Voyage of the Dreadnaught: Four Stella Madison Capers (15 page)

There was a loud, resounding blast, a
startled yelp from Lou Edna, and the baby started to cry.

“Holy—crud!” He leaped to his feet. “She
better either missed it—or killed it!”

Stella didn't even try to keep up with him,
as he took off down the hill. But if it had been anything serious,
there would have been a lot more hollering and screaming by now.
Instead, Mason's voice boomed over the water from the after-deck
where he was working, “Mildred—what did I tell you about that
thing!”

“I thought I saw something in that tall
grass up there, Mase! False alarm.”

Stella breathed a sigh of relief as she
picked her way down the incline at her own careful pace. It was a
lot easier going up than down. All at once, she saw someone stick
their head up out of the grassy meadow, a short distance away, and
their eyes met, with the same identical expression. Who on earth?
Before she realized it was the head and shoulders of a bear. Her
first thought was that it had such intelligent eyes. Almost like a
person's. What a shame it would be to kill such a creature!

“Go! Go that way!” she whispered, pointing
in the opposite direction before continuing on her own way down the
hill. Oddly enough, the bear—almost as if it understood—moved off
toward the trees just as quickly. It wasn't until later that she
realized she hadn't felt even a flutter of fear.

Another miracle!

The weather front hung in place, pouring a
deluge of rain down on top of the castaways for an entire week.
During that time they discovered more accurately how long it would
take to get the boat operational, again, and then off the rocks. If
no help came, it could take weeks. And though they had plenty of
resources aboard for repairs—knowing the lodge would most likely be
in terrible shape from having been vacant for so many years—they
didn't know exactly what kind of place that was, or if it even
still existed. For all they knew, it could be nothing more than a
tumble-down shack sitting in the middle of some swamp.

So, they had some decisions to make.

The majority of which really belonged to
Stuart. They had dragged the man from one end of the ship to the
other, lowering him over the side in a “bo'sun's chair” to see the
damage, or even bundled into his rain gear to get a look at the
work area they had set up on shore.

A make-shift bridge had been constructed,
early on, by felling two trees, and then hammering short pieces of
wood across the top for a boardwalk. Something that saved a
considerable amount of time and effort in hauling things back and
forth between the boat and the shore.

On the occasions Stuart needed to come
across, Cole simply hoisted him onto his back in a “Fireman's
Carry,” and hustled him over the bridge to his supervisor chair. It
was one of the deck chairs tucked under a tarp-covered area where
Mason had set up the portable sawmill he brought along for making
lumber.

They had been making lumber ever since they
got there.

It soon became evident that the Captain's
mind was as sharp as ever. He had simply lost the ability to speak,
or move around easily. A situation that still occasionally threw
him into a rage of frustration. One that almost always simmered
down somewhat with a reassuring clap on the shoulder from the
colonel, and the remark, “It's only temporary, sir—only
temporary!”

However, it was Stella, and her many years
of having to deal with mentally deranged people, who had come up
with the ingenious system of communication that worked best for
him. She did it by keeping several washable markers at the table.
The ones Millie used for the little white-board tacked up in the
pantry to keep track of stores. A different color for each member
of the family.

The large wooden dining table was lacquered
so smooth that it made the perfect surface for him to write or draw
on, then erase with a damp cloth. And even though it often turned
into a game of Charades, trying to figure out what he meant (his
right hand was not usable, so he had to struggle with his left), it
was at least immediately apparent by which color he picked up, who
that particular message was for. That and a few gestures, such as a
nod or shake of the head for yes, or no. Thus, he was reinstated as
the top-ranking voting member of the party.

So it was, that he sat at the head of the
table (it was their first Sunday afternoon since the disaster),
armed with his markers, and a cup of tea poured into one of the
Senator's “sippy cups” (most liquid he drank tended to leak out the
slack side of his mouth, otherwise), and—on this occasion—a
notebook and pencil. Signifying he was going to attempt to
communicate something important.

The meeting was called to order.

“What a blessing we've brought our own
little world into the wilderness with us,” observed the colonel, as
he finished off the last bit of Millie's Huckleberry Betty. “To be
in a situation like this, and still have the sort of comforts we
enjoy aboard the
Dreadnaught.
L
ight, warmth, superb food, and the coziest of
homes...mmm! Must be a sermon in that, somewhere.”

“Speaking of such,” said Mason, helping
himself to another cup of coffee, “you being the most educated on
that subject, I was thinking how it would do us all good, under the
circumstances, to share some of what you been talking to Shortcake
about. I'm ashamed every time I have to agree she's right,
lately.”

“It's just I have a lot of questions, Pop.
I've been doing things wrong my whole life. And Mr. Colonel
says—”

The baby, who was standing on the
upholstered bench between her and Cole, suddenly stopped playing
with the Jello boxes Millie had given him, and leaned against her
to jabber into her ear.

“The colonel says,” she repeated as she
automatically stacked the boxes into a tower for him, again, “the
only way you can change your wrong thinking is by learning what's
right. Then practicing that until God miraculously changes your
mind.”

“I believe that's a Lou Edna paraphrase for
Romans 12:2,” the colonel interjected. “Where it states we can
actually be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Once again,
it's a decision we all, individually, have to make.”

“All I know is it took a miracle to change
me.” The toddler knocked his boxes down, again, and she reached
under the table to pick two off the floor.

“Like I always said,” replied Mason. “Didn't
think you'd ever change, since I thought it couldn't be done.
Anyway, a little Bible reading on Sundays wouldn't hurt any of us.
Right, Stuart?”

The Captain shrugged, but only one shoulder
went up.

“He doesn't mind,” interpreted Gerald.

“Then it would be an honor,” the colonel
agreed.

“All right, then.” Mason took a folded piece
of paper out of the pocket of his red and black flannel shirt. “Now
for the items up for a vote.”

Millie stopped wiping off the stove and came
to sit down next to him. Stella linked her arm through the
colonel's and sighed with contentment as she looked at the whole
family seated around the table.

“First up, we have to decide whether we
should just stay right here for the winter. Point being we don't
know when, or if, we're going to get help. If so, there's things we
can do before the cold weather comes to make it more comfortable
around here. Such as blocking the back end of the boat up, so we
can get rid of this cock-eyed slant we been walking around on.
Thing is, it would take some time away from repairs to do it.”

“If we do get help,” said Gerald, “I
volunteer to go with Stuart, so he can get some medical. Or, at
least, some therapy on...” His hand involuntarily felt for his
throat. “How to deal with all this.”

The Captain tossed the green marker at him
with his left hand, and bounced it off his head.

“Oh, I say!” Gerald replaced it in the
pile.

“We'll cross that bridge when we come to
it,” said Mason. “Any opinions up for discussion?”

“Well,” Millie spoke first. “Considering our
original plan—before E.J. let us off—was to disappear somewhere in
Alaska, it's not like we didn't come prepared to do something like
this. The only hard thing is being totally cut off from the rest of
the world. Which is something we can't do anything about right now,
anyway. So... I vote, yes.”

“Me, too,” agreed Stella. “We came to
experience Alaska, and this is about Alaska as it can get.”

“It would definitely give me enough time to
finish my novel,” the colonel put it. “Might be rather freeing, not
writing to a deadline for once. I couldn't accept a contract on
speculation, now, even if I wanted to. No Internet, not telephone,
no post office. I vote, yes, as well.”

“So, it's down to the DeForio family, then,”
said Mason.

“This is the best I ever had it,” Cole
admitted.

“I don't care what we do,” Lou Edna added.
“If I didn't have this family, I'd have killed myself by now.”

“For heaven sake, Lou,” Millie admonished.
“Don't give me such a start this early in the discussion.”

“Well, it's true.”

“Stuart?” Mason looked over in time to see
another one-shouldered shrug.

“He doesn't mind,” said Gerald.

“Passed. Point number two. It occurred to me
we should establish a signal fire. Could be we got ourselves
farther off than we thought, and ended up buried into some national
wilderness area no one ever goes to much.”

Stuart gave out with a bellow and reached
for Mason's red marker. But instead of writing anything, he merely
jabbed at the air over the top of the carpenter's head with it.

“Oh, right.” Mason raised up in his seat
enough to get the last chart they had been navigating by, that was
rolled up and stashed behind the back of the bench. “Stu thinks
we're somewhere around...” He slid the rubber band off and unrolled
it for everyone to see. “Here.”

He pointed to a cluster of little islands
off the southwest tip of the Alexander Archipelago, that lay
between the Pacific Ocean, the West Dixon Entrance, and the South
Prince of Wales Wilderness. Ketchikan was at least sixty miles to
the northeast, and the nearest other town was... they all stared
silently at the vast amount of space... the closest seemed to be a
logging camp, situated on the largest island. But that was even
farther away than Ketchikan.

“That being the case,” Mason went on, “a
continuously burning fire might be the only thing that would catch
anyone's attention this far out. At least by some passing plane
that could report it to the Forest Service, maybe. So...” He looked
up at the group, again. “We got to set fire watches throughout the
day to man it. Two at a time is best, in case of...” He rubbed a
hand over his three-day growth of salt-and-pepper whiskers.
“Something happens.”

“Lou and I will do the early watch,” said
Cole. That way I can take the skiff out the inlet before the tide
changes, and look for any boats out there.”

“I hate early mornings,” complained Lou.

“You just haven't seen enough of them,” Cole
replied.

“OK. Cole and Lou on the first one, then.”
Mason wrote it down on the back of his list. “Who's next?”

After they had each chosen their times for
the fire watch, the third order of the day was the announcement of
their need to conserve diesel.

“But, why?” Millie asked. “We're not even
going anywhere.”

“Because the generator that makes your
electricity runs off diesel,” he answered. “And—in case you haven't
noticed—there wasn't a lick of sun, this week, to use Stuart's
solar-powered system. Not to mention we're in the middle of a
rainforest, here. So, it could be like this most of the time from
now on.”

“Oh.”

“I imagine we're running close to empty,
anyway,” the colonel pointed out, “since we haven't added any since
we left California. Thought it better to have a bit of a money
cushion for an emergency fund when we got here, as I recall.”

“We've definitely got ourselves an
emergency,” said Gerald. “But who'd have thought it would end up
being gas?”

It was at that point the Captain began
growling and fussing, until he was fairly spitting with
frustration, in an effort to find something in his notebook.
“Mah—Bo!” he finally sputtered out. “Mah—Bo!”

“Of course, it's your boat, my good man,”
the colonel replied, though he was too far across the table to clap
him on the shoulder. “It will always be your boat, sir!”

“Mah—Bo—” He repeated louder and slower,
reaching at the same time for his black marker.

Cole jumped to his feet (black being his
color) and moved behind him to look over his shoulder. One, two,
three vertical lines, and... an upside down M. Or, maybe it was a
W. Then came an A, and eventually a T.”

“Wah...watt...” Cole ran a hand through his
wavy hair and concentrated harder. “Maybe he wants us to conserve
water.”

At which point the older man pulled his
Captain's hat off and smacked his First Mate over the head with
it.

“Cripes, Cap—give me another hint,
then!”

“We could be getting low on water.” Stella
was thinking how much she enjoyed her evening shower. “Seems we
haven't topped off since we were half-way through Canada.”

“Not a problem,” said Mason, “since we have
the waterfall so close by.”

“Wah—Fah!” the Captain thundered, with a
resounding crash of his fist against the table that shook all their
dishes.

“Waterfall!” Cole called it out as if it had
been just before the buzzer in the game of Charades. “OK,
waterfall. Geeze. What about it?”

Stuart flipped through his notebook then,
until he came to a very sketchy sketch that he shoved out into the
center of the table for all of them to see.

“Reminds me of one of A.J.'s first wife's
preliminary modern art sketches,” Gerald mused, as they all stared
at it. “The ones Lou got so much money for.”