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Emily woke up the following Saturday feeling anxious. It took her a second to remember why. Oh yeah, we have a scrimmage today. She was so excited to see these girls in a game situation. They had come so far. Four of them could even throw the ball now. And five of them could catch it. But she was also nervous. She felt protective of her kids and didn’t want them to be embarrassed. They were so used to winning. This would be different. Very different.
But as she stood at her kitchen counter watching the coffee drip into the pot with excruciating slowness, she noticed it looked a bit wet outside. It had rained. She looked up. No blue sky in sight. She couldn’t check a weather app like a normal person because she didn’t have a cell signal or internet connection. But she did have the next best thing to a weather app—she had a lobsterman. Impatiently she poured a cup of coffee from the incomplete pot and took a gulp of too-strong scalding coffee. Then she dialed her fiancé from her landline.
“You sound like you’ve been up for hours,” she said when he answered.
“I have. You sound like you just woke up.”
“I did. I’m calling for a weather forecast.”
“Ah, I see. Well, it doesn’t look good. I’d call it off unless you want your girls’ first game to be a soaking wet freezing cold experience.”
“Isn’t it up to Camden Christian to call it off though?”
“It is. But you live on an island. If you call them up and say, ‘Hey I’d like to cancel the ferry trip ASAP, so let’s cancel the game,’ they would.”
Emily sighed. “That stinks. I don’t want to cancel.”
“I know, but you also don’t want them playing in the rain. They’ll get hurt. And since they’re probably going to get mercied, they’ll also get discouraged.”
“I don’t think the mercy rule applies to a scrimmage, James. And I also don’t think we’re going to get mercied by Camden Christian. What have they got, thirty kids in the whole school? And don’t count my girls out. They’ve been looking a lot better lately.”
“OK, OK, don’t get defensive. But you called for a weather forecast, and I’m telling you that it’s going to rain and the wind’s going to blow. It’s going to be cold.”
“OK, thanks.” She knew he was right. “I’ll call the coach.”
“Good. Then we can do something else today.”
“Lunch at The Big Dipper?” she guessed. It wasn’t a wild guess.
“Hey, did you hear about that?” He sounded excited.
“Hear about what?” She stretched out the phone cord as far as it would go, so she could sit at her kitchen table, suddenly wishing she was sitting at James’s kitchen table.
“About The Big Dipper. Travis tried to take his family to eat there, and they refused to serve him.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I am not. They all came in, sat down, waited for a while, and were completely ignored. Finally, Abby went and asked one of the servers to take their order, and the server said she was told not to serve them. So they left.”
Emily felt sick. “Was Thomas there?”
“I believe so.”
“That’s awful. I don’t care if you disagree with someone, you don’t treat people like that.”
“Well, people are feeling desperate. They really don’t want this to happen.”
“Oh, for crying out loud. It’s two windmills. They’re not putting in a nuclear facility. It’s not that big a deal—”
“It is that big a deal,” James interrupted, “if you’ve lived on Chicken Hill your whole life, if you’re living on the land your grandparents were raised on, and suddenly someone wants to put up a giant, loud eyesore in your backyard.”
“James, it’s not going to be that loud.”
“Tell that to the people on Vinalhaven. Anyway, these people shouldn’t have to stare at windmills for the rest of their lives if they don’t want to.”
“James, anywhere else, people have to deal with this stuff all the time. Cell phone towers going up. Billboards. Tall buildings. You can’t control what your neighbors do.”
“This isn’t anywhere else, Emily.” Something in his tone made her stomach lurch.
“James, are you mad at me about this?”
“No, Emily, I’m not mad. But if you’re going to be an islander, you might want to start thinking like an islander.”
“I’m pretty sure Travis and Abby are islanders too, James.”
“No, Travis and Abby are moneygrubbers.”
