"We jus' North Shore fisherman Billy!" John John flashes his tooth and winks.
Inside Peter Moon and band electrify the place with warm slack key rhythms and drivey steel guitar melody lines. Two big screens pump the latest surf movies and all the worlds surf personality male and female have beautiful dates dressed to impress. Photographers both surf specific and national media move in and around the tables, dance floor and bar. Anyone who was lucky enough to get a ticket feels like they "are somebody" as movie cameras record the entire proceedings. Baby in his high heeled cowboy boots and Tux stands with Bla at the bar, there is a clear space around them like penicillin in Petri dish of bacteria.
As Billy and Jake walk toward the bar...
“Hey Jake, do you think Baby, Bla and John John like being sorta separate?"
“They’re like a frying pan with no handle, you need it to cook but you don't know how to handle it. It's different with you because you’re their neighbour, you play croquet and know they're basically good people with not normal jobs…. Here people just know they're important but dangerous."
The dance floors rocking, the drinks never stop, Jake is being interviewed by media, and the master of ceremonies, RB, is pumping the Super Comp like it was kin to putting a man on the moon.
"Now Billy the sure fire way to meet women is to go where they are.”
"They are all around here Jake." Billy smiles
"Yes but where they relax has got a label right on the door... see here where it says 'women'."
"Jake. That’s the ladies powder room"
"This is the place Billy.”
“What about Julia?”
“We’re taking time out.” and Jake grabs Billy's arm and drags him into the ladies room. Instead of being appalled the girls are intrigued as Jake explains his theory that the place to meet women is obviously where the sign says, 'women'. Roguish charm exudes from Jake. The tallest most pimped up platinum blond turns to Jake with a martini in hand and says, “You have a pirate, wanderers’ spirit. Dogs love you and women love you for sex, you’re heart has always wanted to settle down but your mind won’t allow It.” and for a long few seconds Jake is stuck in his tracks. As Jake recovers from this painfully true spike in his heart, he takes up the call and begins leading the girls out and passing them to his friends. Compassionately, charmingly, impishly he connects the tall statuesque blond to Billy who gets into the swing of things and goes to the bar where Bla James is ordering some very bizarre shots.
"Billy brah you gotta have one of these, or two! And really it’s safest if you eat one of these little red pills with it. Mellows everything out bra."
"Ok"
As if Billy is watching a movie of himself, like turning a radio dial, things get cold and quite objectively a man drowning.
Needless to say Jake doesn't need a ride home and its late afternoon before Billy dejectedly pushes the passionfruit covered fence to drive his Jeep to its spot between the house and the seawall. It’s that weird feeling; sticky, crumpled, hung over and spiritually weak.
Upon entering the house his mind thinks the cat has strewn the tapes of the reel to reel across the floor but as mind catches up to sight, he looks around to see the tape machine is gone, the wall size speakers that were on loan are gone the turntable is gone the collection of '30s and '40s 78 blues records gone, the
Jake’s '1950 National blond wood hollow body guitar with gold Humbucking pickups and decals of girls in one piece bather and high heels, gone, the Epiphone base gone, all the pottery, all cash, and all surfboards, gone. Robbed? But after the previous night it feels like retribution, karma, fate, God’s hand has been lifted off. His head is on fire and his body is like a cracked bell waiting for the harsh blast of the clanger.
Some renegade snake knew Billy would be at the Super Comp party and set his house up. Nobody does the job themselves; town guys do it and pay dividends.
The neighbors are furious. "Bra Billy this is not Hui guys." Baby laments
“Somebody’s going to pay bra". John John smiles; it’s a very asymmetric smile.
A week later the second bad thing happened.
While Billy was in the shaping room working on his new yellow surfboard. Pig hunters from up the mountains came down and stole Lloyd. They take big dogs, starve them, put gun powder in their food to make them crazy, work them to track wild pig until a boar guts them with his tusks.
John John saw them eying Lloyd before and ordered them to leave Lloyd alone. The fact that they stole Lloyd enraged John John not just for defying his order, Lloyd was one of his few friends, because a dog doesn’t care what your job is. When Billy came next door to look for Lloyd John John took off in his mustang with a loaded shotgun. And when he found one of the guys he made him crawl around the road and bark like a dog, then he made him bit the curb and kicked him in the back of the head.
Lloyd was gone. The most honorable, noble, loving friend Bill’s ever had, next to Jake, gone like your child stolen into slavery. Billy's head was ablaze, fuelled by guilt fuelled by anger, and lots of self-pity, he couldn't sleep, or eat or concentrate or put out the fire that raged in his head, like fusion burning the core.
You can never love your dog more than he loves you… until he’s gone. Then the sadness and shock of realizing unconditional love has been sucked out of you. And you are weak like the bleached feeling when walking out of hospital.
At Nicole's A-frame house in Pupuikea Heights, the moment feels mechanical and Nicole says,
“Billy we need some space from each other. You know I love...” she pauses… “your style but I feel like you’re going through some stuff that is like rain clouds casting shadows before the rain... you go through it and maybe I'll meet you on the other side. I’ve got faith you’ll get past all this but I don’t want be around you for a while."
“I know the Sunny Boy thing freaked you out, the Super comp party, the robbery, and Lloyd getting stolen all freaked me out too.” Recognizing the sum of his reality is astringent. “Maybe you’re right. But let’s not pretend it’s possible to start up the same again. I’m out of here."
"Good Billy. Let’s go our own way and if our paths cross we can see what we feel."
“Right” Billy says mockingly
Driving away Billy feels hollow inside, quavering inner speak, swearing, and ranting at the heavy laden rain clouds blotting out the sun. The atmosphere is sticky, humid and Billy's mind burns with a monotonous vision-clouding slowness. It feels like Nam. With no reason to go home he drives right past the passionfruit covered fence.
Fat rain drop begin to fall.
CHAPTER 11
Van Gough did a self-portrait that looked like a week of no sleep, no appetite and an escaping soul…
“…and the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.”
Driving up and down the North shore, can’t eat, can’t settle, and he can't think past trying to figure out what happened to his life. Did he survive Viet Nam, get his life back on track, and work daily on getting his spirit back, all for this, a hollowness in the soul, aching heart and his insides burning with consuming fire.
Once again he drives past the passion fruit covered fence, no reason to go home, just drive, eat a almond cookie, drink coffee, feeling skinny and sick emotionally, sick spiritually… His mind is fuelled to burn and ill easterly winds blow menacing his skull.
When your head is on fire you'll do whatever it takes to put it out. Driving doesn't work but it gets you somewhere. Billy finally parks the Jeep at Puena Point. It’s a lonely series of small sandy coves facing toward Haliewa, a forgotten WWII air strip over grown with bush. The Jeep bashed in there easily. The surf is always small at Puena Point even when Waimea is breaking. ‘I need to walk straight into the calm waters, into the deep and breath water “yes, breath water” echo in his mind. A cold step across the line. Strange voices in his head verify that it is the obvious option to put out the fire, a short step in a vacuous mind. The will is engaged and
the course is set. His body is thin and muscular, his emotions are too dry to cry, and his burning spirit is bigger than the sum of his parts, if you could see his halo it would be badly tinted and uneven like explosions on the sun... His mind, hyper aware of everything, is moving a million miles a second into a very dark location. Walking into the sea until he breaths water is the remedy... and that is that.
At waist deep a flash of color from the next cove catches the corner of his eye. Jerking his head sideways he sees a young girl sun bathing alone, she’s wearing a bright tie dyed homemade bikini and she is smiling at him, this millisecond observation rattles around in his head like dice on a crap table, his mind lets him realize she likes what she sees, he knows it! She is definitely smiling at him and simply that, is the turning of the tide. The crack in the wall of evil. There is light. A 180 that swims away from the dark. Quite suddenly he thinks ' what the hell am I doing?' He just begins to laugh, a smile, a giggle at first that turns into a belly ache. What power in the shallowness of this moment, a moment that turned suicide into laughter, but that’s really all it is, something to get past the apex of the darkness. A pinprick glimpse of light into the future re-engages time and time needs being, and only being alive allows another step. Whatever it is that enters ones head to kill and destroy dissolves in the light of life potential… and the smile of a cute girl in a tie-died bikini.
Driving home with tears running down his face and a very deep humility warmly inhabiting the vacant spaces in his being, Billy senses the beginning of return, the ring of recurrence in one lifetime.
"When yo ain't got nothing you got nothin' to loose... you’re invisible now... "
CHAPTER 12
It's a dry gusty afternoon, Billy is surfing alone. Hollow but smiling. It is one week to the super contest and Jake pushes the passionfruit covered fence open, surfboard under his arm... expecting Lloyd; remembering, and spitting on the ground. He sits on the sea wall to watch as Billy ferociously paddles left before standing in a flash to rip a gash in the four foot wall of liquid before dropping down to soul arch' around head high sections, there is almost a violence in his stall to rise into a controlled tail slide that evolves into another arch around the final section where he cups his hand and drags it through the fringing lip controlling speed, feeling it. Coltrane,
'Just poetry" Jake thinks as he paddles out. For Billy it is the cleansing moment that lays open his bare wires dissolving pain, and demons and words like 'why'.
“Billy that was such a beautifully constructed ride."
"The difference between you and me pal is that it’s not a construction, not a thought process for me, when I pull out of a wave I struggle to really remember what happened, it’s more about the flow and the feeling. For you, and I totally understand, it’s a calculated attack. It’s the 'iron sharpens iron' of professionalism, versus the spirit of uninhibited freedom; surf my guts out. Amateur' may have become archaic but it's glorious and free. Like pal I'm going to spin around and grab this next wave and I've got no plan, just the feeling through my feet. So I’m going to surf my feelings which lately have a lot of gouging, sorta bebop."
"Right" Jake says, " but I already calculated that the following wave is the biggest doubled up wave this cove has seen all day, it's about 'size of wave, length of ride, most critical move closest to the curl'..." as Billy spins to paddle Jake blurts out, " and that’s why I'm expecting to win the Super comp!"
Billy drops in, five foot wind scuffed perfection, folding like chocolate icing on a cake, and he rides like therapy, like parenthesis in the dullness of life, like meaning is a feeling not a thought, a cake walk...because surfing’s the only constant left. As he exits at the edge of the reef the sun drops below the horizon and he waits in the calm water watching Jake do his power dance. The wave is doubled up- two wave energies combined, twice the power, twice the water. Jake top turns into a slashing cut back, eyes arms and sinew forcing back into the heart of the curling wave then snapping a turn right as the curl folds, so he drops his arms, arches out his chest and allows the curl to pour onto his chest, a statue, a photo opportunity, a moment of haiku poetry before ducking in under the tunnelling lip, Jake drags two fingers on the wall of water unconsciously it is Lloyd, Julia and the children he will never have, it is powerful music that rubs your cheek close to the real timeless now, dragging him further into the black hole of sunset, tons of water pouring overhead.
In the dying light all Billy can see is Jake's white teeth and the fluorescent bubbles of his boards’ frantic track. Billy is screaming approval but Jake doesn't come out of this dark doubled up tube. It seems like a long time before Billy paddles toward the last spot he saw Jake.
Jake finally surfaces gasping through a sea surface diluted with blood. Doubled up tubes are smaller, Jake's head got stuck in the top of the tube and he was pulled over the falls, the fin of his board flayed his knee cap wide open. Diluted blood, rain softly begins, and reality threatens to melt as Billy drags semi-conscious Jake to shore.
CHAPTER 13
The day before the Super comp Billy wakes to the sound of heavy equipment; bleachers are being erected, TV platforms, and judges stands rise while traffic stops to gawk. 'Grin and bear it" Billy thinks, 'it'll all pass but how the hell did it get to this?'
. The next morning there are cables being strung between the neighbors and Billy’s house, Blah James has a beer in hand, the sun is rising, palm trees are being garrotted by tightly strung speakers, Baby, like a first Sargent is directing all the big Hawaiian beach marshals (who are mostly his relatives). John John stuffs ammo inside the seat of his Mustang where the sawed off shotgun rides. RB is ushering media to their luxury viewing tent, tour busses are beginning to back up on Kam highway and Jake arrives with a crutch under one arm, Julia under the other and a six pack in his teeth.
"Well you're still in form partner!"
"Ah... you've got to make the most of all situations Billy." Jake speaks through the six pack.
“Right. Will you live?"
“Hard to tell ‘because the doctors got me so drugged I wouldn't notice either way."
“Well come in man, we'll have to watch the event from in here cause the rest of the surf world is camped outside my door."
“Now don't be bitter, I'm the one who should be bummed but I'm not. Truth is Billy I'm relieved. I've been delivered from the expectations of all those people out there… and, my pressure on myself, maybe it's fear of public failure, so I ‘m going to just love being spectator... and I still think I could have won this thing."
“I know you could Jake, you've done the hard yards and put in the hours like a research project. You could've won today but you’re a brilliant rider any day... and that is that."
“Thanks man. I really like the adventure, the mission, preparing... maybe I could just do that for the rest of my life... or maybe I’ll marry Julia, raise her sons and rage at the sea like old Nikaido San." Jake says.
“That’s not exclusively your choice pal." Julia says threatening to kick his knee. Jake shrieks like a girl and Billy has set the table by the window similar to the dinner party, but the furnishings are stark again, just the three of them and Jake's six packs. Jake dismisses the moment by saying,
“Well guys it's party time out there" pointing at the contest, " so we may as well get into it." nobody says a thing about being just three.
Two beers down each, two heats ride by the window, and Nicole's at the door with two bottles of Chardonnay. "Hey guys am I still welcome here or what?" she says with such a laughing South African challenge that the natural wattage goes up three fold in the room and the three legged dog gets the miracle of real balance and solid footing.
“Get in here and chill that bottle of wine!" Jake orders with the biggest cheesy smile you would think he was a cartoon Canadian Mountie. Billy almost cries he’s so happy to have her presence back in the house.
“Hey Nic… I’ve got some ice in the freezer.” His words are dumb but she
smiles at him like he is a lost kitten found under the sofa. They don’t touch until she reaches into the freezer to help him extract the ice. Just brushing forearms brings eye contact that’s as good as an embrace; heart felt and light years from sexual.
They sit in the window watching the heats and the afternoon sun
So much weirdness has gone down that for the four of them the comfort of being with old friends, mutual acceptance, is so pervasive that long stretches of silence are warm moments bound together by golden light more caressing than the sun. Quietly Jake watches the sunlight come in through the window and light up Julia’s ankles. For that moment it was like he fell in another rabbit hole; quiet and maybe in love.
The super comp was everything it was billed to be and more. The surf turned on and the media really did show the world how powerfully beautiful surfing a wave can be; it is power dance at the highest level, it is bull fighting without death, of course the wave dies; it is art. R.B. was masterful and when he popped into the house to commiserate with Jake it seemed the whole beach entourage followed him in.
On the seawall in the moonlight Nicole and Billy sit shoulder to shoulder, like they are at someone else’s party, someone else’s home; two old friends giggling at the past and content in, the present… which stretches right out there on the moonlit horizon. By morning only a house is left, smelling of beer, bottles piled high around the yard, and a slapping shore break echoing coldly across the cove.
Ecclesiastes 11:7 ….Truly the light is sweet,
And it is pleasant for the eyes to behold the sun
But if a man lives many years and rejoices in them all…
Yet let him remember the days of darkness,
For they will be many.
All that is coming is vanity.
CHAPTER 13
When the swell is going to come up really big you can sense it in the unearthly distance between each wave. The shore break is different and the timing between waves is disconcerting; time gaps too long and the energy of the ground swell is hinting that big things out to sea are marching to land fall.