Wave Warrior (2 page)

“Yeah, right,” I said sarcastically.

“What?” I could tell I'd hurt her feelings. Now I knew just how big of an idiot and loser
I really was. I couldn't bring myself to say anything else.

I got on my bike and rode the grassy path back to the road. It was the beginning of summer and already I was wishing it was over.

The next day was Sunday. At breakfast my mom stared at me. “You sure we shouldn't go to the hospital? What if your nose is broken?”

“It's not broken. Besides, I'm not going to wait around for hours in an emergency room all day.”

“He's right,” my father added, oddly coming to my defense. “Besides, it's no big deal. I've had worse than that. It builds character.” He was smiling. I think he was secretly proud of me. A black eye meant I was becoming a man. I could take the punishment.

“I'll be okay,” I said. “I just feel like hiding for a while.”

“You can't hide, Ben,” my mom said. “It's summer. You need fresh air.”

My father cleared his throat. “Well, I was talking to my boss about getting you a summer job in the plant.”

Working in a factory that made cardboard boxes sounded like a death sentence. I knew that anything I said now would be the wrong thing. Luckily, my mother agreed with me. “I don't think Ben should do that.” She paused and looked at me. “He's still a boy. He shouldn't have to grow up yet.”

“When I was his age...” my father began, but he was cut off by my mother.

“We all know about what you did when you were his age, dear.”

That was the end of that conversation. The job at the box factory would hang over my head all summer unless I found something to do that would keep me out of the house. And I wasn't sure my mother's small victory was going to save me altogether. My old man would keep alive his dream of getting his son a job at his factory. And if he had his way, that would be the end of my so-called life.

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.

It rained for almost a week after that. If it wasn't raining, the fog was so thick you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. There was nothing for me to do but hang around the house, watch bad tv reruns and get bored.

By Thursday, my mom was siding with my father. “Ben, maybe you'd be better off working with your father than just moping around the house.”

“I'm not moping,” I lied. I was hiding out from the world until I looked half normal. The black had turned to blue and I hoped it was fading. I kept thinking about Tara. And about surfing. And about the fact that my life was over before I even got my ass out of high school. I ate a lot. Pretty soon I'd be fat as well.

While flipping through the satellite channels, I discovered the sports network had a documentary about old guys who surfed. It was way cool. These were the legendary surfers, now all over sixty, who had surfed the big North Shore waves of Hawaii back in the early 1960s. They showed them at Waimea and Sunset and then shifted to years later when they were surfing in the crowds in California. Some were bald, some had big guts, some were skinny and had a crazed look in their eyes.

And then there was Ray. I didn't believe it at first. I watched him being interviewed. “Guess we can rightfully call you a kahuna now,” the young interviewer said.

“Guess you can,” Ray said and laughed. It was unmistakably him. They ran some old
black-and-white footage of him in 1962 at Malibu. He was smooth as ice. Next it was back to the older Ray surfing a big wave in Northern California. He was on that board I'd seen him ride. He was amazing.

“Any advice to young surfers?” the interviewer asked over the video clip.

“Fight your inner demons,” Ray said. “Be a warrior. Don't ever let the suckers get to you.”

And then they cut to a commercial for SUVS.

The rain was still pelting down, but I put on my father's serious rain gear and headed out. I walked to the beach and heard the roar of the storm waves. The beach parking lot was empty—all except for the van with California plates. I banged on the side door and the dog barked.

When the door opened, Ray saw me standing there. “What's a kahuna?” I blurted out.

Ray laughed. “You've been watching too much tv. It rots your mind. Wanna come in out of the rain or do you prefer to drown in
it?” He coughed long and hard as I stepped up and inside. I found myself settling into a swivel captain's chair on the front driver's side.

“A kahuna is what they call you when you're old. When you're young and stupid, you're a gremmie or a grem or a grommet. When you're old, you're a kahuna, or if they don't like you, you're a kook. As long as you're not a poser you're okay.”

“Poser?”

“Someone who hangs around surf, talks the talk, walks the walk, but doesn't surf.”

“Oh.”

“What? You, a poser? No way. You got the beauty mark to prove it.”

“But I can't surf.” I leaned over and petted Mickey D, who was already asleep and snoring on the floor.

Ray coughed again. He closed the door as the rain began to blow in.

“I want you to teach me to surf,” I said quickly.

Ray said nothing. He reached above his head and pulled down an old
Surfer
magazine.
He flipped it to a two-page spread of a surfer, somewhat out of focus, surfing one of the biggest waves I'd ever seen. I read the caption and got the picture.

“I'm not only gonna teach you to surf, kid. I'm gonna teach you to be a wave warrior.”

“Sounds violent.”

“Not violent, dude. It's a whole different kind of battle.”

I stared at the huge wave again—triple overhead with a threatening lip. “You made it, right?”

Ray shook his head. “Nope. Two seconds after a buddy of mine took that picture I was pearling up to my waist. I got sucked down, chewed up, pulled up to the top and thrown back down under. I got the air knocked out of me, had my arms and legs nearly pulled from their sockets and thought I saw angels in bikinis.”

“Were you scared?”

“No, Ben,” he said sarcastically, “I was feeling just fine. Hell, yes, I was scared. I figured I was about to die.”

“What saved you?”

He closed the magazine and put it back on the shelf. He grinned crazily. “I had this vision, see. It was my grandmother. Yep, right there beneath three thousand million gallons of Pacific Ocean. She spoke to me just as I was about to struggle to get to the surface. ‘Relax,' she said. ‘If you want to live, you can't struggle. Let yourself sink.' Well, that seemed like the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted air and I wanted it badly.”

“But you listened?”