“Big bombs,” Doc said. He kicked off his flip-flops and rested his feet on the veranda rail. Now Sharkey saw a bandage on Doc’s foot, but it was so dirty he had not noticed it until the foot was raised.

“How big?”

“The first tests were three-megaton H-bombs, but the yield-to-weight ratio made them more destructive—measured in terajoules, they were bigger by far than the one we dropped on Hiroshima. First the Brits in the fifties. Then us. In the sixties we set off twenty-four shots.”

“I didn’t see any craters.”

“Atmospheric tests,” he said, pointing upward with his bottle of beer. “Some from planes at eighteen thousand feet, some suspended from tethered balloons. No craters, unless you count genetic damage, genomic instability in DNA, birth defects, high levels of ionizing radiation, and radioactive contamination.” He swigged his beer. “Cancer.”

“There were people here on the island?”

Bearded, sweating, he went on drinking, but he was unexpectedly full of information. “Not many, a few hundred. They were instructed to put blankets over their heads so they wouldn’t see the flash. No one told the birds. All the birds were blinded.”

“And you know this how?”

“I’m a physicist, man. Cal Tech. I went to Hawaii to surf fifteen years ago and never looked back.” He drank again but held the beer in his mouth for a moment as though in reflection. Finally he swallowed and asked, “This bombing is news to you?”

“I heard something. I thought it was Bikini where the tests were.”

The man didn’t answer at once, though when he did, he spoke casually, dismissively, disgustedly. “Way west of here, in the Marshalls. Another nuclear disaster.”

“I saw a lot of heavy equipment on the other side of the island.”

“Abandoned by the military. They dug huge holes and buried a lot of it, the rest they left to rot—too expensive to take it away.” Now Doc smiled, a drunken smile. “It’s a hole.”

“What happened to your foot?”

“Gashed it on the beach yesterday when I was scoping out the wave.”

“Coral’s sharp.”

“Broken bottle. There’s glass everywhere. Rusty cans. Plastic.”

“So,” Sharkey said, and paused and nodded, “you make it to the wave?”

“Didn’t want to risk it with this foot. The priest bandaged it—the clinic was closed.” He smiled again. “This island is freaking me out,” and what he said was the more disturbing for being whispered.

Sharkey said, “I was beginning to enjoy it. Now I’m not so sure.” He leaned toward Doc and said in a low voice, “I got lost in the bushes by the lagoon.”