Before she could speak, he said, “He wiped out—a big drop at Waimea—and his board probably hit him. He was way under. He swallowed a lot of water. But look”—he was holding her wrists, steadying her, restraining her, because she was fighting him—“he’s going to be fine. We’re talking about Joe Sharkey.”

She wrenched free of the man and hurried into the house, where he lay on his sofa. He was almost unrecognizable—a different man inked with Sharkey’s tattoos, corpse-white, his eyes pink and staring, his hands and feet bluish and badly cut, a blanket slung loose from his body, his hair spiky and wild.

Seeing her, he feebly lifted his hand in a shaka sign, then his hand fell and became a claw.

“Epic wave. Went over the falls,” he said, scarcely moving his lips. “Major hold-down.” Then he became self-conscious, dropping his voice. “These guys saved my life.”

The lifeguard who had followed her into the house stood beside her, as though in protection. Yet she remained watching, horrified by what she had first taken to be a dead man, Sharkey motionless and pale, his face ugly with fear.

“Heavy water,” one of the lifeguards said.

“Monster wave,” Sharkey said, and, tangled in his own black shadow, as though still under the wave at Waimea, oppressed by his life, he began to cry, like a small boy in a strange land.

Part II

The History of a Hero

1

Haole—The Scar

He was a child, and at last, after the ache and fatigue of a long flight, like a sickness on a smelly plane, everything was new and pure. The difference was a sweetness he tasted in the soft air, the breeze like a pillow against his cheek. It was a sound too, the flutter of leaves, the scrape of palm fronds, the ocean big and loud and continually foaming to the beach, waves flopping and swirling in a monstrous flush and then gone. The cliffs and valleys behind the house were deep green, the house so simple, with wooden boards for walls, and you could leave the door open. He was different too, always in summer clothes and often barefoot—and conspicuous for his color among bigger, darker people who lived beyond the perimeter fence of the fort in the high green island that was his new home—Hawaii.

He was happy, a new person, and his difference had a name; the gardener, Abe, laughed and said, “You a haole.”

This was at the Sharkeys’ bungalow on Nimitz Circle in the married officers’ subdivision of Fort Shafter. They’d been transferred from the Presidio in San Francisco, and before that spells at Fort Bliss and in Germany.