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232. Inadmissible Evidence

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It is Sunday morning, 8:30 here on the west coast, and I am hurrying to finish this in order to post it for tomorrow. Tonight is the second presidential debate; Hillary’s newly leaked emails and Donald’s newly leaked audiotapes will be aired fully. When you read this, you will know the outcome. Here and now, I can only speculate.

First let me say that I am not apologizing for Trump. Nor am I suggesting that the Access Hollywood tape is a fake. I have been giving Trump a hard time since he first began ranting about The Wall, and I haven’t been too kind to Hillary, either. None of that has changed. However . . .

There is a danger facing America which needs to be brought fully into the light. It is going to be a bit hard to talk about, because even suggesting it makes me look like someone who is into conspiracy theories. I’m not, except for the fun of poking holes in them.

Here is the problem. What if the Wikileaked documents on Hillary were doctored? What if the Access Hollywood tapes were faked?

Do I think they were? Absolutely not.

Do I think faked or doctored releases are on our near horizon? Absolutely, unquestionably, as sure as tomorrow’s sunrise.

Conspiracy theories run afoul of the fact that conspirators usually aren’t too bright. It easy to imagine a conspiracy, but hard to believe anyone who would want to pull one off would be able to succeed. It’s easy to imagine the government faking the moon landing on a Hollywood sound stage, but the notion that the millions who built the craft and watched the launch at Canaveral were all either fooled or in on it, makes the theory laughable.

Leaked electronic documents are different. Changing a key word, or cherry picking what part to release, or creating them out of the whole cloth is ridiculously easy. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or even a conspiracy. One person could do it.

Let’s suppose that a new leak is reported by the New York Times in tomorrow’s issue, on the candidate you support or the candidate you hate. Would we know its source? We would not; news organizations guard their sources like the Swiss Guard guards the Pope. Would we know how the source got the information? No. Would we know if he passed it on pristine, unaltered and complete? No. Would we know if he simply faked it? No.

Do I trust the New York Times? More or less.

Do I trust the Democratic Party? More or less.

Do I trust the Republican Party? More or less.

Do I trust everyone who works for those three organizations? Ah, there’s the rub.

If a police officer picks up fingerprints or DNA at a crime scene, there is a trail of evidence which must be presented, showing that no outside influence was made on the results of tests performed on those clues. If that trail fails, the evidence cannot be presented in a court of law. With leaked electronic documents, there is no such chain of evidence. With a reputable agency – say the New York Times – there will certainly be an attempt at verification. But, by the clandestine nature of the events, that verification will be imperfect.

So back to tonight’s debate. Hillary and Donald will have to face the consequences of these leaked electronic documents, and we probably can accept that the documents are real, although certainly cherrypicked.

But a year from now . . .? This is the point at which every hacker, prankster, and political operative in America – and the world beyond – realizes how easy it is to create or modify electronic documents and “leak” them.

Next cycle, when Paul Ryan runs for President, and leaked documents prove that he is actually a Martian, I don’t think I’ll believe them.

Raven’s Run 22

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She was lying face downward on the deck, with her bra strap untied and loose beside her.

She heard my footsteps and I saw her body tense up. It irritated me. If she didn’t want a response from me, why didn’t she keep her clothes on? It wasn’t one of those cases where the patrons of a redneck bar decide a short skirt is a license for rape. We were co-prisoners on this boat, and she knew the response her near nakedness would bring.

I sat down on the deckhouse and said, “Hi.” The side of my foot brushed her calf. She jerked it aside. It was a clear message, but there was also something contrived about it. As if she had stripped down just to give me that message. I said something short and crude, and went back to the wheel.

Ten minutes later, she went below again. She had managed to get into Will’s shirt without standing up.

Ten minutes after that, she came up with a mug of coffee which she gave me like a peace offering. I took a sip. She made good coffee. Then I said, “What the hell was that all about?”

She shook her head. “I’m don’t know, myself.” And I don’t think she did know.

“Do you know anything about Buddhism?”

“Huh?”

“Buddhists set great store by unspoken communication. There is a story about a master and his young pupil. The pupil had just had some great insight and he couldn’t wait to tell his master about it. When he finished, the master just shook his head and said, ‘That is very true. But how sad to say so.'”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning that we had an unspoken agreement on how to act toward each other. I thought we were doing pretty well, too. Now we have to talk about it, and I find that unfortunate. It takes the naturalness out of our relationship.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you? I don’t think so. It’s clear to me that you aren’t satisfied with the way things are going, but you aren’t ready for the natural next step. So, let me lay it out for you. You are a beautiful woman; very sexy; very desirable. I am young, healthy, and horny. Does any of this confuse you?”

“No.” There was anger in her eyes, but I didn’t care.

“If I haven’t crawled all over you, it is because you have been sending me signals to keep my distance. Right?”

She glared.

“Right?”

She nodded.

“So what was that striptease all about? Do you have a rape wish? Or are you trying to prove to yourself that any man who can control his impulses is some kind of a wimp? Are you showing me how long my leash is? Whatever your reasons, I don’t like it!”

The sun poured down like honey, and I felt about as romantic as a sack of garbage. Raven face was congested with anger. She didn’t say anything, but with her glare, she didn’t need to. Suddenly, I was just plain tired of her. I said, “Go below. Get out of my sight.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I’m the voice of sweet reason,” I shouted. “Who do I sound like? I can’t leave the wheel, and if we look at each other one more minute we will be punching each other in the face. I can’t leave, so you have to. Just go!”

*****

I’m leaving in the bit about Buddhism, because I don’t plan to second guess myself here. However, in the likely event that Raven’s Run is published, I think I will drop it. It’s just too esoteric for the time and place it appears. more tomorrow

231. The Black Shrike

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The Black Shrike is the American title of a thriller released originally in Great Britain as The Dark Crusader. It was written by Alistair MacLean and published under the pseudonym Ian Stuart. MacLean claimed that he had released it that way to prove that the public would buy his work even if his name was not on the cover.

**       **       **

There is a sad phenomenon of writers going Hollywood. Some authors’ early books are  everything a reader could want, but as time goes on and they start seeing their novels made into movies, their literary output loses quality. Their later novels start looking like treatments in search of a screenplay writer.

Michael Crichton’s late novel Timeline, for example, was filled with wonderful ideas and brilliant vignettes, but the plot blundered along from start to finish, with sub-plots strewn aimlessly here and there – pretty much like a movie.

Donald Hamilton’s early westerns were superb. When he switched to Matt Helm spy stories, the quality dropped considerably, but at least they were gritty and intense. The movies made from them were a bad joke – although Hamilton can hardly be blamed for what Dean Martin did to them.

Alistair McLean suffered a similar fate. A close look at his early novel The Black Shrike in comparison to his later Breakheart Pass will show you the process at work. The former is excellent; the latter is a plotless collection of scenes – good scenes, but unconnected so that they fail to have a cumulative effect.

I read and enjoyed a dozen of Alistair McLean’s books during the sixties and seventies. Two stood above the rest: H.M.S. Ulysses and The Black Shrike. H.M.S. Ulysses, was a powerful and moving story of war, based on MacLean’s experiences in the British navy. The Black Shrike was a spy novel that I stumbled onto about the same time I discovered James Bond – the early, gritty, realistic Bond of the first few novels before Hollywood turned him into a cartoon. I had no idea at the time thatThe Black Shrike was written by MacLean, who was already one of my favorites.

John Bentall is a spy, during the early cold war, for an unnamed British service. He started out as a rocket fuels scientist but has been co-opted to search out subversives in that industry. He is stubborn, smart, and dedicated, but not the top spy he appears to be at the beginning of the novel. He is of heroic mold, but closer to everyman than to superman. Not Bond, at all. Bond would have made this novel completely forgettable. It is Bentall’s humanity that makes him believable, even when the action sometimes isn’t.

The story opens – and later closes – with these words:

A small dusty man in a small dusty room. That’s how I always thought of him, just a small dusty man in a small dusty room.

For me, that ranks with Call me Ishmael as one of the all time memorable novel openings, but you’ll have to read the book before you understand why. Bentall is sent by his small, dusty boss to track down a stolen missile called the Black Shrike. He is paired with a top female spy who will play his wife. To find the missile, they will become bait to lure the unknown forces who have been kidnapping British rocket fuel scientists. Events ensue, as the reader knows they will, but the surprise is that the “top female spy” turns out to be beautiful, charming, and – dumb? This major irritation for the reader is resolved when . . .

And this is where my telling has to stop to avoid spoilers.

Bentall falls in love with his “wife”, and without this development, the novel would have been nothing special. It is Bentall as a complete human being that elevates The Black Shrike above other novels in the genre.

When I decided to write a contemporary novel for the men’s adventure genre (today it would be shoehorned into the thriller genre), John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee and The Black Shrike provided patterns to follow – McGee for competence and Bentall for heart.

Raven’s Run 21

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Chapter Seven

I was awake to possibilities, alert to nuance, and randy as hell; but Raven didn’t send up any smoke signals. It might easily be twenty days before we saw land. If I put any heavy moves on her, and she turned me down, we would both be looking forward to two-thirds of an absolutely miserable month together. So I went about my other business.

The main boom was beyond repair. I spent a day trying to convert the gaff to a boom and make the mainsail over into a reduced leg-o-mutton. I could have done it, but only by ruining the mainsail, and the emergency didn’t seem that great. I finally I gave up and hoisted the main as a boomless gaff sail. On a broad reach the Wahini was almost as good as ever, but off the wind she sailed like a turtle.

After that, things fell into a routine. I had to steer all through the daylight hours since the Wahini would no longer keep course with the wheel lashed. At night I could make her hold her course under jib and mizzen, but a heavy boat like Wahini doesn’t make much distance that way in less than a gale.

From six in the morning until eight at night I was chained to the wheel. Raven spent a lot of her time below, and a lot of time during good days up front straddling the bowsprit and watching the bow wave. It was the best spot on the boat for private contemplation. I used to spend a lot of time up there myself, back when Wahini would steer herself. Raven had a lot on her mind. We talked about her attack a dozen times, but we never came to any conclusions. Too little data. Raven had other things to think about as well. I didn’t know what – then – but I respected her privacy.

A week after the storm I found two wet rubber bands hanging from the rigging. Actually, it was the gag bikini. I had forgotten all about it until she decided to wash and dry it. Near noon, she came up with a bowl of canned stew and took the bikini back down with her. Fifteen minutes later she came up again in Will’s shirt with her long, bare legs sticking out, went forward and dropped the shirt. She had the bikini on, and it wasn’t much. She lay down on the forward deck in the sun.

It was a beautiful cloudless day with little wind. Once she was flat on the deck, I could not see her. But I could imagine, and I did. I stood it for about five minutes. Then I said, “Boat, I’ve been your slave long enough. You’re on you own for a while.” And lashed the wheel.

String bikinis were odd things. As a fad, they didn’t last long, and for good reason. Pure nakedness is much kinder to the female figure. If a woman were less than perfect, a string bikini showed nothing but her faults. If she were perfect, however, you could ignore it and concentrate on what was revealed. 

Raven was in the latter category. She was lying face downward on the deck, with her bra strap untied and loose beside her. more tomorrow

230. Blackie Ryan

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Blackie Ryan began as a priest and worked his way up the ladder to Arch-bishop while solving crime. Unlikely? What does that have to do with whether a series if fun to read?

Every time I sit back and think about Father Andrew Greeley books, I am amazed that I like them. They are so lame in so many ways, but every time I open one up and begin reading, I am immediately hooked. I wish I knew how he does that.

Father Blackie Ryan is aware of Father Brown. In Blackie Ryan’s “real” world, Father Brown is a fictional character. It’s charming to hear an imaginary person, living in an imaginary world, refer to another imaginary person, living in a different imaginary world, as if the former were real and the latter were fictional. 

I have to admit to a fascination with Catholicism. I grew up as a Southern Baptist, where I was taught that the Devil twisted the word of God in the early days after Christ’s resurrection, and spawned the Catholic Church. When I became an unbeliever, that became moot, but I think there is still a subconscious fascination with the forbidden driving my feelings.

Certainly, if I were to go shopping for a religion, I would look for something like Greeley’s All Dogs Go to Heaven version of Catholicism. I would steer clear of Chesterton’s harsher version. In Father Ryan’s world, everything will come out well in the cosmic long run, even if half the characters in any given novel end up dead. In Father Brown’s world, evil comes oozing under the door like black smoke.

It must be nice to know that everything will come out right in the end, no matter how many bad things happen along the way. For the reader, it makes the Blackie Ryan novels the literary equivalent of comfort food. I suspect that accounts for a good deal of their popularity.

Sex probably accounts for another share of their popularity. It seems odd that a series by a priest and about a priest has more sex in it than a secular thriller. I don’t intend to engage in long distance psychoanalysis, but the driving force of priestly frustration can’t be completely discounted. If all you can do about sex is think about it, you might as well write novels.

Probably the most irritating quirk in Greeley’s style is his overuse of foreshadowing. It seems sometimes that everything that is going to happen get’s a preemptive comment. If I had only known . . ., If she had only told me . . ., I should have realized . . .. These are key, repeated phrases in Greeley’s way of telling his stories. They match up with the way Ryan solves crimes through intuition. His subconscious sees the answer, and his conscious mind gets glimpses of it which fade frustratingly away. Eventually, all becomes clear, the elevator door stays open (that is Greeley’s conceit, not mine) and the crime is solved. Just in time. Or just too late, depending on how Greeley chooses to  spin it.

All this makes it sound as if I don’t like Greeley’s writing, but then why am I talking about him? Hmmm. I”ll have to think about that while I’m reading Rites of Spring for the tenth time.

Raven’s Run 20

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Raven’s hair was free and streaming back and she seemed to be having the time of her life. I know I was.

I showed her how to steer and after a while I gave her the chance to practice. She attacked the task ferociously, and after half an hour she was beginning to develop a fine and delicate touch.

I tried to lead her into talking more about her family, but she avoided the subject. She did not seem secretive so much as she seemed uncomfortable, as if she didn’t want to think about them. Until I mentioned siblings. 

“Brothers, no; but I have a sister. Daddy’s favorite. The kind of girl who can do no wrong. Never gets in trouble. Never gets less than an A in school. Always the best at everything she does. She’s really great!”

Her voice was heavy with sarcasm. I said, “Older or younger?”

“Younger. Eight years younger than me. She’s an ice skater. She’ll be in the Olympics someday, if she doesn’t break her leg or something.”

I smiled at the venom in Raven’s voice, and asked, “What’s her name?”

“Pilar. You know, after the Virgin Mary, the first pillar of the Church.”

I laughed and Raven looked daggers at me. I said, “Even her name is perfect.”

“Exactly!”

“I watch ice skating sometimes, but I have never heard of her.”

“Do you go to the meets or just watch on TV?”

“TV.”

“A big meet will have a bunch of skaters, but the networks only show four or five of them. They shoot a lot of footage, then after the meet is over they splice together what they need. When you see it on television, it looks as if they just happened to film the winners. If someone makes an unexpectedly good showing, they go back to stock footage from previous years so that it looks as if they knew all along that she was going to be a winner.”

“How long has Pilar been the family favorite?”

“Since forever!”

When I had first fished Raven out of the water, she had spoken standard English. Now that she was becoming relaxed with me, her schoolyard Chicano-English mannerisms were beginning to creep out. She asked, “How about you?”

“I have a sister, and an older brother that I thought was perfect. Donal, was his name; he was much older so we didn’t compete. I haven’t seen him in years.”

“Why?”

“He left home when I was nine. Just disappeared. I never knew where he went or why. Maybe my parents did, but they never said. He used to fight with my dad all the time.”

“Boy, I can relate to that!”

*****

At least ten years before I wrote Raven’s Run, I wrote the first sixty or so pages of a novel called Eden Lake. The names were different, but the main character had a father who had run away to Canada after causing the drunk driving accident in which his wife was killed. The son in Eden Lake was saddled with raising his younger sister, an event that led to mutual alienation.

Ian is a different character, but I grafted the Eden Lake backstory onto him, complete with estranged sister, and added Donal. All this was to provide plots for future novels should Ian have become a series character. more tomorrow

229. Travis McGee’s Women

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John D. MacDonald, who wrote the Travis McGee books, had a schtick he loved and did very well. McGee would make a meaningful aside, through internal monolog, of some event that advanced the story and put it in context. His musing about the plate spinner in Dress Her In Indigo was one of his best.

Here is a decidedly lesser instance, written for this post by me, not by J. D. McD.:

I knew a man who had a yard full of stray cats. He fed them, petted them, and adored them. At first he named them, but he kept losing them to coyotes, to hawks, or to automobiles. After a while, he could no longer remember his first ones; they had all become interchangeable. He still adored them, but he stopped missing them when they went away.

I gave you this, instead of quoting MacDonald himself, because it encapsulates the problem of women in men’s adventure fiction. If you want to see MacDonald’s writing, go to wikiquote. If reading those selections doesn’t send you scampering to the used book store, nothing will.

Make no mistake, women are a problem in books for men. Their treatment is a balancing act. They have to be there, they have to be sexy, and there has to be sex. It isn’t a genre for eunuchs.

Of course, there are fully sexist writers who have no problem with women. They parade them, penetrate them, then shoot them. I acknowledge that these writers exist, but they don’t exist in my world, and that is all I have to say about them.

At the other end of the continuum are the characters who are married or seem relatively sexless. Most of them are found in puzzle mysteries, where the protagonist’s relationship to those around him is primarily cerebral. Holmes is the prototype. Bony, the half-aborigine outback detective who is one of my current favorites, is married to a woman who is never seen. His relationship to the sexually attractive women he deals with is always avuncular.

For the rest of the genre, there have to be beautiful women and the hero has to have a sexual relationship with them, whether consummated or not. In keeping with the fast paced nature of such writing, there are likely to be more than one woman per book. Possibly several.

If the hero is a series character with say, twenty-one books, and he romances (heavily or lightly) two or three women per book, how can he keep track? And how can book twenty-one show him as anything but shallow and jaded? That’s the problem for the writer – and for the reader as well, if he reads multiple books from the series.

Romantic literature is about finding the one. Men’s adventure books, whether thriller, mystery, or spy novel, are partly about finding the one for right now. That’s a major difference in tone.

John D. MacDonald handled the balancing act quite well with Travis McGee. J. D. McD. was a methodical writer. Before he signed a contract to do the series, he wrote the first two McGee novels to see if he could live with the character. He tried to make sure that he had disposed of each novel’s woman by the last page. He (spoiler alert) killed off McGee’s first, at the end of The Deep Blue Goodbye. It wasn’t always that lethal, although it often was. Others left in other ways. Some got married (not to McGee), some went back to their husbands, or to whatever life they had temporarily escaped from. The one notable woman who stayed over into the following book was killed in the opening chapters, setting up a revenge motive. (see 49. The Green Ripper)

When McGee was with his women, he was protective, but distant, caring but manipulative; he was self-centered and self-serving. A self possessed loner with deep wounds, well hidden, would be the romantic cliche. Women loved him. At least the fictional women in his books did. A glance at Goodreads reviews will show that women readers weren’t always so enamored.

You could fantasize being him, but you wouldn’t want your real-life sister to meet up with him. Travis McGee was a partial model for what I wanted Ian Gunn to be in Raven’s Run, but also a model for what I didn’t want him to be.

Raven’s Run 19

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I barely even knew her name, or maybe I didn’t know her name. Raven was too melodramatic to be real.

“Where do you live, Raven.”

“Our original home is near Santa Cruz, but I really grew up in Sacramento.”

“I know both places. I went to college at San Francisco State. I spent a month in Sacramento once as part of my classes.”

“In what?”

“Political science. My friend Will and I both plan to go into the foreign service.”

“The friend who is in France? The one who owns half of this boat?”

“Yes. He was just posted to the consulate in Marseille a couple of months ago. He had to leave the Wahini in Jamaica and fly to Washington for briefings, and then on to his job.”

The ship’s name seemed to amuse her. “And that is why you are sailing alone?”

“Yes.”

“Why the foreign service?”

“It seems exciting, and it provides a chance to travel. I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin and never got far from home except for an occasional canoe trip to Canada. Then, when I was in the Army, I spent three years in Germany, and another three months wandering around Europe after I got out. After that, I didn’t want to take a job that would keep me in one place.”

“That’s funny,” she said. “I was just the opposite. When I was little we moved from place to place so much that I would have given anything to settle down and never move again.”

“Because your father was in politics?”

She shook her head. “Before that. He worked for the FBI for ten years. They don’t have that many Chicano agents, so he was always in demand for field jobs.”

“Could that be why you were tossed off that ship? Revenge for something he did, or leverage against him for something he is doing now?”

“No, of course not. He has been out of the FBI for a long time.”

“You think.”

“What?”

“You think he has been out of things, but if he were mixed up with some clandestine operation, he certainly wouldn’t tell you. So you don’t really know.”

#          #          #

The afternoon was fading fast and I had repairs to do. I took another inspection tour of the ship and decided that I could set sail once I repaired the strained backstay. It took most of two hours, then I set the jib and mizzen and hauled in the sea anchor. The mainsail repairs would wait until tomorrow. The wind was still about force seven, and I thought it would be a while before I could set more canvas anyway.

Raven went below, and when she came up again she was wearing Will’s ski parka under his oilskins and looking as if someone had inflated her.

The wind was dying down more quickly than I had anticipated, but the waves were not and it took a quick hand at the wheel to pick our way among them. It was a roller coaster ride. Raven sat across from me with her legs enlaced with mine. Her hair was free and streaming back and she seemed to be having the time of her life. I know I was. more tomorrow

228. Father Brown

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There is an obvious connection between the Catholic priest-detective Father Brown and the Catholic priest-detective Father Blackie Ryan. Since Father Brown came first, we will look at him first, and move on to Father Ryan on Wednesday.

Before we consider the real Father Brown, we have to dispose of the imposter who has recently begun a series on PBS. I watched the first two episodes with anticipation, but they were travesties. If they had not stolen the titles from Father Brown stories (without taking anything resembling the content), and if the main actor had not been so physically wrong for the part, and if they had called him Father Green or Father White, then these first two episodes would have been pretty good versions of typical British detective drama. But as Father Brown stories . . .

This bovine actor in no way resembles Father Brown, the clucking hens and stock police detective that follow him around are no substitute for Flambeau, and the plots are unrelated to the originals. As Nero Wolfe would say, “Pfui!”

Let me know if they get better, because I won’t be watching.

Now, let’s turn to the real Father Brown.

G. K. Chesterton’s friend Father John O’Conner, in a discussion of one of Chesterton’s upcoming publications, convinced him that his conclusions were wrong. He did so by quoting to Chesterton facts about criminal behavior that shocked him to the core. Far from being innocent of evil, Father O’Conner was well versed in it from hearing the confessions of criminals. This was the genesis of Father Brown.

Let’s look at an excerpt from The Sins of Prince Saradine. Father Brown and his friend Flambeau are vacationing in a small boat, on a small river in England, when they are awakened by a full moon shining through the foliage on the overhanging river bank:

“By Jove!” said Flambeau, “it’s like being in fairyland.”

Father Brown sat bolt upright in the boat and crossed himself. His movement was so abrupt that his friend asked him, with a mild stare, what was the matter.

“The people who wrote the mediaeval ballads,” answered the priest, “knew more about fairies than you do. It isn’t only nice things that happen in fairyland.”

“Oh, bosh!” said Flambeau. “Only nice things could happen under such an innocent moon. I am for pushing on now and seeing what does really come. We may die and rot before we ever see again such a moon, or such a mood.”

“All right,” said Father Brown. “I never said it was always wrong to enter fairyland. I only said it was always dangerous.”

As you may guess, the experiences which follow would not properly fit into a child’s fairy tale.

Father Brown was not a detective, despite the genre into which he has been placed, and despite the fact that he solves crimes. He is a priest. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less. He sometimes aids the law and sometimes ignores it. His notion of justice refers to a higher power than the courts, and he often finds the criminal as worthy of his attention as the victim. He comes to his understandings by intuition rather than ratiocination. He is more concerned with the soul than the body – even though there are plenty of bodies lying around in a typical Father Brown story.

If you want to know the real Father Brown, you should start with his oldest stories, found in The Innocence of Father Brown, and in the Dover edition Favorite Father Brown Stories. You may hate them; you may love them. Either way, they will be unlike any other detective stories you have encountered.

Raven’s Run 18

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Chapter Six

We live by conventions. Like the old fashioned western movies where the hero wakes up in the bedroom of the rancher’s daughter, to find out that he has been wounded and she has nursed him back to health.

When I woke up, it was like that. The mess was gone from the floor and the smear of coffee grounds and ketchup was gone from the bulkhead. There was a smell of fresh coffee in the air, and Raven had untangled her hair again. It hung in a fluffy cloud around her face and down across her shoulders, shaming Will’s ragged wool shirt with its elegance. Raven was leaning against the back of the opposite transom seat with her feet braced. She was three-quarters asleep.

I could only remember snatches of our later conversation. I must have been more tired than I had realized. Raven, too, although she had clearly outlasted me. At least I didn’t think the good fairies had cleaned up the mess.

The storm had abated. It was time to be getting out and beginning repairs. But looking at Raven, that wasn’t the first thing on my mind. Her foot was bare and close at hand. I brushed a fingernail from her elegant toes up to the cuff of Will’s baggy jeans. Her skin jumped under my fingers.

There was no getting around it. I was miles ahead of her in readiness. Rescuing her had given me a feeling of ownership; seeing her naked and vulnerable when I had first dragged her aboard had aroused me intensely. If I went ahead at the speed I wanted, it would frighten her terribly. She seemed to have accepted that I was not going to take advantage of her helplessness, but I could still easily lose that trust.

This trip wasn’t going to be easy. The Wahini didn’t even have a cold shower.

Raven yawned and stretched, and said, “I wasn’t sleeping.”

“Me, either.”

“Ha!”

She rose and went to the cupboard, poured coffee for both of us and handed me mine. Her motions were sure and easy; she must have spent a lot of time while I slept familiarizing herself with the layout. She said,  “Hungry?”

“Starved.”

“I couldn’t find any eggs.”

“I used the last of them a week ago. There are powdered eggs in that plastic jar, or you could open a can of hash.”

I left her and went on deck. The waves were still sizable, but nothing compared to what they had been. It was late afternoon and the sun was peeking in and out of scattered clouds. I made a slow circuit of the ship, assessing damage.  The mainsail was out of commission until I could repair it, but most of the standing rigging was intact. Only the port main backstay was strained beyond immediate use. Apparently the boom had hit it when it went overboard.

Raven shouted, “Come and eat.”

She was standing at the stove when I came below. I fished Will’s safety harness out and cinched her into it. Her clothing was not enough insulation for the electricity I felt pass between us. I felt! She just nodded and served up the hash. We ate it on deck, leaning against the deckhouse to stay out of the wind.

I set my plate on the deck and said thank you. She laughed and said, “Thank you, sir, and let me add that this has been one hell of a first date.” It was so unexpected that I laughed out loud.

We were sitting side by side, looking back past the lashed wheel across the dying but still lively waves. I wanted to take her hand, but decided not to. There was a feeling of companionship between us, but we were still strangers. I liked the way she looked, the way she smiled, and the sound of her laugh. I liked the way she had stood up to hardship and danger, and the way she had made herself useful without any fuss. And yet I knew nothing about her. I barely even knew her name, or maybe I didn’t know her name. Raven was too melodramatic to be real. more tomorrow