Desperation Reef

40

After twenty-five years it’s time for me to do my job and tell the truth.

The great writer Susan Casey once called Mavericks a portal to the dark side.

She certainly got that right, especially the wave that John caught late in his final heat: a fifty-foot blue-black peak breaking top to bottom, leaving a barrel five times taller than the man trying to ride it.

Onto which I towed John, then sped along and over the shoulder to safety, the rescue sled gliding behind me on its braided nylon rope.

From there I watched him drop into the wave, legs vibrating, feet locked in the straps, like a vertical arrow, John fastened to the pointed, narrow, big-wave gun, headed down fast, his arms out for control and balance.

He made the bottom turn, carving deep, leveling off, and backing into the barrel forming over him, raking his fingertips along the cylinder. In that moment, John was a daredevil in the barrel, somehow managing to look casual within a rifled, two-story tube.

I smiled to myself despite the danger he had chosen.

This is why we do this, I thought. Nothing we’ll ever do will match it. Not sex, not love, not being a mother or a father, which I know we will be someday. Not seeing God. Not making money. Nothing but this moment of freedom and velocity, this rush of nature of which we are a part. This mastery of power unimaginable. This pure, terrifying joy.

Then the heavy lip lunged, took John by the back of his neck like a blue-black leopard, and wrenched him off his board.

Leaving him suspended in midair, turning, head down and feet up, his board above, aimed down at him like a spear, its leash wobbling between them.

From my perilous angle — the jet ski rocking hugely on the building crest of the next wave, the rescue sled shifting with its own contrapuntal weight — I watched John vanish into the white avalanche of the kill zone.

I saw my opening, my moment to get there and help him.

But I didn’t crank the throttle, because I had something to tell John first.

And I did, firmly:

“I know you betrayed me.”

In that fraction of a moment, I hated him.

And in that half second I felt the wave bearing me up, as if I were an offering and I knew that there was no way I could get to him in time. I had missed my moment.

So now you know our secret.

My sons, Casey and Brock, were born just minutes apart, almost nine months later.

As many of you know, last month, Casey won the Monsters of Mavericks contest that killed his dad twenty-five years ago.

It was held during a massive swell, some of the biggest waves ever to hit Half Moon Bay. My boys rode those waves courageously, unpredictably, and artfully.

My beautiful boys!

I won worst wipeout on the women’s side, mostly because of a huge but handsome wave that took me in and held me close in its beating heart, then launched me into the impact zone like I was a stick. Pushed me under and held me down for a very long time. Lost consciousness. When I awoke I was back on the boat but I didn’t know who I was, or where, or how I’d gotten there.

Nietzsche said when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

But my fear was gone, because that last wave decided to kill me.

Would have killed me in just a matter of seconds if Casey and Brock and Mahina — Brock’s wife — hadn’t pulled me out of the rioting Pacific and onto Mahina’s jet ski rescue sled. I have no memory of that wave, only of white light followed by black silence.

In which Casey jumped my failing heart, and Brock breathed life into my waterlogged lungs.

Sons.

Heart.

Breath.

Life.

Then onto the rescue chopper and the hospital in San Francisco.

I have one more question for you, John, and for you, my dear readers: Do you forgive me?

Midnight, and Jen stares at that final paragraph, heart beating hard, and a dull knot in her throat. Hits the home key and reads the whole article again.

Here it is, she thinks.

How the world will remember John and me.

Betrayal...

A fifty-foot blue-black peak breaking top to bottom...

In that fraction of a moment I hated him.

And in that half second... I knew there was no way I could get to him in time. I had missed my moment.

She wonders if the world really needs this confession, but she knows that she does. It’s been three weeks since rising from the almost dead. Her memories are creeping back, and they frighten her but she can face them.

So she saves the story and attaches it to a note to her Surf Tribe editor.

Apologizes for taking so long.

Hits send.

Jen spends the next hour walking her dark, autumn-cool beach town. She loves this city, its buildings and streets, its beaches and waves and coves. The boardwalk. The smells of the Pacific and eucalyptus and the restaurants, the smell of the Barrel when it was alive, the smell of the roses up in Heisler Park. Loves the people, the artists, the eccentrics, the homeless huddled in their blankets in the cold retail doorways on Forest Avenue.

Live here; die here in this privileged, charming bubble.

We ride huge waves for the rush of it. And the joy and the danger. We pretty much ignore the rest of the world. We are not superfluous people, but we are highly specialized. We Stonebreakers are the stock of champions, who are, of course, made, not born. We beat fear.

Right now she feels released from her past, although found guilty as charged. By a jury of one: herself.

Freed by her confession, born again by truth.

And Jen hopes — she’d pray if she knew how — that Casey and Brock and her mom and dad and Mike and Marilyn will understand and forgive her for missing the chance to save John’s life. If not, well, she’s given them a foundation of truth rather than a half-truth.

Jen puts one foot in front of the other as she traverses the sleeping city.

An orange-and-black Corvette howls through the crosswalk at Brooks Street, just ten feet from her.

Jen freezes mid-stride.

Another chance to write a new destiny, she thinks. To do for Casey and Brock what you couldn’t do for John.

Keep them alive. Protect and serve.

And do something for yourself, she thinks. Finally. Something for the Jen Stonebreaker drowning in regret and fear for all those many years.

Drown no more.

Ride wild horses again.