I head for the bar kitchen with its full commercial setup. Flat top grill, deep fryer, six-burner range, walk-in cooler. I fire up the flat top and start pulling food. Eggs, bacon, a loaf of bread for toast. Butter. The good hot sauce, not the tourist stuff with fancy labels.
Stormy follows me in and stands near the doorway like he's not sure he's allowed past the threshold. His arms are crossed over his chest and he's watching my hands again. I've noticed he does that. Watches hands. Tracks them like radar, like he needs to know where they are at all times and what they're doing. I file that away in the growing folder of things I notice about this kid and don't ask about.
"You like eggs?" I ask, cracking four onto the flat top. They sizzle and pop and the kitchen fills with that good breakfast smell. "Scrambled, fried, over easy? I cook a mean over easy. The secret is butter. Unholy amounts of butter. My daddy used to say if you can still see the pan, you haven't used enough butter, and the man died of lung cancer, not a heartattack, so clearly, he was onto something. Is that okay with you?"
He nods. Then forces the word out, quiet but there. "Yes."
"Over easy it is then. Bacon?"
Another nod, a swallow. Then, softer. "Please."
The words are coming easier now. Still quiet. Still costing him. But coming. That little 'please' guts me but I don't let on. I don't want to make him more self-conscious than he already is.
I lay strips across the flat top and they start curling and snapping. "Here's the plan for today. We've got to board up every window on the front side of this building, and there are a lot of them. I picked up plywood yesterday but we need to measure, cut, and nail it all up. We also need to move anything valuable from the first floor up to the second or third in case the surge gets bad. And at some point, we need to get your bike up the stairs. Can you help me?"
His eyes light up. "I can do all that."
Wow, a full sentence. We're getting somewhere now.
"I know you can. That's why I'm glad you're here." I flip the eggs. "You know, most people evacuate during hurricanes. They pack up their cars and drive to a Holiday Inn in Dothan and eat vending machine food and watch the Weather Channel in their underwear. And here I am, making over easy eggs for a stranger in gift shop pants during the apocalypse. Fair warning though, it's going to be hot as Satan's armpit out there. July during storm season is no joke. The humidity alone will have you wringing out your shirt every twenty minutes, and the storm bands are going to roll through and soak us.Then the sun comes back out and steams us like vegetables. It's miserable."
"I don't mind the heat."
The words are coming out smoother now without him choking on every syllable.
"Good. Because the heat definitely doesn't mind you. It's really friendly down here. Real hands-on."
I plate everything up. Four eggs, six strips of bacon, four slices of toast on each plate. His plate maybe has a little more bacon than mine. Maybe the toast is cut a little thicker. He probably won't notice. I set the plates on the stainless-steel prep counter and pull up two stools.
He sits down and looks at the food like he's not sure it's real. Then he picks up his fork and starts eating, and there's this thing he does where he tries to eat slowly, tries to pace himself like this is a casual breakfast and he's not that hungry. But his body betrays him. His hand moves faster than his brain wants it to. He finishes a strip of bacon and his eyes flick to the plate to check how much is left, the way you do when you're used to food not being a guarantee.
I don't say anything. I just eat my breakfast and talk.
"So let me tell you about the last time we boarded up this place. Hurricane Michael, 2018. I was young, dumb as a box of rocks, and convinced I knew better than every meteorologist in the state of Florida. My buddy Hatchet came over to help me board up and he brought his cousin, who I swear to God had never held a hammer in his life. This man nailed plywood over the front door. Not a window. The front door. Sealed us inside the building. We had to take it back down and start over, and Hatchet laughed so hard he fell off a ladder and bruised his tailbone."
Stormy is listening. He's not reacting, not laughing, but he's listening. His eyes are on me and his fork has slowed down. But he's in the room with me, and he's not cowering, which is about all I can ask for right now.
"The cousin also brought a case of beer for the job, which ordinarily I'd be fine with, but it was nine in the morning and he'd already had four by the time he nailed the door shut, so in hindsight the signs were there."
I take a bite of toast and keep going. I tell him another story about Preacher and his fourth-bourbon sermons, including the legendary one about how manatees are proof that God has a sense of humor because he made an animal that looks like a couch cushion and gave it the soul of a philosopher.
I tell him about the time a tourist's parrot got loose in the bar and spent three hours on the ceiling fan yelling obscenities it had learned from its owner. Nobody could get it down until Sheila climbed up on the bar with a slice of garlic toast and said, "Come here, baby," in the same voice she uses on drunk bikers, and the bird landed on her shoulder like she was a pirate.
Stormy's plate is empty. He's cleaned it without realizing, I think, because he looks down at it with a flicker of surprise. For a few minutes he forgot to monitor his own survival and just ate.
"More bacon?" I ask.
"No. Thank you. That was..." He pauses. Swallows. Closes his eyes and tries again. "Really good."
"Wait until you try my brisket. It'll change your life. Now come on, we're burning daylight and that bastard Peter's not going to wait for us."
We start with the windows. I've got sheets of plywood stacked against the side of the building, already cut to rough sizes from when I measured the windows last hurricane season. But the bar has a lot of glass on the front side, big picture windows that look out toward the water, and every one of them needs to be covered.
The heat hits us like a wall the second we step outside. It's barely daylight and it's already ninety degrees, the air so thick with moisture that breathing feels like drinking. The sky is a weird color, that yellowish gray that means the atmosphere is loaded and ready to dump. Storm bands are rolling in from the south in waves, ten minutes of sideways rain followed by twenty minutes of brutal sunshine that turns the wet pavement into a steam bath.
I grab a tape measure and start marking plywood. Stormy holds the other end without being asked. He's quick and careful and he pays attention. When I show him how to line up the cuts, he does it right the first time without needing to be told twice.
"You've done this before?" I ask.
