Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars Ch. 01

"Sound like hypoxia to me."

"Smart-ass."

"Yup, and I have the SAT scores to prove it, too."

"You got your brains from my dad, and your mother. Man, she was a real rocket scientist."

"Until Jack Daniels came calling, anyway."

"I guess we all have our crosses to bear."

"You know what her's is?"

"No, not really. A hunch, but she would never open up about it."

"What's your hunch?"

He sighed, shook his head. "You know what? Maybe you should ask her someday."

"You're just not going to speak ill of her, are you?"

"Nope."

"You still love her?"

"Yup."

"Jesus, Dad. Why...?"

"Why? Oh, I guess it has something to do with standing before God and making a promise to that effect."

"But she..."

"There are no buts, kiddo. A promise is a promise, even if the other person can't keep up their end of the bargain. You're only as good as your word, and don't you ever forget that."

"I don't imagine you'll let me."

"I won't always be around, Ted. That's something you'd do well to remember, too."

"Oh?"

"You and your mother need to clear the air, come to terms."

"Is she sick?"

"Not that I know of, but..."

"I'm not ready for that, Dad."

"Okay..."

They heard it then...a disturbance in the water...a rippling in the air, and they turned and looked down into the inky starscape, saw a sea otter swimming on it's back, looking up at them as it circled lazily under the bow pulpit.

"I'll be..." he said.

"I thought these guys were extinct," Ted whispered.

"Not quite. I see 'em every now and then, even in the lake."

"Damn...he seems almost tame."

"Not likely. More like brazen confidence. They don't fear us anymore, I guess."

"Did they hunt them for their pelts?"

"Uh-huh."

"Damn."

"Yup. They're kinda cute, ya know?"

"Kind of? I don't know about you, but I'd like one as a pet."

"Yeah? Well, aside from being aquatic mammals, they're also wild. I don't think that's a such a good combination, even for a dorm room, but go ahead - ask her."

"Her?"

"Hey, Paco, she's laying on her back...see any relevant hardware?"

"When did you start calling me Paco? I was still a spud, right?"

"Oh, when we went down to Mazatlán that Christmas. You were, let's see, four? You couldn't eat too many tacos, and, well, Paco rhymes with..."

"Gee, that sounds original, Dad."

He looked up into the night sky, found Altair in an instant and felt suddenly reassured that it was still there, and that struck him as odd. Had his life changed so much, been so thoroughly disrupted that now he felt unsure of even the stars? Then images of Ted eating tacos in a Mexican village filled his mind's eye...

"You had to be there, I guess, as a parent. You stuffed those things in so fast...your cheeks were so puffed-out...you were a sight. You had your first beer then, too."

"I - what?"

"Well, you don't drink the water down there..."

"I remember...the Aztec two-step..."

"And then you bit into a huge jalapeño. Your face turned beet red and you started to tear up, and I had a bottle of Carta Blanca in hand. You reached up and grabbed it, downed about three-quarters of that bottle in one go..."

"And I've been madly in love with beer ever since."

"I guess you thought it saved your life."

"It probably did, ya know? Hallelujah, and praise the Lord!"

"Milk does a better job, so does Coke."

"Thank God you drank beer those days."

"Well, too late. There she goes," he said as the otter rolled over and disappeared beneath the still waters.

"Damn. And I was really hoping..."

"So, you wanna get moving?"

"Now? It's still kinda dark out, Pops."

"Track's laid in on the GPS...no problemo."

"Well, sure; I'm still on east-coast time, so I'm up for the day."

"Okay...I'll fire up the diesel. You better go below and stow your gear..."

"I know the drill, Dad."

Ten minutes later they were motoring out of the little harbor, north towards Little Flattop Island - and Canadian waters - and still there was no sign the sun was ready to put in an appearance. He sat behind the wheel, looking at chart symbology as Altair motored through the various channels between all the big and little islands that formed the way north, and then he heard Ted down below fixing coffee and warming croissants.

"You still do the Nutella and orange marmalade thing?" his boy, his "Paco," called out over the rumbling diesel, and he shot a thumbs-up back at him. A few minutes later they were eating in the rumbling silence, the only sound the diesel working down below, but soon enough an apricot-salmon sky appeared over the mountains to the east, and he wondered what the day would bring.

"So, we putting into Vancouver tonight?" Ted asked.

"Yeah. Nanaimo is still kind of dead."

"Suits me. Is Nancy's still around?"

"Yeah, think so. Some traditions are still too strong for time to kill." Nancy's was THE place to meet and eat on the Sound, literally. It wasn't called Desolation Sound without reason, but it helped the food was truly good. "You wanna steer for a while? Time to drain the main vein..."

"What? No autopilot? No flight director with auto-land capability?"

He shook his head while he flipped on the autopilot, then walked to the aft rail and pulled down his shorts just enough to fire a stream into their wake, his knees braced against the rail as he looked up at the fading stars. Altair was gone now, disappeared beneath the southern horizon, and he felt that old familiar tinge of sadness - when he heard Ted walking aft, by his side, and soon draining his vein into the sea, too.

He took the cut between Deer Harbor and Jones Island, adjusting his course on the chart-plotter and executing the change, then he cycled the radar, saw there was still no traffic on the water...but then he saw Sucia Island ahead, and Echo Bay. Probably the worst weekend of their lives lived in those returns...

"Echo Bay?" Ted asked, pointing at the screen.

"Yup." And he saw his boy shrink from the memory. Barbara, drinking more than usual that weekend, decided it was time to shred her son to pieces, and with her razor sharp tongue had belittled and berated him while he'd been out on the water in one of their kayaks. He'd looked on as Ted dove off the bow and swam ashore, so paddled in to see what had happened.

Ted was sitting on the rocky beach, knees pulled up to his chest, tears falling from reddened eyes - trembling like a leaf - again.

They'd sat and talked until the sun went down, then he'd gone back to get another kayak to bring back to the beach - and he noticed Barbara wasn't in the cockpit. When they both got back to the boat she still wasn't there so he'd gone below - only to find Barbara passed out, only this time with an empty bottle of Valium in hand.

She'd been carried out by the Coast Guard that night, airlifted to Bellingham. Stomach pumped, three long days and nights in the hospital there, then back home. Ted a total wreck by that point too, but nothing compared to Barbara...

And here it was again. All those feelings tied to this place.

"I know it still hurts," he said, "and I guess it always will..."

"I don't know why you think I should forgive her."

"Because of human frailty, son. Nobody's perfect..."

"That's a laugh, Pops. She's the meanest human being that ever lived."

"She wasn't always that way, Ted."

"Oh? What changed her?"

"Lots of things, I think, but first among them was, well, me."

"You?"

"Yeah. When we started to drift apart maybe I could've..."

"Dad...stop. You can't take the blame for who she is, all the things she did. She's a crazy narcissist, maybe she's even a goddamn psychopath, but all you did was fall for her, once upon a time, but you don't have to carry that around for the rest of your life. YOU need to move on, YOU need to find someone else - while you're still young enough."

"You think so, huh?"

"Fuck yeah, you old goat."

"So...you wanna get laid this summer?"

"What?"

"You said you wanted to try the whole girl thing this summer. What'd you have in mind? Falling in love, the whole nine yards, or just getting your rocks off?"

"I'd like to, well, both, maybe."

"Has this got something to do with the whole priesthood thing?"

"Yes."

"So, you're really serious about this seminary thing?"

"Yes."

"But...what if you meet some girl this summer, and you fall in love? Then what?"

"Then that whole thing wasn't for me."

"Okay. Then what?"

"I don't know, Dad. Maybe...like...take one thing at a time?"

"Maybe, but if being a priest is what you really want to do, well, maybe you should just turn away from these things. It might just fill you with all kinds of regret later down the road."

"Father Murphy talked to me about that, ya know?"

"Oh, how is the old goat?"

"Fine. He sends his regards, by the way."

"Hard to believe we both had him as a prof."

"Yeah...those Jesuits...they seem to hang on the longest. He turned eighty last year."

"And still looks like he's fifty, I bet."

"Forty."

"All that clean living."

"Yeah, right. Those guys love their vino, that much I'll say."

"So...a girlfriend. You want to try a one night stand first? Vancouver is probably a target-rich environment."

"Isn't that line out of Top Gun?"

"Top Gun was right out of real life, Paco. Art imitates life, remember?"

"You mean, you guys really talked that way...?"

"Sorry. Yes."

"Sorry? Why are you always apologizing?"

"I don't know...kinda feels like the thing to do. So. Vancouver? We goin' on a pussy-hunt?"

"Jeez, Dad, you sound like Trump..."

"You mean, I take it, that Trump sounds like ninety percent of every other white-Anglo-Saxon-male in this country? Man, what a double standard that guy has to live up to... Ya know, I heard that W was at a birthday party down in Texas, like before he was governor, and he was drunk as hell and walked up to the honoree, a woman who had just turned fifty. He asked: "Gee, does it feel the same to fuck after fifty as it did before?"

"Yeah, I heard that one. Did you know he was arrested in Maine, for driving while intoxicated...?"

"Yup, and did you hear he assaulted the trooper who arrested him?"

"Yup. Kinda makes me think there's a double standard at play here, don't you think?" Ted asked.

"Oh? How so?"

"Well, Clinton gets a BJ in the oval office and gets impeached, while W skated on all that stuff."

"W had smarter people around him. Politics is the art of not getting caught."

"Man, have we sunk so low?"

"We? What do you mean? There've been politicians for thousands of years, of one stripe or another. All this crap is nothing new, and all of which seems like a good way of you avoiding the question. Do you want to get laid tonight?"

"So, just like that...you can get me laid tonight?"

"No. That's up to you."

"Jeez, Dad..."

"Hey, Paco, you need to remember this: girls like sex too. Got it? You act like a Neanderthal and you'll never get anything, but take it easy, be yourself and then let nature take its course."

"I'm scared around girls."

"Yeah? That's been programmed into you by millions of years of evolution. You SHOULD be scared of 'em, Paco, because once they sink their fangs into you, you're doomed."

Ted laughed, a nervous laughter full of expectation and insecurity, then: "Is that what Mom did to you?"

"Exactly. Didn't I ever show you the bite marks?"

"Ha-ha."

"I'd say the trick, given the biology of the situation, Ted, is to not fall in love. At your age you're programmed to fall in love, it's a biologic imperative. The drive impairs your thinking, too, makes you say silly shit and do even sillier shit. Like marry a gal you hardly know, promise to spend your life with her..."

"You mean, it all comes down to testosterone?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"And that's what happened to you?"

"I don't think I'm any different than any other red-blooded male out there, Paco. I say stupid shit under the influence of either testosterone or tequila. Or, as the case may be, both testosterone and tequila. You mother got me at a Cinco de Mayo thing over by the commons."

"She...got you?"

"Got a couple shots of tequila into me, showed me some thigh. I was a goner after that."

"You make it sound so simple..."

"Falling in love IS simple, Ted. You just gotta let it happen. You'll know when it does, too. Take my word for it."

"And, if I went for the priesthood...?"

"That's a calling, Ted. In the purest sense of the word, and you've always been interested in this stuff so I'm not all that surprised."

"You're not? It sure surprised me..."

He looked at the chart-plotter again, noted they were abeam the island now and he checked the depth under the keel, then watched as the autopilot changed course to 315 degrees - about thirty miles to the next course change - and already he could see jets angling in for their approach to Vancouver International. How many times had he shot the same approach, he wondered? How different everything looked from up there.

"Want a DDP?" Ted asked, and he nodded.

He swept the horizon while his boy was below, and he saw a Coast Guard cutter on radar - then visually just as Ted came up from below.

"I think we're going to have company," he said, pointing at the display, then at the white hull arcing through a turn in their direction.

"Coasties?"

"Yup."

"You got any dead bodies stowed below?"

"Two or three, why?"

"Just wonderin'?"

They watched in silence as the cutter drew near, near enough to see half a dozen-or-so men looking at them through binoculars from the bridge.

"I thought you have one of those stickers?"

"Yeah, still do, but that just allows me to clear-in without having to go to the Customs Dock in Seattle."

"What are they looking for?"

"Drugs. Terrorists. Horny college students. You know...the usual."

One of the men on the bridge-deck waved at them and the cutter changed course towards Bellingham, and he waved back. "Well, we're in Canadian waters now, or will be in a few minutes. Guess it wasn't worth the hassle."

"When will we get to Vancouver?"

"Oh, about ten hours," he said as he popped the top to the Dr Pepper. "I think the wind will pick up in about two hours, so if you want anything hot to eat, now's the time to do it."

"You got bacon and eggs down there?"

"Yup."

"Stove still work the same way?"

"Yup, it does."

"How many eggs? Still do three, over easy?"

"I do."

"Okay, comin' right up, Master."

After 'growing up' together with Altair, there's was an easy routine. Ted knew where everything was, how everything worked, even how to break a few non-essential items, too, but he knew his way around the boat almost as well as his father did. And soon enough, the smells coming out of the galley hit all the right buttons and he began to feel hungry - as they skirted along the Saturna Islands.

He watched the water closely as the sun poked up beyond Mt Baker, and he thought he could see Garibaldi's crown beyond Vancouver as the first puffs of breeze filled in. They'd be able to make sail within an hour or so, he thought. Then he wondered where he could take his son to get laid in Vancouver.

And how long had it been, he wondered, since he'd had any?

+++++

They tied-up at the Coal Harbour Marina an hour before the sun slipped under the horizon, and after he showered he walked up to the Harbor Master's office and talked to a few guys there while he waited for Ted. The locals recommended a few places overlooking the marina and once Ted arrived - off they went.

Loud music and watered down drinks seemed to be the order of the day, and though there were a few womenfolk around nothing seemed to call out to either of them so they left after a few minutes. They walked to another place that happened to have a deck overlooking Altair, and they took a table on the deck overlooking the marina - about fifty feet from the boat - and a waitress came to take their drink order.

"Dark rum collins for me," he said. "Ted? Name your poison."

"The same," Ted said - cooly.

"I'll need to see some ID, sir," the waitress said.

"He's my son."

"Doesn't matter, sir."

"How about a ginger ale," Ted sighed. "Maybe with the cherry on the side?"

The girl grinned. "What do you want?"

"A beer. I'd kill for a cold beer."

"Been out on the water," she asked.

"Two days," Ted said. "Coming up from Seattle."

"Oh? Where are you headed?"

"Desolation Sound," Ted added. "Been there?"

She smiled then walked off to grab their drinks.

"She's kinda cute," he said.

"Kinda?" Ted added. "Man, she's hot."

"Sounds like an Aussie accent."

"Is that what it is?"

She came back a minute later with his drinks, a ginger ale and an ice-cold Moosehead. She put the beer down away from Ted and put the soda down in front of him.

"You from Australia?" Ted asked.

"Melbourne. Been there?"

"Not yet. You been there, Dad?"

"Yup. Once or twice."

"My dad's a pilot," Ted sighed. "He's been everywhere."

The girl turned on him then, curious. "Yeah? You fly for an airline?"

"Delta," he said.

"You fly to Australia?"

"I've been down there. Sydney once, Melbourne a few times, but not on duty. When we had a run to Hawaii from Seattle, I did that for a while. These days it's mainly LA and San Francisco, sometimes Salt Lake or Cincinnati. What are you doing here?"

"Spending the summer here, then headed to McGill."

"I'm at Boston College," Ted added.

"Oh? What year?"

"I'll graduate next spring."

"What are you studying?"

"Pre-med, philosophy."

"Really? Me too."

He smiled when he saw Ted's reaction. "So," he added, "you didn't answer. Been to Desolation Sound?"

"No, I haven't, but then again I've only been here a few weeks."

"Done much sailing?" Ted asked.

"No," the girl said, then she just walked off.

"Too fast, kiddo. Ignore her when she comes around next time."

"Right. We gonna have dinner?"

"You want to stay put, or move on?"

"Stay. There's something about her, Dad."

"Yes, there is. Interesting type, that one."

"For me, Dad. Not you..."

And he had to laugh at that. "Don't worry, Paco. I'm not looking."

"You could've fooled me."

"Just trying to back your hand."

"Okay...well, the menu looks good."

When she came back to take their order Ted didn't even look up at her.

"Maybe you could find some sort of middle ground," he said.

"What?" Ted said, confused. "You said to ignore her."

"Give her a smile next time. Make eye contact."

"Jeez, Dad. Maybe you should be a priest...?"

"You're right, Paco. Just be yourself..."

"Right. Nervous and unsure of myself. That's a winning combination, every time."

"Probably better than ignoring her."

"Now he tells me..."

She came back with their salads a few minutes later.

"So, what's in Desolation Sound?" she asked.

"Killer whales, sea otters - and Nancy's."

"Nancy's?"

"Bakery. Best cinnamon rolls in creation."

"Ah."

"You wanna come with us?" Ted asked - with a straight face.

"What?"

"Would you like to come with us?"

"For how long?"

"How long you got?"

"Let me see," the girl said before she disappeared back into the restaurant.

"Jeez, Paco...!"

"Hey, you said to just be me."

"You are direct, I will say that."

"You think she'll come?"

"Depends."

"On?"

"Well, she just got here, but she's cute as hell so the manager is probably hitting on her. She's away from home for the first time, maybe trying to earn a few buck before school starts but just figuring out that with the cost of living here she's barely going to be treading water. Then there are the visa problems..."

"Jeez, Dad. What are you - like some kind of clairvoyant?"

"Nope, but I have been around the block a few times."