Dave Eggers: How We Are Hungry

There were dozens of surfers out already, ten just in front of them, another ten a few hundred yards to the right. The waves were small, with children playing in the shallows. Rocks to the left, body boarders close to shore. Pilar rubbed lotion on Hand’s back and he did hers. Look at him, she thought. His face is strong. What would a man do, she wondered, without a chin! The skin on his back was taut and smooth. His neck aquiline, if that were possible. There was, she felt, a world full of beautiful future leaders, each with a thousand fulfillable promises, in Hand’s neck.

Pilar couldn’t surf well. She could paddle. She could lie on a board and balance and lay her face on its smooth cool wet fiberglass surface and rest. She was good there. And when the waves came she could do a few things. She could get up. She could stand, turn a little (only to the right), and keep herself steady for a few seconds.

But everything closer to shore for her, this day, was more difficult. She worried if she was holding the board correctly. She worried if when she drew the rented board from the rack, she did so correctly. She wondered if she was supposed to carry the board with its slight concavity out, away from her hip, or toward it. She worried if she should attach the Velcro ankle strap, which was in turn attached to the board and prevents the board from flying away after surfer and board fail, while in the surf shop area, once she hit sand, or when her ankles were wet with water. She didn’t know if the board, when not in use, should be set upon the sand bottom-fin up, or down. She was concerned that if she did any of these things wrong she would be laughed at or pointed at and removed.

So she watched. She watched when others rented their boards to see how they drew them from the rack. She watched to see how they held them, carried them, when they strapped on their ankle bungees. And she did as they did, even though, as often as not, they didn’t know either. Everyone was an amateur, everyone pretending at grace — that’s why they were renting boards and did not own them, and that’s why they were surfing here, at Alta, where the waves were small and forgiving and the water was warm, like the inside of a plum.

GOD: I own you like I own the caves.

THE OCEAN: Not a chance. No comparison.

GOD: I made you. I could tame you.

THE OCEAN: At one time, maybe. But not now.

GOD: I will come to you, freeze you, break you.

THE OCEAN: I will spread myself like wings. I am a billion tiny feathers. You have no idea what’s happened to me.

Pilar and Hand walked into the water, same temperature as the air, and Hand bent himself in half, dropping his face in the foam and coming up headsoaked. He pushed the hair back from his face and looked at Pilar and Pilar knew that some people, implausibly, look better wet.

“The water’s so warm,” she said.

“It’s the greatest water I know,” he said.

They paddled out past the breaks. The waves were not large but the process was more tiring than she had remembered. She was knocked back six times and by the time they were on flat water again she was exhausted, her triceps aching, shuffling their feet, children in museums.

Pilar and Hand were straddling their boards, watching the horizon for coming waves.

A good swell came, five feet high, and with two quick strong strokes Hand was up. Pilar watched him depart for the beach. From behind, it looked like he was riding a very fast escalator. Or a conveyor belt. A conveyor belt being chased by a wave. From behind she saw only the round of the wave’s top, and this obscured Hand’s lower half. She was watching and he was going and going. He had a nice longboard stance, standing straight up, knees only slightly bent, leaning back, his whole frame one perfect diagonal line.

Then he was back, paddling quickly, smiling. He settled next to her and sat up on his board.

“That was nice,” he said.

“It looked nice,” she said.

Pilar liked what he had done, but for the time being she was content to sit. Or even to lie down. She had been in this town for half a day, awake this morning for an hour, and was prepared to do more resting, even if it was here, on the water. She stretched out on the board, resting her cheek on its wet cool creamy white, the wax, sand-encrusted, rough on her face. The water came over the board gently and kissed her. It said shuckashucka and it kissed her. She could sleep here. She could probably live here, on this board, her shoulders burning. There was no difference between resting her face here and resting her face on her mother’s stomach when she was younger, no difference between feeling her breasts flattened against the board and feeling these breasts flattened against the backs of men. She liked to sleep that way, with men on their stomachs and her breasts on their back. It never worked — she never actually fell asleep in this position, but she liked to try.

With one eye she could see Hand, still upright, scanning. To the right of the beach, to the far right, a mountain, the color of heather, lay like a broken body.

“Are you going to take one of these or what?” Hand asked before dunking his head into the sea, coming up again so good, a mannequin’s perfect head soaked in cooking oil.

“Right. Sorry,” she said.

“Do you need a push?”

“Ha. Yes. Ha.”

She had to try. She sat up again. They waited, both straddling, watching the blue horizon for a bump.

A bump was on its way.

“Take this one,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

She turned the board and laid her chest on it and began paddling. Three strokes and she was at the same speed. She let up and allowed the wave to overtake her. The wave came with the crackle of crumpling paper. She and her board rose above the land, one foot, three feet, five. The water brought her into its curved glass and she paddled harder as it drew her up and sharpened itself under her. Then two more strong strokes, both arms at once, and she descended. She knew the descending was key. That if she was not fast enough or her timing was off, the wave would speed below her and she would watch it leave, very much like watching the shrinking back of a missed bus. But if she were fast, or pushed at the right time, she would go down into it, and her board would speed up quickly, become a car, and she would jump to her feet and the board would become solid like a girder of steel, cream-colored, smooth, and doublewide.

This wave she took. The board was strong, she jumped up, was standing and traveling toward shore — she had gotten on the bus. Beneath her was all bedlam, foam and noise, the rush of white pavement. She had one moment of rapture — up! standing! look at the sun, the mountains like a body reclining or broken — and then she knew she had work to do. The wave was crashing from her right and she knew she only had a second if she didn’t try to turn left, to ride the break. If she made the turn she could go for a minute, a full minute maybe, just stand and stand and stand. She had seen people ride these longboards for minutes, just standing, walking up and back, strolling — the best surfers could join their hands behind their backs and stroll up and back, up and back, considering the issues of the day, so sturdy was a longboard on a good wave, they could set up a nice chair and a rug and sit in front of the fire—

She wanted to turn left, to follow the still-curved glass away from the mulching glass, and so she leaned back a little, she weighted her ankles into the board’s left side, pushing its edge slightly—

It was done. The board was behind her, gone. She dove into the foam and was under. Her ears exploded with the sound of underwater. It was dark and all was violence. She shot up and surfaced in time to see the board, wanting to be free but attached to her ankle, rearing, bucking straight into the sky before it fell again and rested into the now-calm sea of blue-green gel.