Chapter Twelve

There were two more good days of tropical storm waves. I surfed Nirvana Farm and another spot farther down the shore with Tara. It was a place called the Wreck because a steamship had run aground there in the 1930s. You could still see chunks of the hull on the shore, and part of it was beneath us where we surfed in the clear dark water. The waves were perfect A-frames with a right and a left ride from the peak. Tara and I could both take off at the same time and turn in opposite directions, sliding smoothly down away from the peak.

We were still sitting near the break at the Wreck when Tara said, “You know, you should surf in the contest this weekend.”

I had decided to steer clear. “No way. I’d get chewed up.”

“Not necessarily. You’d have three options. Go in the junior men’s division. Or go in the longboard. Or go in both. Hey, what do you have to lose?”

“It’s not my scene. I’m a loner, remember?”

“Well,” she said, paddling for an upcoming wave, “I’ve entered the women’s category. And there’s some stiff competition. I don’t expect to win. I just want to do it.”

The wave picked her up then, and she made an amazing drop. She did a hard bottom turn, jammed it to the top of the wave and pulled a brief but heroic floater before she dropped again with full control. If it was the last heat in a contest, she’d have cleaned up.

I hadn’t seen Ray for a couple of days, which felt odd. I assumed that he had driven down the coast with his dog to catch some of the remaining tropical storm waves at some truly remote locations. But that evening I rode my bike over to my grandfather’s old fish shack to see if he had returned and to swap some stories with the big kahuna.

I knocked.

“C’mon in,” he said.

I went in and Mickey D greeted me with the usual wagging tail. Ray was sitting in a stuffed chair reading a book called An Avalanche of Ocean. He didn’t look so good.

“You all right?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered assertively, “the universe is unfolding as it should. Ever hear that one before?”

“No, I don’t know that much about the universe. Spent my whole life here on the Eastern Shore.”

“And a lucky gremlin you are.”

“You find your own secret point break or what? Didn’t see you at the Farm.”

Ray put his book down. He looked old and tired. “I was feeling a bit wasted. Had to lay low for a few days. Gettin’ old, I guess.”

“Anything I can do?” I asked.

“Yep,” he said. “Surf in the contest Saturday. Just to see what it feels like.”

“Did Tara tell you to say that?”

“Nope. Women don’t tell me what to do. I saw the posters at the beach, figured it’d do you good. Take you to the next level.”

“I didn’t think you liked the idea of surfing competitions.” I spat the final word out.

“It’s good mental discipline,” Ray said.

“Hell, I don’t want you to become a full-fledged professional poster boy for wet suits. I just want you to confront the things that scare you.”

“I didn’t say the contest scared me.”

“Then what do you have to lose?”

“Thirty bucks. That’s what it costs to enter.”

Ray cleared his throat, pulled out his wallet and put a twenty and a ten into my paw. “Now you don’t have an excuse.”

Seemed like I was being shoved up against a wall. “You gonna be there to coach me?”

“Sure, I’ll be there.”

I was scared. Surfing alone with no audience was one thing. Surfing in a contest with a couple of hundred people watching was something else. But I decided to do it. I registered at eight in the morning and watched the parking lot fill up with rowdy, stoked surfers. The air was cold, the wind was onshore and the waves looked mean and choppy. They were not perfect conditions by a long shot. Whoever could surf bumpy, close-out waves was going to win.

Tara showed up late and just barely registered in time. She was up against at least twenty other girls and women.

I stood around in my wet suit for over an hour until my first heat—the juniors—came up. Just my luck, I was up against Genghis, Gorbie and Weed. It couldn’t get much worse. And I was the only junior on a longboard. The air horn sounded and we ran for the water. I was wasted and breathing hard by the time I’d paddled through the incoming waves. Gorbie gave me a threatening grin and went for the first wave headed our way. I didn’t even try. He took a quick, late takeoff, punched off the bottom and back up to the nasty lip of the wave. He smacked it hard intentionally and sent a rooster tail of spray way into the air. You could hear people on the beach cheering loudly.

Genghis was on the next wave and was equally aggressive. Weed hung back and took a fairly easy wave, made a good drop and cranked around a couple of sections. Me, I wanted to go home. What an idiot I was to think I could do this.

I was alone when the next bumpy set arrived. I should have let the first two or three waves pass and go for the next one. But I was antsy, so I made a bad decision and went for the first wave. I caught it, but it began to break right away. It was a big messy wave with hardly any wall to it. I dropped and tried to turn, but the board stalled. I had barely stood up and was trying to claw at the water to get some more speed. But it was too late.

A big lumpy pile of white water slammed down on me, knocking me from the board and pummeling me. The water was surprisingly cold today. When I popped up, I could see I was right in front of Weed, who was trying to paddle back out. I grabbed my leash but not before the next wave had picked up my board and driven it toward him. Weed had to dive to get out of the way. He was cursing me as we untangled our leashes.

After that, winded and skittish, I found myself being dragged down the beach by the cross current as I tried to paddle back out against a seemingly nonstop onslaught of heavy waves.

By the time I was back in the contest zone, I had two minutes left. You needed at least four waves to complete a heat. I had caught only one—and a shoddy one at that. My heart was thumping hard, and I felt like crap.

I waited for a wave that no one else was going for and I dug in deep. It caught me almost like the one before, but I took off on an angle this time, using the advantage of the longboard to race across the wave without having to make a bottom turn. I had a wind-chopped, head-high wall to work with and got some distance before it sectioned. I grabbed a rail and squatted low and made it past the white water and back up onto the wall as it steepened in the shore break. I tucked in low again and let this big mass of shore break— more sand than water—curl its vicious fist above me. When it came down, it came down like a steel pipe on the back of my neck.

I ended up right on the beach, in a sprawl, with a second shore-break killer wave pounding me into the sand. I felt dizzy and wobbly as a third wave smacked me off my feet when I tried to retrieve my shore-battered board.

Then the air horn blew. And I looked up to see at least a hundred people on the beach in front of me. They were looking right at me. And they were laughing.