West of Jesus, page 10
1. The hero's mother is a royal virgin.
2. His father is a king and
3. often a near relative of the mother, but
4. the circumstances of his conception are unusual, and
5. he is also reputed to be the son of a god.
6. At birth an attempt is made, usually by his father or
maternal grandfather, to kill him, but
7. he is spirited away, and
8. reared by foster parents in a far country.
9. We are told nothing of his childhood, but
10. on reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future
kingdom.
11. After a victory over the king and/or giant, dragon, or
wild beast,
12. he marries a princess, often the daughter of his predecessor, and
13. becomes king.
14. For a time he reigns uneventfully and
15. prescribes laws but
16. later loses favor with the gods and/or his people and
17. is driven from the throne and the city, after which
18. he meets with a mysterious death
19. often at the top of a hill.
20. His children, if any, do not succeed him.
21. His body is not buried, but nevertheless
22. he has one or more holy sepulchres.
On Raglan's Scale, Oedipus scores the highest of any mythic heroes, with Theseus, Moses and King Arthur as close runners-up.
Robin Hood falls in the midrange for fictional characters, while Alexander the Great tops the list for historical figures. On Raglan's
Scale, the Conductor scores not at all—though this may have more to do with my lacking a clear picture of the roots of the Conductor's story or the evolving nature of our mythological needs or some combination thereof. Anyway, there's little chance that Lord Raglan knew much about surfing. And while the Conductor's
story was the technical reason for my trip, I was plenty keen to test myself on one of surfing's more fabled waves.
I was keen to test Raglan a few weeks shy of my thirty-seventh birthday, an age when my desire to be truly excellent at the sport of surfing was a desire that could easily be found on a scale a bit like Raglan's: twenty-two archetypal incidents that don't often happen to thirty-seven-year-old men. But the mythic is attractive because it straddles fact and fiction. And Raglan is a little of both.
It's a steep, walling wave, mostly beyond my ability, whose tiny take-off spot perches atop a shallow rock shelf where an error means getting smashed onto that reef or swept onto the boulders that rim the shore. There are usually a few pros in the water and a local population who knows every inch of that wave, which means the only way to be assured a ride is to sit deep and drop fast, and while those skills are within my realm of possibility, they are not there frequently. When we finally got to Raglan and found the wind howling and the ocean sloppy, I was more than happy to go get some lunch.
We went to the Tongue and Groove Cafe, which sat a few miles back down the road, near the middle of town. The patrons were a mixed bag, and the warm mango chicken panini was excellent, even the fifth or sixth or seventh time ordered. The floor was worn and wooden and stained a lustrous black, and the walls were covered in surf paraphernalia and tribal masks and the kinds of paintings often found mixed in among surf paraphernalia and tribal masks. There were old couches and new couches and tables that looked like they had once been lost at sea and rows of theater seats repurposed for casual dining. The Johns liked it too, but I think that ultimately my fondness was really simple nostalgia. I had lost ten years to rooms just like this one.
At the front counter, I stood beside a regal woman, tall and lean, with her brown hair pinned up beneath a white sunbonnet.
She wondered aloud if it was too early in the day to drink champagne. I thought it was never too early to drink champagne and told her so. She told me that her grandmother had left England and come to Raglan some sixty years ago to spend a few thousand dollars on a few plots of land in an attempt to find a better life. No one in the family had ever come to visit and few knew the events of that better life, but the grandmother had recently died and willed this woman those same plots of land. Less than an hour ago, a real estate agent had informed her that her land was now worth well over a million dollars.
"We make our own luck," she said, "unless someone else makes it for us." She ordered champagne and drank it happily. I waited for a cup of coffee and read a New Zealand surf guide, which described Raglan as an advanced wave for two reasons: "surfers still get mangled jumping off the rocks" and "the crowds." One way or another, I was going to need plenty of luck.
23
Charlie Young was in his late forties, built like a fireplug, with messy brown hair and a serious fondness for Jack Daniels. He grew up in California, a surfer, teaching the sport at the Mission Bay aquatic center in San Diego before becoming a contract negotiator for the Long Beach Longshoreman's Union. In 1998, he and his wife, Erin, came to New Zealand on vacation and decided to never go home again. Back in the States, she owned a restaurant. They sold it and had enough other money saved to buy a patch of land atop a hill overlooking the break at Raglan.
The Youngs started out small and expanded. Now they own over a hundred acres of land and operate the Raglan Surf School and a hotel of sorts. On the acres they had built a series of rental cottages with names like Dream Catcher and Spin Palace and, for those on a budget, the Karioi Lodge: a sprawling backpacker's hostel taken over nightly by busloads of hippies, surfers and other visitors wanting to sleep four to a room for fifteen bucks a pop. The center of the lodge was the two-room compound that served as a combination kitchen and dining room and nightclub. There was a long table and a dozen chairs and a couple of battered couches and a pool table in the far corner and an old television showing surf films with the sound always switched off and a stereo that was always switched on.
On the southern edge of the property, the Youngs had constructed a broad-beamed wooden A-frame that overlooked a swatch of Maori land that nestled the first of Raglan's fabled points, a surf break known as Indicators. There were wood floors and high ceilings and deep fireplaces and an upstairs bedroom reached by a curving staircase, the banister smooth and elegant, custom-made by a local shipbuilder. The place felt more like a ski chalet than a beach house, except for the surfboards that hung on all walls.
Many were collector's items, among those the original Bear board from the film Big Wednesday, arguably the most famous surfboard of all.
Big Wednesday is a surfer's film more than a surf film. It tells the story of three local wave riders, played by Gary Busey, Jan-Michael Vincent and William Katt, caught in the rude trajectory that was the Vietnam era. It's a coming-of-age story of problem marriages, problem wars and problem drinkers; of friendship and hardship, and of how the former may be the only known antidote for the latter. In the movie, Sam Melville plays Bear: spiritual guru, surf elder, board shaper, the living embodiment of the sport's old ways and the man who prophesizes "a swell so big it will wipe everything that came before it." A line that is both the surfer's version of the Taxi Driver favorite—"someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum from the streets"—and a much more interesting proposition altogether.
Two Bear boards were shaped for the film; one was later destroyed, the other given to Jan-Michael Vincent. As is fitting for stories such as these, but inconvenient otherwise, the character Vincent played in Big Wednesday, much like the character Vincent played in real life, was a bright star ascended too early, a young pup cold-plunged into the heaven of fame and the hell of addiction. The booze and the drugs cost money and more money, and eventually Vincent found himself on the wanting, supply side of this familiar economic theory. He sold the Bear board to his agent, Dave Wirtschafter, something of a Hollywood legend and the current president of the William Morris Agency. Considering the circumstances, I imagine this transaction was made for cash and not credit. Wirtschafter had worked with Vincent but had grown up with Charlie and sometime later, when his friend decided to move to New Zealand, threw him a party and gave him the Bear board as a good-bye present.
"Man, that was some party," Charlie told me, by way of explanation. He told me this while standing in the kitchen of the main compound, peeling potatoes with a practiced hand. There were fifty of them, stacked haphazardly on the counter in front of him.
It was strange to be in New Zealand hearing stories of people from home, but stranger still to find one of surfing's totem objects sitting in a house on a bluff overlooking the point at Raglan. It seemed to be an omen, good or otherwise, so we checked in for the night.
24
We'd slept in the Bird's Nest, a two-story slat-wood bungalow perched atop a steep hill, and awoke to find the next day bright and blue. From the upstairs porch, the take-off spot at the first of Raglan's three points was barely visible. The view improved if you stood atop the wooden railing that rimmed the porch. On the other side of that railing was a forty-foot drop, but that seemed to be part of the experience, so I stood there and drank a cup of coffee and watched waves wrap into the bay. We were a mile from the beach, maybe farther, but those waves didn't look small.
Downstairs, I could hear the Johns debating boards. They had each brought a shortboard and a gun, while I had a shortboard and a funboard. To understand the nature of their debate, you need to understand a bit about varieties of surfboards. Longboards, the classic cars of the sport, are stately and slow and often difficult to handle when the waves get big and steep. Because surfers wanted a shot at more difficult surf, guns evolved from longboards. For speed, guns have a narrower frame and a pointed nose and tail; for speed is of the essence when riding big waves. Shortboards arrived in the seventies, when the desire for maneuverability dropped board sizes from ten feet to seven, a design feature that birthed all the shenanigans that make modern surfing appear an acrobatic circus. In the years since, they have shrunk further still, now running into the much-abridged five foot range. These days, my six-six shortboard is only considered a shortboard for guys much bigger than me, on the plus side of six feet and two hundred pounds. On the other hand, a funboard sits halfway between both extremes, offering more maneuverability than a longboard and more floatation than a shortboard. It is the happy medium of mediocrity. Funboard riders either have nothing left to prove or lack the skills to prove anything.
That day I should have brought my funboard, but the Johns were going small and, ego being what it was, I followed their lead and threw my shortboard in the car. When we got to the beach, there were thirty cars in the parking lot and sixty guys in the water.
The waves were overhead, thick and cold. As I put on my wetsuit, I watched locals take off so deep in the pit—one wrong slip—but these guys weren't slipping. I looked around for the Johns but realized they had already headed out into the water.
I was alone in the parking lot with no real idea where to paddle out. As far as I could tell, there were two choices: paddle safely around the point, easily a fifteen-minute proposition, or scramble over a long boulder field and find a tall rock and jump. Jumping was all about timing. From the top of the rock, you had to wait for the last wave in a big set to crash, dive into its foam and paddle like mad. Some surfers made it to the lineup with their hair dry; others were slammed onto the rocks. I wanted to make the smart decision but saw no one paddling around the point and wasn't sure where it was best to get in the water. I thought about jumping off the rocks, but which were the right rocks? The beach was lined with boulders. I spotted another surfer in the parking lot, wetsuit already zipped, board already waxed. He looked local. Rather than asking if he was local or if he knew the right way to jump off the rocks or, for that matter, if he could save me the trouble and just bounce up and down on my head for a while, I decided to follow him out.
He walked down to the southern part of the beach and started picking his way across the boulders. They were slippery and wet and covered with the kinds of sharp edges that made walking difficult and falling dangerous. He was a few steps ahead of me when we reached the edge of the water, and I stopped to watch as he climbed up on a small boulder, steadied himself and leaped when the next wave arrived. There was another wave behind it, but he dove through it without a problem. I hopped onto the same boulder he had jumped from, but didn't have time to get my balance.
The foam from that last wave crashed and hit my ankles with more force than I was expecting. I lost my footing and pitched forward and ended up on my belly on my board with nothing to do but paddle like hell. A few strokes out, the current caught me. It was too strong and running the wrong way down the beach, and my shortboard didn't paddle as quickly as my funboard. I had gone barely thirty feet when the first wave of the next set appeared.
There's an art to duck diving, one with which I am not too familiar. I took a deep breath and shoved the nose of my board underwater and got my foot on the back and pressed the tail down.
The goal was to get body and board down beneath that wave, letting it roll harmlessly over me but I hadn't sunk deep enough and the Whitewater grabbed my shoulders and I lost ground fast. I got free and managed a dozen strokes forward when the next wave appeared, bigger than the last. I tried to dive through it and popped up and saw another, and this one was more serious still.
I tried to paddle over it but got caught at the last second and sucked up the face as the Up started to pitch, and was flipped onto my back and hurled over the falls. There was a dull roar, a stinging in my sinuses. I was underwater for a second when the wave's lip landed.
It smashed straight into my chest. The air was smacked from my lungs, and I went pinballing around underwater. There were hard objects everywhere. I covered my head; something hit my hip—a rock or my board—no way to know for sure. I started to swim for the surface but had no idea which direction was up. I looked around and finally saw a spot of sunlight and swam for it. There was enough time for one gulp of air before the next wave landed.
In surfing, no matter what happens out there, you can usually turn around and swim in. Surfers get into trouble because they persist in losing battles. In almost every situation you can retreat and live to fight another day. In almost every situation, except when paddling in means paddling straight onto the rocks. Paddling onto the rocks means uncertain consequences and I knew what kinds of uncertain consequences surfing could bring.
Years back, on another bright and blue day, I'd been surfing about ten miles south of San Francisco, at a beginner break or as much of a beginner break as can be found in San Francisco. That day, I had been surfing the northern end of the beach when I noticed people crowding around the southern end. I didn't pay much attention until an ambulance drove onto the sand. By the time I got out of the water, there was a boy, not much past fifteen, lying on a stretcher. The paramedics were moving slowly, their heads hanging down. I watched a girl sob to her knees. By the time I arrived, they had covered him with a sheet. He had snapped his neck riding the shorebreak and was dead before anyone even got him out of the water. The paramedics, the sobbing girl, the white sheet, everything I was seeing was just final formality.
That Raglan day, there were no formalities. I didn't have the strength to fight the waves so I paddled onto the rocks. The rocks took a small chunk of my board, a larger chunk of my shin. By the time I caught my breath, I was utterly spent. It was mainly adrenaline, mainly fear. Even the rock bashing I had taken was no worse than many others. It was a bit of a deal, but not a big one.
Afterward, I walked down the beach and tried to paddle around the point. My left ankle hurt, and later I would find a bruise shaped like a kidney just below my calf. I was too jumpy, and
my strokes were off. Every time I saw a wave, I started steering away from it, ending up way outside the lineup. It took forever to make it into position, and when I did I was already too tired. My heart wasn't in it. It started to rain, a cold drizzle. Even in my winter wetsuit I was shivering. Two hours I stuck it out but never caught a wave.
I trudged up onto the shore and into the parking lot, and the temperature dropped ten degrees, and I realized that one of the Johns had the keys to the van. The last I had seen of them was out in water, picking off waves that I was too cold and too tired and too scared even to consider. I sat down to wait, and the rain came down harder, and a heavy fog began to creep in. Eventually, the Johns showed up and mentioned that the swell was not supposed to last through the afternoon. The forecast said this side of the island would get no more waves anytime soon. They were talking about other possible destinations as we pulled out of the parking lot. By then the fog was so thick that I couldn't even get a last look at the wave I had traveled halfway around the world to surf.
25
That night, we stood around the Karioi Lodge and waited for dinner to be ready. It was Easter vacation. Australian college students had been arriving all afternoon. They were mainly young women, traveling in some semblance of a guided tour. They wore jeans, tank tops, little makeup, the odd puka shell necklace. The room filled with their nasal birdsong. In the kitchen, Charlie Young was cooking lamb for fifty. Outside, the rain was still falling, and the grill, which was set up at the edge of the porch, caught errant droplets. The meat hissed and sputtered, and everyone got drunk on cheap beer.
For two days, I'd been looking for a chance to talk to Charlie about the Conductor but could never seem to get him away from the pack of locals who trailed him at all times. They were a motley crew who had long grown used to the lodge's endless stream of visitors and viewed all with a predatory disinterest. From experience, I knew few people were comfortable talking about the mystical in public and fewer still in a nuts-and-bolts place like New Zealand. Already, there had been incidents:
"What are you doing in New Zealand?"
