Empty Pockets by Dale Herd Read Free Book Online Page A

colored crystal prisms strung by wire across the windows, its psychedelic-rock music posters on the walls, the mauve and rose and cream scarves partitioning the room that gently billow from second to second as wind comes in the open window behind Hansen sitting in a lotus on the couch—all of this a newness alien from the old of surfboards and Goodwill mattresses on the bare floors and surf pictures on the walls of the old surf house where he lived while going to school when Hansen, two years ago, age eighteen, first came on the scene having left his parents’ home and moved in (that surf house gone now in an urban renewal project that in a year would not only have demolished the row of similar houses on Ventura Point but will, because of a long, high, stone and steel and concrete seawall, outrider of a planned six-story concrete and palm-surrounded resort hotel, destroy the rock and sand formations of an ancient river mouth made point break, a peeling symmetrical surf break that provides on a strong west swell power rides up to an eighth of a mile long, waves that give a rider an ecstatic pride in his own courage in riding them; rides that Gray feels are the major accomplishments of an already long athletic career; rides that so far are the best moments of his life), seeking, Gray felt, his friendship, his approval—all of this a newness overlaid by one other impression: the hypodermic syringe lying on the white of Hansen’s kitchen sink; hearing now Hansen speak in answer to his warning about being hustled by queers while hitchhiking north, hearing Hansen now say, “So, it’s all the same, man; it’d be a new trip,” blinked, paused, got a mindflash of darkness and the highwayand some forty-five-year-old fag unzipping Hansen’s fly, and then, suddenly, totally, finally (at once thinking of Hansen’s favorite saying, “Whatever happens, man, happens. It’s all up to the stars.”) understood him, understood why he always fell off in hard sections of hard waves, understood why he wasn’t surfing anymore, understood why he had gone AWOL, understood the dope dealing, the turning on of his thirteen-year-old brother, understood the syringe, understood exactly where Hansen was; felt excited by the insight, relieved of any further curiosity, and disgusted enough to say, “Well, man, we’re going up to Stanley’s if you want a ride to get you started and right now I’m going outside ’cause if the police really are coming it could be anytime and I sure as hell don’t want to be here when they do.”
    â€œWow, man!” said Hansen.
    Hoefer, looking at Gray, said nothing.
    Gray, wanting somehow to undo the harshness of his own statement, looked up out the window, looked back at Hansen, then picked up the binoculars off the couch and brought them up to his eyes, looking beyond the two blocks of tract housing, a field, the gray-ribboned freeway, focusing them for distance on California Street, seeing moving into clarity off the dark brown of the upper parking lot beyond the two squat silver Shell Oil storage tanks the long gray-green walls, six, seven, eight, more stacked out toward the horizon, the first good wave breaking maybe two hundred yards out across the high tide, its face a solid six foot, maybe seven, but too much wind, way too much, sections pushing over everywhere along its line. Gray jumped to the fourth wave, still smooth looking, a good five-footer starting to peak over, made the opening turn, stayed high in the pocket by the white now breaking, then drove down the green and out, setting up to make a hard turn back up. The long bulging wall ahead collapsed, turning over into whitewater.
    â€œStanley’s the only place,” Gray said, looking back at Hansen, seeing Hansen smiling, thinking then, He’s freaked out, seeing Hansen’s Indian moccasins, his rotten Levi’s laden with iron-on patches, the faded cloth a soft