The Gentlemen's Hour Page 0,21

around with it a little, and Boone went to one of Dave’s tournaments a couple of years back and Mike was there.

“How’s Dave?”

“He’s Dave, he’s good.”

“Haven’t seen him for a while,” Boyd says. “You still hang with the PB Dawn Patrol?”

“Yeah, you know.”

“Your crew is your crew.”

“That’s it.”

“What brings you here?” Boyd asks. It’s friendly, not a challenge, but there’s a little edge to it. Boyd’s clearly the sheriff here, and he wants to know what’s going on at his beach.

“Checking it out,” Boone says.

“Nothing on today.”

“Same all over,” Boone says. They talk bullshit—the flat surf, the heat, the usual crap—then Boone asks, “Hey, you know this kid Corey Blasingame? The Rockpile Crew?”

Boyd turns to the younger surfer and says, “Push off, all right?” When the kid is a few feet away, Boyd spits into the water, and then juts his chin toward the handful of surfers laying on the shoulder. “I’m a martial arts instructor. Brad’s a dry-waller. Jerry’s a roofing contractor. We don’t live here but we’ve been surfing here forever. It’s our place. Some of the kids? Yeah, they’re local kids, some of them come from money, I guess. They live around, so it’s their place, too.”

“Corey, Trevor Bodin, Billy and Dean Knowles,” says Boone, “they glossed themselves the Rockpile Crew.”

“Rich, spoiled La Jolla kids playing at being something they’re not,” Boyd says. “There’s no gang here, just a bunch of guys who surf.”

“Did you know Corey? What can you tell me about him?”

“Corey’s a strange kid,” Boyd says. “He just wanted to belong somewhere.”

“And he didn’t?”

“Not really,” Boyd says. “Just one of those kids who always seemed just one click behind the wheel, you know?”

“Got it,” Boone says. “What about Bodin?”

“Tough boy.”

“Real tough,” Boone asks, “or gym tough”?

There’s a difference. Boone hasn’t seen a fighter yet who looks bad against a bag. And most look okay in sparring matches, where nobody is really trying to hurt anybody. But you put that same guy in a physical confrontation on the street, in a club, or a bar, and maybe he doesn’t look so good.

“A little of both,” Boyd says, sounding kind of cagey.

“You’ve seen him in action?”

“Maybe.”

Maybe nothing, Boone thinks. Maybe Trevor had helped Boyd keep the fatherland pure—a little law enforcement on the beach or in the parking lot. “And?”

“He does okay for himself,” Boyd says. “He’s got an edge to him, you know?”

No, I don’t know, Boone thinks. Bodin backed down pretty quickly at The Sundowner that night, when he was four on three. Maybe his edge came out when the odds were a little better, like four on one.

“I guess,” Boone says. “Hey, Mike, tell me something. If you’d paddled over here and I wasn’t a buddy of Dave’s and all that, what . . .”

Because that kid didn’t paddle over here on his own. You sent him to check it out, chase away the interloper. Were you going to extort me, Mike? Make a profit? Further a criminal activity?

“You would have been politely asked to find another place to surf,” Boyd says.

“What if I said no?”

“You would have been politely asked to find another place to surf,” Boyd repeats. “Why are you asking?”

“Curious.”

Boyd nods, looks around at the flat sea. Then he says, “So we’re the bad guys now, I guess, huh? We’re the Neanderthals, the animals who give surfing a bad name, just because this fucked-up kid connected with a punch?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“All I ever wanted,” Boyd says, “all I want now, is one little stretch of water in this whole fucking world. I just want a place where I can come and surf. Is that so much to ask, Daniels? Huh?”

I dunno, Boone thinks.

Maybe it is.

23

Yeah, but he kind of gets Boyd.

He gets all the Mike Boyds and the Brads and the Jerrys.

A man works his ass off his whole life, putting up drywall on a house he could never afford, puts food on the table, clothes on his kids’ backs, and all he asks in return is the chance to ride a few waves. Like, he made that deal and it was a good deal, but then it changed as the water started to get clogged with yuppies, wannabes, dilettantes, and dot-com billionaires who can barely wax their own boards.

It’s not that they’re just taking his water, it’s that they’re taking his life. Without that Rockpile break, what he is is a drywaller, a roofer, a karate instructor in a strip mall. With that break, he’s a surfer, a