Chapter 10: Clambake

The harbor clambake was on the last Saturday in June, and Fern told me I was coming.

"I have a headache," I said.

"You have a face like a closed door," Fern said. "Come eat."

It was held on the beach below the Legion hall.

A long fire pit lined with rockweed ran down the sand, and a hundred people sat around it in folding chairs.

Kids ran through the shallows, and somebody had a fiddle.

I wore a clean shirt and my father's jean jacket, and I stood at the edge of the sand holding a paper plate.

People came to me one at a time.

A woman from the bakery pressed a loaf into my arms.

An old man I'd never met shook my hand and said Armand had once built him a skiff for the price of a haircut.

Two girls my own age hugged me and cried.

I had gone to school with them and forgotten their names, and they said they were so glad.

By the time I reached the picnic tables, my plate was a mess and my eyes stung.

"They're all on your side," Fern said, setting a lobster in front of me. "Eat."

"They didn't do anything ten years ago."

"They didn't know how. Now they do." He tapped the table. "Eat."

I cracked a claw.

Then I saw him.

Ansel was at the far end of the beach in jeans and a faded green shirt.

His sleeves were pushed up, and he was laughing.

I had never seen it.

His whole face had gone loose, and his head was tipped back.

The lines at the corners of his eyes ran all the way to his hair.

He stood with three lobstermen around a keg.

One of them had just said something filthy, judging by how hard he was slapping his own knee.

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