Episode 1: Introducing a Dog Named Rambo and an Island Named Looser
Who Laughs Last: Episode One
The warm August afternoon is winding down as Jim Perkins hikes the Seal Rock Overlook trail with his dog, Rambo. (Over the years, Jim has apologized profusely to his dog for naming him Rambo—a moment of attempted machismo exacerbated by an excess of Seattle IPA. It appears Rambo has forgiven him.) Rambo is a boxer, with the sleek tan hide and square head of his breed, an animal of immense heart and, Pooh-like, very little brain. Jim is a middle-aged man of singularly unremarkable appearance, medium height and build, and beginning-to-gray hair. The only truly noticeable thing about Jim is his eyes, which are the color of olives, and which are full of kindness and anxiety, in equal measure. Few people notice his eyes, because Jim is painfully shy, and rarely looks up.
Jim and Rambo are walking the Overlook trail, ostensibly for Rambo’s sake, but really to distract Jim from his worries. This particular trail is the perfect place for distraction—neither too difficult for a middle-aged person of middling fitness, nor so easy that it would allow Jim to ignore the trail and settle back into anxiety.
To avoid thinking the thoughts he doesn’t want to think, Jim considers the other islanders he and Rambo have encountered on previous rambles here.
Sometimes—though not as often as Jim would like—they’ll run into Lauren, proprietor of the Apple Cart Grocery, and her mostly-Australian-Shepherd, Shelby. Shelby’s comical whiskers and gentle demeanor have won the heart of many a timid child. Lauren, who is brusque and does not suffer fools lightly, is just this side of terrifying for the young and the insecure. Unbeknownst to Lauren (but probably not to Shelby), Jim is in love with Lauren. Though no longer young, Jim belongs to the ranks of the insecure, and the most he’s done in furtherance of his love is ask whether the sugar is still on sale this week.
Occasionally, when Jim and Rambo arrive at the eponymous Seal Rock Overlook, they find Sheriff Tom, a man who has been sheriff so long the title is part of his name. Sheriff Tom is one of the few islanders who lacks a canine companion, and most people agree his life is the poorer for it. Perhaps even Sheriff Tom agrees, but this is how it is.
Sometimes they’ll run into Susan Droske and her daughter Marta. Marta is Lauren’s granddaughter by blood but not by marriage. This is island gossip, a story Jim knows without knowing how he learned it. About a decade ago, Susan dated Lauren’s son, Bill. When Susan discovered she was pregnant, she refused Bill’s offer of marriage and left the island, shutting Bill out of her life entirely. Broken-hearted, Bill never told his mother about the pregnancy. Lauren didn’t find out she had a granddaughter until Susan returned to the island, having found whatever it was she was looking for in the faraway place most islanders referred to as “the other America,” or sometimes simply: off-island. By then, Marta was four years old.
Marta is ten, now, but Lauren has never forgiven Susan.
Jim wonders briefly if that’s why Lauren is so gruff, but he quickly rejects that thought. By all accounts, Lauren has always been exactly who she is now. Belatedly finding out her son and his girlfriend withheld the news that she had a granddaughter was just the icing on the cake.
Icing. Unbidden, an image arises in Jim’s mind: the light is dim, perhaps flickering candlelight, and he’s licking icing off Lauren’s navel.
No. He shakes himself to clear his head, looking momentarily like Rambo after the futile pursuit of a rabbit or a squirrel. That fantasy will never come to fruition, so he might as well stopper the vision like a bottle of fine wine that’s too expensive for his budget.
He and Rambo walk the last few steps to the abrupt edge and Jim, a little winded from the walk, sits on a boulder facing out over the bay where the seals bark and belch. Rambo rests his square head on Jim’s bony knee, and together they watch as the sun blesses the water, the towering cedars and multi-colored madrones lining the opposite shore, the houses and shops in the Village, and the sensuous curves of the forest-clad hills rising behind it all.
Into this moment of heart-enveloping calm a large black dog bounds, rams into Jim’s knee, and sends Rambo ass-over-teakettle (a phrase Jim’s always admired, though he isn’t in a position to appreciate it just now). It’s Molly, an inimitable and effusive Labrador. Markus follows, breathing heavily. Markus has abandoned even the pretense of keeping Molly under control, though he holds a leather leash in one hand, as if he could easily rein her in, should the need arise.
“Hi Jim,” Markus says, adjusting a Sounders cap over hair that is desperately in need of a trim. “Taking a break from my rounds to let Molly run.”
Markus is the island’s full-time garbage collector, and part-time philosopher. No one knows whether it’s philosophical musings or garbage collection that prevented Markus from getting a haircut. Well, possibly Markus’s wife, Ella, knows the answer. Or possibly she has more important things to think about.
“Coming to the Water District meeting tomorrow?” Markus says.
Ah, there’s that thought Jim was trying to avoid thinking. “Yes,” he says quietly. “I have to. They’re going to vote on whether to elect me as engineer.” He doesn’t give the full title, Chief Engineer of the Looser Island Water District, because he’s afraid it might sound cocky. And he doesn’t say finally, because he doesn’t want to give the impression that he thinks the election is overdue, that he’s entitled to the position.
Markus supplies the word for him. “Finally!” he says. “You’ve been doing the job for a few years now, right?” He puts his hands on his hips, steps one foot forward, and rocks back and forth, as if he’s posing for a commercial for running gear. Or pirates.
“Right?” Jim says, hoping that’s the appropriate response. It’s not easy being an introvert, living so completely in his own mind that he sometimes misses what others have said to him.
Molly is dangerously close to the ledge, so Markus jingles the leash to get her attention. “C’mere Molly!” he shouts. Molly ignores him (a canine skill seemingly learned in utero). Markus calls again, then whistles, and finally produces a bacon-flavored dog treat, covered in pocket lint, and makes kissing sounds in Molly’s direction. She races over, and he gives her the treat, nabs her collar, and snaps on the leash.
“Back down the hill we go,” Markus says. “You know what I always say about this trail, don’t you?”
Jim does, but he shakes his head, to give Markus the chance to say it again.
“This trail is not a loop,” Markus says solemnly. “Like life, it’s a one way ticket.”
Jim smiles weakly.
“See you at the meeting!” Markus yells as Molly takes off, dragging Markus back down the trail.
The silence after they leave is palpable, warm and soft and familiar, like a favorite sweater. But even with the gentle calm restored, Jim can’t go back to not thinking about the Water District meeting, and the implications if he isn’t elected. The thought is there, and all the fears wrapped around it, a tangled jumble like the tightly-wound innards of a tennis ball, the kind Rambo always rejects because he lacks the brain power to figure out what, exactly, a dog is supposed to do with a tennis ball.
If Jim isn’t elected, the selection process will start all over, and he’ll be out of a job. Jobs, like housing, are scarce on the island. If he isn’t elected, he’ll have to move. He’ll have to leave Looser Island and find another home and another job, and if he moves that will be the end of any hope of fulfilling his Lauren-based fantasies. The medley of anxiety twangs in his stomach and his chest until Rambo, sensing a problem in spite of the paucity of neurons in his dogly head, smears a generous dollop of slobber on Jim’s knee, reminding him it will all work out somehow.
“Thank you, my friend,” Jim says, rubbing the inner part of Rambo’s ear, which makes Rambo groan with pleasure. “But I don’t know if I believe you. I might not get elected. I’ve only been here for a few years. I’m too new. I don’t really belong.”
Rambo shakes his head, sending a shower of saliva onto a nearby clump of sword ferns, where it will likely remain until the end of time, such is its staying power.
“Yeah, go ahead and shake your head,” Jim says, “but it’s true. And I’m beginning to think it doesn’t matter how long I live here. I’ll always be an outsider.” He gazes into Rambo’s eyes. “I mean, look at me. Most of my conversations are with my dog.”
Rambo grunts, but before Jim can tell whether Rambo is suggesting one’s dog really is the best possible conversation partner, there is a small miracle, something Jim has read about but never seen, a flash of green on the horizon when the sunlight prisms in the atmosphere just before signing off for the day. The moment brings with it a flash of insight: maybe he isn’t the only one. Maybe Lauren and Susan and Marta and Sheriff Tom and Markus and all the others, maybe they’re interlopers on the island, too, alternately trying to put down roots like the trees and shake things up like the waves, hindered on both fronts by their humanness and their dividedness.
Perhaps that’s what Rambo was trying to convey.
Or maybe he was trying to warn Jim of the portentous events still to come, to signal that the next day held even more significance than a mere Water District election.
It’s hard to say.
The flash is gone, the sun has disappeared behind the hills, and the air is growing chilly in spite of the fact that it’s late summer. Jim waits, trying to imprint the beauty so he can translate it into one of his (thus far unpublished) graphic novels.
He sighs, and Rambo follows suit, because whatever Jim does is right and good, to his way of thinking.
“Let’s go home,” Jim says.
And so they do.
The next day, a few hours before the meeting of the Looser Island Water District Board of Directors, Jim locks Rambo in their apartment. Within a short time, the entire village can hear the dog’s displeasure. Normally, Jim brings Rambo everywhere he goes, to his cramped office, to the testing sites, to the post office to drop off water samples for the lab on the mainland, and to all the meetings of the Looser Island Water District. But not today. Jim has worked himself into a fine frenzy over the election, and it would send him right over the edge to worry about whether Rambo might throw the vote by urinating on the Welcome to Looser Island sign outside the Community Center, or licking his unmentionables during the meeting.
Looser Island has no governing body. There is no mayor—though there was a cat who held that honor, for a while. There is a Chamber of Commerce, but its functions are limited to handing out maps, posting signs notifying tourists which restaurants are open in the off-season, and lecturing clueless visiting cyclists about the rules of the road. However, fresh water is a precious commodity, in short supply in spite of the abundance of water surrounding the island, and so the Looser Island Water District holds a kind of authority in the community. Also, the Board meetings are pretty much the only venue for public discourse. As a result, just about everyone who is ambulatory and not otherwise occupied attends the meetings.
Most bring their dogs, it should be noted.
But not Rambo. Not today.
As he attempts to while away the hours before the meeting starts, Jim paces. The Village is approximately fifteen blocks long (the rest of the island is mostly taken up with farms and forest, with the occasional artist’s commune thrown in for good measure), and he’s already completed multiple loops and is about to wander back through the Apple Cart Grocery in anticipation of starting another loop when he sees Markus approaching in his garbage truck. He doesn’t want to talk to Markus again, or anyone else, for that matter, and he turns to leave, but stops when he hears a sound coming from one of the dumpsters. There is something about the sound, something that suggests more than the normal contingent of seagulls and crows hanging about like retirees waiting for Ye Old Country Buffet to open.
After Markus pulls the truck up to the dumpsters, Jim waves at him to hop out.
“Bet you’re excited about the meeting tonight!” Markus says, after opening the passenger side door to let Molly out.
Jim shakes his head. “It’ll be what it will be. Or something. God. I . . . well, anyway, I just thought you should know . . . I heard something weird from the dumpsters. Like, a knocking sound.” He points to the dumpsters.
“Hey, look at that! We finally got new dumpsters!” Markus says. “They must have been delivered today. The old ones were in such bad shape it’s a wonder they didn’t blow away in one of our big winds!”
Does he ever get tired of speaking in exclamation points? Jim thinks. Maybe that’s what a PhD in philosophy does for you.
There are three dumpsters, and together Jim and Markus lift each lid, and lean over the edge to peer in.
Inside the last one, there is a man.
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