Friday Night

It was not a romantic goodbye.

I set the last stone an hour before the boat home left the island. I took down the batter frames and packed up my tools: shovels and rakes, a cutoff saw, a transit in its big clunky case, a dolly, two long lining bars, insulated tarps that never got used, and a large assortment of hammers and chisels. All of it stuffed into the Subaru along with workboots and raingear, dirty clothes, leftover food, coffee-making contraptions, and seltzers. Lots of seltzers.

Scott, the caretaker, waved goodbye while blowing oak leaves.

I got my parking spot at the ferry terminal and wolfed down a sandwich as the boarding process began. A few hours later I was home again, eating Friday-night-pizza with Eliza and Vim. A whole temporary world that had occupied my mind so completely for weeks suddenly disappeared.

And now it’s on to the next one.