Chapter Twenty-Two
Terrence Williams opened his eyes and looked around the room he woke up in at the Folly Beach Motel with no memory of where he was. It was a common occurrence given the lifestyle that had led to his nickname, the Vagabond Surfer. It was his sixth location that month.
Folly had done him right though. The people were nice, and the best surfing spot, the Washout, had been consistently heavy since his arrival two days earlier. He wished he could stay. Even flipped through real estate listings in the local magazine he picked up at the entrance to the diner where he ate the night before. He had been feeling that way often lately. Dreaming of putting down roots somewhere, and with his parents now retired abroad, South Carolina seemed as good a place as any.
The magazine had been his companion until his server recognized him and wrote her name and phone number on the back of his check.
“I’m off at ten,” she said, in her thick southern drawl. He put her number in his pocket, unsure whether he would or wouldn’t take her up on her southern hospitality. She would be the third woman that month who had propositioned him. Southern girls seemed to really know what they wanted, and while each was more fun than the last, he was tiring of it. Tired of living out of his duffel, tired of repeating the same stories and answering the same questions, even tired of the meaningless sex. He thought about that a lot lately. Suddenly longing for a greater attachment than his board being leashed to his ankle. After twenty or so years on the circuit, he was ripe for change.
The waitress, Carly, came out of the motel bathroom and fixed her name tag in the mirror.
“Breakfast?” he inquired hopefully.
“Nah, I have to get home.” She held up her phone and kneeled down next to him in bed. “Selfie?” she asked, snapping one before he could answer. He winced at the thought of her posting it—being that he was shirtless under a white sheet in a motel bed. Not that anyone would be surprised. His reputation preceded him.
Carly left, and before showering and getting ready to head to the airport for his flight to New York, he looked through the questions that the reporter from Sports Illustrated had sent. Basic things about his childhood, riding his first wave, and whether his race was ever a factor for him. He figured the reporter was a white guy. A black man would never word the question that way, unless they wanted the answer to be Duh. Though there was no denying, as the first black surfer on the cover of Surf magazine, and the first to place in the Olympics, he had excelled in a sport dominated by blue-eyed, blond-haired Americans.
Terrence didn’t catch his first wave till he was sixteen—but once he had, he didn’t stop. The son of a navy doctor, Terrence had moved with his family four times by the time he was in high school, when they landed at the naval base outside of LA in Ventura County. He had learned to swim in the ocean at an early age, while they were stationed in Jacksonville, and took to it like a fish, but had lived on landlocked bases in the years that followed in DC and Georgia. The ocean was the only consolation prize for leaving his friends and girlfriend in Atlanta. His dad promised him a surfboard and as soon as they arrived, they headed over to the Ventura Surf Shop to make good on his promise.
It didn’t take long before Terrence mastered the waves and ingratiated himself with the tight local community that stretched from Carlsbad to Pelican Point. He was a natural, and along with winning a couple of local competitions, Terrence was known as a really nice guy. The combo led to his first sponsorship. He traveled to competitions, making friends and sleeping on couches wherever he went. Soon, his nomadic ways led to a local newspaper reporter naming him the Vagabond Surfer. After that, he kind of leaned into the nomadic lifestyle.
The notoriety was fun, but didn’t really matter to Terrence. He was in it for the thrill and had been since his first nose-ride. Though lately there was no denying that the thrill had faded.
Terrence shook out the bedspread and looked under the bed one last time to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind before calling an UberXL for the airport.