None of these incidents on their own would have alarmed him, and even taken together they were not strange enough to portend anything dark. But he reflected that all this happened before the accident that killed the drunk homeless man. Now they seemed full of meaning, with the shadow of significance. What troubled him was that he had not been able to read this meaning at the time, and even now he could not say what they were about, only that they seemed linked. Yet he was convinced they held a darkness he was too busy to discern.

He thought, If I had put them together, might I have avoided the accident? And he answered himself: No.

But he remembered the other incidents, trivial at the time: the old goose stepping on his foot and muddying his toes, gashing his foot on the lava rock, the centipede bite that had left one toe throbbing, stubbing that same toe, on his right foot, the one he used on the accelerator and the brake.

All this, then the accident.

7

Picking Up the Pieces

Without his own car, and with Olive needing hers—the insurance appraiser still had not examined the wreck, which had been towed to the front of the house and left there, the shattered window, the crushed and torn-open hood filling with rain and fallen leaves, a feral cat asleep on the backseat—without a car, he had begun to walk down the hill, or ride his bike, often with his surfboard under his arm, as he’d done when he’d been a teenager; and it did not dismay him. He was reminded of his youth, of skipping school, of happy days, pedaling, walking, hitching rides, being heedless, seeking waves.

Only four days since the accident but stunned by the event, he felt his life turning around and drifting backward into the blur and simplicity of the past, when if anyone had asked him what was going to become of him, he would have said, “Who knows?” He didn’t ask. In his heart he had believed in his strength and his luck; he was convinced that he’d be all right. He kept this certainty to himself because he didn’t know anyone who felt this way, certainly none of his friends. Nor had he ever told his mother: he didn’t want his mother to say that she’d always believed in him—which was untrue—and then take credit for his success. An older Hawaiian man had guided him, the tough waterman who went by the name Uncle Sunshine. He was surprised when Uncle Sun said, “You got the juice. You got the moves”—surprised and dismayed, because now he had to live up to it, and this praise, which was also a prediction, was a burden.

His mother had asked him what his plans were.

“None,” he said. “But I’ll be fine.”