Wave Warrior (7 page)

Then the wave sectioned and it was like the fist of God came down on his head. Hard.

Gorbie was down. Wisely, he dove deep.

His board surfaced first—very close to shore. But no Gorbie.

“His leash snapped,” I heard someone yell. “He's screwed.”

I walked closer to the edge of the headland. Gorbie's board was banging around on the rocks. I studied the churning white water farther out.

That's when somebody saw him. And pointed. Gorbie had tried to swim out of the impact zone and found himself in the river current. He was savvy, though. He was trying to swim across it, not against it. The only problem was that he kept getting beaten back by incoming waves that were smacking him over and over. Gorbie was at the mercy of the waves pushing in and the current pulling him straight out to sea. He wouldn't be able to get out to deeper water and he wouldn't be able to get to shore.

Tara took out her cell phone and dialed 9-1-1. She understood that this was a true emergency.

“The Zodiac will never get here in time,” I said. “I'm not even sure the firehouse rescue team can handle anything like this.”

“So what do we do? Stand here and do nothing?”

Tara got an operator and began to explain the situation.

I saw a couple of other guys pull up their wet suits. Weed and Tim. Right, I was thinking. Two surfers who had just toked up, heading out to sea on their shortboards. No way could they be of any help.

I was staring hard at the river current, the waves and the tiny dot that was Gorbie's head as he tried to stay above water. Almost unconsciously, I started to put on my wet suit, still looking out to sea. That's when I realized there was a small window between the killer sets of waves. Twelve waves and then a short break of maybe three minutes. Enough to get myself in the river current and paddle like hell.

When Tara looked back at me, I was already running down the hill, my longboard under my arm. She yelled, but I couldn't
understand her words. I didn't have to. She didn't want me to go.

As I stumbled across the boulders at the base of the hill, I saw the lull I was looking for. Now or never. I threw myself into the foamy water and began paddling like crazy. I was totally freaked at how cold the water was. This was even worse for Gorbie. If he was getting walloped over and over, he'd lose his strength pretty quickly.

I got to my knees as Ray had instructed me and knee-paddled straight into the river current and then with it, digging with deep powerful strokes. Here at water level, I couldn't see Gorbie anywhere.

I had never been this scared before. My body was shaking. From the cold or fear, I didn't know. I just kept my head down and I paddled.

When the next set of waves arrived, I saw a huge dark mass of water coming my way. I watched in terror as it grew bigger and bigger. I prayed that I could paddle over it.

I made it. Just barely.

And then there was another.

And another.

I shifted farther into the deep water and found the river current again and worked with it. Gorbie had to be out here somewhere. The current wouldn't let him be anywhere else. When I could stop paddling for the briefest break, I looked back toward the headland. The other surfers had not made it through the shore break. I saw a couple more scrambling down the hill. All shortboarders. But they were at a disadvantage. I still couldn't see Gorbie anywhere.

And then I saw Tara on the headland, waving and pointing. When I finally saw Gorbie, he was farther out than I would have thought. The river was that powerful. He was being pulled toward a rocky shoal. The waves were crashing on the shallow reef with a terrible force. It had once been called “the Graveyard” because so many ships had wrecked there. I had to get to Gorbie. Soon.

It was all about strength, pacing, breathing, paddling. I was Gorbie's only hope. And I didn't even like the guy. I was really scared. I wondered why I was out there.

That's when I heard Ray's voice. Inside my head.
You are here because you can do this,
he said.

Do what? I was thinking. What would I do if I could even get to Gorbie?

Move past the fear. Don't ignore it. Stay focused.

I could barely breathe. I realized that I had to paddle slowly. I needed to find Gorbie but I needed to conserve energy. And I needed to quell the doubt rising within me.

I could hear sirens in the distance. Somewhere there would be rescuers with a Zodiac. But could they even get through the waves to get here?

And then I saw Gorbie. Not struggling, but floating. His head was above the water, but he had no strength left in him. He was being pulled close to the shoal now. It was only a matter of time.

Slow and steady. My breathing came back. My lungs stopped aching. A calming voice in my head now.
Work with the sea. Don't fight it
. I kept paddling.

I turned to look back at the land. I was
shocked to see how far out to sea I was. But I kept paddling. And that's when I heard Gorbie's feeble cry. It wasn't a word I could make out. But it didn't matter. I realized that, even on my longboard, even if I could get him, we were not going to make it ashore. What would I do?

And then I had him. He couldn't talk. He could barely hang on. He didn't have any gloves on and his hands were blue. I got in the water and shoved him up onto my board.

It was all pretty much slow motion. A weird kind of calm determination came over me. I had this lump of a half-dead surfer on my board. There was no way I could paddle him ashore. Gorbie was trying to hang on, lying on top, and I had to climb up half on top of him, get the nose of the board up and paddle. I had to get away from the pounding white death of the shoal, of the Graveyard.

And that meant there was only one place to go. Out to sea.

The farther from shore we got, the deeper the water. Massive swells passed under us, but
none were breaking. I realized that everything was out of my hands. For now, we were alive. Gorbie tried to say something about heading ashore.

“Save your breath, bro. If we head back in there, we die.”

“What then?”

“We wait. We do nothing.” And then I added something weird. “Warrior mode,” I said. “Save our strength and wait.”

The Zodiac failed to blast through the walls of incoming water. The boat swamped and, fortunately for all, the men were washed back ashore.

Forty minutes later, after I had tried to reassure a frightened and freezing Gorbie, a search-and-rescue helicopter appeared on the horizon. Within minutes it was overhead.

The props churned up the sea, and two rescue divers dropped into the water beside us. I had been amazingly calm up to that point.

But right then I was suddenly scared to death. The rescuers harnessed Gorbie first and hauled him aloft.

And then it was my turn. The second diver took a knife and cut my leash at the last second as I was being hauled up.

Inside the chopper—an old Sea King—I was more scared than ever. “Just stay calm,” said the diver who had pulled me to safety.

And then I said the strangest thing.

“What about my board?”

“I'm afraid you're going to have to let that go.”

The waves subsided in a couple of days. I was glad it was over. I knew it would take a while for me to want to surf again. But I knew I would. The ocean could be deadly here, but it could be kind as well. I decided to socialize with the sea on the kinder days from then on.

I had thought about the whole ordeal, and I can't say it made a lot of sense to me. In fact, I didn't like talking about it or thinking about it. But Tara brought a navigational chart to my house and spread it out on the kitchen table a couple of days after the near tragedy.

“It shows all the currents along the shore here.”

“So?”

“So, given the waves and the wind direction the last few days...and the currents, my guess is that your board—Ray's old board that he gave you—would've come ashore right about there.”

She pointed to a headland farther east. The Farm. Nirvana Farm.

“No way,” I said.

She just shrugged.

So we went to the Farm and we searched. There was no surfboard.

But we went back the next day and hiked farther along the coastline.

On the third day we found it—dinged with a broken fin and wedged between some rocks and driftwood. But in one piece. I picked it up and carried it home.

Mickey D actually barked when he saw the board, and I got out some fiberglass and sandpaper to begin my repairs.

As the days grew colder and the winds began to howl outside, I started thinking
that this board and I had a few more rides coming our way. I kept thinking that it was time I started listening to all my teachers. Not just Ray. But Tara and the Atlantic Ocean itself and even that new voice within me—my own inner voice that had grown from a whimper to a roar.

Lesley Choyce lives and surfs at Lawrencetown Beach in Nova Scotia. He is the author of two other Orca Soundings novels—
Thunderbowl and Refuge Cove—and Sudden Impact
, an Orca Currents novel.