History 1-A

Mark Barkawitz

October 2005

It was the fall of '72. I was living in a '51 Chevy pick-up truck, on the bed of which I had built a wooden, cab-over camper with an A-frame roof to which a crooked, faux stovepipe was attached. My roommate, Atom, was a dog. Literally, a sixty pound, two-year-old mutt-part shepard, part lab-I had gotten as a pup. Curled up next to me in my sleeping bag in the camper, we kept each other warm while parked overnight on the streets of Monterey, where after dark it was already colder than any winter either one of us Southern California transplants had ever experienced.

That morning, the signature fog lifted early. The sun shined brightly. As the morning warmed, Atom and I decided to take a ride down the coast to look for some surf. (With winter approaching, I wasn't sure how much longer I'd be able to stand the chilly waters.) We stopped off for some donuts and coffee, and because I needed to use the restroom, then headed south on Pacific Coast Highway, past the towering redwoods and gated domiciles of Carmel and continued around the extreme curvatures of the coastline as it approached Big Sur with its sheer drop-offs and profound chasms connected by concrete bridges. While steering the truck with one hand, I put a Three Dog Night tape in the eight-track player I had mounted under the dash. As I sang along-"On-n-e is the loneliest number that you ever knew-w-w . . ."-Atom sat with his head out the passenger side window, the wind blowing his ears back like a cartoon character's, his nostrils flaring as he breathed in the salty air that rushed past his coal-black nose. It was a weird time in my life. I was between things. My 1-A draft classification had finally been rescinded and replaced with a 1-H. A holding classification. Which meant for the first time in three-and-a-half years (I had gotten a lousy Lottery number) Uncle Sam wasn't trying to draft me into the Army. I would've made a lousy soldier anyway. Wasn't much on taking orders. Always questioned Authority. But now, my life was my own again. I wasn't going to die (For what?) in some remote rice paddy in Vietnam, as had been the fate of two of my classmates from my high school graduating Class of '69. And there was Ray Stevens, the goofy kid who lived across the street from me growing up, who at eighteen had enlisted, and by nineteen, returned home with a steel plate in his skull and a daily heroine habit. No one came back the same as they'd left. Rules of War. I guess that's why I'd quit my job at the factory, closed-out my paltry savings account, and gone on the road for a while. As I had explained to my girlfriend and my mom (separately, of course), I just needed some time to think, to re-adjust, to mellow-out. I used the turn-out and, as had become my habit, signaled the cars behind me to pass.

As I drove over the long bridge that transcended the mouth of the Little Sur River, I had a clear view of the glassy swells which rolled in from across the deep, blue-green ocean, wafted the kelp beds, crested as waves, and lapped over into white foam ribbons that uniformly approached the shoreline. On the other side of the bridge, I pulled over behind the only other car parked on the side of the road, a blue-and-white '57 Ford station wagon with rusty surfboard racks attached to its roof and a red, white, and black POW/MIA bumper sticker pasted on its tail end.

Atom and I got out on the sandy roadside. The barbed-wire fence had already been cut and peeled back to accommodate public access to the sand and ice plant-covered hillsides that led down to the white sand beach a half-mile below. The air was unusually still for northern California. I wanted to get out in the water before the afternoon wind whipped up, and so hurriedly unlocked the back door to the camper, pulled out my surfboard-a six-foot, five-inch double-finner that I'd shaped and glassed myself in a friend's garage-and my O'Neill wetsuit and booties. Regardless of how warm it was on the shore, I knew the water would be cold. Suddenly, a car horn honked. I looked over quickly to make sure Atom hadn't wandered out on the highway-he hadn't-just as a Datsun crammed full of jarheads in civies-GIs on their way back to Fort Ord-sped by. The driver cursed me: "Goddamn hippie!" The guy in the back seat held his arm out the open, side window and flipped me the bone. Fortunately, for my sake, they didn't stop to kick my butt. Instead, the little import continued north, white smoke belching out its tailpipe, as it snaked around the curve and over the bridge. I figured they didn't like my long hair and bell-bottom over-alls. Or maybe it was the large, white letters painted on that side of my windowless, plywood camper: "DROP NIXON, NOT BOMBS!" He was their Commander-and-Chief. For at least two more weeks anyway, when we the people would go to the polls to cast our ballots for a new president. On the passenger side of my camper was painted the campaign slogan: "McGOVERN & PEACE." Sure, it was a long-shot. But the war had motivated me politically. It was my first time voting and I had a right to my opinion. Even if it was hopeless. But I was damn glad that I hadn't had to explain that to those irate GIs, who saw me as an enemy of the state. They didn't know I was on their side, too. Or that my best friend in Monterey was likewise stationed at Ord. But it was a time of tough decisions. Most of those guys, like my friend, had probably been drafted and were just pissed-off at the situation in which they found themselves. All I had was freedom. And they hated me for it.

I changed into my canvas trunks, grabbed a towel and a bar of wax, and locked up the camper and cab. Atom and I headed for the beach. It was a long hike. But my huarache sandals were worn and comfortable. My board was relatively light weight, compared to the long boards on which I had learned at the foot of the cliffs at Huntington Beach. But like many others, I had been swept up by the experimental, short board revolution of the late Sixties and early Seventies. In Rat's garage-a high school classmate and fellow surfer-we began shaping our own boards. From the old, foam blanks of long boards, which we skinned ourselves by ripping off the old fiberglass-the invisible fibers of which stuck to our bare, sweaty skin and made us itch for days-we reshaped new boards into radical designs of our own choices. Smaller and smaller and smaller, until they barely floated us as we paddled out into the waves at Malibu, Newport, Doheney, San Clemente, and North San Diego county. It was all trial and error. Some designs worked; some didn't. As the sun beat down, my skin began to sweat under the black, rubber wetsuit slung over my shoulder. I followed Atom's crooked tail, which had been broken in a doorway before I got him, as it wagged back and forth like a cockeyed windshield wiper down the winding foot trail towards the beach, where the waves loomed larger the closer we got.

When we hit the sand, Atom raced towards the shoreline, roused the grubbing seagulls, "Woof, woof, woof!" and chased them down the beach as they flew away. It was his favorite thing to do. On the sand, a solitary beach towel lay over a pair of sneakers. The only surfer in the water-black in his wetsuit, floating on a small, blue board out near the point (I figured it was his Ford parked back on the road.)-dropped-in late on an overhead left. But standing backside on his short board, which hung too long at the top of the wave as it broke, he pitched over-the-falls in a gnarly-looking wipe-out. His board bounced up in the air, landed in the whitewater and turned sideways as it washed in towards the shore. Outside, the surfer's head, like a seal's, popped up from underwater and craned around to look for his board before spotting it inside. He began the long swim for shore, which was no easier-though warmer-in a wetsuit. I hated the swim in after a wipe-out. Especially up north, where the water was colder and deeper, lush with kelp beds, and populated with sea lions and steelheads and other large, shadowy shapes swimming just below the surface. On the inside, the now-boardless surfer caught a wave and bodysurfed towards the beach, where he trudged exhaustedly to his blue board on the shore. As he carried it under his arm towards the towel on the beach, we acknowledged each other-brothers of the waves-from afar with the nod of our heads. With the exception of Santa Cruz, a surfer enclave just north of Castroville-artichoke capital of the world-the beaches and waves of northern California were sparsely populated, unlike the beaches down south, where the milder climate and songs of California Dreamin' about Beach Boys' summers enticed hoards of surfers and families and tourists to enjoy the warm sun, sand, and surf. After stepping into my wetsuit and stretching it up and over my legs, chest, and arms, I zipped up then struggled to pull on the skintight booties that would keep my toes from freezing. I grabbed my board and wax and headed past him-the only other person on the beach. As he peeled the wetsuit down to his waist, I called over: "How is it out there?"

"Brutal, man." He looked a little older and more experienced than my twenty-one years, with a grown-out crew cut and tattooed bicep-maybe a Marine insignia-but I was too far away to see it clearly. He toweled off. I nodded back.

The waves of northern California were often like that: big, thick, and oblivious to human enjoyment. As the icy water on the shoreline washed over my booties and sent an ache through the bones of my legs, I peered out at another overhead set on the outside-it was getting bigger with the in-coming tide. The waves looked fast, with a steep drop, but make able for a good surfer. Unfortunately, my board was designed more for maneuverability-with a wide tail to accommodate its dual fins-than speed. So if the waves got any bigger, I would be in trouble. I tossed my board upside down in the shallow water to harden the wax on its deck, then picked it back up, and stepped backwards on the incline of the wet sand and dropped to my knees. As I waxed my board, Atom raced past me in the other direction, "Woof, woof, woof!" chasing down the shoreline after another low-flying seagull he would never catch.

Paddling-out was a chore. Especially when the waves were overhead and consistent. Standing knee-deep with my board in the in-coming whitewaters, I watched and waited for a lull in the booming, outside sets. When the momentary calm outside finally arrived, I dove on my board to push it through the lip of a four-foot wave on the inside. As it washed over my head, the icy water froze my brain, snuck in the neck of my wetsuit, and sent an icy chill down my spine. My arms reached forward, dug deeply and rapidly in the cold water, which iced and stiffened my bare fingers. I maneuvered around the inside breakers as fast as I could paddle, but kept checking the outside, aware that at any moment the next set would appear. Hoping that I wouldn't get caught inside by the overhead waves, I put my head down momentarily, breathed deeply, and continued to paddle hard towards the point where an underwater reef caused the swells to peak and break uniformly, and the outside kelp beds helped smooth the surface from ocean chop. But when I looked up again, a big set loomed on the blue horizon and I knew I couldn't beat the first wave before it broke-damn-so I stopped paddling, sat on my board, and waited for the inevitable. The thick wall of water rose, then came crashing down with the whitewater exploding in front of me. I pulled myself to the nose of my board, held my breath, and sunk my head under the surface, clinging tightly to the rails of my surfboard in an effort to submerge myself under the power that smashed over me, pushed me farther down, then overwhelmed me completely, bouncing, churning, throwing my board and me backwards towards the shoreline. When I finally popped up in the bubbling aftermath of the whitewater, I paddled instinctively towards the outside to keep from drifting farther inside. The swells from the north pushed me farther south. There were a half-dozen more waves in the set and each one had its way with me. But I fought and paddled and swore and eventually, between sets, made it outside to the point, where I just lay for a while, alone, sucking air, face down on my board with my feet dangling underneath me in the tentacles of kelp that reached up from the deep.

I was in no hurry to catch a wave. Needed to regain my strength first. But when I looked up again, I was in good position-just to the right of the peak-for the approaching swell, which looked about six-foot-plus.

I couldn't resist, sat up quickly, and oscillated my legs in the water to rotate my board towards the shoreline. As the wave swelled underneath my board, I leaned forward, and with a thrust of my legs and one, quick paddle of my arms, pulled into the wave at its top and stared down its steep face. Jumping to my bootied-feet, I crouched low and dropped-in on an angle to the right, just as the peak broke to my left. As I raced to the bottom of the wave, facing the wall of water which crested above and behind me, I swiveled my hips and knees to turn the board hard, propelling it, gaining more speed, beating the breaking curl, then cutting back into it-tempting Fate-only to bounce off the lip and crank another hard bottom-turn. The wave was about to close-out on the inside, so I kicked my board through its breaking lip and flipped back over the wave, then belly-flopped back down on the water's smooth surface. Yes! God, yes! This was my favorite thing to do. But there was no time for celebration. Instead, I immediately began paddling-with renewed vigor-through the last in-coming waves of the set and back outside for more.

Because I'd ridden a right and the drift from the current was also pushing me farther south down the beach, I was on the other side of the point now. The ocean was suddenly calm now in the deep water outside. The continental shelf dropped off much more steeply up north than down south, which made me feel as if I were paddling in the middle of the ocean. The momentarily lull brought an eerie silence to the surface. But I knew at any moment, another outside set could pop up and squash me like a sandcrab, so I put my head down again and pulled hard to finish my paddle back over to the point.

But as my left hand dug deeply underwater, its open palm suddenly reached down upon a smooth, cold surface-like naugahyde-the outsides of which my fingers couldn't reach. It moved below me. With a gasp, I yanked my hand back out from the ocean, which rose momentarily like a belch under my surfboard, then subsided just as quickly.

Parts of words spat out as I hyperventilated and jerked my head around in all directions to see where it was, what it was I had touched? And although I saw nothing unusual, I knew I had to get the hell out of there. Now! But I was afraid to put my hands or feet back into the water because of whatever it was that was below me.

Outside, a set started to roll in. But there was no way I was paddling out any farther. I just wanted to get back on land. So in an effort to turn my board back towards the shore, I leaned to the side and barely scratched the surface with my hands, keeping my feet up in the air and out of the water, as I negotiated a wide half-turn, wishing and praying-"Oh, God, oh, God, oh . . ."-that I had a bigger board that floated me better, that I wasn't about to get eaten by whatever it was that I had touched below me.

As the first wave in the set broke and boomed like a mortar behind me, I grabbed the rails of my board as tightly as I could hold and waited for the whitewater, which hit me a second later, enveloping me completely in its churn like sock in a washing machine, bouncing me, prying me from my board that I wouldn't relinquish for fear I would surely die. Finally, my head broke the surface of the whitewater that continued to propel my board shoreward. I didn't dare stand. This was no longer a ride-it was survival. So I belly-boarded the soup all the way inside until my skags dragged into the sand, where I abandoned my board, ran out of the shore break, and tripped face down onto the dry sand, out of the ocean's reach.

I heard myself breathing deeply, rapidly. But I was too freaked to move, until something suddenly warm and wet licked the side of my face. I started to scream again and jumped away. But it was only Atom.

"Oh."

I looked out at the ocean but there were only waves and my abandoned surfboard on the shoreline. On the beach, there was no one else now. The only other surfer had vanished with his blue board, towel, and sneakers. Atom stepped closer and sat down next to me. I put my arms around his neck and leaned against him.

"What the hell was that?"

But he didn't answer. Instead, he spotted another seagull as it landed on the shoreline-daring him-and with his usual explanation, "Woof, woof, woof!" took off running after the gull, leaving me alone to contemplate my demons.

On the hike back to the truck, I tried to rationalize what had happened to me, what it might have been that I had touched, and what had moved the ocean below my surfboard? But there was no explanation that made any sense. I had to tell someone. To get an objective opinion, theory, explanation. So after dark, I parked my truck at the curb outside the mobile home park in Monterey where my friend Dick lived off-base with another GI. Atom and I walked in the park with its two dozen rental units and parked RVs interspersed under giant redwoods. From his aluminum porch, the manager, balding, middle-aged, and pot-bellied under his flannel shirt, whom I recognized from my last visit, yelled over to me:

"I told you to put that damn dog on a leash when you come in here."

But Atom had never been on a leash. He'd always walked at my side without one and I didn't think he'd appreciate the tethering, so I pretended not to hear and continued across the grounds to my friend's one bedroom, mobile home, where I knocked on the aluminum front door. Jethro Tull's "Fatman" reverberated from inside through the aluminum walls. A moment later, Dick, already out of his Army fatigues, barefoot, wearing levis and a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt, let us in. His hair was short, but longer than any of the other GIs'. He, too, had had a lousy Lottery number. The inside of their place was already filled with the aroma of beans and chilies. Dick's roommate Dave-a crew-cut, red-headed, red-neck enlistee from Arkansas-was in the kitchenette, dicing with a butcher's knife more chilies and onions, which he scraped from the chopping block into the big pot that was simmering on the two-burner stove. A bottle of Tabasco and a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels rested on the counter next to a shot glass filled nearly to the top with the eighty-six proof liquor. Dave was a cook at Fort Ord. He cooked daily for six-hundred GIs. He was making another pot of his killer chili, which was way too hot for human (or canine) consumption, but because it was free and because I was on a tight budget and because Dick never had any money because the Army was always deducting fines from his monthly paycheck for his insubordination and bouts of AWOL, we ate it. And Dave knew we would eat it-none of which he ate himself-and relished watching us suffer through each bowlful. So each batch was a little hotter, a little spicier, a little more killer.

"What's happenin'," Dick said. It was more of a greeting than a question.

I answered anyway: "Freaky stuff, man."

But before I could explain, Dave said: "Git your damn dawg outta ma kitchen." He held a butcher knife blade up on the chopping block, like an exclamation point.

Atom had wandered from my side over to sniff what was cooking on the stove above him. He wasn't actually in the kitchen. But Dave didn't like Atom. I didn't know Dave well enough to know if it was something in particular about my dog or me or dogs in general that he didn't like. But it was his pad, so I called Atom back over. I sat on the lawn chair next to the slumping couch with its green sleeping bag on which Dick slept every night. The bedroom was Dave's, who paid most of the rent. Atom sat next to me. The black & white TV was on but there was no voice coming out of Walter Cronkite's moving lips as he reported the "CBS Evening News." The sound was turned off in deference to the rock music playing on the stereo. Dick's empty Army boots slumped on the floor by the TV.

There was ritual to surviving a bowl of Dave's killer chili. Each demanded a six-pack of cheap, commissary beer, which was exempt from federal taxes and most of the alcohol content, and a half-loaf of white bread. I reimbursed Dick a buck-and-a-half for my six-pack and my half of the bread. He took two, icy-wet cans from the ice chest on the floor-the bachelor-sized refrigerator in the kitchenette was strictly for Dave's food supplies-and set them down with a loaf of Wonder bread on the coffee table between us. At the stove, Dave ladled out two large bowlfuls of chili, which he set on the counter, steam rising from each like twin volcanoes. "Come an' git it, boys." Tilting back his head, he shot down the whiskey, then pretended to smile at us. Dave was a hard guy to like.

Each delicious spoonful of kidney beans, ground beef, and tomato sauce was accompanied by spicy onions and fiery chilies that set every taste bud in my mouth ablaze, made my throat and ears burn, my eyes water, and my brow sweat. I tried to douse the fire with long draws of cold beer from the popped top of the barrel-shaped can and smother it with slice after slice of the dry white bread from the open loaf. I gulped in air to cool my lips and tongue, while explaining in detail what had happened to me earlier out at the point in the mouth of the Little Sur River.

Dick, a fellow surfer , whose dinged-up board leaned in the corner of the room behind him, surmised: "Probably just a big rock under water with some kelp."

In between gulps of beer, I replied: "No way, man. I know what a rock feels like. I'm telling you, this thing was alive." I wiped the sweat from my brow with my shirtsleeve.

"Boy, you been smokin' too much a' that loco weed," Dave conjectured, while sitting on the loan stool at the counter. He poured himself another drink from the bottle, and from his perch, looked down on us.

"I wasn't stoned, man." It was the usual assumption about hippies. Why else would we look, act as we did? "Something was out there. I touched it and the ocean rose below me." I gave Atom a slice of white bread. Dave looked on disapprovingly.

"A blow-hole at high tide'll do that sometimes," Dick offered. His brow was sweating, too. He chugged down his beer, got us two more, and put a Van Morrison album on the turntable. The speakers crackled from the scratches on the black vinyl under the needle.

"A submerged blow-hole sucks down," I countered about the possibility about a hole in the rock reef. "This lifted me up. As if something breached below my board before diving deeper."

"Yeah, Ahab. Like you went surfin' with a whale." Dick shook his head, disbelievingly. "You're flippin'-out, man." He took another spoonful of chili and likewise sucked air to cool his insides.

"Maybe it was a shark?"

We both looked over at Dave, who at the counter was already staring back at us through narrowed eyes, like slits of dim light. "Ya know, like one a' them giant, man-eatin', white kine."

Of course, that had crossed my mind earlier. But I had eliminated its likelihood. "I would've seen the dorsal fin on the surface. Same thing with a dolphin."

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