The sand was black and burning hot so I sat on my board. I watched Dad ride some waves. He swung his board up the face of the wave, banking off the pitching lip, which drove him down the face, giving him enough speed to thrust off the bottom and back up the face to bash the lip again.
We ate lunch in a restaurant at the top of the rusty stairs. We sat at a pigskin table in our wet shorts and the refined Mexican couple scrutinized our sandy feet and salt-contorted hair. My dad sunk low over the table and shifted his eyes to the couple and back to me.
They have no idea what they’re missing, he said.
His eyes wound up. His cheeks formed into two rosy balls.
They think they’re really something, he said. We just surfed perfect waves, perfect, with nobody out, and they’re just sitting there oblivious, sipping coffee and chatting about who knows what.
I looked over at the fancy couple. They sipped their coffee like birds and the man smoothed out his linen shirt and I thought about us racing across the sea on those waves.
It would be boring to be them, I said.
Could you imagine? he said, and we laughed like two monkeys.
In the morning a crosswind was chewing the swells down to one-foot mushers. We left and never found another good wave in Baja. After traversing the monotonous desert all morning we parked on a bluff of dust and sand, no bushes or plants or color, except for the emerald sea below. Just looking at it cooled me down.
Good thing we got those waves yesterday, he said.
It’s sure better than sitting in a hot truck all day with nothing to look at but dust, I said.
He laughed.
Have you ever been tubed? he said.
No.
It’s kinda like flying through deep powder.
Really?
Yeah. Even though it’s different, you get that
I turned and my dad was staring at me with wild sapphire blue eyes. He saw it in me and I saw it in him—a remembrance of that feeling: hovering in a weightless space with honey on the tip of your tongue and pure red blood gorging your heart, soaring on a current of angelic music cutting clear mountain air.
Maybe we’ll find some tubes for you, Boy.
What happens if you don’t make it out?
You get crushed.
He punctuated his response by holding his gaze on me.
My dad was not his usual self that night. We ate in a town crowded with Mexican tourists and he scowled and stared at the people moving along the cobblestone street. It seemed like he was glaring at women’s asses a lot. He said he was feeling under the weather and he ate oranges and raw garlic with cheese for his dinner.
Are you sad about Sandra?
Naw. I’m just fighting off a bug.
Will she be there when we get back?
I don’t know. I hope so.
In the room we plugged in the fan he had bought at the local hardware store. The store had mostly barren shelves and was dank and dirty, part of a broken world of half-built structures and unfinished roads. We sat naked on our respective beds receiving alternate blasts from the fan. He tuned the guitar, which was way out of tune from the heat. He sang
The following afternoon we set across the Sea of Cortez aboard the ferry. The only thing good about the eighteen-hour journey would be the cool air coming off the water. My dad played poker with a Scandinavian doctor and his beautiful wife. There were stacks of 1,000 and 10,000-note pesos building up in front of my dad’s seat. I wondered if he was trying to impress the wife. She had dove-white hair and lime green eyes. The opposite of Sandra.
The dolphins rode waves off the ferry’s bow as the sun went down. I was mesmerized. They must be the best surfers in the world.
In the middle of the night I was awakened. My dad was curling up on the end of our bench, putting the top of his head close to mine. He smelled funny.
What’s that smell? I said.
We’ve been sweating for a couple days, he said.
You smell like that lady, I said.
We danced together after you went to sleep, he said. Her perfume must’ve got on me.
Where was her husband?
He danced too.
Yeah sure, I thought.
The next morning we disembarked in Mazatlan and the sage was gone, replaced by jungle. The jungle crawled across the hills and was deep green and smelled of wet earth.
We took the highway south and drove out to the first point we came to. A blond surfer, clearly an American, was waxing up his board.
Guard the truck, said my dad and jogged across the beach and spoke to him.
When my dad returned he looked excited.
The guy thinks the waves will get good today from a hurricane off the coast. What do you say we drive for a couple hours and then surf?
Is it going to get big?
Maybe. But we’ll surf a point. Just stay on the inside.
At the last point break there was no inside section where I could ride the smaller waves. I brought this to my dad’s attention.
That was unique, he said.
He patted my leg and shut my door and went around to the driver’s side.
The road veered inland and I anticipated it veering back toward the coast. I moved to the edge of the seat, waiting for the moment when we’d see the big waves, not wanting them to catch me by surprise. My dad whistled a tune I had heard him play on his guitar and he told me it was Merle Haggard. He jiggled his shoulders and lifted his voice. It was out of sync with the forlorn lyrics and it seemed like maybe he was trying to hide sadness. Or maybe he was fine. There was no way to read him. He was walled off in his own world. I hated not knowing what he was feeling, not having a barometer to look to. Unable to express my aloneness, I felt tied up, and I sat there picking the scab on my elbow.
My dad reached across my body and braked hard, his skin peeling off the vinyl as I banged against the passenger’s door. Next to a roadblock made of sandbags and a two-by-four stood a young man in a military uniform that was several sizes too big for him. He waved a white flag.
Shit, said my dad.
What?
Nothing. It’s cool.
My dad eased the truck up to the two-by-four that was about hood high. I wanted him to stop farther back. From under a makeshift lean-to of palms appeared three more young men in uniform. The soldiers had rifles over their shoulders, barrels pointed forward and swinging, as they approached us.
The teenager with the flag stepped aside and a guy wearing a billed cap took the lead. He was a teenager too. His eyes were small and swollen like Nick’s on a Saturday morning. He didn’t respond to my dad. The other two guys with rifles circled the truck and glared at me. How could teenagers have guns already? I thought.
