Kook

by Peter Heller

  “Bobby T——. I think he’s from Denver, where you’re from.”

  I knew the guy.

  Then he told us that the public campaign to stop the big development out at Balandra, the mangrove cove we’d passed on the way to our wedding in the water, had been successful. The developers were going elsewhere. The issue had resonated with the people of La Paz. It was a conservation issue, but also an issue of sovereignty: the public was fed up with losing one public beach after another to resorts that catered to gringos.

  Tim told us that Espiritu Santo Island had won UNESCO World Heritage Site status, meaning that it was protected under an international regime and would remain wild. The few fishermen who had camps on the island would be allowed to stay, and various groups were now working out the protections for fish and other wildlife around the island.

  Tim could not make the whole of the Sea of Cortez a reserve, but he was chipping away at his dream an island, a cove, at a time.

  “You two should hang out awhile,” he said.

  “I—uh—we’re pretty eager to get back to surfing,” I stammered.

  “Well, you can stay at my place while you get ready to go across.”

  It was a generous offer. Tim was a famously private man and we felt honored. It was an offer we couldn’t refuse.

  Means’s house was surprising. He was a man of standing in La Paz; wherever he went—restaurants, the marinas, the hotels—he was recognized and treated with respect and affection. One might expect a man like this to live in a fancy house. Understated, perhaps, but sumptuous. What kind of house would Jacques Cousteau live in? Something with a view over the ocean that he loved, something with rooms open to light and breeze, with patios and a desert garden. Okay, that’s what I would have wanted. Anyway, you might expect a guy like Tim Means to have a sweet pad. He did, but it was nothing like we’d imagined.

  I thought it would overlook the harbor. As we pulled up, I saw that the house stood on a grimy wide side street of concrete-walled modest houses, with a junk car shop across the way. It was a mile from the water. A sign for Grupo Tortuguero stood before the shaded bungalow beside it. Tim helped start the organization: groups of local fishermen and others up and down the Mexican coasts dedicated to saving sea turtles. The same fishermen that were wiping out turtles with careless practices were now patrolling beaches nightly to prevent poachers from robbing nests of eggs, and carefully transferring eggs from those nests into nurseries. It was an astounding grassroots movement.

  We parked the Beast by the sign and approached the house. I stuck my hand through a slot in the tall heavy wooden gate and slid the bolt and the barking came up like a deafening alarm. A thud against the gate, then another. We heard clawing on the wood. Kim and I looked at each other.

  “Do you have a piece of raw steak?” I said. “Isn’t that what they do in the movies?”

  Kim said, “We’ve got tortillas and beans. They’re Mexican dogs, right?”

  “Huh. Okay, I’m going in.” I shoved on the gate and we squeezed through and were almost knocked over. Two thin Mexican mutts, one brown and one black, were on top of us, their licks covering our arms and faces. An old golden retriever seemed a bit embarrassed by her colleagues’ lack of manners and politely licked our hands. A gray cat sat on an old chair by the door and blinked. Tim’s house was two stories, set in a grove of drought-tolerant Palo de Arco trees, deeply shaded. Cool in here after the bustling, glaring streets of the town. An old hippie school bus, painted with fish and turtles, sat beside it.

  I forgot to latch the gate. We heard it clatter and knock and turned to see the two mutts bolting through it. By the time I got into the middle of the street, yelling, waving, all I could see were a pair of insubordinate streaks blocks away. I ran after them, screaming my head off, terrified they’d get hit by a bus as they crossed avenue after avenue. I returned to the house ragged and upset, climbed into the Beast, and chased them down like a helicopter going after wolves. As soon as I pulled up on them and slid the door open, they smiled broadly the way dogs do and happily jumped in. VW vans were in the family. The brown dog hopped right up onto the backseat, on top of our clean towels, and lowered his head to his paws. The black jumped up into the passenger seat, furrowed his brow, and looked seriously ahead like a copilot. It took half an hour to wrangle them back to Tim’s house.

  Inside the house, it was blessedly cool. Tim had said there was a good place to sit upstairs. We went up the narrow steps onto a covered rooftop. A couple of beat-up chairs sat by a low wall looking into the treetops over the front of the house. In the corner was a large sturdy cage. Inside was a giant iguana. A parrot squawked. Two cats slipped around our legs.

  We were enjoying our reentry into Baja, but I was more than ready to go surfing. Tim took us down to the marina to see one of his new dive boats, a nice cabin cruiser, and we met his surfer son Carlos, who was putting down new decking. Tim said, “Carlos is taking a group out to Mag Bay for five days. Why don’t you go with him?”

  “Whale watching?”

  “You know the drill.” I did. I had taken my sister on a trip with them years before. We had slept by the lagoon on a windy sand spit in spacious wall tents on cots; we ate delicious food, drank coffee, went out in boats twice a day and ran around in the wild bay beside the nursing gray whales. Sometimes we could hear them blowing at night, and the explosive breaths rasped at my sleep. Dense fog rolled in over the dunes, and at dawn, walking to the water to pee, I saw the wraiths of coyotes patrolling the wet sand, and feral donkeys ghosting the mist, descendants of ones left by Spanish explorers and who had learned to become coastal scavengers. Once in a while a pair of whales bred near camp, pushed against each other by a helper, and their passionate waves washed up on the sand. A wholly dreamlike place.

  Now I winced. I loved whales, but I wanted to become again an aquatic creature of my own. I needed to surf. I took one look at Kim.

  “I’ve never seen a whale,” she said, reverent, her big eyes glistening. My hopes for surfing very soon, as in the next few days, vanished like a whale spout in the wind.

  “Well,” I stammered. I guess my spindle neurons kicked in, the ones we share with gray whales, the ones that govern love and suffering.

  Magdalena Bay was across the peninsula and to the north. We drove back the way we had come twice before, through the cardón cactus hills, the stony basins covered with yucca. We drove back through Constitution, where the local cartel supported the gray whales. On the other side of the bustling town we hung a left, west, toward the coast, followed the expedition vans down a flat sand road beneath a defunct telephone line, every third or fourth pole crowned with the giant stick nests of ospreys. We drove with the windows down, elbows stuck out, the oven air pouring in, and the clouds of dust from the cars ahead sticking to the sweat on our necks. The dust thickened the small hairs on our forearms so they looked like fur. Over the engine, we could hear the osprey chicks peeping, the malevolent heads of their mothers peering at us over the twig parapets.

  We pulled up to a flea-ravaged fish camp on the edge of the lagoon. Way across, maybe five miles, we could see the line of canvas safari tents that would be our home.

  Over the next few days it was cold, windy, choppy, and we got into open boats and followed whales with their calves in the early morning, and before sunset. I was chomping at the bit to surf, but was happy in any event just to be back on the sea. After the months on a surfboard being buoyed and rocked and tumbled, I could appreciate anew the whales’ ancient choice to take to the water. Also, I liked being near the massive creatures again. Whales are like us, just bigger and better. Like us, if we weren’t bent on killing everything and each other, and they are so big and powerful they are halfway to being geographical. A reef, a ridge, a whale. Get too close and they are an earthquake. The mothers nursed their calves, gently nudged them away from the boat. Turned half on their sides so they could fix us with one dark intelligent eye. Kim adored it. She just wanted to be close to whal
es. She wanted to study the glossy backs mottled with whale lice, the barnacles on a flank, the notches and scars in the great flukes as they came lazily out of the water. She was enthralled. When a male breached just ahead of us and crashed down on his side, I thought she’d faint.

  Carlos led the expedition, and he knew a lot about gray whales, and was thoughtful and attentive to his clients. But I recognized a fellow surf-obsessed. Nothing explicit, but there were little clues, in the way the alien zombie invaders who look normal in a crowd recognize each other. The way he always seemed on low idle, engine just purring, slouching in the wind in his anorak, equanimous, friendly, shy, at the edge of the group with his coffee mug, expending energy with perfect efficiency, saving it. For the hunt. I could tell. It would take a lot to rouse this guy, and between surfs he rested in the easy way all hunters do. He told us that he’d taken a long mainland surf trip in his VW bus, and that he’d overheated so much he kept the heater on all the time to draw heat away from the engine, and that he tried to break down at good surf spots.

  One evening I wandered away from the camp into a sea of haystack dunes. They tossed this way and that like a confused storm swell. I wound around in the troughs as though through a maze. Down in the low spots, sheltered from the wind, a thousand animal tracks in the sand told stories in measured, then frantic calligraphy. Here were the intermittent hops of a rabbit, here the tiny tank crawl of a beetle, here a strutting raven, here a coyote—meeting the rabbit, now an errant tuft of fur.

  I climbed a ridge of sand to where I could look over the water of a lagoon and lay in the late sun on the leeward side of the dune, away from the stiff wind. The sand was warm. I thrummed with solitude and peace. Closed my eyes.

  When I opened them the sun was nearly touching the farther sea. I blinked, shook the sand out of my hair, sat up, shivered. I gazed around. The lagoon was now a tidal mud flat stalked with slender-legged birds. The dunes—on the tops of the three closest hillocks, one on each, not a hundred feet away—were three coyotes watching me silently. My skin sprang with goose bumps. They were exactly the color of the sand in the red light of the last sun. They were big, well fed. Each lay still, centered between haunches, and studied me. I had no doubt that, were they to make a concerted effort, I could be supper. I grinned.

  “Hi, guys.” It wasn’t much above a whisper, but the breeze was blowing toward them and they heard me. A couple of ears swiveled forward. Hello, I must be going.

  I got up slowly and backed away. I didn’t have waves but I had this. When I got to the bottom of the hill, into the sinuous trough, I took one last look over my shoulder and ran back to camp beneath the first high stars.

  Four days into our week out on the bay, I told Kim we better get on the road. Carlos sent us back to the Baja mainland with a couple of his crew who were going over in an open panga to get more fresh water for the camp.

  The Beast started up right away, but as we pushed along the smooth sand road under the line of ospreys I noticed the temperature gauge climbing. I stopped in the middle of the road, walked to the back, leaned against her rear end the way you would to a horse, reached down, flipped open the license plate door, checked the plastic coolant reservoir. Empty. Uh-oh.

  I retrieved a funnel from under the backseat where we stored our tools, took our six-gallon jug of spare water back, and, while Kim held the funnel, poured almost a gallon into the plastic tank. I’d add straight coolant later to get the proportions right. Now I just wanted her to drink.

  The temp gauge settled back to the middle of its arc, but twenty minutes later it was climbing again. I tried slowing down and it rose. I speeded up and it lowered for a few minutes—the faster air flowing by must have helped—and then she climbed again. I turned on the heater. She hesitated, dropped. Good. Climbed again.

  We pulled over and this time I dug out a gallon of coolant and added half of it to the reservoir. This was not at all good.

  We limped back to Tim’s house and he sent us to a VW shop in La Paz just up the hill from Los Arcos. They went through the Beast. No coolant leak they could find. The owner, Rogelio, did say that if there were a breach in the head gasket and coolant was seeping into the oil and burning off in the cylinders, they wouldn’t have found it. The compression seemed fine. I wasn’t a mechanic, I wanted to get to the mainland, finally, and go surfing, and so I chose to find the whole assessment optimistic. My reasoning was: they didn’t find a coolant leak, so there must not be one. Coolant might be leaking into the engine, but the compression was fine, so the engine was fine, so the whole overheating must have been an anomaly, just the Beast being the Beast, and we better get on the ferry. Right?

  Not looking at reality head-on when a VW, especially a van, begins to overheat is like ignoring the sharp chest pains that radiate down your left arm and leave you breathless. That is definitely not just something you ate.

  We drove the twisty small road north again out of town, past the mangrove cove of Balandra, to the big ferry terminal that sits a half hour from La Paz. We booked tickets for the three of us—the Beast cost the most—on the fast boat and in the early afternoon steered the Beast into the dark maw of the California Star, joining a snaking line of every kind of commercial truck and pickup and panel van. At three the whistle blasted, the thick hawsers were loosed from the dock, the big diesels churned and backed from the pier, and we headed out into a windy, slate-gray Sea of Cortez. We had apples and white cheese. We put on sweatshirts and rain gear and went out onto the upper deck and watched the sky flush as we passed the far side of Espiritu Santo, our marriage chapel, and we stayed out, leaning over the rail, pressing our hooded heads together until the sky darkened, and the booming thresh of the bow dropping into each trough was like a lullaby and made us sleepy. The second part of our adventure had begun.

  JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO GET BACK IN THE WATER

  Kim was not feeling the same urgency to get back in the water. She never complained, but I could tell. This was a surf trip and she would try her best to learn to surf. I, on the other hand, was going berserk. We were so close. Just on the other side of this ferry ride was Mazatlán, and somewhere near Mazatlán was surf.

  We sat down at a table in the large saloon of the ferry and spread out the map. We were landing in Topolobampo. Mazatlán was about a four-hour drive south. So, we would arrive in the middle of the night, sleep somewhere near the ferry terminal, and could be at a surf spot around Mazatlán tomorrow afternoon. On the other hand, the water this far north would still be cold. Not the worst thing to wear a shorty wetsuit, but after half a winter in Colorado, and chilly Baja, the idea of warm water and surfing bareback was appealing. Also, we didn’t know any beginner breaks around Mazatlán. We hadn’t surfed in a couple of long months and we would be out of shape and rusty. I’d been swimming as much as I could, but I knew that even swimming didn’t translate to strength on a surfboard. The paddling motion, while similar, is not at all the same.

  We wanted to start somewhere gentle, someplace where we could stay awhile, camp, rebuild our strength and confidence. We needed a wave that didn’t break on rocks or reef, that wasn’t too fast or hollow. A sand bottom, something forgiving. We looked at the map. There was Mazatlán a few hours south. We traced our fingers along the coast. And there, farther south, within a day’s drive, was Sayulita, a famous beginner’s break that would suit all of our purposes.

  The highway detoured through a busy market town south of Mazatlán called Escuinapa, the Crossroads. We needed bottled water before hitting the beach. As I pulled over at an open spot on the corner by a grocery store, we heard kids yelling. A bunch of tykes laughed and pointed. I stuck my head out the window. The back of the Beast was shrouded in a cloud of steam and smoke.

  Damn. As I climbed down, I thought, If we’re going to break down, let’s do it at a wave. Let’s get stuck someplace where we can surf every day.

  Kim came back and looked from me to the steam. Arched an eyebrow.

  “Out of
coolant. Must be a leak. I think if we keep it full, we’ll be okay.” I turned to the clutch of boys. “Watch the van?” Forked fingers to my eyes and pointed at the Beast, nodded. They shoved in front of each other. “Yo!” “No, yo!”

  “Todos. Diez minutos.”

  We got a twenty-liter bottle of water, refilled the coolant reservoir, and she started right up. Sounded smooth. Okay. We’ll get to Tepic this evening, get her checked out, then to the wave tomorrow.

  We made it to the open highway. We cruised down it for a couple of miles. Freedom! The wind washing through the open windows, the vibration of the tires, the headlong flight into the districts of dusk! I wanted to look at Kim with a wild surmise. At last, we were on a surf trip. Then the Beast lost power and stumbled like a runner with a heart attack. I looked back. Billow of smoke. Worse than before. Pulled over again.

  Now, this was more serious. We were on a highway. The sun was hanging over the dense dark tops of a mango orchard that ran to the horizon. Traffic was sparse.

  Don’t be on the roads at night. The bandits are worse on the mainland.

  The admonition we had heard over and over.

  “We’ve gotta unload the back,” I said. “We need to look at the engine.”

  We did. Unloaded a wall tent, grill, boxes of surf wax, duffels of towels and sleeping bags, first-aid kit, patch kit, solar panel. Made a pile on the shoulder. The sun hit the trees. I lifted off the cushion, untwisted the latches to the engine cover, slid it out. We didn’t need a mechanic to tell us that we were screwed: the main ribbed coolant hose was hanging free, dripping green blood, melted right off its coupling.

  I looked at Kim. “Fuck.”