They were amphibious savages, they were sea creatures, wild mongrels and water dogs, their wide shoulders and thick necks were burned black from surfing all day; they were tattooed, they had no interest in anything on land—they looked awkward onshore, walked haltingly, bowlegged, barefoot on sand and pebbles, and were smaller than they seemed when they were standing on a wave. Anytime the surf was up they set off in the morning, and if it remained high they stayed in the water all day, perhaps resting on the beach, flopped like monk seals, and still taking waves after sunset in the gray sea that in places looked like hammered iron.
On land they were paler, their skin sodden, their hands bluish and pickled from the whole day in the water. The boards that had been so buoyant were big and hard to grip, banging against their bodies or buffeted by the wind gusts, sometimes scraping the stony ground, thick awkward things that had been so light and swift on the water.
They lived to surf, chasing each other like puppies through the incoming waves to the outer break. Sharkey, part of the ohana now (as they put it)—but it seemed more like a pack of dogs—followed them, paddled behind them, bobbed with them, took the waves that no one wanted, and always, as the younger brother, was the last one to ride to the beach. It was a form of respect, this hanging back, but his watchfulness helped him improve his technique. Uncle Sunshine had said, Find the rhythm to mount the wave and learn to ride it. But Eddie and the hui had devised different ways of taking the wave, timing each move onto the board and charging—“hard charge, Hawaiian kine,” Eddie said—and since the right speed was essential—the speed of the board had to match or slightly exceed the speed of the wave—being a strong paddler was essential. Balance could not be taught, but a way of kneeling and standing could be imitated.
After that, only repetition mattered, and even at twilight, just before the green flash, when he was tired, Sharkey’s form was good enough to allow him to ride his board all the way to the beach, striding off it onto the sand in a dance step he perfected. He might be exhausted then, not realizing how tired he was until he began walking on the beach, stumbling up the sand of the steep eroded part of the foreshore, now and then overcome and dropping to his knees. And it was odd, that tottering on land, because his swimming had been effortless. You didn’t know how tired you were until you came ashore.
The frolicking of the hui—Eddie and his friends—was a game that grew to a form of competition. They dared each other to take a wave, they teased, they chased each other across the swells and in their moves attempted to be singular. Sharkey tried to keep up with them, and though they were more experienced and stronger, they sometimes acknowledged his effort.
“You da weenah,” one of them called out at the end of one surfing day—a day on which Sharkey was aware of his easy balance on the board, and, relaxed, able to ride more easily, his confidence making him supple, with a greater control.
The satisfying part was that Sharkey had been unaware that he’d been competing—and his instinct was that competing went against everything Uncle Sunshine had taught him. But the others had noticed his improvement.
They surfed Waimea and Sunset, Chun’s and Leftovers; but the best, the most symmetrical barrel was at Banzai Pipeline. Eddie said, “If you can ride here, you can ride anywhere.” So Sharkey concentrated his effort on the Pipe, where he’d once painfully wiped out, to master the wave and course through the barrel, kicking out before the reef.
On these weekdays of his playing hooky the beach was usually empty, so he was surprised to see a gathering of workmen one morning putting up a white canopy and a staging for seats—men with tools assembling and bolting pipes, tightening the guy ropes of the tentlike shelter, which gave to the beach a gaudy air of clutter, circuslike, the setting up of an encampment.
“If the surf stays up, we got a contest,” Eddie said, and named the sponsor.
“Are you in it?”
Eddie shrugged and tossed his hair. “Just like every other day out here except some people they wen’ try judge us—give us points. But you gotta sign up.”
Before the day was over, Eddie took Sharkey to the tent where the organizers sat and introduced him, vouching for him.
“Dis my braddah Joe Sharkey—he a shark, like his name. Try put him down.”
Among the Hawaiians watching, Sharkey still felt like a skinny white kid. He laughed nervously as he signed, paid his fee for competing, filled out the forms. Walking away, he realized that though he had laughed a little, he had not said a word.
When he arrived home that night—past eight o’clock, because of traffic—Sharkey’s mother was waiting, looking stern, something on her mind, the muddled severity she often displayed when she was drunk.
“Sit down, Joe, please,” she said, sounding sober. But he knew her tipsy tone. She spoke more daintily and slowly when she was very drunk.
She had an envelope on her lap, her splayed fingers pressing it flat. As she spoke she lifted it and picked the flap open, her head wobbling as though with effort. She drew out a folded sheet of paper and opened it in a stagy way. Drinking turned her into a ham actress.
“‘Dear Mrs. Sharkey,’” she read, with an exaggerated fluting of concern. “‘It has come to my notice that your son Joseph has been absent from school since classes resumed after the Christmas break. As it is now January twenty-fifth and his absence continues, I must request that you meet for a conference in my office.’”
And then she fluttered the letter like a hankie and said, with emphasis on each word, “Where have you been?” Belching slightly, a burp that jogged her head, she rapped on the arm of her chair, disturbing a pair of white gloves folded there.
Sharkey wanted to say, “Where have you been?” but he knew: she’d been dating Major Crandall once again—she’d disposed of Captain Van Buskirk. And it had been a great convenience to him that she’d been preoccupied, out early in the evening, home after midnight, asleep when he set off for the North Shore. He did not want any details; the very sight of the men his mother dated made him squirm.
“Did you hear me?”
She was dressed to go out, in a costume that was so odd in the heat, a green silk dress with a lacy collar, frilly sleeves, the white gloves on the arm of her chair, black heels. She was white-faced—masked with powder—and had a pillbox hat on the side table, where her empty glass sat, its rim smeared with lipstick. She selected a cigarette from a tray near the glass, twiddled it in her fingers, and poked it between her lips.
“I’ve been training.”
She twitched at the unexpected word, as though he had flicked her face with his insolent finger, and she snatched the cigarette from her mouth.
“Training—for what?”
“Surf meet.”
“What do you know about surfing?”
“A few things.”
She nodded at this disapprovingly. “Ronald said it’s dangerous.”
Ronald was Captain Crandall, who said he’d surfed in San Diego. His mother quoting him as an authority angered Sharkey, but he decided not to reveal his anger, nor to give anything away.
Although his mother was alone in her chair, it seemed he was facing two people, both of them hostile witnesses.
“Maybe it’s dangerous for Ronald.”
She snorted and clumsily lit the cigarette, snapping her lighter. “And not for you”—blowing smoke at him.
“It’s a challenge, I guess.”
“And this surf meet,” she said in a mocking singsong, “I suppose you think you’re going to win.”
“I don’t know. That’s why I signed up. To see if I’m ready.”
Because his mother was smoking a cigarette, tapping it in the ashtray, sometimes blowing and sometimes chewing the smoke, Sharkey had a better idea of her mood. The way the smoke left her lips told him she was agitated and confused, and now and then puffing and inhaling instead of replying, as she did now.
“Dad always said, ‘Big risk, big reward.’”
“And look where it got him,” she said, expelling smoke.
“Dad was a hero,” Sharkey said, the first time he’d raised his voice, though his voice broke in grief.
“What about me? I’m a widow. He left me to look after you.” She seemed to fortify herself, puffing again. “And you’re such a disappointment.”
Sharkey was not dismayed. He smiled at her for rejecting him, because it freed him from her. How much worse it would have been if she’d clung to him. She’d spent more than two years since the Colonel’s death seeing men—army officers—apparently enjoying herself. Sharkey wasn’t fooled by their bonhomie. They knew she was wealthy, they were looking to replace the Colonel—or even if that wasn’t their plan, they were romancing his mother, another sort of competition. He was glad she was preoccupied; he was happy when she left, happy when he came home to an empty house to find her note: Gone out—won’t be late. But she always was late. So what? It left him in peace. He enjoyed the solitude of the house after exhausting himself surfing. Alone, he reflected on the joy of being on his own wave.
“I know I’m a disappointment to you.”
She exhaled smoke through her lipstick-stained teeth—a blue plume of satisfaction—then nodded, puffing again, a sort of mute agreement.
“But I’m not a disappointment to myself,” he said. “I like what I’m doing. I’m learning.”
“Skipping school,” she said. “Your marks are terrible. I have no idea who your friends are. I get this letter”—she slapped it on her thigh, where it had lain all this time.
“I’m happy. I’m doing what I want to do.”
“You have no ambition!” she said, and mashed out her cigarette in the ashtray.
He laughed a little—angering her more—because she was wrong. He would never be able to explain it to her, so why try?
She asked, the day of the surf meet, where it would be held; and when he told her, “North Shore—Pipeline,” she said she probably would not be there. But after Sharkey arrived and signed in and got his number, he saw her a little way down the beach, incongruous at Sunset Beach in city clothes—his mother in a dress, and beside her, holding her hand, Ronald, in an aloha shirt and slacks, the captain in civvies.
They looked out of place and awkward, the wrong shoes, the wrong clothes, his mother in a pillbox hat, Ronald looking military in his posture, his shirt tucked in, his shoes shined, signaling to him with a thumbs-up.
Sharkey kept his distance, annoyed that they had come, distracting him, calling attention to themselves. He wandered beyond the spectators and the canopy and crouched beside his board, waiting for his name to be called.
In the sequence of six heats, Sharkey’s number was last. He sat alone, watching the others—Eddie in the first heat, the others he knew before him—and saw them trying to outdo each other. Eddie’s persuasive advice had always been, “Stay mellow, brah,” but he was jamming his board, swiveling on his wave, slicing through the barrel with his arms out, emerging in a squat stance before racing, until he reversed and vaulted over the wave, and at last slowed to step off in shallow water, looking joyous.
The others seemed to take cues from Eddie, echoing his moves, going him one better with repeated cutbacks, and there were cheers for them from the clusters of spectators seated on the sand. Sharkey’s mother and Ronald stood at the back of the beach, under the palm trees, near the judges’ canopy, frowning at the sea.
When Sharkey’s name and number were called, there was a shout from Eddie, but no cheer of recognition as there had been for the others. Sharkey paddled out, aware that he was being scrutinized as a stranger, one of the two haoles at the meet, and when he swam to the wave he did not know any of the three surfers who’d gotten there before him. They sat on their boards, waist deep in water, not acknowledging him—and he saw dogs again, teeth and jaws and narrowed eyes, necks shortened in threat. They bobbed together, riding the swell, Sharkey at the edge of the lineup.
No one onshore could have seen them clearly enough to understand the mood of rivalry or heard their snorting at him; but it didn’t matter. What mattered was waiting for a wave and choosing the right one before the horn blared and he was out of time.
So he paddled hard on the first good wave, and because he was last in the lineup, away from the others, he was at an advantage. He danced around the trim line, pierced the lip, and, charging, found his feet, cut right and rode through the barrel, at one point high on the foam ball, and when he emerged at the far end of it, kicking out as he’d seen Eddie do, he heard a cheer—and the raised voices lifted him. He turned to see the crowd on the beach, a wall of bodies, eager faces watching him.
“You done good,” Eddie said, generous as always, meeting him at the shore.
“You done better.”
“I know dis wave. I stay lifeguard here, brah.”
More heats, more noise. Sharkey surfed three more times but did not feel he’d improved on his first ride—the thrill of it, the howl from the beach that was like a welcome to him as he’d shot out of the barrel.
He sat with Eddie and the hui, the pack of water dogs, while the results were tallied. The winner’s name was announced with the points he’d gotten—a boy he didn’t know; and then Eddie, the second prize, and Kanoa, who was in the hui. He was not surprised that he hadn’t won, nor did he feel that he’d lost. The boys in his heat came over to congratulate Eddie: they were not really dogs—they said “Aloha” to Sharkey. What struck him, sitting there on a beach—the winners garlanded with leis—was that he was among brothers.
Then he remembered his mother. He looked at where she’d been standing with Ronald, but they were not there, nor anywhere on the beach.
The house was empty when he got home. But he was elated, pleased with his rides—he’d done the best he could, and knew he could do better with practice, if he devoted every day to it. It was a competition but it was also a ritual, a game, a rite of passage, a celebration of brotherhood.
His mother was late and, being late, seemed to be making a point, asserting herself—slightly tipsy, severe in her silence. She peeled off her gloves and unpinned her hat.
Sharkey lay stretched out on the sofa, heavy from the fatigue of the day. Standing over him, rocking slightly, his mother smacked her lips.
“I sincerely hope you’ve done your homework.”
She was not tipsy, she was sozzled, and he felt sorry and embarrassed for her as he always did when he saw that she was being unreasonable, and was glad there was no witness to her foolishness.
“I didn’t go to school today. You know where I was.”
She sat down in her usual armchair and kicked off her high-heeled shoes and stared at him, nodding, as though bringing him into focus.
“We went all the way out there,” she began, “Ronald and I.” She was still nodding, like someone dropping off to sleep, and did not speak again for a while. Time passed slowly when you were drunk; even Sharkey knew that. “For nothing.”
He snorted, refusing to acknowledge what she said with a reply.
“You lost.” With a little giggle of satisfaction, as though she had won, she fixed her gaze on him. And he saw with pity and disgust that her upper lip was chafed, some of it due to smeared lipstick but mostly it was rubbed and reddened. And he was reminded that Ronald had a mustache.
After that, nothing that she said with this mouth, with this face, mattered to him. She was someone he didn’t want to know. And, predictably, when he said nothing, she became remorseful, another stage in her drunkenness, and began to cry.
He left her whimpering in her chair and went to bed and surfed in his sleep. In the morning, leaving the house before his mother awoke, he strapped his board to his roof rack and drove to the North Shore, vowing that he would drop out of school. It wasn’t complicated—it was legal, he was within his rights to quit. He was over sixteen, half his class had quit, all the bullies were gone, one was in jail, Nalani was pregnant, another girl was married. His classmates had grown up fast, but seldom followed through on any plan. They abandoned whatever ambition they had and stayed home, and their families enclosed them, protecting them, sheltering them, helping them raise their kids.
Not Sharkey. His mother said, “Your father would be devastated.”
Sharkey thought, If only he could see you.
“What will you do now?”
“I don’t know.”
He did not know what he would do—true. But he knew what he wanted and felt it thumping inside him, more strongly now because he was facing his mother. You lost. Another spur, another goad, a challenge.
She had shown him her hand. She would never have a claim to his victories. I don’t know if it will happen, he thought, but I know what I want. I want to surf, I want to win.