Sharkey led them into the surf zone, among low advancing sets, blue frothing to white, the sprawl of foam scooping toward shore. He showed them the moves again and then urged them on as they shouted and tumbled, flailing in the suds. But after five or six tries, they grew in confidence and balance and rode the waves, tumbling when Sharkey signaled, then heading back to ride again. Flattened on his own board, Sharkey watched with pleasure, thinking, There is nowhere I would rather be, and reflecting on how the day was transformed for him by the sight of the three boys gleaming in the sea, exulting, the small boy, Tavious, squealing.

They continued until early afternoon, when Sharkey said, “Let’s eat, guys.” Passing the rental shed, Sharkey called out to the man in the beach chair, “We’re cockaroaching them!”

He bought the boys burgers at an outdoor café nearer the pier. Watching them eat, he thought of mentioning Nick Gabaldón; but they were happy, they were hungry, they ate with gusto, and why remind them of their race?

“You guys are good. Stay unsinkable.”

Holding his burger, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Junior said, “You ain’t no Easter Bunny, man. Who you really?”

“I’m nobody—average Joe,” Sharkey said. “Just passing through. But I want you to promise you’ll come back here again and practice. Take my board—give it to a friend. Hey, I don’t know what you feel like where you live, but let me tell you, in the water”—he lowered his head, he spoke fiercely—“in the water, you’re somebody special. Remember that.”

13

The Paddle-Out at Waimea

A beautiful North Shore early morning, a sweet whiff of damp foliage that had the freshness of lettuce, and a gauzy veil of greeny-gold heat haze like a halo of pale light over the stillness of Waimea. A fuzz of reddish gnats and tiny jeweled flies stirred in the warmth. A troop of surfers, thirty or more, their boards under one arm, batted at the insects with their free hands as they loped barefoot toward the beach. There, the pale sprawl of bay glowed as smooth as a lake between the arms of spiky black lava on either side, the Leaping Rock on the left, the boulders at Pinballs on the right. One of the surfers muttered, “Total glass.”

A few distant corrugations, the twitch of a ribbed swell toward the horizon, but near to, this dawn, the sea was a white whisper.

In the parking lot, gilded by the sun striking through the haze, Sharkey reached to his roof rack for his board, Olive beside him, the surfers passing.

“Give him a hand, guys.”

“No, I’m cool.”

His will was strong, yet trembled with the weight of the board when he clapped it under his arm. But he was determined not to be helped.