Bay Street is the surf spot at the end of the Pico line, the bus we catch at dawn from Cousin Pete’s apartment in West L.A. Bay Street is like a diagram of our evolution. The palm tree-lined street that slopes down to the beach is a popular skate spot, frequented by the Dogtowners we grew up imitating. The wave out front is a playful beachbreak, perfectly suited to our “cuts” and occasional “rollercoasters.”
On a foggy afternoon, Cousin Pete, Brother Steven, and I ride knee-high silvery walls. The beach is empty. The surf is so tame that rather than paddle, we wade back out to the lineup. Between waves, Pete steps on something. “Whoa!” he shouts. “Come here! Quick!”
Steven and I slosh over. Pete clutches a box. It’s about the size of an encyclopedia, covered in moss and barnacles.
“It’s money!” says Pete. “I guarantee you it’s money!”
Cousin Pete and Steven are the same age. But where Steven is cautious, Pete is reckless. His latest stunt involves laying flat on his back, placing a firecracker on his belly, and lighting it. This quickly advances to two, three, five, then ten exploding firecrackers, his red face smeared in a grimace, his peach-fuzzed chest blotted in gray and pink burns. Pete claims that the closeness he, Steven, and I enjoy is a result of our identical twin mothers sharing breastfeeding duties. “We’re pretty much the same age, right? So you gotta figure that when your mom got tired she passed you over to my mom, and vice versa. That makes us almost brothers.”
We set the box on Pete’s board and push it to shore. It weighs about twenty pounds, though it’s hard to tell whether this is because of its contents or all the goop stuck to the outside. It looks ancient.
“I’m buying me a brand new Pro Series,” says Pete. “6’8”, wing pin, custom shaped by Robbie Dick!”
We carry it up the beach, across the scalloped high tide line, and onto dry sand. Six hands grope for an edge or a lip but there’s none.
“Hang on!” says Pete.
He runs up to his backpack and returns with a small penknife. We take turns scraping at the vibrant green moss and razor-sharp cockles that draw blood from our cold, wet knuckles. It feels primitive, Indian-like. Pete stabs at an edge, tears off a clump of shells. He says that his Pro Series is going to be maroon on the bottom and yellow on the deck. A ghost of a letter appears, a C. “Bitchen ass!” says Steven. Pete whoops. Then an R and an E. With great urgency we claw off a sheet of slime and read—
CREMATED REMAINS OF…
Beneath it is someone’s name, and beneath that, in official-looking, boldfaced text—
DO NOT DESTROY
In the two-part “Brady Bunch Goes to Hawaii” episode, Bobby finds what he thinks is a lucky tiki, but what turns out to be “tabu,” the cause of Alice’s hula accident, Pete’s confrontation with a spider, and Greg’s near drowning in a surf contest. He learns through a Hawaiian elder that the only way to reverse this is to take the tiki back to where it belongs.
Following this line of thinking, we set the box on Pete’s board, walk it back to the water, and with bowed heads, with an intense blast of the willies, drop it right where we’d found it.
