Soon, Nanci and Sarah were out in the informal camping area behind the store and Buddha and Giselle’s house. It wasn’t much more than an open lot with a handful of picnic tables and a rather tumbledown outhouse Nanci remembered from photos her sister had taken years before.

The tent, foam pads, and sleeping bags proved to be pretty familiar – they were out of the Canyon Tours stocks, although they were beat up enough that Nanci suspected they had been taken from the spare gear pile. Nevertheless, they would do just fine, and the two proved it by crashing onto the sleeping pads for a nap just about as soon as the pads were unrolled.

It was later in the afternoon before the girls awoke. “Well, I suppose we’d better get up and get at it,” Nanci yawned.

“Nanci, I don’t know how this is going to work. I never even thought I’d try to go surfing.”

“I’m pretty close to you on that,” she admitted. “But we’re here, and we may never have the opportunity again, so we ought to give it a fair try. I guess we’d better get swimsuits on, and then our wet suits.”

“Nanci, I didn’t bring any swimsuits. You know I don’t own any.”

“Remember, I had Crystal ship us some of mine. They’re in a plastic bag in one of the boxes. Some of them are pretty much one size fits all, so we ought to be able to find something that fits you.”

It proved that Crystal had indeed thrown in some swimsuits, but hadn’t worried too much about the selection; Nanci wouldn’t have wanted to bet whether that was intentional or not. There were a couple of the tankinis that Nanci often wore on the river, and several bikinis, each one of which was considerably more revealing than the one Sarah had worn at Jon and Tanisha’s over the Christmas holidays. Only the skimpier ones stood any chance of fitting on Sarah.

“Wow,” Sarah shook her head. “Nanci, I don’t know if I should wear something that, uh, tiny. None of those have anything to do with what I call modesty.”

“True,” Nanci shrugged. “I got several of them at a post-season sale down in Phoenix a couple years ago. I’ve only worn them in Jon and Tanisha’s pool when there was no one else around, or when I wanted to get a little sun.”

“I don’t know if I could even wear something like that.”

“Sure you can. It’s not like anyone is going to see anything. You’re going to be wearing a wet suit over it, so it really doesn’t matter.”

“Well, I guess,” Sarah shook her head. “Nanci, you’re really trying to corrupt me, you know?”

Nanci thought about it for a second, then replied, “Yeah, I guess I am a little, but maybe you need some corrupting. I don’t mean turning you into the kind of person I was before I came to Jesus, but it would be good if you were a little more tuned into the ways of the world. I mean, it’s like the idea of going surfing at all – you have to be open to some new ideas. Your parents have turned you out into the world, so to speak, so you’re going to have to come out of your shell so you can be wise to the ways of it. Just because it’s new to you doesn’t mean it’s automatically wrong.”

“You scare me, Nanci,” Sarah shook her head. “Mostly because you make me scare myself sometimes.”

“Maybe that’s what the Lord wants me to do to you,” Nanci grinned. “I’ll go outside while you change into one of those bikinis.”

“All right,” Sarah said, taking a deep breath. “I guess I don’t have a lot of choice, do I?”

Nanci went outside the tent and sat on one of the picnic tables nearby, mostly taking in the sun and the warm air. It was considerably warmer than Kentucky, and the sun felt good. She didn’t have much experience of the ocean herself, and this would be a new experience for her, although she found that despite the reason for being there she was looking forward to giving it a try.

Some time passed before Sarah poked her head out of the tent flap with her face very red indeed. “There isn’t anyone around, is there?”

“No, just you and me.”

“Nanci, I can’t believe I’m doing this,” she shook her head. “I’m glad I don’t have to blow my nose because there isn’t enough of this bikini to use as a handkerchief.”

“You could have chosen one that’s a little less skimpy,” Nanci told her.

“I did,” Sarah said. “This is the best I could find, and I can’t fit into one of your tankinis. I mean, I tried.”

“I could have told you that. Those are even a little snug on me. I really need to get one or two new ones before rafting season starts up again. Now, come on out so I can go in there and change.”

“Well, I guess,” she replied, easing back the tent flap and crawling out.

Nanci’s first impression was that there really wasn’t a lot of bikini there and an awful lot of Sarah; Nanci figured she had good reason to be embarrassed. “Hey, that looks pretty good on you,” she said, trying to be supportive. “If some of those surfer dudes out on the beach saw you their eyes would be popping out.”

“Quit trying to scare me, Nanci. You have me scared enough as it is.”

“Oh, you’ll be fine. Tell me, what are the odds that one of those surfer dudes would be better than Abraham Bowman?”

“It wouldn’t be any great trick,” Sarah replied as she stood up. Nanci thought she really did look pretty good in the tiny blue and white bikini, at least objectively speaking, but that wasn’t the kind of girl she was.

“Well, let me duck in and change, and then we’ll get our wetsuits on. Then it won’t be quite as embarrassing.”

“All right, but hurry up.”

Nanci dove into the tent and started to strip off her clothes. She wasn’t wearing one of the skirt outfits she’d gotten used to up at Hickory Run, but had on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt. Amazingly enough, Sarah had been wearing jeans and a sweatshirt as well, ones that had come from one of Sarah and Karin’s shopping expeditions in Flagstaff.

As soon as she had her clothes off, Nanci reached out for one of her tankinis, but almost instantly thought better of it; considering everything, Sarah needed a little solidarity, so pulled on one of the string bikinis Sarah had rejected. In only two or three minutes she was back outside the tent. “Ahh, now that feels like Florida,” she said cheerfully.

“I don’t know what this makes me feel like,” Sarah replied wanly. Nanci glanced over to see that her friend was sitting at one of the picnic tables, all hunched over as if to cover up a little more, and not being very successful at it. “At least I don’t want to say what it makes me feel like.”

“Oh, don’t let it bother you,” Nanci said. “Have you ever seen a young teenage girl wearing a bikini like that?”

“No. Never. Come on, Nanci, you know me better than that. When would I ever have had a chance to do that?”

“Yeah, I suppose,” Nanci shrugged. “Look, when I was a kid, say, around thirteen or fourteen, I often had friends my age that broke out in bikinis even skimpier than that, mostly so they could show off how grown up they were. Then, when they got out to the beach they started to realize how uncovered they actually were, and wound up wearing T-shirts over the bikinis all the time. Oh, they made up excuses like they were a little chilly or something when the sweat was rolling down their faces. I’ve seen the same thing on the river.”

“Did you ever do that?”

“Well, maybe a little. I was a little wild when I was that age, Sarah. Let’s get our wet suits on. Maybe that’ll make you feel like you’re not posing for a cover for Playboy.”

Sarah did not waste much time pulling on Crystal’s one-piece wetsuit as soon as Nanci pulled it out of the box, and she seemed much more comfortable once she had it on and all the zippers pulled up. It turned out to be a pretty good fit, even though Sarah was a little bigger in the chest than Crystal.

Nanci’s wetsuit – actually Nanci’s mother’s – was a little more complicated. It was a “Farmer John,” pants with a bib, and a separate jacket. It was a snug fit since Nanci was just a touch larger than her mother. While she was getting it situated, Sarah asked, “Do you wear these things on the river?”

“No,” Nanci said. “Well, I don’t. Mom and Crystal run in the spring and fall, and before they messed around with the schedule that meant April and November. They took wet suits along in case they ran into a wet day when there were a lot of big rapids, but they rarely wore them because the customers didn’t have them. But sometimes they were a good idea. Except for one fall I always ran summers, so I never needed one. Well, except for last winter, of course, then I was glad to have this one to wear.”

“Why were you wearing it last winter?”

“Long story. There’s a spot on the river, the mouth of Havasu Creek, that’s pretty special to me, because it was there that I came to Jesus. Last winter I was very troubled about whether to attend seminary or what, so I decided to go there to pray and make up my mind. It’s a nineteen-mile hike to get there if you’re not on the river, and the last few miles have some deep stream crossings. Well, it was February and I didn’t want to get my clothes wet, because having wet clothes in those conditions is dangerous. So I wore this wet suit on the lower section.”

“So did the Lord help you make up your mind?”

“I went to Hickory Run, didn’t I?” Nanci grinned. “Come on, let’s go surfing. It’s not a nineteen-mile hike down to this beach.”

The ocean wasn’t quite as warm as it looked, Nanci thought an hour or so later, so she was glad she had the wetsuit on as she lay on the beach, watching Sarah and Giselle work out on the frothing shore break. Giselle was just letting her get used to handling the board, paddling it around, and to Nanci it looked as if her friend was picking it up pretty quick.

Teaching someone to surf was nothing new to Buddha and Giselle – they must have done it thousands of times. Since one of them had to watch the store, Giselle was their teacher, at least for this first round, and she’d worked with Nanci first. The surfboard they shared for this session was what Giselle called an “egg” – wider and less maneuverable than a normal board, but easier to stand up on and do simple maneuvers. Once Nanci had gotten used to being on the board – which wasn’t as stable as a raft, that was for sure – Giselle had her go out a little farther, and catch some of the little waves while still lying on the board. It was just riding the wash toward shore, getting the feel of the waves pushing her.

Once she had that down pretty well, Giselle had her try the same thing, but this time getting to her feet. It was a tricky move, sort of a pushup with a body twist built in, and it took a few tries to get it down. Smoothness was the key, she learned, but once she learned to balance on the board, knees slightly bent, Giselle showed her how to lean toward the edge of the board in the direction she wanted to go. That was harder to learn; she fell off a few times before she got it down. However, she never had to chase the board far; there was a leash from it attached to her ankle that made it easy to catch up with and try again. Once she managed that, she began to learn how to ride the wave’s shoulder, and do a “cutback,” a harder turn that would take her off the shoulder and over the top of the wave.

After she’d done a few cutbacks, Giselle got together with her and told her, “You are picking it up pretty quick. Take a break and watch me work with Sarah and think about some of the things you’ve learned, and some of the mistakes you’ve made. Then maybe we can try a few breaks outside if it stays fairly easy tomorrow.”

While Nanci was an adequate swimmer and had few qualms about being in the water, the same thing couldn’t be said for Sarah – the sum total of her swimming knowledge had been in Jon and Tanisha’s pool in Phoenix back in December. So, more to help her confidence than anything else, Buddha had suggested that Sarah wear a Personal Flotation Device, a life jacket. Although it was a little clumsier, it seemed to do the job, and Nanci was pleased at the speed at which Sarah was picking up the beginner moves. Perhaps it was the fact that she had a little better sense of balance than Nanci, or maybe it was because she followed Giselle’s instructions exactly. In either case, Sarah seemed to be enjoying the experience, which meant that this trip hadn’t been a waste other than for its purpose of avoiding Abraham Bowman.

The water was cool enough that even wetsuits weren’t enough to keep them from getting cold, although Giselle seemed to be impervious to the chilly water – maybe being brought up in Quebec had something to do with it, Nanci theorized. She remembered when Buddha and Giselle had been with her on a river trip some years before; Giselle seemed to spend more time in the cold water of the river than anyone else on the trip, and never seemed to mind it, so she had to be used to it.

Eventually even Giselle had enough, or else she figured that Sarah had had enough for one day; it seemed to Nanci that Sarah had gotten a little further along than she had done, but soon they came into shore. “I must go up and get started on dinner,” Giselle told them. “But you might want to lie out here in the sun and warm up for a bit before you go back up and change.”

“Sounds good to me,” Nanci told her. “I could get used to the idea of lying out on the beach in the sun and watching the waves roll in.”

Sarah found a place beside her, and the two sat there for a while, just talking about their new experience. This was looking like it would be a fun week, and Sarah seemed excited; her reluctance had been washed away by the surf in the last hour or so.

They sat there for half an hour or so, and were just getting set to head back up to the tent to change clothes when a couple of the surfers they’d been watching off and on came into shore themselves. Nanci had been able to tell they were guys from a long distance off, but when they got up to shore she could tell they were college age, presumably in Florida on spring break themselves.

Nanci was also pretty sure the two guys had been watching them; after all, while both she and Sarah had wet suits on, and their hair was a mess from being in the water so much, they were still both recognizably women, and reasonably attractive ones. It was pretty clear that the guys smelled opportunity, so it wasn’t surprising that the two of them headed their way. “Hi,” one of them said when they got within talking distance. “Are you two down here on break?”

“Yes,” Nanci replied, seeing the chance for another lesson for Sarah. “Where are you guys from?”

“North Carolina State,” the guy replied. “So where do you go to school?”

Nanci was nothing if not honest. “Hickory Run Methodist Seminary,” she smiled. “That’s in Kentucky.”

“Seminary?” the guy almost recoiled.

“Oh, yes,” Nanci told him. “I’m a Methodist minister seeking ordination, and my friend here is studying to be a minister.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. You don’t look like ministers.”

“Well, I’m the only one who’s a minister,” Nanci grinned. “But my friend here will be one of these days.”

“I can’t believe a Methodist minister would be down here surfing,” the guy snorted, suspecting a put-on.

“Why not?” Nanci grinned, seeing that she had him on the run a little. “Just because I’m a minister doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy this marvelous surf that God made for us. Come on, you think that ministers are mostly stodgy, gray old men who have faces wrinkled like prunes because they never think that people should enjoy themselves, don’t you?”

“Well, yeah, pretty much.”

“We know of a few like that, but ministers are people, too. We’re supposed to help people in their walk with the Lord Jesus, and that’s what we do. But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy ourselves once in a while. Tell me, boys. Do you know Jesus?”

“Huh?”

“Have you taken Jesus as your personal savior? Have you turned away from sin and seek to walk in the path of righteousness?”

“Well, yeah,” the guy said. “I go to church sometimes.”

“Only when you have to, right? You really should be taking a closer walk with the Lord. Would you like to pray about it?”

“Uh, not right now, I think,” the guy said, backing away a little.

“Yeah, well, pleased to meet you,” the other guy said, backing away even more quickly.

“Well, you two have a good day, and have fun surfing,” Nanci said as they started to leave. “And may the Lord walk with you.”

The two walked away quickly, heading for a car parked alongside the highway. They were well out of earshot before Sarah started snickering, and Nanci joined in. “That was almost cruel, Nanci,” she said.

“I didn’t handle that very well,” Nanci shook her head. “I guess I’m out of practice.”

“Huh? Nanci, sometimes you talk in riddles.”

“Oh, come on. Those two saw two good-looking girls sitting by themselves and thought they had some easy pickings for their college-boy surfer-dude approach. I never used to get that kind of thing at Black Mesa very much, partly because I wasn’t on campus a lot of the time, but it was more because most of the guys I ran into knew I was a religious studies major. They wouldn’t touch me with a ten foot pole since they knew I wasn’t into playing their game.”

“So what do you mean that you didn’t handle that very well?”

“Well, I wasn’t sure if you could hold up your end of the conversation. I doubt you’ve had much practice in shaking off passes from guys.”

“Well, no, I haven’t.”

“What I should have done was bring them in a little closer, get them sitting down with us so they couldn’t run off quite as easily, and talk about nothing much until I had them in a good position to talk about saving their souls,” Nanci grinned. “I shouldn’t have brought up the fact that we’re divinity students until we’d talked with them for a while, but since I didn’t know if you’d be able to play along, I squelched them right at the beginning.” Nanci let out a sigh, and went on, “I learned a long time ago that people are not ready to hear the Word unless they’re ready to listen, and you sometimes have to wait out that time. I doubt if they were ready to hear the Word, but I didn’t want to take the time to really find out. To put it in terms Will would use, you have to rope ’em before you can brand ’em. I never even got the lasso out.”

“If something like that happens again, I’ll try to play along, but I’ll be following your lead.”

“Oh, it’ll probably happen again. We’re going to be spending a lot of time on this beach and there will be more guys around than girls. We may have been a little old for those two, but they weren’t looking to be picky, they were looking for an easy score. I guess it’s just as well we had wetsuits on instead of just bikinis, or we might have sent the wrong message.”

“Well, yeah, I can see that.”

“Sarah, have you ever had the opportunity to learn how to handle a guy making a pass at you?”

“Well, no,” Sarah admitted, a little shamefully. “Hey, you know me, you know how I used to dress until you and your mother and Tanisha got to me, and I’m still like that a little. Besides, there wasn’t much of that kind of thing at Philemon Bible College. Boys and girls were supposed to stay away from each other unless they’d been properly introduced, and then there wasn’t much room for messing around. Not many guys were interested in an introduction to dowdy old Sarah.”

“It’s how the game is played, Sarah. The rules vary from place to place, but it’s still all the same game, and it’s always been that way, guys and girls looking to get together with each other. Some times, some places, it’s not very innocent because both sides of the equation are looking for sin, not for love. It’s not necessarily wrong for guys and girls to sniff around each other, but it depends on the circumstances, and there are some people in the churches who don’t recognize the difference. While we’re down here, I wouldn’t be surprised if we have the chance to play around with that a little more. It may not mean anything, but you might get to learn something else your parents never gave you the chance to learn at home.”

“It’s one of those things I need to learn how to handle to get along in the real world, right?”

“Definitely. Sarah, I played that game a lot, especially when looking for sin was involved, so I know the rules. We can have some fun with this, and maybe we can have some fun down here, have some interesting conversations, and who knows? We might even be able to lead someone to the Lord. You’re just going to have to take it easy and follow my lead until you have an idea of what you’re doing.”

“I have to admit, that’s something I never thought about when the idea of us taking a surfing trip came up.”

“There you go. Think about it. A beach means strangers, skin, and sun, and in a place like this, an awful lot of single people. That means a lot of opportunity. This is probably a good place to learn it. Now let’s go up, change into our regular clothes, brush out our hair, and find out just how well Giselle makes red snapper.”

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