In the Break (4 page)

When Amber started surfing she insisted that Robert take Jamie and me along sometimes, even though we’d been at it for a few
years already. And he did, surfing with us down the coast at breaks we would never have been able to get to.

When F entered the scene, Amber took up the void left by Mrs. Watkins’s defection. It wasn’t that their mom neglected Jamie
or anything. She was just spending time with a man, a guy who wasn’t Jamie’s father, and I knew Jamie didn’t like it, though
he never said anything about it. He kept quiet, as usual. But it was weird — I could know stuff about Jamie without us ever
talking about it. I knew he didn’t like F being with his mother. I knew he wasn’t happy when she eloped with him. But what
could he do?

Could he really get arrested?

We sat there quiet, gazing out over the dark sea. In the silent roar of the waves breaking by the shore I wondered how I could
help. I couldn’t see their faces, couldn’t gauge their emotions, but it was as if Amber had read my mind.

“F hid the car keys,” she said.

Jamie shouted, “The dick locked them in his safe.”

I wondered why Jamie hadn’t just taken his mother’s car, then remembered it wasn’t running, the reason he’d taken F’s in the
first place to get us to the morning waves. “Maybe I can get my mother’s car,” I said. A plan was formulating in my mind.

“Could you?” Amber said.

“Your mother won’t give you her car,” Jamie said.

“I won’t ask.”

We digested the implications of that remark. Remembering the warmth of Amber’s hand in mine, I thought, I could do it. My
father was at work — he wouldn’t be home until eight in the morning,
and my mother was a heavy sleeper. Besides, I didn’t want Jamie to go through any more shit. Not tonight.

“It’s just to get Jamie out of town, get him a good start.” I’ll get the car back before my father gets home from work and
before my mother wakes up, I thought.

“I’ll go with you,” Amber said.

It was after midnight as Amber drove my mother’s car. I was pensive in the passenger seat — I’d never done anything close
to this my entire life! We drove in the Barrela family car, a brand-new 4Runner cruising next to the beach without letting
the tires go into the sand. Tourists always tried to drive up on the beach to park, and when it was time to go they’d gun
their engines and spin their tires, expecting the sand to release them, but the sand was unforgiving. It was tricky driving
because Amber had turned off the headlights so as not to be seen from up on the mesa, should anybody be watching. There were
no other vehicles on the road, and when we were directly south of my house on the mesa, I told Amber to stop the car, leave
the engine idling. Soon Jamie opened the side door and got in. He held his backpack on his knees. There was no reason to peel
out, but the sand covered the highway and in her excitement Amber stepped on the gas too hard and burned rubber getting back
on the highway. After a short time she turned on the car’s headlights.

“Lemme drive,” Jamie said. “You’re going to get us pulled over.”

“Shut up,” Amber said.

“Stop for my board, okay?” Jamie said.

“You bet,” I said.

“You can’t hitchhike with a board,” Amber said.

“I’m not going south without it,” Jamie said. “Swell’s building.”

Far off in the distance you could see waves breaking white against the unseen pilings of the pier. We’d often stored our boards
in Greg Scott’s garage so we could walk to the pier after school let out, because the waves there were usually better than
the beach break at Playa Chica. Sandbars would form around the structure, making for reeflike surfing.

And that big south swell was heading to the coast of California, the result of the hurricane off Hawai’i. The waves from the
storm would hit our coast anytime, so the surf forecasters had said. Everybody who surfed was pumped up, waiting for the action.
It looked as if Jamie would be getting those waves, while I wouldn’t

I felt somewhat guilty for taking my mother’s car — opening the garage and pushing it down the road before starting it, and
without her permission — and definitely felt guilt for stealing all the cash in her purse. Yet there was an excitement in
the air, a veiled electricity, what with the approaching big swell and the chaos surrounding Amber’s and Jamie’s lives.

Downtown was deserted, and we didn’t want to get pulled over. For no reason the police would stop a car with kids in it late
at night, and if they were looking for Jamie, well, they’d find him. Amber had her license so we were legal. Still, I was
relieved when she turned on Ninth Street and got off the Coast Highway, heading toward Greg Scott’s house. She coasted to
a stop one house away from where our boards were stored.

The air was humid and thick with salt these few blocks up from the water. Palm fronds riffled above us as we made our way
to the backyard. Even the streetlights seemed to conspire a sort of “muffled” light, if that’s possible. You could hear the
soft creaking of a nearby oil well, a remnant of the city’s past, moving up and down, up and down, a mechanical beast of burden
that never slept, so nobody would be able to hear any noise when Jamie got his board.

Amber and I went with him into the backyard. There was a sticky gate latch, which stuck, of course, and Jamie made a big
thunk
! muscling the gate open. The whole scene struck us as funny, and we began giggling, the first light moment since the beach
this morning. Trying to suppress our laughter, we made our way to the garage. Inside, Jamie moved some boards, and Amber took
hers, then I grabbed mine so that Jamie could get his, but a strange thing happened. Amber and I held on to our boards, leaving
the backyard with Jamie. I don’t think it was a conscious decision or anything, just an opportunistic moment of self-delusion.

“We need to get them back anyway,” I whispered to Amber.

“Oh, absolutely.” She nodded agreement.

As we loaded the boards in the back of the SUV I said, “Maybe we’ll catch a few waves in the morning.” It wasn’t that far
off.

“It might be good,” Jamie said.

“Yeah,” Amber said.

Suddenly Greg Scott showed up in the street. “What’s up?” he said.

“Jamie’s got to get away for a while,” I said.

He looked at my mother’s car. “Where you headed?”

“South,” Jamie said.

“Do you have any stuff?” Greg Scott said.

“Just what’s in my pack,” Jamie said.

Greg Scott looked at all of us. “Hang on.”

In a while he returned, carrying a pile of things. “This might help,” he said, dropping it on the floor. Sleeping bags and
towels and God knew what else. As he handed Jamie some money, he said, “Late.” He turned and walked away.

Greg Scott was the best! Jamie, Amber, and I stood alone in the dark quiet street. We transferred the pile from the grass
on the parkway into the back of the truck, trying not to make noise with the doors.

Avoiding Main, Amber drove the backstreets of town. When we were past the trailer park, we got on the Coast Highway, heading
south, my mom’s 4Runner our raft, the Pacific our Mississippi.

The early morning swells humped on the horizon, racing toward shore. Once they hit shallow water the tops cascaded down and
over each other with a lovely creamy-white grace, a turbulence contrasting with the still blue of the lightening sky and the
deeper black-blue of the water.

I pulled myself out of the passenger side of the car. Amber was scrunched up though comfortable-looking in the back, a sleeping
bag over her and her hand right on her mouth. Jamie was in the water, I supposed, for his board was gone — mine and Amber’s
were still underneath the car, safe and undisturbed — and I could see a surfer paddling through the swells.

Last night we’d driven until we could no longer stay awake, and we’d parked not far from the parking lot at Swami’s, the nickname
for the Self-Realization Fellowship grounds overlooking the reef break south of Encinitas.

Sometime before light, when I was groggy and Amber was out, Jamie drove us into the parking lot. The lot had a curfew posted,
and we didn’t want to get hassled by cops for something that dumb. Light was just dusting the golden dome of the temple.
My mother’s car was the only one in the lot.

As I pissed in the bushes I watched the surfer. Jamie, I could tell by the way he paddled. We’d surfed together since the
summer of the fifth grade.

The summer after her husband’s death Mrs. Watkins spoke to my parents about surfing. They all decided that it would be a good
idea for Jamie and I to get boards. At that time Amber was going the cheerleader route, sneaking out of her bedroom window
at night and running with the wild girls. She had no interest in surfing during that era. She did take it up when she was
in the ninth grade, probably to impress Robert Bonham, who surfed really well. And when she started surfing she hit it with
a vengeance.

So my parents and Mrs. Watkins took us to the beach a few times a week that summer and Jamie and I began our surfing lives.
For Jamie it was a way to grieve, I guess, because he used to cry in the water sometimes. He thought nobody could tell, but
I could. I let him have it, and was just there with him, just was with him.

We surfed and we shot hoops and we hung together, and even Amber got tired of hanging out with angry chicks who got in trouble
all the time. It wasn’t in Amber to be a criminal, like her screwed-up so-called friends of that time.

I looked back in the car; Amber showed no sign of waking so I was stuck — I couldn’t leave her like this, asleep in a parking
lot. “Ah,” I sighed, looking over the ocean, wondering about Nestor and my mother. I could barely make out Jamie’s form out
in the water.

The summer between the seventh and eighth grades, our third full summer surfing, Jamie bestowed “best surfer” title on me.
That summer his mother had worked out of necessity — it was after Mr. Watkins’s death and before she married F — and on her
way to work she dropped us off at the bluffs, where the waves were always better than in front of the mesa where we lived.
This also saved us from having to ride our bikes on a two-lane road, pulling the board rack that Nestor had fashioned out
of an old wagon for me.

That summer there was a sandbar buildup not far from the limestone cliff, which offered a great left. Jamie was goofy foot,
meaning he faced the wave when going left; I was regular foot — I faced the wave when going right. On the prevailing south
swells I became excellent at going backside, left, going with my back to the wave. I could crouch with one knee up and the
other knee almost resting on the board and grab the outside rail, leaning into the wave, making ones that I shouldn’t have,
perfecting this maneuver while surfing the left-breaking sandbar all summer.

In mid-August, Claire Watkins stopped at the bluffs to drop us off, as she’d done many other workdays. It was a misty morning,
not too unusual right along the coast, but the parking lot was filled with cars, and the entire cliffs were lined with onlookers,
something we’d not seen any other summer day. Mrs. Watkins got out of her car with us. What we saw on the ocean that morning
was a surfer’s dream: summer morning south swell, huge empty waves. The biggest waves we’d ever seen. Not even the older surfers
ventured out, and everyone stood hypnotized and in awe of the beautiful and violent display before them.

“You boys don’t have to stay,” Mrs. Watkins said, sensing our fear, our survival instinct, which was palpable. “I’ll take
you home. I’ve got the time, I’m early.”

But Jamie and I knew we couldn’t leave the beach, even though we probably wouldn’t go out in the water. We just had to stay
and watch, if nothing else.

Before she left, Mrs. Watkins extracted a promise from us that we would
not
go out in the huge waves. Only if it got smaller could we venture out. She wanted to force us to return home, but she knew
that should we leave, we couldn’t face any of the other boys who stood on the cliffs. Claire Watkins was cool that way, sensing
subtle things that other parents didn’t have a clue about. She didn’t want to leave us, but she also didn’t want to make us
look foolish. So she went to work as she’d done countless other days that summer.

After she left, Jamie and I walked down to the beach with our boards and placed the towels and lunches in the sand as we always
did upon arriving. The cliffs above us had a better vantage point for seeing the overall view of the waves marching to shore.
Yet on the beach we had a better perspective of the size of the waves at water level. It was hard to judge size accurately
since nobody was surfing, but we figured the waves were three to four feet overhead. Ten feet on the face? Usually the waves
we surfed were two to four feet, once in a blue moon six feet on a big swell. These waves were the equivalent of Hawai’i’s
winter North Shore, surfing Mecca.

Plopping on the sand and not even bothering to remove our sweatshirts and short pants, we watched the incredible display of
power all through the morning. Neither of us had any intention of going out in the massive waves, though we did begin taunting
each
other about doing so, since nothing was at stake because not even the older guys were going out.