Desperation Reef

John and I wrestled the jet ski off its home-welded rack and into the heaving sea. He jumped in and climbed on and started it up with a burst of white noxious smoke. Revved the engine against the roar of a wave breaking fifty yards away, a plume of white tearing off its crest as the lip curled over and the face stood upright.

Thirty feet? Forty?

The seasick photographer shot.

The captain kept his pitching boat from being pulled into the waves.

Randy Payne — who had read the centuries-old charts and ship’s logs, and volumes of Navy archives and diaries to pinpoint the location of once mythical Cortes Bank — jumped into this cauldron with a rigid smile and his eight-foot gun, and paddled to the ski. I watched him, bobbing on his board like a praying mantis blown into a rushing river, praying the shark stories weren’t true.

John eased the jet ski into place and threw Randy the handled nylon waterski rope.

They were off in a bark of engine and a billow of smoke, semicircling away from the break. They came to a stop, below and well to the left of the incoming peaks. I could see them through the smoky wave spray, watching the set, and hear their voices yelling back and forth.

Then John eased his jet ski onto the forming shoulder of a giant, turning to see Randy, who threw the rope and dropped onto the face of a wave that looked to be six times his height.

We three witnesses stood mute, silenced by fear, and by a fierce, almost paralyzing hope as Randy bounced down the wave, his legs bent at the knees, his feet locked into straps improvised from wetsuit neoprene fastened to the board’s deck with plastic bolt sleeves and fiberglass.

He rode a smaller wave, then, after a blue-lipped cup of instant coffee back on board, during which he tried to explain through chattering teeth what it had all felt like, Randy looked at John.

“Your turn.”

John’s first wave was the size of Randy’s, but choppier in the growing wind. Randy towed him in flawlessly.

John dropped into the thing, all his cool gone, nothing but survival on his mind. Crouched, arms out, feet locked into his homemade straps. He was too far away for me to see his expression but I guessed it was one I’d never seen.

He caught two more before the wind came up hard and the lumbering behemoths of Cortes Bank were blown out and unrideable.

When I helped get him back aboard, his face was pale and almost expressionless but his blue eyes brimmed with light.

“He was there, Jen. He was there.”

On that rough run back to land I tried to knead the cold from his back and shoulders. We hardly said a thing.

Hours later, by the time we got into his truck in San Diego and cranked up the heater, I looked at myself from above and saw an eighteen-year-old girl in the front seat of a pickup truck, leaning uncomfortably over the center console to put her hand on the shoulder of the young man driving.

But when I looked inside me, I saw that he was mine and his journey was mine. We were us, one wave at a time. Maybe for a week. Maybe for years.

He had seen what he was looking for, and so had I.

I graduated from high school with a 4.35 GPA and gave the graduation valedictory, became Miss Laguna Beach in a pageant, and in the fall started the creative journalism program at UC Irvine.

Getting the grades was tough, but Mom pushed me through to the finish line. She taught me to read early, and I did have a knack for writing, starting with printing, then the cursive script that I tried to make perfect and beautiful.

I entered the Miss Laguna pageant on a dare from one of my good friends, Ronna Dean, who said she’d do it if I did. For the talent part of the program, I played Mom’s slick video of me at surfing contests, several of which I won. Ronna, a beautiful honey-blond California girl all the way — daughter of a US Mail carrier and a waitress at the Ranch & Sea — finger-picked her guitar and gave a sassy, sexy rendition of “Wild Horses.”

After the pageant at the Women’s Club, there was a big party, vegetarian food and soft drinks. Ronna snuck in some schnapps, which we shared in the bathroom, but she seemed upset, and drank most of it, fast. I suspected she wanted to win that pageant, but she wouldn’t admit to being that un-hip until years later. She was second runner-up and became part of my “court.”

I thought being Miss Anything would be silly and a little demeaning, but when I did my civic duties — attending art festivals and ribbon cuttings, greeting visitors, spending a Memorial Day dedication at the Sandpiper nightclub, which was owned by two veteran brothers and their mom — I saw how good and alone most people were, how much they longed to belong.

I did all those long, boring Rotary lunches, but loved their motto: Service Beyond Self. Reminded me of Dad’s police motto, to protect and serve. He took that oath very seriously. I had no formal oath as Miss Laguna, other than an agreement to comport myself “with good cheer, high morals, and a willingness to help the less fortunate.”