The coat was folded lengthwise, and when he got in and laid it on my board I saw a rifle barrel emerge. He had a leather pack on the ground he had to squat to lift, and when he put it in back next to the coat I could smell blood. The pack was loaded with deer meat, 110 pounds of deer meat. He was Chet, he said, Chet the Jet of The Family Dog. He and his old lady had been with The Dog up in the Santa Lucias but she got pregnant, they’d moved down to Pacific Grove because of that. They were into macrobiotics but just brown rice wasn’t giving her the strength, she wanted meat, so he’d gone back up there and shot a doe, good blood, sweet blood, graceful blood to put into a baby. He’d like to be back up there now. It was the only country. The National Guard was up there trying to run them out, that was federal land, but they couldn’t find them. It was too rugged for helicopters, and The Dog had lookouts with walkie-talkies on the few roads in, that gave them a two-hour head start. They can’t get us, he said. I knew you’d stop when I saw your car, he said.
Then he asked about my board, he liked its color.
“Aqua green,” I said, “the color of clean winter surf. You know how a wave peaks over on itself, not breaking along all of its length at once, but peeling off down the line?”
I held up my hand, making a model of a breaking wave, curling the first two fingers to the base of my thumb, leaving the last two up.
“You interested in this?” I asked.
“Well,” I said, “there’s a pocket back under there, see, that’s where you’re trying to get, you sliding the board in, into the wall, its color going into the wave’s color, you choosing the track, tracking yourself toward it, toward the setup, the wave sets itself up, goes vertical, the wall goes vertical, see, you thinking you won’t make it, can’t make it, the fin won’t hold, can’t hold, then bam, it’s spilling over, the wave’s spilling itself out and over, completely over, and suddenly you’re there, the board has disappeared, it doesn’t exist, it’s just you moving fast on nothing, no sensation at all except light coming through the tunneling water enclosing you, you’re there, completely inside, right inside the jewel, you’ve got it, the heart of the universe . . .”
“Like music,” he said, “The Dog is into music. Like all the Avalon posters are Dog posters,” he said. “Everything is worked out in a group. We all sit in a circle and get stoned and fire sentences at each other. The further out we go, the more people we get off. The ones that get everyone off we write down, the ones written down become the poster, the best combinations.”
“Yeah,” I said, “and then bam, it blows you out, it has to blow you out, there’s trapped air in there, the wave has trapped air in behind you as it pours over, it has to blow it out, you blowing out with it.”
And I went on, you use that speed to let you turn down the wave face, the speed from the drop giving you the juice to turn right back up into it again, see, the peak moving on down the line all this time, you organizing your attack again, playing variations on it, maybe going into it higher on the wall this time, this time sticking your arm into it, into the face to suck yourself back in even farther, deeper, trying to see how far in you can go and still make it out.
“Like music,” he said, “just trying to get higher and higher. Just pour your mind at it and it opens up, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, “that’s it, that’s where you want to live, that’s where all the energy is. Some guys come out of there screaming,” I said, “I mean they literally scream when they come out.”
“That is far out,” he said.
“Not everyone is into surfing that way, though. Most people just paddle out and get stoked if they get a ride.”
He said he could understand that.
I said it’s not something you can get right away, you have to work at it.
Like everything else, was his comment.
We rode in silence after that.
Coming into Pacific Grove he said he’d like to offer me a place to sleep but he hadn’t seen his old lady in six days. I told him I didn’t need a place to sleep.
He showed me where to turn, and we drove up a couple of blocks and stopped alongside a rusted Ford panel in gray primer coat, its left front hub resting on a wheel laid flat on the street.
He got out.
Beyond the panel was a two-story wood-frame house, white paint peeling off the sides, unpainted steps going up to a porch.
He reached in the back and pulled out the pack, then the coat with the rifle and said, “That’s our place, take care now.”
I watched him go across the lawn and up the stairs, then turn and wave and go inside.
I drove off up the street.