Surfing Detective 02 - Wipeout

passed
. Phew!
    Craning my neck back, I watched the enormous white lip forming that would soon pound the bay. I was far enough off on the wave’s broad shoulder to observe the monster crest and to see Cousin Alika turn, stroke just twice, then drop down the massive face. Alika crouched near the back of his yellow gun and spread his arms wide, like one of those ants I had imagined earlier clinging to a toothpick. His almost vertical drop looked impossible.
Impossible!
The Hawaiian Superman went anyway. I shook my head. No fear.
    “Boooom!”
The lip cracked like a thunderbolt. Alika and the jade mountain swept past, leaving only the gauzy lace of blown-back foam.
    But there was no time to gaze. The second mountain was coming fast. I felt it rising underneath me. I paddled hard. But not hard enough. I couldn’t scratch over the top. Suddenly I found myself gazing down—straight down—a sheer cliff with only one way to go.
    I swung my board around into a takeoff position. Thoughts raced through my mind:
feet wide . . . stance low . . . arms spread . . . stay back on the board . . . Holy . . . !

Six

    “Kai, brah,” Alika paddled back from his ride wearing a million-dollar smile. “Why you let da bes’ one go by?”
    I shrugged. “I took da nex’ one.”
    Alika glared at me in apparent disbelief.
    “It da truth, brah. Da board drop so fas’—
Ho!
—almos’ pitch me off.”
    It
was
the truth. The lime green gun had dropped down that steep face like the bottom fell out, me barely hanging on. In only seconds I had cranked my turn and, just like that, the ride was over.
    “Hana hou!”
my cousin brightened. “Again, brah, again!”
    “Nah, let’s go to Hale‘iwa and find your frien’, Ham. Ask ‘em ‘bout da Christmas Eve wipeout.”
    Alika frowned.
    “I goin’ buy lunch,” I offered hopefully.
    “Laytahs.”
    Alika stroked out again into those jade cliffs and soon he took another impossible drop. And then another. And another.

    It was afternoon before I finally coaxed my Hawaiian cousin out of the water. Luckily when we arrived at Paradise Sandwich Bar in Hale‘iwa, Mapuna’s friend Ham was still there.
    “Da
haole
guy? He take off too late. Wen’ over da falls.” Ham spoke to us through the order window as he stacked a deli-style pastrami for Alika, and a
mahi
sandwich for me. Polynesian tattoos covered Ham’s dark brown arms, and his chiseled face was crowned by sun-bleached dreadlocks. Alika told me Ham had battled drugs and lost, then wound up at “Oh-Triple-C,” the O‘ahu Community Correctional Center in Kalihi, and then in rehab. Struggling to stay clean, he now built sandwiches, surfed, and reported weekly to his parole officer.
    “Da red stripe board shot in da air,
way high,”
Ham explained as his fingers danced over the Kaiser roll that was Alika’s lunch. “Maybe twenty, t’irty feet—twirling, spinning, brah.”
    Behind Ham I could see a chrome carousel whirling a half dozen sandwich orders, slips waving like flags in the breeze. Ham watched over my
mahi
sizzling on the grill, then stuck his hand in a plastic container of pickles.
    “You like pickles, Alika?” Ham raised his eyes to my cousin.
    “Everyt’ing, brah. Da works!”
    “So da California surfer’s leash snap, or what?” I asked Ham as he flipped my fish fillet and piled pickles and onions and lettuce on Alika’s sandwich.
    “Fo’ sure. Was not hooked to da board anymo’. No way could fly dat high.”
    “You spot him aftah da wipeout?”
    “Nah,
da buggah
gone. Undah da water. Nobody in da lineup see him. Was late, brah, aftah sunset.” Ham shrugged his shoulders, tattoos rippling over his brown biceps.
    After downing our sandwiches, Alika and I cruised every surf shop in Hale‘iwa, trying to track down Corky’s missing board and the Sunset Beach woman who had found it. Tropical Rush, Strong Current, Surf n’ Sea, again, and all the rest. I questioned everyone I could, but nobody knew much about Corky, other than his well-publicized wipeout. One person did recall seeing the California surfer showboating through Hale‘iwa in a BMW convertible. Another mentioned a girlfriend.
    “Girlfriend?” I was curious. “Was she blonde and pregnant?” Summer had told me she didn’t accompany her husband to Hawai‘i, but maybe that wasn’t the full story.
    “No, this lady had red hair,” I was told. “And she didn’t look pregnant.”
    Was Corky pulling the wool over Summer’s eyes, stepping