Breakers by Diana Gallagher (Appeared in the January 2010 Issue) “Do you need help?” He trots over. The board slides away from my straining arm while thousands of heated sand grains burn my feet. I resist the urge to do a silly dance to relieve the heat. “I got it!” I call. He lifts an end. Muscle strain releases. “Thanks.” He smiles, I think, but the sun slits my eyes. “Great waves today,” he says. “Best I’ve seen in three weeks.” A burst of breeze whips the hair from my face. The ocean glimmers everywhere, breaking and shattering only to find itself again. Under gray skies, waves tumble uneasily. They cannot be reconciled to meeting themselves. But today, the waves foam and frolic joyfully. Come to me, they laugh. “So you’re here…a lot?” I ask. “Absolutely.” I respect males who use more than one syllable. “Ocean in the summer, mountains in the winter. I can’t stay inside.” His back muscles tense and yield, tense and yield. I step cautiously around towels with sleeping teenagers, plastic shovels, and beer bottles. He glides forward. I’ve been inside longer than I’d realized. My skin twitches beneath the sun. “My stuff’s here,” he offers, nudging a towel. A water bottle, set of keys, and wallet decorate the faded blue cloth. We ease the board onto the sand. I begin to rub the wax on. He, too, picks up a piece and smoothes the other end. My shoulders recall the old ritual: my father, brother, and I in a row, waxing without speaking. I’m not much taller now. “Listen,” my father said that first time. I was lamenting yet another fall, complaining that Mark had taken my wave. I paused. He waited until my eyes had lost their frustrated glare. “None of those things,” he said, “matters.” Not matter? Wasn’t the fundamental part of surfing the actual standing up and riding of a wave? When I finally caught one and wobbled in, I thought I understood. But I couldn’t be sure. Too much has mattered since then. So I’ve returned, to another coast, with a board still too large for my embrace. I see the license carelessly poking from his wallet. I’d rather not know names. I’d rather let this encounter rest as a pleasant daydream instead of facts. I deny the letters, but read a year. “You’re good to go,” he says, straightening up. Blue eyes, as I’d suspected—a subtle blue. Then he smiles. The kind of smile that makes you smile back, unconscious of how or why you’re doing it. Why don’t people smile that way anymore? What happened to sincerity? To simply enjoying the sensation of being alive? And I understand. But now I break my gaze and look towards the leaping breakers. I lift the board. “Thank you,” I say. “You got it?” “Absolutely.” I step down to the shoreline. Thank you, seventeen-year-old boy. Cold water slaps my skin. Foam stings. I laugh. Sand rushes away as water prepares to break and unite again. I’ve broken away. I’m here again. This matters.
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