Free Crazy for the Storm by Norman Ollestad Page B

dad could call me back out.
    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 feeling .
    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 andwas 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 Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain and then shut off the lights.
     
    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,