Doc laughed loudly. “That’s funny. When Captain Cook came here, some of his men went ashore. They immediately got lost—for a couple of days! It’s the freaky vegetation. The island was uninhabited. It was perfect. But Jimmy Cook named it and put it on the map. Other ships visited. It became a coconut plantation. Then a bomb site and a junkyard. Now it’s what you see—a dump.”

Sharkey looked around and sniffed. “What’s that smell?”

“Oil spill on the slipway—someone must have dropped a barrel.” He finished his beer, then said, “Do me a favor? Help me move my board? It’s still at that guy’s hut.”

“Are you going to surf with that foot?”

“Maybe not. But I don’t want to leave my board with that criminal. His own daughter, man!”

So Sharkey drove Doc down the road past the church and into the palm grove on a rutted track to the hut, which was a tin-roofed plywood box, painted green, sitting on cinder blocks. A man sat on the front steps, smoking a cigarette.

“That’s Dad,” Doc said under his breath.

He was a dark frowning man in a torn T-shirt and shorts, his elbows resting on his knees, the cigarette in one hand, an open can of sardines in the other, and what Sharkey noticed was the size of his hands, the thick fingers, the way they dripped with oil.

“I’m here for my board.”

The man hesitated, moved his mouth as though to speak, then went on chewing.

In its padded sleeve bag it leaned against the hut, but the bottom edge of the bag was torn, the stuffing pulled out.

“Who messed with my board?”

The man chewed, then, twirling one finger into the can of sardines, he said, “Was a rat,” and went on chewing.

Nothing more was said. Doc lifted his board into the bed of the pickup, and as they drove away from the palm grove and were nearer the road, Doc said, “There she is.”

A young girl in a school uniform, white blouse, blue skirt, was walking toward them. Sharkey slowed and stopped. Doc leaned out of the window.

“Remember me?”

“Yah.”

The girl’s thin face was set in a resentful, almost sulky expression, her underlip protruding. But perhaps she was shy, guarded, averse to questions.

“How’s school?”

The girl made a face, not at the question but at the man who asked it, and said nothing.

“Everything all right?”

Now she did seem resentful, and she nodded, then turned and walked up the path where the man, her father, was waiting.