After so many rides he had lost count, Kirk was pooped, so he rested in the lineup. When the morning sun came out, he could see the tops of the vans and his dad’s camper in the parking lot, the tile roofs of the shops across the highway, and the rocky, scrub-brush hills beyond. With the blue water against the brightening sky, Mars took on the look of a sepia-toned photograph of some legendary surf locale in Hawaii or Fiji, a color image long since faded to an amber tint, turning green mountains into yellow and brown hills. If Kirk squinted, the Mexican-themed shops became bures on a slip of beach, native huts on an atoll in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Again, Mars became a different world and Kirk was its king.
Sometime later he heard his father calling him from the beach. Frank had laid his board on the sand, planted his paddle like a flag, and was making the hand gesture universally translated as “I am going to make a phone call.”
Kirk saluted his father just as Mrs. Potts screamed, “Outside!” Sure enough, a set was shaping up well offshore, the waves as visible as humps on a washboard, breaking at least fifty yards early, making for dozens of long, aggressive rides. Everyone paddled furiously. Kirk was tired, but he was not about to sit out a great set. He stroked hard and steadily until experience told him to wheel around and paddle toward the beach. He caught the third wave that came his way.
As he was rising up on the apex of water, instinct timed his springing to his feet for the drop into the wave’s trough. This wave was gorgeous, well shaped and smooth faced. And huge. A monster. Kirk kicked out of the trough and climbed up the face, just in front of the curl of white water, a compressed whisper of wind at his back. He jerked left and shot down perpendicular to the arc, pulled right at the bottom, and again sluiced up the face. He topped the very crest, bounced along the rim, then dug once more into the slot, retarding his speed to allow the break to catch up to him. He knelt as low on his board as his physique allowed until water was bending over his head and he occupied the little green room of the curl. Rushing water was on his left, the smooth glass of the surface on his right. He dragged the fingers of his free hand in the wall of green like the fin of a dolphin, a knife in the water.
As ever, the curl closed on him, the water smacked him on the head, and he wiped out, no big deal. Churning in the white water, he relaxed, as he had learned long ago, letting the wave roll beyond him and allow him time to find the surface and fill his lungs. But the ocean is a fickle mistress, Mars indifferent to human effort. Kirk felt his leash go taut in the Velcro around his ankle. In the foam and chaos his board snapped back, nailing him hard in the meat of his calf. The hit had the same blunt force as the blow from the croquet mallet Kris had once taken to him in the backyard, which sent him to the doctor and her to her bedroom. Kirk knew he was done for the day.
He felt for the sandy bottom, knowing the next monster was about to crush him. He lunged up for a breath, sucking in air, seeing seven feet of white water roaring down on him. He ducked under the wave, blindly felt for the Velcro of his leash, and ripped it off his foot so his board would get tossed toward the beach and away from him.
He floated in, no panic despite the pain in his leg. When he made contact with the sand again, he was farther inland and could hop on one foot to get his head above water. The next incoming wave pushed him closer to shore, another did the same, then a few more. He crawled out of the water and onto the beach.
“Fucker,” he said to himself. He sat on the sand, his leg so deeply gashed that white tissue showed along with torn flesh and pulsing blood. He was going to need stitches, sure as shooting. Kirk remembered a day when he was thirteen, when a kid named Blake got hit by his own board and had been pulled unconscious from the water. Blake had been nailed in the jaw and needed months of dental work. This wound was not as serious as that, and Kirk had suffered a few lumps in his time, but this chunk taken out of his leg was worthy of a Purple Heart.
“You okay?” Ben Wu had come out of the water after retrieving Kirk’s loose board. “Oh, shit!” he yelled at the sight of the cut. “You need a ride to the hospital?”
“No. My dad is around. He’ll take me.”
“You sure?”
Kirk stood up. “Yes.” There was pain, and blood was trailing down his lower leg, splattering drops of scarlet in the sand of Mars, but he waved Ben away and said, “I got it. Thanks.”
He took his board and limped on up the path toward the parking lot.
“You’re gonna need, like, forty sutures in that thing,” Ben called out before leaping back into the surf atop his board.
Kirk’s calf was throbbing in time to his heartbeat. He limped up the path, his leash trailing in the sand-covered walkway. More beachgoers had arrived, so the lot was two-thirds filled, but Frank had parked close. Kirk expected to find his dad inside the camper at the table, talking business on his phone with papers spread in front of him. But when he rounded the back of the truck, the camper door was locked and his father was nowhere to be seen.
Kirk stood his board against the door, then sat on the bumper to inspect his leg, which now looked like a kielbasa had exploded. Had the board hit him a bit higher it might have shattered his kneecap. Kirk felt lucky, but the sooner he got to an emergency room the better.
His dad was probably across the highway, in a store grabbing a drink or a protein bar, the key to the camper in the zippered pocket of his wet suit. Kirk didn’t want to hobble across the highway carrying his surfboard, nor did he want to leave it for a thief in the parking lot. He looked around to make sure that no one was observing him, then he stood on the bumper on his nonbleeding leg, shoving the board up onto the camper roof, where it would be out of sight from the ground. The leash hung down, so Kirk knotted it into a messy ball and tossed it up as well. So much for protective measures, he thought, and then headed for the highway.
An overgrown bush provided shade as Kirk waited for an opening in the morning traffic. When a gap showed, he made his move, skip-hopping across the four lanes. He checked the Subway and the Circle W, looking through windows but not seeing his dad. The surf shop would make sense. Maybe he was picking up sunblock. Heavy metal music blared from inside but no one was in the place.
His last and best bet was the Starbucks at the north end of the shops. Coffee drinkers were reading papers and working on laptops at the outside tables and benches. Frank was not one of them, and if anyone bothered to look up at Kirk with his open wound, they didn’t say anything. He entered, expecting to find his dad, roust him off the phone, and set off for the appropriate medical attention. But Starbucks held no Frank.
“Holy shit!” The female barista saw Kirk standing there, bleeding. “Sir? Are you okay?”
“It’s not that bad,” Kirk said. Some customers looked up from their cups and laptops without responding.
“Should I call 911?” the barista asked.
“I’ve got a ride to the clinic. My dad,” Kirk said. “Has a Frank been in, ordering a Venti drip with a shot of mocha?”
“A Frank?” The woman thought a second. “A lady ordered a Venti drip with a shot of mocha a while ago with a decaf soy latte. But not a Frank.” Kirk turned to go back outside. “We have a first aid kit.”
Kirk scanned the parking lot again and the walkway of the shops but still did not see his father. On the off chance there were tables on the other side of Starbucks, he eased his way to the corner but found no tables, and no Frank, just parking spaces under eucalyptus trees.
A single car, a Mercedes, was parked on the other side of a thick trunk of one of the trees. Kirk could see only the front end and a bit of windshield. Starbucks cups, two of them, were sitting on the dash. From the passenger seat, a man’s hand reached out for what Kirk knew to be a Venti drip with a shot of mocha because he recognized the black band of his father’s military-style chronometer, a watch just like the one Kirk now wore on his own wrist. The windows of the Mercedes were rolled down, allowing Kirk to hear the lilt of a woman’s laughter along with his father’s amused cackle.