Minesweeper Read online

  Fine by me.

  It was about time for me to surface anyway. I wasn’t finding any conclusive evidence to the surf’s mood today, and I had reached just about my limit. It was one of my prouder claims, that after all my time in the water the past few years, I could now dive and stay under for nearly three minutes. I had no watch on—I was dying to get a proper diver’s watch someday—but my lungs were reading about two minutes fifty.

  When I broke the surface, breaching like a tiny whale, I found the surf was surprisingly feisty again. I’d sensed none of this from beneath, which was rare. I just couldn’t quite get a handle on things today, and so it seemed prudent to clear out. I wasn’t superstitious, like a lot of surfers were, but I wasn’t silly, either. And I had respect.

  I swam back, around the rock reef, steaming across the last stretch of wave water, then beached myself and got to my feet. I went to collect my board.

  But my board was not available for collection.

  There was still nobody else on the beach. I looked up and down the waterline, then up and down the shallows, then up and down the not-so-shallows in case the tide had sucked my board back. Nothing doing. The seagulls started, on cue, to laugh at me again. They were so focused on it that I briefly thought they may have been involved in the disappearance.

  Of course, that was crazy. But that was how quickly I was becoming frantic over this. My board had become my best friend over the last couple of years, and the thought of losing it made me just as edgy as having it made me relaxed.

  The truth, it turned out, was even crazier than the delusion. Seagulls famously never did anything helpful for anybody, but here they were, circling and squawking over me, then over the water in a more or less straight shot in front of me, then to another point on the horizon where they circled once more over something.

  That something was a surfboard. Quite possibly my surfboard, since there was no one else in the vicinity. Except that there was a somebody out there. Sitting on the board, apparently awaiting waves to catch.

  I sprinted back into the water and launched myself like a torpedo. Swimming so hard and fast I swear I must have been making outboard motor noises, I crashed straight through several oncoming waves. When I finally emerged on the far side of the break, I started screaming at the guy.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  He paused, as if he had to translate my words in his head.

  “I think I’m floating.”

  I was already angrier.

  “But what are you floating on?”

  He looked downward. Then back up at me. “A surfboard.”

  Swimming and shouting simultaneously is harder than you might think. But I tore into both with everything I had.

  “Not a surfboard,” I hollered. “My surfboard!”

  He bobbed up and down on the swells, just another buoy in the bay. “Is it?”

  “Yes!”

  “’Cause I just found it. It was right over there—”

  “I know where it was,” I bellowed, “because I left it there.”

  “Oh,” he said calmly as I approached the board—my board. “Thanks.”

  “No, not thanks,” I said, grabbing on to the board and hoisting myself onto it so that the guy and I were sitting, squared up, our knees bumping. “Not thanks. And not welcome. If you knew anything about surfing, you’d know you do not ever touch another person’s board. There’s no finding a board lying on the beach, there’s just stealing a board from the beach.”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, trying to calm me down with his soothing surfer tone. “Okay, so I didn’t find it. But I didn’t steal it, either. I just borrowed it. I knew where you were the whole time. I saw you go in the water. I knew you’d be back. Unless you drowned under there or something. In which case you wouldn’t have any need for a surfboard. Waste not, want not, right?”

  “No way were you on the beach when I went in,” I said.

  “Um, I think I was.”

  “I looked all over, and I didn’t see you at all. I’d never miss something like that.”

  He shrugged. “Well, you missed me. And hey, you stayed under a really long time. You some kind of merman or something?”

  I was still tense, and my voice and body language were showing it. There we were, bobbing on the surface of the great Pacific, two guys—two total strangers—sitting face-to-face on one board. One sacred board, and I was not making that up. You do not mess with another surfer’s stuff. Everybody who isn’t a jerk or a knucklehead knows that.

  “So,” I said, “are you a jerk or a knucklehead?”

  This didn’t appear to bother him as much as I’d hoped it would.

  “Depends on who you ask,” he said.

  “I’m asking you,” I said, probably unnecessarily. This whole episode was riling me up something fierce. More than I would have expected it to. The sacred nature of surfing rules is real and meaningful, but I didn’t like to think of myself as one of those line-in-the-sand kind of guys. Normally I was pretty slow to anger, so this feeling, this day, was kind of surprising me. And the fact that I was caught so off guard was putting me even more on edge.

  “Then I’m gonna go with knucklehead,” the guy said cheerily.

  Which of course just made me more irritated. I’d had enough.

  He was fairly fit, his pectorals looking like they were carved out of brown slate. And when I jabbed a finger into one of them, that’s what it felt like, too.

  “Get off my board,” I growled.

  He got visibly less cheery. Not angry, but not friendly, either.

  “I was planning on riding it back in,” he said evenly. “Then you can have it back. Funny thing is, I don’t much like swimming. Strange, right, for a surf—”

  Couldn’t tell if he saw it coming. I couldn’t have cared less, either. Because he should have.

  With a quick and snappy open-hand swat, I belted him sideways. He started falling over to his right, then caught himself by catching me. He clamped on to both my elbows and dragged me awkwardly down into the water with him.

  With the water still so clear, I got a good look at him as we exchanged our first submerged kicks and punches. He tried the “hands up, let’s stop” gesture quickly enough to boost my confidence tremendously. It was already fairly high, since one of the last things he’d said up topside was how he wasn’t big on swimming. And I, apparently, was a merman.

  I took several more shots through his defenses, but with it being underwater and all, it was less like punching and more like pushing with fists.

  This went on for what seemed like a long time but couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. Time itself goes slower when you’re submerged. But we both knew how this was going to end, slate pecs or no slate pecs. It could have been Rocky Marciano grappling with me down there; nobody was going to outlast me underwater.

  The guy was well aware of it, too. He might have been a knucklehead, but he wasn’t stupid. He’d very quickly depleted his oxygen by flailing around and trying to tie me up. But I just bopped him several times on the nose, the way they say you should defend yourself against a shark. Finally, he made his move. He got both hands on top of my head and shoved me downward. Then he got his feet on my shoulders and with one great kick managed to send me toward the bottom while propelling himself up to the top.

  At first I reacted with fury, paddling madly toward his kicking feet, hoping to pull him back into the fray.

  Then I thought: No, I’ll show him. I stopped swimming altogether. I just let myself go, drifting casually toward the surface. I was in no hurry to suck in air like he was, and in every hurry to show that I didn’t need to. If he would have muscles, I would have lungs.

  I was even enjoying the view, as I came within about six feet of the surface. I watched him flailing around, toward my board, then clamber up onto it. Very satisfying to me.

  Until he started windmilling, and the board started skimming toward shore. Then it scooted really quickly, and I r
aced to the surface.

  I was just in time to catch him catching it, a big horse-necked beauty of a curling wave. He hit it just right, too, riding the crest, zigging along it until zagging was required to extend the ride. He had great control, despite the wave being big and powerful and my board being built more for speed than control.

  I watched, first in fury, then eventually with envy, as the guy on my board enjoyed a wave like I hadn’t enjoyed in months. He was good, and aware of it.

  So he was a knucklehead and a jerk.

  It was one of the longest swims of my life. And I’d been in long-distance swimming competitions.

  “I can’t help thinking we’ve met someplace before,” the guy said as I crawled out of the surf like the last survivor of a shipwreck. He was sitting cross-legged in the sand, with my board lying right alongside him like a loyal dog. Traitor board.

  “Go ahead,” I said, “enjoy your moment. You earned it.”

  “I will. And I did.” No taking the high road for this guy.

  “Thought you’d have skedaddled before I got out,” I said.

  “Well,” he said, “I thought about it, but then I figured that would be rude, after you loaned me your rig and everything. Also, I’ve had nothing but laughs since I met you. How many people can you say that about?”

  I did not respond to that in any way.

  I sat down in the sand next to him, looking out at the ocean and the decent roll of the waves.

  “What’s your name?” he asked me after a few peaceful minutes.

  I answered his simple, straightforward question the same way I would have when I was six. “What’s your name?”

  “Duke,” he said, making it easy. Making me look stupid. Which is also easy.

  “Fergus,” I said finally.

  “Huh?” Duke said.

  “Fergus. That’s my name.”

  “Oh. Caught me off guard there. Fergus. Sounds like the kind of thing you say after somebody sneezes.”

  I rose slowly, mightily, to my feet. “You want to go again?” I said, fists balled at my sides, towering over him.

  He smiled up at me, as pleased as if I’d just offered him a bite of my candy apple.

  “Okay, if you insist,” he said. “But we ain’t in the water anymore, Fergus. And this is a United States Marine you’re calling to arms.” He held his hands out in front of him the way you would if you were about to commence playing the piano. They were big. Gnarled. Not piano hands.

  “I suppose I could be a little friendlier,” I said, thinking better of it, and corkscrewed artfully back into my seat. I took his great right paw into my human-scaled hand and gave it a shake.

  “That’s the way,” Duke said, shaking enthusiastically. “And if you were friendlier, you might not be so friendless.”

  “What?” I said, letting his hand drop. “How do you … You don’t know that!”

  He raised his hands in phony surrender. “You’re right, you’re right, I don’t know. It’s just, you don’t seem to have many social skills.”

  Perhaps unwisely, I rose to my feet again. “You know, Duke, there will come a point where I’ll have to risk having you pound me into the sand …”

  Now he laughed out loud and clapped those major mitts together. The sound was like a rifle shot. It skimmed out across the water and probably didn’t stop until it reached Japan.

  “I gotta tell you,” he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me back down, “with comedy skills like those, it’s hard to believe you have no friends.”

  I turned sharply toward him. He shrank away from me like he was terrified. He wasn’t. But he wasn’t done, either.

  “Okay, I’ll do it,” he said with a pinch of mock desperation. “I’ll be your friend if you quit trying to fight me.”

  Even I could see a good deal when it was presented to me.

  “See, Duke, this is why I don’t usually bother having any friends. You all stink.”

  “Ha!” he said, punching me on the shoulder hard enough to tip me all the way over.

  When the next ten minutes went by without another word, I started thinking that we had already exhausted all conversational possibilities. But silence between people, I realized, could be its own sort of conversation.

  “Marines, huh?” I said, when I’d had my fill of it.

  “Yup. Stationed at Camp Pendleton just up the road. You local?”

  “Yeah. Born and raised in the boringest town on Earth, San Clemente.”

  “Ah, I’m sure it’s not that bad.”

  “It is. It’s so bad I’m already bored with talking about it. Where are you from?”

  “Hawaii.”

  I nearly jumped to my feet again, though this time for less combative reasons.

  “Hawaii?” I said. “I’ve been dying to go there for practically my whole life! It must be rotten to get stuck here after living in Hawaii.”

  “No.”

  “No? Why no?”

  “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful place. Every bit as nice as the postcards say. It’s not the island’s fault … It’s probably mine. A surfer’s paradise, as you may have heard.”

  “I surely have. That’s one reason I’ve been dying to go. I want to experience it for myself. Makaha, Waimea, those places are legendary!”

  “And their legends are well-earned. It is indeed a surfer’s paradise, if it wasn’t for one big drawback.”

  I kind of thought he might finish that thought on his own. But after a quiet minute or so I figured I was entitled to ask.

  “That drawback being … ?”

  “Surfers. Thing is, I love surf, love surfing. It’s surfers I can’t stand.”

  I couldn’t believe this. I felt like the last dodo coming across another dodo.

  “That’s exactly how I feel!” I said. “It’s like they think they own the whole world. Or at least one small, kind of fantastic corner of it. You’d think they would be happy enough to just be in such a great spot, doing such a great thing … But they seem so interested in making it watch me, watch me, like a bunch of peacocks. And being all possessive and territorial, as if the surf is something that can be owned by anybody.”

  “Exactly. And if you think it’s bad here, try to imagine how infested Hawaii is with those guys. That’s partly why I stole your board … I assumed you were one of them.”

  “I knew it!” I said. “I knew you had every intention to be a jerk.”

  “Guilty,” Duke said, kind of apologetic, kind of proud.

  “Okay, so, you joined the service to escape Hawaii? You’ve got to be the first guy ever to do that.”

  “No, no, you got it wrong. Since the war ended and they sent all the guys who did the dirty work home, military service is a cushy deal. There’s nobody left to fight, but plenty of bases that need to be staffed. And since they went and used up all the prime fighting-age population, they’ll take you as long as you have an inclination and a pulse. You get to see the world, develop a specialty … It can be a nice, safe living.”

  “I have a pulse,” I said. “But I have no such inclination. For one thing, my dad was killed in the war.”

  “So what? So was mine. I figure that’s just all the more reason they owe us an easy living in nice surroundings.”

  “Hmm,” I said. “I don’t think it’s healthy to go around thinking that anybody owes me anything. Especially just because my father died.”

  “Well, you should reconsider that thinking. Was your father a Marine?”

  “No.”

  “Navy? ’Cause you are a natural water baby.”

  “No. He was Army. Special Forces. Devil’s Brigade. Although he did die in the water. Part of a combined services operation.”

  “Well, you swim like some kind of natural amphibian. You should be headed toward one of the water services, for sure.”

  “I’m not headed anywhere, Duke. Didn’t the whole military just sort of shut down when the war ended?”

  “Nah, they didn’t shut i
t down. Reduced it in size, though. Still have to man bases all over the world. It’s a career now rather than an obligation. Plus the benefits. The Marine Corps is going to pay for college once I’m done.”

  “Well, good for you,” I said, winding down this segment of the Duke and Fergus show. “I should probably get going.” I stood and reached for my board, but Duke got there first, picked it up, and started walking toward the path to the parking lot.

  “You going this way?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but you don’t have to carry that.”

  “Consider it my bill. For renting your board.”

  I had just been about to take it from him, or at least insist he let me help, when I remembered his unauthorized rental.

  “Sure,” I said, following behind him up the path. “Why not?”

  When we had hiked the mile back to the parking area and I pointed out my car, Duke’s reaction was, “Really?”

  “Really,” I echoed. “What’s not to believe?”

  “It’s not disbelief. I’m impressed. I mean, it could certainly use a paint job. Are those suicide doors?”

  “Yup,” I said proudly. “And I can even top that. The original owner committed suicide, reportedly.”

  “Did the doors play any part in it?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Still, haunted truck. Sort of impressive.”

  I took the board off him and began strapping it in the bed. “It’s a good truck, anyway,” I said. But as I turned toward him again he’d already started down the footpath toward the beach. “Nice to meet you!” I called.

  He turned but kept walking backward. “Same to you.”

  “Guess I’ll see you around,” I said.

  “Guess you will,” he said. “Can’t miss me, really. Any time I’m off duty I’m probably here. Hiking the bluffs, walking the trails, bird-watching, body surfing …”

  “Then I guess you will be hard to miss,” I said.

  “So don’t try.” Then he signed off with an exaggeratedly big wave.