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.
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.
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.