“This whole area private property,” the fattest man said, gesturing with his cigarette. His face looked roasted by the sun, blackened and peeling in places, his lips cracked, but he wore a good pair of aviator sunglasses, which obscured his eyes. As though for emphasis, he canted sideways and spat into the sand. His hat was lettered LOCAL MOTION.

Sharkey said, “You guys surfers?”

“We look like surfers to you, haole?” The man plumped his belly with his hands, and the others laughed.

“Reason I ask is I’m a surfer.” He put out his hand. The others did not move to shake it. He said, “Joe Sharkey.”

“Here’s a stick,” Local Motion said. A bruised and chipped surfboard was jammed in the sand beside one of the tents. “Give me twenty bucks for rent. Go surf.”

Sharkey hesitated, digging his toe in the sand, hating the man for his hostility. “Not today.”

“Haole say he one surfer dude. Now he say he no want for try surf.” He nudged the man next to him, who obliged, expelling cigarette smoke with his laugh. The gaunt man went on eating, now making scouring motions inside the can with his chopsticks. The yellow label on the can said WAHOO. He stared at Sharkey, then opened his mouth wide to clamp it on the chopsticks. He sucked the fish fragments from them, then tossed the can aside.

“Frawley,” Olive said. “We’re looking for him.”

“He at the food pantry,” Local Motion said.

The gaunt man, dabbing at his lips, looked closer at Sharkey. He squinted and said, “Sharkey,” and chewed the word with his lips, because he had no teeth. “Sharkey,” he said again. “You was at Roosevelt. You was a Rough Rider.”

“Yeah. Long ago.”

“Old days,” the man said. He jabbed his thumb at his sunken chest, snagging it on a rip in his T-shirt. “Fonoti. I stay Roosevelt.”

Sharkey knew the name as one of his antagonists but could not discern the muscular wild-haired boy in this skinny toothless balding man squeezing his chopsticks with bony fingers and staring out of deep-set eyes with his mad monkey face.

“I was in da hui,” he said. “Wilfred Kalama and Bradda Jay and them.”

“Wilfred—what happened to him?” Sharkey said, remembering his tormentor.

“He wen’ make. Too much of drugs. Ice, he smoking.”

“Batu,” Local Motion said, as though clarifying.

“Vai and Nalani, they got grandkids. Nalani stay in Vegas.”

“You know this fucken haole?” Local Motion said.

“We was at Roosevelt,” Fonoti said. “Hey, good old Rough Rider days, brah.” He saw a fleck on one of the chopsticks and lapped at it. “So where you stay—what kine job?”

“Like I said, surfing.”

“Except,” Local Motion said, gesturing with a fat finger, “I offer him one stick and he back off like a panty.”