Desperation Reef

Now Casey looks up and gives her a look that makes her feel like she’s being forgiven. It both angers her and makes her want to cry.

“Totally right on, Mom,” he says. “You don’t need to surf today. Brock’s right.”

Jen looks out at Todos Santos Island, the curve of the bay, the blue water, black rocks, and tawny hills.

But what she sees is her husband taking off on the final wave of his life.

“I’ll be ready for the Monsters,” she says. “Ready to win it. And tow you in. Don’t you worry about that.”

That evening at the Barrel, scrubbing away at the once-beautiful stamped aluminum bar, Jen still hasn’t gotten over her Todos Santos chill, and the 3 A.M. fantods that follow her everywhere.

Casey, Brock, and Mahina are helping out. Jen catches their occasional looks — the kind that people cut short when you look back. Even Mae looks concerned.

She pretends not to hear their soft, intense discussion of the freak autumn swell now forming way up in the North Pacific, spawned by an early Aleutian storm and an unusual shift in the Humboldt current. It’s already very powerful, and aimed at the Bay Area coast of California. A late October or early November Monsters of Mavericks is possible.

“Man, I hope so,” says Casey. “Pray to your Breath of Life that it happens.”

“I don’t pray,” says Brock.

Mahina mutters something that Jen can’t quite hear but it sounds portentous.

She’s tired of living in dread. Feels exhaustion right here in front of her, curling a bony finger her way. Maybe Dr. Parker was right: she should bow out of the Monsters and battle her demons on a less deadly playing field.

Just the mention of the Monsters deepens the chill from Todos Santos, but it’s even worse because she publicly committed to the Monsters. Months ago. With some minor fanfare from the surfing media, and from the big-wave riders she’s still in touch with.

Jen bears down with the fine-grade polish pad, demolishing those stains, protecting and serving the Barrel with all her might.

Thinks of tomorrow’s early paddleboard workout, followed by the weights, the breath-control training in the high school pool, maybe a visit to Belle. Then back here to her stinking former restaurant, to her ash-ridden rubber gloves, her brushes, solvents, and scratch pads, her black fingernail sludge.

She knows that swell up in the Aleutians is going to finally break at Mavericks. Knows she’s supposed to ride enormous waves. Knows she’s not going to let what happened to John happen to Casey. That Mahina isn’t going to let it happen to Brock.

But can Casey keep it from happening to her?

She misses the vodka and knows that Ralphs, just a few blocks away, has the pepper Stoli she loves. What would a quart of that look like on this bar? Feel in her hand as she pours? On her lips, in her nose?

But she refuses to give in.

25

On the bridge of the elegant Chris-Craft Cinnamon Girl, Brock stands beside bald, gray-bearded Dane Crockett, who eases back the throttle. Brock feels the big cabin cruiser slow and settle in the bright, late afternoon.

Dane is an irrigation supply wholesaler from Riverside who admittedly joined the Go Dogs for dangerous missions, not so much to help people out but for the rush.

It’s been three days since Todos Santos. All three of those days spent searching at sea.

But as of one hour ago, eureka!

Brock, Mahina, and the five-boat Go Dog flotilla have finally found and surrounded the pirates’ flagship. The rust-stained, blue-and-red steel-hulled trawler Empress II waits at anchor just off San Clemente Island.

Brock’s vengeful heart has been beating hard. His blood pressure is probably off the charts but he doesn’t care. Feels liberated by lying to Casey, such that like his brother’s guilt — and maybe even blood — will not be on his, Brock’s, hands. Besides, he’ll need something very important from Casey, down the line: his innocence.

They’ve had Empress II under watch, at a distance, easing in and keeping in touch by radio. She’s unaccompanied and possibly unmanned. If there are crew aboard, Brock thinks, they’ll have to swim the two hundred feet to San Clemente Island — rocky and current-blasted and forbidding as it is. The island is a bomb and artillery testing ground, for Christ’s sake. A few hundred Navy guys. They’ll drag the pirates ashore and ship them back to Pier 32 in National City. Maybe deport them, for all Brock knows.

The touchy part is boarding Empress II without getting shot, and before anyone can call in reinforcements.

Which means Brock and two of the Go Dogs on Cinnamon Girl will board the old trawler, which from here, through Brock’s binoculars, definitely looks unattended. Almost too good to be true, but it’s possible that the pirates are out on their smaller, faster crafts, patty-hopping for tuna and sharks. Where else would they be?