Olive saw again that the disorder of the camp was fixed and featureless, and so it was not a camp at all but a settlement, like the ruin of a scattered household. The burst cushion was left where it had been, those empty cans had not been picked up or kicked aside, the beach chair, the chewed boogie board, the mildewed mattress, the shredded plastic bags—all of it remained as they had seen it before, nothing moved or cleared, giving the squalor the look of solidity. The same piercing smell too, as before, woodsmoke and damp rags and decaying food. Olive was struck—not that it was ugly but that it seemed indestructible and everlasting.

The fat man had not moved, though at some point he must have unfolded his arms, because he was pointing at the path and mouthing the word kapu.

4

Pau

They drove home and told themselves they weren’t shocked—that it was a dead end, they’d been misled, they’d allowed themselves to be persuaded by the woman Lindsey because they were so intent on finding the identity of the man who died. They’d keep looking, they said; they wouldn’t let this stop them. They were devastated, yet they wouldn’t admit it, and the failure ate at them.

For a week or more of shapeless days they hardly left the house. They said there were chores to catch up on, repairs to be made, animals to be fed—the geese, the chickens—all the maintenance that living in the country required, vines to trim, windows to be washed, rats to be trapped.

“So much to do,” Sharkey said.

“We’ll deal with it.”

What was unspoken between them was the bleak experience of the homeless camp. They’d been shocked, more than they could express in words. The sight was not just dreary, it was unexpected; it was appalling, like looking into a pit of poverty and hostility and being hated for it. Sharkey, who prided himself on being fearless on a monster wave; Olive, who dealt with blood and death and who believed herself unshockable—they were frightened and intimidated by the homeless camp, by the sight of junk and improvisation, by the physical threat of the fat man and his yappy dog, and they felt helpless and bereft in the presence of the earnest schoolchildren.

It could have been a jungle clearing in a poor country—it was no better. Given its proximity to the well-traveled road, to the world of money and tourists and restaurants, it seemed worse than something they might have found thousands of miles away. Sharkey had seen such slums on his surfing trips, in Africa and South America. but none of them had depressed him like this. And yet it was a fifteen-minute drive from their house—easily walkable, a hike down the highway, then the path through the tall grass and there it was: desolation.