October: my favorite month. Most of the tourists have packed up and gone back to Ohio and New Jersey. The beaches have cleared, and so has the humidity. Temperatures hover in the high seventies. The water holds the summer’s heat; it’s a few degrees warmer than the air. This oceanic heat fuels the big storms, sending them churning across the Atlantic. When hurricanes spin off the coast, we get swells. Today, Folly Beach has serious waves.
I tuck my keys in my wheel well, grab my board, and head for the beach access. I tiptoe past a new puddle, now the fourth permanent one on this footpath, even without a king tide. An elevated boardwalk built to protect the fragile dunes rises at the end of the trail. At its crest, the ocean comes into view. The sea is wild, alive, thrashing. Gray walls of water rise tumultuously, fall in crescendos. Crowns of spray leap and scatter in high arcs before collapsing into the thunderous booms.
Pelicans twist nimbly in the open sky, hunting for fish pushed upward by the choppy waters. One spots a fish and readies itself for the attack. The bird cocks its wings and torpedoes down into the chop. Splash. It pops up from under the water with a silvery menhaden suspended in its beak. The bird’s gular pouch, the stretchy flesh under the beak, balloons to swallow dinner whole.
I place my board on the sand to rub on a layer of wax.
A child, maybe five or six years old, runs past me to dump a bucket of water into a hole in the sand. He hurries back and forth, absorbed in his project. His plastic toys litter the beach: an orange shovel, purple castle mold, red sand sifter. A muscle-bound action figure rolls in the surf. On my way into the water, I pick it up.
“Mine!” he shrieks. The child has an ear-splitting scream, a cry sharper than a gull’s.
“I’m not taking your toy. I’m putting it over here so it doesn’t end up in the ocean.” I lay the action figure in the dry sand.
“Mom!” he shrieks. A woman walks toward us, her lips flat as the horizon. Her shirt reads: “lib·tard: noun 1. A person so open minded their brains fall out.”
Instead of explaining why sand and shells make fine, natural toys for kids—that the world doesn’t need any more plastic—I grab my board and run off into the waves. No one wants to hear my speech about plastic. Plus, judging from her shirt, we probably wouldn’t have had a productive conversation.
I hop on my board to paddle out into the deeper waters. A massive wave rolls toward me. I attempt a duck-dive, pushing the board beneath the steamroller of a wave, but I don’t get deep enough to pop up safely on the other side.
The wave tosses me like a rag doll and chucks my board high into the air. The leash tugs at my leg, like a giant hand curling around my ankle, yanking me back to shore.
Once I regain my footing in the shallows, I pull on my leash to retrieve my board. I squint to measure the incoming set and plot my course back out to the ocean. My only option is to try harder.
Eventually I make it past the break. As my reward, a plush, slow-rolling wave rumbles my way. I point my board toward the shore and kick hard. I catch the wave and pop up to a wide stance. I steer my board up and down along the ever-changing wall of water. I’m flying.
My ride ends. I’m back in the shallows, exhausted. I can manage one, maybe two more rides. Panting, I survey the surf, looking for patterns. Waves come in sets, and if I can paddle out between a group of waves, I’ll have a better chance of making it past the break.
I hear a loud screech and turn to see the kid from the beach. He’s pretending to shoot the laughing gulls soaring overhead. He jumps up and down in the surf, unaware that the outgoing tide carries him closer to me.
I start to put distance between me and this airhorn, but then I spy a surfboard torpedoing right at him.
“Watch out!” I race toward the kid and pull him under the water, pinning him down until I feel the wave has passed and the wayward board is safely between us and the shore.
Seconds later, we emerge. He is stunned. I look to shore, where his mother flips through a magazine; she wasn’t watching. Thank God. First I steal his toys, then I dunk him underwater. What would she think?
The boy wipes his eyes, coming to his senses. He starts to cry and runs to his mother. Not wanting to stick around to explain, I hurry back into the ocean.
“Are you okay? Is your son okay?” A guy about my age hurries toward me. He wears a worn rash guard and blue board shorts. His skin reminds me of the pink and tan mottling on whelks. His eyes are the exact shade of palmetto fronds. While this man is definitely sexy, I wonder if he’s the type of surfer to claim part of the beach. I know one thing for sure: he’s an idiot. Who surfs without a leash, especially during a swell? There are kids in the water. Shitty kids, but kids nonetheless.
He lopes to pick up his board, flipped upside down and buffeted by the surf, and jogs toward me. His forehead is crisscrossed with fine wrinkles from marathon-long days in the sun. He’s cute. Very cute.
“We’re fine. Just got to be careful out here, you know?”
“I’m so sorry. My leash snapped.”
Oh. So, he’s not a total bonehead. “He’s not my kid,” I say, maybe with a little too much force.
“That could have been a disaster. I don’t know how to thank you.”
A pickup game of tonsil hockey? “Don’t worry about it.”
“What’s your name?”
“Simons.”
“I’m Ben.”
“Nice to meet you.” I hold out my hand.
“That’s a good handshake. Is this your usual spot?”
Hmm. Maybe this is his territory? Fine. It’s mine, too. “Yes, it is.”
In my periphery, the mother to the vuvuzela is waving her arms, trying to get my attention. I half expect her to scream at me, but instead she calls out, “We want to thank you!”
Ben turns to look at the mother, who has lifted her son to her hip.
“Looks like they want to talk to the hero.”
I pick up my board. “I guess I’ve got to go.”
“I’ll keep an eye out for you.”
“Ditto.” And that’s the thing about life and love. One random person, at some random time, can make the day better. Chances are, I’ll never see him again. But it’s intriguing to think that I might. I’ll keep my eyes open.