Breath

Bruce returns to school at the end of the summer with obligatory whining, but secretly he enjoys it. He takes refuge in the school library and dives into classic adventure tales. A girl named Queenie, who also haunts the library, decides that Bruce is her boyfriend, and it becomes so. Bruce suspects that he only likes her because she liked him first, although she is plenty likeable in her own right. One day, two older cadet students declare loudly and crudely that Queenie has nice breasts, sending her crying to the bathroom. Bruce is unsure how to respond and fails to react, thereafter feeling like he failed some kind of test that he didn’t understand.

Just as surf season is picking up, Loonie breaks his arm in a foolish stunt, trying to get himself launched out of a blowhole in the rocks. Eva is around to drive the boys home, but she seems to take pleasure in Loonie’s pain.

In the summer prior to the injury, Bruce and Loonie had passed the season of flat water by freediving and building their lung capacity, seemingly outdoing even Sando in this regard. Sando gradually gives in to the boys’ pestering for information about Old Smoky, the giant offshore wave they’d seen. Soon, he takes them there to free dive around the underwater reef at the site. They marvel at the topography and submarine life, and Bruce and Loonie engage in one of their old breath-holding contests.

The boys eagerly check weather maps anticipating a time when the Old Smoky break will get big enough to surf. Bruce’s parents don’t question him about spending time with Sando, but they have no idea of the danger of what he’s getting into. Loonie’s parents are more skeptical, but still ignorant of the true nature of their exploits. In the present, Bruce reflects on how different those times were from today.

It happens that the storm required for Old Smoky to become surfable arrives while Loonie’s arm is still injured. Sando arrives to pick the boys up, but Loonie sulks off, refusing even to come along and watch, and insulting Bruce as a chicken. After he leaves, Sando tells Bruce that everyone is chicken, and extreme activities are a way of facing that fear.

As Bruce and Sando climb down to the break, Bruce’s fuming over Loonie’s insults temporarily blocks the fear from his mind. When it’s time to jump in, however, the apprehension returns, but Bruce doesn’t speak up; he follows Sando in. A long paddle out brings them close enough to the wave for Bruce to become terrified of its force. He would chicken out, but he can no longer tell where the shore is.

Sando catches a wave and returns ecstatic. He lightheartedly but persistently pressures Bruce into riding one himself, but Bruce is frozen with anxiety and sensory overload. Sando suggests they take a break and free dive. During his dive, Bruce’s confidence in his aquatic abilities returns. He goes on to ride the big wave successfully twice, getting an overwhelming rush. He gets greedy to repeat it and miscalculates, getting violently tossed by the wave and held deep underwater. Sando remains grinning when Bruce finally emerges, but Bruce is humbled.

Bruce and Sando return to Bruce’s house, knowing that Loonie will show up sooner or later. Eva makes them burgers while they enthusiastically rehash the day and fight off sleep. Loonie appears, and Eva invites him inside, but he doesn’t thank her, angering her. They tell Loonie about the waves: while Bruce plays down his accomplishment, Sando says that he’s made history today. Bruce realizes that he’s surely the youngest person ever to surf Old Smoky.

Loonie is driven by the exploit he missed out on to outdo them both as soon as his arm has healed. He pulls this off, surfing Old Smoky with a fearlessness that makes even Sando marvel. Henceforth, the three of them return to the spot regularly. Sando initiates the boys in yoga and healthy eating as they become more serious about their outings. They become a fine-tuned unit in the water. Outside of surfing, however, a gap begins to grow between Bruce and Loonie, which had been opened the first time Bruce surfed Old Smoky while Loonie was injured. Bruce doesn’t mind this new distance, as he is uninterested in the hooligan antics of Loonie’s agricultural school friends, with whom Loonie starts spending more time.

One rainy day on the ride to school, Bruce’s bus comes across a horrifying accident: a car has been crushed beneath an overturned cattle truck, and wounded animals are strewn across the road. The bus driver is uncertain whether to get out and help. When he finally does, his trepidatious pace infuriates Bruce, who leaps off the bus and runs past the driver to the truck. He can see that the woman in the car is dead, and the man next to her seriously wounded. The truck driver is stuck in his cab, and Bruce climbs the truck to try and break in the back windshield. Then the police and firemen arrive and take over.

That same night, Bruce reluctantly goes to the school dance, since his parents tell him he cannot stand up Queenie, but he is understandably disconnected from his surroundings. Queenie berates him for not telling her about the accident that morning, and Bruce just shrugs. Bruce’s father drives him home, and the dead fish that he caught while his son was at the dance revolt Bruce in a new way.

All winter, Bruce spends much of his time anxiously anticipating the next surf outing to Old Smoky or Barney’s. He struggles to replicate the thrill he gets from these expeditions elsewhere in his life, and he spends most of his time in a state of agitation. Queenie breaks up with him via impersonal note, and Bruce is secretly relieved.

Loonie, meanwhile, finds a new way of seeking thrills on land. A 40-year-old woman named Margaret Myers has begun lodging above his family pub. Loonie deduces that she is a prostitute and cuts a peephole into her room, regaling Bruce with sordid details that Bruce cannot believe, although he doesn’t admit it. Loonie, however, can tell that Bruce doesn’t believe him and insists that he come watch for himself. Bruce’s vocal shock at the sex act he witnesses alerts Margaret, who sees him for a split second, but goes on anyway. From the sound of his groans, they figure out that her partner is Loonie’s father Karl, but Loonie keeps his eyes to the peephole anyway.

In the present, Bruce reflects on how long it took him to wonder about Sando and Eva’s living situation. Beyond most hippies, who condescended to the thought of work, they simply never mentioned it. And yet, they lived in a nicer house than many townies. Bruce gave no mind to this question as a boy. He was happy simply to soak in the special lifestyle the couple had. When Sando would talk about the dramatic rebirth experience of extreme danger, Eva would claim to understand perfectly, but Bruce would wonder how she could know what he meant.

One day, Sando upsets the equilibrium that the boys have arrived at regarding their dangerous lifestyle: he tells them of an even more dangerous and astounding wave called the Nautilus, on a reef three miles offshore, never surfed by anyone before. Ships will not even get near it. Sando gleefully begins hinting that they should surf it while freely admitting his own fear. Loonie disapproves of this expression of fear, but Sando counters with a long speech explaining how fear is human and confronting it has led to humankind’s greatest accomplishments. He says that to deny fear is “unmanly,” and Eva interjects to take issue with his sexist choice of word.

The boys agree to go scope out the Nautilus break and return to lighthearted banter. On the inside, however, Bruce feels a queasy sense of dread: his exploits the past few months have been thrilling and have given him a heady feeling of power, but he feels less certain about his ability to take on this new challenge.