“Anyone like beef, I take you on—otherwise get out of here,” Uncle Sunshine said. And as he watched the boys sidling away, he called out, “Not you, keed”—gesturing to Sharkey—“you stay here. I got one bone to pick with you.” Sharkey hung his head as Uncle Sunshine walked past him, calling out to the others, “Git!”

Then they were alone, Sharkey and Uncle Sunshine, and Sharkey felt woeful, worse than he ever had when faced with a reprimand by the Colonel or his angry mother. They stood half turned away, not facing each other, in the harsh midafternoon sun, under the tall slender palm trees. In what was a ragged thought, not fully formed in words, Sharkey was ashamed in the beauty of that setting—the palms, the ribbed sea, the sun—the sun most of all, making him feel futile and breathless. Nothing could be hidden here—he was naked in this pitiless light.

He found refuge and distraction in considering the incoming waves, how they rose and fell, unrelenting, traveling toward him from the sea, always at the same speed, a kind of consolation.

“You think I huhu,” Uncle Sunshine was saying. “But no. I real disappointed.” He breathed through his nose, snorting for emphasis. It embarrassed Sharkey for being the reason Uncle Sunshine was forced to make this awkward speech, for which he didn’t have the words.

“I’m sorry,” Sharkey said, hoping to end it.

“Don’t say sorry. Don’t say nothing. Don’t make ass. Fricken do something, keed. You look terrible. You got red eyes, you got fish-belly skin. You smoking, and what I tell you? Don’t smoke. Smokers don’t surf.”

Sharkey put his hands to his face as though to hide it, clawing at his cheeks.

“What you father wen’ say?”

“My father died,” Sharkey said.

Uncle Sunshine went silent, seemed to stop breathing, and was still for a long moment. He then put his hand on Sharkey’s shoulder.

“You father no wen’ make,” he said, and with his free hand he pointed to the sky. “He up there looking at you. He inside you and all around. He lillybit disappointed, like me. But he know bym-bye you can get back on your board.”

“I want to,” Sharkey said, but he felt puny and pale and insincere and did not see any way he could surf. He was not rescued by this man—he’d been ambushed. He wished he’d sold his board, he wanted to get stoned with Wilfred and the others, he wanted to meet Nalani in the van or else sneak her past his drunken mother into his room; he wanted a smoke.