by Dave Balcom
“Fine. Betty’s probably talked with her by now, and why don’t you two call us tomorrow or Monday?”
We left it at that. They wandered off, Stan still giving the boys grief for the yacht comment. I started working the party, making sure all of our guests were enjoying themselves. Randall had out-done himself with the beef, and Jack Nelson had created a wonderful concoction of Boodles gin, pineapple and passion fruit that was going over well. I had tasted the punch, but was holding out for a martini when Shirlee reached around from behind me with a frozen glass containing a mart all my own.
“You are a lovely woman, Shirl. I just couldn’t wait any longer for you to become available. I finally just figured I’d have to teach another wonderful lady how to make a martini.”
“You say the sweetest things when your bullshit comes out.” And she wandered off looking for someone else needing an adult beverage.
As the sun was setting, we found ourselves on the deck with Jeremy, his wife, Sheila; and Sara. Everyone else had left, and, as usual, the Nelsons and Albrights had made sure the fallout from the party was gone as well.
“You have great friends here,” Sara said. “If I have a party, I end up spending all the next day cleaning up after.”
Jeremy chided his sister, “Did you ever start the clean-up at someone else’s party?” He put his arm around Sheila and gave her a hug. “We made a pledge that we’d do that after seeing how Mom and Dad and their friends did it, and it works. Everyone pitches in and while the party is still going, the mess disappears. It’s cool.”
“I’ll have to upgrade my party habits, I guess.”
Jan couldn’t wait. “Did you guys hear about our honeymoon?”
Everyone turned to her. “We’re going sailing off the coast of British Columbia!”
Sheila gushed. “Sailing? On a four-master or a motor yacht? Just sailing? No fishing?” Jeremy gave her a friendly elbow to the ribs.
“You’ve been sailing. I’ll admit our boat doesn’t fit the ‘yacht’ category, but it has an on-board comfort station.”
Jan went on. “This is a twenty-seven-foot Orca, with an extended cabin, shower in the bathroom...”
“Head!” Both Jeremy and Sheila interjected at the same time.
“Oh, you’re talking pirate to me. I just love it.”
I had to ask. “So, Jan, you’ve had a lot of boating experience?”
She looked surprised. “I guess it never came up, but growing up in northern Michigan, spending all that time in resort towns like Ludington, Muskegon, Traverse City, Petoskey, Mackinaw City – a lot of my days were spent on lakes Michigan and Huron chasing salmon and fighting off wolves. I liked the fishing, but I loved the boats.
“I like it best when shore is just a smudge on the horizon and your body adjusts to the rhythm of the waves. Oh, yes, I love big water. I can only imagine the ocean...”
She stopped suddenly, a look of concern in her eyes. “Jim, don’t you want to go?”
“I wasn’t sure until I knew if you wanted to. It’ll be all new to me. But I can’t think of a nicer idea. I’m really looking forward to fresh Dungeness crabs for breakfast.”
10
The flight from Portland to Prince Rupert started after lunch on Sunday, and arrived in time for dinner with two stops on the way. The stops are the part of flying that bothers me more than I would admit to my traveling companions.
I had discovered Jan has no fear when it comes to flying. She actually loves the rush of takeoff, and finds the sudden drops that come with turbulence “thrilling.”
I don’t have the same sense of adventure, and usually calm myself with several cocktails, but flying with my new bride and the Liskes with half a load on didn’t seem too manly to me, so I decided to grin and bear it.
“I hate to fly,” Liske confided as we arrived at the airport. “Gotta have a pop or two to make it tolerable; join me?”
The trip included stops in Seattle and Vancouver, but with the sun still high in the northern sky, we arrived at the airport on Digby Island, a part of Prince Rupert.
After we made our way through customs and changed our money into Canadian currency, we loaded carts with our luggage and started out of the terminal when a short man with wizened features and a lively step bounced out of a Chevy Suburban and made his way to us.
“Stan! Betty! And so, you’re here, aren’t ya?”
Liske shook the other man’s hand, “Fergie! It’s great to see you.” Betty stepped in between them and pecked the little guy’s cheek.
“Thanks for meeting us, Fergie,” she said, “Meet Jim and Jan Stanton; guys, meet our Canadian partner, Larry Ferguson.”
The man’s grip was firm and his blue eyes sparkled out of a sunburned, ruddy complexion. “It’s my pleasure to meet you. I’ve heard all about you folks, and you’ll be havin’ my congratulations on your recent marriage.”
I have an ear for dialects, verbal tics, and that sort of thing, and thought there was a little too much Irish in Fergie’s lilt.
“Where are you from, Fergie?” I asked as we loaded our gear into the back of his vehicle.
“Madras, Oregon, actually.”
We drove only a short distance, then queued up for a quick ferry ride to the mainland. As we chugged across the arm of water that separates the two parts of Prince Rupert, Liske and Ferguson filled us in on how they had become acquainted.
“I met Fergie at Oregon State. We were roommates. After graduation, I went to the State Police Academy; Fergie went to Alaska to be a fishing guide.”
“How did you end up here?” Jan asked Fergie.
“Oh, got lucky. Growin’ up on the Deschutes River, I got to thinkin’ I was some kind of hot shot fly fisherman, and after takin’ a high school graduation trip to Alaska, I decided I was destined to become the next super fishing guide.
“So, I majored in business and minored in psychology at OSU, and after graduation, I moved to the big ice box.”
Liske picked up the narrative, “Fergie was born in America. His father was a Canadian doctor who emigrated to the U.S. to get away from socialized medicine. His mother was a nurse at the clinic in Madras.
“Anyway, Fergie had his choice of birthrights. After three years working the rivers and bears in Alaska, he decided he needed something steadier, so he hired on to a commercial fishing boat.”
Fergie negotiated his way off the small vessel and into the city. “They were crabbers. We spent all winter in the Bering Sea gettin’ frost bite and rich. It was miserable, dangerous work. I lasted three seasons, and each summer, I hired on as a mate with a charter skipper out of Sitka. After that third season, I knew I had found my niche. I only fly fish on my annual vacation these days.”
Liske took over as we pulled into the driveway of a cottage on the bank of a bay. “I started going to Sitka to fish with Fergie back in those days. One day he told me his dream was to outfit a suitable boat and start his own charter business out of Prince Rupert. At the time there were only a handful of charter operations here, and most of them were corporate deals where you live on a big tub and fish out of small boats for a week.
“Fergie thought he could make it better on a day-trip basis stationed out of the yacht club here, but he needed some help with start-up money. We had some cash after Betty’s mom died, and so we decided to invest it in Fergie’s dream.”
As we started taking gear out of the vehicle, Liske turned to the present. “Guys, after you’re settled here we’ll have dinner and then Betty and I will take Fergie and his bride home. Tomorrow, we’ll decompress, get licensed up and take a spin out on the boat.”
Fergie nodded and pointed to the door, “Teresa has dinner in there, and I can give you some information on the new navigation system we installed this spring. Tomorrow, I can go out with you and shake it down.”
Mrs. Ferguson was a lovely woman with a bright smile and a vigorous air about her. She was at least three inches taller than her husband. As the two of them bustled about t
he kitchen, it was obvious how much they liked each other. Betty asked if she could help, but the pair gave her a sorry smile and shooed her back to the living room.
Jan and Teresa hit it off immediately, and after we had eaten the roast and vegetables that made up the meal, Jan complimented her. “I have never had better tasting beef, Mrs. Ferguson. I’m envious of any woman who can seemingly throw together such a wonderful meal. Thank you very much.”
Teresa blushed just a bit, then reached out to touch her husband’s shoulder. “I can’t take much credit. Fergie does most of the cooking in our home, and all of the wild game cooking. That ‘beef’ is really moose that we shot last fall. In fact, it’s about the last of that moose.”
Liske hoisted his wine glass, “To the chef, the hunter and his guide!”
Teresa blushed a bit more.
“Guide?” Jan asked.
Betty chipped in, “Teresa was raised in Dease Lake, B.C. Her parents operated a full-service guiding operation for big game and fishing. Fergie met her when he booked a week-long “cast and blast” moose hunt his first fall in Prince Rupert.”
“It was love at first ‘sights,’” Fergie chirped.
“Actually,” Teresa said with an arched eyebrow, “it was more like ‘scoping’ out the available females which left our hero with little to choose from.”
Fergie laughed louder than anyone. “That’s an inside dig at those of us who use telescopic sights on moose,” he explained. “Teresa got us so close to the first bull I tried to shoot, that when I raised the rifle, all I could see was a mass of brown fur – no idea which part of the animal, just fur.”
“I didn’t know he wanted to shoot them from a certain distance, and we had the wind.” She shrugged as if to say, “Go figure.”
“I found its eye, and shot it in the ear from twenty-one feet,” Fergie said off-handedly. “I hunt with an iron-sighted thirty-thirty now.”
As soon as the kitchen was cleaned up, Teresa gave Jan a quick tour of the place. They were talking a mile a minute when they rejoined the rest of us on the front porch, and then it was over. The Liskes and Fergusons were gone and we were alone in a strange house in a strange place.
I put my arm around Jan’s shoulder and we just stood there watching night steal across the bay.
11
Monday morning dawned gray and drizzly. We had been warned that we wouldn’t ever want to be too far from rain gear, and as I walked out of the cottage in the early light, I understood why I’d been advised to bring plenty of Gortex and Thinsulate.
My walk took me west along the shore, and it was obvious that I was headed into town. After just a couple of miles, I realized I was in the industrial complex. Warehouses and marine service outfits vied for shoulder room on this modern-looking street that ran inland until it teed into another one running parallel to a bay. I took a right to see what I would see as I worked out the kinks and practiced the forms that had become integral to my life.
At about two miles into my walk, the road veered away from where I thought the bay might be, and then I started encountering side streets in what was obviously a residential area.
I started working my way north by northeast as I skirted what I thought was the edge of the residential district, but eventually found myself forced more westerly before I could work northeast again on Seventh Avenue. I walked on for about a half mile, and found myself watching a helicopter land right in front of me.
When I got to the boundary fence of the Seal Cove Water Airport all the time I’d spent studying a map paid off, and my bearings clicked into place.
I turned around and marched off in the opposite direction, knowing I was on track to the Yacht Club.
I walked southwest until I got to the first cross street which took me to Sixth Avenue, which I walked until I got to another cross street that was taking me to the north which ran me into George Hills Way, and I knew I was near the Yacht Club.
I was streaming sweat as I approached the sign that marked the parking lot to the Yacht Club. I decided to cool down a bit before looking up Liske. I strolled into the compact basin seeing nothing in the way of security.
It was still early, but I figured people would be up and around; I knew I would be if I’d spent the night crammed into a boat.
There was one gentleman drinking his coffee on a park-like bench where the most seaward dock marked the end of the club’s moorages. He was wearing a rain hat and poncho, smoking what appeared to be a black cheroot or something.
“Morning,” I greeted him softly from ten feet or so. I was approaching his back and didn’t want to startle him. The only other sound I could hear as I spoke was an occasional “plop” of water dripping on water.
The man turned slowly, looked me up and down, and nodded. “Up and out early?”
“First morning of a fishing trip, decided to get the lay of the land.”
“Moored here?”
“My host is. I’m staying in a cottage on a bay over that way,” I said with a wave of my arm.
“You must be one of Fergie’s bunch.”
“You know Fergie?”
The man stood up, stretched to clear his right hand from his slicker, and extended it to me with a smile, “Boise. I’m the major domo of this place. I tend to all the things that need tending when rich people interact with the working class. Been doing that here for twenty years.”
He said his name as if it were spelled b-o-y-s, but I couldn’t go on that. I shook his hand and revised my estimate of his age. His grip was like steel and he wasn’t trying to impress me, he was just real strong. “Mr. Boys, how do you spell your name?”
“It’s not mister anything, just B-o-i-s-e. So, you must be the newspaper fella that’s joining Liske and his wife this summer.”
“Busted. How did you figure that?”
“I heard you were full of questions and fearless in asking them, like how to spell a name... just like a reporter from the paper that interviewed me on the changes I’d seen in my time here. A reporter question, that’s what that is.”
I nodded. “Which boat is Liske in?”
“None of ’em.”
“Really?”
“Yep, he and his missus pulled out about fifteen minutes ago. Probably went to wake you up.”
“Guess I better head home. But which boat is Fergie’s?”
He pointed to a white boat with an orange stripe and matching orange details in the windows and a covered bimini top on the bridge.
I walked over to it, took in the spacious afterdeck with its engine housing at the stern, and tried to peek inside the cabin, but it wasn’t light enough to make out much.
That the boat was immaculate came as no surprise. How clean would your office be if your partner was going to be visiting?
I started out of the marina, gave a small salute to Boise, and stepped up into a trot, knowing my way back was going to make this about a 30-minute jog at my customary 12-minute-per-mile pace.
I walked the final quarter of mile and hit the porch just forty minutes later. The Suburban was in the yard, and Liske was at the kitchen table while Betty was working the stove.
“’Bout time you wandered in,” he greeted me.
“Mornin’. Did you get Jan up?”
“Nope, I actually sent Betty in there to see if she was dead, what with you missing and all.”
“Missing?”
“Well, your rain gear and running shoes were missing, so I just figured you were with them.”
“Did you sleep well? You seem a bit surly.”
Betty put a cup of coffee down in front of me. “He is a bit out of sorts. Some friends of ours were expected in here day before yesterday, sailing up from Anacortes, and they haven’t made it yet.
“We heard about it last night from Boise, the Yacht Club steward. That man’s been sitting at the Mary Loose’s berth since. I gave him coffee this morning, and he said he hadn’t heard a word from her. He’s worried.”
Liske stirred. �
�Boise is a mother hen type. Luke Whitman is a very capable captain and his family – Mary Lou and their three grown children – are all very capable sailors. And that thirty-eight-foot Bertram is a very capable craft.
“They probably found a particularly neat mooring down the coast and decided to camp a couple days; maybe got into some great crab. You can’t tell.”
I drained my coffee, and said I’d rouse my bride, take a shower, and see what we could see today.
They both nodded silently, and as I went into the bedroom, I realized they were concerned despite what Stan had voiced. I shook Jan awake, kissed her and told her our day was starting.
I took my shower and dressed and found Jan sitting at the kitchen table eating cereal. The woman has a bottomless appetite for breakfast cereal. She saw me, tipped up her bowl and finished her milk, then scooted towards the bedroom.
“That girl loves cereal,” Betty marveled.
I nodded. “It’s a food group for her. Any time is breakfast as long as cereal is involved.”
Liske was on the porch, staring off into the misty Pacific Ocean.
“Stan, what’s the name of your boat?”
He started out of his reverie. “Boat?”
“Fergie’s’ boat.”
“Oh, I wanted him to name it the Arrested Development, but he insisted on a fishing-related moniker. It went nameless for more than a month as he debated and debated.”
“Well? What did he finally choose?”
“Premature Release” was one of the options; and “Slip Knot” was another, and he thought long and hard about “Killer Whale,” but after all, the boat model is an Orca, so he jettisoned that one, too.
“I started to think he was never going to name it, so I suggested “AKA Anonymous,” and “APB Search” or even “Just the Facts, Ma’am.” We drank a bunch of Maker’s Mark trying to settle on an appropriate name.”
I let him ramble, knowing it would do me no good to try and hurry him. He was teasing me, I guessed. I was enjoying it.
A long silence passed between us, and I realized he might be taking a bit of solace from his concerns for the overdue Mary Loose. “So, what did he choose? You going to tell me?
