Iowa-born Eugene Burdick (1918-1965) was an Oxford-educated Rhodes scholar teaching political theory at UC Berkeley in 1956 when The Ninth Wave, his noir-tinged first novel, was published. Burdick’s other fiction and nonfiction books include The Ugly American, a best-seller from 1958, and 1962’s Cold War thriller Fail-Safe; both were made into movies. In this excerpt, we meet budding psychopath and future political operator Mike Freesmith at age 17.

A Buick drove up behind the circle of Model As that were parked at the top of the cliff. One or two of the cars had neat chrome-plated engines, powerful squat carburetors, wire wheels and twin exhausts. The others were dilapidated and broken down. All of them, however, had braces on the tops where the long surfboards were slung.

Mike opened the door of the Buick and at once passed from the smell of the woman, the odor of perfume and deodorant, into the hot odorless sunlight. He turned and looked at Miss Bell through the open window.

“I’ll see you again, Mike ... very soon, “ she said expectantly, half whispering.

“If I can get away,” Mike said, hedging. “Busy this week. I have to ...."

“If you have time for surfing you have time to see me,” Miss Bell said sweetly, but there was the corroded edge of a whine in her voice. Mike smiled at the way the flesh around her mouth worked in tiny flat jerks. “Please now, Mike.”

“OK. I’ll try. I’ve got some work in chemistry to catch up on. Maybe by Friday.”

They talked for a few more minutes. Mike could feel the sun starting to open pores on his back, through the thin cotton of his T‑shirt ... the tight blue jeans over his legs turned warm. He was bored, but it was pleasant to talk to her. Some angle of the car caught the sun and reflected chrome brilliance in his eyes so that all he could see of Miss Bell was a black faraway figure. She receded and as her figure grew more doll‑like and remote it took on a reprimanding, hostile look. Mike squinted his eyes to keep the blue refracted light from the Pacific from blinding him entirely.

Her voice took on its piping schoolteacher’s authority. “You just must be more considerate of me, Mike. You must.”

“Why?” he asked idly. “Why, Miss Bell?”

At once the remote doll‑like figure collapsed into a posture of apprehension. Miss Bell’s voice lost its crisp quality and quavered.

“Well, don’t you care, Mike? Doesn’t it mean anything to you?”

It is so easy, he thought, so easy to make her drop that cool note of authority in her voice. He reached out and touched her shoulder and at once she leapt back into proper proportion, was neat and full-sized in her flowered silk dress.

“Sure I care,” Mike said. “I’ll call you later in the week.”

He turned away from the car and started toward the edge of the cliff. He heard the Buick start and then turn slowly. Mike smiled out at the blue Pacific, noticed a tanker, hull-down and far at sea, smoke from her stack smearing the blue-white sky.

When he got to the path that led down the cliff he stood for a moment while his eyes cleared of the glare. At the bottom of the cliff there were two umbrellas, shabby and stringy. Anonymous legs stuck out of them. A few surfboards were scattered around. The sand was white and washed looking, picking up all the sun in the cove.

I know, Mike said to himself, that you look clean from here, but when I get down there you will be jumping with sandfleas, a regular layer of them, just off the sand ... hopping, jumping, screwing around. jumping into the air and rubbing their legs. But I like it. Sandfleas don’t bite, they just tickle.

As he started down the narrow curving path he could see that most of the boys were far out in the cove. Very far out, waiting for the occasional big hump. Their boards rose and fell, they sat with their feet up, some of them wearing straw hats to shield their faces from the sun ... tiny, lazy, Mexican‑looking figures.

One of the boys was eating from a paper bag and Mike was sure that it was Hank Moore. It was just like Hank to take his lunch out on the board. That was what was confusing about Hank, Mike thought. He was like an old lady before he got in the water. Cleaning off his board, testing the water with his toe, edging slowly into the water and not diving sharply in like the rest of the boys. Hank would go out slowly on his board, not yelling like the other surfers, but picking his way out cautiously, watching the waves, protecting the brown paper bag which held his lunch. But once he had eaten his lunch out of the brown bag, wadded it up and thrown it out on the water, Hank changed. He sat stubbornly, endlessly waiting for the ninth ninth wave. Some of the other boys would get excited, mistake a big hump for the ninth ninth, but never Hank. He always knew when it would come; he never took a smaller wave; he always waited for the big one. They all believed that every ninth wave was bigger than the preceding eight, and every subsequent ninth wave was bigger than the one before it, until the biggest wave of all was the ninth ninth.

Mike wasn’t sure if the system was accurate, but he did know that there was always one wave a day that was bigger than the rest. The other waves might be big and sometimes they were really huge and you might get excited and think that one of them was the ninth ninth. But not Hank. He always knew when to wait. He always got the biggest wave of the day.

Some days he would sit quietly, glancing over his shoulder at the humps, watching them come working up out of the ocean, not moving for three hours. Then finally, he would turn around, start to paddle, and it would be the biggest wave of the day. If he picked his board up and got out of the water that was a signal there would be no other big ones that day. Hank read the weather reports in the papers because a storm far out at sea would often mean big waves and every day that a storm was reported, winter or summer, Hank was down at the cove, looking out to sea, waiting.

As Mike came down the steep cliff he watched to see how the waves were shaping up. The coast was flat and even except for this cove which had been carved by waves into a huge U‑shaped indentation. The swells rose quietly and smoothly from the flat ocean, beginning at the very edge of the horizon. In even lines each wave moved toward the shore, increasing in speed as it approached shallow water and beginning to steepen. Then as the waves reached a certain point of shoal water they turned a concave face toward the beach, reached higher and higher and began to feather with foam at the top. Along the rest of the coast they pressed powerfully against the rocks and sand without breaking, but as they came into the cove the feathering tips broke forward and the entire wave crashed over and rolled like a long, noisy, incredibly powerful cylinder toward the shore.

Mike could see that the waves were big, but no one was taking them. They were waiting for a ninth wave. When it came, swelling up big and green, sucking up all of the water in front of it, slanting sharply into the sky, the lines of surfers kicked their boards around, lay on their stomachs and began to paddle slowly, looking back over their shoulders. Only one person did not move in the line and that was Hank Moore. Monkeylike he reached down a hand, touched the water and moved his board away from the nearest person. Then he looked out toward the sea. Mike began to trot down the path, suddenly anxious to be in the water.

When the wave reached the line of surfers several of them backed water, afraid to try it. Several more skewed their boards sideways when the wave began to feather and prepared to smash forward. In the end, only two or three boys actually rode the wave through its crash and only one of them was able to control his board and finally get to his feet.

As Mike rounded a boulder his view of the cove was cut off. When the ocean came in sight again Mike was much lower, walking steadily downward into the hot reflected sun, the dense odor of seaweed and iodine, the streaked smell of long‑burned charcoal. This descent into the odor, the heat, the smell of sand, was as pleasant as the first second when he dove into the water. He walked slowly, controlling his urge to get to the beach as fast as possible. He felt the muscles of his legs strain with the slight effort of holding back as he descended.

When he got to the sand he took his shoes off, slid his blue jeans off and stood up with only his swimming shorts on. He walked toward the nearest umbrella.

“Hi, Mary Jane,” he called to one of the girls.

The girl rolled over, shaded her eyes against the glare. Here at the bottom of the cove, cut off from the wind and picking up all the dull reflection from the sand and water, it was hot with a dead pleasant heat that pulsed rhythmically as the waves shifted the air and made it heave and swell. Mary Jane’s nose had sweat on it and the edge of her bathing suit was rimmed with moisture. She stared for a moment, expectant, a smile on her lips but unable to see him. Mike stood still and waited. He knew what she was seeing. When you lifted your head suddenly and looked into this dull, glaring sun people looked like black solid shadows, faceless, formless, only the edges of their bodies glowing with an astral brightness.

“Hello, Mike,” she said. The other two girls under the umbrella looked up, their faces surprised; suddenly unfocused and confused. They did not smile and the smile faded from Mary Jane’s face. Their faces were bruised somehow with a hard memory; a curiosity that changed to irritation.

“Where have you been, Mike?” Mary Jane said. “Waves have been good all day. Some really big ones. Tommie said they were eighteen feet high ... base to feather.”

"I’ve been riding around,” Mike said. He squatted down on his heels. The sandfleas started at once, a blanket of tumbling, falling, jumping, writhing black dots; falling to the sand and then springing wildly back upward. He felt a light, delicate itch start over his feet, reach up to his ankles.

“Riding?” Mary Jane asked. “Riding all morning?”

Now the bruised, disinterested look was gone from their faces and was replaced with curiosity. Their eyes were wide with interest, although their lips were drawn thin with some sort of disapproval. Mary Jane’s lips drew back and showed moist teeth and pink soft flesh in the corners of her mouth.

“Yep, just riding,” he said. “Out toward Long Beach, past the docks, then over here. Nothing but riding.”

Oh, he thought, you’d like to ask, wouldn’t you? You’d just like to screw up your courage to say, “Who with?”

He squatted there in the sun, feeling like a roadblock in the easy flow of their serenity, sensing the curiosity well out across the sand like a physical substance. Squatted there, his knees drawn under his body, all his muscles taut, his arms dangling, he felt powerful and poised. He closed his eyes and dozed for a few moments. When he opened his eyes the girls were pure black figures. Gradually they swam into perspective.

The girls were tense with elaborate disinterest. Mary Jane yawned, then opened her mouth as if to speak, but stopped.

"I think I’ll try some waves. Can I borrow somebody’s board?” Mike said.

“Board?” Mary Jane asked, her voice round with surprise. “Sure, Of course, see Bill Flatter over there. He just came out.”

The quick first impression of antagonism had vanished from all the girls’ faces; they were tense now with curiosity. As Mike stood up the girls twitched with irritation. Mary Jane scratched at her ankles, her eyes following Mike.

“Bill, can I borrow your board?” Mike asked a long, very tanned boy.

“Sure, Mike,” the boy said waving his hand, his black eyes searching Mike’s face once and then falling away. “Remember, she’s heavy in the tail so ride her a few inches more forward than you’d do normally.”

He picked up a long narrow board, natural mahogany-colored on the body of it and trimmed with blue at the edges. His fingers unconsciously ran over the wood, measuring the smoothness, judging the quality of the board. He swung the fifty pounds of it over his head and walked toward the water. It’s a good one, he thought. That Bill Flatter makes a good board, heavy in the tail or not.

When he got to the edge, Mike stopped and stood on a rock where the water was only a few inches deep. Usually he would wait until a wave moved in and then with a sweep he would throw the board on the shallow water and swing himself aboard and with one movement be heading out to sea with only the tips of his toes wet. But today he waited a moment and then put the board on the dry sand.

He walked to the water up to his knees, waited for a wave and with a clean strong dive dove over it and into the water. He let his body glide, held himself straight and stiff. Then he stood up and made a curious unpremeditated gesture: he wrung his hands over his head and then threw them down to his side and at the same time looked up at the people on the beach. They were all watching him.

Mike felt a surge of surprise. The gesture was so strange. He was not sure why he had done it. It seemed vaguely propitiatory like the sign he imagined a priest would make over an animal sacrifice, or the motion that a magician makes after a trick, the jerking wave of hands as if to cleanse them; to take a curse off.

Mike looked away from the people under the umbrellas. As he walked to the board the sandfleas jumped on his legs and stuck to the moisture. He waded into the water again to drown them. Then he lay flat on the board and headed for deep water.

It took him ten minutes to work out to the calm water. The waves were big and as the lines of broken surf approached he dug his hands powerfully into the water and then came up on his knees so that his weight went toward the rear of the board and shot its nose up over the foam. When the nose was over the foam the body of the wave would hit the board and smash it forward with a whipping action.

There is a point in the surf where the waves have just broken and the tons of green and white water are falling almost straight down. One must cross this point between waves or the surfboard will be thrown backward or turned over. Mike waited cautiously until there was a lull, then shot forward over the shattered hulk of one wave and slid up the side of another before it broke. Then he was in the clear water beyond the surf line.

There were almost a dozen boys waiting on their boards. Some of them were lying flat on their backs, others were sitting with their feet dangling in the water. Mike saw that half of the boys were from Manual Arts High and the rest he did not know. He saw Hank Moore and paddled over to him.

“Hey Hank,” Mike called. “How’re they humping? Been waiting long for one?”

Hank Moore swung around. He was a short, stocky, freckled‑faced boy. Although his hair was blond and his eyes light blue he had a perfect Semitic face. Hank looked coolly at Mike. He’s bright, Mike thought. He’s got intelligence.

“They’re good,” Hank said. “Long wait between big ones, but when they come they’re really huge. Must be some sort of funny storm out at sea. Never saw such big ones mixed up with such little ones. About every other third ninth is big and then every ninth ninth is a big baby. Pretty soon there’ll be a really big one.”

Mike splashed his hands gently into the water and his board skimmed over the surface, jarred against the end of Hank’s board and the two boards were held together by the slight pressure. Hank was sitting neatly in the middle of his board, his knees pulled up under his chin. The top of his board was covered with intricate lines where the salt water had dried on it. Hank never dove off his board or played around in the water. For him the water was only a means of getting out to the waves and he disliked swimming. Hank was talking to a boy Mike had never met.

“Where’ve you been?” Hank asked, looking at Mike. “You’ve missed some good ones. Farting away the day in L.A. when you could have been down here.”

Mike grinned back. “No. I’ve been for a drive, riding around Long Beach, Pedro, Wilmington ... just got here now. Nice day for riding.”

“Riding in a Buick, I’ll bet. A blue Buick,” Hank said and his voice ended in the slightest burr of a snarl, so faint that only someone who knew him well would know that he was angry. “Riding in a Buick.”

“Yep, in a blue Buick. And stopping and eating four hamburgers, and two Mile‑Hi cones and shooting a rifle at a gallery. Doing that and riding in a Buick that’ll do 53 miles per hour in second gear.” Mike stopped and looked coldly at Hank for a moment. “Your ass, Moore. Right up your ass.”

Deliberately Hank reached out a hand, stuck it in the water and moved his board away from Mike’s. He did it as a rebuke.

Mike felt a sense of excitement; an excitement that was really a spasm of triumph. Even old Hank, he thought, even old Hank is that way. He pushed his board forward so that it touched Hank’s board again and smiled at Hank.

“Look, Hank, grow up,” he said. The strange boy stared in bewilderment. “You’re 17 years old. Grow up. She knows what she’s doing. Don’t worry about her. just worry about yourself.”

Mike watched Hank’s strange Semitic face, with the sharp flat planes and the odd blond, twisted hair and the light blue eyes. Hank was angry, but Mike knew that he was also confused.

But Mike was not confused. Not me, he said to himself, not me anymore. Carefully, picking the words, he phrased the meaning to himself, inside his head. He was excited.

You, Hank and all of you, you think that someday you’re going to stop worrying. You think that you’ll get older and just by getting older someday that goddamn worry and uncertainty in your guts is going to stop. You think that you’re going to come in out of the worry and the fretting and the doubts, like stepping out of the sun into the shade. All that has to pass is time. You think you don’t have to do anything; that it will just happen. Well, it won’t. Absolutely, positively, without fail, it will never happen. You’ll always be the same, you’ll always be miserable—right at the core, you’ll be miserable. And you’ll spend most of your time trying to escape that fact. That simple little fact.

Intuitively, on some obscure level, Mike knew he had discovered something valuable. He knew he had a tiny fragment of insight that at once made orderly and understandable a lot of things that had been chaotic. Also, and this with a kind of disappointment, he knew that he could use his special knowledge. Also, he knew he would add to it. He would find other things.

Sitting on the gently heaving board, watching Hank’s face, Mike spoke a law to himself: Everyone is scared.

Mike sat and stared at Hank for a moment.

“What’s he so tough about?” the strange boy asked Hank.

“He’s not tough,” Hank replied. “He’s just a cocky bastard. Not tough though."

“Well, what’s he so cocky about?” the strange boy asked. He looked sideways at Mike and Mike grinned at him.

Hank lifted his head from his knees and turned toward Mike. “He screws the English teacher. That’s why he’s so cocky.” Hank said it coldly.

“Big hump, really big hump," someone shouted.

“Big hump, big hump,” everyone in the line said, taking it up like a chant. The boys who were dozing came awake and began to kick their boards around so they faced the shore. Everyone began to chatter with excitement. The strange boy was talking to Hank, but looking at Mike. Mike swung his board around and then looked over his shoulder. He could see at once that it was huge. It seemed to take something away from the two waves in front of it so that they were small and shrunken and behind them the big one humped up, already so high that it was losing the blue color of the ocean and taking on a green thinness as the sun came through it.

He looked quickly at Hank. Hank stared for a moment at the wave. He pulled his shorts up tight. He looked over at Mike and for a moment, just the slightest fraction of a second, something dark flitted across Hank’s eyes and then was gone.

It’s the big one for the day, Mike said to himself. And Hank is scared of it. Like he’s scared of all the big ones.

Watching it, Mike felt the usual slow chill of fear. At some point, the big waves were always like that, so awesome that he felt as if he would like to dig his hands in and shoot his board out into the safe water beyond the surf line. But then there would be the grind of satisfaction, as he made himself stay put and move his hands to get himself in the proper position to catch the wave.

Most of the skill in surfboarding depends on catching the wave at precisely the point where it has reached its highest peak, is beginning to feather at the top, and is ready to let all the tons of green water it has held in a curious rhythmic control for so many miles crash downward. A second too early and there is nothing for the board to ride. A second too late and the board is submerged in a lather of foam. Some people are never able to catch this knack, this ability to sense the precise moment when the wave will crack and let its water spill.

The wave moved from the middle distance with a rush; drew itself from a hump into a towering cliff of water and now, like strange plants frozen in old green ice, Mike could see pieces of kelp in the water, every thread of their filigreed detail caught for a moment in the sunlit water. The water was soundless at this point, but Mike felt a pressure rise in his cars and head as the wave gathered itself.

Mike felt the water drop from beneath him as the huge wave rose. He looked over his shoulder and saw its green and ominous bulk take shape above him. The wave was pure and undiluted; not a trace of foam in it. He gave a couple of strokes with his arms and the board began to move ahead. He looked sideways and saw the scared white faces of the other boys. Most of them were back-paddling with their hands, making sure that they did not catch the wave. Hank, however, was crouched on his knees on his board. With his hands, he was crumpling up the brown bag which had held his lunch while he looked over his shoulder at the wave. His face was rapt with attention and something more; a sort of tough angry belligerence. Hank threw the paper bag away without looking at it and then took two strokes in the water with his hands.

Mike felt his board lift, and savagely he cut the water with his hands. Midway in the fourth stroke, he sensed that he had it; felt the body of the wave grip his board and he began to move forward. He looked sideways and saw that only he and Hank were still in position to catch it.

For a few seconds the wave rushed silently forward. Then a thin vein of foam gathered at the top and formed a lip which bent slowly forward. The speed of the wave increased. This was the critical second when the surfboard would not only be moving forward at great speed but would also drop down the face of the wave as it curled over.

Mike glanced sideways and looked at Hank. Then suddenly Mike stood up on his board, still looking at Hank as he did it. This was not the time to stand up, for usually one stood up after the wave had broken and the board had smoothed out. Mike had never stood up at this point, and he was not sure he could keep his feet in the next few seconds. Hank looked at him without blinking and stood up also.

For a moment they stood calmly as the wave moved forward. The only noise in the vast moving green world was the hissing of the boards over the water. Then from deep in the wave came a sound like rocks rolling together and with a curious lunge it broke. A great green tunnel of roaring water was formed in front of the wave, foam gathered as high as Mike’s waist and the board almost dropped away from under his feet. With a slight liquid shock the board landed on solid water and although Mike’s feet slipped for a moment he remained steady. He looked sideways and saw that Hank also had survived the crash of the wave.

Mike’s board chittered with speed, slapped a thousand blows against the water. They were rushing toward the blue water of the cove and the noise was enormous.

That’s right, Mike howled to himself. I screw the English teacher. just what all the rest of them would like to do. But I’m the only one that does it and I’m wiser than the rest of you because of it.

The surfboard shook with speed, the water hissed and roared, foam tossed up over his shoulders. Words rushed through his mind, piled incoherently on one another, forming impressions, and all this mixed somehow with the taste of salt on his lips and the noise in his ears.

You all think you’ll get better as you grow older, but I know you won’t. Because I know Miss Bell, who is 28, which is very old, and I know that she lies naked in a bed and cries when she calls me in. I know that right in the center she is rotten with fear and because of this I know that we will always be that way. That it won’t change when you get to a certain age. It will always be the same.

The wave was dying now and in seconds later the board came to a halt in a few inches of water. Mike stepped off and looked over at Hank. He suddenly felt depressed, sorry that he had this piece of knowledge that none of the rest of them had. And he was sorry because he knew he would use it. It was as if he already knew how unfair was his advantage.

“That was pretty chicken, Mike, standing up before the wave broke,” Hank said. “Trying to delight the girls, eh? You did it because you’re chicken, that’s why.”

“Sure, Hank, that’s why. I’m chicken,” Mike said, but he laughed and Hank looked up quickly, his face confused. “You just go on believing that.”

Mike picked up his board and laid it on the sand and in the hot sun the wood began to steam and the salt traced out a pattern on the board.

“Hank, can I ride home with you?” Mike said. “Don’t have a car today.”

“Sure. I’m leaving right away. Hurry up.”

1956: EXCERPT FROM "THE NINTH WAVE," BY EUGENE BURDICK

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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