Page 9 of The California Dreamers

8

Quiver

1984

Santa Cruz, California

Fourteen years old

Cap studies his mug of lemon tea. “Infestation week is here.”

We’ve finished dinner, and the six of us sit on our everyday plaid blanket in the shade of the Gull. We’re parked in an abandoned lettuce orchard miles inland from the Santa Cruz shore, behind a collapsing farmhouse. The trees are neglected and scraggly, but the house’s decaying white clapboard screens us from the road, and though it’s a half hour walk to the water, no one’s hassled us.

We don’t park close to the sand during spring break.

Or infestation week , as Cap calls it.

I’d spotted the first sign this afternoon. I’d been floating on my board under the little dock. Not the big Santa Cruz pier, which is always heavy with tourists, but the battered, skinny one the crabbers use.

In the cool shade under the dock, I looped my arm in a frayed rope around a pylon gone soft with age and lay face-up, lulled by baby waves, watching clouds change through the wooden slats. It was sweet relief to get away from the van, which feels smaller these days. I’ve grown an inch, and my feet dangle over the end of my and Dyl’s bunk. But that’s not why the van feels small. Maybe it’s Jarvis Germaine—Cap’s surf idol, whose gentle, elderly voice lectures us from Cap’s oldest, most-played record. Jarvis talks about freedom, about “rejecting the machine,” about “sermons in stones” and “wisdom in waves.” He’s the source of our morning promises: “I close my eyes ’til it all drops away. What’s left is what I want.”

Jarvis Germaine is one of our few clues to before. Before the Gull. So his voice never bothered me when I was younger; I always listened to him reverently, trying to imagine I was a younger Cap, becoming inspired to live like we do. Jarvis Germaine talks about quiet, about thinking for yourself.

But now his voice crowds our home.

I thought I’d found the perfect escape under the crabbers’ dock. They keep to themselves, like we do, lassoing their traps, plunking them in, waiting. Whir, splash, silence, again and again. There’s a peaceful rhythm to it, like surfing.

I hadn’t been floating long before the cracks between the boards above went dark. “Hey, cutie! Thirsty?” Two boys stared down at me.

They wore Sun Devils T-shirts, the loud one also sporting a baseball cap with a plastic harness for his beer can, a clear tube running to his mouth.

So much for my hiding place—I flipped onto my stomach and paddled fast, out into the sun.

“Wait, share my IV drip!” the hatted boy said. “Have a suck!” He yanked the straw from his mouth and rained beer on my legs.

His friend grabbed his shorts so he wouldn’t fall in. “Leave her alone. Sorry!”

“Come back! C’mon, don’t be like that, Gidgey!”

“Gidget,” the friend corrected.

“Whatever. Don’t go!”

I didn’t turn again until I was far out where the twins were surfing. When I glanced back, both boys were gone.

“Were those college kids hassling you, Ro?” Griff asked, his brow heavy with concern.

I shook my head.

Griff gazed off to Mag, who’d drifted close to two girls on a raft shaped like a flamingo. Mag is civilized on water. Lately, extra civilized when pretty girls were involved. Mag didn’t seem to know what to say to them, but he ventured closer and closer.

“God, I hate spring break,” Griff said.

***

Now, as dusk falls on the lettuce field after our dinner, we wait for Cap to go on as usual about the wasted money, the littering and vomiting. How we should pity college kids who try to squeeze a lifetime of freedom into one drunken trip.

But this year something astonishing happens.

“What do you kids know about the Quiver?” Cap asks, looking at us each in turn. “Griffin? Magnus?”

They shake their heads no.

I’d just plunged my hands into the dishwashing tub, about to wash our dinner plates for Mama to wipe dry.

Quiver …did I overhear the word in the lineup? Meet me at the Quiver…

“Is it a restaurant near here?” I ask, and Cap and Mama chuckle.

“No, Little Seal.”

“I know.” The five of us turn to Dyl, flat on his back atop his worn green beach towel, a few feet from our picnic blanket. He’s observing cumulus clouds, fuchsia-streaked because the sun’s setting, and has a book about sea lions tented on his narrow chest, his field journal at his elbow ready for important transcriptions.

Dyl continues evenly, quietly, as if reading from one of his encyclopedias, “A Quiver is an annual spring gathering of surfers. They dig and pile sand next to a creek or river stream to widen and redirect it, until it’s a chute down to the ocean, forming a perfect, constant wave on shore. They pick a remote beach without day-trippers. And no cameras are allowed because it’s secret.”

A spring break for surfers.

“Why’s it called a quiver, genius?” Mag doesn’t look up from his whittling.

“Your collection of boards is your quiver, like an archer’s quiver of arrows. The gathering, the Quiver by the River, is a collection of surfers.”

Griff, who was eating an apple, pauses midbite in appreciation, and asks with a face as pensive as Mag’s was mocking, “How do you know all that, Dyl?”

I wipe my hands dry, waiting. But Dyl’s lost in his sea lion book again. He’s so quiet and small he can become invisible, free to observe people outside the van. But he’s more interested in the speckled, slug-shaped animals than the rituals of strangers.

I watch Cap; his hat is tilted over his eyes, but I can imagine the disapproval in them. He believes the paddling, the patience, are as important as the thrill, the flight of surfing—he probably thinks a man-made wave is cheap. A shortcut.

I envision a crowd of people throwing shaka s at each other, all the “showoff Beach Boys garbage” Cap detests. An impure substitute for real surfing.

But it only makes me more curious. I want to know what it feels like to ride an endless wave carved into the shore.

“That sounds awful. A fake wave?” Mag says to please Cap, though I can tell he’s equally intrigued.

Griff nods in agreement. “It does sound synthetic. A wave on land?”

“Awful and synthetic,” Cap repeats.

His ironic tone confuses all three of us. Griff tightens his ponytail nervously, and Mag looks down at his wood and whittling knife.

I try to help them. “They probably leave beer bottles and trash.”

“That would be terrible, wouldn’t it?” Mama’s voice holds mystery…mischief? “But it isn’t like that. It’s not a gathering many citizens know about.”

“You’ve seen it, Mama?” I dare. “Before us?”

For a second, the air stills. Then Mama and Cap share a soft laugh.

“A million lifetimes ago,” Mama says to Cap, only to Cap. And he smiles at her. “Shall I tell them?”

Cap nods and rises, hoisting his board, striding off on the long walk toward the beach.

“Tell us what?” I ask with a throb of excitement.

“Well, simply that it’s too bad you three think the Quiver sounds synthetic and messy, because there’s one nearby. Blue Beach. And we thought you might visit as a birthday present for the twins. Was that foolish of us?”

“No!” Griff and I nearly shout.

Mag shrugs. “I guess it could be interesting.”

Mama reassures Dyl, who’s grown tense, sitting up abruptly on his green beach towel and watching her with wide eyes, his books forgotten, clutching his journal in both hands. “You and I won’t get close to the Quiver, Dylly. Would it be all right if we watch sea lions instead?”

Dyl loosens his grip on his journal, nodding in relief.

Griff and Mag and I sit in silence for a moment, regarding each other with expressions of surprise. My dish tub, Mag’s whittling block, and Griff’s half-eaten apple forgotten at our knees.

We’re seen-through, we’re shocked, we’re confused.

But underneath, I know they feel the same frisson of exhilaration I do.

***

“Is this really happening?” Griff asks as the twins and I hurry along a narrow dirt road toward the ocean.

I take two steps for every one of theirs. Quiver, Quiver…who named it? How does such a ritual get started?

Cap, who will join us in two days, has still not explained his decision to send us here. Not that he ever explains his decisions. Not to us.

When I questioned Mama this morning, she seemed to have forgotten claiming this adventure was the twins’ birthday present. She only said, “He must have his reasons.” Like always. When I asked why she and Cap hadn’t joined a Quiver since that one “a million lifetimes ago,” she’d said, “We don’t need it now. We have our Quiver of six. Now let’s braid your hair…”

But after preaching to us our whole lives about staying separate from the crowd, about the evils of music festivals and surf contests and “mainland luau clambake hokum,” he’s granted this exception, and it feels foolish to waste more time on why.

“We must be close,” Griff says when we’ve been walking on the windy road toward the beach for an hour.

We know only that we’re to turn right at the red mailbox. But we’ve passed many mailboxes and none have been red. White, tin, tin, black, brown…but not a speck of red on the long dusty road ahead, and my board is heavy at my side.

“Look!” Mag points ahead.

Not the red mailbox, but a parked yellow Chevy with a balsa wood rack. A minute later there’s an old Woodie wagon, peeling green paint streaked with white—the telltale sign of a life in ocean fog. Ahead is the most impressive vehicle of all, a VW van with a jagged surfboard nailed on the roof sideways, like a dorsal fin.

Mag sounds thrilled: “That board was bitten!” The VW’s plastered in Jaws movie stickers, and the message is clear—the owner survived a shark encounter.

Finally, in the distance—a beautiful dot of red. A crimson mailbox in front of a ramshackle house, and past its dirt driveway, a narrow opening in the trees, a sandy trail.

“I smell ocean,” I say, and suddenly my board feels lighter.

Griff sucks in air, grinning, and even Mag breathes deep and half smiles.

A wiry old man appears on the path, walking toward us with his ancient white longboard at his hip. As he passes he throws a shaka , barely raising his thin, sun-speckled arm—just an automatic curl-in of his middle three fingers, a friendly wag of his wrist.

The three of us throw our own shaka s back to him.

Cap wouldn’t like it. He said “Don’t forget you’re not one of them, even if they’re vanners.”

But Cap and his disapproval are miles away.

***

We string our hammocks in dune palms, a quarter mile of beach between us and the roaring river wave, the beach fires where everyone else is surfing and hanging out.

Cap commanded that we stay together, but the twins cling to each other, and I feel a surprising rush of tenderness. Tough Mag, protective Griff, a world of two since minutes after they were born, a world within our already-small one. Both now trying to hide their discomfort in these uncharted waters.

When it’s dark, the wave lit by torches, I’m the one who insists we march over there at last and step up for our turns. It’s not a choice: the wave’s unceasing rush sounds too inviting to resist any longer.

“I guess. Now or never.” Griff forces a smile.

We approach the lineup in the sand, and the man ahead of us turns, sizes us up. He’s about forty, with long brown hair and a tattoo of a shark on his shoulder. “Your turn, Duchess,” he says with oily politeness.

“I’m not next.” Nervousness has crept in. Not of the wave, but of these strangers, even if they’re fellow vanners. I don’t know the etiquette here.

“Fiat of this place—first-timers cut in line.”

“They’re first-timers, too,” I say tentatively of the twins, who are stiff and silent in front of us.

“But ladies first.” Slowly, in an exaggerated gesture of courtliness, the dark-haired man rotates his wrist until his palm faces up. His eyes flash mockery.

“Listen to Jaws,” some other man says, respect in his voice. So, clearly this Jaws character owns the VW with the shark-bitten board on its roof.

“Indecision is a decision, Ronan,” Cap said when he taught me to surf.

I’m holding everyone up, waiting too long. My last thought before I push Cap’s voice away is that a man nicknamed Jaws just called me Duchess. I shove in, onto the wave, right here, now, now, NOW!

It’s a new feeling—everything has to happen in one swift, decisive motion. Commit, grip your board like you’re a skateboarder, shift onto the current and you’re soaring. For a second I fear I’ll wipe out in front of everyone, but I find my feet quickly, closing my eyes after I get the rhythm. Long minutes of just feeling it. No wondering why Cap brought us here, what nostalgia or birthday generosity or other mysterious impulse stirred him, or how Dyl’s doing on his ramble with Mama; or anything else in the world. A never-ending wave—what a sweet, strange thing.

“Goofy-foot!” someone yells approvingly from the sand.

“Go, Ro!” Griff’s voice, far away.

“Nice, Ronan.” Even Mag has words of praise.

I open my eyes, trail my hand in the man-made curl, taking everything in.

Fires dotted around, encouraging faces. A perfect wave made by a bunch of people just because, and the pink-orange-red layers of the sunset light hitting the hills.

***

The wave is like a campfire—it requires stoking, tending. The three of us help eagerly, and as I’m reinforcing a wall of sand, shoving great cold mounds to the edge of the rushing water with both hands, a woman on the other side of the water chute stands to observe something behind me. Soon all of us have paused to watch.

An incongruous sight: A family of four follow a photographer carrying important-looking equipment. Father, mother, a baby in her arms, and a citizen girl about my age. They’re in matching white shirts and jeans, even the baby, whose fat legs kick in denim pants. They walk gingerly across the sand, clearly embarrassed, and avoid making eye contact with our ragged group.

“No cameras are allowed,” Dyl had said. It feels like ages since Cap dropped the college student’s Leica in our fire, but I’m still on high alert whenever I see a camera.

The family and their hired photographer show us little interest. To them, we’re just surf bums messing around.

“Got to get those Christmas cards done in March now, gotta keep up with the neighbors!” the red-bikinied woman next to me says, and I oblige her with a laugh.

The photographer leads the white-and-denim family out onto picturesque rocks and everyone gets back to work shoving sand. But I can’t help glancing over my shoulder a few times. The photographer kneels, checks the light, repositions the four on the rocks. For the final pictures, he drags a trash can down the beach, upturns it, and stands on it.

After, they retreat across the beach and I eavesdrop as they pass behind me.

“I meant to tell you, the Morrison house sold,” the mother says. “Two-fifty. A lot, but it’s got the biggest yard on the kulldasack. Here, Kelly, you dropped your sweater.”

I steal one more glimpse as they approach the road. The father carries the baby, and as the daughter pulls on the sweater she’d dropped, she stops and gazes right at me for a minute. Then her mother calls back to her and she hurries after them. The sweater’s white and fluffy, ESPRIT on the back, the E three horizontal lines like Morse code. The brand rich citizen girls wear.

I wonder what Kelly would say if she saw where I live. Six people in one small van? No toilet, no shower? Outsiders never see our Gull clearly.

A roach coach—that’s what some of them call her, because she used to be a lunch truck. When I was little, and someone was laughing at us, our van and our clothes, I’d asked Mama, “Why don’t those people like us?”

“Because they trudge and we glide,” she’d whispered.

I must have seemed confused because she knelt and looked me right in the eyes, cupping my face in her soft hands. “We glide, Little Seal. We get to live how we want. Those others, they’re stuck. We glide.”

The Gull is battered and she used to be a roach coach, but she glides. If a town doesn’t make us happy, if the people are nosy or the break is bad or cops knock on the window too much, we glide away. Like a gull sailing on the wind.

***

Late that night, settled into our hammocks, the twins compare stories. Everyone seems to admire the vanner called Jaws, the one who called me Duchess, but Mag knows a secret about him.

“That board on Jaws’s VW? With half the nose gone? Jaws was telling this kid in line today how it’s from one dawn when he surfed Trestles alone. And he looks down and sees a gray shadow. Great white…twenty feet. But he keeps his cool.” Mag growls, imitating Jaws. “‘Every muscle in my body knew if I wiped out, I was dead. Two hundred pounds of red chum.’”

I envision the long, pearly gray shadow and shiver.

Mag lowers his voice. “‘And then…’”

I lean half out of my hammock, intent on Mag’s face.

“‘Crunch!’” Mag claps his arms together and Griff and I nearly tumble from our hammocks. When we’re done laughing Mag goes on. “Except it’s a lie. He cut the board himself , with an old bear trap.”

“No!” Griff and I shout, as disgusted as we are amused. Vanners are supposed to be above that. Trying to impress people with props—that chomped-out board is no different from a citizen’s ESPRIT sweater or BMW hood ornament.

“It’s true. Apparently, he stole some antique bear trap from Big Bear Lodge. Years ago.”

“Why would you ruin a perfectly good board for a story?” Griff is genuinely mystified.

“I have no idea,” Mag says. “But Big Bear sounds cool. We should try snowboarding someday. I heard you can get work in those mountain towns, easy. Two years…”

Two years until they turn eighteen and Cap might let them work.

I let their talk wash over me as I pull my sleeping bag up to my neck. It’s cozy, here with my brothers, listening to their funny stories, the wind off the water rocking us back and forth in our hammocks.

What a day it’s been. I picture the ridiculous vanner Jaws, cutting his board and concocting his boast. I think of citizen Kelly and her family in their denim and white, and the photographer who’d stood on a trash can to get the perfect record of their lives.

I wonder what their pictures will look like, what wall they will hang on, at their house on the kulldasack.

“What’s a kulldasack, Griff?” I ask.

“Cul-de-sac,” he explains, spelling it. “It means expensive houses on a dead-end street.”

Mag adds, echoing Cap, “Dead-end lives.”

As I’m drifting off, I picture Kelly from today. I raise my hands like her family’s photographer, steadying his camera.

Click , I think, crooking my index finger in the dark as I sway in the hammock. I try to recapture the look on her face when she stared at me.

Had it been scorn, or longing?