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WILL
Summer by the Sea by artist Louis Ocepek
The Pacific was not. The sea was gouging at the shallows, pounding the flattened beach, grinding at Southern California's coastline. Mick and Stewart and Will stood leaning into the onshore wind and slightly away from the long boards tucked tightly under their right arms and partially resting on their canted right hips. They stood, about fifty yards north of Huntington Beach Pier, reading waves of winter storm surf. All were freshman at tiny Chapman College in Orange, just down Tustin Avenue from Disneyland, all on student deferments. Mick from New Jersey, Stu from Florida's East Coast, and Will from Monterey Bay, California. They wanted to surf, not make war.
The gray-black, smoky storm clouds swagged against eight to ten foot breakers that gathered at the end of the pier, sucked up choppy, gray backwash, marbled with white foam, crested and smashed into the shallows a few yards in front of them. Wet, granular sand caked their bare feet, a drizzle matted their shoulder-length hair, the wind blew light-brown, flecked spume around their ankles. The big waves rumbled and collapsed, rumbled and collapsed, fewer than eight seconds apart sending tremors through their cold feet, ankles, and into their knees. These were not orderly wave sets but burly erratic bullies. Other than these three man-boys and a growing line of driftwood, tangled piles of Red Alga seaweed and broken shells, the beach was empty; the pier held a solitary fisherman, bundled into a mackintosh, behind the north pier railing.
Nearly motionless, silently, they studied waves, with an intensity seldom focused on biology or freshman English. Mick finally gave a slight nod to his friends and raised his voice over the wind and surf. "Nothin' here. No form. Just shit."
Stewart agreed. "Nothing from Seal Beach down to Imperial. Not even river mouth is any good. Shit. Let's head back to the dorms." Will turned towards his friends. The wind caught the nose of his O'Neil's Intruder and shoved him into Stewart. He quickly shifted the board into the wind, stepped back from his friends and announced, "I'm goin' out."
"Com' on man, those swells are gonna suck you up and spit you out. There's nothing there, man." Mick was irritated. "Look at the rip into the pier. There's no place to go. I haven't seen a shoulder on these f_ckin' waves. You won't be able to get outside."
"I'll get out; I saw a couple of lefts, and I'm sure as hell not goin' right through the pilings, serious."
"Serious suicide, ass-wipe. I'm not going in for your carcass when you wipe out. I've been in serious winter surf off Jersey, man. This is just stupid."
Will knew Mick had more big-wave experience than him. Mick was on a Jersey surf team. And then, Will was too mature at eighteen to think himself immortal. Ten years ago, his little brother had drowned in a rip current off Manresa Beach, right in front of a lifeguard tower. Will had been down the beach a few hundred yards, surfing. In his nearly five years of surfing overhead waves, Will had been slammed around enough to know Mick was right. Today, for some reason--well there was no reason-- all that didn't matter. Will was scared and defiant, and those were reasons enough. He didn't want to be in college; he didn't want to face his father's disappointment and his mother's worry. He was tired of trying to bed coeds, smoking dope, and getting his older brother's letters from Da Nang. Ten years afterwards, he was deep down sick about his brother's death.
Stu Robertson, Will's sometimes-pugnacious roommate, dropped his new Doug Haut NoseRider on the beach, swept his auburn hair back to the nape of his neck, crossed his arms over his wrestler's chest and proclaimed, "Mick's right; you're stupid; let's go have some beer."
Will was already turning away to face the sea. He didn't look much at the surf. He angled away from the pier pushing through knee-high white water to where he had seen a notch in some oncoming waves, ran into waist high water, and launched himself into the surf. What had been a base thumping and constant hissing, as he stood on the beach, now became undifferentiated noise. Will was deaf to it. His fear was drowned in concentration, in purpose. This is what he wanted today . . . purpose.
First the tumbling 3-foot whitewater: paddling to gain momentum and bursting through the surging whitewater often failed. The water simply smashed him back and back or wrenched his board around and carried him toward the beach. In less than five minutes of steady paddling, he had made little headway and was tiring. He did not turn his back on the sea and allow the fierce whitewater to sweep him into the beach, not today. "F_ckin' sea, F_cking waves." he hissed a cadence with each left-right stroke.
His arms nearly played out, Will finally broke through the whitewater and rode up and over the oncoming waves, up and up and over, frequently turning turtle, rolling his board on top of him to allow the cresting wave to pass, righting himself and paddling madly to move up the face of the next and the next wave. His arms and chest heavy, his Neck, stiff, he found a chaotic haven just beyond the breakers parallel with the end of the pier. He gasped and sucked air into his lungs, and, within a few minutes the numbness in his arms subsided. He noted the lone fisherman. The man had no line out, his pole held away from the wind. He was leaning on the railing and watching.
Will had to face and calculate the oncoming waves. Between long waits he saw what looked to be surfable waves loom from the sea and now pelting rain; quickly Will pivoted his board toward the beach. On a few he stroked before the waves to match their momentum, but then, each time, as he jerked his head around, he saw the wave wall up behind him, saw nowhere to go, and heaved his board over the back of the wave. At times, Mick and Stu were visible through the waves, feet apart, arms folded across their chests, watching. Mick had put his t-shirt back on. Stewart, his windbreaker, his friends and the man on the pier were tiny and remote. And the waves just came, towered over him, passed, humping towards and throwing themselves at the shore. Now, fear came back. But it did not pass. The huge waves had no shoulders, no right-to-left break that he could ride away from the implosion, away from the pier, upon which he could skitter away from the smashing. Now, the waves were pulling themselves even higher, into fourteen to fifteen feet troughs as each hit the backwash and killed itself in the shallows.
"God damn it!" Will shouted into the surge and chaos. "Come on you son of a bitch! Come on." And it did come on, a monster, growling out of the clouds and rain, sucking Will into its curl. Will saw, thought he saw, a right-to-left shoulder, but he did not hesitate. He couldn't bear being in between any longer. He spun his board toward the shore and paddled, first his stomach then his back arching away from the board with each dig. Desperately, he angled the board to his left moving away from the zone where the huge wave would crest, curl and collapse just behind and over his right shoulder.
The wave yanked his board up. In a fluid motion, he crouched. He and board began to bounce down the steep wall,one thousand one, one thousand two,the wave's throat roared; he couldn't keep the board's left rail dug deeply enough into the wave,one thousand three . . . the world ended. Will had enough time to pull in a deep breath before the wave catapulted him off the board, just enough time to tuck his chin and curl his arms tightly over his head. Then, he had plenty of time, because there was no more time. The wave swallowed and Will tumbled and somersaulted. Then a split second after he rolled into a protective ball, his back smashed into bottom, slamming air out of his lungs. Up was down. And the wave churned and would not vomit him up. Seawater forced itself into his nose and mouth and into his lungs. Black became blacker.
Then through a tangle of seaweed that was his hair, he broke through into native air and choked and spasmodically gulped. But the sea was not through with Will. The rip current swept him into the pilings, smashed and scraped him against tiny, scalpel-edged barnacles that lacerated his face and chest and stove in his ribs. Will gave up, just before Stewart locked him in a full nelson and, with Mick's help, dragged him onto the beach, away from the growling, hungry waves. And the lone fisherman gently enfolded Will into his long raincoat. Will lay on his back, puking and bleeding and sobbing for LJ, his little brother, LJ whom he had seen inside the belly of the wave, whose face had pressed against his own, in the abyss, and who had whispered to him . . . "Live."
Gregory Louis Candela , a professor of English at the University of New Mexico-Valencia Campus, is the author-editor of books, scholarly articles, essays, short fiction and poetry. He is a dramatic performer, musician, and occasional playwright. Recent publications include a book of poetry, Surfing New Mexico (2001), poems in La Puerta, and a 200-line Dramatic Monologue, "El Mozo Regresa" that will be produced by KUNM. His work here marks his first publication online.
Although Candela was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1949, and grew up in the Central Valley and along the coast of California, he has worked and resided in New Mexico since 1972. In 1970 he began his numerous visits to Mexico--lately, to the Yucatan Peninsula. He is married with two children and two grandchildren. His granddaughter, Alexis is a handful.
Artist Louis Ocepek lives in Las Cruces, NM. His art has appeared in many galleries and exhibits, and he has provided covers for many volumes of Puerto del Sol.
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