An odd moment of silence then as Bette Wu stares at Jen, and Polo finally stops struggling.
Casey sees men on the decks of the Luhrs and the Bayliner looking down on them. Same guys who shot up his phone. Guns scare him like a sixty-foot wave never could.
In the middle distance, the Cigarettes lurch like bulls in a chute.
He wonders where his God is right now, why He isn’t down here acting on behalf of the upright against the soldiers of Satan.
“Pirates, smugglers, shark finners, lawyers—you really are a fun crew,” says Brock. “Let’s do this again sometime.”
Brock underhands the backpack to Casey, and marches Polo to the door, followed by Mahina and her captive, then Jen and Casey.
All the while he’s got his gun on Wu, Danilo, or Benitez, alternately. Waits for his family to clear the galley, then releases the hostage and backpedals up the gangway to the deck.
Soon as Casey’s back in his truck and moving, Jen calls 911 and describes what she’s just seen at slip 41-B in the National City Marina.
In the rearview mirror Casey sees Bette, Jimmy, Benitez, and their outmaneuvered crew milling around on the deck of Empress II, apparently without a plan.
Jimmy shakes a fist, gold chains glinting in the bright San Diego sun.
Casey falls in behind his mother’s VW Beetle, top down, and follows it to the freeway, Brock driving and Mahina waving a big brown paw at him, her profuse, black island hair blowing in the wind.
12
Looking Back—
WHO WAS JOHN STONEBREAKER AND WHAT WENT WRONG AT MAVERICKS?
A big-wave surfing contest left one of the world’s premier professional surfers dead. Who was he and why did he die?
BY JEN STONEBREAKER
Part two of a special series for Surf Tribe Magazine
No more little surfer-girl crushes on John Stonebreaker. No more “Beach Blanket Bingo.”
No more gazing at him from five houses away at Top of the World, no more spying on him in the hippie van.
John Stonebreaker pulled me into his world that day at Imperial Beach like a riptide that has you before you know it, and you can’t really fight it until it lets you go.
The stats:
Five to seven feet.
Slight offshores.
Top-to-bottom barrels, over fast.
Short shoulders and hard crashes.
By the time we got out of the water at nine o’clock, I was so cold and weak I could barely get my wetsuit off. I stood there for a while with the neoprene pulled down to my waist and a black sweatshirt on, letting the sun thaw my skin and muscles.
I looked beyond the metal border fence to Tijuana, its shanties climbing the steep hills, smoke rising, the smell of burning trash, just a half-mile distant across the river.
I crashed butt first onto a towel in the slightly warm sand, still half-clad in my wetsuit, a hoodie zipped tight, hugging my knees, my hands brine-soaked and wrinkled, eyes closed and heart slowing. The sun warmed my eyelids and I saw the ornery, orange-burnished waves I’d just tried to surf in all their speed and sudden caprice. I missed at least a dozen, just couldn’t paddle fast enough. Quickly fell off a dozen more—they were much steeper and faster than I’d been riding up in Orange County. Crashed another ten or twelve times on the bottom turns—my legs weren’t strong enough. I caught four short, fast waves that I couldn’t outrace, and ended in nasty wipeouts. But what I saw most clearly on the orange-tinted big screen in my head were the three barrels I got into, and belched out of, with what seemed like the velocity of a motorcycle. These beautiful, ribbed, roaring cylinders held me close, then set me free.
And those moments you know why you do this and you believe that there is no other thing on Earth so personal and so good.
It was my introduction to big surf—yes, sir, yes, ma’am—please accept my wipeouts as bows and curtsies.
“You did good out there,” said John.
I stayed in my burnished orange world, eyes closed. Saw a five-foot section opening up for me like a gift, looked down to see my feet on the board and the leg-throbbing bottom snap to beat that crashing lip. Saw from the corner of my vision the collapsing wall of whitewater that took me out by surprise.
“Thanks, John.”
“You took a beating, too.”
“Nothing broken or cut.”
“Imperial’s a devil and you handled it.”
“I got to get stronger.”
“All your swim and polo training is great. You just need more waves. And bigger ones. You feel it, don’t you?”
“What.”
Some time went by as John thought. I felt the sun easing into my muscles and bones. Sleep knocked.
