Read Online The Practical Navigator by Stephen Metcalfe - Free Book Online Page B

cold, smooth, and delicious. It is Leo’s opinion that societies and religions that forbid drinking breed angry, aggressive men. What’s worse, terrorists or alcoholics? It’s probably a trade-off but Leo opts for the alcoholics as occasionally they can be amusing.
    â€œSo how you been?” asks Leo.
    Off the cuff.
    Anita shrugs and sips from a bottle of sparkling water. “Not great but no big deal. You?”
    â€œAh, you know. The good, the bad, the ugly. Mostly pretty good though.”
    â€œYou look good.”
    â€œSince when you like bearded fat guys?” says Leo.
    Anita smiles. “I was talking about your soul, Leo.” She refills his glass from the thermos, as Leo wonders when was the last time he felt this simple and content.
    â€œHow’s Michael?”
    Contentment vanishes to be replaced by caution. Leo sips, sucks the taste of lime off his tongue. How is Michael? For someone he’s known for almost a third of his life and considers his closest friend, Leo realizes he isn’t sure.
    *   *   *
    The kid comes wandering onto a building site one day, he’s maybe nineteen or twenty, looking for work, anything. Usually Leo would tell him to beat it but the kid is strong looking and Leo has a no-show that day.
    â€œYou do drugs?” Leo asks.
    â€œA little pot on occasion.”
    â€œYou drink?”
    â€œLittle beer on occasion.”
    â€œWhat do you do more than on occasion?” Leo says.
    â€œSurf.”
    â€œI don’t like surfers. A ripple in the water, they don’t show up.”
    â€œI surf at dawn and sunset.”
    Leo likes the kid. “You got a sense of humor?”
    â€œGuy’s walking his dog,” says the kid. “He goes into a bar. The bartender sees him—hey, no dogs! It’s a seeing-eye dog, the guy says, I’m blind. Since when is a Chihuahua a seeing-eye dog, says the bartender. Damn, says the guy, they gave me a Chihuahua?”
    â€œUnload those bricks,” says Leo, laughing. “Eight bucks an hour, we’ll see if you last the day.”
    Michael did. He came back the next day. And the next. And the week after. Smart. Curious. Willing to do anything asked of him if you showed him how.
    â€œI need to take the next couple of days off.”
    It had been three months.
    â€œWhy?” says Leo.
    â€œThere’s a surf contest in Redondo Beach.”
    â€œIs there money?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œSee you next Monday.”
    Michael had come back the following Monday with a huge grin and two hundred dollars and to celebrate bought a case of imported beer for the crew.
    â€œYou must be good,” says Leo.
    â€œJust okay,” says Michael.
    The next contest is local and on a cold, gray day, the temperature in the high fifties. Leo, who is allergic to bathing suits on the best of days, goes to watch. It blows him away. One moment a guy is like a floating head out in the water, the next he is up on his tiny board, screaming down the face of a wave, pirouetting at the bottom, cutting up, then down, back and forth, in constant motion, sometimes skating across the top of the wave, balanced on its cascading edge, one surfer actually going under the curl, then shooting out the side, some of them, including Michael, going up the face and taking off, turning an impossible 180 degrees in midair, Leo wondering if the board is attached to them or they to it, coming down, carving at the bottom, going back up to do it again, on and on. And they were tireless. Coming in, they’d immediately turn and, with hungry strokes, paddle out again through the heavy water as if it were a race to see how many rides they could get before they died of exhaustion.
    â€œI have a sponsor.”
    It was a year later, Michael now up to fourteen an hour, and hearing the news, Leo felt like a proud older brother.
    â€œWhat, you mean you don’t want to do drywall the rest of your