13

Inside the Ocean’s Spray Cafe, Leo surveyed the crowd and saw that every seat was occupied except for one. Scanning the table, he found the young woman who had failed to keep her shoes out of harm’s way, and tagged his shoes in the process for good measure. He figured she would be able to put up with his intrusion, given that he’d become intimately familiar with her breakfast, or was it her lunch? He let the door close behind him and the cacophony of conversations in the bar rolled over him. He wasn’t much for places like this but it seemed to be where everyone else was eating, and he wanted to make the acquaintance of the woman from the ferry. Wading through groups of people in conversation, dodging servers and tables of diners, Leo made his way over to the woman’s table. 

Clearly irritated by something, the woman was fussing over a cellphone on the table, sitting next to an opened laptop. She tapped on the cellphone disgustedly, and then banged on a few of the keyboard keys. As Leo closed in on the table, he could hear that a matronly waitress was patiently trying to explain that technological signals didn’t work on Tranquility, but the young woman clearly wasn’t prepared to accept the answer. She had one part of her long hair tucked up behind her ear, and the rest cascaded down over her neck and shoulders. 

Leo nodded to the waitress and put his hand on the chair opposite the young woman. He hesitated and tried again to get her attention. “Do you mind if I sit here?” Leo asked, lifting his hand in greeting and as a bit of supplication, without ever getting the younger woman’s attention. 

The gray haired waitress looked over the glasses held from falling by the set of her twice broken nose, just barely. Leo could smell the grease from the grill and probably french fries, too, emanating from her, and her uniform looked like she’d worn it for quite some time. At the moment, Leo surmised that the waitress with the name tag “Marge” looked like she’d like to upend a bucket of grease on the other out-of-towner’s head. The younger woman was still angrily addressing her phone and laptop and made no move to acknowledge Marge. 

Turning to Leo, the waitress said, “You might as well sit there. There’s nowhere else to sit anyway so it doesn’t really matter if she wants you here or not. Maybe you can order something to eat? She doesn’t believe me that there’s no Internet or cell service here. It’s why some of you mainland lot stay here once you get here, and why others can’t wait to get away from here. You have at it, son, and see if you can talk some sense into her. Good luck.”

Still tapping madly on the phone and now banging on various laptop settings, the young woman looked up as the waitress walked away. “She didn’t even take my order,” she muttered, seemingly oblivious to everything else Marge had said, or how long she had waited to take the order. The woman was laser focused on the problem in front of her, continuing to tune everything out, initially even Leo. 

“So, I’m Leo,” he said, extending his hand, awkwardly. 

“Gillian,” replied the young woman, not even looking up. After a second or two, Leo withdrew his offered hand, and made himself at home in the seat opposite Gillian. She had dropped her bag over the chair next to her, and Leo straightened out a menu that had been crumpled in Gillian’s mini-tantrum. 

Over the top of the menu, Leo gave Gillian more of a once-over than he had before. Her shoulder length brown hair curled close to the shoulders, and she had pulled it back into a ponytail with a rubber band while she stared furiously at her phone. Her nose wrinkled as she concentrated, making the freckles on her face dance while she worked. He swallowed, and attempted to get her attention. “Hey,” he said, but choked when she held up a finger shushing him. 

“I think I saw you on the boat today,” he tried again. “I’m…”

“I know, I know. The new pastor,” Gillian interrupted. “I heard that old woman greet you on the dock. Listen, I’d love to chat and all, but I’ve got to get connected to this internet system or my boss is going to have my head on a plate. I’m supposed to be writing some background stories about the annual whale migration, so I can get out of here and get home.”

Marge the waitress had reemerged, sidestepping customers who tried to corral her, and the rush of folks coming in for lunch that created a bottleneck at the front door. “You two know what you want yet?” she asked, glancing from Leo to the top of Gillian’s head. 

“What do you recommend, Marge?” Leo responded, smiling sweetly, over the muttering and tapping from the other side of the table. 

Marge, folded her arms over her expansive waist, looked to see if Leo was for real or not, and sighed. Her heavy New England accent deepened with her irritation. “The special today is the lobster roll. I’m sure it’s quite delicious, but I’m allergic to shellfish,” she intoned, staring up at the ceiling. “The cook churns out fish and chips pretty fast. You can get a burger here, but you could get a burger anywhere. The salad is made from freshly harvested vegetables from gardens on the island-”

“I’ll take the fish and chips,” Leo offered, brightly. Gillian just kept hacking away at her keyboard, and mumbled incoherently. She glanced up in time to say, “Make that two,” throwing two fingers up in the air as if Marge needed the visual answer, too. Leo shrugged apologetically, and mouthed ‘thank you’ to Marge. The waitress harrumphed and slid her greasy notepad back into her apron pocket. Walking away, Marge stopped to refill drinks for another table of regular customers, before carrying their order to the kitchen and barking it across the counter at the cook. 

Leo spent the next few minutes quietly examining the other diners at the bar. The overall din was consistent with an ebb and flow of conversations, but no one engaged him. It felt like the eye of a storm, his little table of solace in the midst of all the activity around him. 

Off to his right, Leo saw that the ferry captain and his right hand man had taken up space at the corner of the bar, keeping the bartender running back and forth between them and the rest of the orders. Apparently their stomachs were no worse for wear after the trip over, and he saw that the captain was already several drinks in based on the empties on his side of the table. A few tourists he recognized from the ferry had bellied up to the bar, including the family with the toddler. The stroller was nowhere to be seen and Leo figured that they had been forced to leave it outside. The little boy was balanced precariously on one of the bar stools and his mother had placed one hand behind him to keep him in place. 

To his left, an older married couple from the ferry had chosen a quiet corner off to the side, and Leo watched as they shared a close moment in the midst of the hubbub. Different groups were gathered around the tables, and the bar was packed. The annual migration looked like it was good financially for the Ocean’s Spray but Leo hadn’t seen anywhere else that was a larger establishment where a person could grab a meal. Looking back at Gillian, he saw that she was oblivious to it all, focused as she was on her inability to work. 

“Here they are, two orders of the fish and chips,” announced Marge, slapping the plates down for emphasis, making sure to land them close enough to make Gillian jump. Leo thought Gillian might have growled as she glared at the waitress, but he loudly and enthusiastically thanked Marge, to which she rolled her eyes and moved away to answer someone else’s request. He realized too late that he had neither tartar sauce or ketchup, but he figured it would be awhile before Marge returned to see if they needed anything. 

Quietly saying grace over his food, Leo soaked in the smells of the fish and chips. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until the motion sickness of the ferry ride wore off. Apparently fresh fish was really better than Red Lobster’s frozen, processed seafood! He looked up to say something about their meal but Gillian just picked at her food, barely even acknowledging its existence or his. Leo shrugged and went back to enjoying his meal, and so their lunch went until the door flew open. 

A young black man strode into the bar, surveying the crowd as he made his way to the bar. His eyes seemed to barely register the other diners, until he found who he was looking for. His serious look broke into a broad smile, and his eyes seemed to come alive under the close cut fade. Leo watched as he strode over to the bar, and enveloped the younger man from the ferry sitting at the bar in his embrace. The other man turned and half-hugged him back, as the late arrival tousled his hair and gave him a friendly punch in the shoulder. Leo couldn’t hear what was said, but then he realized that someone else had joined their table, too. 

“These are quite good,” Miss Isabelle said, snatching a few chips off of Gillian’s barely-touched plate. Sitting down, Leo could now look Miss Isabelle directly in the eye. She was grinning from ear to ear, and pointed a thumb in Gillian’s direction, expecting Leo to introduce her. Gillian waved at her distractedly, and Leo shrugged. Miss Isabelle had grown tired of waiting, asking as she swallowed down another fry, “Who’s your new friend?”

At the same moment, Gillian slapped her laptop shut. She looked up at Isabelle, as if noticing her for the first time. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Gillian from the Coastal Gazette. I’m here to do some stories about people who are part of Tranquility, as we get toward the migration. My boss Dewey apparently thought it would be really fun to send me here without telling me that this place is a complete deadzone for all things technological. I can’t research, email or text. It’s really putting a damper on my day. How do you people not have Candy Crush or TikTok? Seriously, no Netflix and chill?”

Miss Isabelle dragged an empty chair away from a table of unsuspecting tourists, and scooted close to Gillian. “My dear, I don’t know what your crush is on, or whatever that Ticky-Tock thing is, but that’s the beauty of Tranquility! While the technological world just wants to get bigger and more invasive, we’ve chosen to stay small” – here, she pulled her hands close together – “and keep all of those hacker types out of our lives altogether!” 

At this, Miss Isabelle sat back, as if waiting for applause. “Isn’t this great?” she asked, looking from Leo’s bemused face to Gillian’s irritated one. “What could be better than a few days away without interruption, surrounded by sea breezes and salt air? After a few days, you’ll love it, too!”

Leo knew that Miss Isabelle had a point. Too much of life was rushed and hurried, thrown together on the way to something else. Few people he knew stopped to appreciate or enjoy the moments they were in, as they constantly focused on what came next. 

On the other side of the table, Gillian was staring at Miss Isabelle like she had just grown three sizes and turned green like the Grinch. She choked on a piece of the fried fish, and hurriedly drank some of the water Leo offered her. “Well, I have a job to do,” she said slowly, reaching for her notebook and pen. Turning to Miss Isabelle, she asked, voice dripping with sweetness, “Would you maybe answer some questions for me?”

Leo swallowed a chuckle, coughing into the back of his hand, as he raised an eyebrow at the way that Gillian so quickly turned her charm on and off. She turned to make some kind of retort, but Isabelle had already snatched up her hand in both of her own. “My dear, I would love to talk to you about the wonders of Tranquility!” she exclaimed. 

Instantly, the storyteller was verbally recounting the formation of Tranquility as a community, the importance of the traditions and lifestyle that these people maintained, and the way that they provided a respite for world weary people who were seeking an alternative. Gillian mindlessly ate her fish and chips, jotting a few thoughts down here and there as Isabelle lectured her for the next hour. When Marge had reluctantly approached the table to clear plates away, Isabelle had slapped down the funds to cover their meals. “I ate most of your chips!” she exclaimed. “Now it’s time for the tour!”

Gillian’s face contracted in a grimace, and Leo could tell that she was almost prepared to argue. But Isabelle was already on her feet and had snatched up Gillian’s arm, pulling her toward the front door.  As Leo watched with amusement, Isabelle steered Gillian out of the bar, and away from her laptop. Even as the newspaper woman tried to argue, looking back over her shoulder, Isabelle shushed her, and launched into the history of Tranquility and the many wonders that there were to see. Throwing down some cash to cover the gratuity for both of them, Leo picked up Gillian’s computer bag, shoveled her computer and phone into the bag, and headed out into the street behind them. 

14

The foundation of the little town off of the New England coastline was attributed to a desire to be closer to the migration patterns of the whales and of fish that provided the livelihood for many of the early Tranquility residents, Miss Isabelle explained. Hundreds of years prior, it had allowed fishermen to settle their families closer to their work, rather than spending weeks and months away from them out at sea. Over time, out of necessity, other businesses had sprung up on the island, drawing other people to the island. 

While many of the Tranquility people were natives, a few were people who had moved in late in life or married into a Tranquility family, Isabelle shared. A few of the people would move off of the island every year, and fewer still would move onto it, but the population remained relatively the same. Anything you couldn’t get on the island could be brought in from the mainland, but Amazon wasn’t going to deliver Prime two-day shipping so there was no instant gratification.

The town itself occupied most of the near side of the island where they were, with residential property extending along the middle of the island up through the forest. On the far side of the island, their guide said a sheer rock cliff prevented access by water, even though folks from the mansion could access the tiny cove they had seen from the ferry. An old lighthouse could be found at the farthest point of the island out to sea, but it had been unmanned for years. A simple battery light was triggered when darkness fell, but otherwise, there was no one to keep the light. 

Miss Isabelle bought them each a soft pretzel at Kauffman’s Bakery, much to the delight of an equally tiny old woman who could’ve been her sister. They stopped to examine the odds and ends at the Tranquility Island Gift Shop, petting the three-legged French Mastiff who stiffly rose to greet them, slipping it a few treats from the bowl on the counter. Each store and business made Miss Isabelle’s list of important facts, but none so much as the schoolhouse where she had taught for forty years. She told them that she still volunteered if the new teacher needed to be away or was sick, but that her time with all of the students was past. 

As the day progressed, Isabelle warned them that everything appeared peaceful and calm at the moment, but that over the next forty-eight hours, the town would be flooded with tourists and day visitors wanting to catch a peak at a whale and experience New England island life. A few of the ships were expected to arrive earlier than normal, depending on how smoothly their voyage went, and some of the captains would choose to ride out the upcoming nor’easter here. The inundation of tourists would last for at least a week, Isabelle shared, unbothered by what Leo was sure was an overwhelming crowd. 

“Where will they all stay?” asked Gillian, surprised. “I booked a room in the Tranquility B&B, but there aren’t hundreds of rooms there and I haven’t seen any hotels.”

Isabelle’ face lit up. “They’ll stay on the cruise ships! They will put people ashore to shop and stroll, and to watch the whales swim past. But for the most part, they don’t stay overnight here. There’s not enough room. You’ll have to ask Mr. O’Rourke about that sometime.”

Leo stopped examining a pair of seagulls squawking at each other over which one would get an abandoned French fry on the street, and looked up. The interaction between Miss Isabelle and Red O’Rourke hadn’t seemed amicable earlier, but she clearly had an affection for the man. Leo knew that he didn’t expect the angry giant would be incredibly keen on answering questions but maybe Gillian would turn on her charm for him. 

Their tour had brought them back to the Ocean’s Spray Bar, just as the young men Leo had seen earlier emerged into the sunshine. They were whispering conspiratorially to each other, and the black man’s face lit up when he saw Miss Isabelle. She glared at them, momentarily, and then lunged in, an arm around each of the men who dwarfed her. 

“David, Johnny, I can’t believe you’ve gotten to Tranquility and didn’t tell me directly!” she fussed in mock anger. The blonde-haired man was still showing some surprise, when she turned to him. “Johnny, any friend of David’s is a friend of mine, and of course he has been telling me about you! Listen, both of you, meet my new friends, Leo the minister and Gillian the journalist! I’ve just given them the Main Street tour, and I didn’t even collect tickets,” she cackled, laughing at her own joke.

“Well, Leo the minister and Gillian the journalist, welcome to Tranquility,” David, the tall black man said. “You’re certainly in good hands with Miss Isabelle. She knows everything and everyone,” he added, with a nudge toward Isabelle, who beamed. “She’s taught all of us about Tranquility at some point, and how to be good folks, too.”

Johnny shook hands, and explained that he was not originally from Tranquility, but was visiting David over the school holiday. They were seniors at Hudson University in New York, and had made a plan to visit Tranquility together so that Johnny could see the annual migration. Johnny was from Nebraska, and had never seen the East Coast, let alone a whale before.  

A moment of inspiration struck David and he leaned closer to the visitors. “We don’t get many island visitors who aren’t cruise ship tourists. Why don’t you come up for dinner tomorrow night, to my uncle’s house?” he asked, excitedly. “We can show you the other side of the island, and you can try to pry some stories out ol’ Red himself.” He looked expectantly from Leo to Gillian and back. 

Leo watched as Miss Isabelle bit her lip, frowning. David noticed but he wasn’t deterred. “It’ll be fine, Miss Isabelle! You know that Carol will have a full spread, and everyone will have enough. Besides, it’s better that we show them Tranquility hospitality ourselves! Red could use some company to help him grumble a little less.”

Turning to Leo and Gillian, David said, “See you at six tomorrow. Promptly of course. Ol’ Red can’t miss a meal.” And with a wink, he was off with Johnny in tow, as they headed up the cobblestone road that disappeared into the trees. 

Miss Isabelle stared after them, hints of concern on her face. She seemed lost in thought, until Gillian, completely oblivious, asked, “What was that all about?” Searching in her purse for a notebook and pen, she asked, “Who is ‘ol’ Red’?”

“You’ll see,” Miss Isabelle responded, slowly. “He’s part-mayor, part-rich guy, and all crotchety old man!”

15

Having said his goodbyes to the others, Leo decided to investigate the village square in more detail. He wandered up and down the aisles of the grocery store, and even purchased a few postcards. Sitting outside of the post office on a bench, he watched as a portly gentleman in a lab coat struggled to get his keys out of his pocket while minding a stack of to-go boxes from the Ocean’s Spray. He tried unsuccessfully to get the key into the lock of a door marked “Infirmary”    with his right hand, and was fumbling to switch to his left to get the door open.

“Here, let me help you,” interjected Leo, hopping up from the bench. Apparently, the other gentlemen had been lost in thought, because Leo’s sudden movement caused him to flinch, and a few of the boxes flew in different directions as the man himself went sprawling. Leo looked down at the man, realizing that he bore a resemblance to the General from the KFC commercials. His white hair was part pompadour, part receding hairline, and underneath the lab coat, he wore a frumpy pair of dress pants and a stained dress shirt that was two sizes too big. His leather cowboy boots had seen better days, but the man didn’t seem to mind.  

Brushing himself off, the man accepted Leo’s hand as he gingerly pulled himself to his feet. “My goodness, young man,” he murmured, “you certainly put the fear of God into me!”

Laughing at his own joke, the man explained that he was the island’s doctor, Frank Steinman. He was hurriedly shoving items back into the to-go boxes, and pulling them away from Leo. “Everyone calls me Stein though,” the doctor explained, finally getting the door to his office opened. “And of course, I knew who you were because Isabelle has been around the town a time or two telling everyone to be nice to you, being fresh out of seminary and all.”

Leo could see that the inside office had a partition or two to separate patients and provide different degrees of privacy. It wasn’t like a normal doctor’s office, stuck between the post office and the hardware store, but he figured it would suffice if someone got sick. The doctor disappeared behind another partition, leaving the to-go boxes behind when he reemerged. He seemed surprised that Leo had followed him into the clinic. 

“Can I help you with something?” he asked, pushing up his thin black glasses higher up his nose and focusing on Leo for the first time. 

“I’m just wandering around right now,” Leo replied, still taking it all in. “How long have you been in Tranquility?”

The doctor shared that he had arrived on a cruise ship several decades ago, and had never left. He’d met a woman from Tranquility, and after a short courtship, they’d been married. But when Dr. Steinman saw Leo examining his left hand, he explained that his wife of almost thirty years had died of cancer on the mainland, just a few months before. Doctors hadn’t been able to do anything for her except to keep her comfortable. Leo mumbled his condolences but the doctor waved it all away with his hand. 

The doctor now lived alone in a cottage on the O’Rourke estate, and admitted to hitting a golf ball now and again through Red’s yard. “He’s not a huge fan of that,” chuckled the doctor, “but it’s hard to know what he is a fan of anymore! The old bird just grinds along, chewing up life and spitting it out.”

“What’s his story?” Leo asked, curious about the man who kept coming up in conversation.

“You’d have to get the details from Red himself,” Steinman replied, “but his father owned a whole fleet of fishing boats that he inherited from his father. He had next to nothing to do with the actual business himself, but he invested financially and grew the company. He built onto the mansion at the top of the hill, and was going to leave it all to Red. But Red went off to see the world, throwing it back in his father’s face, dallying around the world as a cruise ship captain before buying his own ships.”

The doctor suddenly became quiet, and went to moving paperwork around his desk. Deciding it was time to move on given how uncomfortable that he seemed to make the doctor,  Leo bid his goodbyes and went back outside to retrieve his scattered postcards. He noticed that out to sea, a larger than life cruise ship had appeared, dropping anchor a mile away from the island. A few of the cruise ship’s tenders were in the process of being lowered into the water from above. Soon, it seemed, a whole new group of guests would arrive on Tranquility Island.

Looking back at the row of offerings along Main Street, Leo meandered over to Cindi’s Hair Salon, examining the different advertisements taped on the window. He saw that there would be a special concert by the Tranquility Quartet that weekend, and that someone was offering dog walking services. Another ad suggested people hire someone called Squirrel to top their trees, and several advertised people looking to pick up odd jobs around the island. 

A tap on the window startled Leo, as he looked up to see that the hairstylist, who he assumed was Cindi, and all of her customers were waving to him. His cheeks flushed, and he waved back weakly, before hurriedly away. A few of the other stores were temporarily closed, and several others announced they would re-open the next day. Even the post office had a closed sign and  Leo made a mental note to visit the businesses  later that week so he could meet the proprietors. Realizing that the dinner hour was approaching, he went back to the chapel to tidy up. He found Miss Isabelle dusting and rearranging hymnals in the pews, and nodded to her as he went past to his room. 

Isabelle smiled at him as he came by but gave him space. She clearly knew he needed a few moments to himself, and the quiet in the chapel was like a comfortable blanket wrapped around him. He slowed as he approached the front, and quietly stood before the altar, visualizing what it could look like for him to stand before the congregation that coming Sunday. With a grin and a wink at Miss Isabelle, Leo turned into his apartment off of the back of the chapel and she left to head home.

Section 5 (Chapters 16-18) coming March 29!