Fellowing Longghost

By Gerrit Wegener

Miles Traumer drowned. It's true he was rescued, but drowning is drowning, not that he would ever tell a soul.

 

Young Longghost observed it all. In his teens, "shredding" with the Mo'reapy Raiders, his surfer crew, Longghost had a reputation—he was dangerous to be around. But he had something. 

 

Years later, Miles runs into Longghost in Pierce, Arizona. After a few visits to his ranch, Calabooza, he knows for sure there's something he can't avoid, even if he avoids him.

 

Miles also encounters Will Marvel, keeper of a Blue Moon Butterfly habitat at the Laughing Jesus Tepee. Although the playful fluttering is dazzling at first, Miles learns the butterflies, infected with a parasite, have saved themselves with a savior gene. Marvel calls this "a stranger in the wings."

 

Back at Miles' place in Lonesome Valley, fellowship and the "whole mend" are in the air, at least that's what Longghost dares him to recognize. Miles, however, suspects an unknown secret is about to be revealed. He recalls what surfer Miki Dora once said, "A real secret will get you dead."

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Calabooza Press
• Release date: Jun 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201477929

Gerrit Wegener

Gerrit Wegener grew up in Southern California in the sixties. He thought it was the center of the universe. He now resides in the Central Highlands of Arizona. The road gave out and there he was. 

Book preview

Neptune Standard Time

It was a silent affair. In the last twenty to sixty seconds before sinking the distress wasn’t obvious.

How could he cry out if the water was flowing fast into his mouth—so fast he was barely able to tilt his head above the surface, barely able to catch the wiggle weave of a gaze?

As the water entered his airways, he inhaled it, and his larynx began constricting. Soon, denied entry into the lungs, the water entered his stomach, and he started going down.

Three frantic attempts to stay above were the usual count. He’d used up two.

The other kids watched. That’s exactly what they did. They watched.

It was a stranger who saved him. He jumped in and pulled him out. Now all of them were looking down as he sputtered and spat out water, his throat burning.

They watched as the stranger lay him flat on his stomach and pushed on his back so he would cough up more water.

Later, he sat in a patio chair under a tree. A sparrow sat on a branch overhead. His trunks were drying on a clothesline.

When he left the lesson, he didn’t retrieve them. Must have been about three o’clock, Neptune Standard Time.

He’d asked himself: who wants to be like them anyhow? They were learning how to swim, hallelujah, but he had something they were incapable of knowing, and he would never, ever, let them in on it.

And he never did. Kind of.

Late

Is it you? Miles asked.

He was addressing a man in his sixties. Still strikingly handsome, his gray-blue eyes, more placid now than piercing, were offset by a short beard and longish silver hair. He caught quite a few stares.

They were outside of The Blue Tulip Café and Bookstore in Peirce, Arizona.

Before he entered, the man stopped, recognition not exactly beggaring his expression. He was in a suit, olive. His tie, red, was faintly floral. His shoes, light brown, were vintage wingtips.

Miles identified himself. It’s been a while. Years.

I know, Longghost said.

Other customers were coming in, so they moved out of the doorway and stood outside.   It had been a warm day that belonged more to summer than spring. Now, in the parking lots and alleys, dusk was settling in, the air cooler and more humid. In the distance, at the end of Magellan, Big Toe Butte caught the last patch of light.

One rainy night, in a hospital waiting room, Longghost couldn’t retrieve himself from what had happened, from what he’d done. His chain of gestures had snapped. 

Miles introduced Dara, his wife, and Longghost shot her a nod.

It is you, Miles said.

Longghost didn’t answer. He studied Miles, scrutinized might be a better word.

Cars slowed and stopped at times for pedestrians in the nearby crosswalk, while across the street, above the rooftops, a faint first quarter moon shone, an early star lower in the sky. A woman rode by on a Triumph motorcycle. No helmet. Blonde ponytail in the wind.

Miles decided to focus on the suit. Are you a lawyer now?  he asked. City official? . . . No, how ‘bout a federal agent?

That’s funny, Traumer. Really funny. Do I look like a federal agent?

Not sure.

Are you sure about that?

With you? Not really.

Longghost gave the general proximity a quick scan. You live here now?

Just outside of town—Lonesome Valley.

No shit. Fancy that. Found any yet?

Found?

Treasure. Buried treasure. He kept hold of a smile.

Miles waited for the kicker. It wasn’t coming.

Longghost looked around and shook his head. He seemed impatient now. After glancing at his watch, he said, I’m a little on the late side, Miles. 

Miles made a quick appraisal. "Where exactly do you live? he asked. We could be neighbors."

In the pause that ensued their glances did some browsing; on Miles’ part for a warmer reaction; on Longghost’s for a signal of his true intent, alerting you could say.

Miles figured he was considering whether to give him the bum’s rush, or to grant him more of his time.

Longghost pulled out his wallet and fiddled for something, a card. Number’s on the back, he said, as he handed it to Miles.

Miles glanced at the area code before stuffing it his shirt pocket. Totally unreal, he said. Running into you here.

Looking back after turning to go, Longghost gave him a quick wave as he entered The Blue Tulip.

Following him in was a striking woman in red. Miles’ heart dropped. She was Anne luft, a memory.

Now Miles wondered if Longghost were still meeting people, dining with friends, perhaps, or was he completely alone? Did he detect a listing to left, slight limp? And, really, what the hell was he doing in a suit, an olive Brooks Brothers or Nordstrom suit. He looked again at his card:

LZ CALABOOZA

Central Highlands  Lonesome Valley

Dora nudged him. Is that who I think it was?

Him. Miles laughed as they walked to where they were parked. Dora gave him a nudge, more remonstrative than playful. As they got closer, Miles saw it, parked next to his Mini Cooper S, an older Porsche 912 4-banger coupe, silver.

It was just as Zach Ballad had predicted.

Unlocking his Mini at some distance with the remote, he leaned over to kiss Dara on the cheek.

Not looking ahead, they almost collided with someone. The real deal, Miles speed-read as he met his surprised look.

Dressed entirely in dark blue, Real had stringy gray hair astrew under a Greek fisherman’s cap, and his eyes were enlarged behind tortoise-shell specs. As he flashed a smile, his gaze momentarily fixed on Dara.

Excuse us, Miles said.

Real nodded and away he went. Watching him activated Miles’ shit detector. He wasn’t sure why. His manner had to do with that. Maybe something else.

When Miles looked over at Dara, he couldn’t get a fix on her reaction. What was going on? At any rate, Real was in a hurry, obviously late.

As it turned out, so was Miles.

Lonesome

Lonesome Valley was just outside of Peirce, a small city of 50,000 or so, The Town of Home as Found.  Although its main thoroughfare had one too many RV parks and its commercial strip had a mall with too many vacant stores, the center of town did have a slew of Victorian houses behind the dark gnarls of old elm trees, and a town square with a classical revival courthouse, 1916 or so, air conditioners in random windows, 1950 or so. 

The square was the place for fairs and local events under shade provided by more elms, some scrubby from disease. Across the street, the restored saloons of Tango Row provided nightlife, cowboys and prostitutes a ghostly presence, bikers not.

At the outskirts of town, before you hit the gas to head east to Lonesome Valley and to non-existent Lonesome (no more than an old gas station), you couldn’t miss the concrete, weather-tamed Laughing Jesus Teepee, next to which was the fire-blackened rubble of an adjoining Trading Post; it was an attraction that belonged in the book Weird Arizona, even though all it attracted were afternoon shadows from some huge Precambrian boulders alongside the road. Some kind of artist lived there, or so it was rumored.

It was May now, and the temperatures were already climbing. Although often cloudless in the mornings, in a corner of the late afternoon sky, wispy cirrus clouds stretched until they faded behind jet streams.

In 1963 they formed a circle and swept over Arizona as a mystery cloud. For some observers it was a message last seen in the days of Noah. Others said it was merely an odd pattern from mineral dust in the upper atmosphere.

*    *    *    *

Putting off a call, Miles had been known to do that. This time, he suspected he’d get the prompt after fifteen seconds. He was right. Miles cleared his throat before the beep, but his voice was still pitched a tad high.

A day later, Longghost called back and left Miles a message, his voice modal, low tone, or what one might call normal. 

Normal. That was a laugh. Longghost could only be associated with normal in the eyes of the favored. In the eyes of everyone else, which included his surfing crew, the Mo’reapy Raiders, he was exceptional. Because of this, he was more entitled to certain waves than they were, but they were entitled to be with him.

Miles recalled a summer’s day in Huntington Beach, year of the Mystery Cloud. Driving on Pacific Coast Highway, right after passing the pier, Miles had noticed a Chevy panel truck parked near 13th Street, adjacent to the lot where Gordie Surfboards were shaped and sold.

Slowing, he hung a right and found a parking spot further up on a side street. Then he walked, under gull cry and evenly spaced palm trees, to Main Street and the pier, where he made his way through the usual throng of inlanders.

Heading to the right, to the sand, he took his shoes off and started a zigzag course through sunbathers and kids. As usual, due to the surface temperature of the sand, it was easier to walk at the wave-rinsed tide edge.

After a short distance, not far from the pier, he decided to settle in between a vision in a red bikini to his right and a girl in a green bikini to the left, Hawaiian Tropic trumping ocean air. He knew who they both were, especially Red Bikini, but he pretended otherwise, which R.B. acknowledged with an infused smile.

Far enough back from the breakers, Miles had a good view of the line-up of surfers to the left of the pier and saw it was Longghost accelerating from a hard-bottom turn. Cutting left as he climbed the face, he eventually had to pull back and over, only he didn’t.

Instead, riding close to the curl, he was headed for the pilings—too late now to bail. He had to come in close–outside then inside–to shoot through, which he was doing. No time on his part to fret about the pier teeth of barnacles and mussels.

Afterward, in a fine fettle, his wet hair swept back with his hand, his mien like a surfer Eleusinian, Longghost walked past the pier with his board under his arm.

The Mo’reapy Raiders, sitting on their boards in the lull before another take-off, flashed him wide grins of approval. Miles noticed one of them, Zach Ballad, was singing to himself, the murmur of the waves absorbing his cover of The Muleskinner Blues.

Miles sighed with amusement and glanced over at Red Bikini, her long brown hair going blond, her silver bracelets a-sparkle. She was resting on her elbows for a look at Longghost.   Over to the right, Green Bikini was lying on her side on a beach towel, her head swiveled up and resting on her closed hand. He flashed on how her bikini bottom was held with ties on both sides, her flanks luminous. In both cases, their eyes clung to Longghost as he paddled out again, duck diving under the curls.

After Longghost rejoined the Raiders in the lineup, Green Bikini shot Miles a glance. It was Thora Grunwald, a trifler if there ever was one.

Red Bikini was altogether different. It was Anne, Longghost’s girlfriend to be, and it was hard for Miles to pretend that anything else on the beach could hold more interest.

Behind Miles and Bikinis Red and Green, an older guy had been watching the action. If long of hair and beard, gray but almost white, Miles liked to imagine he was a reappearance of the Gray Champion, from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tale.

Musing on this, when Miles turned around to steal another glance, the Old Guy was gone. Thin air. Miles scanned the area—he didn’t see him anywhere.

*    *    *    *

The call came while Miles was in the wine section of Fry’s market.

When he saw it was Longghost, Miles promised himself he would keep it nonchalant. Again, though, Longghost’s voice did him in. It was like water smacking a keel.

At any rate, Longghost was saying he was busy—he was always busy—but he could possibly free up some time for Miles to pay him a visit at his ranch, Calabooza.

Miles laughed. It was the way he’d said busy.

Taking the Drop

His real name was Peter Lang, but like the Dude in The Big Lebowski, he decided self-applying the right name was the secret of setting yourself apart.

Too, following the example of Mike Dole, one of the early surfers in the real surf movies (all wild rides and wipe-outs, Pipeline, Mr. Moto, and Miserlou amping the stoke), Peter was after more than the exhilaration of a good ride. Somehow, he needed to create his own surfing world to offset commercial and social phoniness.

Studying Polynesian waterman culture was the way Dole did it, even to the extent of carving little tikis in wood shop and wearing them on his sandals and around his neck.

Inspired by but not content to follow Dole, Peter looked around for some mysterioso of his own.

Introduced to Herman Melville when he did a book report on Moby Dick (thanks to the Classics Illustrated version), he found what he was after in another Melville book, Omoo.

First, it was the name Longghost, which, if adapted from the character Doctor Long Ghost, was perfect although he wasn’t that sure why. Then it was Mowree, a term the mutinous crew used for an indigenous New Zealander. When hooted as a rallying cry while surfing, however, Longghost’s Mowreeee, was misheard by the Raiders as Mo’reapy, so that’s what it became.

Even without the new name, it seemed obvious to other Calenture High students that Peter, now Longghost, was both made for surfing, and for what he made of it. Besides, no matter what he did, he always drew the attention of others. He had something.

Deeply tanned, always, his hair long and all one length, he had the habit of sweeping it back with his hand if dry and, if wet, flipping it back with a quick rightward motion of his neck; it wasn’t blond, but it was sun-bleached, and it fell from his part to the right side of his forehead, framing eyes that were intently gray and quick with an unwavering gaze.

As far as his surfing went, shredding, he’d say, there must have been times when every ride on every breaking set was as perfect as it gets. What wasn’t, what would never be, was the fact Calenture High School was in Arcadia, California; thus, it was inland, in the middle of San Gabriel Valley, which held a flat roll of small cities beneath a heave of mountains, all perfectly situated for entrapping LA smog.

Still, even on a normal day at Huntington Beach Cliffs, the offshore wind calm yet holding up the face, it was more than he could ask for. The way the whitewater lip moved along the crest of a barrel; the way each swell kept going off, clean and glassy—it was, well, pure sex.

Bit of an exaggeration? Sure, since surfing wasn’t for everyone, including Beach Boy Brian Wilson, who only went to the beach via the surf songs he composed, his piano in the middle of a living room sand box.  More, it wasn’t easy to explain, apart from using lingo like totally awesome, or awesomely rad, or gnarly yet awesome.

Explainable or not, ancillary stoke almost unavoidable, it was obvious to the Raiders that Longghost shredded close to an optimal flow state. He didn’t share much about this. Once, however, he did tell Zach Ballad, The ocean is like a dream awake. Enter that dream, say ten footers on a good south swell, and you’re sharing a nervous system.

Needless to say, it was changing him, radically, and through him, the Raiders. He was still like everyone else, only he wasn’t. That’s what got people. A lot of them. And it was weird: when he surfed, he had the highest level of impulsivity, but at most other times, unless seized by a phantom whim, the lowest, a factor the Raiders tried make up for.

The fact was he had distanced himself in a way most others couldn’t, especially those who abided high school by sticking to the margins. Think back: you’ve seen their faces passing by in the hallway. You’d catch a glance, then they were gone . . . mute infatuates in some cases, the ones too elusive to make eyes, the ones with senior pictures in disappearing ink.

Understand: it was never going to end, even though it was totally ephemeral, like getting air, which was when Longghost tracked up a wave’s face and launched off the lip. Air. It wasn’t long before he started pre-figuring certain situations by saying, "This is the perfect place for airs."

This was a-okay by the Raiders, until the night they ended up outside of El Monte Legion Stadium, home of Art Laboe and groups like Rosie and the Originals and The Penguins.

They were waiting in the Mo’reapy-mobile, waiting for Longghost, who, whim-seized, had gone in alone to ask a Latina beauty or two to dance. They could only imagine: he couldn’t have stuck out more, a living error-in-action, sand-in-the pockets of his Pendleton variety, amid what must have been pre-homicide stares, Angel Baby in his ears.

What was he doing in there? Raiders Zach Ballad and Mike Toby, in the front seat, could only shake their heads, their impatience growing. Out of the corner of their eyes they could see some dudes from East LA in flannel shirts and chinos; they were gathered around their lowrider Chevy, the one replete with pin stripes, spinners, and white tuck and roll.

Presently, the M-mobile caught their attention, and they walked over to eyeball the over-much oddity of it; it didn’t take long, soon their stares met the cautious half-glares of Zach and Mike. In the back, Raiders Seth Macy and Sam Blunt watched by way of peeking over the front seat.

It was getting close to a stand-off when Longghost finally appeared, his renegade smile suddenly a tad thin after a nod to the East LA dudes. The Raiders, all of them, sighed in relief; they were afraid some objetos de la muerte were about to be pulled out of the Chevy’s trunk. They couldn’t get out there fast enough, the dudes laughing.

Like the Beach Boys’ song, which Longghost hated, they did get around, at least when he wasn’t with Anne, totally awesome Anne. Getting air aside, they were ready to rip whatever was in motion, even if they over-amped it a tad. No matter, it impelled, it did, impulsive gestures galore.

There were limits, however. A full-on rush was one thing, but no Raider wanted to get deshackulated, socially speaking.

Fortunately, it was too early in the sixties for getting French-fried into a persistently altered mental state, although in a way, Zach Ballad’s comedic capers caught a glimpse of what was what coming.  

It all started when Zach realized how cool fun could madly backfire. Thus, maniacally speaking, what was morbid and funny, like his pretended gonzo discombobulations, could get way freaking sketchy, sometimes close to gulping some oblivion. A lot can happen in an instant.

Same thing with an afternoon, one day of a summer, that summer, like the visit the Raiders paid to Malibu. Although, true, the locals were savagely amped, it was the day of Dora, Miki Dora, Da Cat.

As Longghost watched Dora cut wild lines across point break waves, he was awestruck. He didn’t even go out—he just watched. The Raiders, meanwhile, were keenly aware they were interlopers pushing their luck. As the day wore on, they spent most of their time trying to muster up the necessary coolness quotient.

No biggie, it was all about Dora; he had mastered the only thing that mattered to him as if it didn’t matter at all. He owned the place: surf, beach, girls, onlookers, wannabes. He ruled, both king and jester, but he acted as if he didn’t give a shit, unless you got in his way.

At first glance, he was definitely showing off, but more was going on. A lot more. He was shredding as if he’d discovered a new way of being. Either you got that, or you didn’t, and if you did, it meant you couldn’t have a split mind. You were either inside the stoke or out. And it didn’t matter if you talked about the ha of watermen, or shallow waves, or crumbling waves, or reef