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.