“No. The first rule is: there’s only one.”

“You don’t know that, Kasper. You can’t.”

“I’m absolutely positive.”

Brock shrugs. “Look around you. Your god could use some help. That’s what we do. Help.”

Aamon gives Brock a long look, something like amusement on his face.

“So, just one question, Brother Brock. What’s with the hair? You trying to be a Black guy or something?”

“I like it this way. Feels right.”

“Hmpf.”

The drones vanish into the blue. The helicopters spiral down in a loose helix to hover like tremendous dragonflies over a pond. Sand swirls, plates and cups jump into the air. Some of the celebrants hold their hats.

Brock stands, raises both hands and flips them off. Aamon next, then the Go Dogs and the Right Fighters. Raised fingers and drowned-out “fuck-yous!” Most of the others have their faces down now, holding on to their hats, protecting their eyes. Mae barks and wags her tail, her voice hardly audible against the whirlybirds.

Children spill from the church. One of the boys points a yellow squirt gun at the choppers, and another launches a rubber-tipped arrow from a tiny bow. A girl has a small Dalmatian puppy by its middle, legs paddling air, hugging it to her chest.

Brock foresees a terrible massacre about to unfold, remembers all the cops who’ve mistaken cell phones for guns, kiddie toys for the real thing.

He and Mahina start toward them, but the swift kids are almost to their table by then. Mahina sits back down and shelters the girl and her puppy on her spacious lap. Brock snatches away the boys’ weapons and plops them into the rickety folding chairs.

The helicopters nose in closer, their mechanized roar lowering over him. Brock can hardly see through the blowing sand and dust.

Then, the choppers suddenly rise, back off from each other, and bank away into the sky.

Their terrifying voices fade, then vanish. Like a storm switched off, thinks Brock. Or a killer swell at Mavericks retreating to the deep.

As the dust settles, he looks to the Right Fighters and the Go Dogs—some still flipping off the government warships, some smiling, but none moving toward their guns under the awning.

He takes the puppy from Mahina’s lap.

Even with the adrenaline coursing through him, Brock has never felt this exhausted in his life—not from fire or flood or being rag-dolled across reefs by monstrous waves all over the planet.

But he feels the breath of life in him, going out and coming in.

Kasper Aamon is looking at him. “Want to join us, Stonebreaker? Fight for the right stuff? You just saw your government at work for you.”

“You’re a hypocrite, Aamon. You want to rat out my church to the government you say you hate. It’s their power you crave. We’ll never join you. We like the people you hate.”

Brock reaches out and one-hands the puppy across the table and into Kasper Aamon’s big paws. Another wordless moment as the Dalmatian licks Aamon’s broken jaw.

Kasper sets the dog on his lap.

“Stonebreaker,” he says, gesturing with both hands to the churchyard and the people. “Are you willing to die for what you believe?”

“Yes, but I’d rather die in my sleep.”

Aamon considers the pup, petting its head as he gives Brock an assessing glare. “First you break my jaw. Now you try to break my will to hate you. With food? You think we’re your Thanksgiving savages? Quaint. But I’ll admit I’m finding it difficult to hate you personally. Much as I hate the people you harbor here in this fine country. Which does not belong to them. So, thanks for the grub. We’ll say our goodbyes now, and get to shooting that video we need to shut down this heathen slum.”

A hawk keens high up in the heavy dark sky. Scrub jays bicker on the aluminum roof of the church. Faint music from the trailers.

Pastor Mike stands. “First, I’d like to offer up a prayer of thanks.”

Brock is still standing from the puppy pass-off.

“I’ll say the prayer, Grandpop,” he says.

“Go then, Brock.”

Mike sits and Brock looks to the people. Absorbs their attention and bows his head, loc spikes raised like antennae. His voice is rough and resonant:

“Breath of life,

Hear our voices,

We breathe you in, and breathe you out,

Breath of life,

Give us life,

Give us the strength to love. Hallelujah and amen.”

Jen opens her dust-stung eyes at “Hear our voices” and watches Brock—her smaller, darker, more passionate, less happy twin son. Her mutineer. Her prophet. Her fearless big-wave rider. He always wanted to be believed, she thinks. Watches him here, believing himself.

Then she looks at Casey, sitting with his head bowed, hands folded, blond forelock forward, unflappable Mae dozing between his feet. Casey: her gentle, loving boy, now man. Her born believer. The most beautiful wave rider she’s ever seen, his father and brother included. I don’t love that woman beside him, Jen thinks. I could try.

Casey takes Bette’s hand. Feels that familiar jolt when he touches her. They trade glances and he squeezes her hand and listens to Brock asking the Breath of Life for peace. Casey smiles at that: Brock’s never had peace for more than a minute at a time in his life. Not your karma, brah. Never seen a wave you couldn’t ride, a fire you wouldn’t fight, a flood you wouldn’t paddle your kayak over, a man you couldn’t whup. Including me. But, like, peace?

He toes off one sheepskin moccasin, rubs a knobby foot along Mae’s soft Labrador flank.

Smiles at “Hallelujah and amen,” thinking: epic prayer, bro. You dropped right into that monster. You own it.

Mae likes Casey’s warm foot, raises her head and squints up at him, then thumps back down into a favorite dream, on Casey’s boat, going fast, watching the birds dive into a patch of white water in a green ocean. Loud noise and the boat bumping. No words for all this, only memories.

Suddenly, raindrops come roaring down, big as blueberries, densely packed and hitting hard.

The children and the innocent pour into the big cinderblock building.

The Go Dogs and the Right Fighters scramble to the wall and collect their arms.

The Go Dogs follow the children into the church, and the Right Fighters trot through the deluge for their yellow-and-black dune buggies.

Standing in the open doorway of the chapel, Brock watches the buggies splash down the gravel road, American flags swaying soggily, clouds of exhaust heavy in the rain. He watches Kasper Aamon’s vehicle bounce off the main road and into a sandy wash that leads to the trailers.