“You’ll explain everything nicely to the Reverend, but I can’t let you out of my sight until he’s got you.” Karaoke Bill stands at the foot of his watchtower, his legs wide apart like a cowboy in a showdown. It wouldn’t be smart to run when I’m so close to convincing everyone this was all a misunderstanding. I nod to my friends, and they excuse themselves—Molly most tentatively—behind the tropical veil leading to the mobile home. “We’ll wait in the shade. Come on.” Bill jabs upward at the slant-roofed bird’s nest of his watchtower.

Just say “yes” to everything. Be Mr. Agreeable.

The climb is arduous, but breathtaking. With each subsequent, splintering rung of the watchtower’s attached ladder, the vastness above the forest canopy comes into focus: an ocean of camouflage green surrounding the camp all the way to the lakeside cabins. From there, overgrown hills climb to the island’s highest point—a clifftop overlooking the sea.

Being in Bill’s bird’s nest is like being in the basket of a hot-air balloon. Other than his rocking chair and ukulele, Bill’s micro-apartment is littered with technological fossils, bric-a-brac, and just straight-up trash: a vinyl-record player; stacks of beat-up thrift store records piled inside a fruit crate; a boxy CB radio on a desk beside a microphone and subwoofer; an assortment of apples and mangoes hanging in a fishing net; a hunting knife jammed blade-down into the railing; and lastly—and most bizarrely—a dozen bottles of mouthwash, some spearmint green, some electric violet, lined side by side on the floor.

“I’m always stocked with mouthwash,” Bill says, twisting the cap off a half-drunk bottle. “Mouthwash was my best friend in Vietnam. When they train you, they say to only take one personal item. Most men pick a knife or some all-purpose tool, and that’s fine enough. I pick mouthwash. Gotta get the kind with alcohol.” Bill swigs the scalding liquid straight from the bottle; he swishes, gurgles, and then hocks neon foam over the railing and into the trees. He replaces the bottle as a sympathetic, phantom burning stings my gums. “You got mouthwash with you, it’ll keep you fresh, bring down inflammation, clean your wounds, soothe razor bumps; it’ll sterilize a knife—there’s dozens of other uses I’m forgetting.”

“I’ll Google it when I’m back,” I say.

“You’ll giggle it?”

“Uh…Google, I said.”

“What’s that, slang?” Bill flips a red switch on the radio, and it beeps to life.

“No, um, Google. You know, the thing. It’s been around my whole life. The internet thing?”