Natural Selection - Short Story

Rory was a surfer and he wore that fact like a badge. It punctuated everything he did. When he got up in the morning, if it was light or as soon as it was, the first thing he did was to go to his computer and check the webcams that pointed their spying eyes towards the ocean’s horizon. They told him where the swell was coming from, how big it was and at what intervals. The wind; was it onshore, offshore, sideways or non-existent? The skies – cloudy and lowering, foggy, or sunny (Rory’s favorite, quite predictably).

However, upon closer investigation we will see that Rory was an unlikely surfer, given the stereotype. Stereotypical surfers use lots of slang, are young, smoke lots of illegal things and are seen by society as irresponsible.

But Rory was not so. Rory, in fact, took great pride in his opposition to the stereotype. For starters, he was a businessman, and a damn successful one at that, if he did say so himself, which he often did. He had owned several companies and now consulted from his home in Salem, Oregon which brings us to the second point of non-stereotypical surfer characteristics. He surfed in Oregon, a fact that he also readily divulged. The conversation almost always went something like this:

Rory: “I can’t meet with you on Wednesday at 10 am. I am going surfing that morning and I won’t be back in town until noon.”

Person: “Surfing? Where?”

Rory: “Oh, I go here on the coast, usually in Pacific City or Lincoln City.”

Person: “What? In Oregon? And then, 1) “Are you crazy” or 2) “There’s surf here?”

Rory would then usually go into some detail about how good the surf can be, especially in the spring or autumn (he always called it “autumn” instead of “fall” because it lent a certain dignity to a season that should be called “rainlikehell” in his state; plus it sounded sophisticated, unlike the stereotype.), or he would talk about how the water wasn’t that cold with a wetsuit and, chuckle, a layer of fat, or he would talk about the joy of watching the sunset or rise from a surfboard or any number of Oregon surf-related things. When the surf questions petered out, he would then set the appointment or take care of the business at hand and ignore the small guilt that he felt as he hung up the receiver for once again exploiting the sport that was not only his lifestyle, but in no small measure, his life, his breath. It was like talking about a lover in a locker room. But in the end, just talking about surfing quickened his pulse so he did it anyways, lover be damned.

In Oregon the surf can get big. Anywhere in any ocean it can get big. Rory knew that well, since he had been 15 years old and had only been surfing for four months in November of 1969 when a huge swell hit the southern California coast. In fact, on that day the whole Pacific Ocean leapt over its typical barriers like a ravenous beast out of its cage, breaking piers in California, swamping cities in Hawaii, drowning swimmers, beachcombers and surfers alike. Rory had been in the water that day. He had heard that a swell was coming so he and some buddies had skipped school and went to the beach, surfboards in hand. In their teenaged bravado and hormone-hyperbolized minds there was very little surf they couldn’t handle. When they got there, however, they realized that it was much bigger than what they had anticipated. Unwilling to admit fear, however, they paddled out anyway. It was a defining point in each of their lives. Rory’s friends never got in the ocean again, ever, and Rory, although he barely made it in and collapsed on the sand when he did, never left it. He had experienced a power in the waves that somehow replaced a powerlessness he felt everywhere else in his early life. This, coupled with immediate and de facto inclusion with other surfers at his school made him feel included and whole, even while he was underwater longing for air, wrapped in the Ocean’s liquid womb. He stayed there on the beach that day long after his friends had gone home, watching the ocean get bigger and bigger, louder and louder, until it filled his soul with both terror and longing. He watched huge swells like lateral-moving anacondas roll in, rise up and throw out hundreds of yards further out in the ocean than where they normally did, making the ocean a rabid froth for ¾ of a mile out to sea. He was alone on the beach that evening and had been there for hours when he saw a speck on the face of one of the monstrous waves as it showed its grizzly height. He stood and blinked and squinted his eyes. It was a surfer, alone in the meanest ocean that could ever be. Where had he come from? Rory concluded that he must have washed down in the terrible rip to this break from around the point, miles away, and that he was trying to get in. Rory saw him paddle frantically before a wave that was so thick it was almost black against the fading light of a grey storm sky. He saw the surfer move up the face of the wave and pause impossibly high, just before he was caught in the lip and they came down together like a hammer on an anvil. And then there was nothing, just whitewater that was certainly 25 feet high that rolled and rolled and re-formed and broke and rolled some more. He stayed out until dark, wondering about that surfer, but not really. He knew that he had witnessed a murder as deliberate as any. He turned and walked up the dark beach, shrouded in the breath of the monstrous surf, a thrill in his heart and a pit in his stomach. He told no one what he had seen.

Rory the surfer had been born again that day, baptized in the thrill of truly life-threatening danger. From then on, the daily concerns of life were tempered with a knowledge like there could have been more at any given moment; an uneasy tickle at the back of his neck that he wanted to scratch. He was at the beach as often as he was able to be, savoring every moment he could in the water and dreaming of it and cursing his dry state when he was not. Eventually he began competing in a few local contests. He placed high enough to warrant competing often, which he did. He traveled to the varsity surf venue that is Hawaii when it was still interesting to do so and then traveled the broader world, surfing in Central America, Indonesia, Africa and Australia, always alone with his boards, always looking for the biggest surf that he could find. And find it he did, gaining notoriety for his exploits both in the surf and on land.  

In the end it was said by many that Rory was a marked man; from his businesses that always seemed to turn a profit, to his sports cars that were always red and always immaculate to the “world-class” women (his phrase- don’t kill the messenger) he dated to the way that he surfed. For make no mistake, Rory was a good surfer, and in these days always underrated by those who didn’t know him. Why was he underrated? Well, to start, he was portly, about 5’8 and 210 pounds. And he was balding. And forty-five. The sight of Rory paddling out on his 6’2” shortboard, wrapped in a skin-tight black wetsuit always drew snickers from younger people who didn’t know him. They would look at him as if to say, and sometimes actually say, “Here comes another middle aged kook who saw Endless Summer 2 and wants to try surfing.” But when the waves were coming in, they quickly changed their opinion. They saw his powerful strokes into waves that others missed. They saw that he found ways to tuck himself into the crystal cylinders that are the trophy to any surfer, especially on the Oregon coast. They saw the speed that he generated from even mediocre waves to move himself down the line, pumping his board across the face of the wave and then at the end, the layback and snap of his board with such force it threw a sheet of water fifteen feet into the air. The snickers stopped about then and the “who the hell is that’s” began.

The beauty of Rory’s life in his eyes, and to him it was all beautiful, was that he was committed to no one, no “thing”. Since his businesses had been successful and could nearly run themselves he could surf whenever he felt the surf was worthy of his effort. His technique had actually improved with age. So Rory was ready when the buoy reports came in at 20 feet at 17 seconds and building. His face lit up in the pre-dawn computer glow. Where was it coming from? Almost straight west – with just enough north in it - perfect for The Cove at Pacific City. What was the weather like? Overcast, about 45 degrees, with minimal chance of rain and at last buoy check, 10 knots blowing offshore. The water temperature stood at 51 degrees. Not as frigid as it could get in late October, to be sure; not drinking water cold, at least not quite. He checked his calendar. It showed an appointment with a school principal about some kind of charitable contribution and a telephone conference call with a client. Both were reschedule-able, no problem. He called his secretary’s voice mail, told her to reschedule and by 5:15a.m. he was in his immaculate living room waxing his new 8’ big wave gun  that, like Rory in his life, maximized speed.

He walked out of his home and took a deep breath of the crisp autumn air. It tasted to him like wine and rain. Smiling, he walked out towards his red Mercedes SUV, strapped the board on the roof, checked the back hatch to make sure that the container held at least one of his wetsuits (it did) and backed out of the driveway, past his neighbors that were just stirring to go to their jobs, something that he obviously did not have to do (a thought that he noted with much satisfaction).

“Joe, you sorry mother, you think you’re rich, but you’re just another cog in the wheel,” he said to himself as he passed Joseph Allen, his supposedly wealthy surgeon neighbor, who was just stepping outside to begin another twelve-hour day. He waved pleasantly and made a right turn out of the subdivision.

He ruminated during the hour-long drive to the small hamlet of Pacific City about the choices that had separated him from his neighbors; his good fortune, certainly, but also the way that life chooses its favorites and rewards them handsomely. He lived in an exclusive gated community in one of he most beautiful states in the Union. He was relatively healthy, no serious worries, no troublesome children, siblings or aging parents, and he was rich. Life was a game and the scorekeeper was the bottom line. In Rory’s book, he was a winner; the ultimate winner. He would always survive because the one-man species that he was, Rory O. Keller, was simply a cut above; an unconquerable predator.

His $7,000 stereo system sang this lullaby to him as he pulled into the sandy parking lot that overlooked the beach. He hated the sand that blew this time of year onshore, covering the parking lot. But it was of no concern today. His jaw dropped when he saw the ocean in a fit of rage that he had not seen since his youth.

It was then that his heart did its first flip-flop of the day, one of the few surf-related ones he had experienced in the past 10 years. It was a feeling not unlike hate and not unlike love. It was surging adrenaline and the deepest sleep, trembling lust and godlike charity all in one deep, gut-wrenching emotion, and he watched the poetry of the ocean spout off a series of expletives that only a sailor, a deep-sea fisherman or a surfer would understand. For ten minutes he sat, but they felt like two. He was alone in the parking lot. Of course. Who else but me, he figured, would go out on a day like this? The waves broke perfectly, hundreds of yards out to sea, grey and glass-like with the only hint of texture coming from a five knot offshore wind that sent spray backwards over the top of the breaking waves in a plume that was forty feet in the sky, raining saltwater back on itself for ten seconds after the wave broke. The set waves peeled for two hundred yards before hitting a unseen sandbar and closing out with a furious and predictable train wreck of a crash.

He turned the music off and took a few steady breaths. He opened his door with a luxury-car click and closed it with the same click of compression and leather. He pulled on his wetsuit, booties and gloves, closed the hatch, removed his board from the rack and without a hint of hesitation walked towards the surf as it roared back at his audacity.

The first intimation to Rory that there was the possibility of danger on that day came when he was wading out and a wave reformed from nowhere, rose up and slapped him in the chest like liquid flint, spitting in his face, staggering him and taking away his breath, partly from the force of the wave and partly from the frigid water.

”Damn that’s cold,” he said to himself. His spoken words were, to him, proof of his manhood and his disregard for the ocean’s censure, manifested in the wave that had slapped him. He regarded the bully sea as he continued out and as the frigid water dripped off his face. Rory did not like to wear a hood, a luxury few Oregon surfers denied themselves. Something about a “squid lid” made him feel like a wimp. Are you in the water or aren’t you? After all the years surfing the warm waters of Africa, Australia and the like, a wetsuit was bad enough.    

He turned his eyes to the horizon. It would be very advantageous to him on this day, he knew, to wait for a lull. He hadn’t been beaten by the ocean since that day that he staggered in to the beach in 1969, shaking and puking. He certainly wouldn’t get beat now. But if he timed the lull correctly, if he made the ocean predictable, he would not only make it out, but would do it with the style that he felt he should- with his hair dry; what was left of it, anyway.

So he stood in the ocean, making sure that he had indeed seen the last set come through, the one that had produced that bastard wave that had slapped him in the chest.

As he stood there, feeling the pull of the retreating tide and sand against his feet, legs and torso, he felt in his heart something he was unwilling to define. He scrutinized the largest force on Earth, looking for answers, demanding play time. When he felt satisfied that he could once again steal a few moments in this playground, he took two big steps forward, hopped up on his board, which was about chest high floating in the water, and started paddling out.

                                         

It was important at this particular spot to be close to the rocks when paddling out, especially on a big day. There was a small rip-current, a river-like eddy that flowed out from this place about 200 yards before it quit. When the tide was outgoing, one hardly even had to paddle to get to the lineup. Actually, the rocks offered some protection from the largest of the waves, at least until a surfer rounded the slight bend in the rocks a hundred yards out, becoming exposed to the full energy of the ocean on a day when the primary swell direction was west. At this time the tide was not going out but had been coming in for about an hour. This had excited Rory when he had realized it, sitting in the warmth of his car; it meant more power, usually. But now, as he stroked out with all his might, he realized that he could use any help that Mother Nature could throw him.

Rory, for his out-of-shape-ness, was still a good paddler. There seems to be something about working certain muscles early in life that allows those muscles to remember what to do even when the rest of the body seems to have forgotten, so Rory made good progress along the edge of the rocks which were about ten feet away. He noticed in a subconscious way the rise and fall of the ocean, like a lover’s breathing, as he paddled out. He saw the orange rocks to his right and through the soda-pop bubbles on the surface the evidence of life under him; the purple flash of a starfish, the deep charcoal of a colony of mussels, the neon green of an anemone. But he did not notice these things in any cognitive way. This was not the day for noticing and appreciating nature, and Rory knew it. His eyes were fixed on the horizon. In fact, one of the things that had kept Rory in the ocean was the concentration that it required on days with over ten feet of swell. He could not see directly what was in front of him, around the small approaching bend in the rocks, but he could get an idea about what might be coming his way by looking out beyond the bend, out and to his left, for any sign of a set that might rise out of the ocean to attempt to beat him back to land. He ducked under a dozen re-formed waves in the eight-foot range as he continued out, the cold water providing a frigid marinade that softened many a determined soul and sent them back in, prone, longing for sand and a less-harsh environment. He was doing better than most would although he was breathing hard, partly out of the stress of the situation, and partly from the exertion. Then he saw what he did not want to see, not yet; a bump on the horizon.

Sometimes when bumps appeared on the horizon, they went away again, like an underwater cavern swallowed the underside of the wave and made it tame. This wave, however, was coming as resolutely as the storm had that had produced it had been. Furthermore, it would almost certainly catch Rory inside. Most surfers will sheepishly ditch their board in the face of an intimidating wave, particularly when they are alone and out of breath. Rory, of course, made it a habit to never ditch his board, and on ordinary days he never did.    

This, however, was no ordinary day, and it was no ordinary wave. Rory was not in a good position. He rounded the corner of the rocks just in time to see the wave break. He was, of course, lying on his stomach which makes waves seem all that much bigger. In fact, it was already monstrous.

 Rory, if you would have asked him any time before he saw this particular wave, would tell you that he had surfed monstrous waves many times over, alone and in desolate places. He would say that his lung capacity was as large and healthy as it ever had been and that if there was one thing that disappointed him about surfing the Oregon coast, it was the lack of breaks that held during a big swell. But as he rounded the corner and saw nature’s spectacle at 25 feet breaking in one horrific crash, he felt something that he had not felt in many years; a tightening in his chest, a pit in his stomach. The whitewater was 75 feet from him and seemed to be picking up steam as it approached, 20 feet of a boiling cauldron spilling towards him. He had a few seconds to assess the situation. He stopped paddling, took a few deep breaths and slowly, begrudgingly, rolled off his board, a child resentfully yelling “uncle”. When the turbulence was 45 feet away, he dove as deep as he could. Down he went, deeper and darker. He heard it before he saw it, the deep roar that told him that the whitewater was about to pass overhead. He looked up and saw what appeared to be roiling clouds exploding downwards to reach him and tear him away from more placid water to digest him. But they did not reach him. He was deep enough. As they passed over, he grabbed his nose between his thumb and forefinger. He was about to be pulled backwards by his leash as the torrent caught his board. Having water forced up one’s nose while one is trying to hold his breath is not a pleasant experience, as any big-wave surfer knows. At the back of his mind resided a thought that his focus on the wave at hand would not let him address at that moment; he didn’t know what the next wave was going to be. Would it break on top of him, or was this a rogue wave?

His right ankle, the one attached to the leash, was violently torn backwards as the board was caught in the froth. He went backwards for about 30 feet before he sensed that the wave had spent the majority of its force, like a bully that has beat the pulp out of his victim and quits because he is now simply tired. Rory kicked to the surface and took a deep breath of air. He was cold, but he didn’t notice. He immediately looked towards the horizon was relieved to find that the coast was clear. He found his leash and gave it a sharp tug, which brought the board skipping back towards him. He astutely caught it before it plowed into the bridge of his nose. All seemed to be okay, his board in one piece. He piled back onto it and, breathing heavily, started paddling again.

“That wasn’t so bad,” he thought to himself, conveniently forgetting that he had just bailed for the first time in almost twenty years. “That all you got, old lady?”

He stroked deeply straight west. Although he was trying to be flippant, if the truth were acknowledged, he was also trying not to panic. The wave had been big, and it was powerful, and he had not seen this type of surf for many a year. He knew that this type of surf was what caught lesser surfers, lesser people, unawares, and sometimes killed them; but not he, not Rory. He would be okay, of course.

As he continued to stroke out, a question sat unmoved in the back of his mind. It was this: this had been a one-wave set, a rogue. That was kind of rare. Were the set waves going to be bigger than the one that he had just ditched?  Better to find out from the back than the front, he figured, and he stroked hard for the horizon.

Rory was now breathing very hard, in gasps. Notwithstanding Rory’s inner dialogue, his lungs simply couldn’t expand the way that they used to, having been compressed by years of rich food, a sedentary lifestyle, a wetsuit that seemed to be shrinking and the prone position of his body. He knew that he was not getting enough oxygen to his shoulders because they burned. He knew that holding his breath at this point would be difficult. He raced onward nonetheless, his aching arms digging as fast as he could make them.  

As he was paddling, reaching forward with his right hand, he glanced over his left shoulder back towards the beach. It was as empty as it should have been at 7:30 on a cold October morning. Seagulls, ducks and petrels went about their business, mostly oblivious to human concerns. The ocean to them meant food. Sometimes it meant rest. It certainly did not mean fun, recreation, status or money. Rory, clad in his black wetsuit, looked to them at first glance like a sea lion but with larger appendages, and always with that raft under him. His misshapen form brought many birds (and if the truth were known, many larger animals from beneath his board) to his vicinity to ascertain his species. When their instinct told them that he was of the animal species homo-sapiens, they went back to their business, but always with an eye to him from a distance in case he shed food, like humans did from boats. But for the most part, they played out their lives in spite of the human, his concerns unknowable to them, as indecipherable and incomprehensible as a crossword puzzle to a puppy. One thing began to be certain to these spectators, however; this human was in distress. Call it a sixth sense, a premonition of danger on behalf of the human, a disruption of equilibrium. The animal life watched now for other reasons. Death to the human species was an event in the animal world. It was a mistake in their favor. It meant food, a bonus from Nature, who was as often the enemy as not. In such an event, the gulls become the vulture, the fish become the worms. Much less is wasted in a mariner’s oceanic death than is on land. So as the petrel wheeled in the sky, as the gulls fought greedily on the beach, they regarded the struggling human, who would not admit even to himself that he was in a precarious situation, such denial being part of the boon and bane of mankind.     

He had to be getting there, didn’t he? He scanned the lowering grey sky where it met the darker ocean. He was now about 300 yards from the beach, well past any breaking wave he had seen before today at this spot. He had paddled well past the last rock outcropping and was, for all intents and purposes, in the heart of the Pacific Ocean. As experienced as he was, his being in this part of the ocean at this time was like a journeyman thief breaking into the home of a mob boss. Experience for the most experienced surfer is measured in dozens of years. The oceans of the world have had their ways for millions of years with trillions of times the force of one human being. Rory had entered the water about 20 minutes ago. He was much farther out than he was used to having to be to surf this break, or any other, for a very long time. He had never seen the surf this big at this spot, so he didn’t know where a set wave would break. He was tired. He guessed he was out far enough, so he sat up on his board, breathing hard as the mob boss prepared to enter his life.

He put his hands on his hips. He was breathing hard, but damn it, he was breathing. His board was pointed west so he turned it and himself around and looked back towards the beach. It seemed a mile away. He could see his red Mercedes parked innocently in the parking lot, as if to say, “Hey, I did my job. Don’t blame me.” He could see an endless carpet of white water, bubbles boiling to the surface, from nearly where he sat to the sand. As he looked at the serene scene of beach, seagulls and sand, he realized that he was alone. He took a moment to revel in the fact.

“Millions of surfers,” he spoke aloud to a passing seagull that seemed, for the moment, to be following him, “and I am the only one with the balls to be out here.” He raised his voice. “The rest are a bunch of wannabees. I’m here! Survival of the fittest, Mother!”

A smile crossed his face as the seagull turned uncharacteristically sharply and suddenly away. His brow knitted even as the smile continued.

“That’s odd,” he thought. “Where you goin’, buddy?”

He was still smiling when he felt a familiar energy at his back.

Out of reflex, he turned his head back around to the west. An errant thought burned through his mind, an old surfer’s mantra:

“Never turn your back on Mother O.”

“Oh…!” was all he could say. There was no sky. It was as if the whole sky had been turned into a liquid screen. The face of this wave was the height of a three story house and it was going to throw over itself into a barrel that a semi-truck could drive through. And he was sitting right in the path of the lip of the wave.

He piled off his board as the ocean folded over on itself, bringing the lip down nearly on top of him. He heard strange noises as the ocean folded and twisted him. At this time he remembered when he was a kid and his step-mother’s cat had scratched him. He had thrown that cat as hard as he could out of an open window. He remembered seeing it tumbling through the air, graceless and terrified.

Rory was now tumbling, graceless and terrified. His lungs burned as force drove him deeper and deeper into water so dark that he now did not know which way was up. His right arm was torn violently backwards by an errant current as another held his body, sending waves of pain as his pectoral muscle tore partly away from his ribs. He cleared his ears once, then twice a few seconds later, then a third time. He had not been able to get a good breath. He knew that if he fought it, he would waste precious energy, so he was forced to let it take him. When the wave finally let him go, he did not know which way was up. However that problem was solved as a sharp rock dug into his frigid cheek – he had hit bottom.

“I’ve never heard of anyone hitting bottom out here,” Rory thought as he started stroking for the surface. Stroke after stroke he reached for the black sky, through the cruel, cold almost gelatinous medium. It seemed to take too long, partly because he could not effectively move his right arm. He could see no light and his breathing reflex began to kick in, making him make urping sounds as he strained for any sign that he was kicking in the right direction. Had he somehow upended and then gone upside down? He knew that he would not have the air to survive if he suddenly hit the bottom, or if another wave broke on top of him.

At last he broke the surface and cleared his eyes and at the same time took a gasp of sweet air. Another wave was here; now. He had three seconds to take another breath and dive. More black, more cold. A sleepy sensation came over him for an instant before he was able to brush it away. This time he didn’t hit the bottom, but the water was so devoid of light that he didn’t know which way was up. He didn’t have time to think about it - he just gambled. He was right. But each time he came up, another wave as heavy as a building crumbled on him.

There were seven waves in all, each with gruesome faces well over 20 feet. The fact that he was alive at all was a tribute to his strength and will. When he had ascertained that the last wave in the set had come and gone, Rory turned wide-eyed towards shore to see if there was anything, anyone coming in his direction. There was not, but he thought he saw someone on the beach, a youth maybe, watching him. He didn’t have the strength to lift his good arm to summon help – he only whispered it frantically and breathlessly over and over, his eyes full of fear. He pulled his board, three feet of what had been eight feet only an hour ago, towards him and looked at it hopelessly. He took quick stock of his situation. He was stuck in the ocean with a broken board. He was weak from the exertion of the beating he had just endured, gasping for as much air as he could pack into his tired lungs. He could not move his right arm and his face bled grey into the water. He squeezed the water out of his eyes and turned his face to the edge of the world. He saw another set coming, and he vomited. He started swimming for the black, unforgiving horizon, his chin beginning to quiver. He didn’t take the time to remove the leash and his broken board. There was no time. There was simply no time. Several seagulls circled above. As he stroked towards the set to try to get over this new giant, Rory began to cry.