Meet Derrick

A fierce gust picked up and Derrick, from inside, felt the car jerk sidewards.
‘The wind’s coming off the ocean, supposed to be a pretty heavy storm tonight,’ he reassures Sasha’s nervous glance.
Leaning across the wheel of the car he feels the chill from outside pass through the windscreen, wiping the fog off the glass with his sleaves, he watches the road in front, outside its wet, the clouds have covered the moon and all that he can see is the glimmer of water across the road. He relaxes back into his chair and squeezes the throttle a little harder. Earlier that evening he’d had been out surfing, it was a wild ride that still had him pumped. He had only ever seen it break on the outer reef like it had been today, a wild rough swell, closing down at different areas before making it all the way to shore. His old man used to tell him stories of surfing it six foot clean, back in the day that is; he was always a bit sceptical but he still lived the old boys stories daily like it was a gospel reading from some old scriptures. During the hot sticky summer days he dreamed as the teacher drew strange diagrams across the blackboard and talked about x this and y that. Outside through the large beige framed windows, Derrick would watch the tall tree on the far side of the grassy field. He watched the leaves of the highest branches as they danced and sung songs to the wind. He watched the direction of the breeze until he could see the ocean forming in front of him. He would be delighted when the wind blew west; it was like a magnet for his mind that drew him away from his work. First he dreamt of the glassy green sea, smothered by the tender off shore breeze and set alight by the glorious sun. He would look out across the ocean like he were sitting in the white of the beach and see the ocean surging behind the dark figure which was the outer reef. He’d watch as peak after peak of perfect swell grew from the deep blue sea and rose up and broke with a thundering growl. He dreamt until he could see himself paddling in, a quick paddle he would think, then a heavy drop as the thick green lip would curl over. He’d play out the drop in his head over and over again until he thought he had it perfected, he’d crouch and grab the inside rail – no, he’d stay standing and hold his hands above his head and feel the roof of the cave which surrounded him. He fantasised for hours on end, up until the very end where the wave would close out across the sandy shore. He thought about just holding in until it engulfed him like his dreams or bursting out the back like a pro in all the videos. He practised this on the weekends, asking the guys if they had seen how high he launched, and when they said no he’d just try again.

The way the old boy would talk about it, he made it sound like the reef had fired every second day, but like all old boys, Derrick figured, they had forget the hundreds of sessions surfed where they waited in between. He had never seen if go off the way he had imagined it, the way his old man described it. You forget over time, all those other days until all you remember is that wave, that moment, that very off chance and that very time you had the best surf of your life. Like it had played in Derricks head, it played in his old mans mind on those same long summer days until he believed that every wave he had ever surfed was very much that same day.

Even if it had been rough as guts, he couldn’t wait to tell Samuel he had surfed Shark Ally. Beat that bitter break, charged the choppy lines and floated around those heavy close outs the both had feared.
‘Derrick,’ Sasha shrieked, ‘slow down, you almost hit that curb.
He eased off the throttle and smiled at Sasha.
‘You scared?’
‘No, I just don’t want to die tonight.’
‘Like we would crash anyway,’ Derrick replied.
‘Well I don’t want it to be tonight if we do.’
‘Don’t worry we won’t crash, anyway, Sam’s is just around the corner, we’re almost there.’


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So it's been ages again, sorry about that anyone who reads this. After I got home I ended up leaving again for a trip to Darwin then a trip to Cairns in the sunny state of Queensland on the east coast. Finally I came home again for some work. Been working on a few peices but not finishing any of them. This was a quick throw down to see where I had been going with my writing. Sorry if it sounds like a tacky chapter from a teenages novel, it was the characterisation I was more interested in.