One thing Kit didn’t teach Poppy soon enough was that you never dropped in on another surfer’s wave—especially a local’s. That’s what she did one morning. The surfer didn’t see her coming. When they got to shore he popped up and she joined him. He was older, maybe even as old as her dad. He lifted his arm to reveal a gash across his torso. He’d been sliced by her fin.
“Look what you did.”
“Oh God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t—”
“You didn’t pay attention to what the hell you were doing. You should be sorry. Hurts like hell, you stupid washashore.” He inspected the gash. It was clean-looking, at least. “You people, you and your little friends, you think you own everything. Go back to Manhattan.”
“I’m not from Manhattan.”
“OK, Connecticut.”
“Wisconsin.”
When Poppy told Kit she was from Wisconsin it was a joke, but somehow this revelation redeemed her in the leather-skinned surfer’s eyes. “You a Packers fan?”
“Of course.”
“Super Bowl champs! How about that? The green and gold. Nothing but Patriots fans out here. Tired of ’em. I’m Dirk.”
“Poppy.”
He slapped some seaweed on his cut and swore when the salt stung.
“Takes years to learn to surf. Years and years. You’re off to a good start. I watched you. You’ve got good balance and you’re quick. Watchful. And you’re a girl. Not a lot of girls out here.”
“I noticed.”
“Show up at LeCount before sunrise tomorrow. I’ll introduce you to some people who can help you work your board. Real surfers.”
“That’s early.”
“That’s the best time of day.”
“I’ll be there.”
RYE AND SKIP COULDN’T BELIEVE Poppy had dropped in on Dirk and survived. He was one of the outer shore’s resident surfing legends, one of the old guard who got started in the seventies. For the old guys, surfing was as much a spiritual thing as it was athletic.
Poppy didn’t tell Kit about her meeting with Dirk, because it was like discussing a party only she’d been invited to.
It was tough to get up before sunrise the next morning, but she woke early and went to LeCount Hollow, where he told her he’d meet her. She sat on the bench where the parking lot met the steep bluff that led down to the ocean. The sun was beginning to rise, and a layer of yellow like a line of highlighter shone at the crease of the horizon. The wind pushed the cold off the ocean to shore and made her hair whip around her head. She could taste the salt on her lips. She liked being there early. It made her feel like she had the world all to herself.
A few minutes later a caravan of trucks drove into the lot, led by Dirk. His truck was white and covered with bumper stickers her dad would approve of, like the Grateful Dead marching bears, RELAX, a mustache, a Greenpeace logo, RALPH NADER FOR PRESIDENT OF OUTER SPACE. A series of doors slammed and a group of guys close to her own age gathered around her. The last person to approach was a girl.
“Kit?”
“You didn’t know I’m a local? I guess you are too, now, Wisconsin.”
UNLIKE THE “WASHASHORES” WHO started surfing in the afternoons and evenings—after their hangovers began to lift—the locals got started first thing. Their days began with a sacred ritual of coffee at sunrise. Then they’d check the breaks to see where the surf was best. They’d cruise the coast from Truro to Orleans chasing swells.
“You have to be gnarly to surf with them,” Kit said, and Poppy soon learned what that meant. Dirk taught Poppy that surfing with the locals meant peeing in your own wet suit. It meant shitting in the dunes. It meant staying in the cold waters of the Atlantic as long as the swell would last, because it might be another tide or day or week before you’d hit a good one again. It meant keeping up with the guys, some of them about her age, some as old as Dirk. They felt like a family of brothers who were different than Michael. Poppy felt protective of him, while these guys looked out for her safety, taught technique, and let her drink and get high with them.
Sometimes they went to Dirk’s. He was such a hippie, he made Poppy’s dad seem like a WASP by comparison. Dirk lived on a plot of land deep in the woods near Cole’s Neck. He slept in the back of a caramel-colored International Harvester Travelall parked next to a giant boat hidden under a tented tarp. He’d proudly rip it off when he showed it to his guests, like the host of a game show revealing the contestant’s prize. The wooden boat was beautiful but far from seaworthy. The boat was what Dirk worked on when he wasn’t surfing or taking on odd carpentry jobs. Poppy had a feeling that Dirk, like her dad with his local history and house projects, put a lot of work into things he would never finish.
Dirk loved it when Poppy and the other surfers came to visit him. He liked being the center of attention, and railed about Marxism and capitalism and the evil war machines and NAFTA. He told Poppy that he was a typical old-school “Fleetian.” He didn’t follow anyone’s rules, didn’t care about the countless citations the town slapped on him when the neighbors complained about the mess in his yard. He seemed so right about everything and so cool and wise that when he passed around sheets of LSD, Poppy didn’t hesitate to set one on her tongue.
Why not? Nobody seemed to care what Poppy was up to. Michael and Ann were always at the Shaws’ dumb house, and her parents, whom she’d seen get high plenty of times, didn’t seem to notice. This past year they’d been so focused on Michael’s adjustment and so busy with the logistics of his adoption that sometimes Poppy felt overlooked.
She didn’t say a word about Dirk and Kit and Mickey and Nick and Paul, her new best friends. Her parents seemed pleased that she wasn’t bored anymore. She’d crawl into bed after the end of a long day and feel like she’d just experienced the whole world—a world that felt bigger and more expansive.
Poppy felt herself change between waves and bonfires and drunk kisses with her new friends—the boys and even Kit. She couldn’t tell if she was losing her former self or becoming the person she always thought she was. It was exciting and fun and scary, like catching a wave just before it crested. She rode straight into it the way Dirk taught her. She rode into it until it rode her.