ON THE BEACH AT VÍK, WHICH OUR guidebook pronounced one of the ten most beautiful in the world, my father and I walked along, stopping to cup the black sand in our palms. Then we sat at a picnic table, drinking lukewarm beers and eating beef jerky. My brother remained in the car.

Later, in the port town of Thorlákshöfn, my brother remained in the car. In the morning, we'd be catching the ferry to the island of Heimaey, so we'd fetched up at a public campsite that forever voided my grim childhood memories of car camping at franchise campgrounds whose atmosphere evoked the Okie settlements in The Grapes of Wrath. Not only was the place virtually free in the off-season (a boon in a country whose grottiest roadside rut-huts go for about $180 a night); the tent sites were also flat, soft as a Sealy Posturepedic, and offered views of the bay, which looked like poured chrome under the midnight sun.

This was surely the sort of place that would at last tempt my brother from his roost, but just to sweeten the arrangement, we pitched his tent for him. Dad approached the car cautiously, like a priest looking down the barrel of an especially gruesome exorcism. He opened the door.

"Tent's ready for you," he said.

"I'm sleeping here," said Dan.

My father wandered back.

"Oh, son, oh, son," he said sorrowfully, "when did this trip start going so wrong?"

I thought back to my brother angrily peeing into his water bottle.

The next morning, we stood in the parking lot, preparing to board the ferry. Dan had poorly trussed his sleeping bag to Dad's luggage, so I, having brought a duffel big enough to accommodate the golem of Prague, reached for it.

"Get the fuck off it!" Dan barked.

At least a decade had passed since we'd really laid hands on one another, but at that instant an old madness got hold of me. I felt myself spirited back to a time when I knew no greater longing than to punch my brother squarely in the face.

"Come on, bitch, let's do this!" I yelled inanely, shoving his chest.

"You want some, motherfucker?!" he bellowed, pedaling his fists. "Come here!" Dan has four inches on me and probably a good 40 pounds. If he did his worst, I'd be flying home on a gurney with my jaw wired shut. I held my ground, though my heart, still queered from that run-in with a dead New Zealand rat, beat an off-kilter paradiddle: chup-chuppity-chup.

A knot of passersby stopped in their tracks, eyes wide and eager. Dad was watching, too. In all our years of traveling together, I'd never seen his adventurer's ebullience break down. But Dan and I, in our barbarous idiocy, had finally defeated him.

"You're embarrassing me," he said in a quiet voice, turning away.

Shame hit me in a cold wave.

We had to jog to catch him.

Once on Heimaey, we all relaxed in a green meadow in the crater of a dormant volcano, which had lost half its cone in the last eruption, centuries ago, leaving us a heart-stopping view of the sun-gilt sea. Just up from the water a golf links stretched off in emerald chromosome shapes.

"Goddamn, this place is beautiful," conceded Dan, whose mood had staged a full recovery after our abortive fistfight. Our father stretched on the grass, watching the seagulls spreeing high above.

Later, Dan and I were sitting side by side on a giant, comfy hummock, staring at the water. I broke out my stash of duty-free aquavit (Scandinavia's caraway-flavored moonshine) and offered him a drink. He knocked back a slug and made a face like a woman in labor.

"How was it?" I asked

"Not good," he said, shuddering. "If you want me to drink more, I'll need to go eat some Tums."

Down on the course, though it was close to midnight, a few players were putting in the deathless arctic light.

"I'm so pissed at myself for not bringing my clubs," Dan said. "We could've played all night."

"I've never played golf," I said, "but I've always wanted to try."

"I'd teach you," he offered in a big-brotherly way. "Next time, I'll bring my clubs—two sets. Next time, we'll really have some fun."