For a moment, Casey feels like he’s atop a huge Mavericks right, about to drop into the chaos below.

“He’ll destroy you now,” he says.

She stares at him, a battered woman in a red-smeared seafoam-green ensemble.

Looks down.

“Sorry. So sorry. I did everything I could to talk them out of it. Dad laughed and threatened to disown me for disloyalty. So, I lied to you. Again.”

Casey feels betrayed and foolish, but most of all, battered by his failure to protect her, and by the angry sympathy within.

“Let’s get you to that doctor,” he says, placing a big arm softly across Bette’s shoulders, dialing his phone.

He thinks of getting Brock’s help here but Brock and Mahina left Half Moon Bay right after the awards dinner, bound for Hurricane Yvette, category three but building, and aimed directly at New Orleans.

40

Looking Back—

WHO WAS JOHN STONEBREAKER AND WHAT WENT WRONG AT MAVERICKS?

BY JEN STONEBREAKER

Part five of a special series for Surf Tribe Magazine

After twenty-five years it’s time for me to do my job and tell the truth.

The great writer Susan Casey once called Mavericks a portal to the dark side.

She certainly got that right, especially the wave that John caught late in his final heat: a fifty-foot blue-black peak breaking top to bottom, leaving a barrel five times taller than the man trying to ride it.

Onto which I towed John, then sped along and over the shoulder to safety, the rescue sled gliding behind me on its braided nylon rope.

From there I watched him drop into the wave, legs vibrating, feet locked in the straps, like a vertical arrow, John fastened to the pointed, narrow, big-wave gun, headed down fast, his arms out for control and balance.

He made the bottom turn, carving deep, leveling off, and backing into the barrel forming over him, raking his fingertips along the cylinder. In that moment, John was a daredevil in the barrel, somehow managing to look casual within a rifled, two-story tube.

I smiled to myself despite the danger he had chosen.

This is why we do this, I thought. Nothing we’ll ever do will match it. Not sex, not love, not being a mother or a father, which I know we will be someday. Not seeing God. Not making money. Nothing but this moment of freedom and velocity, this rush of nature of which we are a part. This mastery of power unimaginable. This pure, terrifying joy.

Then the heavy lip lunged, took John by the back of his neck like a blue-black leopard, and wrenched him off his board.

Leaving him suspended in midair, turning, head down and feet up, his board above, aimed down at him like a spear, its leash wobbling between them.

From my perilous angle—the jet ski rocking hugely on the building crest of the next wave, the rescue sled shifting with its own contrapuntal weight—I watched John vanish into the white avalanche of the kill zone.

I saw my opening, my moment to get there and help him.

But I didn’t crank the throttle, because I had something to tell John first.

And I did, firmly:

“I know you betrayed me.”

In that fraction of a moment, I hated him.

And in that half second I felt the wave bearing me up, as if I were an offering and I knew that there was no way I could get to him in time. I had missed my moment.

So now you know our secret.

My sons, Casey and Brock, were born just minutes apart, almost nine months later.

As many of you know, last month, Casey won the Monsters of Mavericks contest that killed his dad twenty-five years ago.

It was held during a massive swell, some of the biggest waves ever to hit Half Moon Bay. My boys rode those waves courageously, unpredictably, and artfully.

My beautiful boys!

I won worst wipeout on the women’s side, mostly because of a huge but handsome wave that took me in and held me close in its beating heart, then launched me into the impact zone like I was a stick. Pushed me under and held me down for a very long time. Lost consciousness. When I awoke I was back on the boat but I didn’t know who I was, or where, or how I’d gotten there.

Nietzsche said when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

But my fear was gone, because that last wave decided to kill me.

Would have killed me in just a matter of seconds if Casey and Brock and Mahina—Brock’s wife—hadn’t pulled me out of the rioting Pacific and onto Mahina’s jet ski rescue sled. I have no memory of that wave, only of white light followed by black silence.

In which Casey jumped my failing heart, and Brock breathed life into my waterlogged lungs.

Sons.

Heart.

Breath.

Life.

Then onto the rescue chopper and the hospital in San Francisco.

I have one more question for you, John, and for you, my dear readers: Do you forgive me?

Midnight, and Jen stares at that final paragraph, heart beating hard, and a dull knot in her throat. Hits the home key and reads the whole article again.

Here it is, she thinks.

How the world will remember John and me.

Betrayal …