a step back, testing the length of the cord. One foot out of the booth, one in. “No Sir, they are not with me. No, I do not know where my surf friends would be.” I looked past the small parking lot to the larger lot. Two thirds full. Most were not surfer’s vehicles. Neither Gary’s nor Roger’s cars were among them.  

“Am I going to surf? Possibly.” The Jesus Saves bus was at the far end of the lot, the door open. I didn’t see Portia. “You know, Mr. Greenwald, there’s this thing about doctor/patient confidentiality, but… Sir, I have to tell you…”

The operator interrupted. “Deposit thirty-five cents for the next three minutes, please.”

“I believe this doctor is the craziest one yet.” Click.  

…

I went through the trees and the old outhouse and to the stairs. My board was leaned against the fence and my towel was draped over the top rail. There was a woman next to my board, sitting on the lower cross member of the fence, the top rail crossing her back, just below her shoulders. Her arms were outstretched, hands twisted, fingers on the top of the top rail. She waited until I got very close to her before pushing herself forward and standing up, moving between me and the surfboard. “This is Sid’s board.”

“It was.”

The woman moved close enough that I stepped back. Tall, thin, her hair quite long for a woman over thirty; very straight and very blonde. There was something solid, white, in her hair on where it went over her left ear. Solid. She noticed I had focused on it and reached for it with her left hand, a large diamond on the ring finger. “Might be paint, she said,” moving strands of hair against each other, slightly breaking up the gob.

“Paint. Yes.” The woman was wearing a dress, mid-knee length, and a sweater, connected near the neck with a short length of tiny beads. Another strand, with larger beads, was rather tight to her neck. Her sandals were on the concrete next to her. I had seen this woman before.

I closed my eyes. The grocery store. Customer. She was wearing a dress that time also, talking to Mrs. Tony between the middle and the south register. Mrs. Tony had three account cards, slightly splayed, in her left hand. Her pencil was out of her hair and in her right hand. The woman was placing bills, in three stacks, on the ledge on top of the rack. Mrs. Tony looked at me as I passed. She moved her head, quite sharply, toward the middle counter. The woman looked at me. I looked at the three cards and three stacks and kept walking.

That image faded.

“I see what they mean about you, Junior.” I opened my eyes. The woman’s eyes were blue, very light. “Judith.” She left room for my response. I didn’t. “Julie’s mother.” She didn’t move back. I didn’t move away. “You drove past my house. Yesterday… evening.” She looked up and in the direction of her house, a little to the right from straight across the highway. I didn’t follow her eyes. Her house wasn’t visible from where we were standing. “The Falcon wagon…” She looked toward the smaller lot where the Falcon was parked and partially visible through the trees. I didn’t look. I did nod. “Used to be your dads, then your mom’s. Ruth. I don’t know her, but everyone knows Joe DeFreines. Knew. She took you surfing. It’s your car now?”

 I wanted to answer quickly. “Three more payments to my… No. Yes. Mine. Now.”

Julie’s mother backed away, flipped her right hand out and to her right, to the south. “Before they opened the state park.” She kept her eyes on mine. “Third stairway down. You were just learning. You and my younger girl, Julie; you both must have been around… eleven.”

I didn’t remember seeing this woman. I did remember waves so thin and clear that, walking out, pushing a surfboard, it seemed I could see through them. Transparent. I did remember the girl, laughing, standing, riding more than the soup. I remembered being surprised when a wave hit me, chest high, while I was watching this woman’s younger daughter. Julie.

“You know, Junior, I… we, we were there. That night. Chulo.”

I looked around, hoping something might keep me from having to respond. “Yes. Mrs. Cole. With… Julie. Julia. It must have been…”

“Horrible. Yes. Julie saw the fire. I saw the lights.” Mrs. Cole turned away for a moment, wiped her eyes. She turned back. “Chulo. I knew Chulo… most of his life.”

Realizing I had been squeezing coins in my left hand, I placed them into my wallet, already stuffed with little notes and receipts and twenty-three-dollars in bills. “Sorry.” I pulled my towel off the top rail, wrapped my keys and my wallet in the towel, put the bundle under my left arm. I nodded toward the water. “Surfing,” I said, looking toward the water. “Going. Mrs. Cole.”

“Ex Mrs. Cole. Or… first Mrs. Cole.” I looked back at the first Mrs. Cole. “Judith. Non-Jew Judith to David Cole’s… people. The current Mrs. Cole, Gloria… goes by Glor…” Judith swung her head around, pushed the hair away from her face with both hands. “Uppity. East Coast. Old money. Glor would prefer it if I went back to my maiden name.” Judith waited as if I was supposed to ask something. “Sweet. Judith Sweet. Fuck Glor, I’ve never been… sweet.” Judith looked to see if I was shocked. “Anyway, Junior; what do… you… know?”

“Joey.” Perhaps in response to Judith’s move, I used the fingers of my right hand to pull my hair forward, over my ears, right side, then, awkwardly, the left. “Nothing. What I know.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.” I reached for my board with my right hand.

Judith put her left hand over mine. “Joey, your father understood how things… are. It was under control.” Judith caught me looking at the oversized diamond on an oversized ring. “Second husband.” Moving her lips side to side, the look she gave me was intended to say something like the second husband wasn’t her first choice. “Mooney. I pronounce it ‘money.’ Nice guy.” Her hand still over mine, she moved her face even closer. “Chulo; that was… so… wrong.”

“Wrong.”

“Your father and Chulo, Chulo’s family; there’s… history.”

“Yes. From the parades.”

Judith responded with an obvious scoff, moved her hand to my left forearm, looked at my clouded watch, smiled, and looked into my eyes. “And Chulo; he is another… surfer. Was.”

“And good. When I started… Chulo and Jumper… they ruled.”

Judith pulled her hand off my arm, looked away, stepped back. I followed her eyes. Portia was coming toward us along the bluff. I took the first three steps down the stairs.

“Portia wasn’t asleep, Joey.” I dropped down three more stairs. “And she spoke with your mother. Ruth.” I stopped. I turned fully around. Portia was next to Judith, nothing but sky above them. “I’m just trying to protect my friends and my… daughters.” Judith put her right arm around Portia’s shoulders. “Like your mother is trying to protect… you.”

I knew I had to look at Portia. She pushed back her shawl, put her hands on her belly, slid each hand away from the center, looked at her hands, and then at me. “Your mother calls you Atsushi.”

“Lately. Yes.” I moved back up my most recent three steps. “She, um, your real name… it’s… Patty?” Portia smiled. Perhaps because I had dared to look at her directly. Fully. She seemed more Patty than Portia.

“It was. Patty Long.” She waited a moment. “Back when I came… here, when I first… met your, um, daddy.” She twisted her lips into what was almost a kissing position. She twisted them back, sucked them in, possibly remembering some part of her real story she didn’t want to discuss on the stairs at Swamis. “Teenage runaway. Don’t know if you knew that.”

There was a delay before I answered. “No. Sorry. I mean…” I moved my hand around to try to suggest she had chosen the right place to run to, gave her an expression I hoped conveyed that I really knew nothing about her past. “You’re here… now. Portia Langworthy.”

 “Your mother; she said her… real name is… was Moriko. I understand the biblical reference. Ruth. ‘Your people will be my people,’ all that. She told me she tried so hard… we all do; she wanted to… Portia inflated her cheeks and twisted her lips. “To blend in.”

Judith Cole-Mooney snickered and said, “Like, good fucking luck with that,” checking to see if I was offended. I wasn’t. I was, undoubtedly, moving my eyes between the two women at the top of the stairs. Still, I couldn’t help but overlay Julia Cole’s serious expression on her mother’s snicker. No. I wouldn’t allow it.   

Judith put her right hand on Portia’s stomach. “So, Atsushi… Joey; are you going to help us sort this shit out, or what?”

I looked at Portia. “Because I am my father’s son?”

Portia gave a weak smile and mouthed something. “All will be revealed.” Possibly.

“My father said, ‘There are no real mysteries. You just have to ask the right person.’ Persons, maybe. That’s not… me.” Both women gave me quizzical looks. “When I don’t know what to say, I quote him. Sorry. Look, the detectives don’t want me involved. They’re…”

“Handling it? Dan and Larry?” Judith leapt down two stairs and stood directly over me. Her expression showed real anger, real frustration. “You don’t fucking get it, Junior. Langdon’s… not… going to stop.”

Looking into Judith’s eyes, equally as light as her daughter’s, blue rather than green, didn’t help me in maintaining any semblance of coolness. “You’re… right.” I took a step down, backwards. Losing my balance, I pulled my board closer, twisted my body, threw out my free hand, took two more steps. “He… won’t.” I was now facing down the stairway, toward the water. I didn’t turn around.

“All right,” Judith said. “Jumper’s getting better. Fuckin’ Gooks couldn’t kill him. He’ll… help.” Judith’s voice got louder. “It just got too big, too… too fast. David’s… we’re all getting out of this… shit. It’s… real estate. Glor’s got David all involved in it.” I did look around and up. “I mean, fuck, Joey, look around. People want to be part of this. California. Magic!”

Judith was almost dancing, up a stair, down, her hands moving around in the air, all rather unevenly. She stopped with her left foot on the stair tread Portia was on, her right foot on the tread below it. She kept her hands up as I went back up, stopping one tread below her She studied my eyes. I kept them open. “Magic,” I said. “We’re all looking for… the magic.”

“Yes,” Portia said, “We are.”

That Portia and Judith were studying me seemed to give me permission to study them. Portia had heavy black eyeliner and shadow around light gray eyes. There were freckles on her cheeks and forehead. The hair in front of her ears was blonde. The hair that framed her face and softened her cheekbones was one-tone black. Dyed. Artificial.

I looked several seconds too long. Portia blinked, self-consciously pulling at a section of her hair. “Disguise. Costume,” she said, moving her hands to the opposite shoulders. “Still playing dress-up.”

“it’s, hopefully, a forgivable sin… Portia.”

“Not the Portia I… imagine. Not yet.”

“God. Portia, Patty; just tell Joey here what you actually fucking saw.”

“I got there too late. I’d been… waiting.”

“No, Patty.” Judith took a step down, turned around, put her arms around Portia’s waist. “I meant… sorry, at the bridge.”

Portia looked over Judith and at me. “I saw… an accident.

“Fuck.”

I looked past Judith. Portia looked at Judith. “It’s what I saw. Cars made it past… us.” Portia looked at me. “There was room, there was… time.”

I turned and started back down the stairs. “Jumper. I heard… He’ll help you. I’m sure.”

Judith blurted out, “Julie gave you… the pictures!” It was more a plea than an argument. “She… we shouldn’t have gone down there. She shouldn’t have seen… that.”

I didn’t answer. I didn’t turn around.  

Too many questions, too many images bouncing around my head. Stopping at the platform, I tried to count the surfers in the water; eleven, one coming in, two going out. I looked at the diamond reflections on just one outside wave as it approached. Too many to count, they merged into one shimmering white line. I imagined the intensity of the light spots, the blackness of the shadows. Flash cards. Seven. “Waiting for you,” the note had said.

When I looked back up the stairs, the two women were gone.