Crazy for the Storm: A Memoir of Survival. Norman Ollestad
Just for a second. The iodine’s good for it. Get up.
My whole body aches, Dad.
Just one good ride, Ollestad. It’ll be over before you know it. I’m going to be gone for a week so you get a vacation, he said, smiling.
No, I whined.
As far back as I could remember I was on a surfboard. It wasn’t until last summer down in Mexico that Dad got serious about me riding waves as opposed to just farting around, as he called it, in the whitewash.
No, I moaned.
Hey, I didn’t get to learn until I was in my twenties, he said. All I had was baseball. You’re lucky you get to ski and surf when you’re young. You’ll be ahead of the game.
I need a day off, I said as I pulled up the covers.
He looked away and it reminded me of how cowboys did that in the movies when they lost patience and were trying to simmer down. His faded red trunks hung under two ridges of muscle sculpting his lower abdomen and his shoulder dimpled when he patted Sunny and told her she was a good dog for helping me get ready to surf. I thought he was going to repeat the story of how he financed his first ski trips in the late ’50s: showing Bruce Brown surf films in the town halls of Aspen and Sun Valley. Instead he dropped my beavertail wetsuit on the bed.
Put it on, he said. I’m going to wax up the boards.
We hauled our surfboards toward the point where the pond leaked into the ocean. We passed by yesterday’s boxing ring and I remembered getting hit in the nose and then my mom getting hit in the eye. If I told my dad about it, and told him what Nick said to me about running for help, would they get in a fight? I envisioned Nick grabbing a wine bottle and swinging it at my dad, splitting his forehead. I had always sensed that my dad didn’t want to know the gory details of my mom’s private life, didn’t want to get involved. The wine bottle splitting Dad’s head and his silent plea not to know joined forces, persuading me to keep my mouth shut.
We paddled side by side until a group of bigger waves, set waves, rose on the horizon. He pushed my board from the tail and told me to paddle harder. We barely made it over the first two swells. The third swell was the biggest and the lip of the wave curled over my head and I punctured through its belly and the lip slapped down on my legs. The salt stung my wounds. When we cleared the rock shelf I sat up. My hip was stinging and the wetsuit pressed the salt water tight against my raw skin.
My dad had previously spoken about fighting through things to get to the good stuff or some such concept, and as he shook the salt water out of his curly brown hair, he talked more about people giving up and missing out on fantastic moments.
Accordingly I pearled on my first wave, nose-diving and swallowing water, and he told me to keep trying because I’d be so happy once I got a good ride. I snapped back that I hated surfing.
I saw Chris Rolloff paddling out. I had not seen him in a few months. He was two years older than me but we were buddies. His dad lived in the Rodeo Grounds (or Snake Pit) below where my dad lived on the rim of the canyon. We started hanging out after I saw one of his dad’s surf movies at the yellow submarine house.
Rolloff tried to catch a few waves but didn’t have the strength to get one. So my dad paddled inside and pushed Rolloff into a wave.
He rode the whitewash almost to shore. Rolloff hooted and thrust his arms up and I felt spoiled for not wanting to learn as badly as he did.
When Rolloff paddled back out he was beaming.
Hey Little Norm, he said. Your dad stoked me.
That was a good one, I said.
I’m totally into it.
Me too, I said.
Here’s one for Ollestad, said my dad.
He lined me up under the two-foot peak and gave me a little shove. I knew it would be my last one if I didn’t wipe out. I focused on each step of the process. I got to my feet, bent my knees, leaned back, then corrected my balance when the board reached the bottom. Being goofy-footed I stood with my back to right-handed breakers, pressing the heel of my left foot into the tail of the board, leaning back toward the wave. The board curved into the pocket. I streaked for thirty yards, bending my knees and weighting forward and backward to control the pitch of my board across the moving wall.
I came ashore in front of my mom’s house. She was watering her plants again and I could see her black eye. I hauled my board to the house. When I got to the ivy I rested.
How was it? she said.
Did you see that last one I got?
Her clear eye fixed on me and the lid batted down a couple of times.
Yes, she said. Good one.
I knew she was lying.
Of course it was a white lie, sweet, yet I was ashamed and the board suddenly felt really heavy going up the porch stairs. Her lie seemed to give Nick the edge in the battle of who would be right about me, and I resented her for it.
Look, said my mom. Norm’s on a good one.
My dad’s arms hung at his sides like an ape-man. His upper body was quiet as his feet crossed over, walking him to the nose. His toes gripped the edge of the board and skimmed the water. He leaned back, a curved prow. He rode like this to the sand and casually stepped off the board and let it wash up on the sand before scooping it into his arms.
My mom watered with her good side toward him.
Good morning Janisimo, said my dad.
Good wave, Norm, she said.
Little Norman got a beauty too, he said. Did you see it?
She nodded and I cringed. He trotted up the stairs and my mom kept faced away from him and he did a double take on her. I watched him and he didn’t seem to notice the bruise. He walked the board to the side walkway and put it up on the shelf. I handed him mine and he put it away.
He leaned down and kissed my cheek and salt water shed off his mustache and tickled my nose. He looked at me. Chunks of different-colored blue cracked his irises and his cheeks bunched up like rosy apples. He told me he loved me.
I’ll be back in a week, he said.
Bye, Dad.
Adios, Boy Ollestad.
He walked back toward the beach. My mom heard him coming and tried to appear busy with some weeds in one of the pots. My dad circled around to her bruised side.
Ah shit, he said.
My mom spoke in a whisper with her back to me. My dad’s eyebrows forked down between his eyes, then he looked away like he was pissed off, as if casting the piss into open territory would help disperse it.
My dad appeared to be gathering anger and I liked it, thinking that this was step one in him becoming a force against Nick. A charge of redemption welled up inside me. Then like a reverberation I imagined Nick’s red eyes stalking my dad and there was something in Nick’s hand, a weapon.
At the end of the shadowed walkway I saw my dad studying me. Something raw lurked deep down in his eyes—a look he got when he rode waves or skied powder. He was looking over my mom’s shoulder. She was still talking. He nodded and said something to her before walking toward me. Mom turned with him and her eyes followed Dad down the walkway. Even with a shiner she looked young and innocent gazing at my dad with moist, yearning eyes. Her lips peeled apart and her body leaned toward him. Dad didn’t stop or look back. I wondered if that was how he left when he finally moved out for good. Had Mom hoped he really wouldn’t leave—that it was just temporary? Jacques had gone back to France and Dad hadn’t spent the night at the house for a couple of weeks. He surprised me one evening coming through the sliding glass door in the kitchen after work in a gray suit with a bow tie and wire-rimmed eyeglasses. He limped but didn’t use crutches. He read me a bedtime story and once I was asleep he confronted my mom. She was