“Come again?”
“No headphones.” He pointed to his ears. “So I wouldn’t miss any announcements. Lot of clouds, but you didn’t say anything about the ferry leaving early.” He was puffed up and glowing, as if he’d just discovered the Pythagorean theorem all by himself.
BobDan glanced up at the white fluffy clouds blotting out the sun. “Those aren’t rain clouds, son.” He tried to suppress an eye roll. That’s what a mainland education’ll get you. Book smart, maybe, but learning nothing about the world around you.
“Oh,” the boy said.
“You know, there’s no Cake Walk today,” BobDan said, wondering why on earth he had come back. Repeat tourists were rare on Frick. There were the regulars, of course, but they were the yearly visitors, the ones who lived on the mainland and used the island as their one vacation each year—like the anniversary couple—wanting a break from their factory jobs or teaching gigs or prison guard work.
BobDan picked up an errant boat line from the deck and made a mental note to remind the Perkins kid what his responsibilities entailed for the six hundredth time. Then he glanced back at the boy, taking in the backpack straps cutting into the sweat-soaked white shirt, and just as the boy said, “I know, I’m actually a—” it dawned on him.
“I know what you are,” BobDan said. He should have realized it right off, but it being the Cake Walk day, he just took Anders for a run-of-the-mill tourist. About a year ago, Shirlene had dragged him to the mainland to watch a local theater group put on that musical she’d been dying to see—and it might have been funny, had they not taken the Lord’s name in vain so many times. Oh, and the mimicry of bestiality. Call him conservative, but he saw nothing funny about a human having sex with a frog. Just disgusting, is what it was. BobDan frowned at the memory.
The boy nodded congenially, as he hooked his thumbs through the backpack straps and readjusted it on his shoulders. Then he started digging in his back pocket. Whatever he was looking for wasn’t there, so he slung his bag around and unzipped it. While he was digging, he said, “Could I ask you a couple of questions, then?”
BobDan gave his head a small shake and he grunted, the sound coming from somewhere deep within. He busied himself with the line in his hand, looping it around his elbow, trying to make it clear that he couldn’t possibly take a pamphlet. He had no problem with the Mormons—he thought people oughta believe what they wanted to believe—but he didn’t want anybody shoving their beliefs on him. “Thank you, son, but I’m already right with Jesus.”
The wind was strong on the dock and nearly stole BobDan’s words right out of his mouth.
“What? I’m not sure—” the boy started, but BobDan was already halfway down the boardwalk, mind onto his next task, relieved he’d so easily gotten out of what was sure to be a long and unnecessary conversation.
* * *
—
Anders grunted as he sat heavily on a barstool at the One-Eyed Crab, letting his backpack slip off his shoulder and onto the grimy floor, which looked like the last time it had seen a mop—if ever—was decades earlier. But Anders didn’t care. It had been a shit day. And not just because it had been so hot as he walked around town he felt like his skin was melting off. Or because he had so many gnat bites his arms reminded him of the way his back looked that one time his mom took him for a battery of allergy tests and he turned out to be allergic to just about every environmental allergen possible. (“Don’t ever get a dog,” the doctor said with a smile, and then joked, “or go outside.”)
No, his day had been terrible because he currently had as much information from the locals regarding their thoughts on climate change and the island sinking as he had when he woke up that morning. Which was to say: none.
After his strange encounter with the boat captain, Anders had methodically stopped into all six storefronts on the main strip of town (if there was a road sign naming it, Anders couldn’t find it), starting with the tiny post office, all the way to the Blue Point market, an establishment that had one glass refrigerator case, offering an assortment of fresh seafood and a few packaged deli meats, a deep freezer with a bevy of frozen treats, and two aisles of various boxed, canned, and bagged food.
In each rickety, weatherworn place, he approached the requisite proprietor, and before he could even properly introduce himself, the person quickly busied him- or herself with an activity, as if they couldn’t possibly be bothered right then.
This happened time and again, until Anders got the rather paranoid feeling that they knew he was coming somehow, which was impossible. The only place he scored an interview was at an antiques store called Gimby’s, where a man with liver-spotted hands and bifocals perched on his nose warmly welcomed him into the store and offered him coffee from a kettle sitting on a hot plate at the counter.
A black-and-white-splotched cat was sitting next to the hot plate and eyed Anders as he accepted and sipped on the bitter brew. “Scram!” the man said, startling both the cat and Anders. The cat slinked away as the man turned to Anders and introduced himself as Ronald Gimby the Third. He readily agreed to Anders recording him, without even questioning it or letting Anders explain why—causing Anders to wonder if perhaps he was the mysterious “you missed the biggest story out here” emailer. He fit the mold—an eccentric older gentleman who rambled on from one subject to the next, starting with his impressive collection of saltshakers, moving on to furniture and the various ways you could tell a true antique from a reproduction (wider dovetail joints, square nails, and rough hand-sanded surfaces are all good indicators, but fraudsters would go to great lengths and you never could be too careful), and somehow finding his way to the conspiracy of the moon landing, though Anders wasn’t sure if Mr. Gimby was suggesting that it was, in fact, a conspiracy or was not. Most impressively, Anders thought, was the way the old man seamlessly slipped full Bible verses into his soliloquy that seemed to match whatever topic he was on. Anders stood at the wooden counter, shifting his weight from foot to foot as his coffee grew cold, and nodded politely, though Mr. Gimby didn’t appear to need encouragement to continue speaking. When the man finally got around to commenting about the weather, Anders saw an opening.
“Speaking of the weather,” Anders said, cutting him off in midsentence, as he realized it was the only way he was ever going to get a word in, “what do you think about climate change?”
Mr. Gimby’s jaw dropped half an inch, and he was momentarily silenced—a rare feat, Anders surmised, if the last twenty minutes were any indication.
“Climate change?” the man finally repeated, scrunching his nose as if the two words tasted sour in his mouth. “Tommyrot. Climate change. It’s August and it’s hot as the dickens out there just like every other August I’ve been on this island. And in the winter it gets cold enough to chill you to the bone. One year when I was a boy, the bay froze all the way from here to Winder.” He waved his gnarled hand in the direction of the marina. “You could ice-skate to the mainland if the spirit moved you, though it did not so move me—”