I Was Too Young to Die (Part 1 of 2)

The roads had a capacity for treachery and the mountains appeared complicit. Several times we had been here, gambling on the mercy of mother nature, but this was the storm season and she always forbade us entrance to the sea. As he guided the van around the final hairpin and the bay came into view I saw the weight of the ocean heave itself against the land and shuddered.

This was our third visit and it wasn’t a pleasant drive from Mogan to San Nicolas, I could see he was pissed off. A death throw of some huge storm far out in the Atlantic determined that our style of fishing was nigh impossible. I was hoping we weren’t going Spearfishing today. I put a cassette in the little Bush player we had with us, hoping to lighten the mood. ‘Take it to the Limit,’ began to play. ‘Fuckity, fuck, fuck,’ I thought, not a good choice. As Randy Meisner of the Eagles begged to be put on the highroad so he could take it to the limit one more time the Master’s expression changed from disappointment to determination. Where was Doris Day when you needed her ‘Que Sera, Sera.’ We walked down to the harbour where my cigarette was soon extinguished along with my hope of grandchildren, ‘I’m going in,’ he called through the wind. ‘You don’t have to.’ I was a kid and drowning seemed a better option than being left alone in a storm on Gran Canaria, so we headed back to the van, put our wet suits on and blew back to the harbour wall. We passed an old man sat in the lee of a rock smoking a pipe. How did he do that? I felt like Dorothy and he had a pipe lit. He called us over, ‘Estúpido, hoy no es posible, morirás,’ he said. The Master grinned at him. ‘Not today old man,’ he said turning to me, ‘He says were going to die,’

I smiled and nodded and I have no idea why. I wanted to say that in actual fact I was going back to the van to have a nice cup of tea and you’re going to die, but I followed him to the harbour edge. He explained our mode of entry. We wait for a big wave and as it recedes we jump in and I was to stay with him the whole time we were in the sea. He counted the waves, the seventh wave is usually a big one. A nod and a push later I was in the water finning like a mad man it was then that I realised that he hadn’t explained how we were going to get out. 

 

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