Uncle Sunshine’s motto was There’s always another wave. Sharkey’s mother sometimes alluded to the loss, because it was the only time she’d seen him surf. She did not know that he’d begun to win—not contests, but the daily rough-and-tumble in the waves at Sunset and Waimea. In the tribal rites of surfing, the young surfers were merciless in their quest to be warriors. Other surfers knew better than anyone who the up-and-coming surfers were—Sharkey could see that he was gaining respect, because they matched themselves against him. It was better that his mother didn’t know, better that he was detached from her, detached from school.

He dated the onset of his adulthood from this period. His mother was preoccupied with her boyfriend. Sharkey dropped the pretense that he went to school every day; his many absences meant that there was no going back, no way of catching up with schoolwork, as in the dream he often had of being naked and unprepared and late for class. He quit entirely, saying so in a short scribbled note of farewell, ridding himself of the uncertainty and the sense of failure, leaving behind the skirmishes in the playground and the exasperation of teachers, though he wondered what would become of Mee Ling, who had risked the taunts of the class by offering him a can of soda.

He said to his mother, “I’m quitting school,” and when she howled he left the house and went surfing. His decision to quit gave him a great day on the water. His mother was calmer when he got home, exhausted by her hysteria.

“What will you do?”

“Maybe be a lifeguard.”

Eddie Aikau had vouched for him—Eddie had quit his part-time job at the cannery and was now a full-time lifeguard at Sunset. Sharkey passed the test and earned a Red Cross certificate, and was assigned to Ali‘i Beach in Hale‘iwa. His mother was bewildered that he had gotten a job so quickly, that he had responsibility and a uniform and a salary—amazed that he knew people who helped him. Becoming a lifeguard on the North Shore was another rite of passage for lucky surfers—more like being a member of an exclusive club or a secret society than a city job, and with greater status. But it was not his ultimate aim, only a strategy to stay near the water.

The lifeguard chair was a throne, upraised, eight feet in the air, under a red canopy. He sat, his legs out straight, in the shadow of the canopy, wearing sunglasses, not emerging except to warn the tourists—Japanese girls in floppy hats and summer dresses—of the surf on big days. Using a megaphone, which gave him an older voice that crackled with authority, he called out, “Keep away from the shore break. You can be knocked down and swept out.”