Reef Dance

by John Decure

  Jackie’s nose was flowing red from both sides, and his chin and right eyebrow were smeared with blood and dirt. He sat up gingerly on one elbow a few feet from me and spit into the weeds, working his lips and gums.

  The fight—and Albert’s horror—had dissipated much of the anger in me. In spite of all the hype surrounding the surf star, Jackie was always known to be able to back his act with his fists if it came to that. In a subtle form of apology, he’d let me punch him out.

  “At least you helped me find the grave,” I said.

  “Yeah, at least,” he said. He grunted, still in pain, as he dug into the front pocket of his jeans and pulled out a shiny lump of silver. “This was your mom’s. I’ve been holding it since the day she died. Take it.”

  It was a Saint Christopher medal, badly tarnished and nicked around the edges. I turned it over and read the name still faintly engraved on the back: Roger W. Nelly, U.S.M.C. My father’s drowned friend.

  “Why?” I said.

  “I caught up to your mom in Rosarito, figured out what she was doing. She recognized me from that day on the beach.”

  “Why didn’t you talk her out of it?”

  Jackie touched his lip and inspected the gob of red on the tip of his finger. “I tried—hard, man, I did. A Mexican abortion, you kidding?” He looked at Carmen. “No offense.” But Carmen didn’t move.

  I spread the chain through my fingers. “This was my father’s,” I said.

  “I know. Your mom told me. She had it after he died, said she wore it as your protector.”

  I stared at Jackie. “So how’d you get it?”

  He rubbed his jaw. “She gave it to me before she went inside, you know, to have the procedure. Just in case.” He looked away toward the sound of the sea. “She wanted you to have it in case anything happened. Obviously I couldn’t do that, not without you knowing.”

  I still resented the years of deception. “Obviously.”

  “I know I sketched on you, but I did the best I could in the meantime.”

  With all that had transpired these past few weeks, one thing had never changed. “You were there, at Holys,” I said. “You did okay.”

  My dear, sweet, superstitious mother had passed a sign of her own on down the line to a cynical young surf star, and it had made all the difference. I wished I could thank her properly—and ask her forgiveness for having ever believed she’d just leave me cold.

  I handed the Christopher back to Jackie.

  “No, man,” he said, “it’s a family heirloom.”

  I laughed and shook him off. “It’s just a beat-up old medal. Keep it. You never know, I may need you again.”

  Albert shuffled closer to Jackie. “Hey, Alby,” Jackie said, “whas da haps?”

  Albert threw his arms around Jackie as if to shield him, and I felt ashamed when he turned and glared at me. “L . . . luh . . . leave him alone,” he said. “He’s mm . . . my friend.”

  Jackie sat up straighter and coughed, still shaken from the beating he’d taken. “I’m sorry, J.”

  I moved toward Jackie to help him up. Albert held his ground even firmer against me. “I ss . . . said, he’s . . . my friend,” he told me.

  The misspelled gravestone of Marielena Shepard stared up at a widening patch of pale blue sky. I extended a hand to Jackie. “I know, buddy,” I told Albert. “He’s my friend, too.”

  We spent the afternoon surfing solid beach break peaks at La Fonda, a tiny little bluff stop on the road to Ensenada, then headed down to San Miguel as planned. After a dinner of sea bass in a garlic-butter sauce at the restaurant, we walked over to the bar for a few pops. A small group of surfers near the door took instant notice of Jackie.

  “Jackie Pace! Whoa, stoked!” one of them swooned.

  “Evening, ladies and germs,” Jackie said. “Which one of you radical rippers is buying the first round?” He winked at me, a purple shiner ringing his left eye. Still got it.

  The next morning we packed up early and headed south again, through the dusty streets of Ensenada with their pescado restaurants and tawdry souvenir shops. And past Hussongs, that absurdly famous bar filled at all hours with drunken Americans leering over each other’s shoulders as they wait for something excitingly Mexican to go down. We followed the highway through a series of stooped foothills, then down a grade and into a verdant valley and past fields of lettuce and corn and pastures mottled with grazing livestock. For a half hour or so, the road switched back and forth along the banks of a shallow, silt-laden river littered with shiny boulders the color of rain clouds. Then quite suddenly the river disappeared. The road became straight and unvaried, the greenery fading into an obdurate desert landscape of blowing sand and chattering scrub. We must have passed through a dozen tiny towns along the way, always slowing to put money in the Red Cross cans of the wrinkled nuns who stood by the highway.

  Carmen pointed to a series of cone-shaped hills on our right. “What’s that?”

  “That’s where we’re going,” I said. “To the other side. They’re volcanoes.”

  “I can smell the ocean,” she said, sniffing the breeze. We had not seen the sea since we’d left San Miguel four hours ago.

  “We’re close,” I told her.

  We stopped in the only sizable town in the region and bought more Tecate and a huge stack of fresh tortillas. The sun was hot and hanging straight overhead and the air was sweet with the scent of dried sage and eucalyptus. Passing the last Pemex gas station on the road out of town, we turned right and followed a thin gravel path through a canopy of craggy oaks planted decades ago as wind brakes for fields no longer tilled. A sign pointed left, and the road trailed off in that direction toward an old hotel on the sand, but we headed right, onto a dirt path, instead, and bounced along slowly north.

  Ten minutes later a wide beach backed by gentle dunes came into view on our left. To the right, a low-lying estuary that resembled our own Back Bay in Christianitos stretched inland as far as the eye could follow. Behind the great marsh and the slow streams that fed into it, the brown volcanoes Carmen had seen earlier quivered in the heat that rippled up from the prairie floor.

  Albert laughed as we caromed about inside the wagon, the camping gear rattling with each dip and chuckhole. “Ya-ha!”

  “Where in God’s name are we going, J.?” Carmen finally asked. In the rearview mirror, I could see Britt and Jackie craning hard for a view of the surf.

  “Secret spot,” I said.

  The road ended in a patch of dry grass, and I turned the Jeep at a hard angle to provide a shield from the wind for our camp. Britt pulled in behind, creeping forward until his truck kissed my rear bumper. We rolled out and stretched our creaky limbs.

  Wind direction means everything at this spot. The beach is so far south-facing that the prevailing westerly breezes that blow down the coast every afternoon whistle side-offshore into the surf. The only variable you really worry about when you come down here is swell—if it’s not strong from the south, the place will be flat.

  We were lucky this day. A cool blue peak rose beyond the dunes, its spray whipped back in a translucent blossom. “Oh yeah!” Britt shouted. He and Jackie tossed off their slaps and began to run for the water.

  “Wait for me!” Albert cried, following them.

  The surf stayed excellent all afternoon, the heady offshores smoothing the sandbar peaks into playful, tunneling tubes. I traded waves with Britt and Jackie for three hours, ducking into my share of caverns but not quite outshining the master and his young protégé. Carmen was tired from the drive and chose to lounge in the sun and pick seashells and sand dollars from the shallows. Albert worked hard at riding the tiny lines of soup near shore, snapping into his awkward stance and keeling over almost as quickly. But he hung on a few times, and when he did, Carmen clapped and cheered for him.

  A red tandem surfboard lay in the sand where Jackie had dragged it down and left it. I explained to Carmen the concept of a man and woman riding together on a single board
as the man hoisted the woman through a series of classic poses. Carmen looked amused. “Sounds a little retro, J.”

  “The concept goes back a ways,” I said. “But sometimes, that means it’s pretty good.”

  A little before dark, I came in at last from the surf, dried off and changed into some warm clothes. The sky was turning an ecstatic pink when I walked back through the dunes and met Carmen and a dripping-wet Britt at water’s edge.

  “Where’s Albert?” I said. The shorepound was deserted. The big red tandem board was gone, a lengthy gash in the sand where Jackie had dragged it on a rail to the water.

  “Out there,” she said, pointing toward the surf. “J., you think he’ll be all right?”

  A gorgeous, glassy wave lifted in the dying breeze. Jackie was perfectly positioned for the right slide and dug hard at the bottom as the trough overtook him. Then he stood, and I saw that he was riding the red tandem with Albert aboard and clutching the rails up front. Britt began to hoot. I wrapped an arm around Carmen’s shoulder.

  “He’ll be fine,” I said.

  Carmen held me close, resting her head beneath my chin. I could feel her even heartbeat on my breast.

  The wave jacked and readied to throw, and at the same time, Jackie crouched lower and pulled a prone Albert to his feet. He leaned right, his hands on Albert’s shoulders, and the board shot down and off the bottom, angling away. The peak buckled over with a pop, swallowing their tracks as a long wall formed before them.

  Jackie let the board drift up the face as he gathered more speed, tucking in ever tighter over Albert’s stooped silhouette. Then, as the wave reared higher, threatening to scuttle them both in a single, explosive burst, he set his edge.

  The line Jackie drew was inspired, almost poetic, and the surfboard shot forward as if it were floating on jets. We watched them as they streaked through the feathering sections in the purest, consummate trim, and I suppose that the thrill of this life became simply too much for any one heart to contain, for across the water, the two riders let loose with a soul-shaking, beautiful wail.