Dawn Patrol - Don Winslow [50]
But Boone backs up, just in case.
He’s tempted to give Tweety another kick in the knee, but it would probably be bad karma, something Sunny’s always talking about since deciding to become a Buddhist. Boone doesn’t totally get the whole karma thing, but he decides that kicking a guy in his dislocated knee would probably compel Sunny to chant a few thousand more mantras, another concept he’s not totally with.
“You should have a mantra,” Sunny told him.
“I have one,” Boone replied.
“ ‘Everything tastes better on a tortilla’?” Sunny said. “It’s a start.”
Anyway, Boone doesn’t kick Tweety in the knee and further decides he should get out of there before the bouncer decides to check out what’s happening in the old VIP Room.
But Tweety says, “Daniels? I’ll be seeing you again. And when I do—”
Boone comes back and kicks him in the knee.
What Sunny doesn’t know …
Boone walks out of the VIP Room.
“That was quick,” Petra says. “Sated?”
“Our absence has been requested,” Boone explains.
“I’ve been thrown out of better places,” Petra says.
She follows him out the door.
36
Dave the Love God looks out at the burgeoning ocean and thinks about George Freeth.
George freaking Freeth.
Freeth was a legend. A god. “The Hawaiian Wonder” was the father of San Diego surfing and the first-ever San Diego lifeguard.
If you don’t know about Freeth, Dave thinks, you don’t know your own heritage, where you came from. You don’t know about Freeth, you can’t sit in this lifeguard tower and pretend to know who you even are.
It goes back to Jack London.
At the turn of the last century, London was in Honolulu, trying to surf, and he saw this “brown-skinned god” go flying past him. Turned out it was Freeth, son of an English father and a Hawaiian mother. He taught London to surf. London talked Freeth into coming to California.
Around the same time, Henry Huntington built a pier at his eponymous beach and was trying to promote it, so he hired Freeth to come give surfing demonstrations. He billed Freeth as “The Man Who Can Walk On Water.” Thousands of people went down to the pier to see him do just that. It was a smash, and pretty soon Freeth was going up and down the coast, teaching young guys how to ride a wave.
He was a prophet, a missionary, making the reverse journey from Hawaii.
The Man Who Could Walk On Water.
Hell, Freeth could do anything in or on the water. One day in 1908, a Japanese fishing skiff capsized in heavy surf off Santa Monica Bay. Freeth swam out there, righted the skiff, and, standing up in it, surfed it back to shore, saving the seven Japanese on board. Congress gave him a Medal of Honor.
It was the only gold medal he’d receive, though. He tried to get into the Olympics but couldn’t because he had taken Huntington’s money to walk on water. Buster Crabbe went, became a movie star, and got rich. Not George Freeth. He was quiet, shy, unassuming. He just did his thing and kept his mouth shut about it.
People in California were really starting to get into the ocean. But there was a problem with that: They were also starting to drown in the ocean. Freeth had some of the answers. He created the crawl stroke, which lifeguards still use; he invented the torpedo-shaped life float that they still use.
Eventually, he migrated down to San Diego and became the swim coach of the San Diego Rowing Club. Then, one day in May of 1918, thirteen swimmers drowned in a single riptide off Ocean Beach. Freeth started the San Diego lifeguard corps.
He lived less than a year after that. In April of 1919, after rescuing another group off Ocean Beach, Freeth got a respiratory infection and died in a flophouse in the Gaslamp District.
Broke.
He had saved seventy-eight people from drowning.
So now Dave’s thinking about George Freeth. In his thirties now, Dave is wondering if he’s headed for the same fate.
Alone and broke.
It’s all good when you’re in your twenties—hanging out, picking up tourist chicks, slamming beers at The Sundowner, jerking people out of the soup. The summer days