Tag Archives: “Swamis” novel by Erwin Dence

A Horrific Tragedy AND “Swamis,” Chapter 12, Part Three

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, surf fiction, surf novels, surfing Southern California in the 60s

I really can’t take too much of the coverage of the Hamas/Israel War. It seems as if a surge in violence was predictable and is reminiscent of historic struggles worldwide. The outcomes, however, have varied. Watching MSNBC at the top of any hour guarantees more tales of terror. One analyst, representing this or that organization studying and/or promoting world peace said he expects the situation “Will get worse before it gets even worse.”

The gesture humans have for wonder, whether we are defeated, shattered and questioning; or we are grateful for some hoped for, possibly undeserved, unexpected gift, some surprisingly marvelous ride on a miraculous wave, for example, is the same. The sentiments behind the gesture could not be more different. Opposites Answers and solutions are rarely forthcoming.

“SWAMIS,” CHAPTER 12, PART THREE- SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 1969

            All the surfers and non-surfers in the parking lot were in little groups, locals and non-locals, around vehicles or along the bluff. I was writing in a red notebook on the roof of the passenger side of the Falcon. Petey Blodgett and I were the only ones who looked up or over at the stripped-down and noisy red VW bug with flared fenders, primed with red oxide, going down the far side of the lot, counterclockwise, two people inside.

            Petey Blodgett turned toward me, nodded, mouthed “Dickson,” His expression had turned the name into a question. I nodded. He whistled, one sharp, three note blast, and made a sort of ‘circle the wagons’ gesture with both hands. Everyone looked at the VW. The younger kids started loading into the Mercedes. Ronny and Duncan looked at me before, in a pace that didn’t appear as casual as they may have hoped, they headed for the Morris Minor.

Julia Cole stepped into the bluff side lane and followed the VW with her camera. When it got to the far end of the lot, she put the camera into her bag. She said, “Cardiff,” to Petey and grabbed Monica’s arm. They hurried, together, Julia Cole’s bag almost bouncing on the pavement, to Ronny’s car. Duncan held the passenger side door open, allowing both girls into the back seat. 

The two detectives, Wendall and Dickson, got out of the VW. They straightened their suit pants, buttoned their coats, and walked forward, very slowly. Dickson had a portable radio in his left hand. He raised it, said something, and lowered it again.

The Mercedes, with four boys and Petey Blodgett, backed out and pulled forward. The Morris Minor backed out. Julia Cole, passenger side, back seat, looked at me as the car passed. Duncan may have. I was looking at Julia. She didn’t blink, didn’t move her head. Her eyes moved, left to right. Two seconds, maybe, watching me. Watching me not move.

            Two vehicles, almost instantly, moved from the middle row to the front row. Second tier, now first. Three more surfers headed for the stairs.

            With my own fake casualness, I lifted the Falcon’s tailgate, cranked up the back window, locked it. I walked to the driver’s door, opened it. I looked around. I heard three distinct Sirens. One was a two-syllable yelp, the other two sirens, three. A Highway Patrol motorcycle and a patrol car, and one cruiser from the Sheriff’s Office, red lights going on each, were blocking the Swamis lot at 101.

The Mercedes and the Morris Minor pulled quick u turns at the original lot and parked next to each other in the middle row, as close to 101 as the blockade allowed. I got in the Falcon, closed the door, set the tape player on the floorboards, set the red notebook on the dashboard next to my father’s oversized flashlight.

The four boys got out of the Mercedes and started running circles around the car and then around other cars. Ronny and Duncan got out of the Morris Minor. Julia Cole got out and started unstrapping boards on the rack of the Mercedes. Monica got out and loosened the straps on the one board side of Ronny’s racks. Julia placed her board on the rack and reattached the straps. Monica resecured the straps on the Mercedes.

Petey Blodgett got out of the Mercedes when the Sheriff’s Office cruiser pulled in front of his and Ronny’s cars. The Highway Patrol motorcycle pulled in behind them. The officer got off his motorcycle, removed the glove from his right hand, and shook Petey’s hand.

            Wendall and Dickson were hanging back. Wendall stopped at the edge of the bushes. He disguised taking a leak by lighting a cigarette, his back to the south wind. Dickson took several steps into the open area and raised his walkie-talkie. There was a loud squelch. Wendall took the radio from Dickson, said something into it. Squelch. Both detectives looked at me. I lowered my head.

            I pushed down the vertical knob on the front driver’s side door. As I was reaching over to lock the front passenger door, Detective Dickson opened it. He almost threw himself forward and onto the seat. He reached down and put a hand on my tape deck. With some grunting, he pulled himself and my tape deck backwards and out. He ripped out the loose, overlong, taped together wires from the back, set the player on the edge of the roof. He squatted, his eyes level with mine.

“Obviously stolen,” Dickson said before stepping back and standing up. He flicked two fingers toward the obviously stolen tape player, laughed as it fell to the asphalt. He leaned back in, reached for the red notebook. I pulled it toward me.

“Not obviously stolen, Sir. And, if you don’t have a warrant or a compelling…”

            “Suspicion? I do.” Dickson was pretty much out of breath. He, quite awkwardly, dropped to one knee, on top of the tape deck. “Bet you can quote me the law. Huh, Jody?”

            “Not verbatim, Detective… Sergeant Dickson.”

            “With so many of these tape decks getting stolen,” Dickson said, “it’s really hard to figure out who to get them back to.”

            “I would guess so.”

            “No, it’s under control,” Wendall, just outside the driver’s door, said into the walkie-talkie. He tapped the radio’s antenna on the window. Three times. I must have turned toward him too quickly, looked at him too hard. He slid the radio’s antenna across the glass. “Out.”

            Wendall moved with the door as I opened it. He remained just on the other side of it as I got out. He was looking over the Falcon. Deputy Wilson and a very tall Highway Patrol Officer, standing by between the Mercedes and the Morris Minor, were waiting for further instruction. “This isn’t a game, Jody,” Wendall said, still not looking directly at me.

 Monica and Duncan and Julia Cole and Rincon Ronny were taking a cue from Petey, looking quite casual, but they were all, definitely, looking at me.

“Kind of looks like a game, Detective Wendall… Sir.”

“You’re not helping here, Jody.”

            Dickson pushed the tape deck into the traffic lane with a series of short kicks. “So, Jody, sales receipt?”

I didn’t respond. One of the dawn patrol gremmies was hanging on the racks on the Mercedes. Duncan pulled him off, the kid’s legs pumping. Petey was laughing, chatting with the Highway Patrolman, his hand on the Officer’s shoulder. Three of the four boys were sitting or leaning on the hood of Petey’s Mercedes, looking, if anything, bored. Deputy Scott Wilson was looking at Julia Cole. Monica and Duncan and Ronny were looking at Deputy Wilson. As was I.

Julia Cole, her knees bent, was leaning over the hood of the Morris Minor. Her telephoto lens was aimed at Dickson and Wendall and me. Wendall yelled, “Hey!” He threw out both hands, more in front of his body than straight out. He waved the radio. It was a ‘this is serious’ gesture meant for the motorcycle officer and Deputy Wilson. The CHP Officer shook Petey’s hand and signaled his compatriot in the cruiser. He tapped Deputy Wilson, still watching Julia, on the shoulder. The deputy looked at Julia’s friends, all giving him the same smile. He acknowledged this with an expression I didn’t see but could imagine. Busted.

Julia Cole stood up, never taking her eyes off Wendall, Dickson, and me. She held her camera with the telephoto lens facing up and made four upward thrusts with it. An unmistakable gesture.

I chuckled. Wendall chuckled louder. Dickson wasn’t amused. “Stay away from that one, Jody,” he said. “A regular prick teaser.”

“She’s seventeen years old, Detective Dickson. Sir.”

“Yeah,” Dickson said, jabbing his right hand, in a fist, toward me. Close. I didn’t flinch. He turned toward Wendall. “That is David Cole’s daughter, isn’t it, Larry?” Dickson didn’t give Wendall a chance to answer. “David Cole’s… other, older daughter; she’s the slutty one. Right?” Dickson’s expression was more of a sneer when he turned back. “Surfer girls, huh, Jody?”

Wendall set the walkie-talkie on the roof of the Falcon. He pulled the flashlight from the dashboard, smacking the palm of his hand with it several times. “Gunny… your dad, he didn’t like the ones we were issued.” Wendall turned it on, shined it into my eyes. “Not… impressive enough.” He maneuvered the light into the car, shone it onto a light blue lunch sack in the middle of the bench seat, then turned the flashlight off, handed it to me, smiled. “Lunch, huh?”  

I stuck the flashlight back onto the dashboard, took out the light blue lunch sack, set it on the roof. “Habit,” I said. “I could get something at Mrs. Tony’s.”

“When does your shift start?”

“Not yet.”

            Dickson walked over to the tape deck. “You wanna pick this shit up, Jody?”

I stepped toward the back of the Falcon, lit up a cigarette with two matches from a book with “Fallbrook, The Friendly Village” on the cover.

Dickson kicked the tape deck as he walked around the front of my car. “So, Jody, your mother know you smoke?”

I opened the lunch sack. I pulled my father’s lighter, a small tin of lighter fluid, and a tiny cardboard box of flints. “Evidently.” I opened the top of my father’s lighter, flicked the wheel. There was a brief flame. “I’m going to add the fluid… when I get a chance.”

Wendall took out a cigarette from a pack in his coat’s lower right pocket. “I know your mom didn’t supply… those.” He pulled out a matching Zippo, held the side with the Sheriff’s Office logo toward me, and lit my cigarette before lighting his own. Camel, non-filter.

Dickson came closer to me. The Sheriff’s Office cruiser passed us, followed by the Highway Patrol motorcycle. Wendall and Dickson gave very informal salutes. “So, Jody,” Dickson said, looking at the locals, all still hanging outside the two vehicles, “You popular around here with the hippies and the… surfers?”

“Not at all. Is the… show over?”      

“Think so, Jody,” Wendall said, “just making our presence known.”

“To what end, Detectives?”

Wendall puffed up one cheek, coughed, blew out some air. The portable radio on the roof of the Falcon squawked. A woman’s voice, distorted, said, “Wendall, Vista sub, come in.”   

I slid over and grabbed it. “Betty Boop,” I said, “It’s Joey… Jody; lots of fun here at Swamis. Over.”

A man’s voice came over the radio. “Wendall. Is this a joke? Wendall.”

I almost dropped the radio. Dickson shoved me from the side and grabbed it. Wendall took it from him, stepped away. “No. Not a joke. It’s under control. Over.”

“Put the kid on. Over.”

Wendall, shaking his head, stepped toward Dickson and me. Dickson put his hand on my left shoulder and looked over me, toward the cars and the locals. “I’m going to do you a favor, Jody,” Dickson said, removing his hand and smiling as he punched me; short, straight jabs; very quickly, in the solar plexus. Just the way my father taught me. And him.

My cigarette had landed on Dickson’s shoulder with the first punch. I put a hand on his left shoulder, for balance after the third and fourth blows. After the fifth and sixth, Dickson brushed the cigarette off, removed my hand from his shoulder, took the radio from Wendall, held it up to my face and said, “Just say ‘thank you,’ Jody.” He pushed the button.

“Thank you… Sir. Over.”

“Joseph DeFreines, Junior,” the voice on the radio said, “in real life, there are no seventeen-year-old detectives. Over and… out.”

            Dickson turned moved his face close to mine. “Now the show’s over.” Between my breaths, Dickson whispered, “And… you’re welcome.”

Wendall picked the cigarette up, put it back in my mouth. Dickson turned away, yelled, “Yeah. You get that, Missy?” He flipped the bird with both hands, spun his body and his hands around. “Not very… professional, huh, Jody?” I didn’t respond. “But then, how would a hick Barney Fife like me know?”

With no answer that would please Dickson, I shook my head.

Dickson set what was left of the tape deck on the hood of the Falcon. Wendall lit a cigarette with the butt of his last one, looked around the parking lot. I flicked my father’s lighter a few times. No flame. “No flame,” I said, flicking it a few more times.

Both detectives turned away and started walking, slowly, toward Dickson’s VW. I heard the tiny engine of the Morris Minor and the diesel engine in the Mercedes start up. I heard both cars drive away. I hadn’t looked that way. I had been afraid. Now I was angry.

“I have… spoken to someone who was here… that night.” Both detectives stopped and turned toward me. They acted as if they didn’t understand, but both looked toward the compound wall. Wendall grabbed the radio from Dickson and turned it off.  “The East Indian guy. From London. Not the pretty part. The guy who got singed… in the fire.  Wasn’t taken to a doctor. Nephew of the owner of Carlsbad Liquor; the guy you two, or maybe just Langdon, questioned… downtown, for two days. That guy. Baadal Singh.”

This was a reaction caused by anger, I thought, a mistake. Still, I continued, words coming out fast, uncontrolled. “The possible suspect, definite witness… You told him to disappear. I assume you told Gingerbread Fred the same thing.” Wendall and Dickson were both, instantly, angry. I wasn’t displeased. “This must mean… indicate… that you truly believe the killers, in the black car with the loud tailpipes might… return.”

Dickson stepped toward me. Wendall stopped him with a hand, fingers spread, to the chest. “Go on. Jody.”

“Chulo. Was he your… asset; or Langdon’s?”

Dickson was very quickly in my face. “Don’t give a fuck what you truly believe, Jody.”

When Dickson moved his head back, just a bit, I moved my face close to his. “Chulo and Jumper Hayes; when they were arrested, you had to take sides. Butchie Bancroft was… had been your partner. ‘Dickie Bird and Butchie Boy,’ my father said, ‘red on their heads like dicks on dogs.’ I don’t recall whose side you took… Detective Sergeant… Dickson.”   

“I wasn’t there, Jody. I might have knee-capped Jumper fucking Hayes.” Dickson held an aggressive expression long enough to see if I would move back. “Quit your recalling,” he said, taking a step back, checking Wendall’s reaction. He moved his lips back and forth a few times before he smiled. Full teeth. “Butchie was a good cop. He… that time, he went too far.”

Wendall stuck his right arm, cigarette in his hand, between Dickson and me. He pushed Dickson back. “We’re detectives, Jody. We were on your dad’s side in that.”

“Didn’t make me and Larry popular with… anyone, really; takin’ an avocado thief’s side. Especially seeing as everyone knew about the marijuana him and Chulo were stealing from… groves. Bonus for them… and the… landowners. That shit, it got… glossed over.”

Wendall was shaking his head. Not at me. At Dickson. “Butchie wasn’t good for the… the Office. It all blew over. As always. You calm now, Danny?”

            Danny Dickson wasn’t calm. “So, you got that all wrong, huh? Jody.”

            Wendall stepped between his partner and me. “Asset,” he said, “Source.” He didn’t exactly smile. He didn’t nod. His cigarette moved up and down. “Any other theories, Jody?”

“No theories.” There was a pause. “Okay. If Chulo was your… asset… you’d have a better idea who killed him. Still, you have to know who’s involved, locally. Maybe that’s why you’ve let Langdon take over. He doesn’t live here, and… maybe he’s not telling you what he knows.”

Now Wendall seemed the angrier of the two. He broke off eye contact with me just before I would have. He smiled, pointed at me with his cigarette between his first two fingers. “Theories. I am sure you will keep them to… yourself.” I must have looked as if I agreed. “And, Jody, this is all… you’re… you should…” Such pauses were unusual for Wendall. “Your mother and I…”

Full stop. Wendall turned quickly, toward his partner. Dickson dropped his sarcastic smile. Both looked toward me. I wouldn’t allow either the pleasure of reacting.

“Let’s go, Dickie Bird,” Wendall said, walking away. “So glad we took your death trap dune buggy.”

“Undercover, Dickson said, taking a slight detour to push the tape player off the hood of my car. A family station wagon passing by, with three kids in the far back, ran over it. The car stopped. It backed up. A woman stuck her head out the window. Wendall used his badge to wave her on. “Thanks for being here,” she said, the comment aimed at the detective, though she was looking at me. Suspiciously.

“Doing our job, Ma’am.”

Dickson kicked the tape player toward the center of the parking lot, threw his hands out as if he had scored a field goal, and joined his partner, both walking slowly toward the end of the lot, toward where the Jesus Saves bus would have ordinarily been parked.

NOTE: I couldn’t help it. I went back again on previous chapters to keep the continuity, like, accurate.. I am over 100,000 words, but changes now means, hopefully, that I can cut out more later. Yes, I do realize there is a formula successful writers stick to. It’s just… no, I am trying. Thanks for trying to stick with it. “Swamis” and all its variations are protected by copyright. All rights reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr.

Peace.

This Time of Year

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, northwest surfing, surf novels

Autumn and the opportunity for, rather the chance of multiple swell angles, leftover summer pushes, and, of particular interest on the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the possibility that some errant low might produce something. Some thing. Meanwhile, east winds work magic with what might ordinarily be closeout beachbreak. Westport, perhaps? I can’t be sure. I have heard stories.

What the shorter days do to me is, short term, while I’m busily running from here to there, catching up on leftover projects, trying to finish others, and enjoying the days that are actually perfect for exterior house painting, I’m losing out on the time I could be writing. Or drawing. And I do have projects.

Yes, I know that the shorter daytime hours will soon reduce my time outside, rain and fog and all that, and if I just realize that and concentrate on ‘making hay,’ one of my most heard comments by others who do not make metaphorical hay themselves, not that I do; if I am patient, the time to dabble and write and jump into all the deferred projects will come. This is without even mentioning all the home repair projects I have put off, some for years. That leaky spot on the roof, that… and this, and… okay, I’ll stop whining.

And, no, I’m not forgetting surf. It’s coming. But, if you look at the forecasts we all look at, studying them, searching for the right angle and tide level and wind conditions, that, it just seems tough to figure which of several options to make that one strike mission, always hoping waves might show up at a beach adjacent to a work project. Always hoping.

Now, “Swamis,” the manuscript, though I’ve fine tuned chapters ell past Chapter 12, is currently kind of caught in that space. In my endeavor to focus, novelize the overwhelming and only-partially-plot-centric little insights and stories I long to tell, I am… well, working on it. Once done, it will, or should, or must cut down the verbiage later on. I am committed to keeping the manuscript under 100,000 words. So far, after shortening the time span, successful.

I will be posting the final subchapter on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of sketches. Other than my decorating my Volvo and starting on several other to-be-continued projects, this is what I’ve taken the time to do.

It is probably not worth saying these are copyright protected. I will, anyway.

Good luck in finding the waves you want and the time you need. OH, Maybe I’ll post a couple of shots of my formerly stealth surf rig. Wednesday.

“Swamis” Chapter 12, Part Two- March 29, 1969

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel

Each chapter of my novel corresponds to a single day. THIS is a big day. It isn’t exactly like I’m bogged down here, it is more that I continue to tighten up the plot and the character development. So, Joey is checking out Swamis pre-dawn on a Saturday, almost four days after Chulo was burned to death along the wall of the Self Realization Fellowship compound. He h as already had a connnection with Baadal Singh, a witness to the murder, and possibly a suspect. It’s still early, and with a south wind blowing, the lot is starting to fill up. It’s Swamis… locals and non-locals, and Joey has the optimum parking spot.

                        CHAPTER TWELVE- PART TWO- SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 1969

It was morning rather than dawn, The south wind still blowing. The Swamis parking lot was filling up. I was standing in the middle of the lot, in the middle of the lane between the middle row of spaces and the single row along the grass. I wasn’t sure how long I had been there, rerunning what I had heard and seen, trying to focus on, to memorize the most important images and words.  

Too confusing. If Chulo had been a snitch, a narc, then…. Then what? An image of my father explaining why he was talking to a shady looking guy outside the Vista Foster Freeze broke into my mind. “We need sources,” he said, “Like dictionaries, encyclopedias. Assets.”

If Chulo had been a snitch, a narc, an asset, a source, he was Langdon’s. Had to be.

My fault. Of course, it was. I couldn’t help visualizing the Jesus Saves bus in my rearview mirror, front right tire in the ditch. Langdon had come onto the scene. He had found something.

Of course.

I looked past the latest car to arrive in the lot and toward the bluff. Julia Cole was behind the stack of surfboards stacked on the Mercedes, her telephoto lens between them and the roof. She was taking photos. Of me.

Maybe not. I turned toward the highway. Baadal Singh was gone. His truck was gone. I turned back toward Julia Cole. She waited a moment before pulling her camera back, but kept looking at me. Maybe not. A car was almost even with me, way too close. There were three boards on the rack, two on the driver’s side, one on the passenger side.

It was Rincon Ronny’s car, a late fifties Morris Minor, rather dinged up, the once dark blue paint faded rather unevenly. Rincon Ronny was driving, Monica in the front seat, not quite up against him. Duncan Burgess, in the back seat, flipped me off as the car passed. I nodded and walked toward the Falcon. Duncan turned his body enough to look through the car’s back window. When he saw I was watching him, he flipped me off again, bouncing his middle finger on the window until the Morris Minor parked in the last spot available on the bluff.

Duncan was definitely smiling. I probably was.

Petey Blodgett’s dawn patrol crew members, four boys and Julia Cole, were all gathered at the center of the bluff, in front of the Falcon, an empty Dodge Dart, and the Mercedes. Most of the kids were talking at the same time. The four boys were half-sitting on the hood of my car. Seeing me approaching, two kids slid fully onto my car’s hood. The other two moved to the front of the Dodge. One of them slid a bar of wax across the windshield, just once, before Julia Cole grabbed his wrist. He dropped the wax, then pushed it, hard, with his free hand, across and off the hood.  

Julia Cole shook her head, lifted her heavy gray canvas bag from the Falcon’s hood, set it on the pavement, and turned to greet her three friends walking toward her from Ronny’s car.

            The surfers from the Dodge Dart, obvious out of towners, had made the decision to go for waves the obvious locals had passed on. Other non-locals were in small groups along the bluff or hanging around their own cars in the middle rows. Second tier surfers, they couldn’t just join in with the locals, and they wouldn’t be invited to.

            Nor would I. I unlocked the rear door, rolled down the window, and dropped the tailgate. I leaned into the back of the Falcon, moved my new surfboard to one side and crawled forward over towels and trunks to the back of the front seat. I stretched my body and my arm toward a stack of folders and notebooks on the dashboard. The two boys on the Falcon’s hood moved their faces closer to the windshield. Ronny, Monica, and Duncan looked past them and at me.

If any of them looked amused, I couldn’t tell. “casual” I whispered as I pulled up a red notebook, spiral bound, a pencil in the wires. I started to pull myself back, my left hand on the steering wheel, notebook in my right hand. I heard a click from outside the driver’s side window. Click.

Julia Cole pulled back and lowered the camera. She did look somewhat amused. “Casual,” she said. I mouthed the word. She blinked. I blinked. I would remember her quick smile, quickly dropped, another expression to add to my Julia Cole file.   

            As I back crawled out of the falcon, the surfers in all the little groups resumed talking. “Fucking south wind,” one of the current members of Petey’s dawn patrol group said, holding back a bit on the ‘fucking.’ Practicing. He was probably about my brother Freddy’s age. Eighth grader. “Fucking wrecking it,” he added, emphasis on the ‘ing’ part. Better. “Fucking!”

            “Fucking,” I whispered, equal emphasis on both syllables.

            …

            Leaning over the tailgate, writing down notes from my discussion with Baadal Singh, trying not to have my thoughts interrupted by another image of Julia Cole, I became aware of comments coming from several speakers in several directions. “Chulo.” “And right here. Swamis.” “Which one was Chulo?” “Limpin’ Jesus.” “Oh, with the big cross thingy around his neck.” “Good surfer, though.” “Barbecued, I heard.” “Shut up!” “Guess he’ll get to know Jesus.” “God!” “What about his woman?” “Portia. What about her?” “Cops know who did it?”

            There was a pause in the conversations. I didn’t look around immediately.

            “You know Jumper Hayes was busted, few years ago, along with Chulo.” It was someone next to me, standing on the driver’s side of my car. It was Duncan. He was talking over rather than to me. I didn’t look up. He continued. “This asshole Deputy crippled Chulo. They sent him to some work camp in East County.”

            “And Jumper Hayes, he ditched out.” This voice came from the passenger side of the Falcon. “They’re not going to bust the son of a big-time flower grower and landowner. Not around here.” It was Rincon Ronny. He was looking at me. He looked away when I looked back.

            “No way,” some second-tier surfer said. “I heard Jumper ran off to Canada.”

“San Francisco,” another voice said. “Mexico,” yet another voice added, enough emphasis on the word to make almost anyone believe it was based on fact. “Mainland, not Baja.” More specific. More believable.

            “Back off, fucker!” It was Duncan’s voice, directed at one or all the second-tier guys. “Mexico? Really? He was in fucking Vietnam, fucker.” Practiced. Proper emphasis. Impressive,

 The “Mainland, not Baja” guy flashed a peace sign and mouthed, “Peace, Brother.”

Duncan flashed his own peace sign, flipped his hand around and lowered his pointer finger. “You don’t know shit. Brother.”

            I twisted around and sat on the tailgate. I looked at Duncan, and then Ronny. Both moved together and in front of me. I stuck the pencil back in the spiral binding and closed the red notebook. I started counting the seconds, silently, as I looked at each of the surfers. Evidently my lips moved. Both Duncan and Ronny, after I got to ‘four,’ counted with me. When I got to ten, I said, “Yeah. Marines. Fucking… Vietnam.”

            “He was here,” Duncan said, leaning down and toward me. “Jumper.”

            Rincon Ronny grabbed the top frame for the back window and pulled himself up an into a kneeling position on the tailgate to my left. “Yeah. Here. Swamis. He and Chulo. Julie got some pictures.”

            “Julia Cole?”

            Duncan half spit out something like, “Jeez,” before he answered. “Yeah, Julie. Julia Cole.” He spoke loudly, clearly, slowly. Sarcastically. “Jumper. Here, Swamis; the day before. Tuesday.” Duncan sat down to my right. He looked past me, to Ronny. “Tuesday, right?”

            “Think so,” Ronny said, pulling himself into a standing position on my tailgate “Yeah, Tuesday. He was talking with Chulo.”

            “Tuesday would be the day of,” I said, stepping off the tailgate. “Maybe it was… Monday?”

            “No, it was Tuesday,” Duncan said. “Day of.”

            “He was all bandaged up,” Ronny said; “Didn’t look too good, I guess, according to Gingerbread Fred.” Ronny pulled Duncan up and next to him and added, obviously for my benefit; “Fred. He comes here, like, every evening. For the… sunsets.”

            “Late afternoon, then? Monday.”     

Duncan and Ronny both looked toward the water. Ronny spoke without looking around. “After you and your mom left.”

I may have chuckled. More likely I giggled. “What was Jumper… how’d he get… here?”

There was no response. I was thinking, looking between Ronny and Duncan. Staring. I did see them. I didn’t see Julia Cole until she was next to me, looking at me. Not unkindly.

It must have been ten seconds before Duncan, then Ronny, turned toward me. “I told you, Julie,” Duncan said, “Useless.” Ronny jumped down, Monica moved between him and Julia. Duncan jumped down and directly in front of me. “Freak,” he said, crossing his eyes.

“You mean retard, don’t you?” I smiled. Duncan moved back and sat on the tailgate. 

Julia Cole stepped closer, put a hand on Duncan’s shoulder. “Pickup. Same one Jumper had… before.” I looked from Duncan to Julia. “I have… photos, but… why’d you ask… that?”

“Curious, Miss Cole. Or, really, no reason.”

Monica moved closer to me. “Portia told me Chulo was returning the flower van. Jumper was supposed to give him a ride back.”

“Never made it,” Julia said, “My dad said the van was over at… not Mrs. Tony’s, the market off of Vulcan. Door was open.” She put her right hand on Duncan’s shoulder. “We think…”

Duncan pushed Julia’s hand off his shoulder, pushed himself off the tailgate, moved forward, crowding Monica and Julia back. He turned toward me. “Fuck you, Junior. Yours and Jumper’s dads; old friends. You do know that; don’t you?”

            I didn’t answer.

            Duncan turned toward Ronny. “Junior and I… I’m a junior, too. We were born the same day, Balboa. Just before our fathers took off for Korea.”

            Ronny stepped off the tailgate. “Duncan. Really?”

            “Yeah, Ronny, I’m three hours older than… DeFreines.” Duncan looked from Ronny to me. “His dad came back a hero, mine came back… fucked up. Yeah. But we were all… poor.”

Duncan was looking at Ronny. I was looking at Duncan. “When Joe DeFreines got on with the County, he moved them all up to Frogbutt.” Duncan laughed. “Maybe he thought it was safer.” Duncan turned toward me. “Then some wife beater crashes into the patrol car. Joe fuckin’ shoots him. Meanwhile, Junior there, flying around in the car, gets all…”

I smiled at Duncan, then shared the same smile with Ronny, then Monica, then Julia Cole. Her expression, as blank as the other’s, revealed something close to sympathy.

“Was Jumper in… was he driving the Cadillac?”

“No,” Monica said, “Pickup.” We all looked at Monica. “Same one he always drove.”

“I have the photos,” Julia Cole said.

I visualized Jumper in this very parking lot, 1966. He was leaning on the hood of a Ford pickup from the late 1940s, black paint waxed and shining, exposed metal on the hood waxed and shining, a nine-six Hobie balanced, sideways, across the roof. Jumper was laughing, juggling three avocados, two other, older, surfers and two high school age girls, all entranced, watching him. He held one avocado out toward me as I walked past, catching one, allowing the third one to smash to the asphalt. More laughter.

“Thank you,” I said, and walked to the front of the Falcon. “Jumper wasn’t… here.”

“He didn’t know. Not until… morning.”

“You don’t know shit, Junior.” Duncan turned toward Julia. “Junior can’t help.” Julia turned away. “Anyone.”

…

            The locals had left. I walked to the bluff. There were five surfer at the peak, one dropping into a choppy peak, another dropping in on him. I walked past the Falcon, took two steps into the traffic lane. Ronny and Duncan were at the Morris Minor, talking. In the other direction, toward the stairs, Julia Cole was standing next to Monica and in front of Petey’s Mercedes. Julia had her bag on the hood and was holding the body of her camera with both hands, the telephoto lens pointed down. She was looking at me. Neutral expression. Monica was looking at her, shaking her head.

            I had edited out everything but Julia Cole.

            Duncan and then Ronny came from behind me. Duncan, on my right, his left hand in front of my face, waved Julia over. She shook her head. Duncan, stepping around and in front of me, said, “Thousand-yard stare. I’m familiar.”

            “I’m sorry.”

            There was a chuckle from Ronny, cut short, I guessed, by a quick glance from Duncan. “You. Junior,” Duncan said, close to my ear, “I don’t get you.” I shook my shoulders. I thought the gesture would be taken as ‘nothing to get.’ “You asked about… Jumper, his truck.”

Ronny and Duncan both moved in front of me, blocking my view toward Petey’s Mercedes. I looked from one to the other. Ronny spoke first. “Julie doesn’t know. Monica, she isn’t involved.”

“You’re… protecting. You love Monica?”

Ronny spun around, instantly, yelling “Monica” as he did. “I love you… Monica!”

There were, just as instantly, loud reactions from the various parking lot groups and individuals. Mostly positive. Petey Blodgett raised a fist. Monica put a hand over her face. Julia Cole put a hand on her friend’s shoulder, smiled, kept her eyes on Ronny and Duncan and me.

I exhaled, looked at Duncan for a second. He half-smiled and shook his head. “You don’t know shit, do you?” I copied his smile, reached into my windbreaker pocket for my cigarettes. Duncan put his right hand over mine and pushed, slightly. “The truck? You were talking to that Simon guy. He was there, here, did he see…?”

Duncan pulled his hand back. I pulled my hand out of the pocket and closed my eyes. “Freak!” It was a whisper, but intense, coupled with a shove backward.

“Probably,” I said, catching my balance, opening my eyes. “So, please, kindly, don’t tell me shit I don’t want to know.” Now I did pull out my cigarettes, took one out, put it in my mouth. “Don’t tell me shit, don’t ask me… shit. Why would you?” I half-turned, put my hand on my father’s lighter in my pants pocket.

“We heard you’re… brainy.”

“Closer to freak, Rincon Ronny.” I kept my hand over the Sheriff’s Office logo as I lit up. “Wait.” I stepped forward, took the cigarette out of my mouth, waved it in a big loop, and closed my eyes. “I’m imagining two guys getting out of a pickup truck. They drag Chulo…out.”

Opening my eyes, I aimed the cigarette toward the entrance to the parking lot, watched Julia and Monica move to the far side of the Mercedes. I counted to five, out loud, turned, stepped back until both Ronny and Duncan were in my field of vision. “You know more than I do.” I did a pinching maneuver with my left hand, wiping my eyes. “I shouldn’t have told you that… even.”

            “Look, Junior,” Ronny said, “cops have been coming around, talking about how maybe Chulo’s some sort of big deal drug… dealer, drug dealer. Like he deserved… you know.”

            “Marijuana,” Duncan said. “Weed. You… familiar?”

            “Not… intimately. Not… no, but that, um, diversion, yes, it seems like that is what cops would do. Langdon, maybe.”

            “It wasn’t Chulo. He wasn’t… big time,” Ronny said.

            “Langdon,” Duncan said. “You think, maybe…?”

            I shook my head before I reran the question through my mind. “No. Wouldn’t… suit his… no.” I took another few seconds, shook my head another two times, back and forth. “Thank you both, but… what if I’m a… narc?”

            Both Ronny and Duncan laughed. Ronny laughed harder, but not for as long.

            “And… I’m not a cop.”

            “Not yet.”

            “Not ever.”

            Ronny followed Duncan’s eyes. I turned around. Petey Blodgett was walking along the bluff. “Hey,” he said, quite loudly, directed to the dawn patrol boys, to Monica and Julia, to Duncan and Ronny and me, and to the second and third tier surfers: “Kids. If you are involved… if you’re into illegal drugs, you’re hangin’ with criminals, and, as a bonus, you are a criminal yourself. Now…”

            “Another fucking preacher” the guy who had insisted Jumper had been in Mexico said, instantly silenced with an elbow to the ribs from another second tier surfer.

            Petey Blodgett held his right hand up as far as he could, brought it down, licked his finger, raised it again. Everyone shut up and looked at the oldest person in the Swamis parking lot. “South wind,” he said, “not letting up.” He looked at Ronny and Duncan and me.

            “Not yet,” Ronny said.

            “Not ever,” Duncan said, chuckling after he said it.

Copyrighted material. All rights reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. AND, thanks for reading.

Hawaiian Brian Noji- Finally

Posted on by under Uncategorized

My friend Reggie Smart, when I told him I had met the guy who won second at the latest Cape Kiwanda Longboard Classic in the men’s 40-49 category, went through a list of names. “No, Reggie, it’s Brian. I wrote it down.” “Oh, yeah; Hawaiian Brian.” “Sure.”

SO, I finally figured the best way to get a photo from my phone to the site is to do the copy-and-paste.

INCIDENTALLY, if you know Reggie, please put a little pressure on him to compete next year. Reggie catches a lot of waves, knows how to finish off a ride with a move other than a variety of bails.

OKAY, now scroll down and check out my actual Sunday post. And, if you would be so kind, check out the latest (sub) chapter of “Swamis” on Wednesday.

Ahead and Behind- “Swamis” Chapter 12, Part 1

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, surf fiction, surf novels

I’m doing the, hopefully, final edit of my manuscript. I am ahead of the chapters I’m posting. But, because Microsoft allows me to go to where I last left off, and because I haven’t had time to write since Wednesday, the file opened to Chapter 12, Part One and… and I just couldn’t help myself. Edit, Edit, Edit.

If you already read this, the changes are subtle. If you haven’t, it is… hopefully, better.

CHAPTER TWELVE- PART ONE- SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 1969

I couldn’t say for certain if I had slept at all. I was outside the house at five. I had my lunch, in its pastel blue paper bag, in one hand, my dad’s big flashlight in the other. The Falcon was pointed toward the road. Getaway position. My new board was inside, my nine-six pintail on the by-this-time rusted-on factory racks. I carefully closed the driver’s side door, rolled the car down the driveway, turned the ignition key, popping the clutch, in second gear, at the county road. I turned on the headlights and retrieved a half a pack of Marlboros from under several Pee-Chee folders, those stacked on top of a four-track tape player, that set in the middle of the bench seat.

Waiting for a truck to pass before I could turn left onto Mission Road, I reached into the inside pocket of my windbreaker for matches. I had considered, briefly, pulling out ahead of the truck. I grabbed the flashlight from the dashboard, shined it on my fogged-up watch. “Should have left earlier.” I passed the truck on the last straightaway before Bonsall.

The wood-sided Mom-and-Pop store in Leucadia, perilously close to the southbound side of 101, didn’t open until six. I parked in the pullout just past it at five-fifty-two. Waiting for the lights to come on inside, I reran the TV coverage from the previous nights through my mind. Images overlapped, words were garbled. I focused on faces. No, just on Langdon, on his face when he said, “Heroes. Some people are.” Langdon’s image froze for a moment. “Can’t help themselves but… to be. Heroes.”

Hostess donettes, frosted, a quart of chocolate milk, a tiny can of lighter fluid, Marlboros, box, not soft pack, and a package of flints. The mom and pop, both at the counter, appeared tired. Pop was going to ask for my ID, but a look from Mom, and he didn’t.

“You. You know how to put those in? The flints?” I didn’t. Pop, only focusing on the logo on my father’s lighter for a moment, installed a flint for me. “You don’t want to overfill,” he said, filling the lighter for me, his wife smiling, watching, making sure I knew that she knew who I was, sending some sort of sympathetic message. I had seen the look before. I responded as I had learned to respond. Thankful. No uncomfortable talking.

“The fluid,” Pop said, “if it gets on you. Your leg, maybe. It… burns.”

Burns.

I pulled into the Swamis parking lot, did a soft left, and looped into a hard right. I stopped the car, shone the headlights on the portion of the wall where Chulo had been killed. It looked the same as it always had. White, not even gray, not even yellowed by the headlights, low or high beams. I backed up and away, made a big lazy arc in the very middle of the empty lot, and pulled into a perfect spot, ten spaces over from the stairs. Optimum location. I leapt out, stood at the bluff. Not loud enough to suggest waves of any height. I exhaled the smoke from my third cigarette of the day. “South wind. Fuck!”

…      

            The Laura Nyro tape re-running the songs from side one of “Eli and the Thirteenth Confession.” It wasn’t the tape. It was the player. Side one of albums from the bargain bin, Leonard Cohen and Harry Nilsson and the Moody Blues, side one of The Doors.   

I looked at my increasingly water-logged diving watch each time another car pulled in, each time car doors slammed, each time a surfer or surfers walked out onto the bluff, peered into the darkness, and decided to go elsewhere. La Jolla shores, perhaps. It was, supposedly, offshore on a south wind.

            It was still an hour before sunrise, overcast, almost drizzly. I stuck my father’s flashlight under my left arm and walked straight across the pavement, across the grass. I followed the Self Realization Fellowship compound toward the highway, toward the forty-five-degree curve to where the compound’s original entrance had been. There were two large pillars, gold lotus topped, an arch between them, the wrought iron gates long secured with long rusted chains.

Two bushes had been replaced with full-sized plants. The soil around them, the grass next to them, were new. It would all blend in. Quickly. I touched the wall. I looked at my hand. Dry. Perfect, as if no one had been burned to death there.

Backing away from the wall. I walked across the wet grass and onto the pavement at the entrance to the Swamis parking lot. This was where the crowd had assembled, where the sawhorses and rope had been. Unlike the still almost pristine compound side, there were cigarette butts and candy wrappers and straws and smashed paper cups on the rough pavement, scattered and stepped on and run over.

Clues, I thought. Killers returning to the scene of the crime, blending in, hanging on the ropes. Missed clues. I pulled out the Marlboro box from the inside pocket of my windbreaker, stuck the third to the last cigarette in my mouth, lit it with a surprisingly oversized flame from my father’s lighter. I turned on the flashlight, held each new clue close I had picked up to the beam.

Cigarette butts. Various brands. Lipstick on two of them. A partial pack of matches. “Carlsbad Liquor. Beer, Wine, and Spirits.” I opened it. “Left-handed,” I said. I pulled out several of the remaining matches. They left a red streak when I tried to light them. “Too wet.”

I put selected cigarette butts and the pack of matches into the Marlboro box. I moved back and forth along the de facto line, established where dead center was. I crouched down to study the patch of debris in front of me. “Menthol.” I picked up a butt with a gray, slightly longer filter. I blinked, possibly from my own cigarette smoke in my eyes. “Different.”  

There was a noise. Slight. Footsteps. Pulling my flashlight out from under my arm with    my right hand, I stood up, right foot sliding back.

“Gauloises Bleaues,” a man, ten feet away, said.

I flipped the flashlight around and into my right hand. The beam hit just below his head.

“Picasso smokes these. Jim Morrison and John Lennon smoke these.” I slid my right foot up and even with my left and lowered the flashlight. The man was holding a push broom. Stiff bristles. “My uncle imports these. I smoke these.” I nodded toward the broom. “You and I spoke… before. You gave me a… sort of… newspaper.”

“I did? Okay. So, no one cleaned… here, behind the… the line.”

“So, you. You. Here. Scene of the crime, eh?”

            “Me? Here? Yeah. I don’t know… why.”

The man took two steps, closer. “Joe DeFreines, Junior. You surf. You work at a grocery store in Cardiff, on weekends.” I leaned back. “I look a bit different than… I did.” He nodded toward the west end of the wall. “Meditation garden.”

             I flashed to that time. Four seconds, at the most. “Swami,” I said.

            “No. Not nearly. Gardener. I was with a Swami.”

The gardener’s beard and hair were tucked into a dark coat. The man’s eyes were almost the only part of his face showing. He had a bandana pulled up and covering most of his face. He had on the type of felt hats older men still wore; probably brown, pulled down around his ears.

“Lost most of my eyebrows. Eyelashes just got a good curling. Singed. Still there.”

“No! Shit!” I took half a step back. “It was… you.”

 “No shit.” The man extended his hands. He had a leather glove, dirtied calfskin, on his left hand. He had a white cotton glove on his right hand. His first two fingers taped together, as were the other two, and, separately, his thumb. The bandaging wrapped around the main part of his hand and was taped at his wrist. Three of his fingers showed stains that were either, I thought, something that had seeped through, ointment or blood. I was staring. “Second degree,” the gardener said, “Flash burns. Fools.”  

I turned and looked toward the highway. There was a late step-side pickup in the spot closest to the telephone booth on the highway side of the original parking lot. There was a three-legged fruit picker’s ladder on the rack over the bed, gardening tools bundled upright against the cab, the handle of a lawn mower hanging over the tailgate.

“You must have gone to the… hospital, Mister… You know my name. Mister…?”

“Singh. Baadal Singh. Baa, like ‘baa, baa, black sheep,’ sing like… sing.” I nodded. Baadal Singh laughed. “No hospital. They keep… records.” This seemed amusing to Mr. Singh. “I was two full days… downtown. Not in a cell. Interview room. Hallway. Just… Dickson calls you Jody.” I nodded. “Your father… sorry about him, incidentally. Wendall, he calls your father Gunny.”

“They both do. Marines. Wendall and my… dad. Not Dickson. Why would they even mention… me?”  

“They didn’t. Downtown detectives. One of them said… I am under the impression he was giving Wendall some… grief. And Langdon, he said…”  

            “Langdon?”

“Langdon. Yes. Fuck him.”

“But, Mister Singh, you were a witness; not a… suspect.”

 “Witness. Yes. Suspects have rights.” Baadal Singh looked at the little pile of cigarette butts and candy wrappers he had pushed close to my feet, then at me. I squatted to look more closely. Baadal Singh lowered the bandana that had been over his nose. “’Nice sunburn’ one of the detectives told me. ‘Hard to tell,” Dickson… said.”

Mr. Singh pushed the broom handle toward me. It leaned against my chest as I turned off the flashlight and stuck it back under my left arm. “Marines, you say?” Mr. Singh pulled the glove from his left hand with his teeth. He pulled back his coat. He took a thin box of cigarettes from the coat’s breast pocket with his bandaged right hand. He laughed. The glove fell to the ground. I slid my right hand down the broom handle and picked up the glove.

Baadal Singh took a cigarette out of the pack. “Gauloisis Bleaues” he said. He showed me a book of matches from the Courthouse Bar and Grill. “Downtown. Langdon treated me to lunch on my… second day. Clientele of lawyers and bail bondsmen and cops and criminals. He told me I would, eventually, be charged with Chulo’s murder.” Though he didn’t laugh, Mr. Singh did smile. He pulled out three matches from the right-hand side with his right hand. “Right-handed,” he said, striking the three matches as one, and lighting the cigarette. “All clues that make me what Langdon called ‘completely convictable.’”

I didn’t react. I was playing back what Mr. Singh had just done. I had, evidently, forgotten to inhale. My Marlboro was down to the filter. I spit it out on the clean part of the asphalt. I stomped on it. Too much information, too quickly. I was starting to hyperventilate.  Baadal Singh put his left hand on my right shoulder. “Chulo wasn’t a Marine, though, was he?”

“Chulo? No.”

 “You’re calm. Right?” I nodded. “This is how real coppers work, Joe. Blackmail. Maybe. Information is currency. You know that.” I coughed and took in a more normal breath. “Langdon… not really the other guys, he wants everything I know in exchange for my temporary… freedom. What I know is there is too much money around. Cash. Fine for small… purchases. Someone needs to… Do you… understand? Good citizens. Businesspeople.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“You’re looking, though. Langdon was right about that. You get enough clues and you… analyze, you imagine.”

 “I don’t… imagine. I… memorize. I… remember. If you knew more about me, you’d know more about why.”

“More. Yes. Some… another day; you’ll have to tell me… more.”

“So, Mr. Singh; you told them what you know?”

Baadal laughed. “Not even close, mate.”

            …

            It was closer to sunrise. I had been talking with Baadal Singh a while. “White pickup,” he said. “Farm truck. Double wheels in the back.”

            “White pickup. Farm truck. Double wheels in the back. Duelies, I think they’re called. The other vehicle, black car, loud muffler. Straight pipes. Made a rumbling sort of sound.”

            “Right. And?”

            “And Chulo had been in the white truck with a Mexican and a tall, skinny, white guy. Chulo had already been beaten. You believe the Mexican and the skinny white guy were taking Chulo to the Jesus Saves bus. But… Mr. Singh, if they had, they would have had to face… Portia. So, they knew her?”

            “Drugs, Joe. You had to have known… that. Portia and Chulo? Marijuana?”

            “I told you, Mr. Singh. I just… didn’t pay attention.” Baadal Singh shook his head. “You weren’t a friend… of Chulo’s?” Baadal Singh shook his head. “So, again; why are you telling me all… any of this?”

            “Because, if I… disappear, I want someone to know the truth.”

            “Not me. Not a good choice.”

            “You’re my only choice, though. So… remember.”

“So, the black car pulled in. Lights off. Two guys jumped out. Also a Mexican and a white guy. There was an argument. Between the two… groups.”

Baadal Singh, with me following, stopped between the phone booth and his truck. “Simon’s Landscaping” was painted on the door.

“Not Simon,” Baadal Singh said. “Not Swami, not Simon.” I shook my head. “The two white guys…” he said, “The one from the car pushes the skinny cowboy dude over here. He says, ‘We have customers lined up. They are serious. Call someone. Now! You need change, A-hole?’ Meanwhile, the Mexican guy… from the black car, he kicks Chulo a few more times, drags him across the parking lot.”

“Where were you, Mr. Singh?”

“Call me Baadal. Please.” Baadal pointed toward the concrete shower/bathroom facility. “Cowardly. Yeah.” Baadal stood by the door to the booth. “So, the… let’s call them gangsters… White gangster is outside, cowboy’s dialing. I see him… he’s kind of ducking, looking up…” Baadal stepped away from the booth, looked across the street, past the railroad tracks, and up the hill. “Not sure if that is relevant.” Baadal turned toward me. “I’m just trying to understand this myself, Joe.”

  “Okay, Baadal. So, whatever was said on the phone, it wasn’t what the gangsters wanted to hear. Obviously. A-hole, he’s still on the phone, right?” Baadal nodded. ”You’re still thinking it was a joke?” Baadal shook his head. “No. The white gangster goes to… your truck?”

“My truck. It was on the highway. Chulo gets dragged all the way to the wall. Skinny white guy… whoever was on the line must have hung up on him. He slams the phone, chases after the white gangster, meets up with him halfway across the lot. The gangster stops, sets a petrol can which he got from my truck… He sets it down, looks way over where the bus is parked. I sneak over to… here, the phone booth. Chulo, he’s… sitting, back to the wall. He sees me. He yells… something.”

“You couldn’t hear him?”

“I could. He’s saying, ‘No! Not her!’ That’s when I, I ran past the two guys and over to the grass. I yelled out that I had called the cops.”

“Had you?”

“No. That’s when the Mexican gangster poured the petrol; my petrol, on him. Chulo.”

Two vehicles pulled into the lot and passed us. I recognized both vehicles. One from Tamarack, one from Swamis. Both had surfboards on the roofs. The second car’s exhaust was louder. “Rumble,” I said.

Baadal Singh shook his head. “Louder.” We both nodded. “I fancied myself a revolutionary back in London. I didn’t run away so much as I was… banished. Sent… here.” Baadal put his right hand over the place where his inside pocket was on his coat. He looked at me for a moment before he flattened his hand as if it was a sort of pledge. I am not a killer, Joe. Remember I told you… the truth.” He smiled. “Not all of it, of course.”

“This isn’t over, is it?”

“This? No. Here is the… a secret part, Joe. I… so stupid. I walked up to Chulo, got down on my knees.” Baadal took a deep breath. “Do you want… to know?” I closed my eyes. I envisioned something I had seen in a magazine, a black and white photo of a Buddhist monk on fire. I opened my eyes. Baadal Singh was close to me. “The white gangster was talking to the cowboy. He said, ‘You know Chulo is a narc. Right?’”

“Narc. Chulo?”

“That’s how the guys from the truck responded.” Baadal Singh didn’t move his head. “At first.” He kept his eyes on me as he half-forced the calfskin glove onto his left hand. I must have looked away for a moment. I might have been elsewhere for a moment. Seconds.

Baadal Singh was somewhere else.

“Mr. Singh. Baadal; may I ask you… why were you at Swamis… that night?”

Baadal reached for his broom, grabbed it in the middle, and moved it up and down several times. “Another time, Joe. You have a lot to… memorize.” Baadal and then I turned toward the latest car pulling into the Swamis lot, Petey Blodget’s once-fancy fifties era four door Mercedes. It had a diesel engine sound and smell. Five boards were in a single stack on a rack, a browned and battered kneeboard on the top of the pile.

My focus shifted to the girl sitting in the middle of the front seat. Julia Cole. Baadal Singh looked up at the palm fronds, swaying in the trees above us. He hit my shoulder with his left hand. “Another time.”  

“Wait. Baadal.”

I wanted more information, but I couldn’t help but follow the Mercedes as it pulled in, clockwise, and backed into a spot two spaces to the left of the Falcon. Kids too young to drive bailed from the back seat. Julia Cole was the second person out of the front door on the passenger side, just behind the guy riding shotgun; Petey’s son. My age. Nicknamed Buzz.  

While the others rushed to the bluff, Julia Cole looked at me through the space between the stack of boards on the roof. At me. Not for very long. Petey was looking at Baadal Singh and I from the driver’s seat. He slowly opened the door, slowly pulled his feet out and onto the pavement. Julia Cole pulled her big gray bag out of the floorboards of the Mercedes. Petey walked toward the bathrooms.

Baadal Singh backed up a step. I took two steps toward him. ‘Gingerbread Fred. Fred Thompson, did you see him?”

“Later. Only. I was… busy.”

“But he saw… them?”

“He did.” Baadal lit up another cigarette with three matches and handed me the empty pack. “And they saw him.”

“Did he seem to… recognize… any of them?”

“You mean, did I?” I nodded. “No one I had seen before. But… I will never forget them.” Baadal Singh moved his face very close to mine. “Since you claim you don’t… imagine. Maybe you… guessed. I am not here… legally. More to it than that. I am, in England, legally… dead.” 

There was no way to hide or disguise my confusion. “They… Langdon, he let you go.”

Baadal Singh chuckled. “Bait. Yes. It’s a game, Joey; but you were right. Langdon did ask me, as you did, why I was at Swamis… that night.” Baadal Singh shook his head as he backed away. “And… if you know more about me you’ll know more about why.” He laughed as he turned away. He turned his head slightly as he let out smoke from the Gauloisis Bleaues cigarette. “Again, Joe, it’s Langdon I lied to; not… you.”

…

Copyright Erwin A. Dence, Jr.

Chapter 12, Part One- Joey Goes to “Swamis”…

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, real surfers, surf novels, surfing Swamis, Uncategorized, writings of Erwin Dence

…looking for clues to Chulo’s murder. He talks with witness, possible suspect Baadal Singh. Because each chapter follows a specific day, this day had to be split into three parts.

            CHAPTER TWELVE- PART ONE- SATURDAY, MARCH 29, 1969

I couldn’t say for certain if I had slept at all. I was outside the house at five. I had my lunch, in its pastel blue paper bag, in one hand, my dad’s big flashlight in the other. The Falcon was pointed toward the road. Getaway position. My new board was inside, my nine-six pintail on the by-this-time rusted-on factory racks. I carefully closed the driver’s side door, rolled the car down the driveway, turned the ignition key, popping the clutch, in second gear, at the county road. I turned on the headlights and retrieved a half a pack of Marlboros from under several Pee-Chee folders, those stacked on top of a four-track tape player, that set in the middle of the bench seat.

Waiting for a truck to pass before I could turn left onto Mission Road, I reached into the inside pocket of my windbreaker for matches. I had considered, briefly, pulling out ahead of the truck. I grabbed the flashlight from the dashboard, shined it on my fogged-up watch. “Should have left earlier.” I passed the truck on the last straightaway before Bonsall.

The wood-sided Mom-and-Pop store in Leucadia, perilously close to the southbound side of 101, didn’t open until six. It was parked in the pullout just past it at five-fifty-two. I reran the TV coverage from the previous nights, waited for the lights in the window to go on. Hostess donettes, frosted, a quart of chocolate milk, a tiny can of lighter fluid, and package of flints.

I pulled into the Swamis parking lot, did a soft left, and looped into a hard right. I stopped the car, shone my lights on the portion of the wall where Chulo had been killed. It looked the same as it always had. White, not even gray, not even yellowed by the headlights, low or high beams. I backed up and away, made a big lazy arc in the very middle of the empty lot, and pulled into a perfect spot, ten spaces over from the stairs. Optimum location. I leapt out, stood at the bluff. Not loud enough to suggest waves of any height. I exhaled the smoke from my third cigarette of the day. “South wind. Fuck!”

…      

            The Laura Nyro tape re-running the songs from side one of “Eli and the Thirteenth Confession.” It wasn’t the tape. It was the player. Side one of albums from the bargain bin, Leonard Cohen and Harry Nilsson and the Moody Blues, side one of The Doors.   

I looked at my increasingly water-logged diving watch each time another car pulled in, each time car doors slammed, each time a surfer or surfers walked out onto the bluff, peered into the darkness, and decided to go elsewhere.

            It was still an hour before sunrise, overcast, almost drizzly. I stuck my father’s flashlight under my left arm and walked straight across the pavement, across the grass. I followed the Self Realization Fellowship compound toward the highway, toward the forty-five-degree curve to where the compound’s original entrance had been. There were two large pillars, gold lotus topped, an arch between them, the wrought iron gates long secured with long rusted chains.

Two bushes had been replaced with full-sized plants. The soil around them, the grass next to them, were new. It would all blend in. Quickly. I touched the wall. I looked at my hand. Dry. Perfect, as if no one had been burned to death there.

Backing away from the wall. I walked across the wet grass and onto the pavement at the entrance to the Swamis parking lot. This was where the crowd had assembled, where the sawhorses and rope had been. Unlike the compound side, there were cigarette butts and candy wrappers and straws and smashed paper cups on the rough pavement, scattered and stepped on and run over.

Clues, I thought. Killers returning to the scene of the crime, blending in, hanging on the ropes. Missed clues. I pulled out the Marlboro hard pack from the inside pocket of my windbreaker, stuck the third to the last cigarette in my mouth, lit it with two matches held together. I turned on the flashlight, held each new clue close I had picked up to the beam.

Cigarette butts. Various brands. Lipstick on two of them. A partial pack of matches. “Carlsbad Liquor. Beer, Wine, and Spirits.” I opened it. “Left-handed,” I said. I pulled out several of the remaining matches. They left a red streak when I tried to light them. “Too wet.”

I put selected cigarette butts and the pack of matches into the Marlboro hard pack. I moved back and forth along the de facto line, established where dead center was. I crouched down to study the patch of debris in front of me. “Menthol.” I picked up a butt with a gray, slightly longer filter. I blinked, possibly from my own cigarette smoke in my eyes. “Different.”  

There was a noise. Slight. Footsteps. Pulling my flashlight out from under my arm with    my right hand, I stood up, right foot sliding back.

“Gauloises Bleaues,” a man, ten feet away, said.

I flipped the flashlight around and into my right hand. The beam hit just below his head.

“Picasso smokes these. Jim Morrison and John Lennon smoke these.” I slid my right foot up and even with my left and lowered the flashlight. The man was holding a push broom. Stiff bristles. “My uncle imports these. I smoke these.” I nodded toward the broom. “You and I spoke… before. You gave me a… sort of… newspaper.”

“I did? Okay. So, no one cleaned… here, behind the… the line.”

“So, you. You. Here. Scene of the crime, eh?”

            “Me? Here? Yeah. I don’t know… why.”

The man took two steps, closer. “Joe DeFreines, Junior. You surf. You work at a grocery store, Cardiff, weekends.” I leaned back. “I look a bit different than… I did.” He nodded toward the west end of the wall. “Meditation garden.”

             I flashed to that time. Four seconds, at the most. “Swami,” I said.

            “No. Not nearly. Gardener. I was with a Swami.”

The gardener’s beard and hair were tucked into a dark coat. The man’s eyes were almost the only part of his face showing. He had a bandana pulled up and covering most of his face. He had on the type of felt hats older men still wore; probably brown, pulled down around his ears.

“Lost most of my eyebrows. Eyelashes just got a good curling. Singed. Still there.”

“No! Shit!” I took half a step back. “It was… you.”

 “No shit.” The man extended his hands. He had a leather glove, dirtied calfskin, on his left hand. He had a white cotton glove on his right hand. His first two fingers taped together, as were the other two, and, separately, his thumb. The bandaging wrapped around the main part of his hand and was taped at his wrist. Three of his fingers showed stains that were either, I thought, something that had seeped through, ointment or blood. I was staring. “Second degree,” the gardener said, “Flash burns. Fools.”  

I turned and looked toward the highway. There was a late step-side pickup in the spot closest to the telephone booth on the highway side of the original parking lot. There was a three-legged fruit picker’s ladder on the rack over the bed, gardening tools bundled upright against the cab, the handle of a lawn mower hanging over the tailgate.

“You must have gone to the… hospital, Mister… You know my name. Mister…?”

“Singh. Baadal Singh. Baa, like ‘baa, baa, black sheep,’ sing like… sing.” I nodded. Baadal Singh laughed. “No hospital. They keep… records.” This seemed amusing to Mr. Singh. “I was two full days… downtown. Not in a cell. Interview room. Just… Dickson calls you Jody.” I nodded. “Your father… sorry about him, incidentally. Wendall, he calls your father Gunny.”

“They both do. Marines. Wendall and my… dad. Not Dickson. Why would they even mention… me?”

“They didn’t. Downtown detectives. One of them said… I am under the impression he was giving Wendall some… grief. And Langdon, he said…”  

            “Langdon?”

“Langdon. Yes. Fuck him.”

“But, Mister Singh, you were a witness; not a… suspect.”

 “Witness. Yes. Suspects have rights.” Baadal Singh looked at the little pile of cigarette butts and candy wrappers he had pushed close to my feet, then at me. I squatted to look more closely. Baadal Singh lowered the bandana that had been over his nose. “’Nice sunburn’ one of the detectives told me. ‘Hard to tell,” Dickson… said.”

Mr. Singh pushed the broom handle toward me. It leaned against my chest as I turned off the flashlight and stuck it back under my left arm. “Marines, you say?” Mr. Singh pulled the glove from his left hand with his teeth. He pulled back his coat. He reached into his coat and took a thin box of cigarettes from the coat’s breast pocket with his bandaged right hand. He laughed. The glove fell to the ground. I slid my right hand down the broom handle and picked up the glove.

Baadal Singh took a cigarette out of the pack. “Gauloisis Bleaues” he said. He showed me a book of matches from the Courthouse Bar and Grill. “Downtown. Langdon treated me to lunch on my… second day. Clientele of lawyers and bail bondsmen and cops and criminals. He told me I would, eventually, be charged with Chulo’s murder.” Though he didn’t laugh, Mr. Singh did smile. He pulled out three matches from the right-hand side with his right hand. “Right-handed,” he said, striking the three matches as one, and lighting the cigarette. “All clues that make me what Langdon called ‘completely convictable.’”

I didn’t react. I was playing back what Mr. Singh had just done.

“Joe. Chulo wasn’t a Marine, though, was he?”

I had, evidently, forgotten to inhale. My Marlboro was down to the filter. I spit it out on the clean part of the asphalt. I stomped on it. Too much information, too quickly. I was starting to hyperventilate.  Baadal Singh put his left hand on my right shoulder.

“Chulo? No.”

 “You’re calm. Right?” I nodded. “This is how real coppers work, Joe. Blackmail. Bluemail, maybe. Information is currency. You know that.” I coughed and took in a more normal breath. “Langdon… not really the other guys, he wants everything I know in exchange for… temporary, at least, freedom. What I know is there is too much money around. Cash. Fine for small… purchases. Someone needs to… Do you… understand? Good citizens. Businesspeople.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“You’re looking, though. Langdon was right about that. You get enough clues and you… analyze, you imagine.”

 “I don’t… imagine. I… memorize. I… remember.”

“Yes. Some… another day; you’ll have to tell me the difference.”

“So, Mr. Singh; you told them what you know?”

Baadal laughed. “Not even close, mate.”

            …

            It was closer to sunrise. I had been talking with Baadal Singh a while. “White pickup,” he said. “Farm truck. Double wheels in the back.”

            “White pickup. Farm truck. Double wheels in the back. Duelies, I think they’re called. The other vehicle, black car, loud muffler. Straight pipes. Made a rumbling sort of sound.”

            “Right. And?”

            “And Chulo had been in the white truck with a Mexican and a tall, skinny, white guy. Chulo had already been beaten. You believe the Mexican and the skinny white guy were taking Chulo to the Jesus Saves bus, but if they had, they would have had to face… Portia. So, they knew her?”

            “Drugs, Joe. You had to have known… that. Portia and Chulo? Marijuana?”

            “I told you, Mr. Singh. I just… didn’t pay attention.” Baadal Singh shook his head. “You weren’t a friend… of Chulo’s?”

            “Not… really.”

            “So, again; why are you telling me all… any of this?”

            “Because, if I… disappear, I want someone to know the truth.”

            “Not me. Not a good choice.”

            “You’re my only choice, though. So… remember.”

“So, the black car pulled in. Lights off. Two guys jumped out. Also a Mexican and a white guy. There was an argument. Between the two… groups.”

Baadal Singh, with me following, stopped between the phone booth and his truck. “The two white guys…” he said, “The one from the car pushes the skinny cowboy dude over here. He says, ‘We have customers lined up. They are serious. Call someone. Now! You need change, A-hole?’ Meanwhile, the Mexican guy… from the black car, he kicks Chulo a few more times, drags him across the parking lot.”

“Where were you, Mr. Singh?”

“Call me Baadal. Please.” Baadal pointed toward the concrete shower/bathroom facility. “Cowardly. Yeah.” Baadal stood by the door to the booth. “So, the… let’s call them gangsters… White gangster is outside, cowboy’s dialing. I see him… he kind of ducking, looking up…”

Baadal stepped away from the booth, looked across the street, past the railroad tracks, and up the hill. “Not sure if that is relevant.” Baadal turned toward me. “I’m just trying to understand this myself, Joe.”

  “Okay, Baadal. So, whatever was said on the phone, it wasn’t what the gangsters wanted to hear. Obviously. A-hole, he’s still on the phone, right?” Baadal nodded. ”You’re still thinking it was a joke?” Baadal shook his head. “No. The white gangster goes to… your truck?”

“My truck. It was on the highway. Chulo’s gets dragged all the way to the wall. Skinny white guy… whoever was on the line must have hung up on him. He slams the phone, chases after the white gangster, meets up with him halfway across the lot. The gangster stops, sets the petrol can down, looks way over where the bus is parked. I sneak over to… here, the phone booth. Chulo, he’s… sitting, back to the wall. He sees me. He yells… something.”

“You couldn’t hear him?”

“I could. He’s saying, ‘No! Not her!’ That’s when I, I ran past the two guys and over to the grass. I yelled out that I had called the cops.”

“Had you?”

“No. That’s when the Mexican gangster poured the petrol; my petrol, on him. Chulo.”

Two vehicles pulled into the lot and passed us. I recognized both vehicles. One from Tamarack, one from Swamis. Both had surfboards on the roofs. The second car’s exhaust was louder. “Rumble,” I said.

Baadal Singh shook his head. “Louder.” We both nodded. “I fancied myself a revolutionary back in London. I didn’t run away so much as I was… banished. Sent… here.” Baadal put his right hand over the place where his inside pocket was on his coat. He looked at me for a moment before he flattened his hand as if it was a sort of pledge. I am not a killer, Joe. Remember I told you… the truth.” He smiled. “Not all of it, of course.”

“This isn’t over, is it?”

“This? No. Here is the… a secret part, Joe. I… so stupid. I walked up to Chulo, got down on my knees.” Baadal took a deep breath. “Do you want… to know?” I closed my eyes. I envisioned something I had seen in a magazine, a black and white photo of a Buddhist monk on fire. I opened my eyes. Baadal Singh was close to me. “The white gangster was talking to the cowboy. He said, ‘You know Chulo is a narc. Right?’”

“Narc. Chulo?”

“That’s how the guys from the truck responded.” Baadal Singh didn’t move his head. “At first.” He kept his eyes on me as he half-forced the calfskin glove onto his left hand. I must have looked away for a moment. I might have been elsewhere for a moment. Seconds.

Baadal Singh was somewhere else.

“Mr. Singh. Baadal; may I ask you… why were you at Swamis… that night?”

Baadal reached for his boom. He grabbed it in the middle, moved it up and down several times. “Another time, Joe. You have a lot to… memorize.” Baadal and then I turned toward the latest car pulling into the Swamis lot, Petey Blodget’s once-fancy fifties era four door Mercedes. It had a diesel engine sound and smell. There was a single pile of five boards on a rack, a browned and battered kneeboard on the top of the pile. I shifted my focus to the girl sitting in the middle of the front seat. Julia Cole. Baadal Singh looked up at the palm fronds, swaying in the trees above us. He hit my shoulder with his left hand. “Another time.”  

“Wait. Baadal.”

I wanted more information, but I couldn’t help but follow the Mercedes as it pulled in, clockwise, and backed into a spot two spaces closer to us than the Falcon. Surfers bailed from three of the doors. Julia Cole was the second person out of the front door on the passenger side. The guy riding shotgun was Petey’s son. My age. Nicknamed Buzz. The four kids from the back seat ware all too young to drive themselves.

While the others rushed to the bluff, Julia Cole looked at me through the space between the stack of boards and the roof. At me. Not for very long. Petey was looking at Baadal Singh and I from the driver’s seat. He slowly opened the door, slowly pulled his feet out and onto the pavement. Julia Cole pulled her big gray bag out of the Mercedes as Petey walked toward the bathrooms.

Baadal Singh backed up a step. I took two steps toward him. ‘Gingerbread Fred. Fred Thompson, did you see him?”

“Later. Only. I was… busy.”

“But he saw… them?”

“He did.” Baadal lit up another cigarette with three matches and handed me the pack. “And they saw him.”

“Did he seem to… recognize… any of them?”

“You mean, did I?” I nodded. “No one I had seen before. But… I will never forget them.” Baadal Singh moved his face very close to mine. “Since you claim you don’t… imagine. Maybe you… guessed. I am not here… legally. More to it than that. I am, in England, legally… dead.” 

There was no way to hide or disguise my confusion. “They… Langdon, he let you go.”

Baadal Singh chuckled. “Bait. Yes. It’s a game, Joey; but you were right. Langdon did ask me, as you did, why I was at Swamis… that night.” Baadal Singh shook his head as he backed away. “And… if you know more about me you’ll know more about why.” He laughed as he turned away. He turned his head slightly as he let out smoke from the Gauloisis Bleaues cigarette. “Again, Joe, it’s Langdon I lied to; not… you.”

 -All rights to “Swamis” and changes to the original copyrighted manuscript are reserved by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. Thanks for respecting this.                     

REMEMBER to check out realsurfers.net on Sunday for non-Swamis content.

On Not Judging While Judging

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, Erwin Dence surf illustrations, hipster surfers, northwest surfing, old surfers, real surfers, realsurfers illustrations

It isn’t that I want to ridicule or make fun of or hate on people who want to engage in the exciting world/culture/sport/lifestyle, imagined or real, that is SURFING. I just want to understand some of the folks I see heading for waves, or hanging out near or on the beach, bobbing and/or weaving in the water.

Motivation. I know mine. I just want to ride waves.

Not party waves, and most likely better waves, bigger waves, and as always, I want to ride them better. “Better than whom” is a good question. Better than me. Mostly. Better than you. Yes, if possible. BUT, if you rip, great; I am always ready to identify and appreciate and applaud shredding and ripping and cruising and flowing; surfing done well. I’m really, and this has been true throughout my surfing, uh, life, trying to surf as well as I can during any session and given any and all other factors.

And yes, I am aware of my limitations, and that, to some young hipster I might seem worthy of… let’s say, assessment.

Fair game. See you in the water.

SO, I have been missing a bet by not photographing some of the people I see. Particularly ones I have some conversation with. I have the stories; I need the images.

This is a non-rendering of the guy I saw recently; walking across the entire length of the parking area to, maybe, check out whether there were some waves up thataway. There weren’t. In doing the drawing, I didn’t allow room for his sidekick. Now, It isn’t like anyone can really tell if someone is a good surfer by their outfit, or posture, or by what they say. BUT, if I judged this Grizzley Adams dude harshly, despite his tricked-out surf rig, with overhead sleeping deal AND bike/cooler/campstove rear bumper setup, and his quiver of board-bagged boards, and I shouldn’t have, I did judge his sidekick as a, um, newcomer. Neophyte in, potentially, neoprene. Hard to say. Dudes paraded back across, hopped in the rig, and skedaddled. Maybe you saw them. 

Okay. So, yeah, something that connects most of us is a desire to be considered/judged as cool/hip, maybe even rad/whatever the current word is WHILE also trying to be… better. Me too. WHEW! Wow, confession is so… so something. I’m thinking about that. But, Coolness; never achieved it; still trying to get, you know, like, better at it.

Meanwhile, thanks for checking out realsurfers.net and remember that the next chapter of “SWAMIS” on Wednesday. I think we’re up to Joey going to Swamis a few days after Chulo was killed. If so, because I have each chapter covering a single day, that chapter is a three-parter, mostly so it doesn’t not overwhelm any potential reader. Be one of them. And another thanks.

All content on realsurfers.net is covered by copyright protection. All rights reserved by the author/artist.

“Swamis” Detective Langdon on TV

Posted on by under Uncategorized

                        CHAPTER ELEVEN- FRIDAY, MARCH 28, 1969

It was just dark enough outside that the window above the kitchen sink reflected the image of my mother and me. I had scraped whatever was left on the three plates we had used into a small, galvanized garbage can, and was putting them into the soapy water. My mother was scrubbing the dishes and placing them into the drying rack. We both looked at our reflection rather than at each other.

“What does Larry say now, Mom?”

“Detective Lieutenant Wendall… temporary promotion… says Detective Lieutenant Langdon is not going back to Orange County anytime soon; not with the death of… Chulo Lopez.”

“No. Too much fun here.”

“Langdon has support. Downtown. Not the Chief. Politicians.” My mother did look at me. “Dishcloth, Atsushi.” Dishcloth. I pulled one from the towel bar, tossed it onto the drying rack. “However, he… Detective Wendall…” We were back to looking at each other in the window. “He says the Sheriff’s Office is no longer pursuing whoever was in the gray car.”

“But he, Wendall, he believes the, our story? The lie?”

“He was at the station. He heard your father talking to Freddy… and you… on the phone. He knew I was… leaving.”

“He got there… before you did. Did he ask… why you came back?”

She shook her head. “He will. Any question, your father would say, that logically should be asked…”

“Will be asked.”

“And we have… the answers.”

I unfolded one of three fresh dry washcloths, laid it on top of the soapy water, pushed it down with a flat palm. “I wish I had gone for pizza. I wish I hadn’t… chased… you.”

My mother tilted her head toward me, but only slightly. I slid the three big plates, three smaller plates, three forks, three knives, three glasses into the water. “Atsushi. People will disregard… so much… to believe what they wish to be true.”   

“It’s on!” It was Freddy, yelling from the short stretch of wall between the kitchen and the living room. “Come on!”

“We will just let them soak,” my mother said, giving me, not my reflection, a look that I understood to mean that there would be no further discussion on what Detective Sergeant Larry Wendall believed or why he chose to believe it. She stopped next to the little table that held the phone, turned toward me. “It is over. Accept it.” I stepped toward her. “Please.” She didn’t give me a chance to argue. “For me.”

…

“You’re missing it,” Freddy Hakaru DeFreines yelled. When our mother and I came into the living room, he was walking backwards from the television to our father’s lounge chair. Phillip Reed, the stand-in News Anchor, was on the screen, sitting at a table. I looked at Freddy. He pointed at the screen with both hands, put them together in a prayer gesture, and fell back into the chair, causing the back to recline, the footrest to pop out. Freddy slid into a position with his shoulders on one armrest, his calves on the other.

“Don’t sprawl, Hakaru.” Freddy ignored the request. “Out! Now!”  

Freddy twisted to straight, grabbed the arms of the chair, and jolted himself forward and upright. He joined me in the space between the coffee table and the console. Our mother sat on the kitchen end of the sofa. Freddy looked at her, walked over, turned up the volume.

Phillip Reed looked directly into the camera. “My guest, Orange County Detective Lieutenant Brice Langdon, has been coordinating with San Diego County’s Sheriff’s Office since the recent and tragic accidental death of our Detective… also a Lieutenant, Joseph DeFreines. And now, with the recent murder… I have to ask, Lieutenant; you have some… history with DeFreines, do you not?”

A second camera angle revealed Langdon sitting across the table from Phillip Reed. Langdon, wearing a black coat and a dark shirt and a plain dark tie, barely reacted to the introduction. He looked directly at the second camera. “Not one that is relevant, Mr. Reed.”

“He is,” my mother said, moving between Freddy and me, “so very… slick.”

“Slick,” I said, “Sleazy.”

“Sleazy slick Orange County dick,” Freddy said.

Phillip Reed continued. “What can you share with our viewers, Detective?”

Langdon managed a bit of a smile. “The California coast is experiencing incredible growth. With this growth comes a need for a more professional approach to law enforcement. The prevailing belief has been, ‘It’s under control.’ It is not. The Sheriff’s Office, out in the County, has had this ‘small town, we all know each other… philosophy.’ Not small town. We don’t know each other.” Langdon shook his head. “Not anymore.”

“Politicians,” my mother said, turning and walking away.

Langdon only looked at Phillip Reed for a moment. “We cannot continue to base our investigations on gossip and rumor.”

“Gossip and rumor, Detective Langdon?” 

“Local law enforcement has been… casual.” Langdon looked a bit frustrated. Briefly. “The unincorporated areas, the Sheriff’s Office’s… jurisdiction; this is no longer… Mayberry.”

“Our mother’s voice came from behind us. “He’s… talking about… your father.”

Freddy and I heard a slam, wood against wood. We both looked around. Our mother walked past us and set a drawer onto the console. She pulled out each of her husband’s badges, showed them to Freddy and me, put them back. There were three of them; his Deputy’s and his Detective’s badges, both silver; his Detective Lieutenant’s badge, gold. Each was mounted on a square of thick, black leather. She lifted the Detective’s badge up again, smelled the leather, held it out as if showing it to the TV screen. To Langdon.

Setting the badge back into the drawer, she pulled out a partial pack of non-filter Winston cigarettes, smelled it, put it back. She took out a Zippo lighter, chrome, with a raised replica of the San Diego Sheriff’s Office logo, with her right hand. She opened the top with her left hand, tried to strike it several times. It didn’t light. She handed it toward me.

I shook my head several times. Freddy held his hand out. She shook her head and placed the lighter, logo facing us, on the console, just above the TV screen.

Langdon continued, “The criminals are becoming ever more sophisticated. Our approach has to, has to become ever more professional.”

Phillip Reed looked at Langdon as if he expected him to say more. Langdon didn’t. “Well, Detective Langdon, here’s how small town we are around these here parts: Gossip, rumor. Detective DeFreines. I interviewed him… many times; even back when he was on a joint task force investigating what the Orange County Sheriff described as ‘an unfortunate incident in which several officers were, perhaps, overzealous.’”

“Good memory, Phillip. Exactly what he said. Overzealous. Yes.” Langdon nodded but kept his eyes on the News Anchor. “It was a while ago. We’ve all… changed.”

Phillip Reed looked directly into the camera. “Joseph DeFreines was a bonified war hero. Marines. In the Pacific; from Guadalcanal on. He served in Korea. Gunnery Sergeant. Most of his… advancement was through field promotions. You understand that… I assume, Lieutenant?”

“I do.”

 “He worked his way up in the Sheriff’s Office. Through the ranks.”

            “One could do that.” Langdon folded his hands on the desk. Exhaled, softly, reset his smile, and added, “In those days.”

“The difference between gossip and news, Detective, according to DeFreines, is two days or two different, independent sources.”

“Or both. Yes. Turn of phrase. He was great at… that.” Langdon stood up. The camera took a moment to adjust. Phillip Reed stood. Langdon said, “I came here to address some of the… gossip.” Langdon sat back down. He looked into the second camera. After a moment, the image switched to that angle.

“As has been reported, the victim of this vicious attack, Julio Lopez, was a sort of street and beach evangelist, and a delivery driver for a Leucadia flower business.” Langdon paused. “It is true that Julio Lopez was present at the accident in which…” Langdon looked over at Phillip Reed, off camera. “…Detective Lieutenant Joseph DeFreines, Gunny to his compatriots, was killed. I stress… accident. Mr. Lopez was a witness. Witness. I believe, Mr. Reed… Phillip, you covered this… accident.”nic

Phillip Reed, off camera, said, “I did.” Ruth DeFreines stepped closer to the console, blocking the screen. She turned, facing her sons. Reed continued, “Automobile accident, east of the Bonsall Bridge. Detective DeFreines went off the road to avoid a head on collision. The road was closed for seven hours.”

“Yes. We have not completed that investigation, but Mr. Lopez was at that scene, yes, and again, a witness. Allow me to address another… rumor, here. Despite the positioning of Julio Lopez’s… body, at the wall surrounding the Self Realization Fellowship compound, and the fire; despite Mr. Lopez having been, as I have stated, a sort of… evangelist, we have found no… religious connection, and none to the ongoing conflict in Vietnam.” 

“Chulo.” The angle went back to Phillip Reed. “His nickname. Chulo.”

“Yes, Mr. Reed. Chulo. Unusual nickname for a… Mexican. Adjective. Pretty.”

“Yes. Unusual. Will you, Detective Langdon, with your… professional approach to law enforcement, tell the viewers that Chulo Lopez’s killer or killers will be brought to justice?”

“They, or he shall be.”

“Mom,” I said, “We have to see this.”

My mother moved down the length of the console, sliding her fingers on the edge.

“You wanted to address the current situation as it relates to… marijuana.”

            The image on the screen switched to a closeup of Langdon. “I have heard… rumors.”

 Mrs. Joseph J. DeFreines mouthed something in Japanese that had to have been a swear, shook her head, and turned off the television. Freddy and I stood up. Both hands on Freddy’s back, she pushed him into the hallway. She turned back, opened her right hand, swung it toward the console.

I picked up the lighter. “Rumors,” I said, popping the top open with my thumb, striking the wheel. It lit this time, burned for a few seconds, and went out.

“Slimy bastard,” my mother said. I popped the top closed with my thumb, set the lighter back on the console. My mother walked back to the console. She slid the two doors that would cover the TV screen. vertical slats, together. The one on the right stuck. She pulled it hard enough that it slammed into the other door. She pushed me away. I was almost to the hallway when I heard the chink, ka-chink sound of my father’s lounge chair. I turned back.

Ruth DeFreines was sitting in her husband’s chair, kicked back, holding my father’s lighter and his detective’s badge. “Atsushi, I plan to sell this place,” she said. “Have to. Hakaru… Freddy will be out of junior high, you are… graduating. He says we should move somewhere near Live Oak Park. What do you think?”

“Mom,” I said, “you’re a detective’s wife; you know where I’d want to live.”

“Widow. And yes, I do… know.” 

I had a confusing series of images going through my mind as I went into the kitchen and finished the dishes. I could only guess what my mother, sitting in her late husband’s lounge chair, was imagining. I did, of course, have more than one theory. I am a detective’s son.

REMEMBER that “Swamis” is protected by copyright. All rights reserved by the author.

Check out some non-Swamis stuff on Sundays.

Hipsters and Kooks and Kids and Swells Gone Awry

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, real surfers, surf fiction, surf novels

HAPPY LABOR DAY, I guess, sorry I’m, like twelve hours late with a Sunday posting. One hour, actually, since I woke up from going to bed early to work on this. I have, since I started working, fifty-four years ago, or so, traditionally worked on Labor Day. Yeah, poor me. I spent most of the accumulated martyr points going surfing when other people were working. Poor them.

YES, I did go on a scientifically based, surf forecast driven, search for surfable waves. And it wasn’t just me. People who surf, folks with all levels of skill and expertise and stoke, head out on three day weekends, value added and backups (traffic, ferry waits, Gorst, Tacoma) avoided (maybe) by starting on Thursday and/or heading back to civilization on Tuesday, pack up their board-bagged quivers and their surf-slick modified rigs, their pop-tops, and roof tents.

NO, I can’t really tell you where I went or what I found, wave-wise. This isn’t a self-imposed rule; there have been, um, reminders that blowing up spots is not in the best interest of someone who lives on the Olympic Peninsula. WHAT I CAN SAY is that, and mostly because we all look at the same forecasts, I did see a lot of CHARACTERS,

THIS ISN’T NEW. And, yes, I might put on my lucky HOBIE shirt, try to do a bit of posturing on the beach, trying, and failing, to look, you know, cool. I mean, as cool as someone who just turned 72 can manage.

YOU DO KNOW. Thought so.

FORECASTS- If one looked beyond the numbers, one could find that the swell numbers were one thing, the overall direction of the waves another. There is a real explanation as to why a long period swell might avoid the (relatively) shallower water and cruise on past the relatively narrow entrance to the Strait. I just don’t have it. And either do the many many enthusiasts who pull into the parking and/or viewing areas for known spots, discuss it among the other members of their crew, and move on. And, of course, on.

BECAUSE I’ve been doing this for so long, spent so much time in pull outs and lots, I almost always run into people I’ve seen in the past. This is usually great; reliving stories, waiting for the swell to change direction slightly, the tide to rise or fall appropriately.

BECAUSE I have seen such a wide variety of surf… people, I thought that I am missing a bet by not taking a few cell phone photos of interesting folks. WHAT really prompted this was seeing this one dude, big, bushy brown beard, distinctive hat, some sort of beverage in one hand, wearing shorts to best show off his calf tattoos, some short of shirt that matched his beard; and he’s cruising across the rocks with his, I’m guessing, sidekick, not as hipsterly dressed, and they’re heading up the beach to determine, I guess, if the waves are actually larger than they appear. Something. I don’t know. They weren’t gone long. Before I could get my shit together and chase them down, they were back in their custom surf rig and moving on.

OPPORTUNITY MISSED. Regroup. I will get a HIPSTER OF THE WEEK thing going soon. MAYBE not every week. ANYWAY, I took a photo of these guys to hold us over.

Okay, so it’s BARRY, whose name I remember because my son Sean’s cat is also named Barry, and who wondered that, not only I didn’t remember him, but the legendary TIM NOLAN also didn’t remember him, specifically, when they crossed paths recently. “I had longer hair,” he said. “Oh. Okay.” Next to him (and I did point out the double beach chair) is… no, not sure of his name. Didn’t get enough clues. Both of those guys had little kids who they would deck out in kid-sized suits and take out to challenge the waves. I did take a photo, but it might reveal the actual spot, and it might look as if there were actual waves. On the right is MIKE, who I’ve seen for years. Same van. I called him STU. No, not Stu, who, coincidentally, I ran into later at what was FRANK CRIPPEN’S surf shop, NORTH BY NORTHWEST, in Port Angeles.

IF I can’t collect photos, I do collect stories. For all the surf enthusiasts who got to if not into the water, you also have stories. Adventures. I tried to wave at all the surf rigs I passed on my way back down Surf Route 101. HEY, I DON”T know, maybe that change in tide and/or angle might have set the stage for someone’s awesome tale.

Surf rigs from some not so distant past. I kind of thought Mike’s VW might have been in this shot. I do remember there was one more there before I decided to take the photo. That’s my now-deceased Toyota wagon. I think all these surfers are saying, “Hey, Dude, don’t blow up the spot!” Or, “Hey, man, does this place ever have good waves?” No.

SO, do try to check out realsurfers on Wednesdays for the continuation of “Swamis.”

Chapter 10- Fallbrook High, Two Days After Chulo’s Murder at “Swamis”

Posted on by under "Swamis" the novel, real surfers, surf novels

                        CHAPTER TEN- THURSDAY, MARCH 27, 1969

There were, at Fallbrook Union High School, three large, rectangular, concrete planters between the administration buildings and the band room and the gravel student parking lots on one side, the Senior Area and the majority of the school’s classrooms on the other. The planters featured flat tops for seating. The sides were angled in for leg dangling. The gymnasium, cafeteria, and the boys’ locker rooms were on the downhill side, beyond a paved parking lot. Closer to the planters were two trailers that offered chips, pre-made sandwiches, and ice cream bars, and milk, and apples, at lunch time and the mid-morning ‘nutrition’ break.

Since my sophomore year, I was the ‘fly’ part of ‘you fly I’ll buy.’ I usually went up the ‘out’ side of the shortest line. I was only challenged a few times, never twice by the same boy. Reputation, mostly. Most acted as if they were fine with it.   

The express service happened often enough that it became a standard for me to offer the girl who let me cut the line a creamsicle or a fudgesicle, her choice, with a nod toward my friends, Gary and Roger. “On him,” I would say. If the girl asked which one, I would answer, “Your choice.” One or both of my friends would smile, perhaps flipping the offended girl a peace sign, often returned with a giggle for any other girl in the line and a sort of stern look toward me. I returned any thank you with a “not my money.”

From my first days in high school, I spent most of my non-class time, non-library time standing, usually with a book or notebook in my hands, next to the spindly tree closest to the action; studying, memorizing, and not-exactly-secretly observing the rites and rituals, the fights and romances, the cliques and the loners. Eventually this became the spot where the surf crowd, those who tried it and gave up, those who stuck with it, friends of my very few friends, hung out. On, but not in the planter. That was my spot.

It was lunch time. Murder was the topic. Gary was talking. A crowd had gathered and grown. Too big. I pulled Gary up onto the downhill side of the planter. I moved over to my tree, a Pee-Chee open, listening, trying to appear as if I wasn’t. Gary continued talking about the blackened wall and the cops and the TV crews; not loud, but for Gary, who rarely broke his cool, he was borderline enthusiastic.  

             And Gary was receiving great feedback. There was a rhythm. Words, response. The volume was increasing, the pace quickening. Enthusiasm building.   

            Someone jumped up next to Gary, pumping his arms as if he had been in the Swamis parking lot. The rhythm was broken. Gary looked at the chubby kid with the big, black-rimmed glasses. “Squintz?”

            “Ray Saunders.”

            “Oh, sorry… Ray Saunders; did I call you… Squintz?”  

Some in the crowd repeated, “Squintz.” Ray Saunders couldn’t just jump back down. He took two blind steps backwards, into the dirt and redwood bark, bumping against me.

            Gary, resuming his story, said something about the lingering smell of burnt flesh. The crowd reacted. Ray Saunders and I didn’t join in. “Brain DeFreines,” he said, “you’re the head dude of the surf dudes; why weren’t you there?”

“Because, Ray Saunders,” I said as I looked down at his feet, one of his wing-tipped shoes crushing one of the ground cover plants, “I was here.”

“Sorry, Joey,” Ray Saunders said, moving his foot off the plant, removing his glasses, leaning in toward me. I may have shrugged. I did close the folder. Ray put his glasses back on, looked at the top of the folded Free Press that was sticking out of the top of the PeeChee. “Are you in this week’s… edition?”

“Not by choice.”  

“So, Joseph DeFreines, Junior; you, all cool and shit; you probably blew your GPA by not giving your oral… presentation in Poly Sci.”

“I don’t do oral… presentations. Ray Saunders.”

“Today’s mine.” I nodded. “You’re afraid? You?” I nodded again. “Well, Brain DeFreines, I am scared shitless; and I’m doing mine… anyway.”

“Call me… not that. Ray Saunders, you are… too close to me. And you are staring.”

“Kindergarten. Before your… accident. Morning classes.” I was staring. “We were friends. You, me, Frankie Terrazas, Danny Turner, and, oh yeah, Grant Murdoch. Friends. Do you remember… anything about… us?”

I visualized a tall kindergartner pulling a red wagon with a much smaller kid inside; another kid, in glasses, running alongside, carrying a too-big-for-him American flag.

I tried to see past the reflection in Ray’s lenses; “What was I… like?”

“You were five. We were all… five.”

“Frankie Trousers,” I said, after a longer than usual delay. “What happened to him?”

“Terrazas.” Ray hit me on the shoulder. “Shit, man… Joey; you do remember.”

“Bits and pieces.” I looked at the students below Ray and me. Several were looking at us. “Don’t do that…” I hit Ray on his shoulder with my left hand. “…again.” We both shook our heads. Slightly. “But, Ray, we were all… friends?”

“Then? Yes. You know… Fallbrook. Dads get transferred… other shit.” He took a big breath, adjusted his glasses. “Grant turns into a dick. Shit like that.”

 The rhythm of Gary’s lines, and the crowd’s reactions, had been ongoing.

Carefully avoiding the plants, I stepped around Ray Saunders, onto the flat concrete surface, and next to Gary. Gary stopped talking. The crowd noise stopped. I pulled Ray forward and pushed him against Gary. “New nickname for Squintz,” I whispered.

Gary looked at Ray Saunders, looked at me. “Joey DeFreines has an announcement.”

“Fucker,” I whispered, putting my left hand up and over my eyes as if it was to lessen the glare. “Ray Saunders… here…” I raised my voice. “He will be… hereafter, known as ‘X-Ray.’” There was no immediate response. “Oral presentation,” I whispered to Ray as I took a step back into the bark, aware of where the plants were.

 Dangerous Doug and then one of the Billys, Billy ‘The Hawk,’ started chanting, “X-Ray.” Others followed. Ray Saunders raised both arms. Gary pushed him off the planter. The two students closest to the falling students separated. X-Ray, stumbling forward, caught his balance by crashing into the Hawk in a sort of full-frontal hug. The crowd reacted. The Hawk spun Ray around, grabbed him around the waist and lifted him up. X-Ray flexed his arms again.

The response, the loudest to that point, was almost instantly muted. Someone said, “Greenwald.” Most of the students looked toward the administration building.

The crowd of students parted. The vice principal, coatless, came through. “Gary. I saw you on TV. Where’s your running mate?” Gary pointed behind his back at me. “The other one.” Gary didn’t move. Greenwald pointed at me. “DeFreines, out of the planter.”

Other students moved aside to reveal Roger, sitting with a sophomore girl, one who had chosen creamsicle, on the Senior Area side of the planter. Gary did a hang five pose on the edge of the planter, slid his right foot up to make it a hang ten pose, with a bit of an arch, and jumped down. Roger leaned over, gave the sophomore girl a kiss on the forehead. The Hawk yelled out, “Overshow,” looked at Vice Principal Greenwald, and whispered, “Overshow.”

The sophomore girl ran around the far end of the planter and joined three giggling classmates. She held her next giggle for no more than three seconds. Roger approached the Vice Principal with his hands out in front of him, wrists together and up. Greenwald shook his head, looked at Gary, then looked up at me.

The bell announcing the end of lunch rang. “DeFreines, out of the planter.” I started to do a salute, dropped my hand onto my chest instead. The Hawk shouted “Freedom!” Dangerous Doug shoved him aside. Greenwald led Gary and Roger toward the administration building. Neither of my surf friends looked back at me.

X-Ray Squintz Saunders hung back near some wooden benches, looked at me. I walked to the corner of the planter, squatted, and jumped, both feet even. I said, “Parallel stance.” Ray Saunders chuckled as if he knew what I had meant.

…

The arrow in this map of the actual Fallbrook Union High School campus pretty much points to the place where most of this chapter in the fictional story takes place.

…

Ray Saunders and I turned into a breezeway in the middle of the second block of classrooms. Lockers, two high, lined both sides. The locker I had claimed since my freshman year was in the middle, top row, west side. Optimum location. Scotch taped to the door was a drawing, pencil and ink, partially colored in, scotch taped to the door. It was almost a cartoon, someone behind a window, expressionless. “Surf’s down, Jody” was written at the bottom in red crayon.

Ray moved closer to the drawing, pulling up his glasses. “Oh. Grant fucking Murdoch.”

             “Yeah.” My books and notebooks were tucked under my left arm. I pulled out the latest North County Free Press from one of the folders with my right hand, stuck it under Ray’s right arm. He took it out, unfolded it, held the front page up to the locker next to mine. He looked at the photo of me at the window during the wake for my father, looked at me. I tucked two fingers under the right side of the drawing and pulled. I allowed the drawing to roll up and fall to the concrete. I turned the combination lock, opened the locker.

I put my stuff, and the drawing, into an already stuffed locker. I took out a yellow notebook, “Political Science” on the cover. I pulled out several other newspapers, handed them to Ray. He looked at them quickly, folded them neatly, handed them back. I tried not to slam my locker but did.

“Lee Ransom didn’t have any photos from the murder.” I took a breath.

“You could just read yours… your presentation.” Ray took a breath. “You probably have it memorized. You could… Hey, Joey; I know you’re going to go… to the scene. Can I, maybe…? I have a car. I could act like I don’t know you.”

“No. Ray. See…? I am glad we were friends, Ray, back… then.”

“X-Ray. Yeah. Then. I get it. You’re… you surf, you’re cool. You have enough friends. You…” Ray took several breaths. “Everyone is afraid of you. You know that… don’t you?”

“Are you?” Ray shook his head. I moved closer. My eyes were close to his glasses. “I have hurt people; I have struck out… because…” I closed the locker, spun the combination lock. “You see it, don’t you… X-Ray? Life. I’m scared shitless… and I’m doing it… anyway.”

All rights to “Swamis,” copyright 2020, and all subsequent changes to the manuscript are claimed by the author, Erwin A. Dence, Jr. Please respect these rights. Thanks.

ALL RIGHT, now that the internet at my house is back and running at its usual speed, it is as if the three day lull was easy. SPEAKING OF LULLS… Hope to have some surf-related stuff available on Sunday. Meanwhile, spending too much time on SURF ROUTE 101.