“But what about the sea level?” Anders interjected. “Surely, if you’ve been here since you were a kid, you’ve noticed that it’s rising. They say the island might not even be here in as little as twenty-five years.”
Mr. Gimby pulled his glasses down to the tip of his nose and peered at Anders over the frames, his eyes narrowing, as if he was just seeing him for the first time. “Where’d you say you were from again?”
“Um, I didn’t,” Anders said, wilting under the man’s stern gaze. He straightened his spine, cleared his throat, and stuck out his hand. “I’m Anders Caldwell. Journalist with the Daily Telegraph.”
Mr. Gimby took a not-so-subtle step backward, nearly knocking into a shelf filled with ceramic cherubs. Anders noted the sudden change in the old man—the tightening of his jaw muscles, the hardening of his milky brown eyes—and it became resolutely clear this man was not the anonymous tipster.
“A reporter,” Mr. Gimby said with the same distaste with which he had spit out climate change a minute earlier. “I don’t talk to reporters,” he said. And then he muttered, “Climate change. When there’s a bona fide drug-trafficking ring on this island and Lord only knows what else, he’s in here asking about climate change.”
Drug trafficking? Anders waited for more, but the old man just fixed him with a final look from under his furrowed brow and wrenched the half-drunk cup of coffee right from Anders’s hand. “Get out of here,” Mr. Gimby said. “And take that mangy cat with you.” Then he exited through a door to the left of the cherub shelf. Anders hadn’t noticed the door until that moment. It could have been a kitchen, bathroom, or broom closet for all he knew. He waited, watching the seconds tick by on an imposing grandfather clock, and then the seconds turned into minutes and Anders realized the man wasn’t coming back.
Drug trafficking. Anders added it to his mental checklist to look into, though instinct told him it was more likely the ramblings of a senile old man than a real “bona fide” crime ring on the island.
And now he had an hour to kill before the 4:00 p.m. ferry, and as far as he was concerned, it couldn’t pass fast enough. It was a mistake to come back here, he now knew. There wasn’t a story, after all—or if there was, he certainly wasn’t going to get to the bottom of it—and he’d wasted an entire day and another forty dollars on the ferry with nothing to show for it.
Sitting at the bar, Anders directed his anger at a particularly bothersome bite on his forearm, vigorously scratching it, as the same freckle-faced, backward-ball-cap-wearing waiter from his last visit approached, handing Anders the same oil-stained menu.
The place was dim, the afternoon sun unable to find its way through the filmy windows, and empty, aside from one table of three men, who all had the same weathered look as the captain at the marina—bronzed necks carved with deep lines and sinewy limbs protruding from old T-shirts. The look of watermen who’d spent their entire lives tugging on saltwater-laden ropes and baking in the sun.
He knew he should approach the table, try to strike up a conversation with the men, but he was discouraged. He had come to understand that perhaps the reason none of the articles about the inevitable disappearance of Frick Island included the point of view of any Frick Islanders was due not to gross negligence on the part of the reporters, but to an inability to get any of them to speak.
“Hey, weren’t you just here? Couple weeks ago?”
Anders glanced up at the waiter. He was leaning back on the counter behind the bar, arms crossed, studying Anders.
“Yep,” Anders said, eyeing him back. Was this the mysterious emailer? “I’m a reporter.” He waited for a reaction, a knowing smile, a wink, a head tilt—anything that might let him know if this waiter was the person who had reached out to him. “Was covering the Cake Walk. Now I’m trying to do a story on climate change and its effects here on the island.”
The guy grinned—that same Grinch-Who-Stole-Christmas smile Anders remembered, one that wasn’t friendly as much as it signified finding joy at someone else’s expense. “Good luck with that.”
“Yeah, it’s not exactly been going so well. I can’t get even one person to talk—well, I mean besides Mr. Gimby—”
The waiter nodded, wiping his hands on the dish towel tucked into his back pocket. “It’s ’cause you’re a Come Here.”
Anders wasn’t sure he had heard right. “A what?”
“A Come Here,” he repeated. “On Frick Island, you’re either a Come Here or a From Here. And you’re definitely not a From Here.”
“Oh,” Anders said, his brow crinkling.
“Last guy that came was this developer from the mainland—had all these grand plans for the island, ideas to draw more tourists, revitalize the town. But he was unceremoniously shown the door when one of his first points of business was that the town start serving alcohol.”
“Yeah, what’s up with that?”
“It’s always been a dry island.” He shrugged, as if that explained it all. “Frick Islanders don’t like change. Don’t believe in it.”
Anders nodded. That much was clear. “Including climate change.”
“Including climate change.”
“What’d you say your name was?”
“Jeffrey,” he said, and before Anders could ask any more questions, he straightened up and plucked the rag from his back pocket and started wiping down the bar top between them. “You eating today or did you just stop in for a cold one? Soda, that is.”
Anders’s stomach growled, as if on cue. He checked his watch—still fifty minutes before the ferry left for the mainland. “I’ll take the chicken basket again. And a Coke.”
“Pepsi OK?”
“Oh. Yeah,” Anders said. Being from Atlanta, he still wasn’t used to Coke not being the primary soda brand.
Jeffrey disappeared into the back, and Anders sat hunched over the bar, letting his gaze drift along the fishing décor on the back wall—buoys and nets and paddles all hung so haphazardly it was hard to tell if it was actually ornamentation for the restaurant or storage. And then a loud bang caught Anders’s attention, and he twisted his head toward the table of watermen.
“—it’s out of hand! Not the boat, I don’t care how long BobDan keeps it on planks for, but Piper! The entire thing.” At the name “Piper,” Anders’s mind immediately flashed to the girl he embarrassed himself so fully in front of. “Look, Tom was like a son to all of us after his daddy died, but it’s not right, pretending he’s alive like that. How long are we supposed to do it for? Piper needs to move on. The whole town does.”