Author: otter
Summary: Duck leaned his shoulder against the wall, stretched his elbow out along the table, and watched the world outside, waiting for it to turn upside down, waiting for the rest of Wilby to wake up and realize everything had changed.
Wilby Wonderful | PG | Dec 2006 
The morning after, Duck got up at the same time he always did. He dressed in the same worn, paint-splattered coveralls that he wore every workday. He poured a cup of coffee -- two sugars, no cream -- and stood at the sink while he drank it, so he could look out the kitchen window and watch the gulls wheel in endless circles over the ocean. He drove into town like he always did, parked in his usual spot outside Nellie Bly's Cafe, slid into his usual seat inside.
Duck leaned his shoulder against the wall, stretched his elbow out along the table, and watched the world outside, waiting for it to turn upside down, waiting for the rest of Wilby to wake up and realize everything had changed.
Wilby looked the same, though, and there was nothing out there to tell him what to do now, with all of this.
The morning's Island Sentinel fluttered and twitched like a dying bird when it hit the table, and the headline stretched thick and black like a wound across its belly.
"Wilby Watch Center of Scandal," Duck read out loud, and put his fingers on the paper to turn it around, so he could read it properly. "Nice. Kind of alliterative."
Lukey slid into the seat across from Duck's, kicked one leg of Duck's chair accidentally-on-purpose. "Alliterative, yeah, thanks Duck," he said. "That was just exactly the fucking word I was searching for, when I read that, was 'alliterative.'"
Duck shrugged and looked out the window again. The morning fog was already clearing up; it was going to be a beautiful day. "What would you rather have it say?" he asked. "'Lukey Brown Revealed To Be Cocksucker'? 'Local Wilby Men To Host Anal Sex Workshop'?"
Lukey kicked at him again, this time connecting sharply with Duck's shin, but Duck just ignored him, and ignored the way he was peering wildly around the place like he was sure that somebody was going to catch them talking about queer things. "Well, I'm glad you're so fucking calm, Mister MacDonald," Lukey said, and he was slumped down in his chair like he was trying to go unnoticed. "If only we could all just care less that we're about to be outted." He tapped at the paper with one hand, his long, slim index finger sweeping over a line of text near the bottom of the story. The paper was crumpled there, as if Lukey had crushed it in his hand after reading it, then smoothed it out again.
Duck leaned over and squinted at the type; he really should've brought his glasses, but he didn't usually need them, not on working days. Maybe he just hadn't wanted to read the paper today at all, hadn't wanted to know what it might say.
"Oh, for God's sake," Lukey finally said, snatching the paper out of his hands. "It says that the police didn't charge anybody with anything but we're fucked because the newspaper's going to get a list of the names of the men involved and print them for all the world to see."
Duck didn't really think of the Island Sentinel as a publication that all the world would see -- the Island Sentinel printed things like birth announcements and obituaries and sometimes news about labor negotiations at the mainland fish cannery, but the island and the nearby mainland coast were the breadth and scope of the world, as far as the Sentinel staff were concerned. Duck knew what Lukey meant, though, because the island was the whole scope of the world for most islanders, too, and sometimes they had a hard time remembering that there was anything else out there, across the waters beyond Wilby Watch.
"Nothing we can do about it, is there?" Duck said, more a statement than a question. "Nowhere to go but forward."
"Yeah?" Lukey said. He looked tired; Duck wondered whether Lukey had slept at all last night. Duck hadn't. "And where's that?"
They sat together for a long time, just quiet, because neither of them had an answer for that question. Finally Lukey said, "Where'd you disappear to last night, anyway? I turned around and you'd just--" he made a gesture, the kind usually accompanied by some sort of 'abracadabra' "--vanished. Bet Stan caught you with your pants down out there, huh?"
Duck smiled, though he suspected that the expression didn't look much like a smile: too tight, too worn-away, and his smile had been flayed by the winds last night on the Watch and sitting in the cold near the road, painted red by police lights. In those lights, Dan had looked dead already, and he'd stood off by himself and hadn't looked at Duck once.
"No," Duck said. He tapped his fingers on the tabletop, and watched the sun start to edge the roofs across the street. "Just went down the rocks for a smoke." He wiggled his hand, sort of a so-so gesture, but wasn't quite sure what he meant by it. "Met somebody down there and got to talking."
Lukey snorted. "'Talking,'" he said. "Right. Is that what they're calling it these days."
"Yeah," Duck said, and thought about how Dan's voice had broken when he'd said, I haven't ever-- I mean, I've never-- and Duck's own voice, thick in his throat, the smoke clawing its way out of his lungs, when he'd answered, It's okay.
Dan had never even been kissed, he'd said. Never touched a man. Never had what he wanted, not in his whole life. And he'd looked at Duck like what he'd wanted right then, more than anything in the world, was to have Duck's hands on him and Duck's breath in his mouth and Duck's heat soaking into his skin. But all he'd done was settle next to Duck on the rocks, with their shoulders brushing, and Duck had sat still and would've let Dan do anything that he'd wanted, anything at all, but all Dan had done was skim the backs of his knuckles over Duck's thigh, as if by accident, and curved his hand over the back of Duck's hand, and not said another thing.
Duck had been thinking about kissing him -- had been thinking about very little except kissing him, ever since that moment -- when Stan Lastman had fumbled his way onto the Watch and down onto the rocks, tipped the world on its side like an overturned kayak.
"Speaking of kayaks," Duck said, even though they hadn't been, "where is everybody?"
Lukey looked up, looked around as if he expected a crowd to have shuffled into the silent cafe while he wasn't looking, but there was only Nellie, finally making her way toward their table with the coffee pot and a plate full of muffins.
"Still in bed, maybe," Lukey said, unconvincingly. "I could call Hardy and see if he--"
Duck shook his head, poked his finger toward the window and wrapped his other hand around the mug that Nellie placed in front of him. "There he is," he said, and watched Hardy walk from his car up to the door of Nellie's, pause just long enough to read the headline on the newspaper in the machine outside, and then come in through the door, accompanied by the jangling of tiny bells.
"We're moving to the municipal docks," Hardy said, before he even sat down. "We're getting away from the Watch and that whole thing."
Duck nodded. The Watch was closed, anyway, so it wasn't as if there was any discussion to be had on the subject; they wouldn't be back there until the police line tape went down, until the police gave up on it or the island's natural forces of wind and water tore the tape down for them.
He didn't think there was much of a way to separate the Wilby Island Sea Kayaking Club from the scandal at Wilby Watch -- the Wilby Island Sea Kayaking Club was, of course, how the whole business at the Watch had gotten started in the first place, with Lukey's hand down inside Duck's wetsuit and Johannes Fletcher standing there watching, like he hadn't realized before exactly how nice it was to just get off once in awhile.
Duck could still remember how Lukey's mouth had tasted, how good it had felt to feel those hands after the long years away, how he hadn't been able to recall why he'd ever stopped doing this.
"Duck," somebody was saying, and when Duck came back from the memory Hardy was staring at him, frowning. Hardy had been in the Navy, and whenever he talked to anybody he had a tone like he was addressing a raw recruit. Duck didn't mind. He'd gotten used to it. "We need to talk about what we're going to do about this."
"Do?" Duck said, and looked out the window again, because he thought he'd just seen someone familiar from the corner of his eye.
Dan Jarvis had just pulled up across the street and was peering in the dark windows of Carol French's office, rapping tentatively on the door with his knuckles. He was still wearing the same clothes from last night, and he looked like hell.
"Yes, do," Hardy said. "Obviously there's a problem here, Johannes and Dave didn't show up this morning, and I've been thinking that maybe we ought to advertise in the Sentinel, see if we can't drum up a few new members. The club's been stagnating a little, don't you think?"
Across the street, Dan Jarvis had gone back to his car, but he was just standing there, staring at Carol French's office, clutching his keys like he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do, without anybody in the office to open the door.
"New members?" Lukey said. "Less queers, you mean." He snorted, like he doubted that there were any sea kayaking enthusiasts on the whole of Wilby Island who wouldn't want to get into his pants. Wetsuit. Whatever.
"That isn't what I mean," Hardy said. "Help me out here, Duck."
Duck wasn't really listening, though. He was watching Dan Jarvis climb back into his car, looking broken and defeated. He was thinking about Dan's hand on his, Dan's knuckles brushing his thigh, Dan's mouth that nobody had ever kissed the way Dan wanted.
Dan's car pulled away from the curb, heading out of town, back toward the lighthouse and the bridge. Duck frowned and stood up, finally looked at Hardy and Lukey, who were staring back at him like he'd betrayed all that they were, violated some sacred trust of the Wilby Island Sea Kayaking Club. "Sorry," Duck said, even though he wasn't, much. "I've got to go."
"Go?" Lukey said. "Where?" He said it like he really wanted to know the answer, like maybe Duck had figured a way out of this riptide they'd been caught in, this relentless sweeping out to sea.
Duck waved his hand vaguely, toward the door, toward the island outside, toward the Watch and the bridge and the lighthouse and Dan, whose car was heading to the edge of downtown, about to disappear. "I've got to, uh," Duck said, "go recruit a new member." He left a couple of loonies on the table for his coffee, and didn't quite run out to his truck.
The street was quiet and Wilby looked the same as it always had. Duck pulled out into the street and pushed off in Dan's wake, swimming as he always did, toward the Watch.
the end