Heath

There’s a writing competition that runs every few months called Writing Battle (writingbattle.com). You get dealt a set of cards with the genre, subject, and action that needs to happen in the story, a word count (2,000 words for this one), and three days to complete it. This was my submission.

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.