Desperation Reef

Casey likes the lore and vibe of Dodge. Thinks its outlaw reputation gives him street cred, even though he himself is a non-doping, barely drinking, health-food-eating, body-building, Bible-reading environmentalist. And, a semi-ashamed virgin except for the woman his friends embarrassingly rented for him at his twenty-first birthday party. He regretted it before he even did it. Apologized. What a downer. But it was hard in his always-looking-for-answers mind to say exactly why.

Casey prays at least three times a day — before getting out of bed, before his afternoon siesta, and after lights-out at night — but often prays for special requests, too.

He’s a man who has never really cussed, fought, or said uncool things about people even behind their backs.

So, living in Dodge makes him feel his part in the surf-outlaw tradition that started in Hawaii and spread to California and Australia, then the world. Part of something old and wild and dangerous. Something that makes you feel like nothing else makes you feel: real, authentic surfing. Not commercialized surfing, though he does love the excitement of the contests. Here in his Dodge City living room he’s got a really cool picture of the old surf star David Nuuhiwa in Dodge in 1968 — just a couple of houses down from here — talking with BEL heavyweight Johnny Gale, surrounded by surfboards.

Grandpa Don had stories about Dodge in the late sixties when he was one of the Laguna cops chasing around the drug dealers and the “general no-good-niks,” as he called them.

But with affection. Casey always thought Grandpa Don was too nice to be a cop. Too permissive. Grandpa Don let him surf when Casey was five. Grandpa Don let him and Brock keep a baby alligator they’d bought from a reptile store in Huntington Beach. In their extra bathroom’s tub ’til Grandma said no. Let them have chocolate milk with their meals when they visited.

For sure, Grandpa Don saw some crazy things in Dodge back then, some funny and others not. Casey remembers hearing about the time that Grandpa was one of the officers raiding a South Laguna home back in ’67 and one of the cops — not Grandpa Don — shot, in the back, and to death, a suspected Brotherhood of Eternal Love drug dealer, Pete Amaranthus. That name stuck in Casey’s head because it seemed wondrous and beautiful. And tragic. Pete was twenty-two. He was well-liked, and Grandpa Don knew the family. Casey’s mom told him that Grandpa stayed up alone late the night they killed Pete, got himself drunk on bourbon. Grandpa Don was not a drinker.

Now Casey leans down and gets his cheek against the rail of the board, gauging the rocker it will require to handle Mavericks’ four-story waves moving as fast as freight trains. Too much upsweep in the rocker and the board will slow, trying to displace water; too little rocker and you dig a rail and it’s wipeout time.

Down you go.

Hard.

Escorted by fifty tons of fifty-degree water, which is quite a bit harder than warmer water. It’s like the difference between hitting the surface of a warm lake, or a frozen interstate. Then the tumble cycle and the hold-down that just might be your last.

Mae rises from her shady spot under a brightly blooming yellow hibiscus and lumbers through the open slider into the house. Probably hears the mail lady, who always has treats.

Casey straightens and takes a moment to appreciate his dog, and another to note with gratitude all the plants and shrubs and trees on his lot, from the fruit on the tangerine tree, to the pink trumpet vine, to the purple bougainvillea smothering the old grape stake fence in scintillant violet bracts. And the birds-of-paradise with all their orange-blue plumage, the white-flowered plumeria, and the red lantana alive with butterflies and moths.

Pretty awesome.

Now from the house here comes Mae, head up and tail wagging, trotting ahead of Bette Wu as if showing her to her table.

Casey’s heart bucks.

She strides midway into his little backyard, then stops and stands there, looking at him as if she’s just walked onstage in scene one. Mae licks her free hand. Bette’s dressed in a black knit suit with gold buttons. Black-and-gold pumps, plum lipstick and nails. Hair up, bangs down, and a brushed aluminum Halliburton briefcase in one hand.

She steps up and sets it on the blue-tiled, wave-patterned bistro table. Leans forward on both hands, right into Casey’s grill. Up this close her face is the size of a billboard.

“My family had nothing to do with the Barrel,” she whispers. “I swear it. And I have proof.”

“Jimmy made a threat that day on Empress II. I heard it with my own ears.”

“My father is a clown. Sometimes worse. I expect to be free from him soon.”

“But who else would set the fire? I got burned, you know.”

She softly touches the back of his free hand. “I do know. It hurts me.”

Then she straightens, looking down at him with a hard expression.