Dawn Patrol

The Lounge Crickets — Chapter 2

Jack Armstrong awakened. It was not yet dawn. Once the dry, scratching, blinking was over and he could actually see, he let his eyes adjust. There was a faint glimmer behind the blinds; the sun would be up soon. He looked at his watch. 0530. There was plenty of time yet.

He carefully pulled off his side of the blankets, put them back in position for his wife, and eased out of bed so as to not wake her. It never worked, but he still made the effort. “Are you going out,” she asked in that sweet, hushed voice of hers. “Yeah sweetie. It’s supposed to be pretty decent today.” “Are you just going to meet me at the shop?” “Yeah, I think so, if that’s okay. I’ll just shower when I get over there.” “Okay. Be careful. Are you going off the jetty?” “Yes,” he said, knowing she hated when he surfed in that location. She signed. “Ok, but please be careful. Stay away from all those rocks.” “I will.”

He smiled in the semi-darkness. He was in his early 50s now and their two boys were grown and out of the house, and she still worried about him, especially when he got in the water.

Like so many other things they had picked up and done together, she had tried surfing back when he picked it up with his Marine Corps buddies in San Diego. But she quickly learned it was something that took a lot of time and trial and error. It was a little like snow skiing; unless a person was a really good athlete and in control of their body, one did not just pick surfing up immediately. And it was physically grueling. One seeking to learn and improve needed to spend a lot of time doing it and had to make time to work on it. And she just wasn’t as motivated as he was.

And then there were the sea creatures. She wasn’t a fan. It was something about not being able to see the watery world below.

There was the time when she was paddling out and a huge seal rolled up out of the water right next to her and scared her half to death. “He’s just being friendly!” Jack yelled over, laughing at her plight. And then there was that time when she had been sitting up on the board scanning the horizon for waves, her feet dangling in the water below her, when something really big and powerful had brushed against her leg. She screamed and yanked both legs out of the water and lay prone on the board yelling for Jack to paddle over to her. “What happened?” he asked. “Something really big just nudged my leg. I think it was a shark.” He looked around. “Well, it’s possible. We are in the ocean; the Pacific Ocean.” But he wasn’t joking or smiling this time.

It was true. Shark attacks were rare off the beaches of San Diego, but that didn’t mean sharks weren’t there. When it did happen, it almost always killed or seriously injured the victim and was plastered all of the pages of the Union Tribune. Only a few months prior to her close encounter, a swimmer training for a triathlon with a group of ten other swimmers had been attacked just up the coast off Del Mar and died on the beach. It was sobering. But Jack and his buddies always distinguished and legitimized their activities by pointing out that the swimmers were in much deeper water farther out, and the sharks had mistaken them for food — a seal or big fish swimming on the surface. The theory went that the big sharks didn’t come into the shallower waters where their food sources were more scarce and they had to negotiate around reefs and through the swirling currents near shore. But she wasn’t convinced.

All of these were reasons she no longer got up and went into the water with him. Sometimes, she would get up and go with him and just sit on the beach with her coffee and watch. But she eventually found that it scared her to watch him out there. He was Jack Armstrong after all, a man who had never slowed down now into his 50s, and would still do things most people half his age wouldn’t. Like surf just off an unforgiving, boulder-laden jetty.

“I’m just going to grab some clothes and some coffee and I’ll head out. I’ll be there when you open up,” he said. “Okay,” she said. He made his way over to where she still lay in bed and hugged and kissed her. “Love you.” “Love you too. Be careful please,” which was what she always said when he went out to surf.

He closed the bedroom door behind him and walked into the kitchen. The hardwood floors were always cold for some reason, even in summer. Maybe it was the humidity that seemed to steal its way in off the gulf during the lush, south Texas coastal nights. He needed to find his flip flops. There, over by the couch. He slipped into them and walked over the coffee maker.

He opened the cabinet and took down his favorite black metal camping mug with the Marine Corps emblem — the eagle, globe, and anchor — and set it under the dispenser. He was retired now, but the simple emblem was literally branded on him, physically, as well as spiritually. One long-ago night out west, a group of Marine Corps buddies had essentially dared one another to get the tattoo one night before a deployment, and Jack had been the first one in the chair. Unlike many people, he had been stone cold sober at the time, and when he saw it in the mirror now he didn’t harbor any of the typical regrets. After all, it was small, understated, and simple.

There were no words on the tattoo because that particular mark said everything by itself. And in any event, nobody really saw it anyway unless some educated observer did when Jack was changing out of a wetsuit in the parking lot down by the jetty. But Jack usually never let it go uncovered. It wasn’t meant to be shown off or seen anyway. It was more like a brand, burned into his skin like it was burned into his very soul.

The mark on his left shoulder and the emblem on the coffee mug were why he reveled in those rare occasions when someone would ask about his long-ago athletic career. “Hey Jack. What was the best team you ever played on?” And right on cue, he would say, “Well, I wore blue and gray in high school, red and white in college, and green and gold in the pros, but the best team I ever played on wore red, white, and blue. Or cammie green depending on your perspective.” The groans and eyerolls inevitably followed, but Jack always got a big kick out of it. It also had the added benefit of immediately deflating any further discussion about sports. After all, it was ancient history to him, and he had never been able very good fan after his playing days were done.

He hit the switch, and in seconds, the coffee maker was quietly sputtering to life just like he was, the first drops of the hot, maple-colored nectar spilling into the carafe, the entire little contraption hissing small puffs of steam into the kitchen. This time, the beans were from a plain white bag he had been given by a paying client he’d shaped a new board for who had brought them back from a recent sojourn down to Mexico, a guy who surfed down over the border all the time. The coffee was good, and strong. He wondered where the client had gotten it, but he hadn’t asked. Not yet anyway.

He enjoyed the quiet solitude of these early morning moments that seemed to play on the senses so much more acutely in a place like this than somewhere back in the larger world. His late father had once observed, “If you miss the morning, you miss the best part of the day.” And time had proven his Dad correct in this observation. It was as if each sensory organ was on a heightened state of alert and things sounded clearer and smelled and tasted so much better. As the coffee pot slowly filled, the familiar aroma nearly overpowered him. Involuntary spurts of saliva formed in his mouth as he waited for there to be enough to fill his metal camping mug. Finally, it was ready.

He poured the amber liquid worth its weight in gold into the metal cup and replaced the carafe to collect the rest of the brew. With both hands he lifted it to his face. He let the warm vapors slowly fold across his face, put his nose into the cup like one might do at a wine-tasting, hesitated, then lifted it to his lips. Oh it was good. So good.

He made a mental note to ask the client next time he saw him where he got those beans.

To be continued.

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