Chapter 6

The guy in the dugout wasn"t the only one laughing. A couple of gulls blasted ear-piercing shrieks of the kind of laughter I hadn"t heard since the time I stumbled into one of my mother"s wine-soaked book club meetings. From the way the chunky seabirds circled above the dugout, they recognized him as somebody they associated with food.

A local fisherman? In a dugout? How big of a haul could you carry home?

I was already concerned that it might not hold two men if Noah and I needed to grab it for a quick getaway.

Yet, from our visitor"s point of view, a dugout might be the most practical option for the present situation. It didn"t need a marina or even an anchor. It glided right up onto the beach.

In the interest of making a good first impression, he tried to swallow his laughter as he landed steps away from us. But his smile was still pretty ear-to-ear.

Noah and I tried to smile back.

Like us, he was barefoot. Unlike us, he was beach-ready in loose boardshorts. They were the color of faded denim but cut from a modern quick-dry swimwear fabric—the first evidence we"d seen that this guy came from our century.

Not a fisherman, though. We were close enough now to see there were no fishing poles or crab traps in his boat. Nothing except a bulging backpack. Like his shorts, it was faded but made of modern technical materials.

Lightweight, I thought. Easy to hump up a mountain.

Our delivery guy. Had to be. Well, we"d been due—out of OJ and getting low on everything else.

He"s here to help the guests. That"s got to be a good thing. Right?

"Hey," I said.

He smiled and nodded.

"English," I said. "You speak English?"

He smiled and nodded some more. I didn"t read that as a yes—and neither did Noah to judge from the worried look on his face.

The guy was just a guy being all friendly and pleasant. Maybe he worked for tips.

"We"re trapped here," I said slowly and carefully. "We want to go home. You understand? Home?" I pointed out to the horizon. "America. We"re from America."

Still smiling, he cheerfully sighted down the line of my finger. His smile wobbled and his eyes narrowed as he tried to figure out what I might be pointing at. After a beat or two, he shrugged.

Excuse me for being one of those guys who thinks America is the center of the world, but come on. Who didn"t understand the word, "America?"

Same guy who doesn"t understand the word, "English."

One of the gulls circling overhead was tired of waiting. It darted at the back of the straw hat. Unperturbed, the man under the hat unzipped one of the backpack"s outer pockets.

The gull knew what that meant. With a shriek of victory, it circled around for the next approach.

The man pulled out something that looked like a sweet roll. Pinching off pieces, he began to toss them one by one into the air. As he kept tossing, one gull became two became many.

Since they all liked to shriek at each other as they scrabbled for an unfair share of the goodies, conversation became impossible.

Great. A stupid bird was better at communicating than me.

On the other hand, the gull knew the guy. He must make regular deliveries to the island, and he"d been identified in the gull community as a soft touch.

I, by contrast, didn"t even know where the fuck I was.

As I pondered this discouraging fact, the gulls gobbled his last crumb and then flapped off ungratefully in search of the fish course. The man waved. One hopeful gull circled back one last time, figured out the trick, and shrieked a final curse before disappearing.

"A guy"s pretty desperate when he has to exercise his sense of humor on a flock of gulls," I said. "You get the idea the idea he"s more isolated than your average bear?"

"I think we took him by surprise. He expected to have to hike the pack up to the house." Noah nodded at where the stranger had dropped the backpack on the beach. "Let me try. I think I can communicate with him."

I had my doubts you could surprise anyone so hard they"d forget basic words like, "English," and "America." But what did we have to lose by trying?

"Go for it." I gave him one last secret squeeze to the hip before I let go.

Noah"s toga shifted dangerously as he moved forward. I really shouldn"t have grabbed and tugged at him quite so much. Too late to worry about it now.

Still smiling, the man turned back to us.

"Hey," Noah said. "I"m not sure you got what my friend is saying, but we"re stuck here. We need to leave. SOS."

He spoke even more slowly than I had. But he was using too many words.

"SOS," Noah repeated. "You understand SOS?"

The man made a humorous gesture at his worn and faded boardshorts. Then another gesture at the two of us. Our togas entertained him. He understood that much. Or thought he did.

What did he think this was? Weird rich tourist kinks beyond a simple country boy"s understanding?

We were pretty obviously too far out to sea to be the victims of a fraternity prank.

Or were we?

Maybe Tom Hanks"s primitive raft could sail the storm-tossed seven seas, but I found it hard to believe a dugout could serve as long-distance transoceanic transport. You couldn"t carry enough supplies for one thing. There wasn"t enough sun or storm protection for another.

Had to be another island somewhere. Maybe an entire archipelago. And there were people on it.

If we could only make this guy understand.

Noah was now trying to talk to the guy in Spanish. That was working out about as well as the English.

The man, cheerful as ever—confident we were vacationers with an odd sense of humor—couldn"t resist a tiny tug to Noah"s slipsliding toga.

It was a tug too far.

The various inexpertly tied knots gave up the ghost. The toga sheet—pillowcase and all—tumbled to the sand.