"What do you mean?"

"Like hamburger? Or chicken?"

"Don't need it. Not with this meal."

"What is this meal?" Micah asked.

"Beans on toast," he said, his voice ringing with pride. "Your mom never made this for you, did she?"

We glanced at each other, then shook our heads.

My dad reached for the bowl. "Who's going to be first?"

Neither Micah nor I moved a muscle. Dana finally cleared her throat.

"I will, Daddy."

He beamed. Placing a piece of toast on her plate, he started to scoop from the bowl. It was thick and hard, and my dad had to really work the spoon. The smell only got worse as he began to penetrate the substance. I saw my dad's nose wrinkle.

"Like I said, I might have burned it a little," he said. "But it should be fine. Enjoy." "Are you going to eat some, Daddy?" Dana asked.

"No, you three go ahead. I'll just watch. You guys are still growing and need the energy.

Micah?"

My dad dug into the bowl again, grimacing as he worked at the beans, as if he were trying to scoop frozen ice cream.

"No thanks. I'm supposed to be eating at Mark's tonight. I don't want to spoil my appetite."

"You didn't mention that before."

"I guess I forgot. But really, I should be getting ready. I was supposed to be there ten minutes ago."

He quickly rose from the table and vanished.

"Okay. How about you, Nick?"

"Yeah, okay," I said, raising my plate. I placed a piece of toast on it; the gravy-burned-bean- substance dropped like a baseball onto my plate, nearly rolling off and hitting the table.

"Just spread it out a little," my dad suggested. "It's better that way."

My sister and I began to poke at the dinner-trying to spread it, but getting nowhere-terrified at the thought of actually consuming it. But just when we knew we couldn't postpone it any longer, my mom walked in the door.

"Hey guys! How are you? It's great to see you-" She stopped and wrinkled her nose. "What on earth is that stench?"

"It's dinner," my dad said. "Come on. We're waiting for you."

She moved to the table, took one look at the food, and said, "Kids, bring those plates to the sink."

"But ..." my dad said "No buts. I'll make spaghetti. You kids want spaghetti instead?"

We nodded eagerly, and quickly rose from the table.

"Okay. Just get the groceries from my baskets. I'll get it going in a few minutes."

For whatever reason, my dad wasn't all that upset. In fact, I think it had been his plan all along, for after that night, he was prohibited from cooking for us. And whenever my mom complained about his failure to assume more domestic responsibility, he could honestly say, "I tried. But you won't let me."

Food in general became a strange sort of obsession in our home. Because we couldn't afford the same sort of treats that other kids seemed to get-cookies, Twinkies, Ho Hos, etc.-we developed a binge mentality when the opportunity presented itself. If we were visiting someone's house for instance, we'd devour whatever we could, eating until we felt like we would burst. It was nothing for us to consume thirty or forty Oreos in a sitting. At times, we'd leave our friends in their rooms, sneak back to the friend's kitchen, raid the pantry, and eat even more.

It was the same way whenever my mom was crazy enough to buy anything sweet. Cereal, for instance. As a rule, we had only Cheerios in the house. If she happened to buy Froot Loops or Trix on a whim, we'd eat the whole box, right away. We simply couldn't fathom saving any for the following morning. Our thinking went, If I don't eat it now, the other kids will, and I deserve my fair share. We'd eat until we were sick to our stomachs. Once, after consuming five large bowls each of Froot Loops in less than half an hour, Micah and I sat beside each other on the couch, bellies bloated.

"I think there might be enough for one last bowl," Micah said.

"I know. I was just thinking about that."

"Should we leave it for Dana?"

"No. Definitely not. She ate the last bowl last time."

"That's what I was thinking. But I'm so full. I can't eat another bite."

We tried to get comfortable as we shifted around. Finally, Micah turned to me.

"Want to split it? Go half and half?"

"Okay." My dad, too, had a sweet tooth. He always kept a stash of Oreos in the house, but knowing us, he would hide them in his office.

This led us to ransack his office in search of them. Usually, we'd find them after a few minutes, and we'd each sneak one or two, so that he wouldn't notice any were missing. We'd then go back a second and third time, always rearranging the remaining Oreos in the hope that the pack would look as if it hadn't been disturbed. By the time my dad got home from work, there'd only be a couple of broken cookies left.

Holding the mostly empty bag in front of him, he'd eye the crumbs, his eyes bulging.

"Vultures! My kids are G-D-N vultures!" he'd scream, and we'd hear him searching for his keys. Once he found them, he'd get in the car and drive to the store to buy another pack of Oreos. From his office, he'd give us the evil eye all night.

The next day, the search for the bag of cookies would begin again. And once we found them, we'd eat them compulsively, until only one or two broken cookies were left.

"Vultures!" we'd hear him scream. "You're all a bunch of G-D-N VULTURES!"

Chapter 10

Rarotonga, Cook Islands

January 31

On our final morning on Easter Island, we rose early for breakfast and finished just as the sun was rising.

Early mornings had become typical on our trip. Usually, breakfast began at 6:30, and we'd assemble in the lobby before 8:00 to start visits to the sites. It took hours to move our group anywhere; with nearly ninety people and two hundred bags of luggage, we were more like a slow-moving caravan than a quick-strike task force. Departure time for the plane was usually around 10:00 A.M.; by that time, we'd usually been up for five hours with little to show for it.

These early mornings, late dinners, long days at the sites, and extensive travel in the previous seven days had added up; by the end of our time on Easter Island, most everyone looked tired.

Yet we were only a third of the way through the trip.

The flight to Rarotonga, the main island in the cluster of South Pacific Islands known as the Cook Islands, was seven hours; we made up some of those hours on the way west, and arrived in the early afternoon. No tours were scheduled; instead, we'd be on our own for the rest of the day and would depart for Australia in the morning. We were stopping on Rarotonga to break up the fourteen-hour flight between Easter Island and Ayers Rock.

Rarotonga was steamy when we stepped off the plane, and far warmer than Easter Island had been. It was a typical island day; blue skies crowded with dense puffy clouds that portended late afternoon showers, high humidity, and a light, constant breeze. The island itself was beautiful; the main road circled the island, and the central peaks were shrouded in clouds and thick with island vegetation. Like Easter Island, it had been originally settled by Polynesians, but was probably most famous because of Captain Bligh and the mutineers of the Bounty, who were marooned on the islands in the late eighteenth century.

When we arrived at the hotel, the group dispersed. Some went to lunch, others retreated to nap in their rooms. Still others went to sit on the beach or by the pool; a few decided to go snorkeling. Micah and I decided to rent scooters to explore the island.

The island was roughly twenty-five miles in circumference, and, as in England, the vehicles traveled on the opposite side of the road than they did in the States. Though it took some getting used to, the roads weren't crowded, and we zipped along, stopping here and there for pictures.

Palm trees stretched as far as the eye could see, and we wondered if Easter Island had once looked this way. The thought saddened us. While Easter Island had been austere and lovely in its own way, the difference between the islands was staggering.

The Cook Islands are noted for black pearls, and both Micah and I stopped to buy some for our wives. In the past week, Micah had talked to Christine twice, and I'd talked to Cat four times.

None of our conversations had lasted more than a few minutes. Their lives were more hectic than usual, but their routines the same; it amazed us to think of all the places we'd been since we'd last seen them.

There is something refreshing about riding with the wind in your face, and as we circled the island my mind wandered. Part of it was that Micah and I were on our own and without a schedule. I thought about our childhood; the places we'd lived and the things we'd done. I tried to imagine what my kids were doing, and pictured the way Cathy looked as she stood in front of the mirror in the morning.

Best of all, I never thought about work as I rode, even for an instant. For the first time in years, I finally began to feel as if I were on vacation.

Micah and I grabbed some bottled water, and stopped at one of the public beaches on the far side of the island. The beaches were coral-strewn, and the waves just beyond the reef rose high before crashing against them. Micah and I were the only ones there, and from the beach we couldn't see any houses. With the exception of the faint sound of passing traffic on the road behind us, it would have been easy to believe we were the only ones on the island.

For a long time, we simply sat and watched the waves. The ocean was the color of faded turquoise, and even from our vantage point, it was possible to see through the water to the seafloor. Schools of brightly colored fish swam past us, our eyes traveling with them. Many of the South Pacific islands have their own native species; some fish found in Hawaii or Fiji can only be found there, and I wondered if I was seeing a species I would never see again.

"Now this," Micah said, "is the reason we came to Rarotonga. Beautiful beach, beautiful weather, all by ourselves. Can it get any better?"

"It's not exactly like our vacation to the Grand Canyon, is it?"

He grinned. "That was some trip, wasn't it?"

"It was great," I said.

"It was awful," he corrected. "You're just too young to remember it the way I do. By the end, we'd driven dad almost crazy. He'd drive all day, see a sight, and then we'd camp out in the Volkswagen at night because we couldn't afford hotels. And don't you remember we didn't have air-conditioning? Here we were driving through the desert in the middle of summer, sun glaring through the windows and cooking us inside. We roasted day and night, and complained all day.

And we wrestled until we were slippery with sweat, screaming the whole time. Dad was pretty grouchy."

"Our dad?" I feigned disbelief. "Mr. DEFCON? You must be thinking of someone else."

He laughed. "I think we remember those moments about dad so clearly because he was such a quiet guy. I barely even knew he was around half the time, and then all of a sudden, BOOM. Our dad isn't dad-suddenly he's this super-scary guy."

"Do you remember when he brought us to the movie Alien on opening night because he heard it was the scariest movie ever made? Or when we watched Salem's Lot on television? What were we? Eleven or so?"

"Something like that."

"Would you let Alli see movies like that? I mean, in a couple of years?"

Alli, his stepdaughter, was ten years old.

"There's not a chance. Christine would kill me. She won't even let me bring scary videos into the house."

"Cathy's the same way." I sighed. "Did I ever tell you that I rented Silver Bullet for Miles?"

"No. What's that?"

"It's this movie about werewolves. Stephen King wrote the story it was based on, and I figured that Miles might want to watch it with me. It's what our dad used to do, right? So I let him watch it."

"And?"

"He had nightmares for months. Cathy was absolutely livid-I got glares you can't even imagine, and she still brings it up whenever I offer to bring Miles to a movie. 'He better not get nightmares,' she warns. 'And if he does, you're the one who's going to have to sit up with him all night.'"

Micah smiled. "Our wives and children just don't seem to have the appreciation for good horror movies that we do."

"It's a shame," I admitted. "All I wanted to do was share something with Miles that my dad shared with me growing up. Kind of like going fishing or playing catch or going to museums."

"I understand completely, little brother," he said. He put his arm around me. "You gotta give that to dad," he said. "He did teach us to appreciate the important things in life."

Once back at the hotel, we decided to go snorkeling.

While I've snorkeled in the Caribbean and Hawaii, I've never been more impressed than I was that day. Thousands of bright blue starfish, barracudas, and colorful reef fish swam in the warm, clear water, and a light current made it possible to float at the surface of the shallow water while expending little effort. Above us, clouds had filled in the sky, making it possible for us to be out without getting sunburned, and we stayed in the water, even when the rain started to fall.

Afterward, we ate on the hotel's outdoor patio. We were trying to decide what to do later in the evening; with nothing planned, it seemed like a waste to head back to our rooms. The bartender- who was also our waiter-recommended a pub crawl, and said a van would stop by the hotel around eight o'clock, if we signed up for it.

A pub crawl is essentially that: The van comes by, picks you up, and brings you from one pub to the next over the course of the evening. Whether or not a person drinks, however, is almost beside the point. Over the years, I've visited numerous countries, and I've learned that until you meet the people in a relaxed setting, doing what they normally do, you haven't actually experienced what the country is all about. Almost everyone I've ever met in situations like that is friendly; most people around the world enjoy practicing their English and hearing about America. Our country, warts and all, is a place that foreigners find both fascinating and intriguing; they love some things and hate others, but everyone has an opinion about it. At the same time, I'm always struck by how similar people are, no matter where they live. Throughout the world, people not only want to have the chance to improve their own situation, but want their children to have more opportunities than they have. Politicians are nearly always held in low esteem; so are demagogues on both the right and the left.

Our bartender was no different, and though he was mildly disappointed that we wouldn't be traveling to New Zealand-his home country-he did add that he'd visited the United States.

"Oh yeah?" Micah said. "Where?"

"I was in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Las Vegas, Denver, Dallas, New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and New York. I spent a summer traveling around the country."

"Did you see the Grand Canyon?" Micah asked.

"Yes, of course," he said. "I thought it was great. Mount Rushmore, too. And the giant redwoods. Beautiful. My favorite place was Las Vegas."

"Did you win in Vegas?" I asked.

"No, I lost. I played the slots, you know? But it was fun. That's the wildest city. I love it there.