Photo from Tim Phillips.

The red and green speedboat chopped through the waves under a gigantic blue-gray sky. On the boat there were five Islanders, most of them related, and an American. Honiara, the Solomons’ dusty little capital where most walked barefoot, grew smaller behind them, and the travelers passed a sunken, rust-eaten Japanese freighter from World War II poking through the water. During the war, fierce battles were fought throughout the Solomon Islands, and tens of thousands of Islanders were displaced and many hundreds were killed.

“Do you know 2pac?” the one called Johnny Weed yelled over the engine to the American.

“Yeah, man!” the American yelled back.

“That’s my n****!” Johnny said, pulling up his shirt to reveal the prominent tattoo scrolled across his mid-section: THUG LIFE.

“Nice!” the American said.

Less than five minutes into the ride the beers came out, and five after that, the kwaso, Solomon moonshine. Midway through the hour-long journey, the travelers were good and drunk, philosophizing about American hip-hop. All the while directly underneath them, at the bottom of the sound, slept the rusted carcasses of countless freighters, battleships, and destroyers—many of them to this day full of men.

It started raining on the travelers, and they sang: Rain, rain, go away. After eight or nine sing-throughs the rain stopped. They arrived on the island and spilled onto shore. Johnny and the other Islanders turned to frolic and play soccer with the village children among the lazy waves.

The American joined an old man sitting on a fallen palm trunk. The men sat and watched the sunset, which seemed to last for hours. They discussed the way the sunset’s clouds worked and they talked about all its different pinks and oranges and purples, and the old man told the American how the sunset compared to the previous night’s sunset, and the one from the evening before that, and so on.

Johnny’s grandmother walked up, and they talked. After a while the American asked about the war. She was a little girl at the time yet remembered it well. She told him that she and her family were forced to live in the bush for weeks on end, and they ate nothing but cassava and taro they had foraged from the surrounding forest. She also remembered hearing the bombs coming from “out there,” absentmindedly waving her hand toward the horizon.

Johnny Weed appeared, juggling a soccer ball. He stilled the ball under his foot, then pointed to a World War II bunker down the beach that had apparently been converted into a hotel. He told the American that his parents owned it and that the American could stay there for free. He could show the American to his room.

“I appreciate it, man,” said the American. He got up, grabbed his backpack, and he and Johnny Weed walked down the beach, on toward the bunker-turned-hotel.