Brother and Girl rounded up driftwood while Father figured out which parts of their dinner were salvageable. The rocky beach was sandless, and the gray and brown pebbles hurt even through her boots. Girl found bleached wood branches the size of her forearm and gathered as many as she could carry. The grain of sea-worn driftwood was moiré taffeta beneath her fingers and she knew it would burn with a pale yellow flame. Father lay prone and motionless on the beach, his face inches from the burning tinder, his mustache and beard powdered with ashes. Girl started to run, chanting please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead over and over in her head. As Girl approached, he sat back on his haunches and fed driftwood into the fire, each piece gradually larger than the last. He had been coaxing flame from the tiny sparks with his breath. His patience meant he only ever needed one match from the Ziploc bag he kept in the breast pocket of his red-and-black flannel shirt, a skill he was inordinately proud of. Girl didn’t let herself think about what would happen to her and Brother out here all alone if something happened to Father. Girl dropped her firewood next to him, and they were given permission to go play.
Brother and Girl scurried above the high-tide mark, exploring the island. They found a small grove of tiny evergreen trees, each only a foot high. Nearby was a stream widening to a small pool before it emptied into the ocean. They followed the stream inland, spawning salmon thick enough in the river to walk across. The fish were fighting their way upstream, missing scales and bits of flesh. The water here was so shallow that their slimy silver backs were out of the river, their top fins wriggling as they fought futilely to return to the place of their birth. The stream, salmon, and submerged rocks were all shining wet mercurial gray and indistinguishable from each other. It looked like the channel was boiling.
They ran back to the campfire, racing each other on their dirty-kneed, scrawny legs. Brother won. The extra year and extra few inches of leg he had on Girl always gave him the advantage. Girl dropped onto the driftwood log, breathing hard. Father was tending the fire in his bright red-and-blue-striped bikini underwear, his pants hanging off a branch to dry by the fire. His underwear never had a fly in front, like Brother’s, and he always split the seam up the seat, leaving a gaping hole in line with his crack. He said it was because his farts were too big, but even Girl could see the fabric was straining to contain him—his pubic hair pouffed out the top.
“Father, there’s a pool deep enough to swim in!” Girl said, before Brother could get a word in edgewise. “Maybe tomorrow I can bring shampoo down and wash my hair.”
“And all these little trees. Like only this high.” Brother bent over and held his hand about a foot off the ground. “Tons of ’em, like a nursery. Do you think someone planted them?”
“You’ll have to show me the trees after dinner. Do you want to hear a limerick?” Father said to Brother, ignoring Girl completely. Brother stood up, his cutoff shorts high above his knees, and poked the fire with a stick. Girl was afraid of fire and never felt the urge to stir the flames. Father had the pot nestled in the coals with the lid on tight. He put the grill over the flames and laid the chicken on it to cook. He worked squatting on his haunches, each movement done with a conservation of energy. Watching him do anything—cook, sail, build boats, sew up wounds—was like watching a symphony played by a one-man band. He made everything look effortless. They never had stepmothers or friends accompany them on the boat, and it was the place where the tension left Father’s face and his voice lost that impatient growl that was always simmering in the conversations of parents. Father loved jokes and limericks, and here there was no wife or girlfriend to groan about his perverted sense of humor.
“Nymphomaniacal Jill,” Father began.
“What’s nymphomaniacal mean?” Brother interrupted.
“A person who loves sex and can never get enough of it.”
“Okay, go on,” Brother said. Girl wondered if Father was a nymphomaniac, and how that was different from a pervert, her mom and sister’s word for him. Girl wondered if it was inherited, but she didn’t want to think about it too hard or ask questions.
“Nymphomaniacal Jill, tried dynamite for a thrill. They found her vagina in North Carolina and bits of her tits in Brazil!” They all howled with laughter. Girl knew Father wasn’t supposed to tell the children dirty jokes, and it gave her a squirmy feeling, like she had a heap of worms in her stomach, when he said vagina. Girl didn’t like to think of a woman so horny—Brother’s favorite word—that she’d have sex with a hard stick of dynamite, and the limerick put a nasty image in her head that Girl couldn’t get rid of. She wasn’t menstruating yet, but Girl knew the words “bits of tits” described her body pretty well. Girl wondered about the nympho part of it—was Father nymphomaniacal? He was certainly obsessed with sex. Was Girl? To hell with that, Girl thought.
When Girl was eight she had asked Father what a blowjob was, in order to understand why everyone was laughing at a joke about African cannibal women. “It’s when
