Whatever it was – Hello, Foggy Basin. I was back in you.
I went to the Polar Candy Shop, which I had stopped at way too many times after school. It had been a hangout for everyone as they made their way back into town. Foggy Basin didn’t have its own school system, which had always been weird. We were small, but not that small. However, we shared a school district with a couple of other small towns in the area. But after school,we all made our way back here by the bus to be dropped off at the one-stop for our town – right by the candy shop.
“Ben fucking Fitzgerald?” I stopped dead in my tracks as the glass doors hit behind me with a whomp. “Ben, bro! How the fuck have you been?”
“Denny?” My mind twisted as I came to terms with the round-bellied man who stood in front of me in a red Santa Clause apron and a wide grin on his face. “Dude! What the fuck are you doing here?”
“You know… I flunked out of Chico my sophomore year and started working here. I’m now the manager.”
“Good old, Denny. You never really were one for hitting the books harder than you hit the keg. Looking good, bro.” I slapped his belly.
“I gained a small child in my belly after the first year working here, but who the hell could stop themselves? So, I’ve gained weight, but I’m actually happy – and sober, believe it or not. But the fucking candy…”
“Good for you. I think happiness is about all we can ask for.” I shifted, already feeling weird about running into someone I knew so quickly.
“How about you? You happy?”
“I… Yeah, man, I guess I am. I have a great job that I like most of the time, and… Yeah, for the most part, I guess I am.”
“You know our ten-year reunion is about to happen. If that’s why you came back, you’re a little early.”
“I probably won’t…” I shrugged. “Well, maybe. But I’ll probably be too busy to make another trip back anytime soon.”
“It’s like in two weeks. You should totally stay. What brings you back now? I saw your ma out to eat the other day, and she told me you were designing hotels.”
“I…. that’s not quite-“
“She also said you almost never come back home because you're too busy. They always go to the city to see you,” he admonished like he was fucking better than me. My hackles raised, and I knew I was reading into this much more than I was there. Denny wasn’t smart enough for it.
“I’m… I don’t design hotels. I mean, that’s what I had been hoping to do, but I kind of fell onto a different track, I guess. I manage building projects – hotels, well, resorts, actually.”
“Well, isn’t that curious? There is a resort trying to buy up this end of town so they have enough space to build some uppity high-end resort.” He crossed his arms and stared at me. “That wouldn’t be you, would it?” Well, maybe he was smarter than I thought. That year at Chico must have shaken something free in that football addled brain of his. Denny had more concussions in high school than anyone.
“I… I didn’t know that they were… We have a lot of building projects, and I wasn’t aware that they had chosen Foggy Basin until a couple of days ago.”
“Do your parents know?” God, he was judgy.
“They’ve never said anything about it, but… I mean, they know where I work.”
“Maybe they haven’t seen it. It’s been a pretty damn quiet takeover. Some slick fella came in and offered us a crap ton of money for the building, but old man Brown didn’t bite at his offer. It was pretty damn high, though. If they had offered me that, I think I would have signed quickly. But I’m glad he didn’t. What would all of these businesses do? They weren’t very upfront about any of that. There was some mention of our businesses being a part of the resort’s property, but it seemed kind of shady.” I was being grilled by Denny, and he wasn’t the person I needed to have this conversation with.
“It’s not something that happens very often, I will be honest. However, with the amount of cash that the company is willingto spend, all of the businesses could find—even build—a new location somewhere else in town. There’s tons of space on the other side that’s not being used.”
“But this is where it’s always been, bro. It’s history, man. You can’t just uproot history and think it’ll stick somewhere else. This candy shop has been here for almost fifty years; did you know that? The bakery has, too. Not to mention, the twenty or thirty years, a few of the others have been a part of this community. Wouldn’t it be sad to come to Polar and have to tell your kids that you used to come here as a kid too – but not really here, a different here that is now a resort we probably can’t even afford to go to.” He waited, and I took a deep breath.
“It’s progress, Denny. Things have to change for things to grow and evolve. This place is… charming, and it will always have a soft space in my heart, but it’s not very different from when we graduated, is it? The same businesses and restaurants serve the same food that they did when our parents were kids. A little progress might do this place good. Tourists come with money, and they spend it in town. It could really change this place for the better, and the shop owners in town would prosper in ways they haven’t in years.”
“Change isn’t always for the better either, bro.”
“No, it’s not. I won’t lie and say that things have always worked out for the better, but they have most of the time.” Why was I staying here and having this conversation with him? It wouldn’t get me anywhere.
“Let’s just agree to disagree since I wouldn’t be the one actually cashing the check, anyway. Is that why you’re here, though?”
I nodded and felt the lump form in my throat as I tried to swallow it down.
“Send in the hometown boy to try to get it done, huh? I think you may be in for a surprise, my friend.”
“Yeah, I don’t think that they actually understood my… Well, you know. I may have once been popular, but now I’m sure everyone thinks I’ve become a dick.”
