“You haven’t seen this.” Frank was exiting the highway at Deukmejian State Recreation Area. Kirk glanced up from his book. What had been a field was now flattened and surveyed; the little flagged posts were already planted, with a sign advertising the site of a future Big-Box Mart. “Remember when the nearest business was a taco stand back at Canyon Avenue? It’s now a Chisholm Steakhouse.”
“I remember taking a shit in the bushes,” Kirk said.
“Don’t swear around your old man.”
Frank pulled into the lot, parking in an empty slot one row away from the path gate. “Well, whad’ya know,” he said, as always. “Welcome to Mars!”
A collection of shops had evolved on the other side of the highway under low-slung roofs made to look like Mexican adobes. There was a surf gear shop, a recent and ubiquitous Starbucks, a Subway sandwich place, a Circle W convenience store, and the office of a lone insurance agent named Saltonstall, who had set out his shingle there so he could surf when the phone wasn’t ringing. An AutoShoppe/FastLube & Tire franchise was under construction at the south end of the shopping center.
“A lube job while you surf,” Kirk noted. “That’s environmental consumer integration.”
“Here’s your handbasket. Enjoy hell,” Frank said.
The parking lot showed a collection of aged and rugged vehicles—Rancheros and station wagons loaded with tools, owned by construction workers who were grabbing waves before work. There were old vans and self-painted VW Buses owned by surfers sleeping overnight, despite posted ordinances that exclaimed NO CAMPING. When the county sheriffs periodically rousted the surf bums there were always lengthy legal discussions about the difference between “camping overnight” and “waiting for daylight.” Lawyers surfed Mars, too, as did orthodontists and airline pilots, their Audis and BMWs strapped with roof racks for the boards. Moms and wives would be in the water, good surfers and kind people. Fistfights had once been frequent, when the high surf attracted kooks from all over, but this was a weekday and not all the schools were out yet so Kirk knew the crowd would be easygoing and manageable. And the Martians, as they called themselves, had all gotten older, mellower. Except for a couple of asshole lawyers.
“Sweet break this morning, Kirky-bird,” Frank said, eyeing the water from the parking lot. He counted over a dozen surfers already in the water as large waves—the Swell—were shaping in regular intervals outside the lineup. He unlocked the door to the camper. They pulled both boards out, and Frank’s paddle, standing them up against the truck as they yanked on their summer wet suits with the short legs and built-in rash guards.
“Got any wax?” Kirk asked.
“In a drawer in there,” Frank told him. His paddleboard had a mat, so he didn’t need wax anymore but kept some for those who might need some stick for their sticks. Kirk found a cake in a drawer full of junk including short-end rolls of duct tape, old mousetraps, a hot-glue gun but no sticks of glue, boxes of staples, and a set of channel locks that was going to rust in the salt air.
“Hey,” his father said. “Put my phone in the refrigerator, would you?” He handed over his mobile.
“Why the refrigerator?” Kirk asked. The thing had not worked in many years.
“If you broke into this camper and wanted to steal anything of value, would you look in the busted icebox?”
“You got me there, Pop.” When Kirk opened the door, not only was there the dank smell of years of nonuse but there was also the sight of a small, gift-wrapped box.
“Happy birthday, son,” Frank said. “How old are you again?”
“Nineteen, but you make me feel thirty.” The gift was a waterproof sports watch, a newer model than the watch Frank was wearing, all black and metal, a heavy-duty military chronometer already set to the correct time. Strapping it around his wrist made Kirk feel like he was about to board a military helicopter to go kill bin Laden. “Thanks, Dad. This makes me look cooler than I am. Didn’t think that was possible.”
“Hoopy boofy, Junior.”
As they carried their boards down the path to the beach, Frank said again, “I told you, I’m going to have to make a few calls around eight thirty. I’ll holler at you when I get out of the water.”
“I will salute my recognition.”
Standing in the sands of Mars, they watched a set of waves play out as they attached their board leashes to their ankles with Velcro straps. About a dozen large, well-shaped curlers came along before the surf lessened, allowing Kirk to run into the tide and hop on his board and paddle out, duck-butting through the smaller waves as they broke over him. He’d be lining up just beyond the break with the younger surfers, those who shredded the faces of as many waves as Poseidon sent their way.
As a paddleboarder, Frank sought the larger waves off of Mars, those well outside, beyond the lineup, where along with the other stand-up surfers he’d wait for the larger sets of heavy water, the waves generated by storms in the South Pacific that grew muscular with mileage. Before too long, he easily caught the shoulder of a wave, rising up six feet or so above its floor, riding gracefully in wide turns. As he was the surfer closest to the curl, the wave was rightfully his own, the other Martians peeling off to leave him to it. When the wave closed out, he hopped off his board and held his position in the shallows until the set died. Then he hopped back up, his feet shoulder width apart, dug his paddle into the ocean, and crested each ridge of incoming water until he was outside again.
The air and water were cold, but Kirk was glad he had gotten out of bed. He recognized old Martians like Bert the Elder, Manny Peck, Schultzie, and a lady he called Mrs. Potts—the veteran long boarders. And there were kids around his age, some of the pals he grew up alongside who were now, like him, in college or the workforce. Hal Stein was in graduate school at Cal, Benjamin Wu worked as an aide to a city councilman, “Stats” Magee was studying for his CPA license, and Buckwheat Bob Robertson was, like Kirk, still an undergrad, still living at home.
“Hey! Spock!” Hal Stein called out. “Thought you’d died!”
The five of them waited in a circle between rides, comparing the notes they’d kept since adolescence. Kirk was reminded of just how good Mars had been to him. Living within driving distance of its waves had allowed Kirk access to a world all his own. At Mars, he grew comfortable in the powerful waves of the place. Mars was where, alone, Kirk tested himself and excelled. Onshore, he was a statistic, a tick mark smack in the middle of a bell curve, neither a dropout nor a scholar, not an ace or a deuce. Other than a couple of English teachers, Mrs. Takimashi the school librarian, and the crazy, gorgeous, honey-haired Aurora Burke (before her new stepfather whisked her off to a new family in Kansas City), no one had ever singled Kirk Ullen out as being special. But in the water of Mars, Kirk was master of all he surveyed. He was glad he’d been coming to the place for years and could be there this day as he turned nineteen years old.