“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.
Followed by the Right Fighters, buggy engines whining.
He can’t believe Kasper is doing this.
But he’s not surprised one bit, either.
“Enough of this shit,” Brock mutters to himself.
His duty is to the people who have come here for sanctuary, not to change the minds of those who are here to hurt them.
He collects Dane Brockman, Javier Frias, and Keyshawn Quadra, and eight more of his most capable Go Dogs. Eleven of them—his almost dirty dozen.
He fixes Mahina with a hard look, but she’s already slung her combat shotgun over her shoulder and she barges past him into the rain like he’s not there.
Make that twelve, he thinks: Breath of Life, get us through this hour.
He’s got them outnumbered.
Brock directs half his Go Dogs to the eastern narrows of the wash, then he and Mahina and five others lope through the rain toward the western bend.
He figures that the Right Fighters are headed for the trailer encampment that lies on the higher ground edging the wash, where they’ll shoot their pics and vids, then circle back to the church and the outbuildings, and his home.
And after that? Time for Kasper’s flamethrower?
The rain has lessened and the wind slants it sideways.
Brock can see the yellow-and-black dune buggies through the dense manzanita, and the first row of trailers huddled in the rain. There are lights on in some of them, movement behind the curtains, dogs barking from behind raised cinderblocks.
He shoulders into the sharp, stout bushes, breaking his way to the wash, Mahina and his Dogs behind him.
He sees bear-like Kasper out ahead of the others, already on the far side, the gun of his flamethrower holstered to his hip, a video camera held up, shooting the trailers.
Behind Aamon, two of his dune buggies are mired in the runoff, big tires sunk into the mud, the drivers trying to gun them back to shore, raising rooster tails of mud high into the air.
Drenched Brock watches the other three Right Fighters—two men and women—slipping and sloshing along the bank toward the trailers.
Behind them Brock sees Dane, Javier, Keyshawn, and three more Dogs in measured pursuit, weapons drawn, gaining.
Watches as Kasper lets the camera dangle around his neck, takes up the dual-gripped gun and fires a stream of orange-blue flame against the nearest trailer.
