The Isle of Late Fees

One hundred and sixty-two days, that was how long the old man had been stranded on the island. One hundred and seventeen days, that was how overdue his books were. He had to work the weight of those three hard covers into the buoyancy of his makeshift raft, which he had assembled meticulously over the course of months. His hair had grown long and unkempt, and his once pale skin had turned the texture of a leather-bound journal while his nails had become long enough to use as bookmarks. 

               It was one thing to build a craft that could carry him back to the mainland, some four or five days paddling away. It was another thing entirely to build a craft that could safely transport his copies of War and Peace, Infinite Jest, and The Living Rasputin. It would have to keep the books high above the water without becoming so top-heavy as to be his undoing. The three books, all of which he had read dozens of times since capsizing on a nearby reef, had become his anchor. 

               A steady diet of speared fish had sustained him, along with the fatty pulp of fallen coconuts that he ate in spite of the wicked and swift bowel movements they incited. Proficient as he’d become with spearfishing, he longed for the comfort of fast food and sugary beverages back home.

He had, by his calculation, about $1,342 worth of late fees. This number was, to his dismay, about $1,200 more than he had to his name back in the mainland. He imagined getting some kind of reward though, some kind of congratulations for him making it back alive. He imagined fame would bring him some level of funding so that he could make the payments and still have enough for a Whopper afterward, at least.

 On that day, which was to be his last day on the island, the sand was as hot as the surface of the sun. His feet, long calloused and acclimated, felt the heat for one last time before stepping into the cool water and pushing the top-heavy, clumsy, lopsided craft in front of him. The books were perched some four or five feet above the water on a large tower that he had built to shield them from the water below. A small roof covered them in the event of rain, but offered him no protection at all. 

The first wave struck him before he’d even managed to make it out past the reef that had capsized his original craft, knocking him off balance in his old age and weakened state. The raft, whose surface area was akin to that of a large SUV, leapt into the air, jumping off of the wave before splashing back down in the trough of another that approached. Another wave came, sending the front end of the raft even higher into the air than the one before. The man had time to braced for the impact, clutching some of the rope that he had braided out of the fibers of palm trees, feeling it bite into his hands, already sodden and soft from the water. 

He made it just beyond the reef before the waves finally knocked him off of his vessel and bashed him against the corral a few times to discipline him. He crawled over the sharp, vegetative mass, and swam back to the shore, leaving a red plume of blood along the way and wondering the entire time if he wouldn’t simply get scooped up by some giant shark. The hot sands bit into his hands and feet as he crawled across the shore and collapsed underneath the crude shelter that he’d called home for so long. He sat down, watching as his raft drifted further and further into the distance until it was no longer visible at all.

He wondered if he might have made it if not for having accommodated the heavy books. He wondered what his wife would think, if she would ever find out that he’d sacrificed his own life, the remainder of their time together, to save a few bucks. It was, of course, more than a few bucks to him. It was, as he would often mumble to himself, the principle of the matter. The idea of returning something that you had borrowed from a benevolent source, just as the air he breathed and the food he ate, it was his only to return. 

It was some weeks later when he discovered, while fishing, a bottle floating on top of the water. As it bobbed up and down, he rushed out to the waist-deep water, dropping his spear in the frenzy. He picked it up and, with what remained of his teeth, pulled the cork out. The note inside proved difficult to retrieve, and when he finally did manage to get it to fall out, it landed atop the hot sands of the shore and threatened to catch fire before he swiftly snatched it up. 

He unrolled it with his damp hands, watching as the words slowly appeared before him, struggling to remember how to read the idiosyncratic and confused lines of personal handwriting. The note read:

We have received your copies of Infinite Jest, The Living Rasputin, and War and Peace. Given the strange circumstances of their arrival, we are under the impression that you are, to some extent, indisposed. As such, we have decided NOT to proceed in charging you any of your late fees for the returned materials, and instead send best wishes. Thank you for getting them back to us, and we hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Happy reading!

The old man folded the note neatly into a conch shell, wiped the sweat from his brow, and gave an exasperated sigh of relief. He rest beneath the tree, watching the tide roll in as the day turned to grim dusk and felt the cool night fall over his body. He felt the warmth of the sand, the coolness of the air, the infinity of both the ocean and the night sky. He felt all of those things, and it send his mind back to home, to the little warm house that he lived in and his wonderful wife, and then he began to wonder if he’d left the oven on.