Kilometer 99

by Tyler McMahon

  Once on my feet, I set the rail and gave two hard pumps. The borrowed board felt nice. The volume offered extra glide; the weight from all the dings gave it more drive down the face. Once past the takeoff section, I was home free.

  This wave was unbelievable; it kept opening up. After a couple big carves, I spotted Ben paddling down the line. He flashed me a shaka and hollered some inaudible word over the roar of the sea. I crouched, rode high and tight against the curl. The wave’s power built up under my feet. The next section went vertical and I unloaded. With a stomp, I shifted all my weight to my front foot, shot down the face, did a bottom turn, and hit the lip.

  It didn’t work out as well as I’d hoped. I scrubbed too much speed at the bottom and miscalculated the distance to Ben. Still, I managed to get him with a small arc of spray, on my first wave in years. I’d leaned so hard into the top carve that I fell off in the shoulder.

  Underwater, I remembered that I was unleashed. I surfaced and swam for my loose board, but Ben got to it first. He grinned wide.

  “Damn right you can surf.” He pushed the board back my way.

  “This wave is amazing!”

  “Nice, huh?”

  We paddled back to the lineup. As the next set came in, a band of mariachis started up from one of the seaside restaurants. It felt as if we were heroes, their cinematic horn lines our theme music. The sunset glowed pink and orange on the horizon.

  But how can I truly describe that first session at the point, with a boy whom I began at that moment to fall in love with? Surfing is something I grew up around, that I did as a kid. In high school, surfers were a sort of caste—like the jocks or nerds from mainland movies. Once we hit puberty, older sisters warned that our boobs would turn flat from too much paddling, that sharks would attack when we had our periods. Early in my high school years, I started playing volleyball and put waves on the back burner. For teenagers and twentysomethings in Hawai‘i, surfing tends to get competitive and serious. It’s not playful the way it is for little kids or adults. I’d forsaken the sport for so long now. I’d always enjoyed it but never wanted it to be my identity. Here there was no slang, no fashion, no accoutrements; there was only the ride.

  So surfing that first wave—a nearly perfect wave, which I’d surfed well—was like a celebration of my past. And knowing that this break was this good, this empty, and this close to where I lived—that was a glimpse at the greatest possible future.

  A celebration of my life so far, plus the promise of better days to come—it was, I suppose, a bit like falling in love itself.

  * * *

  We went back to La Posada cold, hungry, and grinning. Courtney and the others had set up at one of the tables in the dining room: beer, cigarettes, and the remains of dinner. The three of them shouted and slammed playing cards upon the table in some unfamiliar game. They whispered to one another as we came in. I couldn’t have cared less.

  Ben put the boards away. I showered, dressed, and joined the girls. Ben talked Kristy into making us a late dinner—something she seemed accustomed to. We all sat around drinking and chatting for a while. Ben went to bed first. He told me that I could join him for the morning glass. I said good night to the girls, and I was so exhausted, I didn’t hear Courtney stumble in beside me later on. In fact, I barely woke up once the screaming started.

  I thought it was a bad dream at first. But it kept up, and changed from incoherent shrieks to English. “In my room, he’s in my room…”

  “That’s Kathy,” Courtney said.

  We threw clothes on and went to the door. In the courtyard, I saw Kathy’s blond hair. Her pale limbs were tangled up with those of another figure; four arms contorted in all directions, as if attached at the wrists. Kathy kept shrieking, “My room!” along with less coherent words. Courtney and I stood in our doorway, frozen by a mix of fear and confusion.

  Less than a second passed before Ben materialized and pulled the two bodies apart. He put a sort of wrestling hold on the intruder, grabbed both his arms at the shoulder. Ben’s hands were laced together behind the stranger’s head. Lights clicked on in the kitchen. A fat Salvadoran man in tighty whities—who, I’d later learn, was the owner of La Posada—came to the door.

  “Don Adán,” Ben hollered. “This mañoso culero was in one of the rooms!”

  “Tie him up,” Don Adán yelled back.

  Kathy was in tears. My heartbeats felt like punches against the inside of my chest. Finally, we could see the thief. He was small, wearing only a tattered pair of cutoff jeans. His four limbs flailed in Ben’s grip like the legs of an upside-down crab.

  More lights came on, and I noticed the broken surf leash upon a chair outside Ben’s room. As he wrestled the guy to the ground, I went and grabbed it.

  Leash in hand, I hesitated to close the distance between myself and the two of them. I flinched from a few feet away, as if afraid the robber might somehow sting me with one of those thrashing limbs.

  “It’s all right,” Ben said, reading my mind. “They never have knives or weapons. These guys trade anything of value for rocks.” He put his knee in the middle of the thief’s back, then took the leash from me and began to tie his hands together.

  “This happens … often?” I asked.

  Ben pulled tightly on the cord. A wince came from his prisoner. “The town’s got a bit of a crack problem. You shouldn’t leave doors unlocked.”

  “How do they get in?” I looked up at the ten-foot-tall wrought-iron gate that enclosed the courtyard, studied the spikes along its top.

  “Tree over there.” Ben pointed to the roof above the hotel’s expensive wing. “I sometimes use that route to dawn patrol, if they haven’t unlocked the gate yet.”

  He went through the thief’s pockets. First, he found a slim glass pipe, snapped off at one end, along with a lighter and a folded square of tinfoil.

  “No rocks,” Ben said. “Big surprise there.”

  From the next pocket, he pulled out a compact pair of binoculars and a leather billfold. “Are these hers?”

  I carried them over to Kathy, whose teary face was pressed to Courtney’s chest. The two of them still stood by the room at the far end of the courtyard.

  “Guess we need to keep our doors locked.” I handed over the items.

  I went back to Ben. With now-dilated eyes, I could see that the crackhead was tiny, hardly a man at all, possibly still a teenager. Lying still in those ragged shorts, with no fight left, he reminded me of a deflated Incredible Hulk.

  The hotel owner put on pants and took control of the thief.

  Ben trembled from the residual adrenaline. “Well, Malia. You’ve already gotten the full La Lib experience: the upside and the downside.”

  “In less than twenty-four hours.”

  He laughed and nodded, walked over to his room, and put on a shirt. “C’mon,” he said.

  I followed him up a set of stairs to the roof of the hotel’s expensive wing. Strands of rusted-out rebar sprouted like saplings from the concrete. A forgotten stack of red bricks lay by a pair of patio chairs and some makeshift ashtrays. We sat down. From his shirt pocket, Ben pulled out a hand-rolled cigarette and the lighter he’d taken off the crackhead.

  “My hands are shaking so bad, I can hardly light this thing.”

  I’d have offered to help, but my nerves were in no better shape.

  From below, we heard the big gate rattle, a string of Spanish curse words, then another clang of metal.

  “Is he letting the guy go?”

  Ben nodded and drew smoke. “It’s for the best,” he said without taking a breath.

  By then, I could tell he wasn’t smoking a cigarette.

  “Pakalolo?” I asked as he handed it to me, forgetting where I was.

  “They call it mota here.”

  I took a small and cautious drag.

  “Sun’s coming up.” Ben looked over his shoulder.

  “This is the grossest pot I’ve ever had in my life.” I coughed and handed it ba
ck to him.

  He laughed. “You’re not in Hawai‘i anymore.”

  “You got that right.” I put a hand to my chest.

  “Is it true that haole means ‘white devil’?” he asked.

  I stopped coughing long enough to laugh. “Not a devil; more like a ghost. Definitely a foreigner. But, yes, it’s what we call white people.”

  Ben nodded and drew more smoke.

  “It’s no big deal, like saying gringo here. They call me hapa—which means ‘half’—for being part Hawaiian and part Japanese.”

  For several minutes, we sat in silence and stared at a square of ocean visible between the buildings. The corners of the sky began to brighten with the impending sunrise.

  “Fuck it,” Ben said. “We might as well paddle out.”

  We changed, got the boards, and returned to the roof.

  Ben climbed down the tree first. I handed him each of the boards, then went down myself. For nearly an hour, we were the only people in the water. The tide was higher than yesterday, and I was exhausted, but it was a fun session all the same—more playful than the day before.

  * * *

  Afterward, I was surprised to find my girlfriends all packed up at the hotel. I figured they’d have slept in. Still rattled by the robbery, they wanted to be rid of this town as soon as possible.

  “We’re all waiting on you,” Courtney said.

  I gathered my towel and a change of clothes. “Already? It’ll probably be a while, with showering and breakfast and stuff. I’m starving.”

  Courtney looked at her watch. She seemed upset with me, as though I’d not treated the crackhead incident with the proper gravitas. Or perhaps it was all the surfing: I’d failed to play my assigned role in this girls’ weekend at the beach.

  “Why don’t you go without me?”

  “Fine,” she said. “We have the room until noon.”

  We said our good-byes before I even got to shower. After breakfast, I took a sweaty nap, the same modified fan turning back and forth above like an automated dummy from an old wax museum.

  * * *

  An hour later, I woke up, needing to pee. I emerged from the room bleary-eyed, in a tank top and sarong, and went straight for the toilets.

  On my way back, still confused and half-asleep, I saw Ben in the hammock outside his room. A Salvadoran newspaper lay across his lap.

  “What time is it?” I held a hand above my eyes like a visor.

  “Almost noon,” he said.

  “I have to check out.”

  “They’re pretty flexible here.” He turned one of the pages. “Or you could stay another night.”

  Maybe it was the dreamy half-awake state of my brain. Maybe I knew it could be weeks or even months before our paths crossed again. Maybe, after all the great waves and the robbery, the tedious rituals of flirtation and courtship were drained of their normal weight. Whatever the reason, this is what I said to Ben one day after first meeting him: “Could I stay in your room?”

  He dropped the newspaper flat to his lap. “I’d like that.”

  Courtney had already made a pile of my things atop my backpack. I used my arms like alligator jaws to clamp it all and carry it over to Ben’s room. I offered him a half smile as I passed. He kept the newspaper down at his waist, and I wondered if he was hiding an erection.

  A smaller room, it had a thin single bed but a proper ceiling fan. I starfished across the mattress and felt the air blow down. It took only a minute to realize that I’d not be falling asleep. A wave of self-consciousness washed over me, woke me up, and forced me to feel silly for the self-invitation.

  As if reading my mind, Ben appeared in the doorway. He stood there for a second. I propped myself up on my elbows. We exchanged a volley of loaded eye contact. And though it was only Ben who stood on a literal threshold, we were both about to enter a whole new chapter.

  He closed the door and locked it. I sat up on the edge of the bed, my body language doing its best to confirm his assumptions. He took the couple of steps toward me, then went down to one knee. The bed was so low that our heads were almost even with each other.

  I’d never kissed a man with a beard before, and so I flinched when he first leaned his head in toward mine—thinking of the prickly stubble Alex used to get after days without a shave. But Ben’s beard was soft and fine. In a way, it felt gentler against me than regular skin.

  I put my hands upon each of his round shoulders. All his paddling had formed a loose, flat layer of muscle. It felt like a manta ray affixed to his upper back. He grabbed the bottom edge of my tank top. I barely had a chance to raise my arms up before he pulled it off and over my head.

  I sat up a little straighter as he went to kiss my nipples. To me, this was always the most tedious part of foreplay. I never minded my tiny breasts; what I hated was the way that boys felt the need to reassure me by paying so much attention to them.

  But Ben’s beard tickled my chest in a pleasant way. It gave me chicken skin in spite of the heat. I’d always considered myself deficient in whatever nerve endings make this area so sensitive to most women. Now, I wondered if I’d simply never been touched in the right way.

  My fingers traced the shape of his shoulder blades. I spread my knees wide. The sarong around my waist melted into the bed. I lay down and closed my eyes. The hiss of Velcro ripping undone and the crisp brush of synthetic fabric sounded as Ben removed his board shorts.

  I felt the tickling bristle of his beard against the inside of my thigh. My whole body shuddered at the first touch of it. One leg kicked as if hit by a doctor’s mallet. Scared he might take that as a sign of protest, I said, “Don’t stop.”

  And he didn’t stop. I clenched my knees around the edge of the mattress to keep from further squirming. The bearded face between my legs sent electricity all throughout my limbs. It had the feel of something alive yet unfamiliar, like the rubbery muzzle of a horse.

  My orgasm was a relief once it finally happened, like walking out a cramp or sending blood to a sleeping limb. I shuddered and panted and pushed his head away.

  Ben climbed into the bed. He made love to me in a way that was lighthearted and generous—the opposite of Alex. In spite of the ceiling fan, both our bodies were soon covered in a slick film of sweat spiked with sand and a trace of sunblock.

  Once it was over, we lay uncovered on the little bed. I put my head upon his shoulder. Staring up at the spinning fan, I once again craved reassurance, some confirmation that this was the right thing to do. How did I know then that we were getting ourselves into more than a one-off weekend?

  Ben wrapped his arm around me more tightly, careful not to displace my head. His fingers settled on the slightly softer, slightly paler triangle of skin at my breast. They searched it for a second, came across a nipple sore from rubbing against surf wax, then backed off.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t have any boobs when I’m lying down.”

  “That’s okay,” he said. “I don’t have a dick after I’ve been out in the ocean for a while. It’s like an eel in a cave.”

  I laughed out loud. The bed shook beneath us.

  “Seriously, it looks like a second belly button down there.”

  I turned my face into his chest and felt the hair against my cheek. Even after the laughter ended, I couldn’t stop smiling.

  “So you spend a lot of time here, then?” I asked him.

  “Depends,” he said. “Couple weekends a month. More if the surf’s good.”

  * * *

  From then on, La Libertad became a part of my life. In El Salvador, most volunteers stay sane by going to the capital or visiting friends every two or three weeks. Now, Ben and I went to La Lib exclusively.

  I became La Chinita. Though it was perhaps Peseta’s least inspired nickname—and though I’m not Chinese—it was nice to have the status. My surfing skills came back quickly. The point was the perfect place for a regular footer to practice.

  Kristy prepared our meals and looked after the
boards while we were gone. I brought her gifts from the Peace Corps medical office: lotions, tampons, ibuprofen.

  Those long weekends—sometimes whole weeks—in La Libertad became the best days of my life. The locals—crackheads and surfers alike—knew who I was and flashed shakas and thumbs-up signs as I walked by. We surfed the morning glass, breakfasted on beans, eggs, fresh cheese, and tortillas. We passed the sweltering daytime hours with naps, sweaty lovemaking sessions, and ice-cold Regias. During sunset surfs at the point, the low clouds turned a weird mix of pinks and blues. The water calmed and took on a reflective, oily sheen. At the far side of the sky, fires from the cane fields sent up columns of smoke that glowed purple in the evening light. Mariachi bands serenaded us. The waves were as good as waves get.

  Was I afraid of the crackheads and the other dangers? To some extent. But it wasn’t so different from the rest of El Salvador. There was a simple set of rules: You didn’t go out at night, never left anything unlocked, never carried more money than you needed. In a sense, the crackhead thieves were more predictable than other elements of the criminal class. Also, I was always with Ben. From the first day I met him, I believed that he could handle anything. That he could keep me safe.

  9

  We wake early. No signs of stirring from Pelochucho’s room. Ben and I walk to the beach for a morning surf check—a ritual that’s become more about procrastination than actual forecasting. We take a seat on the stone staircase that leads down to the sand.

  “Small.” Ben yawns. He’s brought along his multitool and a bit of tie wire to fix my broken flip-flop.

  “This is Pelochucho’s monster swell?” I hand him the bad sandal. “The one we’re sticking around for?”

  Ben shrugs. “Surfing’s a way of life. Waiting is part of it.”

  I run my finger through the sand at the bottom of the steps. How many days and hours did I spend thinking about sand in the past two years? How far the men would have to carry it and how much, whether it was fine enough to aggregate the cement. That was river sand, of course; you can’t make concrete with ocean sand.