The Star Group (2 page)

“Today is the day,” Sal said as he dragged himself and his board on to the shore. “I’ve never ridden waves like these.”

I watched as a twelve-foot monster struck the end of the pier and sent up a sheet of spray. Even the people on the pier were getting soaked, marvelling at the fools who would dare surf such creatures. There were very few people in the water; there would be no traffic.

“I've never
seen
waves like these,” I mumbled, echoing Sal.

Sal considered as he stared at the surf. “Maybe you should take the day off, Daniel.”

I shook my head. “Today I shoot the pier.”

Sal laughed. “I tried that and chickened out at the last second. Wait till the waves get below four feet.”

Jimmy nodded. “There are three breaks today. Haven't seen that in years.”

Sal held up his broken leash. It had snapped in the middle, almost exactly in two. “It's hell getting out,” he said. “I guess I've got to hold on to my board for the rest of the day.”

“Will the lifeguards be out today?” Jimmy asked as he put a foot in the water. He was already squeezing into his wet suit. We all wore them, short jobs that covered our torsos, but only half our legs and arms. They were more comfortable than full suits. Sal shook his head at Jimmy's question.

“The red flags are up,” Sal said. “The lifeguards won't be on duty today. It's your own fault if you drown.”

“Has anyone disappeared?” Jimmy asked.

Sal frowned. “I heard somebody out there was looking for his buddy.”

“Maybe he’ll show up,” I said.

“Maybe,” Sal said.

We got in the water and started paddling out. We were lucky, we caught a break in the sets. But even without the waves pounding in, I could feel the energy in the water. A thousand backwashes trying to settle against one another. And on the horizon, still a quarter of a mile out, I saw blue walls. My heart was pounding, I was scared, but I was having a great time.

The waves came. They swelled beneath my board like elephants preparing to charge. I let the first set go by, I wanted to get in my rhythm. Jimmy was bold. He launched himself into the last wave of the set and we heard him scream as his head disappeared down the back side of the mountain, heading south, away from the pier. Sal and I watched as the wave exploded in a fury of white. But Jimmy had played it smart and pulled out immediately after going over the falls. He paddled back toward us wearing the same crazy grin as Sal.

“That was intense!” he shouted.

“What's it feel like going down?” I asked.

“Like you're falling ten stories,” Jimmy said, pulling up beside us to catch his breath.

“You've got to dive away from your board if the wall comes over you,” Sal cold me. “If your board hits you wrong today, it could cut you in two.”

I nodded. “I'm riding the next one.”

“Don't take anything unless you're positioned perfectly,” Sal warned.

His last comment I took to heart. I was out of place for the next wave, but the one after that had my name on it, maybe the name from my tombstone. It was an easy twelve footer. As I turned my back to it and began to paddle, began to feel it pick me up, I felt as if I were in the grip of Mother Nature Herself.

The speed of the wave was incredible, I was paddling as fast as I could and it was going to sweep me by. Not sure what to do, I jumped up and forced the tip of my board down. For a moment I was pointed almost straight down, and all of a sudden I knew what Jimmy meant about the ten stories. The foam churning below me looked like the bubbling brew in a distant landscape. I had jumped out of a plane without a parachute. The wave suddenly seemed ten times its height. I had caught it, or it had caught me, I wasn't sure yet.

But I didn't have a chance to worry about it. I was going down fast, screaming my head off, a blue wall grinding out the daylight on my right. The breath of the wave was on me, the fine spray of seawater. Even before its fist blew me into chaos, I felt it winding up. One second a liquid tube was gracefully curling over my head, and the next I was flying into a washing machine broken on the spin cycle. The wave didn't merely close over my head, it slammed the door shut on top of it. I was forced down, hard and deep.

Fortunately I had a decent breath in my lungs, and my arms over my head. While being tossed in the roller coaster, my board tried to attack me twice, but it only ended up bruising my back. I estimated that the wave held me down forty seconds – a long time to stay submerged in a swimming pool, but an eternity in a roaring ocean. Yet I didn't panic, even when the pain started to grow inside my chest. It was my last day of school, the first day of my love affair with Gale. I simply could not die, it would be too unfair.

When I came up I was close to shore; my leash had snapped as well. My board was bumping the sand, some little kid was picking it up and showing his friends. I waved to my pals to let them know I was OK and went for my board. The kid looked at me like he wanted a dollar for finding my board. I gave him a smile, I was feeling pretty good. My ride had been a total disaster and yet now I had the confidence to go for it. I really was going to try to shoot the pier.

When I reached Sal, Jimmy was already screaming his head off on another wave. Sal pulled a lighter and a pack of cigarettes out from under his wet suit. He kept his goods in a plastic Baggie. He often smoked while he was out on the water, no one knew how he managed. We were both sitting up on our boards when he lighted up.

“How did it feel?” he asked.

“I bought it big time. But it was cool.”

He nodded as he blew smoke, staring off in the distance. Sal loved the nature as much as the surfing. I think he used the sport as an excuse to get close to the elements. His muscles shone in the breaking light. The sun had risen while I was almost drowning. Sal sighed as his face became more thoughtful.

“I love this,” he said.

I nodded. “It's a great day.”

He shook his head. “It’s always a great day when you're out on the water with your buddies.”

“You're just feeling nostalgic because school ends today.”

“Maybe,” He seemed sad. “I keep feeling like it's all going to end soon.”

“But we'll surf all summer.”

“That's not what I mean.” He changed the subject abruptly. “I don't know what Jimmy's going to do with Shena.”

“What can he do? It's done.” I paused. “Does he want to break up with her?”

“You know better. They
are
broken up, they just haven't admitted it to themselves yet. At least Jimmy hasn't. Shena might already know it's hopeless.”

The words were hard to hear. I liked Shena, she had been our class homecoming queen. Now she was just – Toast. God, how I hated that nickname.

“Just because her face is a mess?” I asked.

Sal shook his head. “Jimmy cares for her just the same. But Shena knows how people react to her face no matter what they say to her. She's not a phony, she knows looks aren't everything, but still she can't be who she was with all those scars. I don't think anyone could.”

“But that's all the more reason they should stay together. They need each other.”

Sal eyed me, he had a way of looking right through me at times like this.

“You're a romantic idiot. The someday-future-love you think is going to solve all your problems doesn't exist.”

I was hurt. “You just say that because you already miss Teri. Because you're such an idiot you think you have to join the Marines and leave her.”

He savored his cigarette. “I just have no illusions. You do, you think what we decide today matters in the long run. Why, in ten years I doubt we'll even know each other. You'll be a famous writer; Jimmy will be a congressman; Teri will be the head of a corporation; and I'll be working in some factory telling stories about how great I used to be at football.”

“You don't even talk about football nowadays.”

“That's my point, I might sink low as life goes on. Who knows?” He looked at the water. “That's why I love right now, it’s real.”

“You're depressing me.”

Sal laughed and put out his cigarette in the water and placed the stub back in his Baggie. He never littered, he was very conscientious.

“Let's ride a wave together,” he said. “I want to see what you're made of.”

Another set came, monsters all of them. As was often the case, the third wave looked the biggest. Sal waited for it and I waited for Sal. Without backs to the wave, the pier was on our left. Slowly we moved into position. Jimmy was trying to get back out but was having trouble. Sal’s words continued to bother me for reasons I couldn't pinpoint. Sal didn't do all that well at school, but he was deep. When he spoke, I listened.

Sal was on my right. He would cut to the right, and he figured I would follow him. But I had other ideas. As the third wave began to swell beneath us, I pointed my board to the left and started paddling frantically. In front of me was the pier, the concrete pillars covered with many years of barnacle pilings, so sharp they could cut like razors. Coming hard at my back was a wave that was at least fifteen feet high. As it picked me up, I had a momentary feeling of being on top of the world. I stood quickly, feeling the power. A part of me was absolutely terrified, another part had never felt so invincible. Sal shouted something behind me but I didn't catch it. It was probably
Stop!

I screamed as I whipped down the face of the wave, then I laughed. Overhead, out of the corner of my eye, I saw two dozen people on the pier shout and point at me. The wave was so high, the top of my head was only ten feet under the floor of the pier. The spray of the wave showered my face. Beneath my feet my board felt like a runaway torpedo. The lip of the wave began to curl over my head, and the blue tube I entered right then was a thing of dreams, all encompassing. Only dead in front of me was daylight visible, and in the center of that light were three tall cement pillars. I couldn't turn away from them; I didn't have the control. The wave itself would have to save me. If the tube closed, my life would slam shut with it because I couldn't wipe out, not in this surf and expect to survive a roll through the pier. The only way to live was to make it to the other side. The razor edge of my existence, of my mortality, filled me with a strange intoxication. Maybe my death wish was more vital than I realized.

I shot the pier. I missed the pillars by inches, and when I emerged on the other side the tube opened up and the sun shone on my face. That wave, possibly the biggest wave of the day, I rode almost all the way to shore. When I climbed out of the water and walked back to the south side of the pier, Sal and Jimmy were waiting for me on the shore. They had both witnessed my ride, the whole pier had. They just looked at me and shook their heads and patted me on the back. We didn't go back in the water, it wasn't necessary for us to do any more that morning. We didn't even speak about what I had done. What had happened was the best – it couldn't be topped. And in a sense we had all shared in it. Right then I felt closer to my friends than I ever had. I loved them, even more than I loved my own life. Maybe that was why I'd been able to risk my life, in a strange way, for them.

CHAPTER THREE

AFTER SHOWERING AMD DRIVING TO school with Sal, I collected my yearbook and searched it for pictures of myself and Gale. There were none of me, of course, except my senior picture, but there were four of my love: Gale sitting by herself on a bench; Gale talking to an art teacher, Gale laughing with the cheerleaders; Gale taking a nap on the grass behind a building.

The last picture made my heart pound. What would it be like to nap beside her? My darling, I memorized each page number. I would have blown up the pictures if I could. I was thinking of looking into whether it was possible. Sick, yeah, I know.

Teresa Jettison, Teri, was the first one to sign my yearbook. She came up to me as I was drooling over Gale’s photos, but I was quick to shut the book. Teri was dressed real nice in a grown-up sort of way. She was wearing a tan suit that made her look like the smart executive we all thought she was going to be. Teri had a knack for business. Already she owned a small mail-order company that imported cashmere blankets and shawls from Scotland and India and sold them to New Age clients for meditation and stuff like that. She was only eighteen, but she had made twenty thousand last year. And she was so nice and not the least bit conceited – she blew me away.

Being black, she had dark hair, and it was her hair that most intrigued me about her looks. It was shiny and fluttered around her head like living threads. She had a way of looking you right in the eye when you were talking to her, as if there was nothing that mattered to her except what you were saying. Her relationship with Sal pained her, no question, but she accepted the good with the bad and didn't whine. She gave me a big hug after she came up to me.

“I heard what you did,” she said, “Nut. You could have died.”

I smiled with pleasure. “Today is not a good day to die.” I paused. “I like the picture of you and the clown. It looks like you have your hand up his nose.”

Teri blushed. “That guy was hitting on me. I was trying to push him away. I can't believe Shena used that picture, I told her not to.”

Earlier in the year Shena had been editor of the yearbook, but quit after her accident. Teri knew that Shena probably had nothing to do with the clown picture. For sure, if Shena had been editor still she would have put in a couple of pictures of me – not that I cared. I didn't photograph well; I think it's the light.

“It’s still a sexy picture,” I said.

Teri Laughed. “Yeah. Dwarfs and clowns are in this year. I liked your picture.”

“My one and only?”

“It's quality that counts.” She gestured to my book. “Can I sign it?”

“Sure,” We exchanged books. I opened hers to the clown picture and pulled out a pen. I wrote quickly, not sure what to say.

Teri,

You are one of my heroes. Don't let go of Sal, he is my other hero. Set the world on fire. I know you got the fire.