There is some similarity between sailing and the work he does, computing alone in a cubicle: the necessary self-absorption, the surrounding emptiness, the charting of a course among the known variables. The major difference is that computing can’t kill you. Even a bayshore weekender like Brad could appreciate that much. Cooper assured him that as long as the mast holds, a sailor can tie off the wheel, flag the staysail, trawl a storm drogue, then go below, batten the hatch and ride it out. Cooper has done just that twice already, tossed and tumbled like a sock in a washing machine. Something to be proud of.
But now to have fucked up while fishing, on a calm day, so close to his destination? It’s too ironic.
Thomas looks at him with some concern, though Cooper isn’t convinced this is for his sake. The big man says, “You’re not our geologist then?”
This question sounds more like an announcement. It puts an abrupt halt to the others’ robust eating of the fries. The Marshallese now stare expectantly at Cooper.
Cooper sees that he is about to disappoint them all. “You were expecting a geologist?”
“To examine the meteorite,” says Thomas, nodding to the big rock.
“Meteorite,” a few of the others repeat.
“Biggest in the world!” says Harold-the-mayor, and this starts all of them talking excitedly in Marshallese.
“Probably among the biggest in the world,” Thomas corrects. His boom-box voice silences the others. Then he explains: last week there was a meteor shower, thousands of tiny stones raining from the early morning sky while the men were out fishing. This accounts for the small welts on their foreheads and forearms.
The rain of rocks was preceded by an immense white flash.
“Like a million camera lights,” Harold-the-mayor says. “Dorean thought it was another bomb.” He points to Dorean, a young man wearing a T-shirt that says “The Rolling Stones,” it tongue-and-lips logo faded to a pale pink. “His grandfather was burned by fallout in nineteen fifty-four.”
Dorean nods gravely.
“Then we hear the rocks falling. Like fish.”
Someone makes a rapid slapping noise that truly sounds like fish hitting water.
“It was two-ten AM,” Harold-the-mayor says. “Benjamin was wearing his chronometer.”
“Rocks falling all over, man.”
“Scared me shitless.”
Laughter.
“Meteor shower!”
“More likely a comet or piece of comet,” Thomas says. He radioed the tracking station at Kwajalein, which would neither confirm nor deny his conjecture. “They don’t care shit about anything but spying on the Chinese, the Russians, and the towelheads. You know they got a radar on Roi-Namur so big it can track a wrench floating away from the space shuttle?”
“Yes, I know!” Cooper says—because, by God, he’s going to be among them shortly, the most elite group of civilian programmers and engineers in the world.
“Helene found the meteor yesterday when she was collecting ni,” Harold-the-mayor continues. He looks with pride to small stout woman with a streak of gray at her right temple.
Helene smiles all around, then says quietly, “I thought it was a egg.”
The others laugh. “Egg!”
Cooper regards the black-brown boulder beyond the table’s end and thinks of the egg of the Roc, the house-sized bird-beast from the tale of Sinbad the sailor. Anything seems possible out here.
He struggles to his feet, wavers a moment in the tight grasp of pain, then declares: “I’ve got a fever. I’ve got an infection!” He hears his voice crack. “I’m asking for help!”
Only now does he realize how desperate he has become. The next inhabited island, with or without a doctor, could be days away. His leg has been oozing pus for two. How soon before gangrene?
The islanders stare kindly at him, nodding agreeably as if encouraging him to make a speech.
“Why don’t you lie down and we’ll see what we can do,” Thomas says. He motions for someone to clear away the empty fry platter.
“You can do something?” Cooper asks.
“I don’t know.” Thomas shrugs. “Maybe cast a spell, say a prayer, cut off your leg.”
“Not funny,” Cooper says with a croak of weariness.
“Sorry.” Thomas grins at him and Cooper sees for the first time that the man has nearly no teeth. This appalls Cooper. What doesn’t rot out here?
In the month before he set sail, he lived on his boat, moored at the Half Moon Bay marina, where anchorage was more than he liked to pay. Lillian wouldn’t see him, wouldn’t even let him in the house. So, twice a week, he drove south to see his therapist, a woman who might once have been a hippie. Though homey and hempy, she asked hard questions, which gratified Cooper because they made him feel he was getting somewhere, doing something concrete to win Lillian back and get his life in order.
Nobody’s life is in order, he has decided. Most people are simply good at hiding their private chaos. The biggest surprise of his growing older—and now, at 36, he feels he can say he is “older”—the biggest surprise is this: most people don’t really get wiser or more mature with age. Meredith, his ex-wife, is a stunningly beautiful and fucked-up example. Lillian seemed the exception.
“Still no traction?” his therapist asked. She was old enough to be his mother—Cooper liked that—but she was much tougher than his mother. And, better still, Sarah was a sailor. Her office was the front room of her houseboat.
With a sigh, Cooper dropped himself into his usual seat, the bulky leather chair near the window. “She must have been really frightened,” he said.
“Nice of you to be so understanding.” Sarah’s smile was cautionary. Sitting cross-legged on her battered sofa, she wore a bulky sweatshirt, paint-spattered jeans, and no shoes. Her toenails were painted pink.
“Oh, I understand,” said Cooper. He heard the teakettle beginning to hiss in the galley behind Sarah. “Bailey could have drowned!”
“But she didn’t.”
“You don’t sound so understanding,” he joked.
“Didn’t you say that Bailey made all of this happen? That she was a conniving little brat who manipulated her mother?”
“She’s just a kid.”
“Fifteen.” Sarah got up to fetch the tea. “Stay put,” she said when Cooper rose to help. “You’ve got three weeks before you’re supposed to set sail and Lillian’s not talking to you, so what do you think will happen?”
He glanced out the window. The boat bobbed gently on the wake of a passing cabin cruiser. A 5,000-gallon tank of diesel will take you across the Pacific. Cooper could think of nothing more boring than chugging through the chop in a boat like that. Sailing, on the other hand, was a head-spinning thrill because it was all about problem-solving, looking for wind, then making the most of what you could catch.
He had learned this as a boy. By the time he was fifteen, he owned a gorgeous little 13-foot skiff made of cedar, with a mahogany backbone and a 24-inch steel centerboard. It had cedar spars and a single sail. As he fished and crabbed in the shallow backwaters of the Chesapeake, he learned about wind and waves but it never occurred to him that he should try deeper waters. He loved the fishy stink of the tidelands, the clouded view to the sandy bottom, the buck and roll of waves as he set his