Around him, in the lacework of sun-flecked shade, the surfers young and old, the young ones chattering, the older ones solemn and silent—Jock, Garrett, Brock, Ryan, the Florence brothers, and others on the beach sitting cross-legged, some pacing. Sharkey recognized Stickney and Wencil, Alex, Fonoti and Frawley, and from the kapu camp Rhonda, Winona, and Kimo, the schoolchildren gathered near them. Skippy Lehua had come with some of his grommets, and Sugar with her three children, May and her Chinese husband. All of them tense and tearful in their gaudy shirts. Moe was there. So was I.

“Insane,” Sharkey murmured.

As we gathered on the foreshore, three black-and-white HPD police cruisers drew up at the edge of the parking lot. Six officers got out and marched to the beach, where they stood in a line, at attention, and saluted.

Onlookers too, early risers, rock jumpers, beachgoers, gawkers, tourists, crowding the surfers.

A hoarse haole voice: “Some kind of Wayan ceremony?”

The kahu had been waiting on the beach. He was wrapped in a priestly green gown and wore a lei of niihau shells, his long black hair under his crown of flowers drawn back and braided. He strode to a dome of sand and beckoned to Sharkey, who handed him the small green bundle, the ashes wrapped in sacred ti leaves. And then the kahu faced the bay and recited a chant in Hawaiian that silenced all the whisperers. It was not a lament—it sounded more like a plea for mercy.

“Lehu kane,” he said when he finished, and sprinkled the green bundle with water from a coconut shell. A robed Hawaiian man stepped next to him, carrying a conch shell. He was also wearing a flower crown, and fastened to his neck a heavy russet cape. He blew a long sputtering trumpet blast on the conch.

Sharkey accepted the green bundle and fixed it with a strap to the nose of his board. The plop of a small insistent wave snatched at a length of sand and turned it to a rim of gravel. A golden plover, its head down, strutted past, its beak lowered to stab at a sea bug, as Sharkey set his board in the fribble of the shore break.

He flattened himself on it. He cupped his hands and paddled slowly into the whispering water of the bay, breathing the tang of the sea, liking the salt, the familiar taste of surfing. The surfers massed behind him and dropped to their boards and followed on them, staying together, a flotilla of them, stomachs pressed against the boards, rhythmically stroking the water.