Don't Ask The Mockingbird, What He Can't Tell — William Williamson

A week shy of his sixteenth birthday, Henry Roberts is realizing the summer of 1977 has changed him and his family forever. As he steps off a Greyhound bus after staying two months in Key West with his great Aunt Lela and her grandson, he sees his hometown of Matecumbe has continued to change as well. In his absence, someone has put a Chicago style pizzeria in the old building that for years sold tropical saltwater fish.

Walking home, Henry's thoughts are troubled, wondering what or who he might find at his house, the only home he has ever known. He hasn't seen or heard from his father and mother since school got out for the summer and she moved to the mainland to be near the insane asylum where his older brother had recently been committed. She vowed she was leaving his father, Jake and the island life in the Keys forever. She was done with Jake's drinking, partying and whoring around, which seems to come with living in the Keys while she slaved away working as a maid trying to keep the family's head above water. Henry couldn't blame her for wanting to leave Jake and the Keys. She had enough on her hands with Henry's brother going crazy, much less, putting up with Jake's infidelities and the constant encroachment on the island from commercialism, tourism and development.

Maybe Jake might be at the house, back from fishing and shrimping in Key West and he would step up and be a father for once, assuring Henry that life and the landscape changing before his eyes will be alright, but he doubted it.

Henry felt like a Robinson Crusoe delinquent, stumbling through adolescence on an island that is far from paradise for those who have lived on it for their entire lives.