Sunday morning: the crack of ass
(Dawn Patrol at world Famous Steamer Lane, Santa Cruz, CA.)
I opened my eyes. My three-year old son snored like his father and his grandfather before him. I smiled. I tip-toed down the hall and slipped into my wetsuit and booties. The smell of wet neoprene always brings a morning woodie to the true hard-charging Para-frog. At least that’s what Staff sgt. Strong used to say in Okinawa.
I grabbed my 6’6” thruster and crept out the door.
Approaching Neary Lagoon, I scanned the bushes and trees for Marines. Santa Cruz is crawling with em’. Six of us surf the lane each morning at dawn patrol. Our numbers are growing. My heart raced. Somehow the nostalgia has gone to everyone’s head. It’s been getting a little out of hand. I crouched into a lower stance, keeping in the shadows of the reeds growing from the lagoon. I stepped onto the catwalk. Wood creaked in the pre-dawn silence.
I was a combat readiness instructor at the JWTC in Okinawa. I love to motivate people. I guess I’ve been pushing us all to charge harder in the water lately, but it’s been spilling over onto the shore. It has my wife very disturbed. Two mornings ago, Rodriguez fell upon me like a rubber panther from the tree-canopy about 200 yards from where I was now crouching. His face was painted with camo-stick. A diver’s knife was strapped to the calf of his wet suit...
He tackled me to the deck and said he was just testing my situation awareness. You know, to help me keep my edge sharp.
“Morning, Hard-chargers!” I said. “You out there, Rodriguez?”
SILENCE
I burst into a sprint, screaming, streaking down the wooden catwalks that float on the surface of Neary lagoon. I held my surfboard like a lance.
“Sons of Bitches! I just want to surf today!” I said.
A longboard fell from a willow tree at the end of the catwalk on the other side of the lagoon with a thud.
“Fuck!” said someone. I saw a leg protruding from the branches up ahead. I charged and pulled on it, then sprinted up the hillside. Donovan fell from the willow tree behind me, spewing obscenities. At the top of the hill I ran a zig-zag pattern. My chest burned. My heartbeat drummed in my ears. Before I reached the railroad tracks a bar of sex wax pelted me in the temple.
It was Charlie.
Not Charlie charlie, it was Charlie Rodriguez chucking bars of wax at me from the plastic dome on top of the slide, from the playground behind me.
“Fuck you, Rodriguez!” I said “It’s gonna’ take more than that!”
I crossed the tracks. Sweat poured. The squeaking from my wetsuit echoed down the residential street. I tossed my board into the tall-grass and flipped over the chain-link fence of the church on Westcliff. Somehow I landed on my tailbone. The pitter pat of rubber bootied footsteps grew in volume on the other side of the courtyard.
They were close.
I ran across the street, keeping the ocean on my left. The lighthouse was just up ahead.
Six wetsuit-clad former Marines charged the point, like fingers of a hand. The sun rose at our backs. The fire of a new day burned in our hearts, and I’m sure none of us knew why the hell we were doing all this.
But we were here, just like we once were, just like we’ll probably be for the rest of our lives: alive, full of intensity and ready to take on whatever the world has chosen to hurl at us.
One by one we leaped from the cliff into the Pacific ocean. Seals vocalized their approval. Otters backstroked away from the impact zone and the waves rolled in from across the sea...
Good Morning Devil Dogs, wherever you may be.
Semper Fi,
SGT. Jade
