Burt Peel needed to build a raft, but he could not hold the wood. He was a rotten banana with legs, and rot had won. He stood at a heap of driftwood streaked with mushy patches of himself. His last raft was gone. A wave took it while he fought with a beer cap on the beach. He had watched it float off and done nothing. Now the only way off this island was a new raft, and his own hands were the problem. He reached for a long plank. His fingers pressed into it and kept going. The wood slid free and thumped back on the pile. Yellow-brown mush stuck to the bark where he had gripped. "Great," Burt said. "I'm the glue and the mess." He tried again. He hugged a board against his chest and stepped back. The plank slipped through his soft arms and landed on his foot. He barely felt it. That was the worst part. The island had made him soft, and soft could not carry a single log, let alone a raft. Burt slumped against the rotting beach house. Bottles lay scattered by the door. A dirty life preserver hung above him, useless. His own beer bottle sat in his hand, cap still on, still sealed after all this time. He pressed it to the plank just to rest his arm. The glass held. His mush did not push through it. He looked at the bottle, then at the wood, and an idea moved through him slow as sap. He hunted the beach house for anything hard. He found a crumpled cigarette pack near the door, half its smokes gone. He shook out the last ones and pressed the stiff cardboard flat against his palm. Now the wood met paper, not banana. He gripped a plank through the pack. It held. The board did not slip. Burt lifted it clear of the pile and set it down where he wanted it. His hands stayed soft, but the barrier did the holding. He worked one board at a time. Cardboard for small planks. The bottle wedged as a lever for the big ones. Sweat he did not have. Mush he had plenty of. By the time the sun dropped, he had dragged six long planks into a rough line on the sand. Burt stood over them and breathed. Six planks was not a raft. But it was six more than this morning. He had beaten his own rotten hands. He nudged the planks with his foot. They rocked. Loose. Nothing tied them, nothing joined them. Wood alone would not float him anywhere. He needed rope, or something to bind the boards before the next wave came for these too. "Course," Burt muttered. He looked at the pile, then the empty shore. "Solve one thing. Buy yourself a worse one."

The planks lay in a crooked row where Burt had dragged them. Morning light showed him the water. The tide had crept up the sand overnight, and the wet line sat close to his first board now. He remembered the last wave. He remembered doing nothing while his raft floated off. Burt set his jaw. "Not twice," he said. "Not this time." He checked the slope. The planks sat low, right in the water's reach. Higher up the beach ran a long ridge of packed sand, smoothed into a low wall. Behind it the ground stayed dry. If he hauled the planks past that ridge, the tide could not touch them. Burt looked at the gap between the boards and the ridge. Thirty steps, maybe. Thirty steps his soft hands could not grip a single plank to cross. He wedged the beer bottle under a plank and pried. The board rose, then slid off the glass and dropped. Water licked the end of it now. Burt tried the cardboard next, hugging a plank through the flattened pack. It held three steps, then tore. The plank thumped down. Foam rolled over his feet. He had minutes, not hours. Then he saw it, half buried near the ridge. A coil of rope, twisted from coconut hairs, fine wires bristling off every strand. Flies lifted off it when he came close. Three of them, fat and glossy, red and pink and blue eyes shining. They buzzed around his head and settled on his soft shoulder. He ignored the bites he could not feel. Burt grabbed the rope through his cardboard. The coconut fibers held where glass and paper had failed. He looped one end around a plank and knotted it tight. Now he could drag the board without touching it. He leaned his whole soft weight back and pulled. The plank slid across the wet sand, over the ridge, onto dry ground. He worked fast. Loop, knot, drag. One plank after another, up and over the sand wall. The water chased each one but came up short against the ridge. Sweat he did not have. The flies rode along, buzzing, biting nothing that mattered. By the time the tide reached the spot where the planks had been, there was nothing left to take. Burt leaned on the ridge and looked at his boards. Six planks, safe and dry. And in his hands, the rope. The same rope he needed to tie them into a raft. He turned a plank over. Soft banana mush smeared the wood where he had gripped it, yellow drips frozen down the rough grain. Burt looked closer and his stomach sank. The coconut fibers were short lengths, twisted loose. Good enough to drag a plank once. Not nearly long enough, or strong enough, to bind six boards against the sea. "Figures," Burt said. "Saved the wood. Found the rope. Rope's junk." He flicked a fly off his ear and stared at the coil. He needed more.