Desperation Reef

“My father won’t be happy about you and me doing business together,” says Bette. “He’ll hate me, temporarily. I’ve known for a while that I need to break away from him. From King Jim Seafood. From all of what being a part of the Wu family is. You are my harbor, Casey. My berth.”

She reaches over and squeezes Casey’s big warm hand with her own cool and smooth one. He feels a rare, crazy heat inside, spreading from his hand to his heart, then out to everywhere. Who’d have thought that after twenty-plus years in cold oceans his ears could burn this hot? His face? All of him?

“We share a fatal illness, Stonebreaker.”

“Which one? There’s lots of them.”

“Time,” she says.

32

Looking Back—

WHO WAS JOHN STONEBREAKER AND WHAT WENT WRONG AT MAVERICKS?

BY JEN STONEBREAKER

Part four of a special series for Surf Tribe Magazine

In late December, a long-expected but devious winter swell bypassed Half Moon Bay and landed south.

Postponing the Monsters of Mavericks left fifty of us surfers huddled under tents in the rain at the Pillar Point landing, teeth chattering, all suited up but nowhere to go.

I counted twelve boats tied up and waiting in the water, ten trailered jet skis waiting to be unleashed, a bevy of photogs and videographers, writers and rescue teams. Lots of terse jokes and forced optimism. I can feel her turning around, John said, meaning the fugitive swell, but making me think of the miscarriage. Luckily, another storm-generated swell was forming — a potentially stronger one at this point — up on latitude 38, full of silence and possible fury.

ETA at Mavericks: twelve days.

Christmas Eve, sitting with John in his father’s impressive, new Hillview Chapel in Laguna Hills, I listened to the hymns and Christmas standards, watched the procession to the manger with real sheep and costumed shepherds, all part of Pastor Mike’s quaint and scented Christmas Eve service, which drew sellout crowds every year.

I sat in the pew with my reindeer scarf still around my neck, a bit of a cold since the Mavericks false alarm, one hand on John’s knee. I sang the hymn lyrics projected alongside the stained-glass windows that flanked Pastor Mike’s stately mahogany and mother-of-pearl pulpit. He was in great form, expansive and filled with the inner light that looked so good through him, especially on video. When we closed our eyes in prayer and Pastor Mike thanked the Lord for His blessings and asked Him to help us use them wisely, I asked the God of whom I was skeptical to give me once again the child who visited and left me, like a ghost.

With the monster swell stalled in the Northwest Pacific, but hungry for diversion, John and I went to a New Year’s Eve party out in Laguna Canyon.

The party was mostly older, drug-enthused people, everybody high and chipper, stoned on weed, dodging into rooms for the edgier stuff — you know the scene.

And it surprised me to find myself here, because I didn’t know many of these people and didn’t do drugs, and John didn’t either. I wondered why he’d accepted the invite without talking to me. I still let him keep our social calendar in those days. And our travel, training, and finances, too. Happy to. I was surfing and writing and he was more than I could keep up with. My orbit was busy and secure. A happy Earth to his sun.

The only person I really knew was Ronna Dean, who spun me around from behind and threw her arms around me. Hadn’t seen her in years.

She looked even prettier now, same golden skin and thatch of honey hair, same cagey smile and skeptical brown eyes. Dressed in a tailored black Western tux with red front yokes and plenty of rhinestones, she looked like a Nashville headliner.

She caught me up on her music in LA, mostly touring with artists I knew of — lots of work but decent money. And between tours she got time gratis from Cherokee Studio in Hollywood — best in the world, she said. Cherokee thought Ronna’s bluesy, vulnerable voice was something that everyone should hear. Even got herself a sponsorship from Taylor Guitars, which was giving her “the most sweet-ass acoustics” she’d ever played.

“I’m going to do a short set tonight,” she said. “And you, Jen? I know you’re big-waving now, up for the Monsters if they can get some waves. How do you ride those things?”

“Carefully,” I said.

I caught her up on the big-wave circuit, about John getting up to number five in the world on the surf tour, told her I was writing for newspapers, and helping Mom coach the girls’ water sports teams at the high school. I downplayed my modest successes, aware of how hard Ronna had taken it when I won the Miss Laguna pageant. Even then I knew she was prettier, more outgoing and talented than I’d ever be. I thought I saw that smiling disappointment still in her — rock star in the making that she obviously was.