Wave Warrior (5 page)

At seven on Thursday morning, I rode my bike with my board to the beach and found Tara standing on the dune, looking at the lines of six- to seven-foot waves rolling in at the Reef. Cars were pulling into the parking lot,
and I knew it would be completely mobbed within an hour.

“You want to try surfing some place totally different?” I asked her as I walked up from behind.

“But this looks so perfect.”

“Yeah, but look.” I pointed to an suv with seven boards on top.

“So you're willing to share your secret spot with me?” she said, smiling.

“If you promise not to tell anyone. Besides, you've been there before. I saw you on the headland.”

“Let's go.”

Fortunately, Tara had her father's station wagon and I could put my bike in the back. I strapped my board on top of hers and we headed east.

Ray was already in the water at the Farm when we arrived. Mickey D greeted us and walked us out to the point.

As we paddled out, the tide was low enough that some big boulders were exposed as the wave sucked out on takeoff. I watched Ray make a drop and carve a killer bottom
turn around a seaweed-covered rock and then arc high up onto an overhead wall of water. He made it look like it was the easiest thing in the world.

We were paddling in deep water and moving quite fast. “We're in a rip,” I told Tara. “There's one on either side of the break.”

“Is that dangerous?”

“Could be,” I said. “But right now it's helping us get to where we want to go.”

“Yeah, but if you wipe out and snap your leash?”

“You'll get sucked out to sea.”

“Keep an eye on me, okay?” she said. “This place is kinda spooky.”

“We'll keep an eye on each other,” I told her.

We paddled across the rip now, still feeling its seaward tug. On a surfboard, it wasn't a big deal. For swimmers it would be another story. The only way out of a rip is to swim across it, never against it. People who didn't understand this basic fact of ocean life had died on this shore.

A set of six waves was headed our way as we reached the takeoff point. Ray nodded and smiled when he saw us but didn't say a word. The way he caught the next wave and pushed himself up on the steep drop showed that he was a master surfer. I turned my board to face the shore and caught the one right behind him. Three deep strokes and I was in.

And then I saw the rock, exposed in front of me. I tried to stop but it was too late. I was already making the drop. As I stood, I began to carve hard with my left foot on the tail. The board began to turn. I hadn't meant to go right, into the collapsing wall of the wave, but I had no choice.

I felt my fin nick the big boulder as I slid past it. Close call. I was sliding across a large, steep wave and headed into a small canyon of water. The waves were so powerful that they were jacking up and throwing out, creating a tube.

For the first time in my life I was standing up and truly inside the wave. As the wave hit the shallow rocks beneath, it became hollow and there was water to my right, to
my left and above me. I screamed. This was amazing.

But instead of heading away from the collapsing part of the wave, I was headed into it. And in a split second I was swallowed by it. I wiped out hard, as the wave hit me first in the head, knocking me off the board and tossing me under, then pulling me back up the wall and slamming me down hard in a big pummeling mass of white water. Ouch.

When I came up for air, my board was nearby and I was smiling so hard I thought my face would crack. I paddled out of the impact zone, back into the helpful rip, and let it drag me back out to the break. Tara was sitting there on her board and so was Ray.

“I thought, if you lived, I might try one too,” Tara said.

“Dude,” Ray admonished me with a grin, “you're supposed to go away from the break, not into the throat of a monster like that.”

I shrugged. “Who put the rock at the bottom of the wave anyway?”

“Glaciers,” Ray said. “Long time ago, one of them thought it would be a dynamite joke
to plant a boulder like that in the middle of the best surf break on the east coast of North America. They waited a long time, but they finally got some yuks out of it. Nice wipeout. A classic.”

Tara was giggling as she started to paddle for her own wave. She positioned herself so that she'd be able to go left and avoid the rock entirely. She took off as if in a dream, made the most graceful drop and carved hard at the bottom with her long hair flying in the bright summer air.

“You gonna marry her?” Ray joked.

“What?”

“She's beautiful, smart and she surfs like a goddess. What more could a man want?”

Tara was riding high on the wave, but it looked like it was about to section. I was thinking about those other rocks I'd seen as we'd paddled out. She'd have to keep her wits about her the whole length of the ride.

I decided to paddle for the next wave and be nearby in case she got into trouble. As the wall jacked up behind me, I suddenly felt something in the back of my brain. It was fear,
pure and simple. As things went into slow motion, I felt the fear of another wipeout, the fear of getting smacked in the nose with my board. It caught me off guard and I almost lost it, but I looked back at Ray and he was staring at me, two thumbs in the air. I decided not to fight the fear but recognize it and use it.

I got cautiously to my feet. I made sure I had perfect balance before making my bottom turn, and there I was, going left into the deep bay with a perfect overhead wall of blue-green water ahead of me. The ride was steep and fast and I carved a few turns—slow and steady like a guy on a longboard should.

And when I kicked out at the end of the wave, Tara was there in the water, climbing back onto her board. We were out of the impact zone and in the rip, drifting back out to sea, getting a nearly free ride back to the break.

We surfed until our arms were noodled and our feet were pruned. Tara and I were saltwater stoked and soggy and had to lie down on the smooth warm stones of the shoreline before we could find the energy to walk back to the car.

Ray sat there on the stones with Mickey D, looking back out to sea. “I needed that,” he said. “Guess that was why I drove across the continent. Kind of puts a nice touch to the end of the story.”

What story? I wanted to ask, but Ray had already picked up his board and was walking back to his van. As he was walking away, Tara rolled toward me and took my face in her hands. She kissed me hard on the mouth, and then I kissed her back. She tasted like salt, and I guess I did too.

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.

Tara was walking toward me. I didn't want her feeling sorry for me. I wanted to get the hell out of there. She'd do better if she wasn't hanging out with a real loser.