“Oh, Tim...”
He could see the tears filling Barbara’s dark eyes with diamonds.
“If you need some TLC, Tim — you know, anything at all — you can get it here. I still like to cook. I spend a lot of time with the kids and grandkids, but that leaves me lots of time alone, too. I’d like the company.”
“I’ll take you up on that.”
“No, you won’t. I thought about it a lot, Tim. After we broke up. I thought about why it happened. And what I came up with was this: you were afraid to slow down. You were afraid to take a few less units at school, take a few less patrol shifts, and just be. Be with yourself. Be with me. Be in the world. And you’re still that way now, you’re still afraid if you slow down you’ll miss something.”
“I’m afraid if I slow down I’ll die.”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“But you’re exactly right.”
“It’s not true. If you slow down, you’ll be happier. You’ll understand more. People will mean more to you. And you’ll mean more to them. It’s not so bad, Tim. It’s just a matter of sitting still. Being you. Just being.”
“It’s a flaw in my character, Barb.”
“Well, you know what they say about smelling the roses. Or the coffee. They change it every few years. If I were you, I’d slow down and smell the ocean on my skin when I’m out riding those spooky waves at the Wedge. You still do that?”
“I did last summer. Not since the surgery.”
“I can remember when you loved those waves almost as much as you loved me. And I can remember when you loved them more, too.”
For all her optimism and refusal to engage her darker side, Barbara was, Hess knew, a clear seer.
“Maybe that could give you something to slow down for.”
She blew her nose. Hess remembered teasing her about crying over anything — TV reruns, radio ads, newspaper articles. He had actually found it irritating once that Barbara had been decent enough to cry over things he would only crack wise about — tough cop that he was, enforcer of the law, prince of the suburbs, badass with a gun. I have been a fool, he thought. So many times. And what am I now but a hollow old man filled with poison on the off chance it can save my life?
“If you ever need me I’ll be here, Tim.”
His heart was a gathering storm and all he could say was thank you.
He tried to believe what she said. That evening he stood on the sand at the Wedge and watched the mountainous waves form on the jetty rocks, lunge toward shore and finally break in hollow caverns that huffed spray out the barrels like breath from a dragon. It was big enough to keep the crowds down, and Hess recognized a few faces out there in the turbulent soup between sets. Mostly kids now, he saw, which is what he was when he first braved this wild and unpredictable break, a wave that no other wave on earth could prepare you for. He could feel the reverberations coming up through the sand into his feet.
The evening had gone gray and humid and there was little breeze so the water was smooth. The spectators on the sand were all standing. Plenty of cameras on tripods, huge lenses. When it was big like this the waves spat enough spray into the air to make a salty mist over the water and the immediate beach. The lifeguard boat bobbed just outside the breakers. Hess could see another set of waves starting to form on the distant rocks and thought the rescue boat was in a perilous place. They rarely bothered with the Wedge — it was either big enough to capsize the boat or not breaking at all. Hess wondered what had brought them here this evening.
The water was surprisingly warm around his ankles as he stood there and waited for a lull in the waves. He was aware of people looking at him because he was old, and maybe because of the scar. When the last wave of the set had broken Hess waded in backward up to his knees then turned and dove flat into the receding brine and rode the backwash out into the deep Wedge bowl.
It always impressed Hess about the Wedge, how close you were to the beach while ten-foot waves picked you up and charged toward shore with you. Up on top of one was a scary place to be until the speed replaced the fright. Then you had the barrel covering you and the touchy problem of getting out before it snapped your neck on the bottom. But you couldn’t try to bail out too soon, either, because then you faced a long drop before the power of the wave was dissipated and that’s how you got tangled up in the heart of the fury and held under for longer than you could stand. Hess didn’t know exactly how many necks, backs and shoulders the Wedge had broken, but he knew it was a lot.
There were five people in the water around Hess and they all started swimming out at once. A jolt of adrenaline went through him as he followed, feeling his legs stretching out behind him, the weight of the big fins on his feet, the movement of his arms through the water. It had been a year.
The first wave lurched up and peaked and Hess watched a scrawny kid shoot across the face, tucked up high, skipping across the water on his hands like a waterbug. Hess dove under and felt the powerful tug on his fins.
A stocky young man Hess had seen before caught the second wave of the set, but he took it late, too close to the peak, and the whole thing just collapsed on him like a dynamited building. Hess glided under it. He knew it was the kind of wipeout that you couldn’t slide out of, it would take plenty of air to ride out the whitewater roller coaster to shore. He wondered if a lung and a third would do it, then figured it would have to.
When the next wave rose before him Hess realized he was exactly where he needed to be to catch it. Two of the other guys made for it too, then cleared out in a rare act of respect. Hess let the rising water draw him up the face, let his fins float up over his head. At the last second he turned toward shore, kicked once hard and leaned his back into the wave as it took him. A vertiginous lift. A surge of speed. Tiny people below. Beach towels as postage stamps. Rooftops in the distance. It had him completely, tons of charging water eager to possess him. He dropped his left hand, palm down, and planed along. This was the real magic of it for Hess, the part that was never quite fully believable — how a 200-pound man could ride the bottom of his own hand like this, feel the water resisting, feel it rushing beneath his fingers, feel the wake spraying off the heel of it. A tiny portable surfboard, connected to one’s self. Then he could see the lip far above him starting to crest and he bent his right shoulder back hard to keep himself locked in as long as he could. Spray in his face, he glanced down at the people on the beach and at the jetty behind him and the harbor beyond the jetty and the sky above the harbor. Then the roaring cylinder broke over him and the sky was replaced by rifling water and he was deep inside for a second or two, still happily gliding along on the palm of his hand until the wave finally caught him and drove him down toward the sand.
A moment later he found himself in the soft whitewater, being deposited on the shore. He sat there for a moment in the sand like an infant while the water receded around him. Some of the people on the beach were clapping.
He took off his fins and stood. He smiled back at the crowd — what a strange feeling to smile — and knew he could do it, he could beat this thing inside him with a little luck, a little applause, a little nod from God on high.
His heart was pounding strong and his lung and a third were full of good salt air.
Fourteen
Big Bill Wayne, erect in the captain’s chair of the panel van, steered through the great master-planned community of Irvine toward Interstate 5.