Belly Button Lint: Rick Ramsey's Weblog

Excerpt

While we stared at each other in silence, my classmates who had stopped writing to watch the exchange realized they were trapped. It was obvious that they, like me, had not prepared for the test, because those who had studied for the test had ignored the entire discussion and had continued filling up their paper with the knowledge they had acquired. If the guilty students who had stopped to listen now returned to their writing, it would be obvious that they had chosen to fill their pages with empty words. Of course, if they turned in their tests now, to demonstrate they had chosen honesty over deceit, they would get a bad grade. What could they do? They scratched their heads, they hid behind their forearms, they pulled out extra pieces of paper, they pretended to have jammed pens, they coughed, and as one by one they returned to their inventive prose, they hoped the professor would not be able to remember them all.

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Excerpt

Lima’s better neighborhoods had a beautiful boulevard running through the middle, their medians decorated with strips of grass, paths for walking, beds of flowers, warm lights on old fashioned posts, and benches for people to sit. Not our boulevard. Our boulevard was divided by dirt covered with stones and trash. Tall aluminum poles curved over the asphalt and drooled a stain the color of mustard onto the pavement. This insult to a boulevard was built by a government who was more embarrassed by Peru’s problems than proud of its achievements. Our alcalde, he christened the avenue with the name of a famous person from Peruvian history, but the people who had to drive under the lights thought that they looked more like the last hairs on a bald man's head, so they called it La Calva. The Bald One. Like all good names, it stuck, so it became the name of the entire neighborhood.

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Excerpt

It could be something as tiny as a drop of sea spray in your eye. Or your foot slipping on the board. Maybe you couldn't quite find your balance. Or your nerve. The top of Pico Alto is a bad place to lose your nerve. The gods watch with disinterest as you fall that great distance with your board twisting and turning around you like a leaf in a whirlwind. When you slap into the surface of the water forty feet below, they turn away as the brute force of the wave crushes your twig of a body, thrusting you down, ten meters beneath your next breath, pinning you in a swirling, lung-bursting tumble for thirty seconds before it lets you crawl to the surface for a single gasp of foam-filled air. Only one. Because while taking that breath your panicked brain realizes that you are now in the place we call Poseidon's Anvil, where you will experience the singular terror of turning to face the next wave unfurling four stories above you.

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PROLOGUE

I am Carlos, the lifeguard of Malibu Beach. I sit under the big umbrella on top of the tower, searching the waves. I have a whistle, a red bathing suit, a round hat, and a jeep for chasing the seaguls off the beach in the evening. When I walk along the shore I smile at the pretty girls. I smile at the unpretty girls, too, but they don’t ask for a smile. I talk to the mothers in their one-piece bathing suits who want a man who works in the sun to make them feel 18 again.

Yes, I am the one who became famous. When everyone was calling the helicopters, I was swimming into the big waves to pull out the people who should not have gone into the water. That day I pulled out six drowning people. The mayor of the city, he gave me a medal. He called me a man of courage, and then he talked for 30 minutes. I am not a man of courage. I am simply not afraid. They are very different things, no?

(c) Copyright 2005 Rick Ramsey