The Maui Effect (Man-Made Trilogy #1)

Tolos

Dane

Nazaré was like California, only fifty years or so ago. With Mediterranean flavors of fishing village meets farmland meets Mavericks, and seagulls soaring across the wide expanse of beach, the town was pure enchantment. Men herding goats up the cobblestone road. The smell of ocean permeating everything. White houses with red tile roofs reminded Dane of Mexico, with a European flair.

Hope had booked them a house a block away from the ocean, and they’d hit the sack early. But between the jet lag and the anticipation, Dane flopped around on the saggy mattress like a fish on the beach. He found himself listening for the sound of rising surf, timing the period between waves. One one thousand, two one thousand. At sunset, they’d sat on the cliff watching the waves, which were still in the double-overhead range. Nothing close to how they’d be by morning if the predictions held.

When he finally drifted off, he dreamed he was riding a dappled horse up and down the beach, galloping through the shallows. The ocean was pancake flat. No waves had come. He saw a person in the distance, an old man in a straw hat waving him down. When he reached the man, his horse stopped. The man slowly took his hat off and raised his gaze.

“Someone is going to die today,” he said.

Dane bolted upright in bed. His cheeks were wet as though he had been crying. He went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face, then downed a glass of water and went back to bed. Something about this trip was spooking him in a way that never happened.

He thought of his mom and how when he was young and she’d be off on one of her “extended work trips,” he would lie in bed and stare at the ceiling—sometimes all night long—listening for the rattle of the old Wagoneer’s motor and its squeaky suspension. It never came.

Even when Belinda would come home sunburned with chapped lips and smelling like weed, she never said where she was on those long layovers. If she had wanted, he knew she could have changed her flight route. By then she’d racked up enough seniority. But she never did.

Dane would skip school those days and head to the beach, surfing until he could no longer feel his toes, then passing out on his threadbare rust-colored towel. Then surfing. Then sleeping. Then doing it all over again. The ocean filled up his emptiness and became his best friend.

His mother had chosen waves over him. Ironic, because choosing waves over women was the story of his life.

Fog prowled the hilltops quietly as they readied the skis, and Jeff and Rusty loaded their camera gear into a wooden fishing boat that looked like it had been around longer than any of them. The air was crisp, wind absent. Yeti had led them in a short meditation and stretching routine back at the house, helping Dane regain his equilibrium. On their way, they grabbed high-octane espresso and pastel de nata —a Portuguese custard pie.

A small crowd had gathered on the dock, speaking amongst themselves. Some shook their heads, others chuckled.

.

Idiotas.

Americanos burros.

A younger fisherman stepped forward. “Man, today is not the day to go to sea. The waves, they will swallow you,” he said, in heavily accented English.

Yeti spoke for Dane and the group. “Thank you for your concern, my friend. We understand the risk. Riding big waves is our religion, we do it all the time.”

The man translated back to the others, who still wore skeptical looks on their sea-worn faces. With likely centuries of collective fishing between them, they would know the ocean here intimately. Know how deadly she could be.

It had been hard to scrounge up a boat driver, but they had thrown enough money at him he couldn’t refuse. Another American, a waterman from Hawai’i named Garrett, had helped set up the whole trip. Garrett had come last year, at the invitation of one of the locals who had recognized the potential of these waves, and had ridden a wave taller than the cliffs. With the fort and lighthouse for perspective, you could tell the magnitude. A photo of it had spread through the surfing world like wildfire, and that wave was singlehandedly responsible for Dane being here.

Last night at Garrett’s place, they’d studied maps of the underwater topography more closely. The Nazaré canyon beneath them went down five thousand meters, with steep cliffs that funneled water in from the depths. It was the deepest undersea canyon in Europe, and those cliffs were responsible for amplifying the waves up to three times what they’d normally be.

“Check this out. There’s even a German U-boat down there,” Garrett said, pointing to a spot not far off the point. “The tip of that canyon is right under you when you’re out there on big days. You can sense it when you’re over it.”

Now they followed Garrett and his partner, Andrew, out through the harbor and beyond. These Yamahas had more juice than what Dane was used to. “Trust me, you’re gonna need it,” Garrett had told them.

Not only that, but Andrew had explained that at Nazaré, they didn’t use the “kill switch.” That was news to the group. In every big wave scenario they’d been in, jet ski drivers always wore the lanyard around their wrist, so that when disconnected from the switch, the engine would automatically shut off.

“Why?” asked Hope.

“Because here you want that ski to keep moving away from you. Anywhere nearby and it becomes a twelve-hundred-pound projectile. It’s just not worth the risk.”

Dane wasn’t sure of the logic behind that, but he went with it. All around, the water was lit up red thanks to the fog-filtered sun. Dane and Kama rode together, Kama driving. Once they made it out into the deep, visibility improved.

“Brah,” Kama said, when the point came into view.

Dane was rendered mute by the sight. He knew the cliff was over three hundred feet high, and from this angle, the waves seemed to be clawing for the top. White plumes lifted off tall green walls that created their own wind. The group approached from the south side, outside of Praia do Nazaré, a long ribbon of white sand. He glanced across the water at Yeti, who gave him a nod, as if to say we’re doing this .

A shiver ran across his skin and that same full body rush that he craved. This was what he lived for. But even as he thought it, an image of ‘Iwa played through his mind, alone at her fundraiser. His jaw clenched down, and he tasted blood on his tongue. What kind of selfish asshole was he? Choosing waves over a woman that meant everything to him.

Is this more important than love?

The question had been swimming just beneath the surface, poking up its head more and more lately. It threw him. Knocked him off balance. He knew what the answer should be, and yet, here he was.

Up ahead, Garrett slowed, then circled back around. Yesterday from the cliffs, he’d pointed out where they would line up, emphasizing that the waves moved around a lot and were largely unpredictable.

“It’s looking a little more north than ideal, but let’s see what comes.”

Garrett handed the wheel over to Andrew and pulled his wetsuit hood up over his head. Dane did the same, and so did Yeti. They floated for a few minutes, and were close enough to the fort and the cliffs that you could hear the voices of the small crowd that had gathered. Dane swore he smelled coffee. What he would give for another hot mug right now. He was freezing his nuts off. Even in his five mm wetsuit. When the first set marched in, Andrew pulled Garrett into a bomb—a vertical mountain that peeled north of the point. As with all point breaks, one slipup and a graveyard of rocks awaited. These rocks were school bus–sized, as though someone had driven them off the edge of the cliff and they’d landed nose down.

“Brah, this one’s all you!” Kama said, as the second one approached.

Dane was already in the water, and Kama gunned the engine, gaining enough speed to sling him onto a wave. Dane let go of the rope and sped along the feathering top, then dropped down the face. He sensed something off, and when he looked up, he saw a second peak forming. He crouched and straightened out to avoid getting slammed. The cliff loomed, but he barely noticed. He cut out before he hit the inside foamy beach break section, and Kama sped in to get him. Outside, they regrouped.

The next set was bigger and cleaner, and Dane had a screaming ride, glad he had brought his thickest board. But so far, nothing like the larger-than-life waves he’d been hoping for. His last few big wave sessions in California and Todos Santos had been better than this. Between the three jet skis, they picked off the best waves of the sets, letting many waves go unridden. Some were too north, almost sideways. Garrett played conductor, telling everyone which ones to ride. It was nice to have someone out here who had even a little experience with the break.

By lunchtime, the day warmed enough to remove their hoods, and the sun shone deep into the water. Everyone got at least one good ride—nothing epic, and everyone had at least one wipeout. Proper beatings, but nothing out of the ordinary. The sun had traversed from land to sea, and Dane was feeling the burn in his legs. Soon, a texture appeared out the back.

“One more set and we go back to the harbor,” Garrett yelled.

Kama said he was done, so Dane—still waiting for that mythic Nazaré wave he had traveled all this way for—said he’d take it. He needed something to clear his conscience, because every time he thought of the look on ‘Iwa’s face when she realized he wouldn’t be coming to her fundraiser, a cold wind blew through him.

“You going?” Kama said.

Dane found himself staring down a big one. Taller than anything else today, thick as a house. It was too late to catch it, but the next wave was even bigger. He gave Kama the thumbs-up.

At the top, looking down, time slowed. White strings of foam ran up the green face of the wave. A gull swooped in, wing skimming the water just below the top. Dane heard nothing but the thudding of his own heart. And then he was unceremoniously pitched into an eight-story elevator drop. For a moment he was weightless, arms wide, gracefully falling. He knew if he went down now, nothing good would come of it, but at the bottom, his board reconnected with the water.

Yes!

Making the drop gave him a sense of immortality, and he carved a deep bottom turn and headed higher up the line. Far ahead, the lip began to throw, and he pumped his board to get beyond it. The wave slingshot him along with an unusual violence. He barely made it through the first section and could feel a cavern forming behind him. An invisible echo of water. But he couldn’t look, he just wanted to get off this thing.

The wave, however, had other ideas. Spray from the closing barrel exploded out and flattened him. The side of his head hit the water as though hitting concrete, filling his vision with fuzz. The wave carried so much force, he felt himself being sucked back up the face. There was nothing he could do but try to relax and go with it. Then he went over the falls and his whole world went dark.