“We went all the way out there,” she began, “Ronald and I.” She was still nodding, like someone dropping off to sleep, and did not speak again for a while. Time passed slowly when you were drunk; even Sharkey knew that. “For nothing.”

He snorted, refusing to acknowledge what she said with a reply.

“You lost.” With a little giggle of satisfaction, as though she had won, she fixed her gaze on him. And he saw with pity and disgust that her upper lip was chafed, some of it due to smeared lipstick but mostly it was rubbed and reddened. And he was reminded that Ronald had a mustache.

After that, nothing that she said with this mouth, with this face, mattered to him. She was someone he didn’t want to know. And, predictably, when he said nothing, she became remorseful, another stage in her drunkenness, and began to cry.

He left her whimpering in her chair and went to bed and surfed in his sleep. In the morning, leaving the house before his mother awoke, he strapped his board to his roof rack and drove to the North Shore, vowing that he would drop out of school. It wasn’t complicated—it was legal, he was within his rights to quit. He was over sixteen, half his class had quit, all the bullies were gone, one was in jail, Nalani was pregnant, another girl was married. His classmates had grown up fast, but seldom followed through on any plan. They abandoned whatever ambition they had and stayed home, and their families enclosed them, protecting them, sheltering them, helping them raise their kids.

Not Sharkey. His mother said, “Your father would be devastated.”

Sharkey thought, If only he could see you.

“What will you do now?”

“I don’t know.”

He did not know what he would do—true. But he knew what he wanted and felt it thumping inside him, more strongly now because he was facing his mother. You lost. Another spur, another goad, a challenge.

She had shown him her hand. She would never have a claim to his victories. I don’t know if it will happen, he thought, but I know what I want. I want to surf, I want to win.

10

A Rescue

Later, when he was much older, dominating the tour, he’d see a barefoot boy of sixteen or so, deeply tanned, the glow of sunshine on him, golden salt-crusted shoulders, thin legs, wild blond hair like crushed feathers, his underlip thrust out in defiance, in a torn T-shirt and faded shorts, a big board under his arm, and he’d feel a pang for this fallen angel. He wanted to say to the boy, “Don’t listen to your mother—keep doing what you’re doing,” but the boy wouldn’t listen and didn’t care and would of course do whatever he wanted to do. He also wanted to say to someone—anyone—“I see myself in that boy.”