Chris Pratt Prays in Hawaii

The van smelled like salt and old beer. We had the windows down on the way to the store, even though the night air was thick enough to chew. Chris sat in the passenger seat with his feet on the dash, humming something off-key from the radio. He had worked a double at Bubba Gump that day, still in the white shirt with the sauce stain on the sleeve. The rest of us had stayed on the beach, passing a joint and waiting for someone old enough to buy.

I pulled into the lot and left the engine running. Chris handed me the cash without looking. “Get the cheap stuff,” he said. “We’re almost out of gas money anyway.” I went inside. Through the glass I could see him leaning against the van, arms crossed, watching the automatic doors.

A man in a button-down shirt walked up to him. Not a tourist. Local, maybe, or someone who knew the island rhythms. He stopped a few feet away and said something. Chris straightened. I watched the two of them talk for a minute, then Chris nodded once and followed the man across the lot toward a small white car. He did not look back at the van.

When I came out with the bag, the spot where the van had been was empty except for the friend who had been driving. He shrugged. “Guy said Jesus told him to talk to Chris. Chris got in the car.” We waited twenty minutes. The ice in the cooler melted. No one started the engine.

The next morning Chris came walking back along the road with his shoes in one hand. He looked like he had not slept. He dropped the shoes in the sand and sat down without speaking. Someone offered him a beer. He shook his head. “I’m done with that for a while,” he said. The words landed flat. We waited for the joke that never came.

He kept going to the little church Henry took him to. It was a low building near the highway with no steeple, just a cross painted on the door. Chris would leave the tent early, walk the two miles, and come back quieter. He stopped rolling joints when the rest of us did. At first we gave him a hard time. Then we stopped. The change was too steady to laugh at.

One afternoon he sat on the cooler and told us he was leaving the island. “Henry knows some people in Los Angeles,” he said. “I’m going to try the acting thing for real.” Nobody argued. We had all said the same thing at one point or another, but Chris was the only one who packed his bag that week. He left the tent standing for whoever needed it.

Months later a postcard came to the restaurant addressed to the night crew. It had a picture of the Hollywood sign on one side and a short note on the other. Chris had a small part in a short film. He wrote that the director had bought everyone lunch. The card stayed taped to the walk-in cooler until the tape yellowed and fell off.

Years after that I saw his face on a magazine at the grocery store where Henry had found him. The caption said something about a big movie. I bought the magazine and read the part where he mentioned the night outside the store. He did not use my name or anyone else’s from the beach. That was fine. The story was his to tell.