The Invisible Husband of Frick Island by Colleen Oakley (autobiographies to read .TXT) 📗

was going to fix it up, as a kindness for Piper; a surprise, he thought, just as the guy cocked his arm back as far as it would go and drove it forward with force, slamming the hammer into the side of the boat with a dull thud.

Anders blinked. If this was part of fixing the boat, it was a process he was unfamiliar with. He almost stepped out to say something, to ask what exactly the person was doing, but something stopped him. Anders didn’t like confronting people in general, much less men sneaking around under the cover of night holding hammers.

So he stayed put.

The man hit the boat once, twice, three more times, leaving the hull looking a sight worse than before, the wood cracked and splintered and even further beyond repair. Then he tossed the hammer onto the ground and, using the planks as steps, heaved himself up over the side of the vessel, disappearing into the cockpit.

Anders waited, dumbly, as though he were watching a television drama and had to find out what happened next. As he stared into the darkness, the stillness of the night was suddenly pierced with a deafening noise. A squawk of sorts, but it appeared to have no ending. Anders looked to the sky, thinking for a brief moment that he would come face-to-face with some kind of prehistoric bird, but the noise was farther away, behind him, somewhere on the island. Just as quickly as the noise started, it was over, and movement in the boat brought his attention back to the man, who had leapt from the craft as if it were on fire, and took off at a sprint.

Anders blinked to clear his vision, which had suddenly become blurred. And that was when he realized it wasn’t his vision that was blurred—it was smoke floating up into the night air. The boat was actually on fire. And the man was running straight toward where Anders was hiding in the shadows, close enough that though Anders couldn’t yet see his face, he could make out the color of the man’s hat in the moonlight: green.

With his heart beating wildly, Anders’s curiosity bumped up against his natural survival instincts—and the fear won out. Every muscle in Anders’s body clenched and he closed his eyes, as a child might to render himself invisible. When he dared open them, the man was gone, out of sight. He exhaled, a short sigh of relief, until he remembered the fire. Turning back to it, it now looked as if the entire marina was ablaze, the bright orange flames fully engulfing the boat.

“Help,” he said, but his voice came out croaky and not nearly as loud as he anticipated. He cleared his throat and tried again.

“Help!” This time, the full force of his breath propelled the word into the air, only for it to be swallowed up by a siren, more deafening than the loud birdcall.

A siren? Anders looked in the direction of the high-pitched noise, expecting to see a fire truck, though he had never seen anything resembling a fire station on the island. Instead, his eyes landed on a gray pickup truck, its headlights competing with the red flashing bulb held tight to the roof by the driver’s hand. Anders couldn’t make out who it was, until the truck pulled up in front of the flames, and he recognized one of the burly watermen he’d seen at the One-Eyed Crab and again at the docks. BobDan had appeared, too, and Anders assumed he was the one that called the . . . firefighter seemed too strong a word.

They both hurried to the back of the truck, where a large drum of water took up the entire bed. The waterman grabbed a hose and pointed it at the boat, while BobDan turned a metal wheel, releasing the water full blast onto the fire, and then put his two hands on the hose as well, helping to hold it steady. Anders watched, waiting for the fire to die down, but if anything the flames seemed to grow higher.

Against all his better instincts, he unglued his feet from where they stood and ran toward the men. “Hey!” he yelled when he reached them, over the loud spray of the water, the crackle of the flames. “What can I do?”

BobDan glanced his way. “There’s another hose over there.” He jerked his head toward one of the docks crawling out to sea. “By the third piling.”

Anders took off in that direction, but as soon as he turned away from the fire, it took a minute for his eyes to readjust to the darkness, and he didn’t see the hose until he was almost on top of it. He turned the spigot as far as it would go and grabbed the nozzle of the hose, running back to the fire. Placing his thumb over the water spout to create a more powerful spray, he directed it at the boat, and though it wasn’t much, combined with the force of the first hose, the fire finally started showing signs of backing down.

“Well,” BobDan said fifteen minutes later, as the three men stood staring at what was left of the boat, essentially a pile of charred wet wood and smoke. Anders waited for BobDan to say more, before understanding that one word was likely his way—and the only way—of offering his thanks to anyone.

“I’ll help you clean this up tomorrow,” the waterman said, coiling up the hose on his elbow and shoulder.

“S’alright. I reckon I can handle it.”

“Shouldn’t we call someone?” Anders interjected, when he realized the men were in no hurry to do anything but pack up and call it a night.

BobDan eyed him. “Who?”

“I don’t know, the police, maybe? Someone just committed arson.”

BobDan didn’t try very hard to conceal a half grin. “Knock yourself out, Barbara Walters. Nearest cop is about twelve miles thataway.” He pointed a bony finger to the expanse of water beyond the dock.

Anders’s eyebrows shot skyward. “So wait,