as a mote of dust carried on the wind. It made him feel that he fit in somehow. At night the canyon of the cosmos wheeled over him and he was stunned by its depth and light. And below, the ocean was another sky, riven by luminescent whitecaps and surprised by blue-flamed fields of tiny fish and constellations of jellyfish that floated by like ghostly green nebulae.
At some point he threw off Lillian’s tattered T-shirt and settled in at last to the rhythm of long days. The noise of waves and wind drove mainland thoughts from his head. His charted trajectory, and his minute adjustments to stay within one degree of that line, became his obsession. The horizon fascinated him: he couldn’t stop staring into the distance because he knew that, eventually, he’d see something.
All that changed when he injured his leg. Close now to his destination and threatened by an imminent illness, maybe even death, he was disgusted with himself and took to calling himself “asshole”: What is it now, asshole? Is the pain inconvenient?
“It won’t be cheap,” Thomas says.
Cooper wakes abruptly from his thoughts. “Cheap?”
It feels like he’s grilling his leg over white-hot coals.
“They’ll charge you, you know, for the rescue. Are you rich, Cooper?”
Cooper notices the islanders watching him with renewed interest. A rich American might buy their meteorite.
“No,” he says. “I’m not rich. Everything I have is in that boat.”
“Don’t worry about your boat,” says Thomas. “I’ll take care of that.”
“I’m not leaving my boat!” says Cooper.
“You’ll leave your boat or you’ll die,” says Thomas. “The choice is yours.”
“I don’t want to die!” says Cooper, sounding like a petulant child.
“Then let’s go make that call.”
It seems the entire village follows them to Thomas’s shack. Two men help Cooper make the short walk.
There is little inside the pandanus-leaf hut to distinguish this as the American’s place except a GE refrigerator crowded with books. Cooper notices the books when Thomas opens the fridge for a beer.
“It’s the only place they don’t mildew,” Thomas explains. He hands Cooper an Olympia in a can. “This is my Melville collection. What’s left of it.”
Cooper drinks down his beer in two long draughts. Then he sits wearily on a plastic milk crate, sucking air through his teeth, willing himself to abandon the pain, just leave it behind like a bad thought.
The islanders crowd at the open door, whispering and smiling and nodding among themselves, as if they were preparing to vote on something.
“Doesn’t anybody have work to do around here?” Cooper says in exasperation.
“That sounds like a complaint.” Thomas is fiddling with a shortwave that sits on a rusted oil drum in one corner of the shack. The place is no bigger than Lillian’s kitchen. Doorless. A dirt floor. A translucent green rectangle of corrugated fiberglass for a roof. A rickety cot. A netted hammock full of clothes.
In the confined space, Cooper can smell the big man’s sweat: like a wet wool blanket.
Every time Cooper opens his eyes and looks to the door, he sees the islanders smiling encouragement and kindness.
“They want to know who you are,” Thomas says. He’s wearing a headset. His glasses are nearly opaque with dust and salt spray.
“Who?” Cooper asks.
“I got the Army on the line, man.” Thomas sounds irritated. “They need some info.”
“I’ve got papers,” Cooper says. “Tell them I’m an DataCell programmer—I’ve got clearance.”
Cooper turns and says to one of the nearby children—the boy who met him on the beach: “Do you know how hard it is to get clearance in the post 9/11 world?”
The boy flashes the peace sign.
“Yeah, that’s right,” says Cooper.
“I’ve got one of your people here,” Thomas says into his rusted microphone. “A programmer. Cooper Davies. He’ll die for sure if you don’t pick him up.”
Then: “It’s his leg. Looks like gangrene.”
Then: “I know gangrene when I see it. I said he’s one of yours—he’s got clearance. If you leave him here, we’re just gonna dump the body in the lagoon. . . . I said the lagoon.”
Thomas turns to wink at Cooper. “I’m exaggerating.”
Then Thomas nods some more at the radio. “Let me read you the coordinates. We can’t waste any time.”
“Do they know who I am?” Cooper asks.
Thomas sets down the microphone, then swivels to Cooper: “How do you like that? They’re on their way!”
Some of the onlookers repeat the announcement like momentous news: “They’re on their way!”
“A big helicopter!” Thomas crows. Then he grins, showing off his few brown teeth.
The onlookers repeat the magic word: helicopter!
“Holy shit,” Cooper gasps. “I’m gonna be saved?”
Thomas smirks at him. “Rescue isn’t the same thing as salvation.”
Cooper wonders if this is a Melville quote.
Thomas shoos the onlookers. “Go away. Look for the helicopter!”
Reluctantly, the villages drift away. Then Thomas sits on the dirt floor in front of Cooper, who can barely keep his eyes open. Thomas is still wearing his old-fashioned headset, pulled away from his big reddened ears.
“How much do you think your boat is worth?” he asks.
Cooper feels an icepick of dread pierce his heart. He squints hard at Thomas. “Are you gonna sell my boat?”
Thomas seems to beam at the thought. “I’m just asking, man.”
“Are you, like, a pirate or something? Where the fuck is this place?” It occurs to Cooper that he might never find this island again.
“This place?” Thomas smiles slyly. “Do you know how many islands are in the Marshalls?”
“More than a thousand,” says Cooper. “I’ve done my homework.”
“Good for you, my man. It’s easy to get lost out here. That’s what I like about it.”
“I can’t lose my boat. It’s all I got.”
“Is that self-pity I hear?”
“It’s the simple truth, Thomas. I’ll pay you for keeping it safe. I’ll pay you whatever you want.”
“So you do have money,” says Thomas with satisfaction. “They pay you programmers well, don’t they?”
“You talk like a pirate, not a do-gooder from the Peace Corps.”
“The Corps was long ago, my friend. As for doing good, that’s always a matter of opinion. I don’t know that I did anybody good when I was encouraging the so-called natives to join the modern world.”
“You came out here looking for the great white whale, didn’t you?”
“Oh, you’re one to cast aspersions, my little Sinbad. You’ve made the amateur’s mistake, getting an infection like that.”
“I might be a fuck-up but I’m no thief.”
“Are you calling me a thief? I just saved your life!”