Washed Ashore 1

You’ve all heard the joke about the shipwrecked man and his dog, right? If not, here’s the quick version: A man and his dog are shipwrecked on a tropical island. Over time, although they manage to survive, the man gets more and more horny. One day, he sees a herd of sheep, which puts the thought in his head that maybe he could have sex with one of the sheep. But every time he tries to approach the sheep, his dog barks and scares them off. Then one day, a beautiful woman washes ashore, and the man revives her. She looks up and him and asks him if there’s anything she can do to repay him. He replies, “Yeah, could you watch my dog for an hour.”

Now suppose it wasn’t just a joke…
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Sam was barking again. When we’d first washed up on the beach a month ago, I used to get nervous whenever he’d bark, but now it just annoyed me. “Shut up dammit!” I yelled into the darkness and tried to go back to sleep. But Sam wouldn’t stop barking, so I finally opened my eyes to see the sun peeking over the top of the waves to the east. Dawn on a desert island. How nice.

It may sound terribly romantic and adventurous, but I assure you it isn’t. I had no real desire to explore, even though I could tell the island was a large one. Any effort just made me hungry, and since breadfruit and coconuts are a poor substitute for meat, I tried not to exert myself unless I had to. Sam was insatiable, but he could catch his own food, and he never seemed to go hungry.

I shook myself awake and looked around for him. His barking was coming from farther off than I’d first thought; I couldn’t see him anywhere. I shrugged and went to my calendar tree, where I put another notch in the bark. Looking at the number of notches always made me depressed, but I did it every morning. Then I trudged off in search of Sam, because while his barking was annoying, he was my best friend and I didn’t want anything to happen to him.

I found him a hundred yards from our camp standing in the center of a grassy field in the outskirts of the forest.