Tom Hanks - Uncommon Type - Some Stories

He floated in, no panic despite the pain in his leg. When he made contact with the sand again, he was farther inland and could hop on one foot to get his head above water. The next incoming wave pushed him closer to shore, another did the same, then a few more. He crawled out of the water and onto the beach.

“Fucker,” he said to himself. He sat on the sand, his leg so deeply gashed that white tissue showed along with torn flesh and pulsing blood. He was going to need stitches, sure as shooting. Kirk remembered a day when he was thirteen, when a kid named Blake got hit by his own board and had been pulled unconscious from the water. Blake had been nailed in the jaw and needed months of dental work. This wound was not as serious as that, and Kirk had suffered a few lumps in his time, but this chunk taken out of his leg was worthy of a Purple Heart.

“You okay?” Ben Wu had come out of the water after retrieving Kirk’s loose board. “Oh, shit!” he yelled at the sight of the cut. “You need a ride to the hospital?”

“No. My dad is around. He’ll take me.”

“You sure?”

Kirk stood up. “Yes.” There was pain, and blood was trailing down his lower leg, splattering drops of scarlet in the sand of Mars, but he waved Ben away and said, “I got it. Thanks.”

He took his board and limped on up the path toward the parking lot.

“You’re gonna need, like, forty sutures in that thing,” Ben called out before leaping back into the surf atop his board.

Kirk’s calf was throbbing in time to his heartbeat. He limped up the path, his leash trailing in the sand-covered walkway. More beachgoers had arrived, so the lot was two-thirds filled, but Frank had parked close. Kirk expected to find his dad inside the camper at the table, talking business on his phone with papers spread in front of him. But when he rounded the back of the truck, the camper door was locked and his father was nowhere to be seen.

Kirk stood his board against the door, then sat on the bumper to inspect his leg, which now looked like a kielbasa had exploded. Had the board hit him a bit higher it might have shattered his kneecap. Kirk felt lucky, but the sooner he got to an emergency room the better.

His dad was probably across the highway, in a store grabbing a drink or a protein bar, the key to the camper in the zippered pocket of his wet suit. Kirk didn’t want to hobble across the highway carrying his surfboard, nor did he want to leave it for a thief in the parking lot. He looked around to make sure that no one was observing him, then he stood on the bumper on his nonbleeding leg, shoving the board up onto the camper roof, where it would be out of sight from the ground. The leash hung down, so Kirk knotted it into a messy ball and tossed it up as well. So much for protective measures, he thought, and then headed for the highway.

An overgrown bush provided shade as Kirk waited for an opening in the morning traffic. When a gap showed, he made his move, skip-hopping across the four lanes. He checked the Subway and the Circle W, looking through windows but not seeing his dad. The surf shop would make sense. Maybe he was picking up sunblock. Heavy metal music blared from inside but no one was in the place.

His last and best bet was the Starbucks at the north end of the shops. Coffee drinkers were reading papers and working on laptops at the outside tables and benches. Frank was not one of them, and if anyone bothered to look up at Kirk with his open wound, they didn’t say anything. He entered, expecting to find his dad, roust him off the phone, and set off for the appropriate medical attention. But Starbucks held no Frank.

“Holy shit!” The female barista saw Kirk standing there, bleeding. “Sir? Are you okay?”

“It’s not that bad,” Kirk said. Some customers looked up from their cups and laptops without responding.

“Should I call 911?” the barista asked.

“I’ve got a ride to the clinic. My dad,” Kirk said. “Has a Frank been in, ordering a Venti drip with a shot of mocha?”

“A Frank?” The woman thought a second. “A lady ordered a Venti drip with a shot of mocha a while ago with a decaf soy latte. But not a Frank.” Kirk turned to go back outside. “We have a first aid kit.”

Kirk scanned the parking lot again and the walkway of the shops but still did not see his father. On the off chance there were tables on the other side of Starbucks, he eased his way to the corner but found no tables, and no Frank, just parking spaces under eucalyptus trees.

A single car, a Mercedes, was parked on the other side of a thick trunk of one of the trees. Kirk could see only the front end and a bit of windshield. Starbucks cups, two of them, were sitting on the dash. From the passenger seat, a man’s hand reached out for what Kirk knew to be a Venti drip with a shot of mocha because he recognized the black band of his father’s military-style chronometer, a watch just like the one Kirk now wore on his own wrist. The windows of the Mercedes were rolled down, allowing Kirk to hear the lilt of a woman’s laughter along with his father’s amused cackle.

Kirk didn’t feel his leg anymore, no pain at all, as he edged closer to the tree, able to see that much more of the car, as well as the face of a woman with long black hair and a smile aimed at his father. Frank was facing the woman, so Kirk saw only the back of his head. He heard his father say, “I better get back,” but his father didn’t move. Kirk knew from the relaxed, quiet tone that his dad wasn’t going anywhere.

Kirk slowly backed off around the tree to the corner, then around to the door of the Starbucks. He went back inside.

On the wall opposite the entrance, windows spread over three small tables that looked out onto empty parking spaces in the shade of the eucalyptus trees.

Kirk went to the windows and craned his neck. He saw the woman with long black hair, her arm resting across Frank’s shoulder, her fingers playing in his sea-salted hair. His father was swirling his drip mocha in its cup. He was sitting on a beach towel that covered the passenger seat as though his wet suit had not already dried. The woman with the long black hair said something and laughed again. His father laughed, too, in a way Kirk rarely saw him laugh, with his teeth showing, his head raised back, and his eyes squinting, a silent movie, the dialogue muted by the window of Starbucks. Kirk heard only the tapping of fingers on laptop keyboards and the commerce of premium coffee drinks.

“Why don’t you take a seat?” It was the barista again, named Celia according to her tag. She had a metal first aid kit. “I can put on some kind of bandage, at least.”

Kirk did sit. Celia wrapped his leg in gauze, the white staining red immediately. A glance back out to the shade of the eucalyptus tree showed the woman with the long black hair leaning forward, her mouth open, her head tilted in the body language known universally as a prelude to a desired kiss. His father leaned in toward her.

Recrossing the highway was a blur, but Kirk did think to retrieve his board from the roof of the camper. He walked back down the path to Mars. The surf line was still crowded with riders, the high tide about to turn in the hours-long recession to the low-water mark. Beside his father’s board and planted paddle, Kirk sat in the sand, his mouth dry, his eyes unfocused, his ears deaf to the roar and rush of the waves. He looked at the bloodied bandage on his calf, remembering that he had been cut deeply by his own surfboard, but it had happened—when? Weeks ago.

He slowly ripped the tape from around his leg, then unwrapped the scarlet-stained gauze, kneading the sticky heap into his fist. He dug a hole in the sand, a deep hole, then put the snarl of trash in the bottom and covered it up again. The wound immediately began to bleed, but Kirk ignored that, as well as the swelling and the pain. He sat, confused, suddenly ill, feeling like he was going to cry. But he didn’t. Whenever his father returned he would find his son recovering from a surf accident, waiting for him to finish his business calls so they could go get forty stitches, at least.