And no matter how tense a day he’d had at school, how severe a standoff with the other boys—because he was always outnumbered, and sometimes sucker-punched or slapped in the face, “fucken haole,” as they grabbed his sandwich and spat on it, and because now Blaine the snitch was on their side—no matter how many taunts he had to endure, the prospect of surfing calmed him and gave him hope. And after he’d had some good rides he felt relaxed, uplifted and alive on the wave, and at the end of the day washed clean.

It helped too that Uncle Sunshine was Hawaiian, that Sharkey had been praised by Duke Kahanamoku, because at Roosevelt Sharkey was bullied for being a haole—singled out and told he didn’t belong. “Fucken haole, fucken haole”—it was the chant. “Go back to the mainland, fucken haole. Geev ’um dirty lickings!” He couldn’t defy Wilfred’s gang of ten or twelve locals or Vai’s screeching girls, but the bullying drove him to surf; made him a loner; made him strong in the water. And being accepted by Uncle Sunshine meant everything, because Uncle Sunshine was, as he said, a kanaka maoli, “real people, here fo’evah.”

When in his stammering way Sharkey attempted to thank him for his kindness, the old man said, “You ohana.”

His mother fretted; she had nothing to do but sit and wait for the Colonel to send a message or to come home. His messages were few; his visits were not vacations, as he said, but always a result of meetings, planning, crises, urgencies, his needing to explain in person to the command at Fort Shafter the progress he was making.

“If they only knew what my men had to put up with,” the Colonel said. He was grim, habitually biting his cigarette, holding it in his teeth, square-mouthed, exhaling around it, squinting through the smoke, his eyes puffy from being stung.

“But the enemy is in the north,” his mother said. “And you’re in the south.”

“Have I told you where I am?” his father said, raising his voice. And in that same sharp tone, “The enemy is everywhere. They have trails, they have caves, they have tunnels. Don’t make me tell you this!”

And he smoked to calm himself, sulking in his armchair in the front room, with the shades drawn, sitting upright in his uniform.

“I told my men you’re a surfer,” he said to Sharkey through blue smoke. “They said it’s good training for special ops, night insertions.”