Dawn Patrol - Don Winslow [78]
“You want to ride or not, dude?”
Brian wanted.
Scared as shit, but he wanted.
“I can’t swim,” he said.
“Then don’t fall off,” Boone said. He looked down at Brian’s feet. “Dude. Do you have six toes?”
“Twelve.”
Boone chuckled. “That’s your new name, gremmie—‘Hang Twelve.’ ”
“Okay.”
“Stand with your feet about shoulder width,” Boone said.
Hang got up. Boone shoved him in the chest. Hang stepped back with his right foot to keep his balance. “What—”
“You’re a goofy-foot,” Boone said. “Left-footed. Lie down on the board.”
Hang did.
“On your stomach,” Boone said. “Jesus.”
Hang turned over.
“Now, jump up on your knees,” Boone said. “Good. Now into a squat. Good. Now stand.”
Boone made him do it twenty times. By the time Hang finished, he was sweating and breathing hard—it was the most exercise he’d done maybe in his life—but he was totally into it. “This is fun, dude!”
“It’s even more fun in the water,” Boone said. He led Hang out to where some small waves were coming in shallow, had him lie down on the board, and pushed him into a wave. Hang rode it in like a boogie board.
Insta-love.
Hang kept Boone out there all frigging afternoon, until the sun set and after. On his third ride, he tried to stand. He fell off on that wave and the next thirty-seven. The sun was a bright orange ball on the horizon when Hang stood up on the board and rode it all the way to shore.
First thing he’d ever achieved.
The next day was Saturday, and Hang was out there first thing in the morning, standing on the beach and staring out at The Dawn Patrol.
“Who’s the grem?” Dave asked from the lineup.
“A stoner kid,” Boone said. “I dunno, he looked lost, so I took him out.”
“A stray puppy?” Sunny said.
“I guess,” Boone said. “He took to it, though.”
“Grems are a pain in the ass,” Dave warned.
“We were all grems once,” Sunny said.
“Not me,” Dave said. “I was born cool.”
Anyway, it was tacit permission to go bring the kid in. Boone got off the board on his next ride and went up to Hang. “You wanna surf?”
Hang nodded.
“Yeah, okay,” Boone said. “I have an old stick in my quiver over there. It’s a piece of shit, a log basically, but it will ride. Get it out, wax it; then I’ll show you how to paddle out. You stay close to me, out of other people’s way, try not to be a total kook, okay?”
“Okay.”
Hang waxed the board, paddled out, and got in everyone’s way. But that’s what grems do—it’s their job. The Dawn Patrol ran interference for him, both with the ocean and the other surfers. No one messed with the kid because it was clear that he was under The Dawn Patrol’s collective wing.
Hang took the board home that night.
Leaned it against the wall next to his bed.
Hang might have been invisible at home, he might have been a nothing at school, but now he had an identity.
He was surfer.
He was Dawn Patrol.
Now he runs toward Sunny’s house, gets to her door, and pounds on it. A few minutes later, a sleepy Sunny comes to the door.
“Hang, what—”
“It’s Boone.”
He tells her about Boone.
72
Cheerful sits at the hovel that is Boone’s desk, trying to balance the books.
Boone Daniels is a perpetual pain in the ass. Immature, irresponsible, a hopeless businessman.
But what were you, Cheerful asks himself, before Boone came into your life?
A lonely old man.
Boone once saved him several million dollars in alimony when the businessman uncharacteristically fell head over heels in love with a twenty-five-year-old Hooters waitress, for whom he bought a new rack and fuller lips to heighten her low self-esteem. Her self-image lifted, she promptly felt herself attractive enough to screw a twenty-five-year-old wannabe rock star and begin a television career that she intended to finance with California community property.
Boone felt bad for the lovesick old guy and took the case, took the pix, made the video, and never showed either of them to Cheerful. He did show them to the soon-to-be ex–Mrs. Cheerful and told her to take her big tits, full lips, guitar-stroking boyfriend, and a $100K alimony settlement, get