Where the Land Meets the Sea

The seventh track of The Beatles’ The White Album played as the road we’d traced since just outside Tijuana bent away from the coastline it had hugged so tightly. My head was propped against the window, the cold from the glass cut through my hair to my scalp, and I rolled my head just a little so that my forehead pressed against the cool surface. It felt good, like turning the pillow over in the middle of a hot July night. I sat with my eyes closed, paralyzed by a hangover, with the taste of tequila and vomit on the back of my tongue and I could tell it was going to be one of those mornings when I’m always just one bad thought away from throwing up. My hot breath licked the window, fogging and fading, as hints of what I drank the night before bounced off the glass and snaked their way back up my nose. The smell of my breath was horrible but not disgusting, a lot like the perverted way people don’t hate the smell of their own farts.
I pulled my eyes open, heavy from three hours of sleep on a lumpy couch, but could manage only an Eastwoodesque squint. The sun was cresting the mountain line to the east painting everything stretched out before us a tangerine hue. Putting my palms flat to the seat, I shifted my position and let out a muffled groan on the back end of a sigh. “Mornin’ rock star,” he said as he held down the hit he’d taken from the joint pinched in his right hand, still burning cherry red like a smog screened sunset. He exhaled with nonchalant control, he never rushed it, and the smoke danced playfully, flirting with the light as it flooded the cab of the truck. The road made its way back to the coast’s edge, trash fires smoldering in the early morning sun. A fog bank sat just off the coast to our right, the sun burning through it, lint gray flames standing up off the water like a wildfire tickling the belly of a crisp blue, November sky.
“So, you got weird last night,” Zak said as he continued to hot box the cab of his Tundra.  
“Yeah, that was… interesting,” I said.
“No. Interesting really isn’t the word. Reading up on new sexual positions to try out with your horny girlfriend, that’s interesting. Watching Drewbie draw weird shit when he’s high is interesting. But what you did last night, that shit was fuckin’ weird.”
I countered with an embarrassed laugh. “What are you talking about,” I asked as I rubbed the back of my head and dragged out a yawn.
“After we left the bar you took off your clothes as soon as we crossed 15th. Then you asked the girls we were with for a piggyback ride. Bro, you tried to jump on the big girl’s back.”
“The big girl?”
“The grenade.”
“Oh, right.”
“I dunno if you felt bad or what, but you starting hugging them and rubbing your junk up against them. It was pretty creepy. Then, when they got mad, you called them all sluts. They kicked out pretty quick after that,” he took another pull from the joint. “Ev, girls like you,” he exhaled, “until you open your mouth. You’re a shitty wingman.”
“Fuck you.”
“I was hopin’ you’d get arrested so I could take a video and post it on YouTube.”
Zak’s good people. I think his mom coddled him a little too much growing up, so he shies away from confrontation, but he still talks a lot of shit, probably more than he should, you know, with him being so scared to throw a punch and all. He was the kid in high school everybody liked, and no one really hated. He’s the vanilla ice cream of my friends. But I’m making it sound worse than it is. He’s one of my best friends. And he’s a great wingman because he’s a little guy who doesn’t mind a bigger girl.
In the car just ahead of us were our two other buddies, Elias and Will. Eli was 19 and a cocky, little son of a bitch, but he could charm his way out of trouble and into girls’ pants. Reminded me a lot of myself at that age, and that’s probably why we butt heads so much.
Will didn’t surf and was a mix between a Kentucky redneck and Mathew McConaughey’s character in Dazed and Confused, dirty stache and all. He talked about his “steeze” a lot and called girls “babes.” He was chockfull of wasted talent, exhausting any remnants of sense on the stoner’s version of useless Jeopardy facts like 73 different ways to roll a joint and the conspiracy theory behind Kurt Cobain’s death. He was a music Nazi, so his idea of a good night included rolling on E with a bunch of guys listening to Brian Jonestown Massacre. He was the kid in college I wanted to punch in the face every time he opened his mouth. But he did have his redeeming qualities – he played a mean guitar, could drink a tall boy and smoke a cig in under a minute, and was game to do downright stupid shit when he had a few drinks in him.
We were headed to Camalu, about seven hours south of the border. It was a Saturday morning in November. The Baja 1000 was running. Our two car caravan played follow the leader as the highway led us through sad, one road towns, over hills posing as mountains, and past the Maguey farms. By midday the air was hot and dry, I rolled the window down, dangling my feet in the warm wind, sank down and reclined in the passenger seat, and sat my hat down on the bridge of my nose as I settled in for a nap.
I was woken up by a large bump and the sound of rocks passing under the tread of the tires, it was a muffled but loud noise like ice cubes in a blender. We had pulled off the highway and turned right onto the dirt road that cut between the PEMEX station and the mercado. The road led west, taking us past a handful of patchwork shacks. Horses grazed in fields blanketed in trash, brittle bones stretching rubber skin, corralled by fence posts better suited for kindling than warding off trespassers.
The road wrapped up and around a hill and the crescent coast revealed itself to the south as we headed north to the point. Straight ahead of us was La Cuelva del Pirata Hotel. La Cuelva looked like an okay idea gone wrong. True to its name, the unfinished eyesore looked like a mix between a pirate ship and a castle you’d find on a putt-putt golf course. Even though La Cuelva had an unfinished second level, a half-built pool, and no landscaping, they were still peddling rooms -- albeit there were only five. The only other sign of life was a trailer that a family seemed to be living out of on the ridge farther out on the point.
The surf was shit, two to three foot, so we set up camp, cracked a couple of beers and waited for the swell to fill in. We waited… and waited… and waited. Nothing. The longer we waited, the drunker we got and that swell we were waiting for never showed up. Three beer runs later, with no waves and darkness closing in, there was nowhere to go and nothing to do except get weird.
I woke up to flies and ants on my face and chest and in my ears. Elias had poured Gatorade powder in one of the gallons of water, and brought it into the tent and left it uncapped and the tent unzipped. I was on the air mattress in my banana hammock, Zak was spooning me to my left, Eli was cocooned in his sleeping bag peppered by dead ants and flies, and Will was naked peeing on what was our fire still drinking beer kept cold by the night and early morning air. It was just past seven in the morning and still no surf.
We ate a quick breakfast, mulling over our options -- do we stay or go. Eli and Zak paddled out, “We didn’t come all the way down here to barbeque and drink,” they said. “We could have done that shit at Zak’s.” When they got out, after about 11 minutes, we walked up to La Cuelva, bought a phone card, and called Eli’s family friend Andy. If you’re ever in Del Mar, Andy’s the guy driving the camo green truck that looks like it should be hauling supplies in Iraq, and he knew everything there was to know about Baja.
“Camalu,” he asked quizzically. “Why the hell are you guys down there? Last I heard people stopped surfing that place because too many surfers were getting robbed and murdered.” Great. We looked at each other, and without so much as a word we knew we were leaving. The only question was where.
Andy suggested Punta Cabras. It was three hours north, and he said it would be taking the swell much better than Camalu. We packed up camp and made our way north. We made good time for the first half an hour, but it was a Sunday and a lot of the small towns we passed through the day before were having parades so they shut down the highway. We hit a line of cars, buses, and semis that would have jammed even the border let alone the skinny two-lane highway we were riding. Having been skunked already, the lure of good surf baited us to leave the main road and work our way around the traffic by way of the back roads.
The parade was making its way east on a side street, bisecting the highway, so we headed west hoping we could cut behind it and then turn up to the north and make our way back to the main road. As we looped back around and began to head north, the road forked. To the left, the road returned to the coast and straight ahead it merged with a river valley running northeast.
Will and I sat in the car behind Zak and Eli, waiting for them to make a decision. A beat up, old Toyota pick-up that I needed a tetanus shot just to look at carried two men, pulled up and stopped, blocking the road to our left. The man on the passenger side opened his door, communicated something to his driver with a nod and a hand motion, and walked up to the driver’s side of Zak’s truck. I couldn’t hear their conversation, but the young man seemed to indicate that he could take us back to the main road through the riverbed. To this day, I don’t know why Zak agreed or, for that matter, why Will and I followed, but Zak and Eli told the stranger to jump on the bumper so he could guide us through the riverbed.
The path was through deep sand and we were slowed to a crawl with our guide bouncing along on the back of Zak’s truck. Barely wide enough to fit one car, the side mirrors clicked the tall reeds that stood about two feet over head and lined the way. The ticking, like a wood stick running along a picket fence, was hypnotic. The noise slowed as Zak’s truck rolled to a stop in front of us. And then it happened.
A man emerged from the brush, gun raised, rushed Zak’s cab tapping the head of the gun’s barrel against the glass of the driver’s side window. I’m always amazed at how in times of duress victims can rattle off the exact type of gun it was that they were assaulted with. I’m not one of those people. All I know is that it was a big fucking gun. At the same time, the guy who’d led us into this mess, jumped off the rear bumper of Zak’s truck, pulled a six inch shank from his front right pocket, rounded the right rear end of the truck at a crouched jog, and popped up by the passenger window with the blade pointed at the glass demanding Elias roll down the window. The men stood poised with their weapons, yelling demands.
“No te mueva,” one would yell.
“Abre la puerta,” the other would chime in.  
There was a gurgling putter behind us. I looked in the side view mirror and saw the rusty Toyota. We were boxed in. I kept wondering why Zak hadn’t just gassed it. Why were we stopped?
“Will,” I said, “No matter what happens, you use this car as a weapon. Run over everything.”
“Right,” he said anxiously.
My palms were sweaty, my brow greasy, and I could feel my heart in my fingertips. I shifted my attention to Zak and Eli’s truck in time to see the man on the driver’s side put his thumb to the hammer and cock it back.
“Fuck,” I said.
Zak pressed his foot to the floor immediately, and to everyone’s surprise the gunman didn’t fire, choosing instead to throw himself on the windshield of the truck. When Zak plowed through the heavy driftwood that blocked our way out, the gunman was tossed off the hood of the truck taking the windshield wiper with him. He hit the ground and rolled, and when he came to a stop his head was to the brush and his legs were limply outstretched in front of our car.
That sneaky, little bastard with the shank had reached for the passenger door handle just as Zak accelerated and was spun around, bouncing down the length of the truck. As we followed Zak out, we hit “our guide” at the waist sending him careening up onto our windshield, the glass splintering into a spider web, and he slid off the side of the hood. We ran over the gunman at the knees and the Toyota tailing us was too low to make it over the debris. We quickly found our way back to the highway and sped north to Punta Cabras, the whole way I half expected to see that rickety Toyota pop up on the horizon behind us.
Five hours later we sat on our boards in the water as darkness raced the sun to the horizon. Eli caught a wave in. Then Zak. I stayed out, looking back at the land cut by a dusk light. The polarity of the last 12 hours made me smile. I shook my head. Only in Mexico, I thought. Held up at gunpoint in the morning. Surfing double overhead waves by the evening. The black cloak of night rained down on the chalky desert hills to the east as my Mexican story was laid to rest. I took a left in. I waded out of the knee-deep water, made my way back to our campsite, my feet sinking ankle deep in the wet sand, the rising tide sweeping away my footprints. A half moon dangled in the rhinestone sky. I changed, sat on the sand warmed from the fire, someone threw me a beer, we toasted to something I now forget, and waited for the sun.