For a fatal moment, now that I was unexpectedly on top of things, the whole enterprise seemed too easy. Within three seconds
I went from saving myself from certain disaster to believing I was a thirteen-year-old hellman.
I never did see the great slab of water that cut me off at the knees. Loonie said it came down behind like a landslip and simply flicked me away. I didn't even get time to draw a breath. I was abruptly in darkness, being poleaxed across the sandy bottom of the bay, holding onto the dregs in my lungs while the grit blasted through my hair and my limbs felt as though they would be wrenched from their sockets. When I burst back to the surface my board was long gone, and before I could begin the swim in another rumbling pile of foam bore down on me so I dived and took another belting. It seemed a good while before I finally came up in a spritzing froth in the shallows, sinuses burning, shorts around my thighs, and by then Loonie was already up on the beach, grinning like a nutter, with my board stuck tail-first into the dry sand beside him.
Slipper came in on the wave of the day. He wound his way across the bay in long, arrogant swipes, flicked out in front of the river-mouth and walked all the way back up the beach as nonchalant as you like. But as he reached us he gave a gap-toothed leer, tossed his board onto the flatbed truck and motioned for us to throw ours on as well. We didn't hesitate. We climbed up beside the Angelus crew, basking in their new and grudging respect, and as we ground up the track a monster set closed out the entire bay behind us, shooting foam against the dunes and brown stormscum high across the scrub of the headland. It was carnage. And yet the swell still appeared to be building.
The truck reached the dirt turnaround where our bikes lay, but it didn't stop. We veered west into a set of wheel ruts that traversed the ridge of the headland and crossed into heath country — spiky, wild scrub dotted with granite boulders and washouts. Boards and tools and bodies slammed back and forth across the tray until we pulled up a mile or so further on at a basalt knoll above the sea cliffs.
Everyone stood and leant on the roof of the cab, staring seaward. I didn't know what we were all looking at. And then I saw the flickering white bombora in the distance.
When the bay shuts down, said Slipper, it starts to crank out there.
A mile out, a white smear appeared on the black sea. A moment later the sound of it reached us. It was like a thunderclap; you could feel the vibration in the chassis of the truck.
How big is that? I asked.
Everybody laughed.
Well, I persisted, how big was the Point today?
Too big for you, sport, said Slipper.
Eight foot, maybe, said someone. Ten right there at the end.
So what's that? I persisted. Out there. What size?
Slipper shrugged. Can't tell, he said. Twenty?
Bigger, said a wiry little bloke.
Does anyone surf it?
Nobody spoke.
Fuck that, said Slipper at last. It's sharky as shit out there.
The sea was dark now and the sky even blacker. Vapour hung in shrouds above the cliffs. Quite suddenly and with great force it began to rain. We jounced back towards the Point in the downpour and I looked at Loonie and saw that no amount of rain could spoil the day for him. His lip was split from grinning. He'd ridden his wave all the way to the beach. There was a glory about him. He was untouchable.
From the shelter of her big verandah the American woman looked down at the pair of us. We stood sodden and shivering in the mud of her yard.
I guess you better come up, she said.
We stashed our boards under the house and slopped upstairs to find that she had some old towels out for us and when we were more or less dry she let us in through the French doors.
Inside the place smelled of incense. A fire snapped in the hearth and there was music playing.
Coffee?
We nodded and she told us to stand by the fire.
It sounds big down there, she said without enthusiasm.
Ten foot, said Loonie.
Huh. Too big for you guys.
We handled it, said Loonie.
Oh, sure you did.
We got witnesses.
She half smiled and poured us mugs of coffee from a glass jug. Through the windows you could see the storm descending on the coast. Sawyer and the forest were obscured by rain.
You're from America? I asked.
California, she said. Before that, Utah, I guess.
Calafawnya, said Loonie in crude imitation. Yoo-tar. So how
come you're here?
Hey, I ask myself. Drink up and I'll drive you back to town.
We're orright, said Loonie.
Sure. But I'm going in anyways. I guess you're from Sawyer,
huh?
Neither of us said anything to this and I thought about how obviously local we must have looked in our flannel shirts and Blundstones. I took my cue from Loonie and slugged back the coffee as best I could. No amount of sugar could make up for the oily bitterness of it. We Pikes were strictly tea drinkers; this was the first coffee I'd ever drunk.
We drove into town without speaking. The Volkswagen shuddered with every gust; its wipers were helpless against the deluge. It felt weird being pressed close in that narrow cab with a woman.
At the end of my drive we both got out but Loonie leaned back in the open door.
It was ten foot today, he said. And we rode it. Can you tell him?
Sure, she said. The moment he arrives.
What's your name? he said with mortifying familiarity.
Eva.
Thanks for the lift, then. Eva.
She revved up the old eggbeater and I pulled our bikes down while he stood there grinning. Close the door, kid.
But Loonie kept standing there in the rain while the engine sputtered and gulped. His smile was a provocation. The Volkswagen jerked forward. The door slammed shut. We watched her drive on through the downpour.
She likes me, said Loonie.
Yeah, right.
Hey, maybe your Mum's done scones.
We pedalled hard for the house.
There was always a manic energy about Loonie, some strange hotwired spirit that made you laugh with shock. He hurled himself at the world. You could never second-guess him and once he embarked upon something there was no holding him back. Yet the same stuff you marvelled at could really wear you down. Some Mondays I was relieved to be back on the bus to school.
Nothing would have made me own up to this at the time but I actually liked being in school. There was a soothing dullness in the classroom, a calm in which part of me thrived. Could be it was the orderly home I grew up in, the safety of always knowing what came next. In any case my experience of school was not at all like Loonie's. For me there was no constant locking of horns, no dangerous visibility. I liked books — the respite and privacy of them — books about plants and the formation of ice and the business of world wars. Whenever I sank into them I felt free. If Loonie wasn't around I tended to go unnoticed and I suppose that in earlier years this had made me lonely, but now a bit of solitude was welcome.