The Break A short story

                                                              The Break

He needed to clear his head. It had been so long since he got high; the smoke coated his brain like dirt in a fishbowl. Things will get better, he told himself. Since Shelley had left for the mainland, he thought about swimming. Each morning he fought through his fear and challenged himself as a coach calling out a struggling clean up hitter. Each day, he made it to the beach but stalled by the shore.

A weathered beach house stood at the end of the street. Sandwiched between the house and chain-link fence, a hidden path littered with grape-sized pinecones and camouflaged by the arching shades of banana trees. The sharp pinecones pricked his bare feet; he awkwardly sidestepped them until the path opened up to the sloping sandbanks of Sunset Beach. The horizon was a dome of blue sky and fluffy drifting clouds.

Charred wood smoldered inside a circle of rocks. A sign staked into the dune: an illustration of a swimming man with a red slash through him. No swimming, strong undercurrent, it read. The waves were six footers from trough to crest and traveled in sets of five to ten. Carried by the wind, carved by the depths, waves rose up and beat down on the shore— one after another until, the ocean flattened out and a torrid silence, as the eye in a storm cast a hypnotic spell.

Back home at Red Horse Beach the waves were ripples in comparison; only when the winter nor’easter winds slammed the coast did the sea rise to a comparable fury and bash the concrete wall along

Nantasket Road

.   Nonetheless, only the rare seasoned rider braved such storms. At Bonzai Pipeline, Leftovers and Waimea Bay surfer’s tread water from sunrise to sunset, bobbing up and down as shark food, stalking the right wave. Some days the beaches were ripe with sets of ten to fifteen footers. In Hawaiian winter, twenty to thirty foot waves were a common sight along the North Shore— enticing surfers from all over the globe— Africa, England and Australia who invaded Haleiwa and lived in hostels, Volkswagens or tents on the beach. Professional surfers brought their campaigns to the pro championships— The G Shock, Quicksilver or The Eddie. Older surfers, masters of the sport, joined the ranks of the up and comers for an Eddie showdown— a tournament held only when waves reached a minimum height of twenty feet.

Shelley Maynard and Trent Busby had been a couple since high school and through four years of college. Upon graduation, they planned a road trip. She wanted the west coast and the pacific. California she said represented the ultimate American journey— the western trail, discovery and the setting sun. Hawaii. Fiji Islands. Hawaii had never entered his dream travel list. He wanted to march upon the ruins of Delphi and breathe the air of oracles and magic, Euro rail through Paris and England or hike an African trail. Hawaii was the destination of honeymooners, football players and movie stars. He wrongly assumed Captain Cook to be a Hawaiian king. An unknown land that he watched on ABC TV, once a year maybe, when the cameras highlighted the world-class surfing championships, festive luaus and portly ukulele musicians singing Aloha Oe to pale faced tourists.

He did not hate the ocean; he feared sharks.

“Don’t be silly,” Shelley said. “You’re more likely to die in a car accident than a shark attack.”

He did his homework and knew the warm Hawaiian waters were loaded with sharks. Tigers. Hammerheads. He pictured himself on a surfboard, a big Cheerio floating in a vast bowl of milk.

“You’re just letting the movie into your head,” she said.

She had a point. For some reason, only known to his parents, they thought it a good idea taking the eight year old boy to see Jaws on the big screen.

He loved Shelley, trusted her. They arrived on Oahu, fresh from stays in Venice Beach, Yosemite and Death Valley. From the second she touched ground in Honolulu, Shelley enamored and loved everything Hawaiian— the people, the land and aloha spirit. A week turned into a month. She took a job as a clerk at Turtle Bay Inn and he worked for a heart doctor as his personal maintenance man. A month turned into a year. They lived a charmed life together.

He pondered the break. Six footers appeared as ten. He took off his shirt and tossed it beside the circle of rocks— the jagged tips of rock just breaking through the sand. Swirling winds skimmed across the beach. He wandered toward the water. Strange the beach deserted; even more, surfer-free.

He put two feet in. Just getting in to his waist, would mark progress. But he mistrusted nature’s stake in laying odds. In his deepest fears they were lurking deep below, at his feet, grazing the surface or just beyond the next wave. If he unlocked fear’s secret, he could remove its power, like a battery and proceed forward. He slipped off his t-shirt. Sunlight reflected off his white chest as chrome. He took three steps until the water leveled at his thighs.

It warmed him like bathwater. Bubbling ocean suds massaged his muscles. The undertow swept across his legs, pulling them and displacing the granules beneath his feet. He paused and scanned the surface for fins.

“Screw it. It’s only a movie.”

The footing sloped gradually but, on the fourth step, the shore fell away. He quickly surveyed the surface again, held his breath then let himself go. He swam in place and kicked his feet. As if on queue, a wave charged at him and it curled, broke and he dove into it, spinning. He opened his eyes and the wave swirled and foamed across the sky. He splashed wildly about and soon forgot all about sharks. He popped out. He dove in. And out again. A ferocious barrel loomed, he ducked and the turbulence brushed over him as a pursuing whale. He somersaulted and shot out and whipped his hair across his head, victoriously. Astonishment washed through him. Another barrel raced toward him— green and luminous— a dozen blue striped snapper fish, rode the crest, their orange backs gleaming and paths locked in. Mesmerized and caught in a hypnotic trance. A swell curled into a wave, he turned and ran— muscles straining but it picked him up as dice, hurled— arms, legs flapping and flailing across the breaking wave and landed with a splashing thud. He rolled on his stomach. Yellow dots danced in his head; waterlogged, half-floating and half-grounded, he smiled. A clump of sand filled his shorts as wet concrete.   

If only Shelley saw him now. He wondered if he had really reached the end or if, even the slightest chance at healing, reuniting. It scared him, being alone. He felt unsure what to do or how to act. For over ten years, they were joined at the hip. The loneliness would chew him up and spit him out. In those dark hours, he would not recognize himself. He would see only shadows flitting in the moonlight. Shifting shapes in the ocean depths.

He rolled over. A massive cloud broke apart; braids of scarlet and tangerine light burst over tourmaline peaks. He picked himself up and dove into the ocean. As he backstroked along the shoreline, an army helicopter dropped out of the sky and swung in low from Waimea, propellers whirling loudly and shaking the palm fronds until it moved over Trent. A soldier surveyed the beach. It hovered, whirring. The soldier searched all around Trent, up and down the beach, he signaled to the pilot, and the chopper zoomed off toward Kukaimanini Island.

An awkward silence tore across the beach. The warm bath-like water grew now cold in spots. Something dark, pulpy broke the plane beside him and Trent froze, horrified. A black shell emerged and then, a wrinkled sleepy-eyed face. It sent Goosebumps across Trent’s neck.

“Damn. You almost gave me a heart attack.”