There was only one road, dead flat, paved for a few miles, then rutted coral and loose stones and packed sand, and after twenty minutes he slowed to a halt and got out to determine what progress he’d made by taking a look at the lagoon. He walked in the direction of the water through the head-high saltbush scrub, big-winged birds flying up from where his elbows bumped the branches, and he smelled the sour sun-dried seaweed and the sting of salt before he stepped onto crystalline boulders of coral and beheld the great gleaming lagoon. More beaky birds took flight at his appearance on the stony shore. He saw that he was less than halfway to the far side of the lagoon.

Turning his back to the lagoon, he hurried to his pickup truck and in his hurry became lost in the hot air and speckled shadow trapped beneath the low canopy of thorny bush and twisted scrub that stank of marine decay, dead fish and dried barnacles. The broken coral at his feet looked like bleached and shattered bones. What had seemed like the path he’d taken was a rut of packed-down coral dust like a game trail. He saw movement ahead—the fidget of a feral cat, another panicked bird, and the sunlight burning through the meager dusty leaves.

He could not climb the spindly stalks to see where he was; the thorns tore at his arms and he was mocked again—a hundred feet into this vegetation and, ducking and thrashing, he saw no way out, no access to the road and his truck. He ran and stumbled, then sat and, short of breath, wondered whether he was impatient or afraid. Perspiration smeared the blood on his arms. He heard a squawk and called out, as though in reply; but it was a bird.

And then at the height of his panic, flushing another bird—roosting frigate bird—and scarcely able to breathe, he saw the red of his truck through the bush and credited that ’iwa bird with saving him, the bird an omen, directing him. He sat in the truck, simply breathing, hot with anxiety, glad to be alone with his shame at having become so easily lost.

Back on the road, he resolved to stay with his truck and followed the road for several miles, until he came to a grove of coconut palms. The rows and ranks of palms reassured him with their symmetry and their abandonment—they had been set there by a human hand, but it seemed the humans had fled, leaving the place to him.