“Just get out of my line,” Boone says. It sounds weak.
He sees another surfer paddling full steam toward them. The guy is bigger, bulkier, older, his shoulder muscles huge as he paddles with easy strength.
I’m about to get my ass kicked, Boone thinks. Gang-jumped in the water.
Epic.
“Show some respect!” the new guy hollers as he comes up. “Don’t you know who this is?!”
He glides and sits up on his board. He’s huge—big, broad chest, heavy muscles, square forehead, thick brown hair greased straight back. Probably midthirties. Boone knows him from somewhere but can’t quite place it.
“This is Boone Daniels,” he says to the younger surfer. “Boone freaking Daniels.
“Sorry,” the kid mutters. “I didn’t know.”
Because BD is a BFD, a Big Fucking Deal, and he has an all-rides pass to any break on the Great California Water Park from Brook Street in Laguna to Tijuana Straits. Messing with Boone means not only jerking with him, which is sketchy enough, but also taking on Dave the Love God, High Tide, and Johnny Banzai.
Like that time at PB pier a couple of years back, when some dismo fishing dudes thought Johnny B had tangled up their lines and went down to front him about it. Yeah, four of these brave fuckers on Johnny—for about five seconds—then Boone, Dave, and High Tide paddled in and it turned out that the fishermen didn’t want to throw so bad after all.
You call the wolf, you get the pack.
“You’re welcome here,” the older guy says. “Always welcome.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Mike Boyd,” he says, stretching out his hand. “I’m a karate buddy of Dave’s.”
“Right, right,” Boone says, remembering. Dave took him to a few dojos and they messed 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
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
It does.
So what about the kids, the next generation that Boyd needs to keep in line? They have everything, they live in the houses that the Brads and the Jerrys work on. They have money, privilege, and futures (or used to have futures, nix that for Corey). What the hell are they about?
Why do kids from Rockpile emulate gangstas?
