From Can't You Get Along With Anyone? A Writer's Memoir, and a Tale of a Lost Surfer's Paradise by Allan C. Weisbecker

CHAPTER THREE

 

To be a writer you need to see things as they are, and to see things as they are you need a certain basic innocence.
--Tobias Wolff

 

I first came to this paradise at the end of the road called Pavones, Big Turkeys, in June, 1997, just after the events described in my (first) memoir, In Search of Captain Zero. Here's my description of my arrival, as written in my journal, and which I wrote quickly and with a minimum of after-the-fact rewriting, as I recall. It flowed. And in this case the first person present tense is not just a device aimed at instilling a sense of You Are There immediacy. I really did write it, most of it, as I imply, i.e., that morning as it happened.

I'm watching through my camper's open door as the first wave of a stacked-up set wraps in from the south and charges across the seascape in the dreamy glow of first light. The wave churns its way through the inside shallows, then rushes over the beach in front of my campsite, which was dry a few hours ago at low water. I thought I'd be safe here from inundation, but still the wave comes, up and over the sloping dirt berm separating beach from jungle; then it sloshes under my hammock, rousing my dog Shiner and chasing her inland from her nest there. In its final throes now, the dying wave gurgles under my doorstep and then suddenly all earthly traces of it are gone. It's a fierce expiration I have witnessed.

I sip my coffee and consider my options as the rest of the set, wave by wave, probes my position, each successive incursion reaching a yard or so further inland than the one preceding it, until the last wave disappears under the Ford's front bumper with a crackle and a hiss. The groundswell has been on the rise since I ran out of road in my travels here yesterday afternoon and is rising still; and the full moon high tide has another hour of flood before it peaks and begins its withdrawal.

In all prudence, a move to higher ground would seem to be called for. But since when in my life have I conducted myself prudently? No, I'll ride out the rising tide, make a stand. I need not fear the water, or so I've been told.

I seem to be attracted to end-of-the-road places. Montauk – my home on the last left on Long Island before the lighthouse – was at road's end. So was the Punta Lobo campground up in Baja, at which I tarried for so long last year. Back on the Caribbean side where I found my vanished old friend Christopher, a.k.a Captain Zero, some three months ago: the end of the road. And here, this wilderness I have come to on the Pacific, the road likewise ends here. So for the second time I have come to the bottom of coastal Central America.

Perhaps my attraction to these sorts of locales lies in their feel of voluntary isolation, inaccessibility and seclusion. The sense that one is unlikely to be disturbed by some fool asking directions to somewhere else – people do not pass through end-of-the-road places. There is also the sense that the civilized world has been tilted and given a shake, with the result that those individuals with the most tenuous grasp on what is considered normalcy have slid down the resulting figurative slope and collected at the bottom, from where there is nowhere left to go, and where are formed enclaves and subcultures rooted in extremes.

And often, I've found, waves will be encountered at end-of-the-road places. Yes, there is a wave here all right. A point wave steeped in both speed and stamina, a rare combination on this planet. With a sizable, long period south swell like the one still building out my back door, spawned by some far distant Southern Ocean tempest, the wave here is so fast and so long as to be almost hallucinogenic. A miracle of a wave.

Not much here, in terms of the works of modern man. There is a cantina just down the shore from my campsite in the bush, looking out upon the middle part of this long, long wave, and by which charged a horseman on the beach yesterday, wild hair flying and a surfstick tucked under his arm. And there is a little fish camp further along, around the point from the cantina.

A long, fast point wave. A cantina and a fish camp. Horsemen carrying surfboards. The end of the road. Everything about this place suits me. I believe I'll stay for a while.

I stayed for a year, during which time I did the investigation into the Max Dalton killing for Men's Journal. As described in my letter to the U.S. Consul General, one result of my investigation was a death threat towards me, issued by this guy Logan, the North American nutcase who now figures to run me out of town. Plus I believe that the squatter who murdered Max, Gerardo Mora is his name, had designs on murdering me for what I'd uncovered in my investigation.

But there was another, more important, reason for leaving when I did. Mom's breast cancer from the 1980s had resurfaced. I had to go back to the States and see her. As it turned out, I would move in and take care of her for two years. During this time I struggled with Zero, writing and rewriting; I'd get an agent and eventually a publisher, Penguin Putnam (Tarcher imprint), who assigned me my demented editor when the original editor left the company. All that stuff.

I would return to Costa Rica in early September, 2001, a few days before 9/11. My intention was to build a house and settle, which I did.

For me to do this, Mom had to die first.

Mom died at home on the night of April 28, 2001. I was with her constantly toward the end; I'd taken to sleeping on a mattress pad next to her bed. She had been mostly unconscious for a couple of days prior to the 28th. She'd come around for brief periods and talk to me, sometimes lucidly, sometimes not. When she was lucid she'd squeeze my hand or stroke it gently; when not, she'd withdraw her hand if I picked it up. She'd even turn away if I touched her face. I was not hurt by this behavior. I assumed that in facing death she sometimes just needed to be alone.

Aside from being at her side, my main duty toward the end was to administer liquid morphine orally via an eyedropper and to keep her lips and mouth moist; being mostly unconscious she was unable to take liquids. She was on an intravenous drip that was tended by me and by a hospice nurse who came by every day. By coincidence, the nurse was the wife of a guy I'd gotten friendly with while surfing at a local beach. Although Mom died late at night, this lady came over immediately when I called and quietly held my hand while I sobbed and sobbed. A special person. I wish I could remember her name now.

My father had died a year and four months prior to Mom dying.

I have no brothers or sisters, just an uncle I'm not close to, Mom's brother, who lives out in Colorado; I have a cousin to whom I don't speak much. That's it for family. Upon making a list and analyzing it, I realized that of my other relationships there was no one I couldn't do without, permanently if it came to that. I actually did this, made a list of people, and then one by one crossed them off. (My writer friend Lesley was the exception but she lived in England anyway.)

At the time Mom died, my writing career was what it was. By which I mean that Zero was done, in print, along with the reissue of Cosmic Banditos. Penguin Putnam was doing absolutely nothing to promote either book. Less than nothing, actually; my demented Zero editor had formally cut off communication with me and – in loose collusion with my then-agent, who had female-bonded with her – was well into her sabotage behavior, which I could do nothing about. So my presence stateside was unnecessary. The movie deals for both books were coming together so I'd have money. I could write the screenplays from wherever I was.

Point of all this being that after Mom died there was nothing preventing me from moving down to the paradise at the end of the road at the bottom of Central America known as Pavones, Big Turkeys.

From Can't You Get Along With Anyone? A Writer's Memoir, and a Tale of a Lost Surfer's Paradise by Allan C. Weisbecker