The Gentlemen's Hour

Of course you can’t do it, she thinks. The lawyer thing.

Of course you can’t, and of course it isn’t who you are. It’s not the man I love, nor the man who apparently loves me. My God, she thinks—a simple, uncomplicated declaration of love. Subject, verb, object. I love you. Something you’ve never had before in your life.

Well, I love you, too, Boone.

And don’t be sorry, please don’t be sorry. I wouldn’t change you, I was wrong to try, and as for not being a gentleman, you couldn’t be more wrong about that, and when you get back . . .

She looks at the note again.

“I have something I have to take care of—my piece of the world—right now.”

Feeling a horrible pang of alarm, Petra hurriedly dresses and rushes out.

She catches the Dawn Patrol just as they’re headed out.

Paddling in the shallow water.

Petra stands on the sand, waves her arms above her head, and hollers, “Help! I need you! Come back! Help!”

Dave the Love God is more used to distress calls coming from the opposite direction, but a lifeguard is a lifeguard, so he turns around and paddles back in. He’s not real thrilled to see that it’s the Brit.

“It’s about Boone,” she says.

“What about him?”

“I think he’s gone to do something stupid,” Petra says.

“I can almost guarantee that,” Dave answers.

She hands him the note.

168

Boone drives all the way up the PCH to Oceanside on that road he loves so much.

Up through Pacific Beach and La Jolla, then down along Shores, then up to Torrey Pines and back down again along that incredible stretch of open beach, then up the steep hill to Del Mar. He goes down past Jake’s, and the old train station, then drives up into Solana Beach, Leucadia, then down again past the long, open coast at Cardiff and Carlsbad.

When he reaches the power station at the south edge of O’Side, he turns around and drives the whole thing again.

This road of memories and dreams.

He pulls off the road at Rockpile.

169

Boone pulls into the little parking lot.

Hard to find a spot, because the boys are really out.

Or not quite—most are still on the beach, getting ready to hit the water. Ten or twelve guys, Boone estimates, all of them white.

One of them is Mike Boyd.

Boone gets out of the van, walks up to him, and says, “You’re gone.”

“What?”

“You filled those stupid kids with your garbage,” Boone says, “and pumped them full of your shit, and you’re guiltier than any of them. I don’t want you in my ocean or on my beach—here or anywhere, anytime. I don’t want you in my world. You and all your buddies, you’re gone.”

Boyd smirks, looks behind him at his crew, and then says, “You’re going to throw us all out, Daniels? Just you? You’re believing your own legend there, dude.”

“I’m going to start with you, Mike,” Boone says. “Then I’m going to work my way through the rest of them.”

Boyd laughs. “Check yourself, Daniels. You’re a fucking mess. You won’t last five seconds against me, never mind the rest of the boys. Walk away while I still let you. You know what? Better yet, don’t. Stay right where you are so we can stomp the shit out of you.”

His crew has gathered around him, eager to back him up.

No compunction.

Boyd smiles at Boone again, then the smile disappears from his face and his eyes widen as he focuses over Boone’s shoulder at:

Dave, Johnny, High Tide, Hang Twelve, Petra, even Cheerful.

The Dawn Patrol.

170

The Battle of Rockpile becomes a legend among the surfing community of San Diego.

By that afternoon, the story gets told at The Sundowner and every other bar, burger place, taco joint, and hangout on the coast.

The Dawn Patrol

v.

The Rockpile Crew.

It was a beat-down.

An ass-kicking.

A balls-to-the-walls, all-out, no-mercy epic.

The tale gets told how the PB Dawn Patrol slashed through the Rockpile like a tsunami wave through a pier. How Boone freaking Daniels, Dave the Love and War God, Johnny Absolutely Banzai, High Rolling Tide, and Hang Tough Twelve threw down, fists and feet, until the beach looked like a Tijuana bullfight—blood in the sand, baby. Even the chick got into it, man—punching, kicking, clawing—while that crazy ancient dude went around keying cars and smashing in windshields and headlights.

Alarmed artists on the bluffs (concerned citizens they) dialed 911, but the kookiest thing happened—the cops rolled up, all right, but then they parked on the bluffs and never got out of their cruisers until it was time to buzz the EMTs to carry out the wounded.

Of which there were many, because DtLG went dervish, like that was the dude who once punched a shark, yeah, so he just went off on the Rockpile, and JB was all judo and shit so that Brazilian crap just couldn’t cut it, and Tide, he grabbed three of those Pilers and banged their melons together like, well, okay, coconuts, and the squirrely little soul surfer rasta dude totally foffed Energizer bunny, man, he just took the hits and kept on coming.

And would you like to have been there (and, much later, many would claim that they were), the beach denizens asked each other, when Mike Boyd launched himself into a Superman Punch to take out BD, and Boone stepped back, cocked his right knee, and cracked that surfing-strengthened-to-steel leg straight into Boyd’s junk? They say you could hear that bang from the bluffs, like a board crashing into the rocks. Like . . .

whump!

The beach-bongo telegram system spreads the story, and by sundown it’s made it all the way to Oz, where Sunny Day looks at her text message and smiles.

The Battle of Rockpile.