Close Out

by Todd Strasser

  Big Dave turned pale. “He told you that?”

  “Come on, Dave,” Kai said. “How else could I have gotten the boards?”

  “Oh, shit.” Dave turned pale.

  “Personally, I don’t get it,” Kai said. “You don’t seem like the kind of guy who goes around stealing another man’s quiver.”

  “I—I didn’t want to,” Dave stammered, his shoulders sloping down. “Buzzy made me.”

  “Buzzy?” Kai pretended to be surprised. “Why would Buzzy do that?”

  “To fuck with Curtis’s head because he wants the old guy out of here something fierce,” Dave said. “He said I should just get rid of them, but I couldn’t do it.”

  “’Cause you wanted the money,” Kai said.

  “No, man, I just couldn’t destroy these boards. They’re too fricken beautiful. I mean, I sold them to Albert for a song. I didn’t even want the money. I just couldn’t trash ’em, and I didn’t know what else to do.” Dave looked like he was going to cry. “Aw, crap, man, what am I gonna do now? If Buzzy finds out I didn’t get rid of these boards he’s gonna can my sorry ass.”

  “I don’t think so,” Kai said.

  Dave raised his head, surprised. “Why not?”

  “Because it was Buzzy who told you to break into Curtis’s shed and take them in the first place, right?”

  “Yeah. So what?”

  “So if Buzzy gives you any trouble, you can tell everyone it was his idea,” Kai said.

  “Oh, sure, like they’d believe me,” Dave scoffed. “Fricken Buzzy Frank is Mr. Sun Haven himself. No one’s gonna believe me over him. Not in a million years.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  Dave seemed to get hold of himself. His eyebrows dropped. “How’d you say you got these boards?”

  “I said I got them from Albert,” Kai said.

  Dave frowned. “You bought ’em? All of them?”

  “Not exactly,” Kai said. “But I don’t think he’s gonna want them back now. The boards go back to Curtis where they belong.”

  Dave looked at Jade. “This is why you invited me here?”

  “Sorry.”

  “The hell you are,” Dave sniffed.

  “Hey, be nice,” Kai said. “In fact, you should be thankful. Now Curtis is going to get his boards back, and you won’t have to go through the rest of your life feeling guilty about taking another man’s quiver.”

  “Dude, you got a strange way of turning things around,” Dave said.

  “Funny you should mention turning around,” said Kai. “Because that’s exactly what I think you should do. Just turn around and leave. Don’t tell anyone what happened here and you’ll probably be okay.”

  Dave’s eyes darted back and forth between Kai and Jade. “You gonna tell Curtis I’m the one who took his boards? Or the cops?”

  “I don’t see why I’d have to,” Kai said. “Not if you just go along and pretend like this never happened.”

  “Then it’s not me you’re really interested in, is it?” Dave said.

  “Very good,” said Kai.

  “Okay, I won’t say a word,” Dave said. He started to turn in the doorway, then stopped and looked at Jade one last time. Kai could see Jade brace herself for something nasty. But Dave only shook his head, a bit sadly, Kai thought, then turned and left.

  Jade followed him to the front door and locked it, then came back to the bedroom. By now Everett had slipped out from behind the bureau.

  “I thought that went pretty well,” Jade said. “Did you get what you wanted?”

  “I sure hope so,” Kai said, and looked at Everett. “Did you get it all on the camcorder?”

  “It’s in the can,” Everett answered with a wink.

  Twenty-seven

  From Jades apartment Kai called Bean to come back and help him take the boards over to the Driftwood Motel. On Seaside Drive, it seemed like almost every third car was carrying a quiver of boards for the next day’s event.

  “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Bean said. “I mean, this is big-time.”

  They got to the motel. The no vacancy sign was on.

  “Got a full house?” Kai asked when Curtis came out of the office to help them move the boards into his apartment.

  “Bursting at the seams,” Curtis said. “This just might be the biggest surfing event to ever hit Sun Haven.”

  They put all the boards in Curtis’s living room.

  “I don’t know how I can pay you back for this, grom,” the older man said, walking with Kai and Bean back out to the hearse. By now it was after ten. The town was starting to quiet down and there was a slight coolness in the air.

  “Believe me, old man, you’ve already paid me back,” Kai said. “Any news about the tax situation?”

  Curtís shrugged. “Could hear something any day now. Only it ain’t a question of whether or not I can keep the motel. It’s just a question of how long until I have to sell it.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Kai said.

  “Me too,” said Curtís. “But it don’t mean we can’t continue to fight the good fight, grom.”

  “What do you mean?” Kai asked.

  “Just what I said. They may win a battle here and there, but the war is far from over,” Curtís said, then changed the subject. “So, tomorrow’s the big day. Weather and waves should be pretty good. Any thoughts?”

  “I actually haven’t had time to think about it,” Kai answered.

  “Well, grom, as a great man once said, ‘Whatever gets you through the night.’ Know what I mean?”

  “I guess.”

  Curtís held out his hand and shook Bean’s and Kai’s. “Again, boys, thanks. Getting those boards back is something I never expected. It kind of gives a fellow hope.”

  Bean and Kai got into the hearse. Bean drove back onto Main Street. It was late and the street was empty.

  “I, for one, am going to bed,” Bean said. “I’ll need a good night’s sleep if I’m gonna give the long board competition a shot tomorrow. You feel like powering down?”

  “Think I’ll go down to the beach for a while,” Kai said.

  Bean pulled into the parking lot. Brightly painted vans from Billabong, Hurley, Quiksilver, and Volcom were parked near the boardwalk.

  “Looks like the gang’s all here,” Bean said, braking the hearse to a stop.

  “Thanks for everything, dude,” Kai said. “Catch you in the morning.” He got out of the car and crossed the boardwalk. Directly in front of Screamers stood a large white tent with open sides as well as smaller tents emblazoned with the names of various surf gear manufacturers. A line of light blue Porta Pottis stood behind the main tent. Kai walked toward the water. It was a dark, moonless night and there were more clouds than stars in the sky. A cool, damp breeze was coming out of the south. Here and there on the sand couples huddled in the dark. About a quarter of a mile down the beach, a bunch of flashlight beams swung this way and that, and Kai suspected that a bunch of kids staying at one of the beach resorts had gotten permission from their parents to stay out late.

  Kai sat down on the dry side of the tide mark and gazed at the inky waves crashing into ghostly white foam. In the absence of the moon, and with clouds covering a lot of the stars, the water was as dark and ominous as Kai had ever seen it. He thought about the past few months here in Sun Haven. Difficult months, but still the best since he’d left Hawaii.

  After a while the flashlights headed up the beach. The couples who were within sight also got up and left, leaving Kai alone with the mild crash of the waves, the drifting dark clouds, and a lone seagull that now and then swooped out of the dark.

  “Hi,” someone said behind him.

  Kai turned and saw Shauna, dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt.

  “Busy?” she asked.

  “Very,” Kai said. “Think you could come back tomorrow?”

  Shauna hesitated, as if she couldn’t tell whether he was serious.

  “Hey, come on” Kai patted
the sand beside him.

  She sat down. For a while they stared at the ocean and didn’t say anything.

  “Bean told you I was here?” Kai finally asked.

  “Uh-huh. Come down here to think?”

  “Hmm.”

  More silence followed, then Shauna asked, “What are you thinking about?”

  “Not much.”

  “Not about tomorrow?”

  “Not really” Kai said.

  “You know, if you enter and win first or second prize, you could pay Bean back for the tires,” Shauna said.

  Kai turned to look at her. “He didn’t send you down here to tell me that, did he?”

  Shauna shook her head. “He never even told me what happened. I found out from Booger.”

  “Okay.”

  “I just feel bad for him,” Shauna said.

  “Me too,” said Kai.

  “Kai, just because you enter a competition, it won’t make you a jerk,” Shauna said. “You are who you are. Being in a competition doesn’t change you into someone you’re not.”

  Kai gazed at the dark waves. He knew she was right, but it was more complicated than that. Way more complicted.

  “Kai?” Shauna said more softly.

  “Hmmm?”

  “What happened in Kauai?”

  The question settled on his shoulders like a weight. “I told you. I was a hypercompetitive jerk. The worst kind of local. I thought I was the hottest thing on a board.”

  “But what happened?”

  Overhead, between the drifting clouds, a patch of twinkling stars appeared. Kai took a deep breath and felt a quivering sensation inside. He had never told anyone, but maybe it was time. “Being a hypercompetitive local jerk isn’t the same on Kauai as it is here. There’s not just one break that everyone wants to surf. There’s a series of breaks, each one a little more gnarly than the last. So at the same time that you’re being a dickhead and keeping kooks off your break, the guys on the next break are doing the same thing to you.”

  “So you have to work your way up?” Shauna guessed.

  “Yeah, and for it to really mean something, you have to do it when the surf is big and dangerous. Like on a day when even the locals think it’s too wicked to go out. The idea is you go out on a day like that and show them what you can do, and they’re supposed to be so in awe that they feel honored to let you into the lineup.”

  “So that day came, right?”

  Kai nodded. He scooped up a handful of sand and let the grains tumble between his fingers. “Yeah, it was the kind of day when they couldn’t waste the energy keeping you off the break because it was so big and hairy that everyone was too busy fighting for their own survival. A lot of people told me not to go out, but to me that just meant it was my shot.”

  “So you went,” Shauna said.

  “Of course. Only it was probably twice as big as anything I’d ever been in before and I was scared shitless,” Kai said. “But I’d read all the stories about how the big-wave guys get scared, and how the whole thing is about facing your fear and overcoming it So even though every ounce of my soul was telling me I was way over my head, I just went for it.”

  Shauna waited silently. The dark waves crashed. A crab skittered along the waters edge.

  “I got outside and was totally freaked,” Kai continued. “I mean, I’d never seen waves like these before. They were so damn big and coming so damn fast that you couldn’t catch them even when you tried. They’d lift you up and drop you down like you were on a Ferris wheel or something. I’d see a wave coming and I’d start to paddle like crazy, and the wave would pull the water up the face under me so fast that I was actually going backward. And the next thing I’d know, the wave would pull me right back over itself and leave me behind.”

  “Until …”

  “I had to totally commit,” Kai said. “I got myself under a peak where I was so deep in the curl that I was either gonna catch the wave or get creamed. There was no escape. I was in that wave one way or the other, for better or worse.”

  “And?”

  “I went over the falls.”

  “What’s that mean?” Shauna asked.

  “I got caught in the crest of the wave as it curled over and dropped. When that happens, you get lifted up and then driven down into the trough with a few tons of water slamming down on top of you. And the trough, of course, is the shallowest part of the wave.”

  Shauna winced. “You hit bottom?”

  “Yeah, only it wasn’t sand like it is here,” Kai said. “It was reef. And you don’t just hit it. You bounce off it over and over and it tears you to shreds.”

  Shauna touched the scar on Kai’s knee.

  “Right,” Kai said. “Took the skin off like sandpaper. Also broke my collarbone and put a gash in my head that took a hundred and sixty-three stitches to close.”

  “I guess I can see how that might change your attitude,” said Shauna.

  Kai felt a bitter smile on his lips. “You want to know the truth? If that had been all the damage, it probably wouldn’t have changed anything. I probably would have been back out there being as big a jerk as ever, as soon as I was healthy again.”

  “Then what did happen?” Shauna asked.

  “I got trashed in the water for a while, and then they got me out and put me in a car and took me to the hospital,” Kai said. “And …” He trailed off. It was too difficult to continue.

  “And?” Shauna prompted him softly.

  “Someone called my mom.”

  Shauna was quiet. Kai suspected she was slowly putting together all the bits and pieces he’d revealed over the past few months. He could feel the dread building up in him as the inevitable happened and she finally figured it out.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered. “The narrow bridge.”

  Kai felt as if someone had stuck a knife into his very core.

  “Then it wasn’t the other drivers fault?” she asked gently.

  Kai shook his head. Up above, the clouds closed over the patch of starlit sky. “It was my fault.”

  “No, Kai.”

  “Come on, Shauna,” he said. “There’s no way she would have raced over that bridge if it hadn’t been for me.”

  “What happened to the other driver?”

  “Hardly a scratch” Kai said. “He was driving a big SUV with air bags”

  “And your mom?”

  “A rusty old pickup. And she never wore her seat belt.”

  They listened to the waves. Kai could feel his thoughts and memories stretching all the way back to Hawaii, just like the dark water before him stretched down the eastern coasts of North and South America, around Cape Horn, out into the Pacific, and eventually to those very islands.

  “Kai, you can’t blame yourself.”

  “Give me one reason why not?”

  “Because she could have waited for the other guy to go over the bridge. She could have worn her seat belt.”

  “If you heard that your son was badly hurt and in the hospital, would you have waited for the other guy?” Kai asked.

  “Yes,” Shauna said.

  Kai didn’t say what he was thinking—that she’d never had a kid and couldn’t know what it felt like.

  “Does this mean that for the last two years you’ve been carrying around this idea that it was your fault your mom died?” Shauna asked. “And that if you hadn’t been such a hot dog, and so competitive about getting into the next biggest break, this never would have happened?”

  Kai didn’t answer.

  “So you don’t want to surfin the Northeast Championship because if you do, you’re afraid you’ll turn back into that other Kai? The hypercompetitive local who got his mom killed?”

  Kai placed his hands flat on the sand and began to push himself up. He felt her hand on his shoulder, stopping him.

  “Don’t,” she said.

  Kai froze, then slowly lowered himself back to the sand again.

  “It’s not going to happen, Kai,” Shauna said.<
br />
  “How do you know?” Kai asked.

  “Did you think that if you entered the contest tomorrow you’d forget? You can’t. You’re a different person than you were two years ago. No matter what you do now, you could never go back to being that person again.”

  Kai looked at her. “You sure?”

  “Yes, Kai, I’m sure.”

  Twenty-eight

  As soon as the first hint of light appeared the next morning, a steady parade of vehicles began to arrive at the parking lot. Bean managed to get one of the last spots. By the time the sun came up, vehicles loaded with boards and surfers were dropping gear and bodies off, then driving away to park elsewhere. The beach was filling up with competitors and their families.

  Kai and Bean carried their boards toward the boardwalk where Everett was waiting for them on a bench. He was wearing a small green day pack.

  Kai clasped his hand. “Thanks for coming.”

  “No problem.” Everett reached into the day pack and pulled out the camcorder. “Try not to drop it in the sand, okay?”

  “You got it.”

  Everett closed the pack. “I’m gonna get lost in the crowd. Catch you later.”

  He went down the beach. A line of lastminute entrants was forming outside the big white tent. Manufacturers’ reps were starting to open the smaller tents and getting ready to display their products. The shoulder-high sets out at Screamers were almost wall to wall with surfers eager to get a ride in before the competition actually began.

  “You gonna wait here?” Bean asked Kai.

  “Yeah.”

  “Give me your board.” Bean held out his free arm so Kai could slide his board under it. “I’ll take it down to the beach.”

  “Thanks,” Kai said.

  “Good luck,” Bean said. “You’ll need it.”

  It wasn’t long before the yellow Hummer pulled into the parking lot. Lucas and Buzzy got out with a thick board bag. Kai guessed there were three boards inside. Buzzy got back in the Hummer and drove away to find a parking space while Lucas came across the boardwalk.

  Kai stepped into his path. Lucas stopped.

  “So you’re here to compete?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” Kai said.

  Lucas scowled. “Why aren’t you on the beach?”