Chapters (54)
So that’s how it worked, Sharkey reflected as he flattened himself on his board and paddled toward the middle of the bay. Hunter’s physical self didn’t matter. His books stood for him—that madman genius, people called him, his furious voice of defiance—the man in the books was the one people loved and talked about; the man himself had vanished into his myth now.
None of these paddlers knew him, the nurse—Olive—at the bungalow, the spectators here on the beach—none of them could have had any idea of Hunter’s timidity, his vulnerability, his whispers, his frailty, his clinging to life, and with a gunshot his letting go, dropping himself over the falls for an eternal hold-down.
But though no one in the paddle-out knew him, they would remember him, as a spirit, at the dawn of this lovely day, in the imagery of floating flowers, the surfers ranged in a great circle on the bay while the long-haired Hawaiian priest, seated on his board—a blossom behind one ear, a crown of flowers on his head, a haku lei of pikake—chanted prayers in full-throated Hawaiian. All the surfers slapped the water, pounding the sea with open hands, and cheered. Then it was over, a formal effort ended, the ritual creating someone to remember, a bit more of the myth.
Sharkey turned as soon as the slapping stopped and the water was stilled. Paddling to shore, he saw her waiting on the beach, a small figure in green hospital scrubs, holding a lei, looking helpless, but smiling when she saw him slipping off his board and approaching her.
“I was at work, in surgery—they wouldn’t let me off. I’m sorry I missed it. A paddle-out is so awesome. I cry sometimes.”
“It’s all pau,” Sharkey said. “It was beautiful—a good turnout. He’s been honored. A good memory.”
“What to do with this?” she said, lifting her arm on which the lei hung. Then she smiled and lifted the lei and, standing on tiptoe, looped it over Sharkey’s head.
“You’re supposed to get a kiss with a lei.”
“I know that,” she said, and kissed him, warming his lips with hers on the cool morning.
“Don’t go,” he said, seeing her turn away.
She faced him then, squinting, dipping her head, an exaggerated What now? smile.
The panic Sharkey felt just then was the urgent need he experienced when he wanted a drug or a drink, a thirst he felt convulsing his whole body. It was not lust, it was a need much deeper, a desperate sense that he was being abandoned, that at last he’d found someone who could save him.
“Don’t leave me,” he said.
She took it to be a joke and smiled again.
“Please,” he said, and with that word Olive lost her smile and took a step closer to him.