The criteria for this year’s contest were to write about life in the sea and the writer’s relationship to it.
Connection / By Timberly Ferguson
I first met him at a spot I’d recently discovered in the waters, a place I heard several of his kind refer to as “Gully.” Gully, Little Dume, Rock, Outers, Mistos: they had a lot of names for the same ocean. I’d been going there because it was safe and it was quiet and I’d just lost my mother.
I literally lost her. We were swimming together near the surface when the moon was out, the best time for finding food. I remember the rain was so strong it felt a dozen tiny fish hammering my back as I swam. I turned to my mother to tell her this and she was gone. I haven’t seen her since, even though I’ve looked and looked.
Then I discovered this new place, this Gully-Rock-Outers place, and saw him. He was alone, floating on one of those things my mother and I have often seen together; hard things, shaped like a giant fish. They lie face down on these things and move their arms in the water, stopping suddenly for no reason at all. Then they sit up and look around a lot, at the land, the sky, the seas all around them and then the sky again. Then, when the waters move, they lie down and hustle their arms and they Stand up on the ocean, all the way to land.
They all do the same thing, but none of them look the same doing it. Some of them are rigid; some move all over the place and shape themselves to the curl of the water. Some stand up and then fall immediately. One time I looked right into the eyes of one of these when he’d just fallen. He was looking up toward the surface and I swam right by and stared at him. He kicked around a lot and seemed to miss my intention.
What struck me about this one, that first day I saw him, were his eyes. They had something my mother had in her eyes, something that always made her a leader. She had impeccable instinct, always knew what to do in any situation. “Your instinct may be all you have,” she told me once, “but it’s always right.” My instinct told me to watch this one.
He seemed worthy of my attention.
I made sure to keep my distance but to also make my presence known. The sun was barely up and it was just me and him. He saw me but didn’t try anything funny, like a lot of his kind do. A lot of them whistle real low and snap their fingers on the water and say “c’mere,” and I have no idea what they want. But he didn’t want anything. He just watched me as I swam closer.
“Hi,” he finally said to me. “Hi, I’m Rick. On land I’m Richard. Out here I’m Rick.” He glanced over his shoulder and then turned to me. “I catch a few good ones I’m Ricky.” His lips pulled upward until his teeth showed.
Rick turned on that thing they all use and gave a shout. “Here comes a set, buddy,” he breathed. “Mine for the taking.”
He lay down and moved his arms a bunch and stood up when the waters moved. Then he came back out and I was still there, still watching. Normally I’d have left, but his eyes were like my mother’s eyes so I stayed.
He came every morning and did his stand-up thing for a week. I stayed near and watched, swimming a little closer if it was just me and him. One day he told me I reminded him of someone and he had another expression of my mother’s, a loss. He looked the way she did when my sister was eaten by a shark, right in front of us.
One morning, after that week had passed, he told me the “swell” was leaving and that I probably wouldn’t see him for a bit.
“But I hear another one’s coming from Mexico,” he said. “Won’t be too long.”
I looked into his eyes.
Then he did something I didn’t anticipate. He reached his hand out. To touch my head. I was that close to him by then.
And I bit him.
Red came pouring out of his hand and he hissed a word under his breath and then he pushed around on his thing to land. The rest of that day I went to places I’d never gone before, avoiding others of his kind and my own, avoiding anywhere that might have reminded me of being with my mother.
He came back, some days later. I saw him and he saw me, then I swam away. I don’t know why I went back the next day, but that spot had become just as meaningful to me as to any of them. He was there just before sunrise; so was I. His eyes found my eyes and I didn’t swim away. I kept my head above the water.
“Hi,” he said before standing up to land and disappearing.
The next day I came a bit closer. He looked at me and his eyes were safe. My instincts were all I had but they were right: he was safe. I swam even closer. He didn’t try to reach out. He just stared at me.
Then he started to talk. About a daughter he had. Who’d just left for college. And how he taught her to “surf,” how it was their special thing, how they had some rough batches—puberty, boys, cars and lies and fights—but they always had that. He told me about the first time he watched her do it all by herself, catch a wave all the way into shore, her little body so unsteady but just managing to pull it off.
She was eight years old. It was summer and she didn’t need a wetsuit and her long salty hair was flipped over a shoulder and there was a dab of sunscreen on her nose that she hadn’t rubbed in and she was the most beautiful, adorable thing and his heart ached with love. Love as intense and exposed as the sun hammering down on everything in sight. He told me it was the proudest moment of his life; he never thought he could feel such pure joy—a joy that came from outside of him. Complete, selfless joy.
“You think all those days together will last forever,” Rick said. “All those years and summers, morning after morning after morning. You think those mornings will never get used up. Suddenly you turn your head to tell your daughter something and she’s gone. She’s a grown woman, leaving you to surf alone.”
Rick pulled himself up on his thing and was quiet for a while.
“Not all alone, though. Right?” he said, looking over at me. “It’s nice, having you here. I’ll have to introduce you to her, next time she’s home. She loves seals.”
The water was calm for a long time. Rick seemed content to float on his thing and do nothing at all. He didn’t see me swim up close. He didn’t see me maneuver my body so that my head was right underneath his hand. He didn’t notice anything at all until he looked down and saw what I’d done.
I never thought it would feel so familiar, being touched by one of his kind.
Timberly Ferguson moved to Malibu 16 years ago from Arizona, and the ocean is just as captivating to her now as it was then … perhaps even more so thanks to her three children who spotted a baby seal abandoned by its mother during spring break. That baby seal, and other seals watching us “humans” at a local beach, became the inspiration for the above story.