‘Umm, okay. Do you have an ironing board, or do I just use the dining table?’
Chook stared at him a fraction longer before breaking into laughter and clapping him on the back. ‘Ah, you seem like a good bloke, Andy, but you’ve got to stop trusting people so much.’
***
Andy was woken by Chook tugging on his ankle, letting him know that he was late for work. A greasy fog lingered above the sheet-glass ocean. Andy threw himself into the water and the awakening was immediate. Clambering on to his board he started paddling when he heard laughter.
‘Andy!’ called Wayan, the ship’s cook, from the boat. ‘Other way!’
Navigating by the muscular sound of waves crashing onto reef, Andy found his way through the mist to the break. The stillness of the air and the water had conspired to magnify the sound, and Andy was relieved to find the swell had dropped overnight. A set of very approachable three footers emerged from the dark, stood up on the reef and then rolled through the lineup forming playful walls that tapered away to gentle shoulders. He resisted the temptation to snag a couple of rides before going back to report the conditions – Marty’s cheat sheet had been specific on that point. The two tribes were getting ready to surf the way marines prepare for combat – with sullen intensity and one eye on the enemy.
Wayan motioned for Andy to take some toast, drawing him close enough to whisper, ‘That one, blue shorts. And that one, yellow shorts,’ indicating the leaders of the respective packs.
‘Thanks, Wayan.’ Andy raised his slice of toast in salute.
‘Good luck. Enjoy.’
Blue Shorts, a heavy-set, tattooed Brazilian, stood on the duckboard waiting without grace as Chook bled the fuel line of the tender. Yellow Shorts, a wiry, weather-beaten South African, leapt over the side, breaking the water with the tip of his board and disappearing below the surface. He emerged several metres later in full competitive paddle, head bowed and arms stroking. The remainder of the guests lemminged after him, churning the water to foam with a series of entries of varying cleanliness.
‘Get out there, try and keep the peace willya, Marty?’ Andy nearly jumped at the sound of Chook’s low, gravelly voice in his ear. ‘Take the boat.’
He understood now that the messing about with the fuel line had been a ploy to convince the impatient surfers to paddle the several hundred metres to the break. This gave Andy plenty of time to speed over in the boat, position himself in the lineup and let a few waves roll through, demonstrating for the guests the kind of patience and magnanimity he was expecting. He felt like a deputy headmaster placing his foot on the ball while talking to the over-eager junior soccer team. But as the pack emerged from the fog, thrashing through the water at pace, the feeling changed to that of a frail village elder waiting for the Mongols to thunder down from the steppes.
The pack steamed in as a lull in the swell enveloped the line-up in stillness. The ten surfers settled in a circle around Andy, assuming he was an experienced surf guide and talented surfer.
‘Morning fellas. Haven’t had a chance to meet all of you. Well, any of you. My name’s Andy,’ he started with as much confidence as he could. ‘Or you could call me Marty, I guess. If you want.’
A bird on the shoreline gave a loud cry and took flight. It was the only sound in the bay. The surfers stared past Andy towards the source of the swell.
‘Where are you guys from?’ asked Andy.
A small wave collapsed onto the inside reef.
‘Well, I’m from Sydney. You guys ever surfed there?’ Andy ploughed on, comforting himself with the thought that this is what he was paid to do. Except that he was the one who had paid.
‘Yeah. I surf there. Is okay.’ It was a young broad-shouldered Brazilian with close-cropped hair. He spoke with no real enthusiasm and his eyes never left the horizon. ‘Some waves, very crowded.’
‘That’s ’cos there’s too many fucking Zillas in Sydney,’ said the South African in the yellow shorts, a smile playing across his lips. ‘Too fucking many in the Mentawis, too.’
Blue Shorts lowered himself onto his board, took two deep, powerful strokes and glided past Yellow Shorts, missing his board by inches. He came to a stop directly between the South African and the likely direction of the next set of waves. He sat back up on his board and placed his hands on his hips, muscles tensing.
‘Looks like game on, eh boys?’ said Yellow Shorts, addressing his countrymen, with a smile that bore more resemblance to a threat.
Andy weighed his options. He was close to making a general appeal for calm when a set materialised, prompting all ten surfers to paddle towards the same small patch of ocean as fast as physically possible.
The paddling turned to shoving as several surfers wheeled around under the lip in unison. Arms flailed, legs kicked, warnings were yelled and ignored. The circus was repeated on each wave of the set, leaving the pack to untangle leashes and inspect boards for damage. The whitewater bubbled as the current dragged them further over the reef.
‘You go this one?’
It was the short-cropped Brazilian kid who had surfed in Sydney but found it crowded. He’d waited patiently while his countrymen sacrificed themselves at the altar of aggressive drop-ins, and that patience was now being rewarded.
‘I think this one is yours – ?’ Andy offered, bringing his inflection up to ask the kid’s name.
‘Renato,’ he said, stroking into the pocket of the incoming wave and timing it perfectly.
By lunchtime the tally was three damaged boards (two crushed rails and one fin chop) and ten frayed tempers. Almost zero waves had been ridden without some sort of drop-in, fade, snake or other infraction. To add sand to the gears, the swell was clearly dying, delivering sets less consistently as the day wore on.
Andy managed to get a little more conversation out of Renato before Blue Shorts barked at his tribe in Portuguese, presumably ordering them to stay focused on ensuring that no South African got a wave without having to fight for it. The South Africans appeared happy to oblige, until Yellow Shorts declared himself ‘really fucken hungry, ay’ and signalled for the tender to pick them up. Deprived of opponents, the Brazilians followed suit.
Chook arranged for Wayan to serve lunch at opposite ends of the boat.
‘Mind if I join you fellas?’ Andy tried to sound confident, but suspected he had not been entirely successful.
‘Long as you don’t try and snake me while I’m eating, ay fellas?’ said Yellow Shorts, trying to make it sound like a joke and also failing.
‘Don’t worry, I promise I’ll wait my turn for the sauce bottle,’ said Andy, which drew a couple of small chuckles. ‘Which part of South Africa you guys from?’
One of the younger guys, lanky and blond, said they were from Durban. Andy had seen this kid catch a couple of waves that morning and, despite the jostling and blocking, he had surfed with the relaxed, fluid style of someone born to the water. The kid turned out to be Yellow Shorts’ nephew and this was his first big overseas surf trip. The other three worked for Yellow Shorts, or were related, or both. Chook had been hovering, nodding appreciatively as Andy made small conversational inroads with the group, until he overheard Yellow Shorts explaining the family business: a small back-to-base home security and response company. In South Africa, it meant the phone was always ringing.
***
‘Fucking hell. Private security contractors. All we need now is for the Zillas to be some kind of Ju-jitsu masters,’ said Chook, staring at the ocean.
‘Why? Have you talked to them already?’ asked Andy.
‘Don’t tell me, please, Jesus fucking Christ. Are you kidding?’ pleaded Chook.
Andy shook his head and reached into the cooler for a beer. ‘They’ve just won their regional championships. But a couple of their team-mates are back in jail for assault, so that’s why there’s only five of ’em.’
‘Marty, you clever prick.’ Chook drained the last of his Bintang and tossed it over his shoulder. It made a
small splash before sinking.
Chook put the hammer down and made the crossing to Playgrounds in record time. He was working on the theory that if they could tire the guests out with uncrowded waves, then load them up with carbohydrates and alcohol, the crew stood a better chance of keeping a lid on the situation each evening. Andy’s job was to convince each tribe to go to a different break for the afternoon session while Wayan assembled an avalanche of food.
‘Hey Renato, I got a secret spot for you guys,’ said Andy, making his way forward to where the Brazilians had been pointing frantically at every break as it swept past.
‘Yah, I think Chico, he going to say where we surf now,’ Rento answered, jerking his head slightly to indicate Blue Shorts.
‘Okay, but tell Chico I’ve reserved the tender for you guys and I can take you to your own spot. No hassling for waves.’ Andy turned and went back down to the main deck where Chook was trying to sell Yellow Shorts and his merry band of security goons on the bowling little left-hander breaking just next to the anchor point. Eventually the offer of exclusivity won them over and the waxing and fin-installing and sunscreening began in earnest. Chook and Andy watched in mild despair as everyone tried to get their boards out of the rack at the same time.
The South Africans grumbled to Chook that the Zillas were going in the tender. The Brazilians, via Renato, who had become the unofficial translator, made it clear they felt it was unfair the Saffers could simply paddle to the closest break. Both groups were promised compensation in having the roles reversed tomorrow. It was like dealing with scrum of resentful, entitled toddlers, except they each stood around six foot tall and were trained to break into either your house or your ribcage.
Andy’s session with the Brazilians started calmly enough. A small group of bodyboarders who had been surfing the peak by themselves took one look at the tattooed tribe piling out of the tender and made for the shore. A few smackable three footers rolled through to start them off but it wasn’t long before the drop-ins and snaking and naked aggression surfaced yet again.
‘What is going on?’ Andy gestured in frustration towards the inside of the break, where two of the Zillas were cursing each other in Portuguese and untangling their boards as whitewater rolled through the impact zone.
‘Is just how we do,’ Renato said with a shrug. ‘Whole life we fight. Just to survive. Out here, same.’
Andy played a cat-and-mouse game with the fractious knot of Brazilians who seemed to want a wave only if someone else wanted it first. Once the floating melee washed through the lineup, he had a few minutes to pick a wave of his own before the civil war resumed. He was enjoying the wide open faces of these Indonesian waves which, although small (and getting smaller), had the energy of thousands of miles of uninterrupted Indian Ocean behind them. They propelled his board with an urgency and grace he seldom found in the confused soup of Sydney’s beachbreaks.
Every time he spotted a promising-looking lump on the horizon and spun his board into position, he found Renato had done the same, and several metres closer to the critical take-off spot. No matter. Andy smiled broadly, gave an encouraging yelp and watched as Renato not so much jumped to his feet as let the wave fall away beneath him and casually placed his board where the ocean had been. The young Brazilian disappeared behind the peak for a moment before unleashing a series of frothy explosions off the top of the peeling wave as he travelled down the reef. Inspired, Andy could feel his own confidence growing, his turns getting sharper and his stalls getting a little more definite with each wave.
‘Turn your foot more straight,’ said Renato as they sat at the take-off spot, willing a set to arrive before Blue Shorts and co paddled back out.
‘My foot?’ asked Andy.
‘Yah. Front foot. Dis one,’ Renato slapped his left thigh and then pointed at the nose of Andy’s board. ‘Make your toes go to the front more. Is better for speed. Try, this wave! Paddle deeper! Go now! Go!’
Even though he was sitting deeper and, by the unwritten rule of Surfer Law, had priority, Renato was coaching Andy into the approaching set, encouraging him to paddle deep into the peak. The water drew off the reef as the line of swell gathered itself up into a wave. Andy saw the coral heads as they appeared to rise massively, inevitably towards his fragile board and exposed flesh.
‘Go!’ Renato’s voice was now more command than encouragement. Andy’s arms responded, digging deep into the blue one last time before grasping the rails of his board and pushing it down into the void. For a second, Andy was weightless, his head leading his body in a trackless arc toward the shallow reef. Gravity asserted itself and the board started to descend. Andy’s feet made contact with the deck just as the rail sliced into the steep, smooth face of the wave. The acceleration was fierce.
The wave opened up for a moment then enveloped him in a cocoon of diamond blue light and white noise. It spat him out through a vortex of foam onto a wide, open face of momentum and possibility. He carved his way, top to bottom, as the wave kept pushing all the way to the inside of the reef.
It was a different wave, geographically and temporally. But as he kicked out into the calm of the channel, Andy realised it was the same wave, at heart and in spirit, as the one that had led him here, to this very spot. He had become that stall-to-tube-to-cutback guy. He had changed, officially and spiritually, into Marty the Deckhand.
‘Why? Tell me why?’
Andy’s reverie was shattered by a face, angry and in need of answers, filling his field of view. It was Chico, with more questions than vocabulary.
‘What?’ Andy struggled to make sense of his new predicament.
‘Why take Renato wave?’ said Chico, pointing the take-off spot. ‘Not you wave. Renato wave.’ He jabbed his meaty forefinger into Andy’s chest.
Andy was now the target of waterborne aggression, as the rest of the Brazilians drew in around him, partly following Chico’s lead but mainly thankful for the opportunity to direct their frustrations at an outsider.
‘Okay,’ Andy raised his hands, ‘Renato wave. Got it. No problem. Every wave can be Renato wave. You’re the guest.’
‘No! Every wave my wave!’ yelled Chico, his breath landing on the bridge of Andy’s nose.
Renato had kicked out from his last ride and paddled over, yelling in Portuguese. Chico yelled back, without moving his face from Andy’s. Clearly, he wasn’t buying Renato’s version of events.
Another set rolled through, unridden. Chico leaned forward and glared one last time at Andy, spat violently from the side of his mouth and paddled back to the take off spot, laughing and talking to himself. The others followed behind at a distance, like a pack of dogs trying to avoid the random beating they knew their master would inevitably dispense.
‘What the fuck, Renato?’ asked Andy when the pack was out of earshot.
‘Yah, sorry man. Chico, he very crazy,’ said Renato, watching his friends gather in a tight knot to jostle for the next set. ‘He just want to fight. Always.’
‘What did you say to him?’
‘I told him: if he hurt you, or people from the boat, he maybe go to jail. He say he don’t care. But I tell him, no Brazil jail – Indonesia jail,’ said Renato, watching the horizon. ‘I tell him to stop fighting, just enjoy surfing. Maybe he listen. Maybe.’
‘Thanks Renato. You’re a good kid.’
The two of them waited for a set to appear and the pack to ride to the inside, but the ocean had gone flat, as oceans are sometimes wont to do. Chico paddled around in small circles, muttering and slapping the water. He waved for the tender. ‘Here no more waves!’ he yelled. ‘We go.’
‘Chook, we might have a real problem here,’ Andy whispered to the skipper once they were all back on board. ‘Chico, in the Blue Shorts, he’s a fucking nutcase. Just lives to fight.’
‘That’s only half the problem,’ Chook drained another beer and watched the South Africans, who were treating the other peak the way a pride of lions treat a zebra. ‘The Saffer in the Y
ellow Shorts – his mates call him TP.’
‘TP? Like toilet paper?’
‘Stands for Tupac, his hero and role model. Showed me pictures of his gun collection last night. Sounds like the kind of guy who goes around begging for someone to give him a reason to pull the trigger.’
‘Oh, fuck.’
‘Fuck indeed.’
A series of splashes from the rear of the boat caught their attention and they leaned over the railing to see the Brazilians paddling for the break in the bay. Andy called out to Renato. ‘What are they doing? They’re not supposed to go to that wave!’
‘Chico don’t care,’ said Renato as he stood on the transom, board under his arm. ‘He want to surf there.’
‘Get out there, Renato,’ Andy pleaded. ‘Tell him to come back before he starts some serious shit.’
Chook called out to his crew in heavily-accented Indonesian. They started scurrying about, hauling in the anchor and tying down the topside equipment. Wayan sauntered below and started prepping.
‘What’s the plan now, Chook?’ asked Andy, ‘We just sail off and have a nice, quiet dinner somewhere while they kill each other?’
‘Good idea. Then we motor back and pick up the survivors? Whaddaya reckon?’ Chook was grinning like a maniac.
‘Umm, is that legal?’ asked Andy.
‘For fuck’s sake Andy, I’m kidding mate. I just want to scare ’em back into the boat and then feed ’em up as quick as we can. Go tell ’em I’m taking ’em to a secret spot.’
When the two packs returned to the boat, they found Chook standing on the transom, arms folded, flanked by his Indonesian crew. The duckboard had been drawn up, making it almost impossible to climb aboard. As the surfers milled around like sullen schoolboys, Chook announced the new rules for the duration of the trip. The front half of the boat would be the favela, the back half would be the shantytown and the middle half would be for the crew.
Andy figured it wasn’t the time to point out that one boat couldn’t have three halves. His job now was to ensure the warring nations had as little contact with each other as possible. Chook drove the CrossShore at full throttle, making it difficult to move about the deck, and Wayan started dishing up mountains of food. The crew took up positions through the middle of the boat, forming a human cordon to keep the nations apart. It felt like a hostage situation, although it was difficult to tell who the hostages were. For his part, Chook had started taking cans of Bintang prisoner, interrogating them for alcoholic content and then tossing their lifeless bodies overboard.
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