Disbelief joins fury in Brock’s combustive heart.
The flame hits the aluminum and sizzles out in the rain, so Aamon shoots another sword of fire but again, the rain drowns it to nothing.
Brock and Mahina ford the wash, feet spread, swaying with the current, guns trained on Kasper, five Go Dogs just behind them.
And, Brock sees, another six Dogs closing in on the far bank.
“Kasper!” screams Brock. “You are not allowed to do this!”
Kasper gives him an almost placid look, then fires another jet of fire against the blackened trailer from which Brock now sees the Jones family—Gloria, Burt, and two daughters—burst from the little front door and run into brush, followed by a small white pit bull, stubby legs already half covered with mud.
The rain picks up again now, heavy, windblown and warm.
Brock slogs on, into the smell of gasoline.
Aamon wheels and throws a comet of flame toward Brock, but the homemade weapon doesn’t have much range, and the fire crashes and smokes out in the rushing brown water.
“And you are not allowed to break my jaw and found a nation of filthy heathens!” roars Kasper. “I have the Constitution to enforce.”
“Drop the gun, Kasper!”
Kasper fires a weakening stream of flame toward Brock but again it falls into the water and sizzles out. Which lets Brock check his flank, where he sees Dane, Javier, and Keyshawn—guns drawn—surrounding Right Fighters, some with their arms raised and others on their knees, breathing heavily.
Kasper rounds the Jones trailer and aims the flamethrower at the door, slamming open and shut in the wind.
Brock is clambering on all fours up the collapsing bank of the wash when he sees Burt Jones crash through the brittlebush and tackle Aamon from behind.
Brock is on them fast, trying to pull skinny Burt off Aamon, but Burt holds fast to the red cylinders and together they drag Kasper out of the trailer and into the warm downpour.
Big Kasper rolls over and tries to shoot Brock in the face but the newly bent and creased barrel pours smoking orange-black lava down his arm and Kasper Aamon howls in agony that dwarfs even the roar of the storm.
Brock snatches the gun away, pulls bellowing Aamon to the bank and into the rushing flood.
Watches as the big man flails into the deeper middle current, arms clubbing away, his screams high-pitched and terrified. He’s already gulping air.
Running along the treacherous bank beside him, Brock thinks: I can do nothing but watch, and let Kasper die. Or jump in and save his sorry ass to fight his right fight another day, and another, and another.
Or maybe change?
Atone?
Forgive?
Generally just get his shit together?
He slides down the embankment, dives flat in, and breaststrokes downstream, the muddy floodwater tumbling Aamon out ahead of him.
Brock snags the backpack flamethrower with one hand, side-stroking at an angle and scissor-kicking hard. Finally rises and drags his cursed, gasping enemy toward the near bank.
SEVEN MONTHS LATER
45
This evening, Casey and Jen sit side by side at the Barrel bar, Mae napping at their feet.
They’re tracking the five wall-mounted big screens tuned to network and cable news. The summer light burnishes the room in a warm orange glow.
Their restaurant is rebuilt and remodeled and set for a gala reopening next week, on the Fourth of July.
Tonight’s get-together is just family and a few friends.
Casey goes through the bar-top lift door, mixes up two more Arnold Palmers, sets them up, and sits again next to his mother.
The new Barrel is a nearly literal version of the old place: same windows and white walls, same walnut hardwood floors streaked with blond, and island-looking teak furniture, same surfing videos playing nonstop when news and sports aren’t on.
Same bronze John Stonebreaker standing in the lobby with one arm on his surfboard and his optimistic, wave-tuned expression which, technically, is focused on the cars creeping along Coast Highway a few yards in front of him rather than the waves breaking along the Laguna shoreline just a few hundred feet behind him.
The damaged big-wave gun surfboards have been restored and refinished and rehung.
The ruined ones have been replaced by equally authentic boards happily donated by the Stonebreaker family’s many well-wishers in the surfing “community.”
Duke Kahanamoku’s redwood twelve-footer, ridden at Sunset Beach, circa 1915.
One of Jeff Clark’s classic plain-wrap guns for Mavericks, shaped by Clark in 1999.
A fresh Laird Hamilton ridden at Jaws.
A Maya Gabeira from Todos Santos and a Mike Parsons ridden on Cortes Bank just last winter.
