Norman Ollestad - Crazy for the Storm

You got guts, kid, he said as he backed the car up.

Thanks for letting me go, I said.

It would be a lot easier if you didn’t lie, Norman.

I know, I said. And it would be a lot easier if you didn’t drink.

His eyes slanted hard and one side of his mouth curved.

What can I say, he said. You’re right. When you’re right you’re right.

I watched the waves trail away from us below the highway.

Nick stopped drinking, going cold turkey, and soon afterward Grandma Ollestad died. Nick drove the three of us to her funeral. The service was in the same little church as my dad’s funeral, about an hour away from the Palisades. Everyone spoke about how kind and giving and full of vitality Grandma had been and they mentioned my dad sometimes and I winced at the thought of him watching me these days, so spiteful and so blind to the beauty all around. As if he were hovering overhead, I told him that I was getting better. Did you see me surfing the other day?

On the way home from the funeral I kept thinking about Grandpa. He stood with a very straight back and when everybody gathered outside the church he listened carefully to each consoling relative. He only spoke a couple of times and his words were concise and poetic—like music or colors that send you upward. I thought about how his eyes were the same blue starbursts as my dad’s and as mine and I thought about how my dad would be very saddened by Grandma’s death but not paralyzed by the grief, and I imagined him playing guitar for everyone outside the church.

We were driving down the freeway, Nick at the wheel, and I started to compare my dad’s fluidity to Nick’s jerky body language. Nick wrestled with each social interaction and at the funeral he sighed a lot and belted out hardened proclamations about death and life and so on. He grated against things, in a fever, compared to how I imagined my dad acting—an enchanter. Nick’s pinched red face and Dad’s wide smile juxtaposed in my mind.

As we came through the McClure tunnel onto the Coast Highway Nick spoke about being a good person, responsibility, hard work and honesty. He used words like colossal and catastrophic as if we were about to go off to war and this was our pep talk. Instead we arrived in the sleepy Palisades on a windless, cloudless Saturday afternoon.

I wandered down the stairs lost in my observations and comparisons and saw the ocean lined with swells stacked to the horizon. Grandpa, Eleanor and Lee were on their way over and I was afraid to ask if I could go surfing.

The next day I hung out with Grandpa over at Eleanor’s house and nobody talked much.

Then in the afternoon Grandpa said, I have to fix the roof, and got in his car and drove back to Vallarta.

The following weekend I was doing my chores around the house and I noticed the waves picking up. I waited another hour to make sure the swells were not an anomaly. When they kept getting bigger and bigger I decided to take the 3:30 bus down to Topanga Beach. Nick and my mom had gone out to run errands and before they had left Nick reminded me that Sunny had been chasing coyotes into the canyon, which was a trap, and that our new policy was to put her inside or on the upstairs porch in the afternoon before it got dark so she wouldn’t get lured into the coyotes’ ambush.

No problem, I had said.

I reminded myself to put her inside while I made a melted cheese sandwich and Rolloff called from the phone booth at Topanga and said, It’s goin’ off the Richter. I got so excited that I just grabbed my gear and ran to the bus stop, inundated with visions of my board stabbing the lip and cutbacks and me riding inside a tube.

When I stepped off the bus a four-wave set was reeling in. The legends were in the water and I watched them tear it up while I slipped into my suit. Rolloff was perched on the lower deck of the lifeguard station and he asked me where I had been and I told him about my grandma’s funeral. He nodded and changed the subject. As I zipped up I noticed Benji staring at me. He was sitting by the lone palm tree with a few of his buddies. I ignored his stare and Rolloff said that Benji was talking shit about how he was going to snake me.

Watch out, said Rolloff.

I shrugged and told myself that the only thing that mattered was to ride the waves and avoid the bullshit.

I’m just here to have fun, I said to Rolloff.

That’s cool, said Rolloff.

I concentrated on the waves and how they were breaking and where I would take off and I ignored Benji’s stinkeye. I strolled to the point and dropped onto my board, ducking under a little insider. A layer of sorrow wiped right off me and it seemed like I could see for a thousand miles. I sat with the legend pack on the point and they asked me where I had been. I told them.

You’ve had a rough go, said Shane.

I shrugged.

Norm, he said. Just hang in there. It’ll turn around.

I nodded.

I surfed for an hour and it was hard to get waves with all the heavy boyz out. Finally Shane went in and that opened up a bit more space. I was eager to snag a set wave and I could feel the frustration darting inside me. Something menacing was rising up and it seemed like everything I had hoped to let go of was surging back and that made me desperate to burn it up. Suddenly I really wanted to shred a wave in front of Benji and his crew.

I heard somebody calling my name from the bluff. I squinted and recognized Nick’s body language. He had one hand on his hip and the other waved me in.

Get your ass in here, Norman, he yelled.

I saw the crew on the beach turn from me to Nick then back to me.

Wanting to minimize the embarrassing drama I paddled right in.

Busted, said Benji with a smile when I passed him.

Most of the locals knew Nick from the old days and as I gathered my shorts, shirt and flip-flops they said things like He looks agro. Tell Nick to take a ’lude .

I meekly waved good-bye to the surf crew and hauled my gear up the dirt trail.

Nick had both hands on his hips when I reached the top.

Do you think we’re all here to clean up your fucking messes? he said.

No, I said.

He jabbed his finger into my breastbone.

You do not exist at the center of the universe, he said, punctuating some words by jabbing harder.

I know, I said.

No you don’t. You’re a fucking self-centered thankless little shit.

I shook my head.

No I’m not, I said.

Yes you are, Norman. Yes you are.

What did I do? I yelled at him.

You left Sunshine out.

Oh shit. Is she okay?

That’s beside the point. The point is she could be dead by now. Eaten alive by those fucking coyotes. You don’t give a shit about her or about anything but yourself.

That’s not true, I said.

Yes it is.

No it’s not. I just got so stoked that I forgot.

That’s a bullshit excuse, Norman.

He pressed his nose against my nose. The whites of his eyes were mucus yellow. I recognized that he wanted to hit me and punish me and make me squirm. In that moment I envisioned myself much older and I was screaming and hell-bent, fighting a bunch of angry faces, eager to punish them like Nick wanted to punish me. When I came out of this vision and saw him again I was merely fascinated by his rage. What else could Nick do but fight all those demons, I thought, and try to slay them before they sucked him into their darkness?

I slapped his finger off my chest and stepped back. He snickered at my retreat.

I never want to become you, I declared to myself.

Tears welled from a hot cavern in my chest and washed him out of sight. I moved away and followed my feet. When I looked up I was walking along the bluff away from the point toward the bus stop. I held my board tight to my ribs and I cried and watched the waves roll into the cove. I wanted to dive into those long bending swells. As I imagined my escape the rage and pain converged with the shimmering light blooming off the water. It all blended into one, like rivers entwining. This invisible current swept me up and it felt right to go with it.