Ishmael goes to the coast guard lighthouse to look at storm records. He sits, remembering that when he saw her after the war and she was distantly polite to him he wa angry. He told her, "The Japs did it. They shot my arm off. Japs." Chapter 23, pg. 332 She turned away from him and they did not speak to each other for some time.
He ran into her on the beach one day. They were the only ones there, and he told her if she held him, just once, not as a lover but as another human being, he might be able to start to forget her. She gently but firmly said she could not do this. In the coast guard record room, Ishmael realizes that weather records might help him learn something about the night Carl Heine died. Soon after, he finds what he wants: a record that a large freighter had taken a path near the island very close to where Carl Heine was fishing that night he died. "An enormous freighter had plowed right through the fishing grounds, throwing before it a wake large enough to knock even a big man overboard." Chapter 23, pg. 335 Ishmael realizes that these records are kept in folders and almost never looked at again. He is the only one who knows about the huge boat traveling through the fishing waters.
