“So you collect pots,” he said. “And you raise plants.”
“Ornamental bushes, actually.”
“Rhododendrons, philodendrons, tetrahedrons,” Bailey said in sing-song.
“Do you even know what a tetrahedron is?” Cooper asked.
“That’s right, he’s a programmer, Bailey, he knows all about math.”
“If you start dating my mother does that mean you’ll do my math homework?”
Lillian laughed nervously. And so it began for the three of them. Eight months of courtship, then the proposal—which Lillian made and Cooper, flattered and abashed, accepted. And then he moved into her Montara A-frame for a year’s trial run. During that year, he landed the job he’s headed for now, a job so prestigious, he felt obliged to take it after he passed the many interviews, and security clearances. It’s a 12-month contract to help study missile re-entries at the Ronald Reagan Test Site in the Kwajalein atoll. It became for him a challenge, a grand adventure. And Lillian was going to sail the 4500 miles with him, stay for a month on Kwajalein, then fly back to the States, while Bailey stayed with her father. But Bailey betrayed them, undermining their intimacy at every turn and ultimately finding ways to discredit Cooper until Lillian gave him up, refusing finally to go through with the trip whose highlight would have been their wedding in Honolulu.
Life is full of surprises, isn’t it? Today Cooper is surprised and a little frightened at his uncharacteristic fumbling as he tries to untether the yellow rubber dinghy from the back of the Lickety Split—the boat Lillian herself named. Once he gets the dinghy overboard, he falls flat-backed into it, his impact raising a splash that soaks his right shoulder. Upended, wallowing in the raft as if it were a hammock, his injured leg extended up and over the side, he watches the sky rocking in big see-saw swings.
He recalls how he was so lucky as a boy because motion never made him woozy, much less sick. Happily, triumphantly, he rode the local amusement park’s octopus, its swing ring, its rocket rocker while Teddy, his younger brother, watched with grave envy from a nearby bench.
And, later, as a teenager, Teddy stood on the shore and watched as Cooper skippered his 16-foot single-sail skiff into the choppy shallows of Baltimore’s back bay, dropping cages to catch crabs. It would take Cooper years to understand the difference between those who love land and those who love water. He, Cooper, belongs on water.
He sits up slowly, carefully, thankful that he hasn’t hit his throbbing leg. It takes great concentration to wrap the outboard’s nylon cord around his right hand, great focus to marshal strength in his biceps and steady himself with his left hand, then great effort to yank that cord decisively. But he does. And immediately the motor sputters, then whines its eagerness, the air abruptly smoky with gas fumes. Yes, this is good. Cooper drops the hand-sized prop into the water, which churns and bubbles. Then he is off, skittering over the surface, the swell of growing breakers propelling the raft, a hot wind in his face—the kind of breeze any sailor would welcome. It never ceases to surprise him how long it takes to arrive at landfall after the first sighting. There’s no sense of scale out here. The island, he assumes, is or was a coconut plantation, like so many of the outlying atolls. Which is to say that a hundred years ago the Marshallese—directed by their German conquerors—cleared the scrub away and planted trees. Harvesters visit once or twice a season to gather the fruit; a few rusted tin-roofed shacks stand at the island’s edge to house the harvest. What other industry the island offers Cooper can only guess. He tried to radio earlier but got only static. He was too embarrassed to send an S.O.S.
He would like to imagine the islanders crowding around him, rejoicing at his visit: What has this handsome stranger brought from the great world?
But only a shirtless boy, wearing denim shorts, watches him from the beach.
“Yokwe yuk,” Cooper calls. Greetings!
The boy arches his eyebrows in wonder and continues to stare.
As soon as the dinghy butts the sand, Cooper lurches forward and vomits, everything going yellow-green, his head tightening as if his scalp would pop. He feels better after he clears his mouth. Then he looks up at the boy, who must be about seven, skinny, missing a few teeth up front. The boy says, “You sick?”
Cooper hauls himself out of the dinghy, bad leg first—he feels his wound bubble and ooze: the bloody pus looks like hot wax. The boy gapes at his leg, which makes Cooper feel worse. Angry at himself, Cooper swats the flies away. “I need a doctor,” he says. Some small part of him—a penitent monk—sits in a dark cell and prays fervently for a miracle. The prayer includes a promise, I will never make this mistake again!
He sees the boy nodding his head yes, yes. The boy says, “We got a doctor.”
Cooper can hardly believe his luck. He hobbles after the kid. The palm-tops hover and bob over him, their frond-clatter like applause. Cooper knows this is a beautiful place but none of it registers—not the turquoise crescent of the lagoon, not the blinding white sand, not the mermaids singing from the tide pools. It is all he can do to will himself to keep moving. Stay conscious. He leans into the boy, who allows the sudden intimacy without a hint of distaste or discomfort. He imagines the boy sleeps in a shack with a mob of brothers and sisters.
The settlement is a clutter of unpainted hovels with corrugated tin roofs and, incongruously, late model Japanese motorcycles parked out front. Skinny dogs, whipping their tails and trotting a few paces behind, bark at Cooper gleefully. Other children crowd around, calling, “Hey, what-sup, man? What-sup!” Half delirious, stumping along on his hot ice-pick pain, the children’s chatter piercing to his ears, Cooper feels surly, stupid, and much too white. He’s tempted to fling a handful of change over the sandy road, let the children dive for it like pigeons after popcorn. But all he has in his pocket are keys to his boat. And a penknife.
Where are the adults on this island?
“Town meeting,” the boy says, as if reading his mind. He is pointing to a single-story, whitewashed cinderblock building that looks to Cooper like a run-down Laundromat. From here, he can see the outer edge of the island, the oceanside, where the swells are breaking with frothy crashes, having traveled thousands of Pacific miles unimpeded. Blacktip sharks are gliding in with the tide. Soon they’ll be dancing on the reef. With the mermaids.
It’s chaos out there.
Wouldn’t Lillian be sorry now, to see him like this? Wouldn’t she fold him in her arms and make up at last?
Maybe not. Didn’t she warn him? Didn’t she say, “You don’t know your limits—that’s why I’m scared.”
The whitewashed building is a Laundromat, Cooper discovers. And air conditioned. As cold as an ice chest. Six washers on one side of the room, six dryers on the other, none of them going. At the center of the room is a long, uncovered plastic table, the portable kind you might find at a bake sale. Around it sit the adults, who regard Cooper with mild surprise. These are short people of dark brown complexion, with broad noses and curly black hair, though their race has been diluted for a century by foreigners: first the Spanish, then the Germans, then the Japanese, and then the Americans. The men wear T-shirts, American baseball caps, baggy trousers and zori, rubber flip-flops. The women wear flowered, cotton shifts, no head covering. They are smiling reassuringly in his direction but not quite at him. A bashful people.
Curiously, a number of them have pinkish welts on their foreheads and forearms. Some kind of disease? Or more of Cooper’s hallucinations?
Just beyond the table, on the dirty, gold indoor-outdoor carpet, sits a craggy boulder as big as a bean bag chair. It must have taken five men to carry it. A rock of historical significance?
The room smells of . . . French fries, he decides. But the table is empty of food.
Suddenly the men, five to seven of them, are at his side, grinning and shaking his hand limply. They smell sweetly of coconut oil, their hair wet with pomade. It seems they have been expecting him. “Welcome,” they