Crazy for the Storm

  News of a big winter swell came via several phone calls from the school crew and Rolloff. I was finally over my fever and the descriptions of perfect peaks and juicy bowls and radical turns fueled my passion all week and by Thursday evening I was in a coiled frenzy.

  My mom made honey-baked chicken, wild rice, and salad—her specialty—and I waited in my room until it was served, not wanting to have an outburst. After dinner I cleaned the dishes and then walked into the living room and addressed my mom and Nick, who were watching the news.

  Look, I said. You have to understand.

  I opened my hands as if holding a beach ball.

  Man, I just need to surf, I said. It’s like the thing that makes my heart pump, it’s essential to what I am, and if I can’t do it I can’t function. I just feel dead inside and it’s horrible.

  Sunny was absorbing my every word and I pointed to her.

  Imagine taking her stick away. No more retrieving. That would kill her. It’s totally against her nature. Surfing is my retrieving. I don’t need anything else. No friends or parties. I won’t even hang out at the beach. I just need to be in that water, man, or I’m going to shrivel up.

  Nick was leaning back on the couch and he was totally engrossed.

  Please, Nick, I said.

  Jesus Christ what a speech, said Nick, to my surprise. How can I say no? You know Norman if you put 10 percent of that kind of effort and passion into school, or anything, you could do great things. Really thrive.

  Oh man. Thanks Nick, I said. Can you give me a ride in the morning before school? There’s a pumping swell.

  Well. I’m not working, he said. You know it’s supposed to rain. Right?

  I don’t care, I said.

  All right. I’ll wake you up at 5:30.

  Killer. Thanks.

  I woke on my own at 5:15. The rain thumped out an incessant staccato on the plastic awning. Last night I had loaded my board and wetsuit into Nick’s station wagon, so all I had left to do was throw down some cereal. Nick was making coffee in the kitchen.

  You still want to go? he said.

  Totally.

  I was so excited that I couldn’t eat more than one spoonful.

  Nick put on a parka and a yellow rain slicker over it and a wool cap. I wore trunks and a sweatshirt and flip-flops.

  You’re going to get sick just wearing that, he said.

  I’m going surfing anyway, I said.

  He thought about it. You got a point, he said.

  He blasted the station wagon’s heater and I was sweating by the time we parked on the bluff overlooking Topanga Beach. The rain splattered the windshield and the trail to the beach was a mudslide. I studied the ocean. The wind and the swells and the globs of rain blurred together and out of nowhere white ribbons sprang from the blur and moved down the point.

  Should we get the hell out of here? said Nick.

  It’s offshore, I said, watching the wind bend the fronds toward the ocean, which meant the wind was sweeping up the faces of the waves, smoothing them out.

  I felt him looking at me. I glanced over. His face was buried in layers of wool and plastic, oval-framed like a nun in a frock. His stories of getting kicked out of several Catholic schools and getting punished by the nuns came to mind.

  I reached back and brought my wetsuit into the front seat. I stripped down and tucked into the tight black rubber.

  This seems like an awfully stupid idea, Norman, he said.

  Why?

  Why? It’s raining like a frickin’ hurricane and it’s freezing. You can’t see the waves. Plus there’s probably a motherfucker of a rip current out there.

  I looked out the window again. Diaphanous coils of whitewash moved behind the rain and I imagined the offshore winds feathering back the crest of a wave and felt the exhilaration of the ride.

  Looks fantastic, I said.

  He did a double take and we both knew that’s exactly what my dad would have said. I realized then, like a shade zipping up on a giant window, that Nick respected my dad a lot, and that Nick probably wanted to be as good a dad as Big Norm. He seemed trapped in the car by the storm and for the first time in my entire life I felt sympathetic toward him.

  I didn’t want him to see this in my face, so I ducked down and put my booties on. When I sat up Nick was watching the ocean. His eyes roved the scene as if it were something awesome and too dangerous to mess with. I followed his gaze outside. Behind the thrashing rain, at the bottom of the mudslide, a few duck-dives away, was a paradise for those willing to fight through the storm.

  I opened the door and the rain pelted me in the face, heavier than I expected. I took a hold of my old seven-foot-two, the yellow rails looked like dirty water in the pale light, and I shut the door with my foot. I crouched at the top of the path, then skimmed down on my booties and ass.

  I ran up the point and saw Shane on a wave. It was over his head, big and gaping, and I was scared yet so desperate for a ride that I charged right in. The creek was running fast and it whisked me into the waves. I dove under the whitewash and paddled and negotiated the logs and tumbleweeds and garbage trapped in the break line between the creek current and the ocean current. It dragged me southward as if I were a twig and by the time I was outside the break I was halfway down the cove, past Barrow’s brick stairs. They hung down the embankment, just a red smudge trail behind the streaks of rain.

  I dug my arms deep into the water and my fingers were numb and wouldn’t stay together, making them porous oars. I used everything I had just to get to the point.

  Shane and Rolloff and one other guy I didn’t know were out.

  Hey, Little Norm, said Shane. The crew will be out soon, better get it now.

  Totally, I panted.

  It was hard to judge the surf because the offshore wind swirled the rain into patterns that looked like waves on the horizon. Rolloff stayed on his stomach, so I did too. We did not talk and just watched Shane. He paddled up the point against the current and we followed.

  It caught us all by surprise and was eight feet tall. The wind held it up just in time for us to puncture the belly. The next wave was bigger and hidden by the first wave’s blowback, coming out of the sky like a big-winged bird eclipsing the light and making it ten shades darker. The leading edge of the lip hit the middle of my back and bounced me off my board and the follow-through drilled me down into blackness. I rolled and told myself to rag-doll. I hoped I wouldn’t hit a rock. When I came up my board was no longer on the end of my leash and I was in front of the lifeguard station, a hundred yards from the point.

  I swam for the shore and the current dragged me south. The tide was high enough that I was able to flatten my body and ride a shore-pounder over the rocks.

  I scanned the cove for my board. Then I saw Nick in his yellow rain slicker and umbrella up by the lifeguard station. My board was at his feet and he waved to me. I waved back.

  I jogged into the wind and was panting by the time I reached him.

  You had enough? he said.

  My arms were noodles. My head was light and my dizziness made white gaps in his face. I shook my head and picked up my board. Without looking at him I jogged up the point. I tied what was left of my leash to the leash-plug and made three knots. I knew it would not hold if a big one hit me, so I would not be able to let go and dive deep because the leash would break and I’d have to swim in that current again, more tired than before.

  I fought through the walls of whitewash and wished I had more food in my stomach. I ended up south of Barrow’s again. I took ten strokes, rested, and took ten more. The current was setting me back five strokes per rest. I decided to go slower but not stop. Twenty minutes later I made it to the point. Shane and Trafton were the only guys out.

  Where’s Rolloff? I said.

  Maybe that last set kinda worked him, said Shane.

  I searched the inside and could not find him. All I saw was Nick’s yellow figure on the sand. Thinking about him saying You had enough? made me d
etermined to ride these big waves. Somehow if I didn’t, Nick would be right about my character. I had given him this power and so I needed to reclaim it.

  I paddled up the point, farther than Shane and Trafton. I knew they thought I was going too deep. I didn’t look back and kept my eyes on the miasma of wind and water blurring the horizon.

  It came and I paddled for it. Trafton and Shane yelped to rouse my courage. I got under the peak and turned, pointing the crown of my head into the offshore wind. I squinted to see through the sweeps of rain. The lip of the wave in front of me was sheared by the wind. I was choking on its blowback so I closed my mouth.

  The tail of my board kicked up and I was going straight down and I jumped to my feet. The wind got under my board and I leaned on my front foot and broke the pocket, only to nose-dive. I stamped hard on the tail and yawed the nose loose. I was only halfway down the face and the wave was already leaning over me. The wind got under my board because it was skewed a bit and the offshore wind scraping up the face nearly blew me over the lip. Just in time I worked the rail down under the crest and suddenly airdropped onto the face again. This threw me back and the nose jerked up like a motorbike doing a wheelie, so I swung my arms around to keep from pitching off the tail. I had lost speed and the wave face heaved and expanded, about to swallow me. Frantically I gyrated and pumped, arms winging up and down. I ducked to avoid the falling lip just as the rails bit and my board responded. A few more pumps and the board began skipping across the surface, bouncing hard, and I bent my knees to absorb the turbulence and steadied her in the pocket.

  I started working the board up and down despite the risk of getting too high up the face and getting pitched. That got me hauling ass, the offshore wind like a jet stream under my board. The section was relentless and the lip nearly decapitated me again, inciting a moment of doubt. I fought it off though by pumping even harder, and the propulsion was like a bobsled getting hurled through a concave track. I felt the wave’s power root into me as if I grew out of the wave, and I locked into sync with her and suddenly she was easy to ride. Together we soared strong and free.

  Rolloff was sitting on the sandbank and he ran down and slapped me five as I came ashore.

  Insane ride, Norm, he said.

  I hooted and he patted me on the back.

  Come on. Let’s get some more, I said.

  He grabbed his board and we jogged up the beach.

  See that one? I said when we passed Nick.

  Nick nodded and I knew that I had done something he could never do, that he was too afraid to do. And I understood that riding waves made me feel things he could never feel. I paddled back out, strong and brave and a part of something that lifted me above all the shit.

  My fingers were too numb to open the car door and Nick had to reach across the seat and open it from the inside. He had towels down over the vinyl and told me to get in. I put my hands against the blasting heaters and Nick put the car in reverse.

  You got guts, kid, he said as he backed the car up.

  Thanks for letting me go, I said.

  It would be a lot easier if you didn’t lie, Norman.

  I know, I said. And it would be a lot easier if you didn’t drink.

  His eyes slanted hard and one side of his mouth curved.

  What can I say, he said. You’re right. When you’re right you’re right.

  I watched the waves trail away from us below the highway.

  Nick stopped drinking, going cold turkey, and soon afterward Grandma Ollestad died. Nick drove the three of us to her funeral. The service was in the same little church as my dad’s funeral, about an hour away from the Palisades. Everyone spoke about how kind and giving and full of vitality Grandma had been and they mentioned my dad sometimes and I winced at the thought of him watching me these days, so spiteful and so blind to the beauty all around. As if he were hovering overhead, I told him that I was getting better. Did you see me surfing the other day?

  On the way home from the funeral I kept thinking about Grandpa. He stood with a very straight back and when everybody gathered outside the church he listened carefully to each consoling relative. He only spoke a couple of times and his words were concise and poetic—like music or colors that send you upward. I thought about how his eyes were the same blue starbursts as my dad’s and as mine and I thought about how my dad would be very saddened by Grandma’s death but not paralyzed by the grief, and I imagined him playing guitar for everyone outside the church.

  We were driving down the freeway, Nick at the wheel, and I started to compare my dad’s fluidity to Nick’s jerky body language. Nick wrestled with each social interaction and at the funeral he sighed a lot and belted out hardened proclamations about death and life and so on. He grated against things, in a fever, compared to how I imagined my dad acting—an enchanter. Nick’s pinched red face and Dad’s wide smile juxtaposed in my mind.

  As we came through the McClure tunnel onto the Coast Highway Nick spoke about being a good person, responsibility, hard work and honesty. He used words like colossal and catastrophic as if we were about to go off to war and this was our pep talk. Instead we arrived in the sleepy Palisades on a windless, cloudless Saturday afternoon.

  I wandered down the stairs lost in my observations and comparisons and saw the ocean lined with swells stacked to the horizon. Grandpa, Eleanor and Lee were on their way over and I was afraid to ask if I could go surfing.

  The next day I hung out with Grandpa over at Eleanor’s house and nobody talked much.

  Then in the afternoon Grandpa said, I have to fix the roof, and got in his car and drove back to Vallarta.

  The following weekend I was doing my chores around the house and I noticed the waves picking up. I waited another hour to make sure the swells were not an anomaly. When they kept getting bigger and bigger I decided to take the 3:30 bus down to Topanga Beach. Nick and my mom had gone out to run errands and before they had left Nick reminded me that Sunny had been chasing coyotes into the canyon, which was a trap, and that our new policy was to put her inside or on the upstairs porch in the afternoon before it got dark so she wouldn’t get lured into the coyotes’ ambush.

  No problem, I had said.

  I reminded myself to put her inside while I made a melted cheese sandwich and Rolloff called from the phone booth at Topanga and said, It’s goin’ off the Richter. I got so excited that I just grabbed my gear and ran to the bus stop, inundated with visions of my board stabbing the lip and cutbacks and me riding inside a tube.

  When I stepped off the bus a four-wave set was reeling in. The legends were in the water and I watched them tear it up while I slipped into my suit. Rolloff was perched on the lower deck of the lifeguard station and he asked me where I had been and I told him about my grandma’s funeral. He nodded and changed the subject. As I zipped up I noticed Benji staring at me. He was sitting by the lone palm tree with a few of his buddies. I ignored his stare and Rolloff said that Benji was talking shit about how he was going to snake me.

  Watch out, said Rolloff.

  I shrugged and told myself that the only thing that mattered was to ride the waves and avoid the bullshit.

  I’m just here to have fun, I said to Rolloff.

  That’s cool, said Rolloff.

  I concentrated on the waves and how they were breaking and where I would take off and I ignored Benji’s stinkeye. I strolled to the point and dropped onto my board, ducking under a little insider. A layer of sorrow wiped right off me and it seemed like I could see for a thousand miles. I sat with the legend pack on the point and they asked me where I had been. I told them.

  You’ve had a rough go, said Shane.

  I shrugged.

  Norm, he said. Just hang in there. It’ll turn around.

  I nodded.

  I surfed for an hour and it was hard to get waves with all the heavy boyz out. Finally Shane went in and that opened up a bit more space. I was eager to snag a set wave and I could feel the frustration darting inside me. Something men
acing was rising up and it seemed like everything I had hoped to let go of was surging back and that made me desperate to burn it up. Suddenly I really wanted to shred a wave in front of Benji and his crew.

  I heard somebody calling my name from the bluff. I squinted and recognized Nick’s body language. He had one hand on his hip and the other waved me in.

  Get your ass in here, Norman, he yelled.

  I saw the crew on the beach turn from me to Nick then back to me.

  Wanting to minimize the embarrassing drama I paddled right in.

  Busted, said Benji with a smile when I passed him.

  Most of the locals knew Nick from the old days and as I gathered my shorts, shirt and flip-flops they said things like He looks agro. Tell Nick to take a ’lude.

  I meekly waved good-bye to the surf crew and hauled my gear up the dirt trail.

  Nick had both hands on his hips when I reached the top.

  Do you think we’re all here to clean up your fucking messes? he said.

  No, I said.

  He jabbed his finger into my breastbone.

  You do not exist at the center of the universe, he said, punctuating some words by jabbing harder.

  I know, I said.

  No you don’t. You’re a fucking self-centered thankless little shit.

  I shook my head.

  No I’m not, I said.

  Yes you are, Norman. Yes you are.

  What did I do? I yelled at him.

  You left Sunshine out.

  Oh shit. Is she okay?

  That’s beside the point. The point is she could be dead by now. Eaten alive by those fucking coyotes. You don’t give a shit about her or about anything but yourself.

  That’s not true, I said.

  Yes it is.

  No it’s not. I just got so stoked that I forgot.

  That’s a bullshit excuse, Norman.

  He pressed his nose against my nose. The whites of his eyes were mucus yellow. I recognized that he wanted to hit me and punish me and make me squirm. In that moment I envisioned myself much older and I was screaming and hell-bent, fighting a bunch of angry faces, eager to punish them like Nick wanted to punish me. When I came out of this vision and saw him again I was merely fascinated by his rage. What else could Nick do but fight all those demons, I thought, and try to slay them before they sucked him into their darkness?