Sleeping Beauty (32 page)

With no body to bury, and no certainty of what happened to him, the gathering has turned into a pseudo-memorial service.

Brendan would’ve been here with us
, I think,
right at this table
, a stray, comforting consideration that slips past my defenses. I immediately stomp it out like a cigarette.

The people standing nearby are part of the overlapping circles of other crews, a kind of Venn’s Diagram of surfers with Davin at the center. Further away are those Davin would call “jiffy-brahs”: people he’d surf with when he couldn’t find anyone from his own crew, but who he didn’t like well enough to hang out with if he was going full-on terrestrial. Beyond them are the posers, chrubees, and waxboys–the hangers-on who wear the right clothes and own all the right gear, but never seem to actually get wet or paddle out.

I listen, catching wisps of conversation. Every time I hear a voice–familiar or strange, the words plain or accented–I think of Davin. I can hear him so clearly that my brain automatically anticipates how he would respond to every comment I hear.

An Australian called Croc: “…you don’t know Christmas from Bourke Street if you think I’m takin’ you to Burleigh Heads, bloke.”

“
Best point break in Oz during the cyclone season brah
, Davin’s voice says in my head.
Let me flop at your place, I’ll try not to make you look bad.”

A Brazilian woman named Yara: “…
come to Sampa, truta, we show you how it’s done
.”

In my mind, I hear Davin’s reply. “
Are you kook? Who would hit Sampa when they could tear it up at Atlântida Pier?
”

A South African dude I’ve never seen before: “…tried to pull in to the jorl, but then he wiped, fell right on his ringpiece.”

“
Better to bail before you get bashed in Kei, dude, unless you want to become a goddam shark-biscuit
.”

“Claire?”

I face forward.

“Who you looking for?” says Alex from across the table.

“No one.”

“Have you noticed?” she says.

“Noticed what?”

“I haven’t seen a single camera flash. You?”

I smile. “Surfer crews are tight. It’d be pretty hard for an outsider else to get close enough to us to take a picture.” I look around. “Besides, I doubt half these people would know Jonathan Varner if they tripped over him on the sidewalk. Even then they wouldn’t care unless he could carve the waves.” I shrug. “They’re here for Wib. The only ones we have to worry about are the barnyards by the door,” I say, pointing my thumb over my shoulder. “They’re not tribe, and they sure as hell don’t look like locals.”

Next to me, West, who’d been talking to Jonathan on the other side of the table, stops in mid-sentence. He turns his head, an odd look on his face.

“What?” I say.

“Nothing. You just–it’s like…”

“It’s like what?”

“You just sound like Wib all of a sudden. You never used to talk like that. You used to make fun of him for talking like that.”

I look over the heads of the people, over to the far wall where the surfer-proprietor of this particular locale has hung Davin’s broken board. It’s not a tribute, not really. There are others keeping his board company. There’s the yellow and blue board with a shark bite-shaped chunk missing from it. The bite measures seventeen inches at the rail and comes within a few inches of the board’s center stringer (the board’s former owner–who unwisely chose to surf near a bob of seals–no longer had any use for it, to put it mildly).

Then there’s the board with yellow and orange flames, broken in half when a college kid snuck onto a beach that had been closed due to dangerous conditions. What he thought was a dream wave turned into a nightmare rogue. According to his friends, he tried to bail, but his board got drilled into the sand, the weight of the wave snapping it in half. Unfortunately, it also snapped the kid in half, breaking his back and killing him instantly.

The wall has become a Natural Selection of Surfing homage, a wink and a nod to the combined insanity and audacity that makes up the core surfer.

“Sorry,” I say glumly. “It just feels good to hear him…even if it’s me talking.”

“Yeah, I guess I know what you mean.”

Evan lurches to his feet, unceremoniously kicking his chair away when it doesn’t slide across the floor fast enough for his liking. Swaying a little, he holds up a mug of beer. Like everyone else in Davin’s crew, his eyes are red-rimmed, all of us penciling mini-breakdowns into our schedules when we think no one else is looking.

“Listen up!” he yells, taking advantage of the quiet. “I’m not gonna yak your ears off, just wanna thank Andy Gordon for putting this together. That’s it.” With some difficulty, his arm groping wildly behind him, he manages to get his rear-end back in his chair.

I glance at Andy, curious as to what Evan thinks he “put together,” when it was Rev and Gray who actually threw together the events of this afternoon and tonight.

Then the lights go out, igniting a low rumble of protest in the crowd that’s quickly choked off when a huge flat-screen in the back corner buzzes to life. On the screen, words in gray letters fade in, shaking around as if filmed by a hand-held camera, the font so gritty and undefined that the letters are difficult to read. They grow bigger and sharper, finally becoming legible.

Number Three

Davin Allen “Wibb” Wibbens

The screen dies away to black. The strum of an acoustic guitar accompanies a lone voice, the simply sung lyrics providing a powerful counterpoint. The lyrics to the song fade in, soft as powder, at the bottom of the screen, as a series of photos materialize:

Davin as a smiling baby and a chubby, towheaded toddler...

(
I’m gonna live my life / Like every day’s the last)

Davin the gangly, smiling, sun-bleached teenager…

(Without a simple goodbye / It all goes by so fast)

Davin in his college graduation robes, flanked by smiling parents…

(And now that you’re gone / I can’t cry hard enough )

Davin on his computer at work, good-naturedly flipping off the picture-taker, looking strangely out of place in a white collared shirt…

(I can’t cry hard enough / For you to hear me now)

Photos of the guy that I remember best slowly flicker onto the screen and fade away like fireflies:

A group shot of Davin surrounded by West, Rev, Gray, and the rest of their crew…

(
Gonna open my eyes / And see for the first time)

Davin in the water with a group of young kids–“groms”–teaching them to surf…

(
I’ve let go of you / Like a child letting go of his kite)

My chest hitches, determined to break me down. I fight it like a gladiator holed up with a lion (and an entire bar of stoic surfers.) The music swells, the voice joined by a second singing a heartbreaking harmony. The last photo disappears, replaced by slow-motion footage of Davin “shooting the curl.”

Flying through the blue barrel of the wave…

(
There it goes / Up in the sky
)

Outrunning the crest before it closes over him…

(
There it goes / Beyond the clouds
)

His trademark ear-to-ear grin outshining the sun behind him…

(
For no reason why / I can’t cry hard enough for you to hear me now
).

The strumming of the guitar continues in the background, fainter now, playing the same melancholy tune. Lieutenant Commander Grayson appears, standing on the beach, looking slightly off-camera at an unseen interviewer, his eyes covered by dark sunglasses.

The crew on my side of the table automatically raises their glasses, shouting a hearty “Number One!” at the screen.

“
I miss everything about him
,” say Gray on-screen. He looks stiff and uncomfortable as he tries to deliver his tribute. “
The good, the bad, the ugly. Even now he’s not here, but it still feels like he’s here. It’s baffling, really baffling
.”

The video cuts to a shot of Rev, on the same beach, sunglasses pushed onto the top of his head.

“Number Two!” yells the crew, a toast that probably confounds a good thirty percent of the people in the bar. I can see Alex’s face in the glow of the TV, and she’s definitely one of them.

“
If you were his friend, you laughed a lot
,” says Rev, looking straight into the camera. “
If he didn’t like you, you probably yelled a lot. But if you needed something– anything–he’d give it to you, right down to the shirt off his back.
”

Cut to Evan Tallant, who is the only one so far in the video not in a bathing suit. Up go the glasses into toasting position. “Captain!” the crew shouts.

“
He was core, and he partied
,” says the on-screen Evan, “
but he was smart. It didn’t matter if it was a ten foot wave or college: he would tackle it the exact same way, with the same intensity. He mixed it up and made it one big package.
”

The screen fades to black. Just when I think it’s over, there’s a surprise: pictures from today, hundreds of surfers gathered at the Ghost, floating on their boards together past the break, braving the cold water, holding hands to keep the group together:

The water, covered, for hundreds of yards in every direction, in a white carpet of flower garlands and petals…

(Gonna look back in vain / And see you standing there
)

Fade-in to a shot taken from above–probably from a news helicopter–focusing on the empty surfboard in the center–one of Davin’s boards that wasn’t destroyed…

(When all that remains / Is just an empty chair
)

A picture I recognize from last summer appears, Davin dragging me by the arm into the water, both of us laughing…

(And now that you’re gone / I can’t cry hard enough
)

A stunning shot of West and Davin that I took, sitting in the sand, facing each other, fingers almost touching, an orange sun setting into the sea behind them…

(
I can’t cry hard enough / For you to hear me now
)

The slow-motion footage of Davin shooting the curl returns to the exact spot where it left off:

Davin kicks out of the wave–still in slow motion–by turning up into the crest…

(There it goes / Up in the sky)

He reaches down to grab the rail, launching the board over the lip and into the air…

(There it goes / Beyond the clouds)

Finally, he falls, turning the board nose-down to reenter the wave…

(For no reason why / I can’t cry hard enough)

The shot freezes, Davin suspended in the wave, the color slowly draining away to sepia…

(I can’t cry hard enough / For you to hear me now)

The room goes dark. You could hear a pin drop. When the lights come up, I look around me. There isn’t a dry eye in the place…except for two seats down from me. Rev has one hand covering his dry eyes as Evan pats his back and awkwardly wipes away his own tears. Gray repeatedly jams his thumb and forefinger into his eyes, maybe to plug up his tear ducts. It seems to be working; out of the three of them only Evan is unabashedly crying, the other two just seem to be acting like they should be.

Even I don’t have that much trouble crying on cue
, I think.

Being surrounded by tough, cool guys crying (or trying to) should provide the perfect cover for the pregnant bawl-baby at the table, but I reach inside myself and find that I can’t. I look at West, who is staring, resigned, at his drink, eyes dry. I find his hand under the table and squeeze it, trying to convey my understanding:
There’s just nothing left
.

Evan gives standing another shot, this time without kicking the chair. He raises his glass. “Number Three!”

“
Number Three
!” comes the thundering, tear-choked, response.

Everyone in the place besides me throws down whatever’s left in their glass. There’s a respectful lull before conversation picks up again. In a few minutes, there’s boisterous shouting, well-meant jibes, and the occasional friendly shoving and shoulder-punching.

“Where’d Andy get the pictures?” I say to West, scooting in close enough to him to be heard over the racket.

“Rev found them in Wib’s apartment,” he says. “Which reminds me…” He smacks Rev on the shoulder. “Two! Need the key.”

Rev digs in the pocket of his shorts. There’s a flash of silver as he drops the key into West’s hand. “If you want mementoes,” says Rev, “you’d better get to his place yesterday. The vultures are descending.”

I take the key. “What vultures?”

“His family.”

I scowl. “They haven’t talked to him since…” Davin’s parents disowned him shortly after college when he “came out.” His siblings didn’t have the willpower to oppose them, and although they’ve occasionally called him over the years, they’ve never made any effort to form a relationship with him. Davin’s friends and family are all on the beach, out in the surf–all right here in this bar.

“Yeah, I know,” says West, “but they’re referring to his apartment as his ‘estate.’ They’re coming down this weekend to have a free-for-all.”