I wrote this a while ago for a Writing Battle competition where you get dealt a set of cards with the genre, subject, and action that needs to happen in the story, a word count (1,000 for this one), and three days to complete it. This was my submission. I forget what the cards were…but I remember there needed to be a shovel in it. One of the anonymous judges called me racist for this story due to the use of Spanglish. I stopped doing the competitions.

“You’ve survived 634 attempts on your life Mr. Castro. What do you attribute this to? Luck, wit, providence?”

Fidel Castro puffed on his cigar. The thickness of the brown wrapped tobacco made his fingers seem frail. He had lost the physical vitality of the character I had grown up seeing in pictures and on television. The man who launched into hour long speeches, hung out of invading Jeep’s, threw opening pitches at baseball games, was now just a jaundice bird under a heavy blanket. There I was, thinking I’d be interviewing the great Castro, but it felt more like an afternoon conversation with my grandfather.

“Jyou know,” he said in broken English. “I ang a bery lucky man. I hab outlasted eleben Presidentes de Estados Unidos and mucho asesinatos intentos. I gib all glory to mi cocinero.”

“Your cook?” I asked.

“Si, claro. Without her I would be un dead man.”

Behind him was the cook. She was hard at work over a cast iron cauldron that rested over a small fire. I watched as she mashed the contents inside, tasting the brown liquid with the tip of her pinky, adding different colored spices with a small garden shovel from a myriad of plastic bowls on the grass around her. She wore no shoes and her dress, which was more of a smock, was all white. Her hair was wrapped in a white scarf. She couldn’t have been older than twenty and she was stunning to watch.

“She looks very young to have saved you from all those assassination attempts, Mr. Castro.”

His mouth moved into a smirk around the cigar.

“Ella es un alma vieja,” he said. “Un old soul.”

We sat under a large mamay tree. The smoke from his cigar sputtered out with less vigor than drool. When he breathed there was a small hiss from his lungs that could only be attributed to the twenty plus cigars he smoked per day for a lifetime. He had offered me one and it now sat lifeless in my fingers. I was nervous to ask him for a relight.

“What is she cooking now?” I asked.

“Ropa Vieja. Jyou know ropa vieja?”

“No, I don’t know that I do.”

“Slow cooked flank steak en un sauce de tomato. Olibs, onyons, peppers. Es el sabor de Cuba. Ropa es clothes, vieja es old. Old clothes.”

Embarrassment crept up my throat. I was still wondering why I was conducting this interview with the famous dictator. I knew little Spanish, less about Cuba, and couldn’t name a single dish at a Cuban restaurant. But it was the opportunity of a lifetime. Something you don’t say no to. When you’re working at a random newspaper in New Jersey and you’re the only Cuban (1/4^th to be exact) employee and Fidel Castro decides to award your paper one last interview, you take it.

“¿Cuando esta la cena?” he yelled, trying to turn around in his seat to project his voice to the cook.

“Quince minutos mas,” she replied.

He turned back towards me in his chair.

“Yjou were saying?”

“We were talking about the many assas-”

I don’t know if my mouth had stopped working, or my mind had been wiped, but I could not continue my question as I watched the cook dig with her garden shovel into a pit of dirt. She looked like a dog shoveling back piles of brown between her legs. She dug and dug until she hit what I could only imagine was China. She took a small heaping of the darkest earth I’d ever seen, walked to the cauldron, and placed it in as if it were pepper.

“What is she doing?” I asked.

The smirk on Castro’s face turned into a grin and then a chuckle.

“Do yjou know what an Iyanifa is?”

Now that I’d heard of. A Santeria priestess. I nodded my head.

“This woman has many talents my friend. She es un chef, un lover, y un Iyanifa. And she has kept me alibe for all these years.”

“So, the dirt is…”

“Yo no se. Pero I don’t ask questions I do not want to know the answers. Jyou understand?”

He chuckled and puffed again on his cigar, this time blowing out a plume of smoke that washed over the table between us. I took a sip of the drink the cook had brought to us and wondered what was in it. Dirt? Insects? A sacrificed animal?

“Jyou know why I ang always at odds with el Estados Unidos?”

It’s a question I should have been interested in as a journalist. But I couldn’t keep my eyes off the cook. She was now using the butt of the garden shovel to mash what looked like a small dry chicken bone. She slid the mashed bone into the cauldron, whispered words with her eyes closed, and then slit her hand. I got up from my chair as she gripped her wrist. Blood dropped into the cauldron. I checked my pockets for anything to stop the bleeding as I ran over. Then she whispered more words and I thought, for a split second, that she had turned old. Her hair was wispy and grey, there were patches of bare skull, and her skin drooped. It retracted just as quickly. The skin reformed tight to her bones. Her mane of hair flowed a vibrant brown.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Claro que si. What do jyou mean?” she asked.

She was chopping garlic with a knife. There was no cut on her hand or garden shovel in site.

I felt heat and smoke at the back of my neck.

“Her blood is for my protection,” Fidel said “Your blood is for her.”

The cook’s knife had glided through my throat like butter and as my chin dropped to my chest, I watched my own blood flow into the cauldron.

“Viva la revoluciòn,” were the last words I heard.

Genre: Ride or Die

Subject: The Art of Persuasion

Action: Submitting

If you’re into fiction, give it a read and let me know what you think.

Also - shoutout Tommy Ihnken (Tommy Lincoln LOL) and check out the boys new video @yiiikesup.top on Instagram.

Heath

“If you don’t want to go, I get it. I’ve never seen it this big and there’s a chance we might get arrested,” said Tommy Lincoln.

               “Arrested?”

               “Yea. You see that black flag waving there in the sand? If we go in the water the cops will track us down the beach. When we get out they’ll arrest us on the spot.”

               If we get out, I thought.

               We stared at the computer screen together in silence. Every time a wave crashed the impact sent the white water ten feet in the air. The Surfline report said it was triple overhead, meaning 15–20 foot waves. Winter storm Heath.

               “I’m going,” Tommy announced.

               He shut the computer and began preparations.  The conditions weren’t as bad as they could be for a storm. The wind was blowing West at 22 knots, the swell was long period, meaning there might be a chance to make it out. I started to laugh. I laugh when I’m nervous.

               “What?” Tommy asked.

               “You’re joking right? I’ve never seen it this big in New Jersey. I’ve never seen it this big period.”

               “That’s the point. We might never get this chance again.”

               Tommy sat on the futon and pulled his five-millimeter wetsuit onto one leg. His hair was a mess of loose black curls that stood up and out, defying all laws of gravity. Under his right eye was a crescent shaped scar. It glowed against his dark skin. There were other scars too, from that night. One down his left calf, another on his back, two nicks on either side of his ribs. A reminder to avoid surfing on cartel run beaches anywhere in Mexico if you like your limbs intact. Not everyone has a friend like Tommy.

He pulled the bottom half of the wetsuit over his hips and then started to work on the booties. Five millimeters sounds thin until you are covered with rubber from head to toe and are paddling for your life in pumping surf. I was out of breath just watching him get the thing on. He pushed his arms through the sleeves, pulled the hood over his head, and all that was visible was a few escaping curls, his dark eyes, and a sliver of nose. He looked at me, rubbed that crescent scar, and I knew I had no choice.

“Fuck it,” I said.

Our boards were stacked on top of one another in the bed of his white sprinter van we used on our surfing trips. The boards were different sizes and shapes for every wave or condition but I’d never surfed anything this big or unruly before, especially in the cold. I’d grown up in Southern California, where a three-millimeter wetsuit is often required but the air temps never touch below 50. It was Christmas Eve in New Jersey, 33 degrees with the windchill bringing the temp down to 28. Twenty fucking eight degrees, 22 knot winds, and triple overhead surf. What a nightmare.

But I really had no choice. If Tommy wanted to risk his life surfing the biggest freezing fucking swell at his home break then I had to go with him. He had saved my life before the cartel incident and he’d probably be there to save it again. Not everyone has a friend like Tommy.

We pulled up to the beach at 6:36 AM. I didn’t like the numbers on the clock. Too evenly divisible. That’s why I remember them. The ground shook with the force of each wave pounding the sand. It was low tide but the tides were almost inconsequential. The waves were so big and powerful that the moon’s pull on the ocean wouldn’t make much of a difference. The waves were going to break, and continue to break, and break, and break. My heart pounded so hard that I thought I could see my chest move through the thick padding of my wetsuit.

“It’s a Christmas miracle,” Tommy laughed.

More like the Nightmare before…

“Where do we paddle out?” I asked. I prayed he was seeing what I was seeing. A sea of green monsters hovering as tall as three-story buildings that crashed with so much anger it was like hearing an ancient war call. I prayed he would say it’s impossible. I prayed to no god in particular, to any god that would listen.

“Right there,” he said, pointing. “Next to that jetty.”

Fuck.

Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can paddle close to a jetty and let the tide pull you out with little ramifications. Heath decided this wasn’t that type of day. There would be constant ramifications. Every decision could be life or death if you didn’t play each hand you were dealt to perfection. I didn’t see a realistic way of getting out to the lineup.

Tommy looked at me and rubbed that damn scar again. I couldn’t tell if it actually bothered him or it was his way of reminding me what was owed.

I just nodded at him.

“I really needed this, John,” he said. “Thanks.”

I didn’t come to New Jersey to surf in harrowing waves. The only time I usually left the sanctuary of Huntington Beach was when Tommy called to go on another surf trip. Often somewhere warm. But when Tommy called to tell me his parents had died I booked a ticket to the shithole that is Newark airport with no return date in mind. It never occurred to me how Tommy became such a junkie for adrenaline. His parents were mild, wise people. They were old and measured and they died suddenly, through no fault of their own. Some tired truck driver t-boned them at a red light. Tommy had consistently looked death in the face, whether it was saving my ass from cartel members or mountain climbing or sky diving or surfing Winter storm Heath. His poor parents looked away from death and were blindsided.

“I have to be honest Tommy; I don’t know how I’m going to make it out there let alone catch a wave.”

He cupped his hands and blew into them, never taking his eyes off the ocean. Steam blew in streaks from between his fingers.

“Submit,” he said. “Let the ocean do its thing. You can’t fight the current or the size force for force. You’ll need to relax. Your body is going to heat up out there in the wetsuit so don’t worry about the cold. And the ocean, well, it will do whatever it wants. They call it riding waves for a reason. You roll with the punches. You stay calm. You breathe every chance you get. And you get the ride of your fucking life like I’ve seen you do before.”

Those rides were in boardshorts, I wanted to say.

We scanned the area for cops before getting out of the car. The town of Belmar, New Jersey looked empty. No beach goers, no runners. Say what you want about New Jersey and its residents but they aren’t a stupid bunch. Christmas lights hung like mystical tree branches from the houses. A blow-up Santa looked like he was doing the Harlem Shake in the roaring wind. I wished I was one of the ornaments hanging from a lit-up Christmas tree in an ocean front window. They looked warm and safe. The black flag that was stuck in the sand 20 feet from our car waved so hard it sounded like a whip.

We waxed our boards, looking from left to right for any signs of the cops. The sky was an ominous gray with little cracks of white where the sun tried its best to burst through. But even the sun was no match for Heath. If the sun couldn’t even compete with the storm then what the fuck was I thinking? I felt like I was on the deck of the Titanic…iceberg dead ahead.

I had one last chance to say no. To watch safely from the beach, in the warmth of the car, when the nose of a police car nudged out onto Ocean Avenue a block over. They spotted us, the sirens flicked on, and Tommy made a run for it. Without thinking, I ran after him.

“I hope you got $1,200,” Tommy yelled as we ran.

“What?”

“That’s the fine numb nuts! Let’s fucking go.”

It’s an odd sensation hitting freezing cold water and not feeling a thing. It isn’t until your first duck dive that you understand how truly cold the winter Atlantic Ocean is. The only places that are open to the elements in a wetsuit are your eyebrows and the tip of your nose and when the water makes contact it’s like biting into an ice cream cone with an impacted molar. Your brain goes completely numb and your breathing stops.

I paddled as hard as I could down the left side of the jetty Tommy had pointed out. He was already twenty yards in front of me. He’d always been a bigger, better swimmer which shockingly is very helpful when you’re surfing. I had the feeling that I was out matched before I touched the water and the feeling was reciprocated when I was actually in the midst of the chaos. There was a point where I figured the worst that could happen was that the ocean denied me. It happens. I’d be battered by sets and sets of waves, pushed all the way back to the beach, handcuffed, fined, and be safe and happy and warm in the backseat of a cop car. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. I kept paddling, and duck diving, paddling and duck diving and when I saw Tommy’s hand waving to paddle as hard as I could, right then and there, I did so without thinking.

               We were out the back, which means out of harm’s way for the time being. Waves need to crash on places where the ocean floor is shallow enough and the further you go out the less shallow it gets. There was only one problem. In order to get back in, you need to catch a wave.

               I sat there like a buoy for an hour while Tommy caught wave after wave. My arms felt like two-hundred-pound weights. My face felt like someone had used sandpaper to wash it. I would have cried if I wasn’t trying every second to survive.

               “What’s the problem?” Tommy yelled to me. It was hard to hear anything with the wind and the crashing waves and the five-millimeter hood.

               “Where do I start?” I yelled back.

               “You gotta submit man. Let it happen. You know how to surf. Here one comes now.”

               He was right. There was a big brown monster building higher and higher, foot by foot, coming right to me.

               “Go, go!”

               There is only one downside to surfing with a friend. Especially a friend like Tommy. Peer pressure.

               I whipped my board around and put my head down and paddled as hard as my arms would allow. The wave jacked up and when I looked down it was like standing at the pointed tip of a brown skyscraper. It would either be the best wave of my life or the last. I set my back foot and the wave just opened up like the Holland Tunnel. I tucked in, the wave crashing over my head, making these hollow space-like sounds. Before I knew it I was being spit out of the barrel, hands raised in triumph, and that’s when I saw it. The biggest wave I’d ever seen in my life. Tommy looked like a spec at the top. And then he was falling for what seemed like an eternity. The black dot that was Tommy hit the bottom. His board shot up and was mashed in the white and brown teeth of the wave. Me and the cops would search for him for hours and find nothing. They sent me the fine in the mail.