anyone. I dropped in on every surfer except the legends and Rolloff. I slugged a big kid named Benji in the face when he splashed water in my eyes after I snaked his wave. He grabbed my hair and dunked me under. Shane called the kid off. Benji let me up and I told him to go fuck himself and paddled to the point.
We got your back, Norman, said Shane. But you might want to tone it down, you know.
I nodded.
The aggression and anger seemed to enfold and redouble inside me and it made me jittery and I kept blowing the waves, digging a rail or overextending my turns. Benji made a point to laugh loudly each time. I reminded myself that he could not punch me even though I deserved it and I relished that injustice.
I turned thirteen and that summer I spent half my time in fistfights. I got my ass kicked fairly often, and the blows to my nose or jaw or ribs were strangely gratifying. Even in defeat I always made sure I got a couple licks in that the other guy wouldn’t soon forget. Sometimes getting whupped made me feel tougher than doing the whupping. I knew I could take anything and that made me feel like the winner in spite of my blackened eye or bloodied nose.
That fall I did poorly in school and Nick grounded me for a month.
One afternoon while I read surf magazines in my prison cell Nick came home early from work. I heard him banging around in the living room and then he called out my name. The blinds were drawn and there was a projector set up on the coffee table. Nick told me to sit down on the couch and watch the screen in front of the TV. He flipped a switch and the projector chugged and spit out a beam of light. On the screen appeared a Pop Warner football game. Nick had hired an editor to assemble a highlight reel of all my best plays—tackling big fullbacks that had darted through the defensive line into the backfield. Catching a pass over the middle as a monstrous linebacker engulfed me, the ball still in my arms when he pounded me into the grass. A quick shot of my dad eating peanuts in the stands with the sports section folded in a rectangle triggered a searing pain that burned a hole in my chest. I had to close my eyes until the ache went away.
When the reel tailed out Nick and I reminisced about me hiding fishing weights in my jockey cup during the weigh-in, about some of the dangerous neighborhoods that we played games in, and the various idiosyncrasies of the coaches and players.
You’ll have this film to look back on forever, he said.
And I compared how I was then to how I felt now. I was callused and irritable these days, brooding. Who was that sweet-natured kid on the screen? What happened to him? Like most things that made me uncomfortable, though, I shrugged it off.
Rolloff called to give me surf reports and I read surf magazines to try to quench my hunger. After school I was pretty bored just loafing around the house, so I decided to fix the dings in my surfboard—at least I’d get to touch it. I fished out the can of resin and catalyst from the storage space under the garage and saw a cardboard box labeled Little Norman in the back corner.
I dragged it out and opened it up. I unearthed newspaper clippings, then yearbooks, then my Murcher Kurcher stories, and finally old photographs of me playing hockey, surfing Mexico, ski racing, me and Dad skiing St. Anton together, and me, as a baby, riding on my dad’s back while he surfed. Mom told me she had come home from grocery shopping to discover me and Dad out in the surf. I went buzzeerk, she said. How could you be so careless with his little body? she screamed at my dad.
I dropped the photograph and tears pressed against the back of my eyes. I stooped and pushed the tears back. You’re not some wimp that can’t handle what happened, I told myself.
I called Sunny over and hugged her and rubbed her belly. She flopped onto her back and wiggled around in canine bliss.
I’m happy like you, I said.
Then I threw the stick as far as I could, and she went bounding down the canyon.
I put the photos back in the box, then the other stuff, and one of the newspaper clippings caught my eye: a
Already it seems like a dream, I thought. Like it happened to somebody else.
I sighed and something kicked up in my throat and scorched my rib cage and I had to sit down with my back against the house.
It’s cool, I told myself. You’re not messed up. You’re okay.
I was supposed to be tough because I made it down that mountain. The dark feelings swirling and clawing inside me were something that I would just have to get over. Dad got over his hurt feelings. Shook them off. Moved on. Bad stuff just had to be reframed. I knew how to do that. And I read the article below the photo as if to prove how
My head and heart clenched, fending off spurts of pain. I rubbed my back against the house and it cut into my skin and I kept rubbing and had to force myself to stop. Settle down man.
My throat got thick so I drank water from the kitchen sink. It washed right through me and seemed to settle like everything else down in my feet. I splashed water on my face but I was still groggy. I hiked down the stairs and my thighs ached. I crawled into bed and fell asleep.
I woke up with a fever. Sandra might have lived if I let her stay under that wing.
I picked up an empty glass next to my bed and threw it at the wall. It shattered across my desk.
I stared at my knuckles, where the scar tissue was raised as if the skin had permanently blistered.
I twisted off the bed. Stop thinking about it.
I swept the glass slivers off the desk into the wastebin. Some spilled into a partially open drawer. I opened the drawer wide to get to the glass. Staring up at me was the plastic Indian that Dad had bought me in Taos.
I remembered that I used to look at it and think that if my dad ever dies then I want to die too.
He got killed taking me skiing, I said to the Indian.
I shut the drawer and went outside. I stuffed the newspaper clippings back into the box, closed the flaps and wedged it back into the corner under the garage. I had the flu for a week.
News of a big winter swell came via several phone calls from the school crew and Rolloff. I was finally over my fever and the descriptions of perfect peaks and juicy bowls and radical turns fueled my passion all week and by Thursday evening I was in a coiled frenzy.
My mom made honey-baked chicken, wild rice, and salad—her specialty—and I waited in my room until it was served, not wanting to have an outburst. After dinner I cleaned the dishes and then walked into the living room and addressed my mom and Nick, who were watching the news.
Look, I said. You have to understand.
I opened my hands as if holding a beach ball.
Man, I just need to surf, I said. It’s like the thing that makes my heart pump, it’s essential to what I am, and if I can’t do it I can’t function. I just feel dead inside and it’s horrible.
Sunny was absorbing my every word and I pointed to her.
Imagine taking her stick away. No more retrieving. That would kill her. It’s totally against her nature. Surfing is my retrieving. I don’t need anything else. No friends or parties. I won’t even hang out at the beach. I just need to be in that water, man, or I’m going to shrivel up.
Nick was leaning back on the couch and he was totally engrossed.
Please, Nick, I said.
Jesus Christ what a speech, said Nick, to my surprise. How can I say no? You know Norman if you put 10 percent of that kind of effort and passion into school, or anything, you could do great things. Really thrive.
Oh man. Thanks Nick, I said. Can you give me a ride in the morning before school? There’s a pumping swell.
