The town was as the priest had said—one street, a few shops, a pier, a bar with a veranda that overlooked the harbor, some beached and broken boats, a low-tide odor of decayed fish and slime drying from green to black. Sharkey parked his pickup truck, and as soon as he got out and slammed the door he heard, “Joe Sharkey.”

The man who called himself Doc had darted from the bar—and Sharkey was gratified to see that he was unchanged, wild hair and trampled flip-flops and the same aloha shirt but unbuttoned. Yet even under the rags he had the physique of a surfer—the shoulders, the legs, the burned hair, the hands pink and boiled-looking from soakings in seawater.

The man said, “Doc,” as though to reassure him.

“How’s it?”

“Insane, man,” Doc said, but in a soft wondering way, and he went on, speaking in a disbelieving tone that was the more alarming for being a near-whisper. “The place where I was staying? It’s just a hut in the palms. But the first night I’m there I hear these noises, someone getting hosed, that rocking sound and those unmistakable sighs. I think, ‘Beautiful.’ But at breakfast I’m talking to the guy—that one you saw, with the hat—and we’re being served by this young teenaged girl—eggs, tea, papaya.”

The man stopped and shook his head.

Sharkey said, “I’m listening.”

“I said, ‘Your wife’s young.’ He looks at me. ‘My daughter. My wife’s off-­island.’ I was thinking how I once had a daughter that age. So I left. I found a room here in town behind the bar. It’s nothing, but the vibe is better.”

Doc looked hard at Sharkey, sadness in his eyes, helplessness in his posture, his arms to his sides, flexing his empty hands.

Sharkey said, “You been on the wave?”

The man didn’t speak, he was thinking of something else, but Sharkey was elated when with just the slightest toss of his head the man said, “Nah.” Then he straightened and added, “I’ve been watching it. Grinds out some steep barrels.”

“You stoked?” Sharkey asked.

But Doc just smiled that older man’s smile.

Sharkey said, “I’ve been on the other side of the island. No one there.”

“Because of the bombs.”

It was what the priest had said. Sharkey said, “Was this place in the war?”

“I’m having a beer,” Doc said, turning away and walking to the bar.

And that was another thing that older people did—didn’t answer a question, said something else entirely, as though you hadn’t spoken, to make you small.

“Soft drink for me,” Sharkey said on the veranda of the bar, and when Doc ordered a beer, Sharkey had the urge to see the man drunk. He wanted to see him incapable of riding the wave today, too drunk to stand, hungover tomorrow.