But there was no one to tell, no one who would understand. He was alone with the thought. The boy, that gangly twitching amphibian, half civilized, a fanatic, jumpy with ambition, didn’t know what was going to happen to him; his whole life ahead of him, he only knew that he had a passion to be on a wave. He was alone too, and happier that way, with fantasies of glory in his head.

Whenever his mother was nearby Sharkey would chant in his mind, With you I’m more alone than when I’m on my own. A single mother, he saw, was like a bossy older sister, and she distrusted him, she hovered, and inflicted the worst sort of intrusion: she said no, and then she was gone, out of the house, on a date. His wish to be alone she took to be inspired by his streak of cruelty.

The Colonel had believed in him, and that belief had made Sharkey confident. The Colonel had also had a sense of proportion—some things mattered, others not so much. He had seen men die in battle; next to that, what else was worth lamenting? Being under attack in a firebase mattered more than cutting your thumb on a tuna-fish can or even crashing your car. Losing meant more than winning, but putting forth your whole effort mattered most. Were you shit scared? “Consider yourself already dead” and take the leap, no retreat.

To his mother, everything mattered equally. “A strange thing happened today,” Sharkey had once said to her, preparing to tell her how a pretty Chinese girl in his class, seeing him alone in the school playground, had come up to him holding two cans of soda. She was small, slender, kitten-faced, chinless, and she crouched obliquely with a little bow. “This one for you.” It was a day when, reverting to their bullying, Wilfred and his friends had been brutal to him. “Fucken haole!” And the girl, Mee Ling, was an angel.

His mother said, “Wait”—staring, she wasn’t listening, she rummaged for a pair of tweezers and plucked a hair from between his brows. “You can’t go around like that.” When that was done, she said, “What were you going to tell me?”

“Nothing.”

For those who believed that everything mattered, nothing mattered. They lived in a smothering clutter of concern and were never happy.

“Look at the time. I have to put on my face.” She dressed for men, for other people.

When she was gone, he was glad; his confidence returned, he was himself again.