Perhaps the experience of fear still lingered on his face, imprinted as a reflex of memory, a twitch of muscles that he overcorrected with a set of his jaw, making the afterimage of his fear more emphatic.

“You never forget ’um.”

Nothing could undo that shock, was what Uncle Sunshine was saying, but the failure made Sharkey strong, as no success would ever do. Something had died in him that day of the wipeout—youth and stupidity, maybe. He was older now, and for the first time—in the wipeout, the recovery, his tears, his sobs—he saw what bravery was: not recklessness but facing fear.

“I’m surfing today,” he said.

“Not here,” Uncle Sunshine said. “You gotta go back to the North Shore. Catch some big waves. They more less than yesterday, but they still big.”

“I don’t have a car. My mother’s using it.”

“Take the fricken bus like everybody else. Like normal people.” Uncle Sunshine grasped him by the shoulders. “You wen’ learn nothing more here on these manini waves. Go up to the country—you ready now.”

“You sure I’m ready?”

“I think.” Uncle Sunshine was nodding. “You got scared shitless, so yah, I think you ready.”

Then Uncle Sunshine put his face close to Sharkey’s, nose to nose, and breathed the ritual ha, and it was like a blessing and a sacred sendoff.

Sharkey stood out with his shorter board at the bus stop on Ala Moana, and the bus driver smiled at him in exasperation—crazy haole—and told him to sit in the back.

More than an hour along back roads to Pearl City and Kam Highway to Wahiawa; through the pineapple fields and the long descent to Hale‘iwa and the North Shore, to Waimea Bay, where he got off. And ever since the bluff above the pineapple fields he had studied the white ribs of surf and tried to read them, and hoped they were smaller than yesterday.

He was relieved to see that the surf had dropped, though some sets were ten or twelve feet. He carried his board down the beach, fixed his leash, and paddled out to the lineup, where surfers were bobbing on boards—locals, he saw when he drew closer.

“How’s it?” he called out.

No one replied, no one greeted him. All were watching the incoming sets. Sharkey paddled away from the others, so as not to intrude, to show respect; and when in turn they took the well-formed waves and vanished beneath them, Sharkey braced himself and straightened his board and positioned himself to thrust himself over the top—“charge it,” as Uncle Sunshine said.