Lorraine and Myrna Orbea after their first performance in “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” at the theatre in Port Gamble, pictured here with a couple of aunts and therir grandmother. Lorraine and Myrna are the children of Pete and Mollie, Mollie being, probably, the main reason Drucilla, daughter of Erwin and Trisha Dence, lives in the former mill town on one of the routes between Seattle and the Olympic Peninsula.
Two days after this performance, very well done, incidentally, production-wise, and, particularly, with amazing performances by all the kids, Adam Wipeout James and the Wipeout family cruised down Surf Route 101 to attend an off-Seattle performance of “The Nutcracker” in Shelton.
Yes, it’ community theater season. All of the Dence family members, also including sons James and Sean, participated in various projects in Quilcene (also on Surf Route 101) in the past. Everyone did pretty well. Sean could incredibly well, memorizing and delivering every line perfectly. I had great stage presence and a great deal of trouble remembering my lines.
It was great fun, but I only remember one line from the four or five plays we were in. “This must be the place…” Line. Trish, possibly a bit miffed because she was to play a male’s role (lack of male volunteer actors) asked the director, “So, what’s the deal? I’m supposed to play the Sheriff of Mulecock?
DECEMBER TENTH- I’ve told a few folks that this is the traditional end of paint projects for any given year. Not that I plan or want it to be; it’s just, over the thirty-four years or so that I’ve been out here “on the edge of the ledge” (another seemingly accidental line from Trish), I seem to run out of jobs like… yesterday.
December 10th is also my late sister Melissa’s birthday. She was the first of my three brothers, three sisters, and a half-sister to pass. She was my youngest sibling and, though it’s somehow wrong to say it, closest to me because she was an amazing artist. I continue to think of her whenever I attempt to draw or paint. She once asked me, “Do you want it fast or do you want it perfect?” “Both.” “Yeah, both would be nice.”
I sthought of her briefly yesterday when I was helping Dru hang Christmas lights and decorations. A couple of years ago Melissa and Jerome Lynch’s son, Fergus, was on hand for this task. He seemed to be amazed at how I was free-forming the lighting, this string here, that there. “What?” “Well, it’s… great. My mom would spend… days. Everything had to be precise. And you just…” “Yeah; I do. Just…”
Two works by MELISSA JOANNA MARIA MARLENA DENCE LYNCH. Melissa Jo. Our mother added the rest as a sort of lullaby.
A couple of nights ago I woke up with the lines, “You thought I forgot. I did not.” Middle of the night lines most often disappear. Because, while trying to sell my novel, “Swamis,” I’ve been concentrating a bit on poetry. Not that I’m a poet; more like songwriter, and I can pretty much promise that the words will change, I wrote this with my sister in mind, although it might also speak to loss of friends. Our father died around Christmas.
If I Thought I forgot
If I thought I forgot. I did not.
I could not, cannot, will not forget about you.
I have no desire to.
Of my memories gone, thrown out or abandoned,
Sun-dried into dust,
Plowed under, half buried,
Dissolved in deep waters,
Obscured by mildew or rust,
Illegible scraps
Caught in the brambles,
Too deep in the thicket,
Hidden,
Somewhere, in boxes and closets and drawers,
None are of you.
Some files are too disruptive,
Some memories too painful,
Grief and beauty overwhelming.
Still,
I save them close at hand,
Easily accessed.
Still,
If I trip on some reminder,
Stumble across some image,
The tiniest clue,
Something that, for some reason, reminds me of you,
It all comes back,
Suddenly, painfully, beautifully.
So, no,
If I thought I forgot about you,
I did not.
Thanks for checking out realsurfers. I will have updates on my dead SUPER FUN CAR, a possible replacement surf rig, on waves and rides and gossip and rumor. SUNDAY. And please remember original works on realsurfers.net are protected by copyright, all rights reserved.
Good luck in you search. Focus on the trip as well as the destination. A full memory bank is all we really own.
I know, I know; I’ve been working on the novel for soooooo long. I’ve put a lot of it on this site. Most or all of that has been changed. More like all of it except the baseline story; one which I have had a hard time (changed this from ‘fuck of a time’) reducing to a tagline.
There’s a procedure in selling books to major publishers, of course; daunting enough to dissuade even the most confident writers. AND, and, and we are all supposed to be capable of writing a story; and we all have stories. AND, believing that somewhere in all my millions of words written and changed, pages deleted, there’s a story, I have gotten to the point where I am leaping off some cliff and submitting “Swamis” to, today, seven agents.
Submission; even the word speaks of uncertainty, of decisions by others; SUBJECTIVE DECISIONS with the first round of decision-makers being the folks whose job it is to cut the volume of could-be-somethings down to those deemed worthy, or worthy-er.
Having something out there and out of our control is not that dissimilar to waiting for waves. Check the forecasts all we want, we can’t wish or hope waves into showing up. Yet, we try.
OH, AND if any of you are actual literary agents and believe you can sell “Swamis,” let me know. I’d certainly prefer a real surfer in my corner.
NOW, I did write an earlier query letter, and I did post it here. I also convinced several people to read it and give me feedback. So, thanks to KEITH DARROCK, DRUCILLA DENCE, ANDY and IZZY ROSANE. And then, of course, I rewrote the query. So, more thanks.
UPDATE ON MY SUPER FUN CAR- It was the in-line (as in, on a hose) heater control valve that broke on my thirty-year-old Volvo. Frustrated by my on line searching, I stopped by an auto parts store and tried to explain the whole thing. Kook-like. “It’s, like, kinda like a thermostat-looking thing, and it’s on this hose, and…” The already-flustered counter guy kept some appearance of patience, and found the part. “We’d have to order it.” Yeah. Then, knowing what I need, I went to YouTube to see if I can do the repair. Yes, pretty sure. Then, because it’s YouTube, on to brain surgery. No, probably not.
Query- “Swamis.” Fiction by Erwin A. Dence, Jr.
Marijuana, murder, surf, romance, and magic in a Southern California beach town in 1969.
Dear real surfers,
That my 92,000-word novel “Swamis” has become as much love story as murder mystery is a surprise to me. Almost. The action centers around the surf culture at Swamis Point in North San Diego County. It is 1969. An evolutionary/revolutionary period in surfing and beyond, to those who have only known crowds, this was a magical era.
Very close to turning 18, the narrator, Joseph Atsushi DeFreines, Jr., nicknamed Jody, has a history that includes a serious injury, time in a ‘special’ school, and violent outbursts. A top-level student and compulsive note taker, Joey is a socially awkward outsider who refuses to give oral reports. His two closest friends are other ‘inland cowboy’ surfers. Surf Friends. Joey wants to be accepted on the beach and in the lineup as a ‘local.’
Joey is desperately attracted to Julie Cole, one of a few girl surfers in the beach towns along Highway 101. Nicknamed Julia ‘Cold,’ just-turned-18-year-old Julie appears to be a spoiled, standoffish surfer chick, rabidly protected by her small group of friends. She is almost secretly brilliant and driven. Julie, like Joey, has personal trauma in her past.
Joey is the son of a Japanese ‘war bride’ and an ex-Marine. County Sheriff’s Office detective Joseph DeFreines, who says, “The world works on an acceptable level of corruption” is trying and failing to maintain that level. Marijuana is becoming a leading cash crop in his rural and small town jurisdiction. The completion of I-5 is supercharging population growth.
Julie’s father, David Cole, is a certified public accountant who may, with help from outwardly upright citizens, be laundering increasing amounts of drug money. Julie’s mother, Judith, moves from fixer-upper to fixer-upper in a housing market about to explode. She may also be the head of a group growing, packaging, transporting, and selling marijuana. Once grown in orchards and sold to friends of friends, the product is moved through Orange County middlemen to a larger, more profitable, and more dangerous market, Los Angeles.
Joey and Julie, concentrating on studying and surfing, had been rather blissfully unaware of what was going on around them. Joey’s father’s death, for which Joey may be responsible, has connections to the murder of Chulo, a beach evangelist and drug dealer set alight next to the white, pristine, gold lotus-adorned walls of a religious compound that gives Swamis its name.
Finding Chulo’s murderer, with those on all sides believing Joey has inside information, pushes Joey and Julie together.
There is an interconnectedness between all the supporting characters, each with a story, each as real as I can render them.
“Swamis” was never intended to be an easy beach read. And it isn’t.
I am of this period and place, with brothers and friends who were very involved in the marijuana/drug culture, both sides. I was not. It is very convenient that a Swami, like a detective, like many of the characters in the novel, is a ‘seeker of truth.’
I have written articles, poems, short stories, screenplays, and two other novels, some moving to the ‘almost’ sold category. I had a column “So, Anyway…” in the “Port Townsend Leader” for ten years, I’ve written, illustrated, and self-published several books of local northwest interest. I started a surf-centric website (blog) in 2013: realsurfers.net.
After many, many edits and complete rewrites, I believe the manuscript is ready for the next step. Thank you for your time and consideration, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. (360) 774-6354
Illustrations for “SWAMIS” by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr.
“SWAMIS” A novel by Erwin A. Dence, Jr.
The surf, the murder and the mystery, all the other stories; “Swamis” was always going to be about Julie. And me. Julie and me. And… Magic.
CHAPTER ONE- MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1969
“Notes. I take a lot of… notes, but… your stack is bigger. Is that my permanent record?”
“Not sure why you take notes. You seem to remember, like, everything. Records. Records are for… later, for someone else.”
“As are notes. And maybe, some time I… won’t remember.”
“You brought them in; so, can I assume that your mother…”
“Yeah. Snoopy. Detective’s wife. We took the Falcon. I drove, my mother…”
“Snooped. Sure. Would you read me something from one of your notebooks? Your choice. Maybe something about… surfing.”
“Kind of boring, but… give me a second. Okay. ‘The allure of waves was too much, I’m told, for an almost three-year-old, running, naked, into them. I remember how the light shone through the shorebreak waves; the streaks of foam sucked into them. I remember the shock of cold water and the force with which the third wave knocked me down, the pressure that held me down, my struggle for air, my mother clutching me out and into the glare by one arm.’”
“Impressive. When did you write this? You had most of it memorized.”
“Some. But, if I wrote it recently, Doctor Peters. This all happening before the… accident; that would be me… creating a story from fragments. Wouldn’t it?”
“Memories. Dreams. We can’t know how much of life is created from… fragments. But, please, Joey; the basketball practice story; I didn’t get a chance to write it down. So, the guy…”
“I’m not here because of that… offense.”
“I am aware. Just… humor me.”
“Basketball. Freshman team. Locker room. They staggered practice. I was… slow… getting dressed. Bus schedules. He… FFA guy… Future Farmers. JV. Tall, skinny, naked, foot up on a bench; he said I had a pretty big… dick… for a Jap. I said, ‘Thank you.’ just as the Varsity players came in. Most stood behind him. He said, ‘Oh, that’s right; your daddy; he’s all dick.’ Big laugh.”
“’Detective,’ I said. ‘And, Rusty, I am sorry about your brother at the water fountain. I’m on probation already… and I’m off the wrestling team, and…’ I talk really fast when I’m… forced to… talk. I’m sure you’ve made note. I said, ‘I don’t want to cut my hand… on your big buck teeth.’ Bigger laugh. Varsity guys were going, ‘Whoa!’ Rusty was… embarrassed. His brother… That incident’s in the records. Fourth grade. Three broken teeth. Year after I… came back. That’s why the buck teeth thing… Not funny. Joke.”
“Joey. You’re picturing it… the incident. You are.”
“No. I… Yes. I quite vividly picture, or imagine, perhaps… incidents. In both of those cases, I tried to do what my father taught me; tried and failed. ‘Walking away is not backing down,’ he said. Anyway. Basketball. I never had a shot. Good passer, great hip check.”
“Rusty… He charged at you?”
“He closed his eyes. I didn’t. Another thing I got from my father. ‘Eyes open, Jody!’”
“All right. So, so, so… Let’s talk about the incident for which you are here. You had a foot on… a student’s throat. Yes? Yes. He was, as you confirm, already on the ground… faking having a seizure. He wasn’t a threat to you; wasn’t charging at you. Have you considered…?”
“The bullied becomes the bully? It’s… easy, simple, logical… not new; and I have… considered it. Let’s just say it’s true. I am… this is my story… trying to mend my ways. Look, Grant’s dad alleges… assault. I’m… I get it; I’m almost eighteen. Grant claims he and his buddies were just… fooling around; adolescent… fun; I can, conceivably… claim, and I have, the same.”
“But it wasn’t… fun… for you?”
“It… kind of… was. Time’s up. My mom’s… waiting.”
“Joey… I am, can be… the bully here. So… sit the fuck back down!”
CHAPTER TWO- SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 1965
My mother took my younger brother, Freddy, and me to the beach at what became the San Elijo campground. Almost or just opened, it runs along the bluff from Pipes to Cardiff Reef. We were at the third stairway from the north end. I was attempting to surf; Freddy was playing in the sand. My mother was collecting driftwood for a fire. The waves were small. Pushing my way out, walking, jumping over the lines, I was turning and throwing my board into the soup, standing up, awkwardly, and riding straight in; butt out, hands out, stupidest grin on my face. “Surfin’!”
A girl, about my age, was riding waves. Not awkwardly. Smoothly. Not straight, but across. She wouldn’t have wiped out on the third ride I witnessed if I hadn’t been in her way, almost frozen, surprised by a wave face so thin and clean I still swear I could see through it.
I let my board go, upside down, broach to the waves, and chased down hers. When I pushed it back toward her, she said, “It’s you.”
“Me?” I had to look at her and reimagine the moments immediately before she spoke. She was wading toward me. She pushed the hair away from both sides of her face. She looked toward the beach. She looked back. Her eyes were green and seemed, somehow, as transparent as I had imagined the waves to be. “It’s you.”
“No. No, I’m… not… Who are you?”
“Someone who stays away from cops… And their kids.” She wasn’t going to thank me for grabbing her board. “Surfing isn’t easy, you know. All the real surfer guys are assholes.” She turned, threw herself onto her board, and started paddling. “I’d give it up If I were you.”
“Assholes,” I said as I retrieved my board. “I’m a well-known asshole.” I walked and pushed and paddled and made my way out to where the girl was sitting. She looked out to sea. She looked toward the shore. It was a lull, too long for her not to turn toward me as I attempted to knee paddle.
“We can’t be friends, Junior,” she said.
“No? What about when I… get to the point where I surf way better than you? Still, no?”
The girl turned away again. Not as long this time. “You coming back tomorrow?”
“No. Sunday. Church. My mom… We… Church.”
“Church,” she said. “My mom and I… Well, me; I… surf.”
The girl paddled over and pushed me off my board. The first wave of a set took it in. She turned and caught the next wave. I watched her from behind it. Graceful. “Julia Cole,” I said, loud enough for her to hear. “Your friends call you Julie.” I said that to myself.
CHAPTER THREE- SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 1968
My nine-six Surfboards Hawaii pintail was on the Falcon’s rust and chrome factory racks. I was headed along Neptune, from Grandview to Moonlight Beach. The bluff side of Neptune was either garage or gate and fence, or hedge, tight to the road. There were few views of the water. I was, no doubt, smiling, remembering something from that morning’s session.
There had been six surfers, including me, at the outside lineup, the preferred takeoff spot. They all knew each other. If one of them hadn’t known about the asshole detective’s son, others had clued him in. There was no way the local crew and acceptable friends would allow me to catch a set wave. No; maybe a wave all of them missed or none of them wanted. Or one would act as if he was going to take off any wave I wanted, just to keep me off it.
As the first one in the water, before dawn, I had surfed the peak, selecting the wave I thought might be the best of a set. Two other surfers came out. Okay. Three more surfers came out. One of them, Sid, paddled past me, making him the farthest one out in a triangular cluster that matched the peak of waves approaching. I knew who Sid was. By reputation. A set wave came in. I had been waiting. It was my wave. I paddled past Sid, paddled and took off. Sid dropped in on me. I said something like, “Hey!”
Rather than speed down the line or pull out, Sid stalled. It was either hit him or bail. I bailed. Sid said, “Hey!” Louder. He looked at me, cranked a turn at the last moment. He made the wave. I swam.
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, approaching the lineup. The four other surfers held their laughter until Sid maneuvered his board around, laughed and said, “Wrong, Junior; you broke the locals rule.” Sid pointed to the lefts, the waves perceived as not being as good, on the other side of a real or imagined channel. “Local’s rule. Get it?” Trying to ignore the taunts of the others, I caught an insider and moved over.
After three lefts, surfed, I believed, with a certain urgency and a definite aggression, I prone-paddled back to the rights, tacking back and forth. A wave was approaching, a decently sized set wave. I wanted it.
“Outside!” I yelled, loud enough that five surfers, including Sid, started paddling for the horizon. I paddled at an angle, lined up the wave at the peak. Though the takeoff was late, I made the drop, rode the wave into the closeout section, pulling off the highest roller coaster I had ever even attempted. I dropped to my board and proned in. I kept my back to the water as I exited, not daring to look back or to look up at the surfers on the bluff, hooting and pointing.
I did look up for a moment as I grabbed my towel where it was stashed, visible from the water, on the low part of the bluff, my keys and wallet and cigarettes rolled up in it. Tromping up the washout to Neptune Avenue, I tried not to smile.
Driving my 1964 Falcon station wagon, almost to Moonlight Beach, a late fifties model Volkswagen camper van, two-tone, white over gray, was blocking the southbound lane. Black smoke was coming out of the open engine compartment. Three teenagers, locals, my age, were standing behind the bus: Two young men, Duncan Burgess and Rincon Ronny, on the right side, one young woman, Monica, on the left. Locals.
There was more room on the northbound side. I pulled over, squeezed out between the door and someone’s bougainvillea hedge, and walked into the middle of the street, fifteen feet behind the van. “Can I help?”
Duncan, Ronny, and Monica were dressed as if they had surfed but were going to check somewhere else: Nylon windbreakers, towels around their waists. Duncan’s and Monica’s jackets were red with white, horizontal stripes that differed in number and thickness. Ronny was wearing a dark blue windbreaker with a white, vertical strip, a “Yater” patch sewn on. Each of the three looked at me, and looked back at each other, then at the smoking engine. The movement of their heads said, “No.”
Someone stepped out of an opening in the hedge on the bluff side of the road, pretty much even with me. I was startled. I took three sideways steps before I regained my balance.
Julia Cole. Perfectly balanced. She was wearing an oversized V-neck sweater that almost covered boys’ nylon trunks. Her legs were bare, tan, her feet undersized for the huarache sandals she was wearing. She looked upset, but more angry than sad. But then… she almost laughed. I managed a smile.
“It’s you,” she said. It was. Me. “Are you a mechanic?” I shook my head, took another step toward the middle of the road, away from her. “An Angel?” Another head shake, another step. She took two more steps toward me. We were close. She seemed to be studying me, moving her head and eyes as if she might learn more from an only slightly different angle.
I couldn’t continue to study Julia Cole. I looked past her. Her friends looked at her, then looked at each other, then looked, again, at the subsiding smoke and the growing pool of oil on the pavement. “We saw what you did,” she said. I turned toward her. “From the bluff.” Her voice was a whisper when she added, “Outside,” the fingers of her right hand out, but twisting, pulling into her palm, little finger first, as her hand itself twisted. “Outside,” she said again, slightly louder.
“Oh. Yes. It… worked.”
“Once. Maybe Sid… appreciated it.” She shook her head. “No.”
I shook my head. “Once.” I couldn’t help focusing on Julia Cole’s eyes. “I had to do it.”
“Of course.” By the time I shifted my focus from Julia Cole’s face to her right hand, it had become a fist, soft rather than tight. “Challenge the… hierarchy.”
I had no response. Julia Cole moved her arm slowly across her body, stopping for a moment just under the parts of her sweater dampened by her bathing suit top. Breasts. I looked back into her eyes for the next moment. Green. Translucent. She moved her right hand, just away from her body and up. She cupped her chin, thumb on one cheek, fingers lifting, pointer finger first, drumming, pinkie finger first. Three times. She pulled her hand away from her face, reaching toward me. Her hand stopped. She was about to say something.
“Julie!” It was Duncan. Julie, Julia Cole didn’t look around. She lowered her hand and took another step closer to me. In a ridiculous overreaction, I jerked away from her.
“I was going to say, Junior…” Julia was smiling. I may have grinned. Another uncontrolled reaction. “I could… probably use… If you were an… attorney.”
“I’m not… Not… yet.”
Julia Cole loosened the tie holding her hair. Sun-bleached at the ends, dirty blonde at the roots. She used the fingers of both hands to straighten it.
“I can… give you a ride… Julie, I mean… Julia… Cole.”
“Look, Fallbrook…” It was Duncan. Again. He walked toward us, Julia Cole and me. “We’re fine.” He extended a hand toward Julia. She did a half-turn, sidestep. Fluid. Duncan kept looking at me. Not in a friendly way. He put his right hand on Julia Cole’s left shoulder.
Julia Cole allowed it. She was still smiling, still studying me. “Phone booth?” I asked.. “There’s one at… I’m heading for Swamis.”
A car come up behind me. I wasn’t aware. Rincon Ronny and Monica watched it. Duncan backed toward the shoulder. Julia and I looked at each other for another moment. “You really should get out of the street… Junior.”
“Joey,” I said. “Joey.”
She could have said, “Julie.” Or “Julia.” She said neither. She could have said, “Joey.”
No one got a ride. I checked out Beacons and Stone Steps and Swamis. The VW bus was gone when I drove back by. Dirt from under someone’s hedge was scattered over the oil, some of it seeping through.
CHAPTER FOUR- WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1968
Christmas vacation. I had surfed, but I wanted a few more rides. Or many more. I had the time, and I had the second-best parking spot in the full lot at Swamis- front row, two cars off center. It was cool but sunny. I was standing, dead center, in front of the Falcon, leaning over the hood. I checked my diver’s watch. It was fogged up. I shook my wrist, removed the watch, set it on the part of the Falcon’s hood my spread-out beach towel didn’t cover; directly over the radiator, the face of the watch facing the ocean and the sun.
Spread out on the towel was a quart of chocolate milk in a waxed cardboard container, the spout open; a lunch sack, light blue, open; an apple; a partial pack of Marlboros, hard pack, open, a book of paper matches inside; three Pee-Chee folders. One of the folders was open. A red notebook, writing on both sides of most pages, was open, five or six pages from the back.
A car stopped immediately behind the Falcon. Three doors slammed. Three teenagers, a year or so younger than me, ran down the left side of my car and to the bluff. Jumping and gesturing, each shouted assessments of the conditions. “Epic!” and “So… bitchin’!”
They looked at each other. They looked over me and at their car, idling in the lane. They looked at me. The tallest of the three, with a bad complexion, his hair parted in the middle, shirtless, with three strands of love beads around his neck, took a step toward me. “Hey, man.” He lifted two of the strands. “Going out or been out?”
“Both. Man.”
“Both?” Love Beads guy moved closer, patting the beads. “Both. Uh huh.”
“Good spot,” the driver, with bottle bleached hair, a striped Beach Boys shirt, and khaki pants, said. I nodded. Politely. I smiled, politely, and looked back and down at my notebooks. He asked, “You a local?”
I shifted the notebooks, took out the one on the bottom, light blue, opened it, turned, half sat on my car, and looked out at the lineup, half hoping my non-answer was enough for the obvious non-locals.
A car honked behind us. Love Beads raised his voice enough to say, “At least go get the boards, Shorty.” The Driver ran toward his car. As Shorty reluctantly walked away from the bluff, Love Beads gave him a shove, pushing him into me.
Shorty threw both hands out to signal it wasn’t his fault. Behind him, Love Beads Guy said, “You fuckers down here are fuckin’ greedy.”
“Fuck you, Brian,” Shorty said before running out and into the lane.
Love Beads Guy, Brian, moved directly in front of me. He puffed out his chest a bit. He looked a bit fierce. Or he attempted to. “You sure you’re not leaving?”
I twisted my left arm behind my back and set the notebook down and picked up my watch. When I brought my arm back around, very quickly, Brian twitched. I smiled. I held my watch by the band, close to its face. I shook it. Hard. Three quick strokes, then tapped it, three times, with the pointer finger of my right hand. “The joke, you see, Brian, is that, once it gets filled up with water, no more can get in. Hence, Waterproof.” I put the watch on. “Nope, don’t have to leave yet… Brian.”
Brian was glowering, tensed-up. “Brian,” Shorty said as he carried two boards over to the bluff and set them down, “You could, you know, help.”
Brian raised his right hand, threw it out to his left and swung it back. I took the gesture to mean ‘shut up and keep walking.’ I chuckled. Brian moved his right hand closer to my face, pointer finger up.
I moved my face closer to his hand, then leaned back, feigning an inability to focus. “Brian,” I said, “I have a history…” Brian smirked. “I used to… strike out, and quite violently… when I felt threatened.” I blinked. “Brian.”
Brian looked around as if Shorty, packing the third board past us, might back him up. “Quite violently?”
“Used to… Brian. Suddenly and… violently.” I nodded and rolled my eyes. I moved closer to his face. “But now… My father taught me there are times to react and times to… take a moment, assess the situation, but… watch, and be ready. It’s like… gunfights, in the movies. If someone… is ready to… strike, I strike first. I mean, I can. Because… I’m ready.” I moved my face back from Brian’s and smiled. “Everyone… people are hoping the surfing is… helping. I am not… sure. I’m on… probation, currently; I get to go to La Jolla every Monday, talk to a… shrink. Court ordered. So…” I took a deep breath, gave Brian a peace sign.
“Brian,” Beach Boy, at the driver’s door of his parent’s car said, “we’ll get a spot.”
“Wind’s coming up, Brian,” I said, pointing to the boards. “Better get on it.”
“Oh, I have your permission. No! Fuck you, Jap!” Brian moved back and into some version of a fighting stance as he said it.
“Brian. I’m, uh, assessing.” I folded my hands across my chest.
Brian may have said more. He moved even closer, his mouth moving, his face out of focus; background, overlapped by, superimposed with, a succession of bullies with faces too close to mine; kids from school, third grade to high school. I couldn’t hear them, either. Taunts. I knew the words: “Retard!” “Idiot!” “What’s wrong with you?”
My father’s voice cut through the others. “They don’t know you, Jody. It’s all a joke. Laugh.” In this vision, or spell, or episode, each of my alleged tormentors, all of them boys, fell away. Each face was bracketed by and punctuated with a blink of a red light. Every three seconds. Approximately.
One face belonged to a nine-year-old boy, a look of shock that would become pain on his face. He was falling back and down, blood coming out of his mouth. Red light. I looked at the school drinking fountain. A bit of blood. Red light. I saw more faces. The red lights became weaker, and with them, the images.
The lighting changed. More silver than blue. Cold light. I saw my father’s face, and mine, in the bathroom mirror. Faces; his short, almost blond hair, almost curly, eyes impossibly blue; my hair straight and black, my eyes almost black. “Jody, just… smile.” I did. Big smile. “No, son; not that smile.”
I smiled. That smile.
Brian’s face came back into focus. I looked past him, out to the kelp beds and beyond. “Wind’s picking up.” I paused. “Wait. Did I already say that… Brian?”
I turned toward the Falcon, closed the blue notebook, set it on one side of the open Pee-Chee, picked up the red notebook from the other side. There were crude sketches of dark waves and cartoonish surfers on the cover. I opened it and started writing.
“Wind is picking up.” I may have spun around a bit quickly, hands in a pre-fight position. It was Rincon Ronny in a shortjohn wetsuit, a board under his arm. Ronny nodded toward the stairs. “Fun guys.” He leaned away and laughed. I relaxed my hands and my stance. “The one dude, with the Hippie beads. Shirtless.”
“Brian. Shirtless.”
“Don’t want to know his name.” There was a delay. “Fuck, man; he was scared shitless.”
“It’ll wear off.” I held the notebook up, showed Ronny the page with ‘Brian and friends’ written in larger-than-necessary block letters, scratched out ‘Brian,’ and closed the notebook. “By the time they get back to wherever they’re from, unnamed dude would’ve kicked my ass.” I looked around to see if any of Ronny’s friends were with him. “I was… polite, Rincon Ronny.”
“Polite. Yeah. From what I saw. Yeah. And… it’s just… Ronny. Now.”
I had to think about what Ronny might have seen, how long I was in whatever state I was in. Out. I started gathering my belongings, pulling up the edges of my towel. “I just didn’t want to give my spot to… fuckers. Where are you… parked?”
“I… walked.”
I had to smile and nod. “You… walked.”
Ronny nodded and looked at my shortjohn wetsuit, laid out over my board. “Custom. Impressive.” I nodded and smiled. “One thing, Junior; those… fuckers, they won’t fuck with you in the water.”
“Joey,” I said. “I mean, not that you want to know, and… Ronny, someone will.”
Ronny mouthed, “Joey,” and did a combination blink/nod. “Yeah. It’s… Swamis. Joey.”
Ronny looked at the waves, back at me. A gust of west wind blew the cover of my green notebook open. “Julie” was written in almost unreadably psychedelic letters across pages eight and nine. “Julie.” Hopefully unreadable.
I repeated Ronny’s words mentally, careful not to mouth them. “From what I saw. Joey.”
CHAPTER FIVE- THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1969
Our house in the hills between Fallbrook and Bonsall was a split level, stucco house, aluminum sash windows, composite roof. Someone else had started building from some plans purchased from a catalog. My parents could save money, they were told, by finishing the lower level and the garage. They could replace the plywood shed at the edge of a corral with a small barn that would provide room for a horse, a side area for hay and tack. New fencing. More trees. A garden. A covered patio off the kitchen, or, perhaps, a bay window.
Almost none of this ever happened. My father promised the patio, and then the bay window. He was working on it, but he was working. Working. There was, outside the sliding door, a concrete slab, with paving stones leading around the corner and down to the driveway. The two-story portion of the house featured a plate glass window, four foot high and eight feet wide, in total, with crank out, aluminum sash windows on either side. This window offered a view to the west, over scrubby trees and deep arroyos, of the hills, some rounded, others more jagged, with ancient boulders visible on all of them. Mission Avenue was hidden below and between. Mission, the road that linked Fallbrook with Bonsall, Vista, Oceanside, everywhere west, everywhere worth going to.
Looking out this window, I felt almost level with those hills. Morning light, descending, brought out the details of the ribs and rocks. Afternoon shadows crept from it until the hills once again became a blank shape. There were waves of hills in irregular lines between my hills and the unseen ocean. I had spent time looking away from my studies, imagining the hills in timelapse, the sun setting at one place in winter, another in summer, lines off clouds held back at the ridgeline, breaking over the top; torn, scattering. I had imagined the block as transparent, the ocean visible, late afternoon sunlight reflected off the water and into the empty skies.
…
The light outside was still neutral when I moved to the dinette table in the kitchen, a bowl of oatmeal, a tab of butter on top of it, in front of me. There was a glass pitcher of milk between my setting and the other two. There were four lunch sacks on the counter. Two were a light blue, one was a shade more orange than pink, the fourth was the standard lunch sack brown. My mother, already dressed and ready for work, took a carton of Lucky Strikes from a cupboard and put a pack into the brown lunch sack.
She looked out the window over the sink. She sniffled.
My father, in one of his everyday detective suits; coat unbuttoned, tie untied; leaned over from the head of the table. “Go get it, Jody.” The ‘now’ part of the command was unspoken. His voice was calm. Almost always. I didn’t move. I didn’t look up from my oatmeal. “Stanford, Jody; you didn’t think they’d send a copy to the school?”
My father’s questions demanded an answer or a response. Crying or lying were not acceptable options. “I did… consider the possibility.”
“Of course. Now, Jody, consider everything you have to do to be ready. Got it?”
Making eye contact was critical in these situations. Required, if for no other reason than to show I was sorry, remorseful. I wasn’t crying.
All original illustrations and writing on realsurfers.net is protected by copyright. All rights reserved by Erwin A. Dence, Jr. THANKS FOR CHECKING! FIND SOME SURF!
RANDY at COHO PRINTING in Port Townsend stayed late to do some tricky stuff on my recent drawings. A Port Townsend native and super avid fisherman, I made the kook mistake, while trying to describe the lighting particular to looking north into the water, of asking him if he fished in the Strait as well as… you know, other waters. There’s nothing quite as enjoyable as that ‘you’re a kook and an idiot’ look. Happy Thanksgiving, Randy! Hope theyre, you know, like, biting.
Top to bottom- THE FIRST DRAWING was a sketch wasn’t too stoked on. Always tough to try to do faces on surfing illustrations. They’re either cartoony or… usually kind of cartoony, as is this one. SINCE my drawing board is plexiglas, I flipped the paper over, put it up to a light, and redrew it as the…
THIRD DRAWING. The cartoonishness might be mitigated by the modified cross hatch technique that, oddly enough, I’ve been doing almost since I tried (and failed) to duplicate Rick Griffin’s work in ‘Surfer.’ OH, and I screwed up, had to glue in a patch, try to make it match.
THE SECOND DRAWING is one of those I draw in reverse, black-for-white. I had it reversed, went into that drawing to add detail, had it reversed again, did some touchup on that, and, Voila! this one. OH, and, again, there is a patched section. SO, another original for Original Erwin is, you know, not pristine.
THE FOURTH DRAWING is one I kept after ripping up three others, the first one a muddied attempt at using pastels despite my being acutely aware that the palm of my hand is way too heavy for chalk or pastels, or pencils. OH, and really wanting a serious drawing of JULIE for “Swamis,” I can’t seem to draw a woman’s face that I’m happy with. Semi happy with this one.
I wanted Randy to do a copy of the FIFTH DRAWING with a blue or silver rather than black on white. “It’s not like I want something that’s all that tricky.” Well, evidently, with Randy’s Star Wars computer/printer set up, it is tricky, can’t just use one of the colored inks. So, next best thing, I got some copies printed up, black on a silver-blue paper. OH, and yes, it is pencil, but with ink over drawing AND, just for more drama, I added some white dots. They don’t show up so much on the original, but when I added some on one of the copies… Yeah, next time I’m at the COHO, I’ll get a scan of that.
IF THIS SOUTH SWELL/ BOMB CYCLONE STUFF KEEPS GOING, I’ll probably do some more drawing AND keep micro-editing stuff required to get “SWAMIS” published.
I am, as always, THANKFUL for the folks around the world who check out realsurfers. I HOPE YOU GET SOME SURF. New stuff on SUNDAY!
All original works are protected by copyright. All rights reserved by Erwin A. Dence, Jr.
I kind of forgot it’s Wednesday. I did say I was going to give an update on my attempts to sell my novel, “SWAMIS.” No, I’m not ready. I am waiting for feedback on my original query letter because, try as I may, though I can go on at length about each character and any and all of the plot points in the manuscript, it has proven extremely daunting to write one page that will convince an agent or publisher that he or she HAS to read it, buy it, print it. Still, I try.
Two illustrations by Scott Quirky (not his actual last name): “Heart of the Sun” and “Globular Raven,” though, he wrote, “They really actually have no names. I let the viewer see what they see..” Really and actually? Okay, I’m seeing…
I did just write a little essay in which a non-surfer has some sarcastic observations about how surfers can go on (or go off) about how awesome wave riding can be. I’ll save if for Sunday.
TODAY is the many-third anniversary of Trisha’s marriage ceremony. SO…
Gary and Roger were my closest surf friends. Roger started board surfing the summer I did, 1965. Gary started the next summer. By the time we were seniors, many others had tried surfing. Most didn’t stick with it for long. Though Roger lived closer to me, Gary offered to give me a ride home.
So, of course, my computer skills fail me. This is a ‘cut’ from “Swamis” I didn’t mean to ‘paste’ here. Inside scoop: Gary and Roger were my neighbors when I lived in Fallbrook. Their family had a bomb shelter; ours didn’t. The characters in the novel are actually based on my friends, Phillip Harper and Ray Hicks, though I kind of get confused in the writing as to which is which. I, sadly, lost contact with Phil years ago. I just spoke to Ray, who I give a lot of credit for getting me back into surfing, last night.
Okay. Out and Back.
Rainy Days in Real Life
An old wives’ tale is that rainy day marriages last. Who better to know the truth of this?
Paul Simon, married several times in real life, wrote: “We were married on a rainy day, the sky was yellow and the grass was gray; filled out some papers and we drove away; I do it for your love, I do it for your love.”
November is the rainiest month in the Great Northwest. We’re somewhere in the eye (or not) of a bomb cyclone/atmospheric river event, so, if you’re planning on getting hitched, hustle it up. Or consult the almanac and set a date.
It was raining on this day, November 10, 1971, when Trish, nineteen-years and eleven days old married me, twenty-years and almost three months old. We thought we were pretty grown up. Still do. We weren’t ‘that’ grown up. Still aren’t.
That any relationship can survive over time is genuinely amazing, A-maz-ing! People who haven’t met Trish want to meet her. Most often, when asked, it’s to see what kind of woman could possibly put up with me.
I already said ‘amazing,’ twice. So, ‘beyond amazing.’
Our daughter, Drucilla, asked me yesterday if I, notorious for not giving Trish gifts, was going to, perhaps, write a poem or something in honor of the occasion. “You mean, like, something new?”
I’m not sure what to write about someone who cries for no reason obvious to me; who refuses to cry when there is good reason; who might panic over some small thing but is strong and determined amid disasters; someone who is wise and decisive, rational in a situation, offering a solution, an attitude adjustment away from anger and frustration.
In all the big decisions we have made in our relationship, me arguing against most of them, Trish has rarely been wrong. All right, almost never. And yet, she has always had faith in me. Not blind faith. True faith. I’m still trying to make that a correct choice.
Here are a few lines from ‘Honey Days.’
“Is it love that gets us through the constant storms, is it love that gets us through that dark December? Love is love, but love can take so many forms; there’s love that’s felt and there is love that is remembered. Years have passed, endless rains, broken glass and empty trains, yet it’s our love that sustains through honey days… I remember.”
I did write a verse for a song a while back, one verse in need of a chorus and two more verses. I very recently came up with a second verse. And no, the ‘honey’ thing, not a theme.
“Hold off on that sugar, Honey, I don’t want to die, I just need a taste of something sweet to get me by; Honey, you should know by now that I might never be, someone who’s as good for you as you have been for me.
I still can’t believe it, Honey, you have been so sweet; didn’t know I needed you to make my life complete; Honey there are universes dancing in your eyes; it’s not just that, it’s so much more that keeps me hypnotized.”
It is tempting to put other examples of Trish-inspired songs/poems. I have them. Julie, one of two lead characters in my novel, “Swamis,” is Trish-influenced. Definitely. Julie has that inner strength; she is intuitive, always seeking the truth, and able to sort through the bullshit to find it.
So, yeah, everything I do other than, perhaps, my ongoing affair with the other woman in our relationship, surfing, “I do it for your love.” And, not to think too much about this, but I did love surfing first. If Trish is, then, my mistress… Well, so be it.
This is actually before we got married; Trish seeming to be wondering what she could possibly see in me. I still have no answer.
Quick Reggie Smart Update: He and Jasmin and two kids are headed to Maui for a eight days, hoping, of course, to get some surf. I have to mention JASMIN because Reggie says she reads realsurfers, like, all the time. SO, thanks, Jasmin, and thank you for checking it out.
I should mention that the rights to Scott’s stuff are his. NEW STUFF ON SUNDAY! If you see some waves, get out there!
The most recent full moon on the Salish Sea. Perfect evening for a paddle.
Sessions Worthy of Remembrance
There are several things that can make a surf session memorable, memorable enough to last years: That time you surfed an often crowded spot alone; that special ride on an otherwise not-special day; that trip with a friend (or potential lover) or friends that you remember more for the friendship (or the movement from potential) than the time in the water; that time where the waves were solidly pumping and you were ripping at the very peak of your ability… and, and, and- yeah, those times.
Think of a spot you’ve surfed, once or many times. Or think of a friend you surf or have surfed with. Think of the music that was playing in the car or in your head. Think of fog, or sideshore winds, or dawn patrols, or skunkings, or the road to here or there, or where you ate on the way home from somewhere you did or didn’t find waves. Think of anything that leads you back to a magical adventure, or ride, or session.
Okay, why was one session, or one ride during the session memorable?
I can’t speak to the adrenalin and dopamine and endorphins, and whatever our bodies and minds create when we anticipate what could be, some fantasy session; and remember or imagine when you find that dream setup, and then you’re in it. If it takes some time, hours, even days, to come down from the high, it takes years before you are unable to bring the memory out of your vault.
You’ve felt it, clueless kook to wherever you are on your journey; the rare-but-there moments are what surfers live for, why surfers ride crappy waves and call it ‘practice.’ The waves are working, you got into the lineup, jockeyed or waited for position, you’re on the wave, committed, driving… and you’ll make the wave… or you won’t.
If you’re not surfing for the thrill of it, the magic of it, please, just take up another hobby.
A memorable session:
Mostly I remember being cold, getting out of the water at Grandview with the sun already down, silver lines on a silver platter. This session was memorable enough that it became part of the reason I started writing, “Inside Break,” the precursor to “Swamis.” It was a different take on my early surfing life, one not much different than any surfer who started before he or she could drive; riding with your parents or someone else’s, then begging older surfers to take you along.
Phillip Harper and I, possibly sophomores, got to go, after school in Fallbrook, with Bucky Davis and Phil’s sister, Trish (not my Trish- different Trish). Backseat. She was driving, headed to modeling school in Encinitas. They were, to me, the perfect surfer couple. Not that she surfed. Maybe she did later, years after that romance ended. Maybe. I tend to push things toward the romantic.
To me, having learned at Tamarack, with some trips to ruin real surfers waves at Pipes and Swamis, Grandview was a surf spot I knew about. I also knew I was not going to be welcomed by the locals and the older inlanders for whom it was their chosen North County spot. Phil, who had surfed there, told me.
Nevertheless, we were there and I was going to show Bucky… something. The waves were “Not good enough,” he said, “Not yet.” This was just before he pushed me into the washout that was the way down to the beach, long filled-in, replaced by a house and fence.
Before it glassed off (alternate title for ‘Inside Break,’ ‘Afternoon Glassoff’), Phil and I went out, only ones in the lineup. Bucky paddled out. We surfed. It got dark. I was bragging about my nose rides. “No,” Bucky said, but only later, Trish now driving, heater maxed out, “you… he, he kind of slides up to the nose. If you want to be a real surfer, you have to go foot over foot.”
“Yeah,” Phil said, “Foot over foot.” Real surfer. Yeah.
Hama Hama News- Adam “Wipeout” James got into a a group text sort of bemoaning that he had done a lot of driving, hadn’t scored great waves, BUT, good news, his son Emmet (Adam spelled it with one ‘t’, so I will also do so) got (may have said ‘bagged’) his first buck.
Congratulations! Adam has another son, Calvin. One is nicknamed ‘Boomer.’ I believe it’s Calvin. NOW, hunting and fishing and all that is kind of a deal down here on the Hood Canal section of SURF ROUTE 101; up there with first Bigfoot and/or UFO sightings; so I had to respond. I said I got it with a ’59 Chevy, but it was probably with a Toyota. Crushed front quarter panel. Dead dear. My older son, James, got his buck with a Buick; big ass Buick Trish pushed him to buy because it seemed safe. Deer over the windshield, James… safe.
CHIMACUM TIMACUM NEWS- For the second time ever, the last being ten years ago, Tim and I were in the water at the same time. I don’t think either of us burned the other. Next time…
“Swamis” NEWS- In looking for an agent, I wrote a query letter, sent it to several people whose judgment I trust to check out. THEN, panicked it wasn’t good enough, I started editing the hell out of it. THEN KEITH, after I told him to wait for a better version, said he liked it. SINCE I am not that stoked on the rewrites… yes, he can send it back, and then… I am not changing the first ten pages, and will post another chapter or sub-chapter on WEDNESDAY..
I’M NOT POLITICAL STUFF- I’m considering getting an alias. BUSTER WALLS came to mind because I wanted something that suggests but can’t seem to remember that term for the subversive, covert kind of sarcastic attack that I have often been accused of.
ANYWAY, I hope you find some waves, and if you don’t, hope you have a great time looking. Don’t steal my stuff. Thanks for reading.
I just and finally got this Wheelie, and, I know, it’s kind of cheating, but, if you’re riding an e-bike down the trail, or a regular bike, um, yeah, I’ll cheat… a bit. OH, yeah, I agree that riding an SUP is cheating. So… don’t.
I was the only one checking for surf after a very dark and very night. Me and this seagull. All I had was a banana. One-third for me, two thirds for… this guy.
When I have some free time, I sometimes do some drawing. the excerpt from “Swamis,” chapter nine, has Joey going to a clinical psychologist, court-mandated after he had an incident in which he ended up with his foot on another student’s neck. ANYWAY, you don’t have to psychoanalyze me because I can’t seem to not go a bit too psychedelic.
CHAPTER NINE- MONDAY, MARCH 24, 1969
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, 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?”
My mom and I 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 matches the curve of 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 office, standing under a round ceiling light installed a few inches off center. I had two PeeChee folders, three notebooks in each, set on a long, thin, empty walnut table. I opened the blue notebook in the top folder, wrote something I had just remembered, and closed it and the folder. I moved my pencil between my fingers until I dropped it.
The cabinets on two of the walls were cherry. A tile countertop featured a 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. Several white lab coats were 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 were, on one wall, six framed copies of diplomas or certificates. Three doctors, two universities. Two unmatched wingback chairs, each with an ottoman, were canted toward each other, facing the window wall.
The mahogany door opened. Dr. Peters entered, carrying a large stack of folders, most tan, several in a gray-blue. 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. 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 let her laugh die out.
She pointed toward the wing chairs. I shook my head. “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. “Or… we can both stand.”
“If it’s… okay with you, Ma’am. Dr. Peters.”
“Susan. What do your… friends call you?”
“Trick question?”
“Maybe. Okay. Yes.” We both shrugged. “And the answer is?”
“Surf friends. A couple.” Her reaction was more like curiosity 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. Young for a clinical psychologist. So?”
“Now I am impressed, and at ease. So… okay.” The Doctor squinted. “But, uh, Dr. Peters; you’re now, I’m guessing, my court mandated doctor of record?”
Dr. Peters restacked the folders. “Your father… and you… agreed to that.”
“Negotiated. Grant’s dad’s an… attorney.”
“Your father’s… was… a detective. Couldn’t he have…?”
“Never. My fault. Best he could do, with me too close to turning eighteen, is… this. A… choice, an option. We… discussed it. But… question; you’ve already suggested I might be a bully; how do you feel about… another smart ass trying to get off easy?”
“Most of the smartasses I deal with aren’t so… smart.”
“And the bullies?”
“That… urge; it shows weakness; I’m sure you agree.”
“That I’m weak? I agree. My dad’s take: I either don’t think or I take too long thinking.”
“Thanks, Joey.” Dr. Peters wrote something down. “Now, your dad didn’t want to go with… what he called ‘Psycho drugs.’” She moved from the stool to the larger of the two wing chairs. She sat down and used one foot to pull the ottoman into position. She 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 must have smiled. “Okay. Different subject. Grant Murdoch, your foot on his throat.”
“Weak… moment. But, previous topic… subject… The drugs, never were an option.”
“No. Of course not. But… Grant Murdoch, his faking a seizure caused you to…?”
“He wouldn’t have done it if he’s known I… I never went to Friday night football… activities. My surf friends… persuaded me… to.”
“Had Grant done this prank… before?”
“You mean, did my friends know he might?” I shook my head. “I haven’t asked.”
“So, this time, the prank, you acted… hastily?”
“Prank? Yes, I did.” I closed my eyes, envisioned the episode. Ten seconds, max. I pulled the metal stool over, sat it, spinning around several times. “He was… really good at it. Foaming at the mouth and everything. I was… Doctor Samuels, your electrode man. Spike. 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 a seizure, or even a… spell? And… Spike is a nickname. If you have a nickname… that you‘re willing to share.” She smiled. “By inconclusive, Dr. Susan Peters, do you mean… normal?”
“Pretty much, Mr. DeFreines.”
“That is… disappointing. The doctor, two doctors back…” 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.”
Dr. Peters smacked the top of my stack of folders. “You study… everything.”
“Some things. Only.”
Dr. Peters looked toward her 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 I might not be a brain-damaged… 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.”
“Vice Principal Greenwald. Sure.” I spun around one more time and stood up, spinning my body a bit, unable to not smile. “I turned down Stanford 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 people with… real brains.”
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. My roommate called me… don’t use it. Re-Peters.”
“I won’t… repeat it.” I swept one hand back toward the table. “Sorry. Too easy to be… clever. Or funny.” Dr. Peters shrugged. “So… Tricks. 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. “There are the things we miss. They go by… too quickly. If we could go back, just a few seconds, review… 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 do. I try not to. I’m more of a… casual observer.”
“That’s me, Dr. Susan 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 remember… that one.”
…
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. 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, 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. “When I get on the school board…”
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 came closer. The details of his face were almost clear, then were lost again to the glare, like a ghost, when he leaned back.
“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!”
The first gunshot, my father screaming the shattering of glass in front of and behind me were all one sound. The pieces of glass that didn’t hit my father blew over me, seemingly in slow motion. 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. Again.
I could see the man’s face. Clearly. His eyes were on me. Bang. The second gunshot. The man looked surprised. He blinked. He fell back. Not quickly. He was a ghost in the glare, almost smiling as he faded and disappeared.
Tires slid across gravel. The siren stopped. The engine noise was all that was remaining, that and something like groaning; my father, me, the guy outside. Mr. Baker. Tom Baker.
“Gunny?” It was a different voice.
“I’m fine.” It was my father’s voice, but at a slower speed.
“Bastard!” It was the new voice, followed by a third gunshot.
Dr. Susan Peters came back into focus. She looked quite pleased.
I HAVE COMPLETED my many-ist rewrite of “Swamis.” AFTER chatting for an hour on the phone with the head of a publishing outfit, I am now looking for an agent. I’ll get into this next time. THIS time, thanks for reading. Remember that original stuff on realsurfers is protected by copyright, all rights reserved. Thanks for respecting this.
AS FAR AS WAVES, best of luck; if I don’t see you on the water, maybe I’ll see you on a trail. WHEELIE!
There is the no waves skunk; the wait for hours for waves to show up and then go out in waves that are or become way worse than the waves you could have ridden; and the show up with good waves but suffer some breakdown (ie; broken and lost fin) or run out of time before you can get out because you have to, HAVE TO LEAVE. We could add the times you just know it’s going off and you just cannot, this or that obligation, go, BUT you will hear about how awesome it was. Somehow being there and not surfing is more painful; what could have been for you and was for… them. Yeah, that’s petty. We all should be accustomed to this and not harbor resentment. Should. Jimbo and Buster got waves, supposedly, allegedly ‘All time, Epic, etc.’ You were working on your resume, trying to make yourself seem a bit more regime-friendly. Worth it.
Right Decisions, Wrong Decisions, Indecision, and/or Three Degrees of Skunk
“Time and tide wait for no man.” I don’t know who to credit the quote to, and frankly, I’m not motivated enough to even try to look it up. Here’s another quote, from me, probably said earlier, possibly better, by someone else: “There are good and bad decisions; sometimes the worst decision is indecision.”
I have missed more waves through indecision than bad decisions. I could trade this possible aphorism, as it relates to my most recent attempt at finding and riding waves to, “Always listen to Trish,” and/or “Trish is almost always right.”
Yesterday was my wife’s birthday. Always a year and a bit behind me, age-wise, always ahead of me, decision-wise. YES, Trish knew the election was getting blown out while I still held on to some desperate belief that even people I am going to say are fooled rather than that they are fools might vote self-interest over grievance, YES, Trish said I shouldn’t agree to go with ADAM “WIPEOUT’ JAMES if he had to get back to HamaHama by 11 am. YES, Trish did say, when I got home at 10am, that I should just go back out. YES, Trish was right.
The, let me see, 1971… 2024… 53rd wedding anniversary (I was 20, Trish was 19 years and eleven days old) is coming up; you’d think I’d believe her by now.
I am extremely bad at giving presents. To anyone. If giving a compliment on, say, a surfer’s, even a friend’s ride or style, is a sort of gift; I’m stingy enough to never give false praise. RUDE SARCASM, yes, though, since you should believe Trish, she says… well, a lot; all of it honest. “You always try to be cool. Give it up!” This was when we were first dating; still holds up. “You say you’re just joking. No, you almost always mean it.” Okay. “You never listen.” No. What? “You’re an asshole and you’re never sorry.” Okay, there Trish is wrong. I am sorry. Sometimes.
I’m sorry right now. Sorry for myself that I didn’t set up an alternate plan, ride back with someone else, sorry I actually (broke a rule here) got word that a spot that wasn’t working pre-dawn was working (hence regret for now heading back out), and I found out, way after the fact, that I could have abandoned Adam, surfed the spot that was working at dawn and beyond, and gotten a ride back. So, TRISH. Right.
Some SOLACE, me trying to lessen the pain of carting my gear all the way to the beach with a thirty-minute window to change, surf, change again, head for the car. Since donning a wetsuit is approximately a ten-minute process, getting out of it, another ten to twelve; there was, realistically, only time to watch surfers catch and not catch waves. OH, and a chance to look like the guy…
SO, there’s the paddle of shame; paddling rather than surfing in because the waves went away (frequent and forgivable on the fickle Strait) or because you are, perhaps daunted by the surf at hand (semi-forgivable if you’ve been surfing for three hours and there’s a seven-wave set approaching); and then there’s the greater shame of being all set to go and then not going out because the waves are not what you are prepared to ride.
This was not the case, and, no, I don’t want to be that guy, OR the old guy who dispenses ‘back in my day’ stories rather than subjecting himself to paddling out and providing proof that this is not his (apologies for using the masculine) day.
RIDING WITH ADAM, I have to say, is very enjoyable. He has great stories that go way beyond surfing, BUT, as I told Adam when we were hightailing it back to his car, me with my bag of dry wetsuit and supplies, Adam with a fresh ding in his latest favorite board of all time, if I had made a deal to get a ride back with KEITH and RICO, I’d have abandoned him in a fucking heartbeat and gone out. I WASN”T JOKING.
Wipout-wise, REGGIE SMART did suffer an injury recently; his board smacking him in the jaw, teeth going through his lip. He drove himself to the emergency room and, in true Reggie style, wouldn’t let the nurse touch him after she touched way too many things with her gloved hands, turned down a stitch from the doctor, saying he had ‘peroxided and denatured the shit’ out of the wound, and couldn’t he just shave off his soul patch and put, like, one of those butterfly things on it? Sure. Did he want vicadin? “No, I’m good.” I’m not all over instagram, but Reggie is. Check him out.
I WROTE a first verse of this poem and/or song (song) a while back. I have been working on a second verse. And a chorus. One I know but one that doesn’t actually fit is something that someone in my family of seven kids came up with. Not sure who should get credit.
Cookies and candy and ice cream and cake, donuts and brownies and pie, and for dessert, Jello.
Hold off on that sugar, Honey, I don’t want to die, I just need a taste of something sweet to get me by; Honey, you should know by now that I might never be, Someone who’s as good for you as you have been for me.
I still can’t believe it, Honey, you have been so sweet, Didn’t know I needed you to make my life complete; Honey, there are universes dancing in your eyes; It’s not just that, it’s so much more that’s kept me hypnotized.
The world of surf, what it is and what we believe it to be, and surfers, real and otherwise, keeps spinning. Some can articulate the range of emotions and sensations flowing through a surfer in the most magical, intimate moments. The addiction is the desire to feel that release again. And… again.
ANYWAY, more to come. I am almost done, like 15 pages from my latest edit of my novel, “SWAMIS,” and I did talk on the phone to the president/owner/whatever of a Seattle publisher. I’ll get to that on Wednesday. RIGHT NOW I am considering whether to take off and look for waves with a dropping swell or… I’ll check with Trish and get back to you.
ALL ORIGINAL stuff on realsurfers.net is copyright protected, all right reserved. Thanks for respecting that. GOOD LUCK.
I got this painting/assemblage from SCOTT. Because I don’t know his last name, after I ran into him out on the Strait, and because he knows KEITH, I called Keith. “Oh, yeah, Scott. He’s kind of… Quirky.” I agreed. Scott was not too thrilled with the nickname. Because he sent this to me on ELECTION DAY, with my mind wanting to be filled with anything other than dread, I had to text back to ask if I could post it, and to ask if this was his illustration of the brain-fuck of being part of endless vote counting and discussion and, ultimately, indecision, or, at least, decision deferred. WHAT I GOT back was something truly cosmic. “If you wish. Kali ma came at an opportunistic moment… to eat our illusions of separateness.” SO, for your consideration: New nickname- COSMIC SCOTT. Fortunately, it’s not up to a vote. It sticks or it doesn’t.
I mentioned that I have been in communication with a publishing house in Seattle. This is the ‘pitch’ I sent them, along with a polished chapter from “Swamis.” The next step is a phone call on Thursday. It isn’t as if I don’t have enough to fret about. We’ll see how that goes. I have put a lot of work into trying to make the manuscript as tight as possible, including setting aside stories I thought worthwhile but just did not fit with the flow of this novel. Strange thing about novels; out of a whole world of storylines crashing into one another, the novelist has to focus, focus, focus. That’s the tough part.
ILLUSTRATIONS -Yes, I do have some original artwork to go with my novel, “Swamis.”
POTENTIAL AUDIENCE-Because I surf, and people know I surf, I look for new works in which surfing is a component. I get ‘the word’ about new surf-related books, often receiving one as a present. Most are not great. Most overdramatize the dangers of the sport while underestimating the intelligence of surfers and the importance surfing plays in their lives.
There were, in 2023, an estimated 3.3 million surfers in the United States, with many more who once surfed, or are attracted to the surf culture, real or imagined, or who believe they
California (and world) surfing spots were undeniably less crowded in 1969, the year in which most of “Swamis” is set. This time, symbolized in my novel by the completion of I-5; with the Vietnam War, the draft, counter-cultures, drugs, radical societal changes, and the most evolutionary period in surfing; is fondly looked back upon by those who came of age during it, and is thought of as a sort of fantasy world by those who have only known crowds daunting enough to keep a wannabe surfer from even going out on a day when Swamis is breaking.
Because I was there, with friends and family on both sides of what became the marijuana industry, and because I, like the narrator, was not a part of it, I believe I can honestly render a realistic-but-fictional story of someone on the cusp of everything that was frightening and magical, love and surf and mystery, about that time.
MY GOAL has always been to have “Swamis” in the hands of a major publishing house. I am treating this as another opportunity to present my case and gather some feedback.
THANK YOU for checking out realsurfers.net. I am, of course, still working on the latest edit of “Swamis,” and I’m about thirty pages from the end. I will post another chapter before Sunday. Or Sunday. All original work, including Scott’s, if protected by copyright.
GOOD LUCK on all fronts. Waves. Yeah. You’ll most likely be reading this after the election day, so…since I don’t know whether to celebrate or sell the farm…
CONCRETE PETE, A 68-year-old GUY who was really pissed off, Legendary TIM NOLAN, photo by another guy in what IAN described as the OLD GUY CORNER. The rest of available parking area was pretty much filled. THE ONLY REASON I am showing a spot that might be recognizable is that SURFLINE, evidently, said it was going to be, on this day, eight feet. There were, at this time, eight people in the water, and eight inch waves, and not many of those. The pissed off guy did go out, came in more pisssssed. I apologize for not getting his name.
HANGING OUT is kind of fun, but my motto is “I’m here to surf.” And I was. So, to use another word I’m using lately, I spent some time ‘Stwaiting.” When the parking lot emptied out and there was only one surfer in the water, and squalls were coming through more consistently than waves, I went out, ready to face another near-skunking.
Yeah. EPIC! Now, perhaps it cleaned up and the waves showed up. Or not. MORAL- DON’T BELIEVE THE FORECASTS. Also, don’t always believe the POSTCASTS. “It was all time, man, chest to shoulder on the sets, rides all the way to the fence (or the woods, or the rock face, or the wherever).”
I COULD GET INTO how the discussion at the old man corner devolved, with input from someone way under 70, into priority and backpaddling and who deserves an asterisk next to their name. It’s a constant issue, not resolved, might never be. Still, if you’re the only one out…
CHAPTER EIGHT- WEDNESDAY, MARCH 19, 1969
Some people come to the bluff at Swamis just for the sunsets. Carpenters and insurance salesmen mix in with the surfers, just out of the water, who have to have one more look.
On this afternoon, the water appearing, deceptively, enticingly, both soft and warm, the waves appearing gently, though too small to do more than wash onto the rock shelves, I was sitting on Falcon’s tailgate, middle row, writing in a notebook. “It’s a picnic and the ocean is the meal.” I scribbled over that and wrote, “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 Langworthy 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, right arm and hand out, palm down, as if floating. Dancing.
Portia was wearing a long blouse, set off with a cloth sash, wide, purple. Violet. Her skirt stopped just above her ankles. Her feet were bare and tan. The blouse and skirt were in dark and almost competitive prints, Gypsy/Peasant/Hippie look. Her hair was long, straight, 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 carved from a conveniently shaped piece of driftwood, hanging on hemp twine.
Pretty at a distance, I couldn’t describe Portia closeup. Inexplicable. When she spoke with others, close to them, she seemed to have an intimidating intensity that said she cared about them, but also understood them. Understood enough that she couldn’t be lied to. Frightening. I didn’t believe it was just me who couldn’t look into her eyes. Not straight on.
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 a moment.
Losing focus on everything else, I knew her eyes were a blue that didn’t match anything else about her. Maybe the sash.
I saw her, there, and I saw an overlapping image of her from another time. Mid-day, I was taking a break, just around Swamis Point at Boneyards. Lying on the largest, flattest of the big, soft edged rocks, I was close to being asleep. Portia’s shadow blocked the sun. She asked, “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. 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.
That was when I saw her eyes.
Portia backed rather than looked away, as if we had both seen some truth of who we really were. She turned into the glare, danced up to two young women in street clothes, handed them pamphlets, and danced into the shallows. One, and then both young women danced. Not for very long.
The Portia on the bluff let Gingerbread Fred’s hand slip away 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; stories enhanced, gilded with each retelling.
This was the current version: Fred 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. Not taking the time to retrieve my notebooks and binders from the tailgate, I got in, and backed out and over, narrowly beating another car as I eased into the spot. Exciting. A little victory.
I was aware that something had blown off the tailgate. I opened the door carefully to avoid hitting the car to my left, got out, and walked to the middle of the traffic lane. A man was holding 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 Dies 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 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.
Or he might have been using the paper as cover to look at me.
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 can get another… copy,” he said. “They are, of course… free.”
“No. 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 toward the wall to the Self Realization compound. “Outside, mostly.” I returned the head tip. “Volunteer.” English accent with East Indian rhythm. Perhaps.
“Oh,” I said, looking along the white stucco wall 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. “Loosely… connected. Less so all the time. I saw you once. Inside.” He nodded toward the far-left portion of white wall of the Self Realization Fellowship compound. “The meditation garden. Do you remember?”
I tried not to visualize. It didn’t work. I closed my eyes, opened them again. I could still see the gardener, along with another version. Same man, 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 jumped up from the bench and ran down the manicured paths with hand-set stones, perfectly cared-for plants, flowers year-round.
“I… ran.”
“You did. Yes, you do remember.”
“I was… studying. Not… anything else, Swami.”
“Perfectly fine. Meditation is… one’s own time. And… not a Swami.”
“Sorry. Not a Swami.”
“If Swami means ‘seeker of truth,’ perhaps, we…many of us are, perhaps, Swamis.” ”
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.
…
I was in front of the Falcon. The people had formed a sort of wall at the bluff, watching the burnt orange in the wispy cirrus clouds at the horizon fade. I was watching Portia. She was watching the yellow van go down the far row. She stepped onto the pavement, and stopped on the passenger side of my car. The van stopped at the squared off end of the asphalt, next to the Jesus Saves bus.
I opened the driver’s side door. 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. 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.
“Oh,” she said, “It’s… you. How… are you?” I couldn’t think of a response both quick and clever. I gave her a weak smile/nod combination. “Chulo… and me… I, we… have to go to Balboa, the, uh, Naval hospital. His friend… Juni. That’s what Chulo calls him.” She laughed. “It sounds more like ‘hu’ni’ when he says it. Juni. Chulo says you know him… from before.”
Before.
Portia walked to the front of the Falcon, setting her bundle on the hood. I shut the door and moved toward the front of the car, across from her. “Jumper. Jumper Hayes. He’s… there? Balboa?” She nodded. “He allright?”
“He’s alive. He was just flown here… there. From Hawaii.”
There were voices coming from the space between the Jesus Saves bus and the Hayes Flowers van. Portia, keeping her eyes on me, moved closer. Several of the sunset watchers beyond her looked toward that end of the lot each time the two men’s voices were raised, short bursts back and forth, not quite distinguishable words.
I didn’t look. Portia didn’t look. She said, “I have never met him. Jumper.” Portia’s eyes were, with her usual dark eye makeup gone, a softer blue than I had remembered. Or imagined. Her black hair was, at the roots, lighter. “We’re going… with Mr. and Mrs. Hayes… their car. Good citizen car. It’ll get us through the gate.”
“The yellow Cadillac. Yeah. That’ll work. And… Gustavo’s a vet… veteran.”
Portia put her right hand on my left arm. “We didn’t say nothing… about… you.” I looked at her hand until she removed it “Langdon… he wasn’t there because of that.”
“No?”
“No. Never even went to… look. And anyway…”
“I wanted to… It was…” I was trying not to get lost, trying not to cry. I slid my hand across the hood, toward but not quite touching Portia’s. “Thank you.”
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. “Good man. 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 with…” She laughed. “You’re there now. Mrs. Tony’s.” I must have looked surprised. “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. I reevaluated her age again. She was barely over that line I’d set between me and adulthood. “They do love their avocados,” she said, with a surprising amount of enthusiasm.
“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. 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 visualizing 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. A second image was of him looking worried and angry, trying to get the others to support him. Some took his side. My father did not.
Portia shrugged. She may have smiled. “I see… your father, in you. He… sorry for saying this again… He was a good man.” I had to look at her. Sincere. “You are your father’s son.”
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 and Jumper then… Chulo!” Loud and clear. Both Portia and I looked over. The Hayes Flowers van blocked the view, but occasional columns of cigarette smoke raising up beyond the two popout surfboards revealed where Chulo and the man doing the yelling were standing. “Last run.” The other man’s voice was lower but clearer. “There and back. Simple.”
A skinny man wearing a cowboy hat, straw rather than cloth, 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.”
Asshole 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. The bus’s engine was racing. I looked over as it passed. Asshole, wearing sunglasses, a bandana around his neck, looked straight ahead, 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. The van stopped, passenger door even with me.
Chulo nodded. I nodded. “Get any… good ones?” he asked through the open window, both of us aware of the sound of gears grinding between second and third as the Jesus Saves bus headed north on 101.
“A couple,” I said, to Chulo, as Portia walked past me, “Before the tide got too high.” 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 say more to her or Chulo. “Different clothes,” I said, more to Portia than Chulo. “I mean,” I said, looking directly at Chulo, “this is not the, um, John the Baptist look.”
“Yeah! Most people get it wrong,” Chulo said. “Jesus, way classier dresser.”
“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. And besides, your dad had already…”
“What about Langdon?”
“I can handle… Langdon. God… God love him.”
“He means ‘fuck Langdon,’” Portia said. “Another asshole.”
Portia looked at Chulo and then at me. I looked away and then up. There was something about the popout surfboards the van. Different boards, not the same ones I’d seen at my father’s wake. I took a step back to check out the skegs. Quickly, aware Portia and Chulo were watching me, aware someone was approaching from my left.
“Asshole,” I said. “God love him.”
“No shortage of assholes.” Someone was beside me. 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, once-red hair, 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 popout surfboards, beyond the palm fronds and the pine branches. 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 moved close to the van’s still open passenger side door. “Boy gets it,” he said.
Portia, in a voice as gauzy as the clouds, said, “Fred’s here for the show.”
“Fred Thompson, the legend,” Chulo said. “Fred. 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, “Juni’s choice. Jumper. He wanted it kept… secret.”
Fred laughed. Not a crazy man’s laugh. “Yeah. Well, Petey and me… and secrets. No. At least he… Jumper… had a choice.”
“Mister Thompson, I heard you were out and you…went back in.” I realized, even as I was saying the words, that I had said too much. “Sorry.”
“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, Fred; I still wouldn’t have chosen the Marines.”
“I’m no Catholic, Chulo, but…” Fred made the sign of the cross, then threw his right hand out, fingers spread. “Hope our friend’s… better. And, catholic-wise, 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, 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… Chulo’s and Portia’s… 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. “You staying for the encore… kid?”
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 was on the ground, too close to the edge. When Gingerbread Fred looked up at the sky, 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, neither.” He 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. 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 Jesus.”
“I saw it! Here! I was… here, Mr. Thompson! Swamis!”
“Whoa-aaaa-ooooo!” Fred Thompson’s zoomed to the highest octave he was capable of, and dropped, rapidly. He closed his eyes and looked up. His voice was gravelly when he tapped me, three times, on the chest, and asked, “Can you still… see it?”
“In my mind; yes, sir, I can.”
I could remember, perfectly, what I saw from the back of Gary’s real dad’s Ranchero in the Swamis parking lot. My back was against 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 cab. The girlfriend was 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 that Jesus, having judged the wicked and the righteous, 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 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. You and I… did.” Gingerbread Fred twisted the frames of his glasses, put a finger in his left ear, and yawned. He used the same finger to tap, three times, on his forehead, and said, “Keep it… here.” He clawed at his hair. He tapped his finger, three times, on his chest. “Here, too.” He pulled at his sweater. “I do hope you will excuse me. I am going to… quick dip. Therapeutic. And, kid, what I said about… your father. Yeah. Just checking. Good man, Joe was… for a Jarhead… and a cop.”
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.
MORE CONTENT ON SUNDAY. “Swamis” and all other original material is protected by copyright, all rights reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. THANKS, get some waves when you can.
I hadn’t really planned on going to Seattle. I had forgotten that I had an appointment in Silverdale to check out the progress on my left eye (looking good after the last surgery, should get the oil out in, like, January), and since I was over that way anyway, and TRISH mentioned that DRU, who had just gotten disturbing-but-(of course)not 100% verified) news about her ongoing disputes with cancer, was going to go over to meet WENDY, someone our daughter met in her first year at LOYOLA UNIVERSITY in Chicago, there with her husband, JON, and I said, “Oh, maybe I could go…also,” this turning, instantly, into a commitment.
Jon, Wendy, and Dru. lost tourists in the background bemoaning that “The place where they throw the fish is closed, pre-8 O’clock.” “Yeah,” I said, to Jon and Wendy, not to the tourists, “It still smells… fishy.”
BECAUSE I wasn’t planning on going to Seattle, I was wearing Crocks. “Not a problem,” Trish, who wasn’t going said, “You’ll walk on, and then you’ll get an UBER.” The ferry terminal at COLEMAN DOCK and the roads in the vicinity have been in a constant state of destruction/construction before and since September of 1978, my first trip to the northwest. Every time I go through there it’s different. The current structure was, no doubt, designed after the oversized structures Hitler’s favorite architect designed. AND walking on from Bainbridge is, like, lengthy. AND you can’t just go out in front and jump in a cab. Actually you can, but we were going to Uber, and Dru has an app, so we walked, like, two piers north (Spring Street if you’re savvy) before we could figure out where a car could pull in, what with the long, plant-filled structure blocking the outside lane of southbound Aurora. Meeting up with Jon and Wendy, the plan was to walk down to Pike Place Market. “It’s only two blocks,” Jon said. No. two blocks over, two blocks down. In crocks.
I AM SUDDENLY REALIZING, as I’m one-drafting this, that I should either do a serious version or just get to the highlights. Or both. Lots of walking. Lots of people. Groups of: Tourists; Buffalo Bills fans; Halloween celebrants in costume (including a staggering drunk catwoman, a woman in a physics-defying top taking photos with others in, you know, other, less memorable costumes); an angry dudes talking to himselve; very very happy dude kind of twerking and singing.
It’s not that I PEOPLE WATCH, but… yeah; can’t help it. ON the way back, crush of people headed home, one way or the other, I noticed a guy (because he reminded me of a friend) with a man bun, a kilt, and oversized glasses. There he was, Dru and I limping along the boat to land walkway.
“I’m ready to go back to ______ (unnamed spot on the Strait that requires extensive walking/climbing).”
I’m not. I’m sore. OH, one last thing: When Dru and I were almost to the parking lot, her van in spot #7, thankfully, I reacted to a smell I identified with, “Smells like skunk,” before I realized the smell, at once sweet and somehow a bit harsh, was… something else. Just laughing was enough for Dru. “You know,” she had said, “Bainbridge Island votes 100% democratic.” “100%?” “Well, almost.”
Three Poems basically revealing that I am so happy I don’t have to live in Seattle:
Limerick Seattle surfers at ferry docks wait, You just want to check out the Strait, At its best it’s quite iffy, You can’t get there in a jiffy, You’ll arrive… just a little too late.
(or early; couple of hours, couple of days, couple of weeks)
Haiku Just missed the ferry, I may as well drive around, Settle for Westport.
Ode Oh, if I was a Seattle surfer, I’d feel so alive, Maybe I’d live in Fremont, Somewhere west of the I-5.
I’d have a built-out sprinter van, No V-dub or Subaru, Three boards in board bags on the rack Like other city surfers do.
And I’d study all the forecasts, Surfline premium’s a must, And every five-star rated day, It’s on the road or bust.
I’d be out there on the highways, In the darkness before dawn, Or I’d be waiting in the ferry line, Hoping, praying I get on.
Or perhaps I’d drive to Seaside, Maybe Short Sands or Westport, Hoping all Tacoma and Portland folks Adopted wing-foiling as their sport.
There is one code that I live by, A truth yet to be debunked, Don’t ever head out to the Strait Unless you’re willing to get SKUNKED.
Apology/explanation I understand how frustrating it is to be hours away from the possibility of waves worth surfing. During Covid, quite a few surfers moved over to the Olympic Peninsula, particularly those who could work anywhere they could get a signal. It didn’t take too long for many of them to realize how frustrating it is to live here. AND, there are so many easy amusements in the big city.
All original material protected by copyright. All rights reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. Another chapter of “SWAMIS” will be posted on Wednesday. PUBLISHERS- I have a publisher showing some interest in my novel. They have questions as to my potential audience, my goals. I am working on a response, but , MEANWHILE, if you are or know a writer’s agent, or if you have connections with an actual, non-vanity press, let me know. Leave a message at my home/office (360)765-3212.
NON-POLITICALLY SPEAKING, Please write down all the reasons you would vote for Citizen Thrump (moral character, intelligence, empathy/narcissism level, religious-ness, allegiance to our country and our rule of law, whatever other bullshit you can think of), CONSIDER that you actual reasons for even considering voting for one of the more despicable human beings ever might have more to do with your own grievances that an honest appraisal of a serial lowlife, and, you know, don’t vote for the asshole.
Real Surfers 