Crazy for the Storm

CHAPTER 12

DAD WAS HOLDING both our surfboards when I woke up, and it took a second to remember that we were in Mexico.

Let’s get wet, he said. It’ll feel good.

I was suspicious because he didn’t mention the waves at all, just the part about getting wet. I followed him down some rusty metal stairs and we passed a Mexican couple dressed up in fancy linen clothes. They huddled against the railing as if we were banditos or lepers or something. Down on the beach the swells became waves, big waves.

It didn’t look so big from up high, I said.

You’ll be fine. There are some beautiful peelers coming off that point. See them?

Should I surf the inside section?

Hell no, he said. If you don’t surf the point you might as well be anywhere riding the whitewash.

I swallowed any further protests because I could see in his eyes that we were going out no matter what.

Although the air was as hot as a two-dollar pistol, as my dad liked to say, the water was cool. I howled because the salt stung my raspberried hip and the scrapes on my ass and arm and hand.

It’s good for it, he said.

I clenched my teeth and put my head down and paddled. The stinging waned and after ducking under a few waves I felt awake and clearheaded for the first time in days. He pushed me through the bigger walls of whitewash and the salt scrubbed off the caked layers of sweat.

Out on the point I shivered, more from buried fear than the water temperature. My dad rubbed my back and spoke softly to me about the waves and how a ride could be effortless, like a seagull gliding an inch off the surface.

The swells came around the headland and stood up without warning. They were taller than my head. He told me I could do it, that it would be no problemo, and he turned my board around and told me to paddle for the little one rolling in.

He pushed me into the wave. Not a little one, it was over my head. I swept my feet under my body and leaned back just a bit. The nose of the board dove for an instant and then planed out on the bottom. I turned my shoulder and the board responded perfectly, elevating into the face of the wave. I pumped my back leg to generate speed.

My dad said these waves were perfect because they broke down the line without sections. I hoped he was right because no matter how hard I gyrated I remained in the crux of the wave—right where the face of the wave bent and the lip of the wave started to pitch outward. I kept pumping my legs and the lip kept pitching toward my head. After a string of near escapes, each one a victory, my legs got tired and I curved over the lip and down the back of the wave. I paddled to the beach before my dad could call me back out.

The sand was black and burning hot so I sat on my board. I watched Dad ride some waves. He swung his board up the face of the wave, banking off the pitching lip, which drove him down the face, giving him enough speed to thrust off the bottom and back up the face to bash the lip again.

We ate lunch in a restaurant at the top of the rusty stairs. We sat at a pigskin table in our wet shorts and the refined Mexican couple scrutinized our sandy feet and salt-contorted hair. My dad sunk low over the table and shifted his eyes to the couple and back to me.

They have no idea what they’re missing, he said.

His eyes wound up. His cheeks formed into two rosy balls.

They think they’re really something, he said. We just surfed perfect waves, perfect, with nobody out, and they’re just sitting there oblivious, sipping coffee and chatting about who knows what.

I looked over at the fancy couple. They sipped their coffee like birds and the man smoothed out his linen shirt and I thought about us racing across the sea on those waves.

It would be boring to be them, I said.

Could you imagine? he said, and we laughed like two monkeys.

In the morning a crosswind was chewing the swells down to one-foot mushers. We left and never found another good wave in Baja. After traversing the monotonous desert all morning we parked on a bluff of dust and sand, no bushes or plants or color, except for the emerald sea below. Just looking at it cooled me down.

Good thing we got those waves yesterday, he said.

It’s sure better than sitting in a hot truck all day with nothing to look at but dust, I said.

He laughed.

Have you ever been tubed? he said.

No.

It’s kinda like flying through deep powder.

Really?

Yeah. Even though it’s different, you get that feeling.

I turned and my dad was staring at me with wild sapphire blue eyes. He saw it in me and I saw it in him—a remembrance of that feeling: hovering in a weightless space with honey on the tip of your tongue and pure red blood gorging your heart, soaring on a current of angelic music cutting clear mountain air.

Maybe we’ll find some tubes for you, Boy.

What happens if you don’t make it out?

You get crushed.

He punctuated his response by holding his gaze on me.

My dad was not his usual self that night. We ate in a town crowded with Mexican tourists and he scowled and stared at the people moving along the cobblestone street. It seemed like he was glaring at women’s asses a lot. He said he was feeling under the weather and he ate oranges and raw garlic with cheese for his dinner.

Are you sad about Sandra?

Naw. I’m just fighting off a bug.

Will she be there when we get back?

I don’t know. I hope so.

In the room we plugged in the fan he had bought at the local hardware store. The store had mostly barren shelves and was dank and dirty, part of a broken world of half-built structures and unfinished roads. We sat naked on our respective beds receiving alternate blasts from the fan. He tuned the guitar, which was way out of tune from the heat. He sang Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain and then shut off the lights.

The following afternoon we set across the Sea of Cortez aboard the ferry. The only thing good about the eighteen-hour journey would be the cool air coming off the water. My dad played poker with a Scandinavian doctor and his beautiful wife. There were stacks of 1,000 and 10,000-note pesos building up in front of my dad’s seat. I wondered if he was trying to impress the wife. She had dove-white hair and lime green eyes. The opposite of Sandra.

The dolphins rode waves off the ferry’s bow as the sun went down. I was mesmerized. They must be the best surfers in the world.

In the middle of the night I was awakened. My dad was curling up on the end of our bench, putting the top of his head close to mine. He smelled funny.

What’s that smell? I said.

We’ve been sweating for a couple days, he said.

You smell like that lady, I said.

We danced together after you went to sleep, he said. Her perfume must’ve got on me.

Where was her husband?

He danced too.

Yeah sure, I thought.

The next morning we disembarked in Mazatlán and the sage was gone, replaced by jungle. The jungle crawled across the hills and was deep green and smelled of wet earth. This is Mexico, I thought.

We took the highway south and drove out to the first point we came to. A blond surfer, clearly an American, was waxing up his board.

Guard the truck, said my dad and jogged across the beach and spoke to him.

When my dad returned he looked excited.

The guy thinks the waves will get good today from a hurricane off the coast. What do you say we drive for a couple hours and then surf?

Is it going to get big?

Maybe. But we’ll surf a point. Just stay on the inside.

At the last point break there was no inside section where I could ride the smaller waves. I brought this to my dad’s attention.

That was unique, he said.

He patted my leg and shut my door and went around to the driver’s side.

The road veered inland and I anticipated it veering back toward the coast. I moved to the edge of the seat, waiting for the moment when we’d see the big waves, not wanting them to catch me by surprise. My dad whistled a tune I had heard him play on his guitar and he told me it was Merle Haggard. He jiggled his shoulders and lifted his voice. It was out of sync with the forlorn lyrics and it seemed like maybe he was trying to hide sadness. Or maybe he was fine. There was no way to read him. He was walled off in his own world. I hated not knowing what he was feeling, not having a barometer to look to. Unable to express my aloneness, I felt tied up, and I sat there picking the scab on my elbow.

My dad reached across my body and braked hard, his skin peeling off the vinyl as I banged against the passenger’s door. Next to a roadblock made of sandbags and a two-by-four stood a young man in a military uniform that was several sizes too big for him. He waved a white flag.

Shit, said my dad.

What?

Nothing. It’s cool. Federales.

My dad eased the truck up to the two-by-four that was about hood high. I wanted him to stop farther back. From under a makeshift lean-to of palms appeared three more young men in uniform. The soldiers had rifles over their shoulders, barrels pointed forward and swinging, as they approached us.

Hola, said my dad. Que paso?

The teenager with the flag stepped aside and a guy wearing a billed cap took the lead. He was a teenager too. His eyes were small and swollen like Nick’s on a Saturday morning. He didn’t respond to my dad. The other two guys with rifles circled the truck and glared at me. How could teenagers have guns already? I thought.

I peeked around my dad’s body. The leader rested his hand on the nose of the rifle, which was lazily pointed toward my dad’s head.

Pasaporte, he said.

My dad reached for the glove compartment and the teenager on my side raised his rifle. The barrel was inches from my face. My dad spoke to the leader in Spanish and pointed to the glove compartment. The barrel dropped and I peed in my pants. I held my breath so I wouldn’t cry. I didn’t move and the piss ran down my leg.

The leader asked my dad about the washing machine. My dad showed him the Sears receipt. My dad and the leader seemed to argue.

The leader grabbed the door handle and I gasped. The teenagers laughed at me. The leader opened the driver’s door and looked behind the bench seat. He yelled to the guy on my side, who opened my door and rummaged through the glove compartment, scattering papers onto the floor and the road. One of them grabbed my dad’s guitar. The guy holding the flag made kissing gestures to me. My dad put his hand over my hand and I stared at the black floor mat and the papers.

The soldiers took money from my dad’s pockets, then one of them threw the guitar case into the truck bed and a sound rose from my dad’s gut. The leader yelled to the kid with the flag and he pulled back the two-by-four. It slid off the sandbags and when there was enough space my dad hit the gas hard. The teenagers whistled and called out.

My dad did not speak. His arm muscles were taut from gripping the steering wheel. I spoke and it startled him.

What? he snapped.

Nothing, I said.

About ten minutes later he pulled over. He told me to change my shorts and I was amazed he had noticed. He fixed the tarp and inspected his guitar. His face looked angry. The vertical crease between his eyebrows cut deep into his skin and it looked like he had a scar there.

Was that all our money?

Almost, he said, then pulled the poker winnings from the sound hole of the guitar.

Ha! I said.

You hung tough, he said.

He kissed me on the cheek.

I love you, he said.

I love you too, I said.

Later that day we came upon another checkpoint. This time I saw only one teenager. He was in uniform like the others had been. He was tall with very dark skin and pimples. He rested something against the sandbags in the shade, and his long spine hooked like the handle of a cane. Gangly legged, he strolled to the truck. He spoke in slow Spanish. He pointed to the washing machine. My dad grumbled and pulled the receipt out of the glove compartment again. On cue the teenager said tax in perfect English. My dad pointed back from where we had come and seemed to recount the heavy tax we had already paid. The teenager looked startled. He craned his head and peered beyond the road into the jungle. Sitting in a folding chair was an older man in uniform with a toothpick in his mouth and a magazine in his hands. The boy whistled and the man tore his eyes from the magazine and shrugged his shoulders, as if bothered. The boy waved the man over.

My dad’s eyes darted around. They landed on the sandbags. Suddenly he hit the gas. The tires squealed, then bit, and the truck lurched and charged the barricade. I ducked and heard the wood ping off the grill.

Stay down! he yelled.

He tucked his head between his shoulders like a pigeon and kept the pedal to the floor. I heard a loud pop.

Stay down!

I crouched into the leg space under the glove compartment. I felt the truck pull as we rounded a turn. The truck righted and he looked back.

We’re clear, he said.

Holy shit Dad!

I wasn’t going to play that game again, he said.

What was that noise?

A gunshot.

Crouched under the dash I stared at his knee thinking about a bullet puncturing his skull.

They don’t have a car, I said. Right?

No. They probably get picked up and dropped off.

What about a radio?

Maybe. But probably not.

What if they do?

I didn’t see one. I think we’re lookin’ good.

I crept onto the bench seat and panted like a dog.

Ollestad. Take it easy. We’re fine. They’re long gone.

I looked at him and he saw the fear and disappointment in my eyes.

I didn’t think he’d get to his rifle so fast, he said. He seemed slow.

That was stupid, I said.

He nodded and ran his hand through his curly brown hair. He stared out the window and his eyes were lost in the beaten blacktop. He looked regretful, sort of confused.

I hated being put in this position—shit-in-my-pants scared. Now something worse was happening. Dad looked scared.

What’s going to happen? I said.

Nothing.

What if there’s another checkpoint?

I’ll just have to pay a bigger tax, he said with a smile.

It’s not funny, I said.

It was tense for a second there, he said. But we’re lookin’ golden now.

I kept imagining the bullet tearing open the back of his head. I kept thinking about the checkpoint guards tracking us down and torturing us. The more relaxed my dad became the faster bad scenarios flooded my mind.

I’m never going anywhere with you again, I said.

Ah come on, Ollestad.

I shook my head and we both stared out the windshield. That’s how it was for a long time.

I heard thunder crawl over the mountains and soon afterward it started to rain. The road began to descend. I glimpsed the metallic ocean over the tops of the green maze. The view was eclipsed by a canopy of overhanging branches with leaves so thin they looked like paper cutouts veiling the sky beyond.

We hit the coast a few minutes later and pink veins of electricity zapped on and off like neon lights gouging the ocean. I couldn’t see the immediate coastline through the jungle, just intermittent swells of ocean out by the horizon.

Silver-dollar raindrops splattered the windshield, drumming the roof, and the swollen ravines on the sides of the road occupied my attention. Suddenly, the truck was skating across the road. My dad braked and the truck tailed out, then the wheels bit and the truck tipped like it was going to roll over. Dad corrected the steering wheel and we waggled back to our side of the road. He glanced at me and smiled like it was nothing.

Curtains of rain moved like giant spider legs across the oily blacktop, trampling into the jungle. The tarp clung to the washing machine. My dad clung to the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white. I mulled over all the bad things I had done in my life. The lies. I wished I hadn’t done anything bad because it seemed like that would help us now. I promised not to tell any more lies if we managed to get out of this.

The windshield wipers stopped. My dad wiggled the lever but nothing happened.

Motherfucker, he said.

The windshield immediately gauzed over as if the glass had melted into globs. My dad checked the rearview mirror and rolled down the window and stuck his head out. He pulled over and engaged the emergency brake. He studied his watch.

We have to get off the road.

Where’re we going to go?

We’ll find a place. No problemo.

He took off his shirt and stuck his head out the window and we rolled along the side of the road. Wet hairs draped his forehead and he looked like he was drowning. After a mile he ducked back inside and rolled up the window. With his shirt off I could see his muscles and that made me feel slightly better.

Are we going to drive like this all day?

No.

Why not?

Too dangerous to drive like this, he said.

He checked the rearview mirror and I imagined the older man and the teenager huddled on the side of the road in the rain and an army truck pulling over to collect them.

My dad rolled down the window and stuck his head out again. He looked tough against the rain whipping his face. I knew we had to get off the road because maybe the army guys would catch up with us, but I did not mention it to my dad.

I used all my energy to push that image out of my head and decided to help my dad. It may have been my first truly mature act, knowing that helping him drive through the rain, instead of being stuck in fear, would make me feel better in the long run.

I wiped my hand over the fogged passenger’s window and right away I saw a dirt road cutting through the jungle and I yelled to him. He stopped the truck. He backed up. He smiled when he saw the road.

Way to go, Eagle-eye Ollestad. See. Never give up.

He swung the truck out wide and we dropped off the pavement and he told me to hold on. He hit the gas and we tore through the tight opening. The truck bucked and metal grinded and the undercarriage thumped the ground. We waggled our way like a water snake through the deep mud. The trail curved suddenly and my dad yanked the wheel and the ass end of the truck slapped some trees. It went on and on and he couldn’t slow down or we’d sink. My eyes were pinned open and I held onto the dashboard and my dad’s triceps flexed with every turn of the wheel. His head was out the window flogging like a cowboy on a bull, ducking under jungle limbs and receding within the window frame whenever his side brushed up close to the jungle wall. I almost asked where we were going but decided that would distract him.

Another close call with some part of the truck tagging a branch. My dad hit the gas and we bounced, then sailed for a moment and landed hard, the undercarriage vibrating up through the seat. Then the engine died. The truck halted and we lurched forward. I felt the truck sink.

My dad spanked the steering wheel with his hand and turned to me.

End of the line, Boy Ollestad.

Is the car broken?

I don’t know.

Will they find us?

No way José. They’ll whip right past that road. We almost did and we were going a quarter of the speed.

I nodded. He seemed right. And he had shared the previously unspeakable-crazy-scary thing with me—that the army guys might come looking for us—and I was comforted by his admission. It’s good to be one of the fighters for a change, I thought.

What do we do now? I said.

Walk down to the beach. See if we can find some shelter.

Are there houses around here?

You don’t bust your ass cutting a trail like this for nothing, Ollestad.

He carried a surfboard under each arm with his duffle over one shoulder. I carried my suitcase. The mud came up to my knees in some places and we hugged the edge of the trail, searching for firmer ground near the trees. A swath of banana plants gave us something to wedge our feet against and seeing the familiar green fruits clustered around the thick vines reminded me of the plants surrounding Grandpa and Grandma’s house.

With each step we had to unplug our feet from the earth. It reminded me of all those hikes I did with my dad in search of virgin powder. I told him so.

Remember your killer snowplow? he said.

Yeah. I could ski anything with it.

You skied the top of St. Anton all the way to the bottom in a blinding snowstorm with ice under the powder in that snowplow.

When did I start skiing parallel?

Let’s see. I think in ’73 when we took the train to Taos for Christmas.

Oh yeah, I said, recalling the plastic Indian he bought me, and how I would sometimes look at it and think about my dad dying, declaring that I wanted to die too if he died.

Do you think I might win a race this winter?

Don’t worry about winning, Ollestad. Just keep trying. The rest will come.

Do you think I’ll be in the Olympics one day?

Sure. Better yet you’ll get a scholarship to Harvard or Yale.

What’s that?

It’s when they invite you to go to their school and play a sport for them.

Dad planning my life so far in advance added pressure, as if the mud and the jungle had grown thicker.

Are we ever going to get there? I whined.

My dad stopped. The spackles of mud on his face and mustache and up his legs made him look like some kind of human chameleon of the jungle.

It’s easier if you…

Just hike straight through without stopping. I know.

He laughed.

Besides there’s nowhere to sit down, he said and laughed again.

Not having a place to sit because we were surrounded by mud and jungle and overhead by thick clouds about to burst did not seem even kinda funny.

I wish I didn’t come, I said.

And I slogged past him.

Well, Ollestad. I’m glad you did.

I don’t want to ski race anymore, I called back without turning. I’d rather do karate.

Your mother’s the one who needs to learn karate.

I paused, startled. My dad had never said so much about my mom and Nick before. This was my big chance to speak out— tell Dad how Nick called me a liar and insisted I’d grow up to be a failure. This was a good time to ask my dad to do something about Nick’s cruelty. But all I did was grunt and plod on.

The hillside climbed to a ridge that wandered back toward even bigger hills. Up ahead I saw the trail drop abruptly. Where it appeared again down below, the jungle grew in ribbons over grassy marshland. There were some cows and tall coconut trees and then another hill and I hoped that on the other side finally awaited the beach, shelter and rest.

I guzzled some water. I was sweating and the heat was like a thick cloak and my head burned with a fever.

I’m burning up, Dad.

We’ll jump in the ocean and it’ll cool you off.

As much as it made sense, that’s not what I wanted to hear.

I could feel him looking at me. I wanted him to say something about my mom or Nick. Then I could tell him that Nick swore at me and said I was rotten and said he’d track me down if I told on him. After that, when we got home, Dad would take care of things.

My dad moved behind me and I waited. Then he stopped moving. He didn’t say anything.

I threw my suitcase over the drop-off. It appeared a few seconds later floating on the mud in the trail below. My eyes blurred with tears and my voice was raked by anger, fucking this and fucking that. I sat in the mud and threw globs of it at my dad. Eventually I ran out of steam and just cried. The mud felt good against the scab on my hip. It began to rain again.

Are you done with your mountain fit? he said.

No, I said.

He reached down and I took his hand and he tugged me out of the mud.

Slide down on your ass, he said.

We slid down the hill into the grassy marshland. The mud was waist deep and I grabbed my surfboard from my dad and floated on it.

Great idea, Ollestad.

Where’s your bag? I said.

Left it up there, he said. Guess I’ll have to wear trunks from now on.

We got to the other side of the marsh and I noticed that some of the mud had dried on our skin—it had stopped raining—and we looked like swamp things. We could hear the ocean and my dad patted my back.

Way to grind it out, he said.

He led me out of the jungle. Abruptly our feet crunched down on a mound of white seashells. I looked ahead and the shells mushroomed all the way to the wet sand and then lay scattered about, washing around on the shore.

The water was blueberry, like the sky now. There were slicks of turquoise where the reef ceased, allowing the white sand to reflect back up through the water. Farther out a bigger reef made swells leap up everywhere like a sea of cobras striking ten at a time. We two swamp things looked on in awe.

For the first and only time my dad refrained from pointing out the beauty. He said nothing. Not even about the surf. He tiptoed over the shells and dove into the ocean. The mud left a stain in his wake. He told me to keep my clothes on in order to clean them out. I opened my eyes underwater and yellow fish scatted beneath a cluster of reef.

We stripped nude and hung our clothes on a papaya tree. The fruit’s sweet aroma mingled with the humid air and stuck to the inside of my nose. The yellow-green melons hung like big breasts and I held the papayas’ bouquet in my lungs. Everything glared vibrant with color and at the same time was as soft as velvet.

We stood in a daze, our long trudge affecting us now. Time passed and the sweetness of the air and the berry palettes in the sky and water resonated over the percussion of waves crashing against the reef.

Breaking the spell my dad asked me about my hip.

It’s getting better, I said.

Sure looks like you got it skateboarding.

I paused. Down here in Mexico, my lie appeared such a small thing.

I did, I said.

Your secret’s safe here in Mexico, he said.

My face contorted into a smile. I felt loony and relieved. I charged the ocean and called out, attacking some imaginary demon. The shells sliced into my feet and I dove headlong into the sea.

I surfaced and my dad gave me a humorous sideways glance, then danced over the shells with his balls swinging. He jumped in and floated on his back and watched the sky. He was at ease like a seal bathing with one flipper up and he watched the pregnant thunderheads and seemed to enjoy their warm mist.

I swam ashore and scoured the beach, finding some thick white shells with holes in them. I showed them to Dad and we decided they were puka shells. I collected at least a hundred, storing them in a large abalone shell.

My dad tore open a papaya with his thumbs. We each dug out the slimy black seeds with a shell and spooned the meat into our mouths.

Just like the Indians, he said.

He told me that they fished with handmade spears, carved boats out of logs, and had no TV or cars or restaurants.

They were tough, Ollestad, he said.

How tough?

Tougher than tiger shit.

What’s tougher? Tiger shit or tiger piss?

Hmm. Tiger piss maybe.

Really?

Yeah. Probably.

He washed off the surfboards in the salt water and I washed off my suitcase. Then I followed him north.

What happens when you boil to death? I said.

You dehydrate and finally die.

What happens when you freeze to death?

You’re cold. Then you feel warm and sleepy. And then you fall asleep and never wake up.

I’d rather freeze to death.

Me too.

We followed the raised sand spit hooking out to sea. My dad looked back toward the big reef. He stopped and studied the waves and I pretended not to notice.

Might get good when the wind settles down, he said.

I didn’t respond and he turned and walked around the spit. On the other side was a patch of sand ending where the big black rocks bordered the cove. As we got closer I saw two fishing boats on the wet sand, rocking like cribs. They’re not canoes carved from wood, I thought. Little dories overstuffed with nets and buckets and spears—metal not bamboo.

Look, my dad said.

Barely visible above a hedge line of mangroves was a group of steeple-shaped roofs made from coconut palms.

My dad shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it and I realized we were lucky. It made me nervous that we were relying on luck.

He followed a path trampled into the shells.

Should we just walk right in? I said.

He opened his hands.

I don’t know what else to do, he said.

But what if the people who live here don’t like strangers?

Then we’ll leave. Don’t sweat it, he said.

He took my hand and we walked toward the roofs.