Empty Pockets (8 page)
Authors: Dale Herd
“Yeah,” Hoefer agreed, “that's right,” thinking, Yes, it is, it is a God feeling, it must be (at eighteen at his father's insistence, he had driven off the coast to Utah and Brigham Young University, driven there in a '56 Caddy-powered '34 Ford Tudor with his Velzy-Jacobs racked on the top, starting higher education full of fear and rebellion, feeling ill-prepared and stifled, wanting no more formal education now that high school was over, not even wanting to see what the university had to offer, hating first the climate and then the rigidity of studying, feeling there was little hope of success for him in either the temporal or the spiritual world there, longing for the coast, the sea, missing his true satisfaction: the pump and lift of surf excitement shooting adrenaline into him seventy, eighty times a day, and so left the first time he received what he wanted, a failing grade on his first English composition exam, this three weeks after he enrolled, and came back to the coast to be tossed out of the home, thenâhe sold the carâgoing on his own, surfing through that winter, ending at the sea's edge, living under the Malibu Pier during the summer of '59, beginning a career based on hundreds and thousands of hours spent in the water: creator of the best rides ever seen at Secos and some at Malibu and Rincon, too: solitary, unique, magical performances, his whole land appearance based on his role as a performer, full hair and beard, shaggy cutoff sleeveless woman's fur coat, flamboyant shirts and pants, never shoes, always dark glasses: rides that made him a star in high school auditorium sixteen-millimeter surf movies, earned him board endorsements and free trips to Hawaii and always work in nearly any surfboard shop on the California coast; rides that gave him for more than nine years a strong sense of self-worth, this sense arrogantly based, a complete hang-everything-else sense, a sense necessary to develop his skill; and rides done on hundreds of days spent totally stoned, first smoking marijuana that first summer at Malibu, marijuana becoming both a sacrament of his free existence and part of his pre-performance ritual, then a part of the joy of riding, a way of taking himself into his own body,
but then quit two years ago at the age of twenty-seven after being rejected in love, had turned back to the church and his family, started work full time, won the girl back, married her, then started again, even though he felt he shouldn't, because, as he told her, telling her this while he was stoned, she wasn't, “a tool for seeing the divine, like out there now”âboth of them standing together on the beach at Oil Piers looking out along the pier seeing a wave silently loom up under the strutwork, dark, then emerald green, taking in sunlight through the back, diffusing it, spreading it in a moving glow gliding steadily toward them, all translucent along its face, all green motion and formâ“I can feel the whole weight of that wave actually moving through my head, I mean feel it, its reality, and can merge into it becoming one with that moving part of the entire breathing apparatus of the planet . . .”) the same feeling. “You know, man,” Hoefer said, “I get it in church. You ought to go to church with me. Why don't you?”
“I mean,” Hansen said, “it was with my little brother, you know, like I'd dropped a tab and went out at C Street and Donny was out and we started paddling up to Stables without saying anything, it was just like that, we looked at one another and I went into it, like, well . . . wow . . .”
“Yeah,” Hofer said, giving the pipe back.
“You want some? I'll lay some on you.”
“Acid?”
“Yeah.”
“No, man,” said Hoefer, “I already know, you see.”
He shook his head at the offered pipe.
“You sure?”
“I know.” Hoefer laughed. “That's what I said.”
Hansen laughed. He took another toke off the pipe, then dumped the ashes out the window. “Bye,” he said.
“Right.” Hoefer laughed. “That's it, you know. It's a groovy feeling.”
“It was really beautiful,” Hansen said, “like all I had to do was remember, you know, just remember.”
“So?”
“So?”
“So you didn't remember.” Hoefer laughed.
“Right.” Hansen laughed, both now laughing together, Hansen at one time Hoefer's follower, a would-be surf mag, surf flick star, had wanted to accomplish in two years what Hoefer had taken six years to accomplish, had style, good wave judgment but no ability to finish, had fallen off on critical waves in three critical Single A contests and so decided he had no gift, Hansen now in this easy laughter feeling himself to be, for the first time, finally, Hoefer's equal, and Hoefer feeling it too, both suddenly happy in their new understanding of each other.
“But I'll get it again,” Hansen said, “I will.”
Outside, Gray sat in Hoefer's panel truck, feet up on the dash, idly watching the after-work traffic. The freeway entrance three blocks ahead was jammed and two rows of cars were slowly rolling past the panel, feeding into the entrance. Gray was thinking about Stanley's, wondering what kind of shape its wave would have, wondering whether the swell was too big for it, and thinking about Stanley's took him into thinking about Hansen just as he saw Hoefer come out on the porch of the house, now remembering carrying his board up the rocks, remembering that that had been a high-tide day too with the outside reef pumping out at least a steady seven-foot with super hairy almost inside-out body-breaking rides, the last one sucking out so bad that sand off the bottom was coming up in the wall then everything exploding under him and after dragging himself in, body banged up, legs shaky going up the rocks, yet excited about the ride, there was Hansen,
AWOL,
sitting inside the car, a dark blue navy coat draped over his head covering his face; and, after sliding the board in the trunk, then getting in, saying hello, through the coat Hans said, “Hello, Chuck,” and all the way into town neither moved nor said more and only when they reached the point and the old house had Gray seen Hansen's face and shaved slick as an egg, sunburned, peeling head (done by the screws at
Long Beach Naval Station Brig), a laughable contrast from his former full sunbleached blond surfer's natural . . .
“Sorry, man,” Hoefer said, opening the door. He had his dark glasses on.
“What he'd say?”
“Nothing,” putting the key in the ignition.
“He say anything about the syringe?”
“Nope,” Hoefer said, looking in the side mirror. “I didn't push anything.” Cars moved slowly across the glass. He started the engine.
“He's going to blow his mind up one of these days,” Gray said.
“Well,” Hoefer said, “maybe that's what he needs.”
“Ha,” Gray said, “you know he's a pretty good surfer when he wants to be.”
“I haven't really watched him,” Hoefer said.
“He's not as good as you but he's pretty, you know, I mean he has a good style, kind of like Mickey's.”
There was an opening in the near lane and Hoefer let out the clutch, easing them into the traffic.
“You know,” Gray said, “Deese has a kind of funny theory about Hans. Deese says everyone is born with a guardian angel, like, and he says Hans lost his a long time ago.”
“Wow!” Hoefer laughed. He looked at Gray. Gray was grinning. Still laughing, Hoefer reached under the dash, clicking a plastic cartridge into the tape deck. Instantly, madrigal voices singing “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” filled the air.
“The Beatles are too much.” Hoefer laughed, looking back at the road. The lane was open ahead and Hoefer shifted into second, then high, looking again over at Gray. Gray was slumped back, beating out the time on his thighs. Hoefer wondered who Gray's angel was.
“N
o,” he said. He got up. She watched him chewing and swallowing, walking off. He forgot the check and came back. She pushed it to him. He looked at her.
“I'm coming,” she said. “I'm the best man,” he said. “I truly am. I truly love you.” “I know you do,” she said.
“You're not happy,” he said. “Please, David,” she said. She stood up, then walked on ahead.
He paid the check and they went outside. “God,” he said, “I can't believe it. It just isn't true! It can't be true! Do you know what this means? Do you?” He started to cry. They walked along the long windows of the restaurant.
She started to touch him then didn't. “I know what you want,” she said, “but I don't know if I can feel that way again.”
“The truth,” he said, “just tell me the truth.”
“I really don't,” she said. Then she said, “There is no truth.”
“Jesus!” he said. “What is happening to me? I'm crying, for Christ's sakes. I'm goddamn crying!”
They were at the car. He opened her door. “You cried the time you asked for a divorce,” she said, “the time right after you married me.”
“I know,” he said. “I remember. Here. Take the keys. I'm going to walk.”
“No,” she said, “don't be ridiculous.”
“I can't stay where I'm not loved,” he said. “I won't.” He was looking down at the asphalt of the parking lot.
“No,” she said bitterly, “I suppose not. I suppose you can't.”
He looked up at her. “I can't,” he said.
“Do what you want,” she said. “You always have. Do anything. I'm tired. I'm going home.”
He looked at her. She didn't move. He looked down at his shoes. “Good Christ,” he said.
S
he had long straight brown hair and a face like a child's, a gentle face. As they danced he told her she looked like his first wife, a beautiful girl. She seemed flattered and said that was nice and funny too because for some reason she felt like his first wife, like they were married.
When they left the bar they went home to her apartment. They shared a number she had and went to bed and for a moment he thought she was his first wife and said so but she didn't mind and told him to relax, just let things happen. He tried to and wanted to but he couldn't, it wasn't any use, her body wouldn't fit his, it wasn't the same.
Afterward she brought him a drink but he got up and dressed, saying he was sorry but he couldn't stay, did she mind, could he call her, he really did like her. She said yes, call anytime, and she wrote him out the number but he never did.
“D
o you think there's someone like that? I mean someone who would know how to be with me when they were with me? That's not being sentimental, is it? I mean someone who really wanted what I have to give. That's not too much to ask, is it? I mean they wouldn't have to stay or anything. I'm not silly enough to ask that. I mean I'm not the only woman in the world, am I. I certainly don't think that.”
S
he wouldn't get up in the mornings. He had had to make his own breakfast. She always took her mother's advice over his advice. It was her family always telling her what to do. She couldn't leave the house except for church, school, and Rainbow. That was how they got married. She had to get pregnant and she did. She always said she was glad about it. She always said she hated that house and she hated this town. She always said that, but both times when he had moved her away she would complain of loneliness and make him move her back. And that was really it, her always doing what her folks told her to do, the only one not telling him what to do was their little girl, age four, but she wanted to know why he wasn't at home. He wasn't at home because of the fighting, no hitting or that, just orneriness, angriness, constantly orneriness that made him too tired at work. And that was it, that was the main thing, a lot of his poor performance at work was the result of her not backing him up.
Now he didn't know what to do.
His wife still loved him, he knew she did, but earlier this morning he found evidence that a Terry Hammond, age twenty-two, had moved into the family house. He accused his wife of it but she denied it, saying only that a girlfriend had moved in, but said she was smoking marijuana now and, in general, just having a ball.
What he wanted to know was what he could do.
Was that sufficient grounds for custody?
B
esides, she had a good time up there, she felt free, really free. Why shouldn't she have? I told her that. What she did was not show up Friday and go on up with some guy she'd met the weekend before. She didn't come back till last night so you know who starts calling around, where is she, has anybody seen her. And all day yesterday he's over here, so concerned and all, so much the gentleman. And when she gets here and sees his car she can't make up her mind whether to come in or not because she knows she's going to get it. Well, he's so nice, treats her so nice, telling her he won't hit her, that he'll never ever hit her, that he won't even touch her unless she asks him to. Then comes the big pronouncement, he loves her, he says, he's finally realized he loves her. I get her in the kitchen and say that's bullshit and you know it, there's only one thing he loves and that's his old lady and two kids back in Chicago, that doesn't all the money you make go back there? That all you're doing is supporting some other chick and that chick can do anything she wants, but you, you can't even go on up to Frisco, that all that love shit he's giving you is just for Mom's sake so he can get you out of the house.
