A Good Story and Other Stories

One on a Desert Island

There is a perennial cartoon idea which begins, “Two men on a desert island. One of them says...” And there follows a more or less funny gag line delivered by one of the men. This situation can be potentially funny because, after all, there are two people present. But how would it be if there were only one man on that desert island?

Jim Kilbride was one man on a desert island, the largest of a group of four islands off by themselves in the middle of the Pacific, south of the major sea lanes. A mile wide by a mile and a half long, the island was mainly unshaded sand, washed by the ocean during high tide, but with two small hillocks near its center on which grew stunted trees and dark green shrubbery. On the eastern side of the island there was a small curving indentation in the beach, forming a natural cove in miniature, a pool surrounded by a half-circle of sand and a half-circle of ocean. A few birds soared among the islands, calling to one another in raucous voices. The caws of the birds and the whisper of the surf against the beach were the only sounds in the world.

Jim Kilbride happened to be on a desert island, alone, as a result of a series of half-understood desires and unexpected events. He had once been a bookkeeper, snug and safe and land-locked, working for a small textile firm in San Francisco. He had been a bookkeeper, and he had looked like a bookkeeper: short, under five foot seven; the blossomings of a paunch, although he was only twenty-eight; hair straight and black and limp; a round and receding forehead that shone beneath the office lights; round eyes behind rounder spectacles, steel-framed and sliding down his nose; a tie that hung from his neck like the frayed end of a halter; and suits that had looked much better in the department-store window, on the tall and lean and confident mannequins.

He was James Kilbride then, and he wasn’t happy. He wasn’t happy because he was a cliché and he knew it. He lived with his mother, he never went out with women, and he rarely drank intoxicants. When he read sad tales of contemporary realism, about mild and unobtrusive bookkeepers who lived with their mothers and who never went out with women, he felt ashamed and unhappy because he knew they were writing about him.

One day his mother died. This is where all the sad tales either begin or end, but for James Kilbride nothing changed. The office remained the same, and the bus took no new routes. The house was larger now, and darker and more silent, but that was all.

His mother had been well insured, and after all the expenses there was still quite a bit left over. Something from his reading, or from some conversation over lunch, something from somewhere gave him the idea and the impetus, and he surprised himself considerably one day by buying a boat. He also bought a sailing cap, and on Sunday, alone, he went sailing in the near waters of the Pacific.

But still nothing changed. The office was still bright with incandescent lights, and the bus took no new routes. He was still James Kilbride, and he still lay awake in bed at night and dreamed of women and of another, livelier happier sort of life.

The boat was a twelve-footer, with a tiny cabin. It was painted white, and he named it Doreen, the woman he had never met. And on one bright Sunday, when the ocean was bright and clean and the sky was scrubbed blue, he stood in his little boat and stared out to sea, and the thought came to him that he might go to China.

The idea grew, until it possessed him. Then it took months, months of thought, of reading, of preparation, before at last he knew one day that he was actually going to do it, that he would really go to China. He would keep a diary of the voyage, and publish it, and become famous, and meet Doreen.

He loaded the boat with canned food and water. He arranged for a leave of absence from his employer (for some reason, he couldn’t bring himself to quit completely, even though he intended never to return), and one fine Sunday he took off, smiling at the wheel, and steered the little boat out to sea.

The Coast Guard intercepted him, and brought him back. They explained a variety of rules and regulations to him, none of which he understood. On his second try they were more aggressive, and told him that a third attempt would result in a jail sentence.

The third time, he left at night and managed to slip through the net they had set for him. He thought of himself as a spy, a dark and terrible figure, fleeing ruthlessly through the muffled night from some enemy land.

By the third day out, he was lost. He paced back and forth, his sailing cap protecting him from the sun, and stared out at the trembling surface of the sea.

Ships, black silhouettes, passed far off on the horizon. Islands were mounds of mist far, far away. The near world was blue and gold, the silence broken only by the muted play of wavelets around his boat.

On the eighth day there was a storm, and this first storm he did manage to survive intact. He bailed until the boat was dry, and then he slept for almost twenty-four hours.

Three days later there was another storm, a fierce and outraged boiling of water and air that came at dusk and poured foaming masses of black water across the struggling boat. The boat was torn from him like a hat in a high wind, and he was left lashing his arms about in the water, fighting and clawing and choking in the grip of the storm.

He reached the island in the night, borne by the waves into the slight protection of the crescent cove. He crawled up the sanded beach, above the reach of the waves, and gave in to unconsciousness.

When he awoke the sun was high and the back of his neck painfully burned. He had lost his sailing cap and both his shoes. He crawled to his feet and moved inland, toward the scrubby trees, away from the burning sunlight.

He lived. He found berries, roots, plants that he could eat, and he learned how to come near the birds as they sat preening themselves on the tree branches and then stun them with hurled stones.

He was lucky, in one way, because in his pocket were waterproofed matches that he had put there before the storm hit. He built himself a small shelter from bits of branch and bark, scooped out earth to make a shallow bowl in the ground, and started a fire in it. He kept the fire going day and night; he only had eight matches.

He lived. For the first few days, the first few weeks, he kept himself occupied. He stared for hours out to sea, waiting expectantly for the rescuers he was sure would come. He prowled the small island until he knew its every’ foot of beach, its every weed and branch.

But the rescues didn’t come, and soon he knew the island as well as he had once known the route of the bus. He started drawing pictures in the sand, profiles of men and women, drawings of the birds that flew and screeched above his head, pictures of ships with smoke curling back from their stacks. He played tic-tac-toe with himself, but could never win a game.

He had neither pencil nor paper, but at last he started his book, the story of his adventures, the book that would make him more than the minor clerk he had always been. He composed it, building it slowly and exactly, polishing each word, fashioning each paragraph. He had freedom and individuality and personality at last, and he roamed his island, reciting aloud the completed passages of his book.

But it wasn’t enough, it could never be enough. Months had passed and he had never seen a ship, a plane, or any human face. He prowled the island, reciting the finished chapters of his book, but it just wasn’t enough. There was only one thing he could do to make the new life bearable, and at last he did it.

He went mad.

He did it slowly, gradually. For the first step, he postulated a Listener. No description, not even age or sex, merely a Listener. As he walked, speaking his sentences aloud, he made believe that someone walked beside him on his right, listening to him, smiling and nodding and applauding the excellence of his composition, pleased by Jim Kilbride, no longer the petty clerk.

He came almost to believe that the Listener really existed. At times he would come to a stop and turn to his right, meaning to explain a point he thought might be obscure, and for just a second he would be shocked to find that no one was there. But then he would remember, and laugh at his foolishness, and walk on, continuing to speak.

Slowly the Listener took on dimension. Slowly it became a woman, and then a young woman, who listened attentively and appreciatively to what he had to say. She still had no appearance, no particular hair color, shape of face, no voice, but he did give her a name. Doreen. Doreen Palmer, the woman he had never met, had always wanted to meet.

She grew more rapidly, once begun. He realized one day that she had honey-colored hair, rather long, and that it waved back gracefully from her head when the breeze blew across the island from the sea. It came to him that she had blue eyes, round and intelligent and possessing great depths, deeper even than the ocean. He understood that she was four inches shorter than he, five foot three, and that she had a sensuous but not overly voluptuous body and dressed in a white gown and green sandals. He knew that she was in love with him, because he was brave and strong and interesting.

But he still wasn’t completely mad, not yet. Not until the day he first heard her voice.

It was a beautiful voice, clear and full and caressing. He had said, “A man alone is only half a man,” and she replied, “You aren’t alone.”

In the first honeymoon of his insanity, life was buoyant and sweet. Over and over he recited the completed chapters of his book to her, and from time to time she would interrupt to tell him how fine it was, to raise her head and kiss him, with her honey-colored hair falling about her shoulders, to squeeze his hand and tell him that she loved him. They never talked about his life before he had come to the island, the incandescent office and the ruled and rigid ledgers.

They walked together, and he showed her the island, every grain of sand, every branch of every tree, and how he kept the fire going because he only had the eight matches. And when the infrequent storms came, whipping the island in their insensate rages, she huddled close to him in the lean-to he had built, her blond hair soft against his cheek, her breath warm against his neck, and they would wait out the storm together, their arms clasped tightly around each other, their eyes staring at the glittering fire, hoping and hoping that it wouldn’t be blown out.

Twice it was, and he had to use precious matches to start it going again. But they reassured each other both times, saying that next time the fire would be more fully protected and would not go out.

One day, as he was talking to her, reciting the last chapter he had so far finished of the book, she said, “You haven’t written any more in a long while. Not since I first came here.”

He stopped, his train of thought broken, and realized that what she had said was true. He told her, “I will start the next chapter today.”

“I love you,” she answered.

But he couldn’t seem to get the next chapter started. He didn’t want to start another chapter, really. What he wanted to do was recite for her the chapters he had already completed.

She insisted that he start a new chapter, and for the first time since she had come to join him he left her. He walked away, to the other end of the island, and sat there staring out at the ocean.

She came to him after a while and begged his forgiveness. She pleaded with him to recite the earlier chapters of the book once more, and finally he took her in his arms and forgave her.

But she brought the subject up again, and then again, and yet again, each time more sternly, until finally one day he snapped at her, “Don’t nag me!” and she burst into tears.

They were getting on each other’s nerves, he realized that, and he slowly came also to realize that Doreen was behaving more and more like his mother, the only woman he had ever really known. She was possessive, as his mother had been, never letting him alone for a minute, never letting him go off by himself so he could think in peace. And she was demanding, as his mother had been, insisting that he show ambition, that he return to work on the book. He almost felt she wanted him to be just a clerk again.

They argued violently, and one day he slapped her, as he had never dared to do to his mother. She looked shocked, and then she wept, and he apologized, kissing her hands, kissing her cheek where the red mark of his hand stood out like fire against her skin, running his fingers through the softness of her hair, and she told him, in a subdued voice, that she forgave him.

But things were never again the same between them. She became more and more shrewish, more and more demanding, more and more like his mother. She had even started to look something like his mother, a much younger version of his mother, particularly around the eyes, which had grown harder and less blue, and in the voice, which was higher now and more harsh.

He began to brood, to be secretive, to keep his thoughts to himself and not speak to her for hours at a time. And when she would interrupt his thoughts, either to touch his hand gently as she had used to do or — more often now — to complain that he wasn’t doing any work on his book, he would think of her as an interloper, an invader, a stranger. Bitterly he would snap at her to leave him alone, stay away from him, leave him in peace. But she would never leave.

He wasn’t sure when the thought of murder first came into his mind, but once there it stayed. He tried to ignore it, tried to tell himself he wasn’t the type of person who committed murder, he was a bookkeeper, small and mild and silent, a calm and passive man.

But he wasn’t that at all, any more. He was an adventurer now, a roamer of the sea, a dweller in the middle of the Pacific, tanned and husky, envied by all the poor and pathetic bookkeepers in all the incandescent offices in the world. And he was, he knew, quite capable of murder.

Day and night he thought about it, sitting before the tiny fire, staring into its Games and thinking about the death of Doreen, while she, not knowing his thoughts, not knowing how dangerous her actions were, continued to nag him, continued to demand that he work on the book. She took to watching the fire, snapping at him to bring more bark, more wood, not to let the fire go out as he had done the last two times, and he raged at the unfairness of the charge. The storms had put the fire out, not he. But, she answered, the storm wouldn’t have put the fire out had he paid it the proper attention.

At last he could stand it no longer. In their earlier and happier days they had often gone swimming together, staying near shore for fear of sharks and other dangerous animals that might be out in the deeper water. They hadn’t swum together for a long time now, but one day casually and cunningly, he suggested they take up the practice again.

She agreed at once, and they stripped together and ran into the water, laughing and splashing one another as though they were still lovers and still delighted with one another. He ducked her, as he had done in the old days and she came up laughing and sputtering. He ducked her again, and this time he held her under.

She fought him, but he felt the new muscles in his arms grow taut, and he held her in a terrible grip, keeping her under till her struggles grew feebler and feebler, until finally they subsided. Then he released her, and watched the ebb and flow of the waves carry her body out to sea, the honey-blond hair swaying in the water, the blue eyes closed, the soft body lying limp in the water. He stumbled back to the beach, shaken and exhausted, and collapsed on the sand.

Now he was alone. Truly alone.

By the next day he was already feeling the first touches of remorse. Her voice came back to him, and her face, and he remembered the happiness of their early days together. He picked over the broken bones of all their arguments, and now he could see so clearly the times when he too had been in the wrong. He thought back and he could see now that he had treated her unfairly, that he had always thought only of himself. She had wanted him to finish the book not for her sake but for his. He had been short-tempered and brutal, and it had been his fault that the arguments had grown, that they had come to detest each other so much.

He thought about how readily and how happily she had agreed to go swimming with him, and he knew that she had taken it as a sign of their reconciliation.

As these thoughts came to him, he felt horrible anguish and remorse. She had been the only woman who had ever returned his love, who had ever seen more in him than a little man stooped over ledgers in a hushed office, and he had destroyed her.

He whispered her name, but she was gone, she was dead, and he had killed her. He sprawled on the sand and wept.

In the following weeks, although he still missed her terribly, he did grow resigned to the loss. He felt that something dramatic and of massive import had moved through his life, changing him forever. His conscience pained him for the murder he had committed, but it was a sweet pain.

Five months later he was rescued. A small boat came to the island from a bulging gray steamer, and the sailors helped him as he climbed clumsily aboard. They brought him to the steamer, and helped him up the Jacob’s ladder to the deck, and fed him, and gave him a place to sleep, and when he was refreshed they brought him before the captain.

The captain, a small gray man in faded clothing, motioned to him to sit down in the chair near his desk. He said, “How long were you on the island?”

“I don’t know.”

“You were alone?” asked the captain gently. “All the time?”

“No,” he said. “There was a woman with me. Doreen Palmer.”

The captain was surprised. “Where is she?”

“She’s dead.” All at once he started to weep, and the whole story came out. “We fought, we got on each other’s nerves, and I murdered her. I drowned her and her body was washed out to sea.”

The captain stared at him, not knowing what to do or say, and finally decided to do nothing but simply to turn the rescued man over to the authorities when they reached Seattle.

The Seattle police listened first to the captain’s statement, and then they talked to Jim Kilbride. He admitted the murder at once, saying that his conscience had troubled him ever since. He spoke logically and sensibly, answering all their questions, filling in the details of his life on the island and the crime he had committed, and it never occurred to anyone that he might be mad. A stenographer typed his confession and he signed it.

Old office friends visited him in jail, and looked at him with new interest. They had never known him, not really. He smiled and accepted their awe.

He was given a fair trial, with court-appointed counsel, and was found guilty of first-degree murder. He was calm and dignified throughout the trial, and no one could believe that he had once been an insignificant clerk. He was sentenced to die in the gas chamber and was duly executed.