Billy Bénédiction Saves the Day

Bénir - French: to bless, to thank the Gods for

Bénir any Billy who wears that fabulous of a tunic.

Once back in the Delirium years, against all common sense, I headed out surfing by myself.

I know, I know I shouldn't do this. Even at the time, I knew I especially probably shouldn't do this at L'endroit Sauvage, which was about a 20-minute fair-weather dinghy ride from where we regularly docked on this particular island in the French West Indies. Getting there involved motoring around the exposed side of the island, out on the windward side of the rock where the shore essentially openly received an Atlantic that had been rolling westward unfettered for an entire oceanic-basin-worth of space. But on the particular day in question I couldn't drum up anyone else available, and it was one of precious few days off between charters, and well, I felt like surfing.

(Them waves aren't chocolate, you know that, right?)

As soon as I got out of the bay, there were swells. I mean, big swells right there at the outskirts of the anchorage, which is still somewhat protected. So here was the scene: me standing at the jerking dinghy console, realizing it's windy as hell – the sort of wind that's blowing up whitecaps right outside the breakwall. The wind-and-water factors combine to make dinghy travel slow at best, un-doable at worst. I don't know about this. But whatever, I feel like surfing.

It takes me a long time to get to L'endroit Sauvage and when I do, there is nobody else there. Being as how this is a pretty popular surfing spot for island locals who know what they're doing, this is A Bad Sign. But it is breaking. Breaking big! In fact, it's big enough, and from a slightly shifted direction, so I can't even anchor the dinghy where I usually would, but have to keep it further down the shore from the point, and further offshore. I idle and consider this for a long time, getting tossed around on the wishbone bow of the pontoons while getting the anchor out and tying the bowline onto the end of the anchor chain.

Two thoughts come to mind: 

a) I neither have a knife,  

b) nor do I have my mask and fins with me in the dinghy. 

(S. Solo Standard Protocol Item 126, Article 34.5: Do not admit, proceed as if nothing wrong.)

Even though I've never had trouble with the bottom here before, every once in a while, there's bound to be a struggle getting the anchor back up, in which case both the above checklist items are standard supplies in case of just-in-case.

Stupid me. Wonder... I wonder... if I should scrap the whole thing?

I notice that I'm already at a certain psychic level of unease – I can feel it uncoiling in my lungs and behind my navel. I know I probably shouldn't ignore it. But goddammit, I feel like surfing!

I know full well that of them all (and there are plenty), maybe my most staggering character flaw is impenetrable stubbornness, and with this in mind I've made a standing deal with myself about all things to do with forces that give absolute-zero shits about me (e.g., the sea and the mountains) – that never, ever will I force what doesn't feel right. So I sit in the cloud-scudded streaks of fleeting sun out there offshore, squinting at the azure surrounding me, trying to think and also, to not think at all in order to let some sort of clarity surface in me, just holding the anchor and chain for a minute.

Two minutes.

Then, the sign:

A turtle surfaces an arm's-length away: a big lazy green olive in the sapphire martini of the water. She cranes her neck to check me out, a fidgeting alien on my floating, wave-crashing white spacecraft – first out of one eye, then a slow head turn to double-check with the other. She is unhurried, unworried, mellow as moss while she comes closer. I keep waiting for her to realize what I am, for her millennia-long memory to remind her she is shy, to snort alarm and dive deep and fast. But she doesn't, so we just watch each other, me fiddling with the anchor flukes, her blowing tiny spumes of salt spray out of silent reptilian nostrils. 

Hi there, turtle.

It calms me down – maybe it's spiritual? – and when she does finally serenely turn and slip away, a tarnished green penny carrying some secret terrapin wish down with her as she slices and wavers out of view, I nod to myself. I have gotten the feeling that it's going to be OK.  

I am listening, Turtle. Gotcha. 

I set the anchor open and chuck it overboard.

It's a long paddle from here, and the chop is big enough that very soon, even sitting up as tall as I can on my shortboard I can't see the dinghy for seconds at a time while it ducks down between swells. It makes me nervous to lose sight of it – not so much for myself, but for the nightmare of the anchor dragging, or the line breaking, and the $30,000+ dinghy with its brand-new outboard blowing into the rocks before I can paddle back to it. It is the rough equivalent of parking a Mercedes without a hand-brake in the San Francisco hills and hoping for the best. 

Shit, it's a long way off.

Maybe this is not too safe. 

But Turtle said it's cool and maybe Turtle is my spirit-animal and hey, I feel like surfing!

L'endroit Sauvage break is windy. Confused. Coming in fast. I pearl and get rolled right off the bat and kick coral on my way around the washing-machine, and then even after I get back out and settled I keep feeling the bottom snagging my leash and I start thinking maybe, just maybe I am being supremely foolish for being out here alone today... 

Am I? 

(All this poor judgment, PLUS I didn't even put sunscreen on my bald spot.)

Once it takes root, the idea grows geometrically. 

Oh my god. 'The fuck am I doing? This is ridiculous. I'm not up to this. I'm too old to be this stupid.  Because of a *turtle?* Really, Susie?! REALLY. Your spirit animal is a jackass.

So I cut my losses and start paddling back and lo and behold, when I catch sight of it, the dinghy is a lot farther down the shore than when I left it. 

Fuck! (Paddlepaddlepaddle...) 

(THANKS Obama.)

By the time I get to it, the anchor has stopped dragging and has caught again, but it's now closer to shore, meaning the waves are stacking up bigger underneath it, and the dinghy is slapping down on them like a kid having a tantrum, angry at the ungiving anchor line. 

Great. What the fuck NOW, Turtle?

I can't pull it up. Every time I get a few feet of line on board, the 1,000-pound dinghy takes a rearward-hop on a wave and burns it back out of my hands. The anchor is not budging. 

Well isn't *this* just perfect? 

(Stuck between the devil and the deep blue sequins, here.)

I pull, tug, wrench, strain, try to time it with the waves, and almost get yanked overboard when the bottom snatches every hard-won inch of line back from me. 

Fuuuuck. 

I try idling forward while pulling, then I try to drive in front of it, try to back around it, pull it the other way, nothing. 

FUCKFUCKFUCK. 

The sun is getting lower. The wave sets are pushing tighter together. The tide is getting higher. Nothing good can possibly come from any of these developments.

I have to swim. I have to try to unhook the anchor off the bottom at the source. Aaaand, I have to do this shit without mask and fins. Jesus. I'm trying to remember how long the new, longer anchor line I just replaced last week at the ship-chandler a couple islands over is. 

Maybe 25 feet? Plus another 5 or so feet of chain? 

I jump back in and tread water, trying to think this out. No mask means I'll have to pull myself down the line, since I won't really be able to see shit. 

Which will make equalizing my ears a bitch. 

No fins means... well, I've had to swim the anchor up before when it's gotten lodged after taking guests snorkeling and whatnot, and with the chain in tow, it's maybe 10 pounds. Maybe 15. Even with fins, it's a good strong kick getting that load back to the surface. And without? I have never tried.

You don't float carrying that much steel.

I breathe deep, trying to get all oxygenated.

OK, go now. Think Turtle.

Pull, pull, pull down the line. Eyes open, everything is murky and stirred up and I can barely see my hands when they're stretched out to full arm's-length. The line is just a dark blurry stripe, and I can't tell with each grab-and-pull if I'm reaching for nylon or chain until I touch it. It seems really goddamn cocksucking sonofabitch motherfucking long. The dinghy on the surface is thrashing at the line like an unruly dog put on a leash for the first time ever. 

Even if I get to the anchor, what then, if it's still under pressure with nobody on-board to drive up on the line? A little help here, Turtle?

Line. Line. Line. Line. Chain. 

Chain! My fingers are on chain! But I am out of air. 

Go up now. 

The line is snapping like a bullwhip. 

Go up now. 

My nose, my bitchy little nose that is used to being masked, is wanting air really badly, rebelliously, starting unbidden to hiccup little leaks of water inward. 

Go up NOW. 

None of my meditative Delirium nights spent lying on-deck looking at the stars and practicing static apnea for three-minute stints of breath-holding – and there have been many, what with the Billyless nature of boat-life – are currently doing me any good in this turbid, aerobic-goal-oriented hell. I have to let go, have to surrender to a flutter of almost-involuntary kicks, and myopically I watch the bright fuzzy surface nearing. It's stranglingly slow. I feel crippled without fins, like my bare feet are some impotent, embryonic mishap. A turtle I am not.

(You're out of your element, Susie.)

Back on the dinghy, I see a lone Billy watching from the beach. He gets on a surfboard, which he has till now wisely shunned, and starts to paddle out. I secretly say a little blessing at this sight.

Maybe he has a mask! Fins! Or a miracle! Quelle bénédiction!

As he nears the dinghy I'm disappointed to see that he does not have a mask or fins, but I pull his board up and he gamely volunteers to try for the bottom himself, while I sumiltaneously drive forward to take the pressure off the line. He dives for it... 

(oh please oh please oh please!) 

...but comes up a minute later out of breath and empty-handed and sputtering, then climbs on board, and we sit, gathering ourselves, thinking. 

Finally he asks, You have a knife?

Well yeah, I *should* have a knife. I *should* have a mask and fins. I *should not* have come out without these things, I fucking knew this before the fact. I should not have come out by my damn self. I should not have come out today at all. And I *certainly* should not have let an effing *turtle* tip my mental balance.

But, out loud, all I have is the admission that No, I don't have a knife.

We sit, surfboards stacked wax-to-wax between us, and watch each other drip-dry in the wind. There is nothing left to do but break something.

So Billy Bénédiction lies belly-down, hanging forward over the bow, and I again drive up on the line. It comes tight and the outboard starts kicking up bubbles because we are not going anywhere. I open the throttle some more and the steering gets squirrelly in a way that you should never feel. And then I open it up some more. 

Are you watching this, you jerk Turtle? 

The bow, my cohort too, gets pulled down low into the waves, getting socked squarely in the chops by them instead of riding over their backs. This is the point-of-no-return: either something gives, or the dinghy will swamp and this ride is over.

Goddammit, you see this bullshit, you stupid Turtle?! Is this funny to you? 

And then there is a shudder, a lurch, the dinghy rears up like a hornet-stung racehorse for a moment before I can cut the engine and Billy Bénédiction yells something, hauling in the line quickly, hand-over-hand, to keep it out of the prop. At the end is chain and the anchor shaft, with all four flukes ripped off: galvanized steel, dismembered and left to drown. But we are free! We both let out a wide-eyed little laugh, looking at the shaft, shaking heads, shrugging. 

You're welcome for my anchor, you awful Turtle! You terrible, mean lying Turtle you!

(Next year for your turtle birthday: mylar balloons. Lots of them.)

I drop Billy Bénédiction back off as near to the beach as the dinghy can safely approach with the current waves, spouting merci beaucoups, and we split, one paddling toward shore and one steering away. 

***

The next morning, when I got back from buying a new anchor and was prepping the deck for our imminent departure on a passage, I found a note with a French island phone number tucked under our dockline, which read:  

America – L'endroit Sauvage – Surfing?

To this day, I occasionally randomly regret that I didn't act quickly enough to put some credits on Delirium's shitty island-cell-phone to give him a thank-you call before we sailed away. 

I never even got his name, but I mean, I owed the guy a drink, at least. 

And maybe some turtle soup.