Desperation Reef

46

The Santa Ana River Jetty up in Newport is a glassy eight feet the next morning, an unseasonal south swell of warm water and beautifully shaped waves.

Casey watches the perfect A-frames marching in, growing to full height, their bodies windlessly smooth, the white spray of the peaks finally breaking, dividing the waves into left and right shoulders that rise invitingly.

It’s first light as Bette idles her jet ski — a three-hundred-horsepower Kawasaki two-stroke she’s named Wanda, after her sister in New York. The 850-pound beast was endorsed by Jen, who ordered her to service it and check every line, valve, and injector, and all connections, before towing her son into big surf.

Casey sits snugly behind her in his half-john wetsuit, arms around Bette’s middle, his surfboard and tow line behind them on the rescue sled.

“Set me up on that last left,” he says, over the idling gurgle of the jet ski. He smells her hair and feels her warm ear on his cold nose, hugs her big strong body.

“You got it,” she says, half turned so he can hear.

Bobbing a safe distance in front of, and away from, the incoming waves, Casey watches that third left taking shape outside. It’s the clean-up wave of the set, the last, and the biggest local wave he’s seen this spring or summer. He squeezes Bette’s middle again, pulling himself up against her, comforted and thrilled by the seaworthy strength and beauty that he can feel even through her wetsuit.

We’re like pirates in arms, he thinks, letting go of her and sliding into the ocean, stroking back to the rescue sled and his tow rope and board.

A moment later, Bette turns and catches his right-hand shaka sign, the one Brock can’t stand, then she eases her machine into a brisk trot and picks her way along and behind the breaking wave. She sidles west, parallel as the wave rises in front of her, gunning Wanda faster now toward the peaking crest. She feels the weight of Casey behind her.

Loves the power of the ski, the power of her own strong body in control of all those horses. Like Casey’s.

Swerves ahead and around the cresting wave, then speeds along the left-breaking shoulder. When she feels Casey drop the tow rope she looks back to make sure he’s dropped it, then opens up the ski and blasts up the steepening face of the breaker and over it, into the sky, engine screaming, Bette getting off this wave as fast as she can so Casey, behind her, can inherit it.

She crashes down into the smooth dark water, cuts hard left, safely behind the wave now, and sees the back of Casey’s yellow head cutting along in front of the breaking lip, the rest of him a faint speeding shadow in a wall of blue-green water. Same yellow head she watched so intently in the Barrel bar not quite a year ago when she dressed her best and tried to catch his eye but he never once looked over.

Casey trims along the shoulder, ducks into a quick clean tube, lets it spit him back out to carve the face. Up and down and up and down, what a joyful wave she is, proud but generous and truly, fully stoke-worthy.

Shoots across this living animal, traces a hand along her flank, dips to the bottom and shoots back to the top, where he launches his board.

Flies high, bending into free fall, arms spread and eyes on the gray-blue sky.