I was more alone in that city of two and a half million people than I am here. At least if I keel over down at The Wharf, somebody will know who I am. Maybe even care. That’s the beauty of these particular woods, and of being a bit of a big deal around here. Even when it seems like there’s no one around, somebody’s watching. Waiting for something — anything — to happen. Especially to the likes of me.

As the summer sun ascends, my senses come to rest on what I’d been too busy to notice was missing from my life all these years I’ve been away. The mesmerizing dance of light on waves. The lullaby rhythm of waves on the shore. The salty stank of rotting seaweed and jellyfish corpses, inexplicably mingled with the smell of . . . marijuana?

Willy Gimp’s truck is parked on the beach, just down past the wharf itself.

Willy Gimp’s real name is William Matthews Jr., but the only people who call him that are people he hates — doctors, lawyers, cops, and judges. He was born with a twisted-up right side. An arm that defies cortical orders to co-operate. A hand whose default is tightly curled and fisted. A foot that turns in and drags a bit when he walks. A slight tension on the right corner of his bottom lip, giving him a perpetual smirk. Hemiplegic cerebral palsy, in medical terms. A “gimp,” according to his old man.

When he was five years old, Willy Gimp wanted to play hockey, but his father laughed. “That body will do you no favours. Best learn to use your head, Willy Gimp.” And so he did — out of spite and pride — use his head instead. Willy was smart as a whip. He was also bad at sports and worse with girls, so he had ample time to hit the books. More than anything else, he used those brains to get in and out of trouble.

Willy lived just off the highway between Loch Bhreagh and the turnoff Down North, a stretch called Centre Loch Bhreagh Bay Look-Off, according to the road signs. He was a year ahead of me in school, but in grade twelve, he transferred from the preppy-ish, small-school comfort of Loch Bhreagh Rural Consolidated to the industrial remedial program at the mean concrete edifice on the hill between The Mines and the Northside, in Town. Sullivan High School was its real name. But everybody called it The Jungle.

Why did sharp-as-a-tack Willy Gimp go from being honour roll at LBRC to being a grease monkey in The Jungle? Two reasons. He decided he wanted to be a mechanic, and The Jungle was a bigger market for the phenomenal pot he grew in the backwoods of his grandfather’s property in Big Harbour. Gimp had been growing it since he was sixteen, and smoking it since he was twelve. Said it eased the spasms in his arm and leg and made the stupid people of the world just a little more tolerable, funny, even.