To feel ill on a sunny day in the islands, to sicken under a cloudless blue sky, his eyeballs burning with fever, was a peculiar form of torture. Hawaii was not its stuffy rooms, its offices or interiors—it was its outdoors, where he lived, upright, barefoot, and all work seemed wasteful. Sharkey’s element was water, sunlight beating on the sea, its heat flashing against his face, and everything else a confinement.

I am an animal, he often murmured to himself, I am a sea creature, a water dog, flipping from wave to wave. He seldom lingered in the house. He woke and walked outside each morning and only then did he take a deep breath to taste the day, inhaling the purring aromas of the flowers beneath the lanai, the flutelike blossoms of pak lan, the orange trumpets of pua kenikeni, the traces of jasmine, and licking all their syrupy perfumes on his lips suggested something crushed, seeping sweetness into the air, the first fingertips of day. He was vitalized by his outdoor life in this water world.

But this particular morning, seeking a reassurance of health, he swung his stiff legs off his bed after another night of headaches and back spasms—he’d resisted the Valium, which left him dry-mouthed and zombielike—and he went outside and was so dazzled by the bright light he staggered back, the sun like a sword blade. Some deep breathing, the pranayama he had learned in yoga, helped settle his head, and by degrees he felt his strength return, a noticeable assertion of health, and he vowed to go surfing.

Lying in bed in the daylight clouded his mind and drained his energy, desiccated and demoralized him. He needed to restore himself, to rehydrate by being in the water; he wanted to make a bold move, by surfing—to slip away from his aches and trick his illness. Simply to feel ill seemed to him a mistake, it was wrong; being decisive was the answer, action was the cure.

He was glad that Olive was at work when he woke, because he knew she’d try to convince him to take it easy. “Relax,” she’d say, and he’d have to listen.