Dick stands in the LAX terminal, looking at the departing flights, and chooses Hawaii. Before he left for the airport, he boxed up his things. He has no idea where he will live when he gets back but knows it is time for a change. He has money now, a fact he hasn’t gotten used to. Perhaps he’ll buy a place, a house of his own with an extra bedroom for the kids. He misses them. Especially Kiley.
Fleetingly the remaining three Pepper files cross his mind, but the thought passes quickly. Mostly what he thinks about is sleep—dreamless, thoughtless sleep.
* * *
The plane sets down, and already Dick feels better. A beautiful woman drapes a purple orchid lei around his neck and wishes him “Aloha.”
He drops his luggage at a resort he found on TripAdvisor that advertised peace and serenity, then heads to the beach. At the first surf shop he passes, he buys a pair of board shorts similar to what most of the mourners at Hamilton’s memorial were wearing.
As he’s paying, he asks the girl ringing him up, “I was wondering if you might know someone who teaches surfing.”
The girl runs him over as if sizing him up for a suit and nods. “Kai would be perfect for you.”
She makes a call, and half an hour later, a kid with a large smile and dark skin with indigo tribal tattoos over most of it shows up.
“D-man, nice to meet you,” he says. “Ready to greet the waves?”
* * *
Dick learned to swim as a boy but hasn’t swum much since, and he has never swum in the ocean. He’s shocked by the power of it, its sheer force the most humbling thing he’s ever experienced.
The salesgirl was right. Kai is the perfect instructor. Patiently and without judgment, he encourages Dick, coaxing him past his initial terror, and smiling, laughing, and reassuring him that he’s doing fine, though Dick knows he’s not. It takes over an hour for him to find the courage to stay on his board when a wave comes and another to convince himself to dive under one while still holding onto his board.
His heart pounds so hard the entire two hours he’s in the water he’s completely wiped out when Kai says, “That’s it for today, D-man. Great job. You and the ocean are going to get along just fine.”
Waterlogged, exhausted, and happier than Dick can remember, he staggers to the beach.
“Tomorrow, Bra,” Kai says, giving him the shaka sign.
Dick gives it back. Or he thinks it does. Kai laughs, steps closer, lowers Dick’s forefinger and pulls out his thumb.
“Oh,” Dick says, turning it toward himself to see the difference, and another wave of pure joy washes over him.
“You’re cool, man,” Kai says and walks away.
Dick laughs, a playful sound that is surprising, and he realizes it’s been a long time since he’s felt so free.
* * *
Dick slept well. His night dreamless. He believes it was the ocean, the salt water a magic elixir with a lasting rhythm that lulled him unconscious and kept him that way until morning.
It’s been so long since he’s woken refreshed he almost doesn’t recognize the feeling. He gets a warm croissant from the hotel’s bistro and heads to the beach. He spent the entire previous evening reading about surfing. Dick has always found that what he lacks in athletic ability can often be compensated to some degree by understanding physics.
Kai fist-bumps him, then holds out his phone. “Check out this meme.”
Dick has no idea what a meme is, but he squints at Kai’s cracked iPhone and laughs at the image of a surfer flying like Superman off a humongous wave in the opposite direction of his board. The letters above and below the image read, “i must go. my planet needs me.”
Kai tucks the phone in his backpack. “Today you surf.”
He bounds toward the water, and Dick bounds after him.
“No way, man,” Kai says when they reach the break with the other surfers and are sitting comfortably on their boards. “Did you practice?”
Dick feels proud. He didn’t practice per se, but he did read about how the forward momentum of a surfer can propel them through even the strongest wave so long as they time the plunge correctly, piercing the water before the face of the wave reaches them and burrowing beneath it. He shrugs humbly like it’s no big deal, his hands resting on his thighs like a real surfer.
Despite his studying and Kai’s pronouncement that today would be the day Dick surfed, Dick doesn’t manage to get to his feet. Instead, he almost drowns a few dozen times as he paddles furiously wave after wave only to get swallowed up or dumped.
“You got heart,” Kai says, taking the board from Dick. “I’ll give you that.”
“Tomorrow?” Dick asks with more hope than expectation, thinking Kai is probably done with him.
“Tomorrow,” Kai says, shaking his head and smiling. “Damn if you’re not the most determined madman I’ve ever met.” He walks away still grinning.
* * *
Dick stood. On a surfboard. In the ocean.
He can’t stop grinning. Despite only managing it for less than a second, Kai said it counted as surfing.
Dick sits on the beach, eating a veggie wrap and beaming. Dick Raynes caught a wave and managed to get to his feet. It reminds him of the homerun he hit once. He was eleven. The feeling is the same. Only sweeter because he knows now how rare the feeling is.
He was paddling, and Kai was yelling, and suddenly he couldn’t hear him anymore and he was no longer paddling, the board caught in the enormous power of the wave and Dick being carried along with it. Then in his mind, he saw Frankie and Hamilton on the beach, Hamilton demonstrating how to pop up and Frankie imitating him. And Dick did it. He braced his hands under his chest, pulled his left knee forward, and pushed himself to his feet. He was bent too far forward and tried to compensate by leaning back and flew off. But it didn’t matter. All he could think about was how much he wanted to do it again.
Kai was happy as Dick, and Dick realized how hopeless Kai believed him to be. “You need me again tomorrow?” he asks.
“I don’t think so,” Dick said. “I think I just need to practice.”
Kai gave him the shaka sign, and Dick very carefully made sure he had the correct fingering before giving it back.
“Stay cool,” Kai said.
Dick laughed. “I’ll try.”
He sets the wrap aside and flops on his back on his towel, the heat of the sand soaking into his skin and the sun bleaching his lids, nothing in his mind but the glorious moment and the incredible feeling of being alive. He’s decided surfing really is the Holy Grail, the intensity of each moment and the magnificence of the ocean allowing no thoughts beyond those of catching the next wave and trying not to drown. It’s incredibly freeing, like a mental vacation from the burdens of life.
When his skin begins to fry, he sits up and pulls on his T-shirt. The wind has shifted and so have the waves, the gentle swell of the morning replaced with peaks well over the surfers’ heads. Dick watches the brave surfers still in the water. One in particular catches his eye. He is patient, often falling out of the queue to pass on a wave or only riding halfway before flipping the board over the lip and paddling back out.
A swell lifts on the horizon, and the surfer swims toward it, then gracefully turns as it crests. Dick’s pulse ticks up as the surfer is captured by its force then as he shoots from its cyclonic tunnel to glide magnificently across the face.
When the wave collapses to whitewater, casually, as if it’s nothing at all, he flips onto his head to ride the rest of the way to shore. He doesn’t look like Hamilton. He is half his age, and his hair is not nearly as blond, but watching him causes a knot to form in Dick’s chest nonetheless.
The surfer carries his board to the beach then, as if sensing something, turns. For the briefest second, his eyes connect with Dick’s, and his head tilts, and the hand not holding the board lifts in a small wave.
* * *
“Hi, Zack,” Dick says, his eyes closed and the phone pressed tight to his ear. He is on the patio outside his hotel room. “This is the reporter from Orange Coast Magazine.”
“Did you do your story?” Zack asks.
“No.”
“Because Hamilton died?”
“Yes. Because he died. Were you at his service?”
“Why would I go to his service?”
“Because he was your teacher,” Dick says, unsure what he’s hoping for.
“I told you; the guy was a loser.”
“Can you tell me why you hated him so much?”
“Why do you care?”
“I’m just trying to understand. He seemed well loved.”
“Loved by people who don’t mind fags.”
The word pierces, and for a moment, Dick can’t speak.
“That’s why you hated him?” he manages.
“The sicko turned Jason into a homo also.”
Dick doesn’t say goodbye.
* * *
The wet sand is cool on his feet. Dick walks with his head down and his hands in his pockets. The water laps at his toes, touching his soles and receding. He studies the shells and watches the tiny sand crabs as they are revealed by the wash then as they frantically scurry back into the earth.
How much did his first conversation with Zack weigh into his decision?
A lot. Had he not spoken to Zack, or had he understood the reason Zack disliked Hamilton, Dick would not have been so easily swayed toward the belief that Hamilton’s motives were ignoble. But he was looking for Hamilton to be guilty, and Zack offered a view he was predisposed to interpret as proof of what he was already inclined to think.
Which doesn’t mean Hamilton wasn’t going to hurt Frankie but significantly lessens the likelihood and makes the morality of Dick’s choice more questionable.
Yet, startling as the revelation is, it is not nearly as earth-shattering as Dick would have thought. Perhaps because he had already considered the possibility of being wrong. He knew when he made the decision there was a chance Hamilton was innocent. Which means, regardless of Zack, his choice would have been the same.
Again, it comes down to the math. Numbers don’t lie. It’s the reason he was worried about Frankie in the first place. Statistically, there was a 93 percent likelihood Frankie was in trouble and only a 7 percent chance Hamilton had changed. He tried to be certain, but sometimes . . . oftentimes . . . there is no way to be sure. He was certain about Otis. He was right about Shea. He will never know about Hamilton.
It’s possible Diego Ramirez played a role as well. A young woman is dead because Dick didn’t act in time. He couldn’t take that chance with Frankie.
You’re rationalizing murder. Steve’s voice replays in his head.
Murder. The word is distinctly sour on his tongue, like when he fills out a form and, beside “Marital Status,” needs to click the box for “divorced,” or under family medical history, when he needs to check “asthma,” “allergies,” “nosebleeds,” “anxiety,” and “cancer.”
The tide rolls out, and he bends down to pick up one of the small crabs before it can disappear. The translucent albino creature, no bigger than a raisin, darts sideways, its amoebic brain sensing danger.
Dick closes his fist around it before it can escape, tightening his hand until its desperate, frantic movement tickles his palm. For a moment he stands, face lifted toward the waning warmth of the sun, then with a deep, sorrowful breath, lays his knuckles on the sand and unfurls his fingers. And the tiny creature scurries away to burrow back to its living grave.