requiring surgery to alleviate headaches and to restore proper
drainage.
On every anniversary of this operation, he had thrown a Proper Drainage
Party. From years of exposure to the laring sun and the salt water,
Corky was also afflicted with surfer’s eye-pterygium-a winglike
thickening of the conjunctiva over the white of the eye, eventually
extending across the cornea. His vision gradually deteriorated.
Nine years ago, he was spared ophthalmological surgery when he was
killed-not by melanoma, not by a shark, but by Big Mama herself, the
ocean. Though Corky was sixty-nine at the time, he went out in monster
storm waves, twenty-foot behemoths, quakers, rolling thunder that most
surfers a third his age wouldn’t have tried, and according to
witnesses, he was a party of one, hooting with joy, repeatedly almost
airborne, racing the lip, carving truly sacred rail slashes, repeatedly
getting barreled-until he wiped out big time and was held down by a
breaking wave. Monsters that size can weigh thousands of tons, which
is a lot of water, too much to struggle against, and even a strong
swimmer can be held on the bottom half a minute or longer, maybe a lot
longer, before he can get air. Worse, Corky surfaced at the wrong
moment, just in time to be hammered deep by the next wave in the set,
and he drowned in a two-wave hold-down.
Surfers from one end of California to the other shared the opinion that
Corky Collins had led the perfect life and had died the perfect
death.
Exostosis of the ear, exostosis of the sinuses, Pterygium in both
eyes-none of that meant shit to Corky, and all of it was better than
boredom or heart disease, better than a fat pension check that had to
be earned by spending a lifetime in an office. Life was surf, death
was surf, the power of nature vast and enfolding, and the heart stirred
at the thought of Corky’s enviably sweet passage through a world that
was so much trouble for so many others.
Bobby inherited the cottage.
This development astonished Bobby. We had both known Corky Collins
since we were eleven and first ventured to the end of the horn with
board racks on our bikes. He was mentor to every surf rat who was
ravenous for experience and eager to master the point break. He didn’t
act like the point was his, but everyone respected Corky as much as if
he actually owned the beach from Santa Barbara all the way to Santa
Cruz. He was impatient with any gyrospaz who ripped and slashed up a
good wave, ruining it for everyone, and he had only disdain for freeway
surfers and wishwases of all types, but he was a friend and an
inspiration to all of us who were in love with the sea and in sync with
its rhythms. Corky had legions of friends and admirers, some of whom
he had known for more than three decades, so we were baffled as to why
he had bequeathed all his worldly possessions to Bobby, whom he had
known only eight years.
As explanation, the executor of the estate presented to Bobby a letter
from Corky that was a masterpiece of succinctness:
Bobby, “at most people find important, You do not. This is wisdom.
To what You believe is important, You are ready to give your mind,
hart, and soul. This is grace.
We have only the sea, love, and time. God gave You the sea. By your
own actions You will find love always. So I give You time.
Corky saw in Bobby someone who had an innate understanding, from
boyhood, of those truths that Corky himself had not learned until he
was thirty-seven. He wanted to honor and encourage that
understanding.
God bless him for it.
The summer following his freshman year at Ashdon College, when Bobby
inherited, after taxes, the house and a modest sum of cash, he dropped
out of school. This infuriated his parents. He was able to shrug off
their fury, however, because the beach and the sea and the future were
his.
Besides, his folks have been furious about one thing or another all
their lives, and Bobby is inured to it. They own and edit the town