In his dreams he was always on an empty wave like this. With the waves to himself, he surfed for the next two hours in the sunshine, and on a whim, for a better view of the green cliffs, he paddled out for almost a mile, near where whales filled the ocean’s surface with the misty plumes from their blowholes. He looked back to the island and gloried in the sight of the steep green pali, a vertical drop that was a wall of tangled trees and black rock. There was too much of it to be visible close up—you needed to be offshore to take in the whole panorama of spires. He was the only surfer out today at this break, the sole owner of this view.

After ten good rides he took one more, carving a turn toward the sandy beach down the shore at Three Tables, where the injured surfer had lain, where his friend had helped him away. Sharkey dropped to his board and paddled to the low waves flopping against the sand. He sat and looked at the sea until fatigue overtook him, a great heaviness penetrating his body, and he stretched out, using his board to pillow his head, and he slept with the sun on his face, his back on the hot sand.

Flattened against the beach, in that posture of floating face-up, he slept, buoyed by the sun heating his body, levitated again in slumber. He was cooked in dazzling light. When he woke, sand adhering to the sweat on the side of his face, he yawned, as two young surfers strode past, their boards under their arms.

“How’s it?”

They acknowledged him with grunts but no more than that, and for the second time that day he thought, They don’t know me—had no idea that the lanky figure stretched out on the beach, propped on one elbow, was the big-wave surfer Joe Sharkey. He smiled at the notion of his anonymity, the novelty of it, the restfulness it offered him. It gave his day the order he wanted, without interruption.

He carried his board to the car and strapped it to the rack, then walked up the road to the supermarket, bought a sandwich and coffee at the deli counter, and returned to the beach and sat cross-legged for lunch. A month before he’d seen a monk seal wriggle ashore just here and hump itself up the steepness of the beach, away from the waves. The doggy thing had folded its flippers against itself and slept for three hours. He’d watched it the whole time, in a mood of protection, and it was a reminder of his animal sleep in his animal life.