Chapter Four

I wasn’t sure why I kept going back to watch the surfers. I would sit on the rocks and watch Genghis, Gorbie, Weed, Tim and all the others arrive in their cars with music blasting. Then they changed into their wet suits, sometimes stripping naked and not caring who saw.

I watched wannabe surfers renting boards from Goofy at his surf truck and paddling out into the shore break. By one o’clock on a weekend afternoon, the beach would be crowded. Everything out here had changed. When I was little and my mom and I walked on the beach, it was almost always empty. Maybe one or two old-guy surfers. But nothing like this.

Tara was there too. She looked at me, but I avoided her. She’d probably never bother to try to talk to me again.

Goofy was between rentals when he yelled to me. “Benji Boy, c’mere.”

I walked over. He had that big goofy grin on his face. He smelled like he’d been toking up.

“Benji, you paid for a day and used the board for maybe thirty minutes. Why don’t you give it another go?”

“Duh,” I said, pointing at my face.

“Salt water would do it good. Fall off a horse, you gotta get back on.”

“Thanks, Goof, but no way.”

I watched as Tara picked up her board and ran for the water. She looked as if she couldn’t wait to get out there and surf. Part of me still felt the same way. But the horse had knocked me off and then kicked me hard. I was afraid to try again.

I turned to walk home and saw this old dog. And I mean old—graying hair, ancient filmy eyes and droopy jowls. I stooped and petted him. It seemed to take all the effort he could muster to wag his tail. I glanced around and it didn’t look like he belonged to anyone.

“Whose dog are you?” I asked.

More tail wagging.

“Lost?”

Those sad eyes again. But he began to walk, and then he stopped and looked back at me like he wanted me to follow. I followed.

The dog trotted slowly off to the empty end of the beach, where he stopped by an old Ford camper van. The van had California plates and four longboards strapped to the racks on the roof. The license plate read Surf’s Up and the side doors were open. Inside, an old guy was napping on the bed. The dog began to lap from a steel water bowl.

“California dog, eh?” I said to my slobbering friend.

The man inside stirred and then suddenly sat bolt upright. He glared at me. “You trying to steal my dog?” he snapped.

“What?”

“Mickey D there. You weren’t thinking about stealing him and selling him for medical research?”

“What are you, crazy?”

He laughed. “You better believe I’m crazy. I’ve got scars to prove it and three ex-wives that would testify on my behalf.” He got out of the van, moving quickly as if he was just a kid. But he was old. “I was only joking. Mickey D finds people and brings them to me.”

“Mickey D’s the dog, right?”

“Yeah. Named for Mickey Dora. Surfer I once knew. You surf, kid?”

His eyes were blue and they seemed to penetrate deep into me. His skin was tanned like old leather and he had a scraggly beard of gray and a head of thinning blond-gray hair. The Hawaiian shirt, cutoff jeans and leather sandals completed the picture.

“Tried,” I said. “Tried and failed.”

He stared at my face. “Oh, I see. Heck, I thought that was a tattoo. Where I come from, people pay to have something hideous like that put on their face.”

“California, right?”

“What are you, a boy genius? You go to Harvard or what?”

He made me laugh. Crazy or not, I liked this guy.

“School’s out, so I’m giving my brain cells a rest.”

“At least you have brain cells. And they still work. You’re in good shape by my estimates.” He stuck out his hand. “Ray,” he said. “Ray Cluny, from Santa Barbara.”

“Ben Currie, from Lawrencetown Beach.”

We shook hands, and I thought he was going to rip my arm off.

“Freaking Nova Scotia,” Ray said, staring up toward the sun. “I’ve been wanting to get here for years. Always wimped out at the drive. It’s a long way from the Pacific. But I’m here now. Figured it was now or never.”

“How long are you here for?”

“As long as it takes,” he said mysteriously. “They said it would be like going back in time. Like California in the early sixties. Before the Beach Boys. Before all that.”

I was trying to calculate how old he must be but couldn’t do the math. “You’ve been surfing a long time?”

“Sixty years. Maybe more.”

“Holy mackerel. How old are you?”

“Seventy-five and thanks for asking, kid. It makes me feel right young to have to say it out loud. Look at Mickey D there. In dog years, he’s a hundred.”

Mickey D had curled up and lay by the tire. His eyes were closed. He looked content.

“What brought you here?”

“Where I live, you can’t get a wave on your own. Everywhere is crowded now. Not like the old days. Surfing is all hyped up and commercialized. You can’t get away from it. But here, you still have elbow room. A guy could have a clean wave all to himself. Have some fun. Like the old days. You know any good breaks? Secret spots, that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, I do,” I said slowly.

Ray thought my pause meant something else. “But you’re keeping them to yourself, right? I can dig it.”

“No, it wasn’t that. I could take you there. Down past Three Fathom Harbor. Near where my grandfather had his fish shack.”

“Like the old man and the sea. Bet your granddad has some stories.”

“Had stories. He died not long ago.”

“Sorry. It hurts, doesn’t it, when someone close to you dies?”

“Yeah, it hurts.” And I suddenly realized that thinking about my grandfather made me feel like I was about to cry. Ray could tell.

“Sorry. I blurt things out. I’ll try not to do it again. Got a board and wet suit? Wanna share some of that shore break on the other side of the dune with all those hotshots and an old kahuna?”

I shook my head no. “No board. No wet suit. And I’m still recovering from my first surf lesson.”

Ray smiled broadly. “I got extra boards and wet suits. What do you say?”

I looked at the other cars in the parking lot. There would be a dozen or more kids in the shore break. I couldn’t handle them laughing at me as I struggled to learn.

“I can’t,” I said. “Not here. Not now. I’ll watch you from the beach.”

Ray smiled again. “Okay,” he said with a mock-threatening look on his face. “But it’s not over. Your time will come. Mickey D will track you down and drag you back here, Ben. And I’m going to get you to show me that secret break, even if I have to bribe you.”

I walked off down the beach. I thought I was headed home, but I came back twenty minutes later and saw Mickey D sitting by the edge of the water. Ray was out there on his longboard—one old guy of seventy-five and a bunch of young surfers on tiny boards. He was catching more waves than any of them, and he was cruising across those long blue walls of water like some kind of Hawaiian surf god.

And part of me was thinking, I’m never going to be able to do that. Not in a million years.