Anyone who has ever visited or lived on an island knows about island time. Surrounded by water, you enter an ambiance of permissiveness, a hiatus from the ordinary. For some, it is the long, slow summer, never changing out of shorts, slouching into the post office and grocery store in flip-flops, waving cars languidly onto the road in front of you. For others, summer is when tourists, like the richly laden ships of old, wash ashore with their bounty. For them, this is harvest time, and if nothing – or not enough – is gathered and laid by for the coming winter, life will become mean and cold as the streets empty of cars and the restaurants close. Each winter carries the threat of eviction from paradise. Not enough food or fuel or money for the kids, and you may be forced to leave.

Before we moved to Martha’s Vineyard, while still part-timers who rented our house in the summer to pay the mortgage, we decided to cover our gray barn siding with cedar shakes. They would add a warm, brown layer of insulation and pretty up our contemporary Cape. That fall, we hired Donny, recommended by a neighbor. We settled on a price and agreed he would complete the job by early spring.

We liked Donny: a tall, skinny guy in his twenties who wore a ponytail and old wool cap. His jeans were torn at the knees and his battered leather jacket looked like it had passed through several closets before landing in his. And he smelled of cigarettes. Unlike some reformed smokers, I enjoy the occasional whiff of nicotine.

Come March, a thaw set in throughout most of the East. We had not heard from Donny, so we called for a progress report. One of the numbers he had given us was picked up by an answering machine that sounded as far away as the moon. “Leave a message,” the ghostly voice instructed us in cracked tones. We did, many times, but never got a call back. His second number had been disconnected. Scalloping, we thought, or hunting. So we got in the car and drove to the Island.

I suppose we shouldn’t have been so surprised to find only one-quarter of the house covered in new shakes. The rest were stacked around, partially covered with plastic. Nails were everywhere, and strips of wood, and broken shingles. I sat on the front steps and felt the tears welling up in my eyes. We had given him a substantial down payment five months ago. What was going on? I felt betrayed. We had heard about the dark underbelly of the Vineyard, of jobs abandoned, of disappearances: All these warnings I usually rejected, defending the value of someone’s word, and his independence. I am on your side, I wanted to say. Why are you doing this to me?

 “Cheer up,” my husband said, as he handed me his handkerchief, “he has a brother. Let’s look in the phone book.”

“Donny’s off scalloping,” said the voice on the other end. “Due back tonight.”

So we bought fresh swordfish, potatoes, and salad, and sat, drinking scotch while the house heated up. The situation was not yet desperate, we decided; there was still time before the first renters arrived. After dinner, we called his brother again. Donny was not there. The woman who answered had no information; she hadn’t known he was coming back tonight. Her husband was out. We left another message.

The next day, coming back from a cold walk on the beach, we saw an unknown teenager nailing shingles onto our siding.

“Where’s Donny?” my husband asked.

“Donny had to go off-Island. I’m Kevin; I’m helping him out.” He stuck out a red, cold hand.

We reviewed the problem for him.

Kevin wiped his nose on the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “There were these other jobs left from the summer. The plumber couldn’t get in until we finished the drywall. We had to work while the weather was good.” He rubbed his hands together. “When do you need to get back in?”

“April,” I lied.

“No problem,” said Kevin. “We’ll be long gone by then.”

“But there is all this to clean up.” I flapped my hands at the mess.

He looked at me for the first time and smiled, revealing several missing teeth. “Don’t you worry; it’ll all be done.”

Tears again. I wanted to get him some gloves, but instead I turned away. A cold wind was coming out of the north and the sun was almost down.

When we got back with Louis’ Take Out, Kevin had left. The previously attached shakes had already weathered to a lighter color than the few new ones. We put the lasagna in the oven and poured a drink. There was a knock on the door.

It was Donny. He looked the same – maybe a little more beat-up, a little more tired. But the smile was the same and the smell of cigarettes. “I brought you some surf and turf.” He reached into a brown paper bag and pulled out a plastic bag with a dozen scallops, then a frozen package of meat. “Venison steaks,” he said. “Tenderloin. You just defrost this and cook it quickly in a pan with some butter – delicious. And the scallops too. They came out of their shells today.”

We just looked at him for a minute. “Thanks,” I said, finally.

“Sit down,” said my husband. He pushed a chair forward. “Drink?”

Donny shook his head. “Nah, I used to be a drunk.”

He stayed for half an hour. We talked about the shingles. He had these other jobs but they were over now and he and Kevin would finish in a couple of weeks, clean up the yard. It would be done long before the renters came. We believed him. He said he needed money so we paid him another installment. The next day, before leaving, we ate the venison and the scallops. They were delicious.

In late April, we called Donny. Same problem: answering machine on the moon. No call back. I panicked. We drove to the Island and discovered one side of the house still lacked shingles. We called his brother’s number but no one answered. Most of the rubble and nails had been removed and the remaining shingles stacked under the deck. We stayed a week, cleaning up, reseeding the grass. Then we wrote a letter to all the renters, apologizing for the unfinished job. A couple of them complained but none reneged on the rent. The final side was shingled the following January, a year late. We never saw Donny again and mailed the final payment to a box number. The check has never cleared.