by Andrew Heyman

The wind batters my old truck as I crawl along the Van Wyck toward Kennedy. These trips to meet Bill as he arrives from his latest global adventure are becoming a ritual. This is the fourth time in six years I’ve made the trip out to pick him up at the airport so he can spend a couple nights with us before hopping a train to visit his grandparents up in Rhode Island.

A little more than a year ago, he was returning from a trip around the world. At the time, my daughter was just a few months old and I relished the opportunity to get out of the house for a couple hours. His arrival happened to coincide with a strong Noreaster so, with Laura’s blessing, I threw my board on the rack and headed out to pick him up and catch some waves. He was easy to pick out of the crowd at the international arrivals terminal, a shock of red hair and freckled skin, he was underdressed for the chill autumn weather and carrying a backpack and three-board coffin bag.

“What’s with the board?” he asked.
“I thought we could go catch a few down the road a bit. I don’t have a lot of time, so...”

I trailed off, a little bewildered by his lack of stoke, but what did I expect? He’d just returned from surfing the world, and when we got in the car, he ticked off the spot names from every surfer’s fantasy map. Saint Jean de Luz, Hossegor, Mundaka, Ericera, Anchor Point, Killer’s, Accra, J-Bay, East London, Durban, Mauritius, Margaret River, Cactus, the Victoria point breaks, Uluwatu, Lombongan, Raglan, Namotou and Wilkes Pass. From Fiji, he flew to San Diego, where he “caught a couple good days at Black’s” and now he was in New York City with his old pal who wanted to take him to.....Long Beach? Why bother?

“I don’t get to get out there as much these days, Bill, with the kid and all, and I have free pass, so whaddaya say?” I kept the tone optimistic. “I brought an extra suit. A 3/2. It should fit you.”
“What the hell,” he said, “surfing New York. You’ve always talked about it, let’s give it a try.”

We’d been surfing together for years, but never in New York. I knew him from childhood in Rhode Island, where we had surfed the points, reefs and beaches together in relative isolation, before the place got overrun by transplants and college kids. Our paths diverged after high school. He went out to San Diego, where he parked cars and grew high-test indoor marijuana to finance surf trips around the world. I went to college in Wisconsin, of all places, looking for something outside the surfing world for a few years. We drifted apart, but never lost contact, keeping in touch over holidays and so forth. I went to visit him every spring break for four years, staying in his hovel in Ocean Beach, sandwiched between the meth heads and the Christians in that little surf ghetto. I always left with the same “nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there” feeling. Something about the place gave me a chill, there was a menacing presence just below the surface. He stayed for five or six years as our lives diverged further. I took a turn toward the corporate side, getting a Master’s in journalism then going to Atlanta to work for CNN for four years before going to law school in New York and finally settling into a life of toil in a Newark firm.

We cruised out onto Rockaway Blvd. toward the Long Beach Bridge.

“So, a lawyer, huh? Wife, kid, suburban home. Who’da thunk it. Jim? I think about things now, the old days, and wonder how you did it. Like that moonlight session at Brogie’s. Remember that?”
“We were tripping, right?” I asked. I hadn’t thought about this in years.
“Yeah. Mushrooms. We used to get them from that pork chop down the point.”
“Rodrigo?” I’d worked with the guy when I was hauling lobster pots in high school. He was a real wild character from Portugal and a fantastic surfer who partied at a level far beyond our comprehension. “He killed himself, you know. With a gun. He was sitting in his truck outside the Co-op and shot himself right through the mouth. Scott said he got hooked on heroin pretty bad, his wife left him and stuff and he just couldn’t take it. Nobody would hire him anymore because he was shooting up during trips out to the Banks and nodding off at the wheel and so on.”
“Shoulda seen that coming. He was a freakin’ head case. So there’s some swell?”

He was deft at changing the subject from an unpleasant topic. That’s why it was impossible to talk to him about plans or the future or anything concrete. He would always just shift the subject to something else. It is an amazing talent, really, and I thought at the time that it would serve him well if he ever got married.

“Yeah, a Nor’easter. Should be pretty heavy. Good wind, too. It’s blowing north, northwest a little. It should be good.”
“It’s blowin’ like a whore on payday,” he snorted. “We’ll see how good it is.”

We drove through Atlantic Beach in silence and pulled up to my favorite West End spot. We walked over the stairs and out onto the beach. The waves were enormous; a foot or two overhead and absolutely reeling down the beach. The wind was stripping the tops off them in huge blasts of spray and the gray sea and sky merged so there seemed to be no horizon. We stared at the two surfers bobbing out past the break line. One took off deep, pearled and got drilled.

“It’s big” he said, sounding a little surprised. “Some thickness in those peaks. You gotta be selective. All lefts, too. Good for us goofyfooters.”

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