Re: Alvin Ever After: Alvin in the Fourth
I felt something latch onto my ankle and before I knew what was happening and before I could get a lungful of air, I was pulled off my board and underwater.
Struggling to get back to the surface, I fought with what seemed to be an octopus. All right, it wasn’t an octopus, but give me a break, I was under water, under attack, and out of air!
It didn’t take long before I realized someone was trying to shove a divers regulator into my mouth. Having dived before with Gary, I knew instinctively what to do as I opened my mouth, shoved it in and closed my lips around it. My fingers found the button to clear the regulator and my mouth of water then I took in a deep breath.
Able to breathe again, but unable to see at all I felt someone strapping what felt like a belt around my middle. I guessed correctly that it was a diver’s weight belt and as soon as it was on me I began to plummet deeper and deeper as the belt was weighted for a grown man and not a teenaged boy.
I didn’t sink long before I felt a hand grab the back of the belt as we began to swim underwater and away from the area.
I had no idea who my rescuer was for sure, but I had a good idea that it was Gary. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
We were down a good eight to ten minutes and I am sure the spectators were freaking out and thinking I’d drowned.
I felt the hand, which had continued to hold the diving belt release and then turn me. The belt was unfastened from around my middle and I took that as a sign that I was supposed to surface now.
I broke the surface and coming up first and saw that we were out of the competition area and very near shore.
My savior rose beside me and stood, his mid chest and above sticking out of the water. It was then that I realized we had swum close enough to shore that he could touch bottom.
He was wearing a full diving mask but just by his hair, I knew it was not Gary. Then he pulled off the mask while removing his regulator.
“DAD!” I gasped and inhaled a mouth full of water.
I began to cough as he angrily said to me, “Oh don’t start that shit again! Now go! Before they…”
The crowd spotted us emerging from the water a ways down the beach from them.
“Too late! RUN!” he said as we saw a couple beach petrol officers running toward us and the skidoos turning in our direction.
He was in a full wet suit with flippers, there was no way he could get those off and run away fast enough. I on the other hand didn’t have such limitations.
Thankfully, the cool ocean water had soothed my knee enough that it held me as I broke from the water and ran.
I was soon up on the boardwalk and to the parking lot where I recognized a familiar car. It had belonged to the stoner I’d met the first day back in California. The windows were wide open but the stoner was nowhere to be seen. I didn’t really think about it too long before I opened the rear passage door, got in and closed it. There was a couple old blankets in there used for laying on the beach. I hunkered down on the floor and covered myself with the blankets.
It turned out to be a good hiding place and I should have stayed there but I was cramped and as soon as I began to worm up, boy my entire leg felt like it was on fire. Mostly because the seaweed around my leg was shrinking as it dried.
Opening the opposite door I’d entered through I slid myself out without actually setting up. I then bear crawled hands and feet across the hot asphalt. My hands and feet burned but I didn’t stop until I was at the far side of the parking lot. Only then, did I stand up to look around. Amazingly, when I turned I was standing directly beside my grandfather who was standing there holding my surfboard. Beside him was mom.
I wanted to jump out, grab mom and hug her tightly, but then I spotted, on the ground between them, a large paper sack with what appeared to be everything of mine from the cave. How did I know this? Because on the very top, sticking out was a nearly empty package of swim diapers.
I froze unsure what to do. After a moment, I lowered myself and was about to back away when grandfather leaned over and dropped my board upside down beside the bag. Standing back up he told mom, wait here. I’m going to check over there.
For a few seconds I contemplated standing back up and approaching my mother but then she took a few steps away from my things and well, I didn’t really think. I simply reacted as I slunk forward, grabbed the bag and my board and then quietly backed away; loosing myself in the mass of cards.
“ALVIN!” I heard grandfather shout.
“ALVIN PLEASE!” Mom called.
I honestly hesitated again at hearing my mother but then I heard grandfather refer to me as a little bastard and that settled it. There was no way I was going back with him around.
I couldn’t believe my luck! I had a change of clothes, fresh swim diapers and GoodNites and I had my surfboard back.
I had to limp while bent over all the way across the lot and was pretty much as far from where I had encountered mom and grandfather as I could be and still be in the parking lot. That is when my streak of good luck continued. A familiar van pulled up and I recognized it immediately as belonging to my recently met Mexican gang members.
“HOLY SHIT IT’S ALVIN!” one of them shouted out the driver’s window as the van screeched to a stop.
The commenced to recount for me everything that had happened right after I had been pulled into the water.
“Everyone thought you drowned man, but someone said the saw you down the beach a couple minutes later.” I was told.
After sharing with them how I ended up still alive they were amazed and were going on and on when I saw through the van windows and about two hundred yards down the street a man in a half-off wetsuit carrying scuba gear.
“GUYS! GUYS! GUYS!” I shouted and pointed through the van.
“I think that’s him! He said he was my uncle but I think it might be my dad for real. He said something about sleeping with my mom! Guys you have to help me!” I begged and almost broke down as my emotions seemed to be right at the surface all the time now.
Without hesitation, they grabbed my stuff and pulled me into the van. To anyone looking on, it probably looked as if I was being abducted. My board was pulled in after me and then we were off like some bad television cop chase scene.
I was sitting across the laps of three of the guys and one of them looked down at my lap. Having seen me at my worst and knowing of my plight, he told one of the guys behind us, who’d ended up with my bag to pass it up.
Blushing and trying to not fall over as the van turned this way and that to get us out of the parking lot and follow the man who said he was my Uncle, I fished a GoodNite out of the bag and while sitting on those three I shimmied out of my shorts and into the GoodNite.
The leader of their gang was in the passenger front seat but he turned in the seat, and was pulling a pair of shorts out for me.
I took them and slipped them on too with some help from the guys beneath me.
A shirt was found near the bottom of the bag and my Huarache sandals too.
“Oh awesome!” I shouted when my sandals appeared.
“Were’d he go!” The driver asked.
“THERE!” one of the guys all the way in the back said.
“What happened to your leg?” the leader asked.
We made one more hard left turn, causing us all to slide across the seats.
“You’re gonna kill us!” someone from the back cried.
“There! There!” I shouted and pointed to the man as he turned and walked down between two large buildings.
“SHIT MAN! HOLD ON!” the driver said as he floored it and shot past where we’d seen him go.
“You passed him!” I shouted.
“DID YOU NOT HEAR ME SAY HOLD ON?” The driver shouted back.
“HE’S GETTING AWAY!” I cried.
We took a fast right turn and then another and then the van screeched to a stop causing me to slide off the guys lap and to the floor.
Cussing and fists flew toward the driver.
“HIT HIM FOR ME TOO!” I cried as the three guys pulled me back up onto their laps.
Something else happened when they were pulling me back up. Something, given the company I was with at the time, I did not react to or bring attention to. However when it happened, both me and the guy who did it, know he’d done it and done it on purpose.
When the guys were picking me up off the floor and lifting me back onto their laps, the guy nearest the sliding side door on the passenger side, instead of grabbing my legs like you would expect, grabbed my crotched. It wasn’t an accident either! He was copping a feel.
However, one look in his eyes and I could see that what he had done in the heat of the moment, was not something he would have ever done around these guys. I could see the fear in his eyes as they begged me not to say anything about it.
I think I did a pretty good job myself with telling him with my eyes that it was not okay for him to have done it. I also saw his apology there in his eyes. He knew he’d crossed the line and he knew I could make a big stink right then and he’d probably get beat death just from the accusation that he had done it.
All that occurred in the space of about three seconds.
“SEE THERE HE IS!” the driver of the fan shouted and pointed.
We all stopped and looked out the passage side of the van and sure enough he was walking right too us.
“OPEN THE DOOR! OPEN THE DOOR!” I cried while trying to scurry off their laps.
My Huarache sandal clad feet plopped out on the ground, my leg screaming under my weight.
“You again!” he exclaimed and then realized who had just dumped me out at his feet.
The tanks dropped and before I realized it, he was pointing a gun at the van and screaming. He thought they had abducted me or something. I quickly explained that they were friends and had been helping me a lot during the competition. I then turned and saw seven guns sticking out of the van and trained on… well on the man.
I rather lost my cool for about twelve point three seconds. I’m warning you now… what I said was not pretty at all and completely out of character for me.
“HOLY FUCKING SHIT! PUT THE GOD DAMN, MOTHER FUCKING GUNS AWAY!”
My Mexican friends lowered their guns and all nine of them looked like little kids who’d just got yelled at by their mothers.
“Damn, you have your mother’s temper!” the man said.
Speaking their native language I quickly thanked the guys for their help once more and with that they sped away after giving my bag of stuff and my board.
He turned, “What?!”
Mouth agape and to reassure myself that I wasn’t crazy I reached out and touched the man’s bare chest. He pushed my hand away.
“Dad?” I whimpered.
