On Saturday, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick strolled through the newly-minted, solar-paneled Eliakim’s Way affordable housing community in West Tisbury — which by midday had become a virtual power plant in the boiling summer heat — on the Island leg of his summer conversation tour through the commonwealth.

Sporting a summer-casual leaf-print shirt, Mr. Patrick was greeted by resident Jen Powers and her two daughters, Josephine and Talulah. The girls presented the governor with a glass jar filled with sea glass and rocks excavated from the site of their nearly zero-net-energy affordable home. Mrs. Powers and her daughters had jotted the words commitment, compassion, generosity and service on the rocks to signify the values of the community, which built the South Mountain Company-designed, Habitat for Humanity house.

After an introduction by Island state Rep. Timothy Madden, who unwisely pined for a respite of rain, Mr. Patrick stood before a small audience of sweaty constituents.

“Thank you for that warm introduction,” the governor punned as a distant rumble foreshadowed a violent end to the stifling heat. Mr. Patrick launched into a whistlestop-tested laundry list of accomplishments, touting the state’s universal health care coverage, educational achievement and job growth (Massachusetts added 10,000 of the country’s 19,000 new jobs in June) before navigating a dizzying array of hyper-local questions from the audience.

Peter Goodale questioned the governor about state enforcement of the Natural Heritage Endangered Species Protection act as it related to rare Island moths. It wasn’t an academic question; Mr. Goodale wants to clear most of the rest of his family’s 100-acre lot in Oak Bluffs to expand his sand and gravel business. But Mr. Patrick was clearly unfamiliar with the issue.

“We’ve been in the mining business for 60 years now and the present situation is . . .” Mr. Goodale began.

“I’m sorry, did you say the mining business?” Mr. Patrick interrupted.

“Yes, and . . . ”

“You mine? What do you mine?” the governor asked incredulously.

After a protracted discussion of habitat remediation for the Island’s rare lepidoptera, Mr. Patrick was ready to move on.

“I want to make sure we get to some other questions . . .”

“We get no benefit as private landowners,” Mr. Goodale interjected.

“I got it, Peter!” he said. By now the distant rumbles were less so, coming in quick succession and accompanied by a dark canopy of charcoal clouds.

“Net metering, it’s gotta go up,” South Mountain Company president John Abrams told Mr. Patrick, referring to the amount of credits a homeowner can generate from their own electricity. “Why is there a limit?”

“I got it, I got it,” the governor said.

“There should be no limit!”

“I got it!” an exasperated governor nearly shouted amid the steady drumbeat of thunder. Island scoutmaster Daniel Nelson, who had earlier asked Mr. Patrick why the state didn’t offer a boating safety class on the Vineyard, saw something he didn’t like in the unusual storm clouds overhead and sprinted out of the event with his troops. Some sought shelter on the new porch of Eliakim’s Way resident Madeleine Ezanno, but the governor pressed on amid a dwindling but hearty crowd.

Deval
Flashing a campaign smile. — Ivy Ashe

Then the heavens opened up and suddenly the event was over. Mr. Patrick’s detail of sunglass-spectacled aides shuffled him through the monsoon to a bulky state SUV.

“Thank you for coming,” someone shouted from the porch as the governor jogged by.

Donning the campaigner’s smile he turned to wave to his supporter.

“Oh, thank you,” he started when a deafening crack and blinding flash erased the smile and a leisurely jog became a sprint to safety.

Later that afternoon at an event to sign copies of his book, a dried-out Mr. Patrick took the stage of the Trinity Church in Oak Bluffs and meditated on the revelations and reconciliations of a young but full life. He recounted a formative trip to Africa after college, hitchhiking by bus, donkey and foot through the Nubian desert from Cairo to Khartoum and then onward to Darfur.

“I used to think I was poor before I lived in Sudan,” he said. “Now it seems trivial to describe my experience on the South Side of Chicago that way.” The audience was treated to a surprisingly personal session with the state leader when the topic turned to family matters.

Mr. Patrick became estranged from his father, a founding member of the left-field cosmic jazz outfit, the Sun Ra Arkestra, when he moved to New York city and away from his family to pursue his musical interests when the future governor was only four. Mr. Patrick described the relationship as “tortured” and said that when he left for prep school that filial divide grew to a yawning chasm.

“He was deeply disapproving of Milton Academy and he made it plain,” he said. “He thought it was going to make me white. He thought it was compromising who I was and who I ought to become.”

On his 25th birthday Mr. Patrick, then a stand-out law student in Washington D.C., was invited by his father to a jazz club in Northeast D.C. where he was performing on the saxophone.

“I don’t think we had spent a birthday together since I was three years old,” he said. Mr. Patrick took his seat at the club as his father announced that he was dedicating the next song to his son for his birthday. The song was the jazz standard I Can’t Get Started.

I’ve been around the world in a plane/I’ve started revolutions in Spain/the North Pole I’ve charted/and still I can’t get started with you

“He just stared right at me the whole time and I stared right back,” he said. “There were no vocals but I knew the words and he knew I knew the words. We communicated more in that musical moment than we had in decades before. It was the beginning of forgiveness.”