Desperation Reef

I was collecting his empty paper plates for the trash can. Set them down and took the box. It felt empty, but inside, wrapped in a cutting from the Sunday LA Times funny page, was a pair of earrings — irregular pieces of sea glass strung with copper wire.

“I found it,” he said. “The glass, not the wire.”

I held them up to the nearest tiki torch: pale greens, soft browns, sanded clears. Even a cobalt blue, all glowing roughly in the light.

“I like them, John. Beautiful.”

“It’s just broken beer bottles,” he said, almost apologetically. “Jen, I’m leaving before dark tomorrow for Imperial Beach, down on the border. South swell ten seconds, strong, and a rising tide. It’s going to be big and fast. Just you and me. Interested?”

So much in that question.

“You can do it. I’ve been watching you.”

I knew my answer but didn’t know what words to use.

“I talked to your dad and he’s okay with us going just ourselves.”

John’s face was serious and beveled in the torchlight. Another picture of him I’ll carry forever.

I felt like I was midair, letting go of one trapeze and reaching for another.

“What time?”

“I’ll come get you at five.”

3

Jen’s son Casey speeds across Desperation Reef off San Diego, headed home for Laguna, Moondance riding high, slicing through the gently rolling swell. Desperation Reef is Casey’s prime tuna spot this time of year, though it’s also popular with the charter fishermen.

Today, he’s got his bluefin tuna in the ice hold, a one-hundred-pounder, dragged, drained, filleted, and ready for the pricey sashimi specials at his mother’s restaurant.

Mae, a chocolate Labrador, sits on a bench in the cabin beside Casey, facing the sea, tongue trailing, an aging, curious dog without a mean bone in her body.

White clouds seem fixed in the blue October sky and the surface of the sea is dark and supple.

Casey is a big man at twenty-four, all muscle and bushy yellow hair, built much like John Stonebreaker, the father he never met. He’s got the same knee knobs and foot bumps, the same pale blue eyes under dark brows. Without sunglasses, the only parts of Casey’s face not tanned to darkness are the strips of skin between his eyes and his ears. He’s wearing a pendant he had made of sterling silver — a sharp-tailed “gun” surfboard with an oval orange Spessartite garnet embedded lengthwise on the deck. It’s the orange of his father’s signature big-wave guns, and the orange of his mother’s hair.

He sees the commercial trawler bobbing out ahead of him and by the time he gets closer something looks, well, wrong. Pulls near enough for binoculars, throttles down and banks to a sweeping stop. Moondance, an angler’s dream at thirty-two feet, sleek and powerful, rides the swells high and lightly.

Casey two-hands the Leicas, rolling with his boat, keeping the trawler in his field of vision as best he can. It’s a shabby thing, predominately blue with red trim, outriggers swaying empty and no fishing lines out that Casey can see. A rust-stained hull. A ragged black sunscreen flapping over the stern deck.

Two men and a woman stand hard at work at tables heaped high with fish, some big. Black rubber boots and aprons. Blades flashing. Seabirds wheel and dive. A shirtless, muscled guy in red shorts and a flat-brimmed black cowboy hat with silver coins on its band leans against the stern railing, and trains his binoculars on Casey.

“What do you think of that, Mae?”

Mae’s native curiosity has already kicked in and she steadies herself on all fours, attentive to the trawler and, of course, the birds.

Casey gets his phone from the steering wheel cabinet, unzips the sandwich bag and pulls it out. Goes to video, reverses the direction, and holds the phone at arm’s length.

Casey is Casey’s favorite subject, star, and director.

So he checks his look: very tan. Hasn’t shaved in a couple of days. Got on the big straw, high-domed Stetson that he wears all the time — fishing or not — which makes him look, at six foot two, tall indeed and not a little funny in his board shorts and shearling boots and the brazenly colored T-shirts he personally designs for his fledgling surf-clothing company, CaseyWear.

In other words, perfect.

Unmistakably Casey Stonebreaker, number ten big-wave surfer and currently number eighteen on the World Surf Tour.

He gives himself and his followers his right-hand shaka — the universal surfers’ hang-loose sign that his brother, Brock, says is idiotic and is always trying to get him to stop flashing.

“Here are Mae and I on our way home from Desperation Reef. We got one of the best bluefin tuna I’ve ever caught, best sushi on Earth, all ready for dinner specials tonight at the Barrel in Laguna Beach. You all know the Barrel. Reservations, please!”

Casey gives himself his coolest smile, then kneels down and gets video of him kissing Mae on the nose. She wipes her tongue up his stubbly cheek. Casey switches the camera direction back to normal, stands and points it at the vessel.