Then someone stood up, slung his wooden surfboard under his arm or over his head—they were heavy in those days, enormous, carved from redwood—and started off toward the water. One by one, the others followed. They stepped delicately into the wash of spent waves. The coldness of the water shocked them, every time. Their feet went numb, their legs. Still they continued. They unslung their boards and set them in the water and set themselves on the boards, in direct confrontation with the oncoming surf. The breaking waves crashed against them as they paddled onward. Brine filled the cavities of their noses. They watched the breakers and timed each one, calculated the seconds of calm between one wave cresting and the other one building behind it. At last someone made his move. Took his board out beyond the line of breakers and turned to paddle with the current, along the current, fused his puny human momentum with the momentum of the wave below him as the bottom of the wave met the bottom of the continent and climbed upward, upward, until the laws of physics wouldn’t allow any more of this suspense and the wave curled over itself and toppled, and the man either rode this wave or toppled too, depending on his skill and luck. He was joined by another man, and another one, and pretty soon they were all out there silently surfing, like a pack of dolphins, communicating by movement and custom instead of words, while the sun slowly rose above the cliffs and blinded them.

Irene’s father taught her how to surf when she was eleven or twelve. This was before the war, before the California beaches began to fill with people surfing or learning to surf. He woke her before dawn one morning and told her to put on her bathing costume, and the two of them drove south from the city until they reached Santa Cruz. Just the two of them. Mrs. Foster stayed abed in their house on Balboa Street; she was by then in the last stages of the sickness that would kill her. Foster smelled a little of whiskey, but then he usually smelled of whiskey. He told Irene to go back to sleep until they got there, so she settled down on the seat and closed her eyes, but she didn’t sleep. How could she? She listened to the rattle of axles and the burr of the engine, to Hank Foster’s whistle. Once or twice another car swept by, and the headlights illuminated the air, but otherwise it was as dark as night, as dark as only the hour before dawn can be.