“In the market for a trawler?”
Startled, Anders turned, his clear brown eyes meeting Piper’s.
“Even if I was, I probably couldn’t afford even this one,” he said.
“I don’t know—I think Tom would sell it for a song at this point.”
“Oh, it’s Tom’s?” he said.
“Yeah. It’s got an issue with worms. See where they ate through the hull?” She pointed to the tiny holes, remembering how frustrated Tom was when he discovered those obnoxious pests. And then, of course, there was the matter of the time the boat had spent at the bottom of the ocean, rendering it completely unseaworthy, but Piper didn’t like to think about that. “They’re using his cousin Steve’s trawler right now, until we get enough money to fix it.”
“So, are you going to tell me what we’re doing here?”
“Right now, we’re waiting,” she said, adjusting the strap of her pale pink tank top.
“For what?” Anders asked.
“You’ll see.”
He stood, staring at the horizon, and she used the opportunity to study him, from his skin, the same color of the blanched underbelly of a clamshell and lightly speckled across the bridge of his nose, to the tufts of hair sticking up like straw at the crown of his head, to his neatly creased khakis and the button-up shirt.
“Do you always dress like that?” The thought tumbled out of her mouth before she could catch it. She wasn’t even sure she said it out loud until Anders looked down at his Dockers, at his short-sleeved work shirt, and then back at her.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know—” She paused, nose scrunching as she searched for a tactful way to phrase it. “Like you’re about to do somebody’s taxes?”
From the expression on his face, it was clear she had failed. She immediately felt a twinge of regret at what he surely interpreted as bald rudeness rather than simple curiosity. But then she remembered his own discourteous behavior in the wildlife center and clenched her jaw to keep from apologizing. There. Maybe they were even now. Movement caught her eye over Anders’s right shoulder. “Ah! Here they are.”
Anders turned to see a skiff puttering up to the docks, carrying two boys. Though Piper had known the Gibbons twins since they were rambunctious eight-year-olds, she saw them suddenly through Anders’s eyes, and they surprisingly no longer looked like children. With matching crew cuts and sinewy, tan limbs, the boys looked hardscrabble—like they’d been in the Marines for five years, even though they weren’t nearly old enough to enlist. When they reached the dock, one of them leapt onto it in a fluid motion, while the other cut the engine, but didn’t take his hand off the wheel.
“Anders,” Piper said. “Meet Kenny and Jojo.”
“Hi.” Anders nodded in their direction.
Kenny grunted, while Jojo grumbled “hey” in return.
“They’re going to take you progging.”
“Bro-ging? What is that?”
“Progging,” Piper corrected. “And you’ll see.”
Anders narrowed his eyes. “Why are they doing this?”
Piper shrugged. “Because I asked them to. And because you’re going to give them forty dollars.”
“Oh.”
He stepped on board the boat, and when it bobbled under his weight, nearly pitching him into the water, Piper tried not to smile. “Might want to put your life jacket on,” she called. Anders wasted no time picking up the bright orange vest from the fiberglass seat behind him, sliding his head through the neck hole, and securing the belt at his waist. By the time he looked up, Jojo was back in the boat, the engine was revving, and the boat was already pulling away from the dock, where Piper was still standing.
“Wait,” he called. “You aren’t coming?”
Piper just smiled and waved. “Have fun!” After a day out in the bogs with the Gibbons boys, she was fairly certain Anders—who didn’t strike her as an overly outdoorsy type— wouldn’t be in want of her help again, and she’d be shed of him for good.
* * *
—
Four hours later, when the boat finally chugged back toward the marina, Anders was sweaty, sunburned, and wearing only one shoe. At some point in the middle of progging—which Anders quickly learned was really just mucking about in the mud to see what you could find (apparently old coins and “arra-heads” were some of the treasures the boys had unearthed on previous expeditions)—the marsh sucked the other one right off his foot and swallowed it up. “Maybe someone will find it a hundrit years from now and put it in their collection!” one of the boys joyfully exclaimed, after Anders finally gave up digging in the sludge to find it.
When he first realized Piper wasn’t going, he thought at least he could use the opportunity to interview Kenny and Jojo, but their conversation skills were limited to grunts—until they somehow got on the subject of hunting, and Anders learned more about tracking and killing muskrats than he ever hoped to know.
With a practiced grace, Jojo slid the boat between two others, the docks alive once again with skiffs and watermen, lugging nets and traps out of their boats. “Today’s Labor Day.” Anders spoke his thought out loud, to no one in particular. “Don’t they ever take a break?”
“Sure—every Sunday,” Kenny said, and then stood in front of Anders, blocking his path off the boat, which Anders found disconcerting until he remembered Piper had promised he’d pay them. He reached into his back pocket for his wallet, which seemed to be the only thing on him not covered in filth, and plucked his last two twenties from it, handing them over, trying not to panic about how much cash he was steadily blowing on this podcast venture. Discreetly tucked beneath his napkin at breakfast that morning was the bill for two nights at the bed-and-breakfast. And while he had anticipated it, having spent the night there two weeks earlier, and while it was wildly reasonable—much cheaper than anything you could find on the mainland—there was no way Anders could continue to pay two-hundred-plus every weekend, on top of his rent.
Kenny snatched the bills and moved to the side, and Anders stepped off the boat onto the dock. Before he could even turn around to say thank you, the two boys were off once again, to God only knows where. What were those weird names they were tossing about—Pitchfork Point? Dipstick Creek?
As Anders rubbed the back of his neck, sore to the touch both from the angle he’d had it bent all afternoon fruitlessly looking down and from the fire-hot sun that had surely left its mark, and stared at the retreating boat, he marveled once again that he was standing here, on this strange little island.