OCTOBER ALREADY/RV-GO DOWN TO THE SEA continued

October, and it's time for me to begin thinking about this year's National Novel Writing month project which begins at midnight on 1 November. This will be my third novel and second in the RV-GO series: tentatively titled RV-GO TO WRACK AND RUIN. Though the actual writing of it can't begin until the virtual starting gun is fired, it's within the rules to have a rough idea of plot and a sketchy outline.

So that's what I'm working on right now. The novel is based on a personal family tragedy I have wanted to write about for some time. Five years ago I had to step in to rescue my mother's younger brother who was suffering from dementia and had become the victim of elder abuse and neglect. Yesterday was Uncle Bud's 92nd birthday - now he is safe, living in a wonderful nursing home a few miles from our house but five years ago he was wandering the streets of Corvallis Oregon, abandoned by his own son, bankrupt and starving. He had been cheated and robbed of everything he had including his dignity. A total stranger (my uncle's neighbor) contacted my mom who "volunteered" me as rescuer. Quite unexpectedly I found myself driving down the coast to check up on an uncle I hardly knew, and to do what??? I had no clue what I would or could do about the situation. If I had any plan at all it was that I'd set things straight, get my useless cousin to take care of his own dad, and get myself home.

If I had known what I would find when I got down there and what the next five years would be like for me would I have turned around before I reached Portland? And given the same circumstances what would Cora Jane Dooley have done? We'll both find out as I put her into much the same situation in RV-GO to Wrack and Ruin.

But for now, here's some more of RV-GO Down to the Sea:
Oh my God! Looking down at my camera, the realization hit all at once. I knew where Carl’s photos were! I was absolutely certain. Alice and I had been looking for photographic prints. But that wasn't the format his shots were in. Carl may have been retired but there was not anything outdated about the camera gear I saw through his cabin window the day I went out there. It hadn't registered with me at the time but remembering back to what I had seen on the wide dining room table I knew that Carl took his hobby seriously - had kept up with the technology of his art. He was using digital photography to capture his boat and seascapes. If he took night photos of the marina they would be on a memory card. A memory card that was approximately the size of a quarter. Something that would fit easily through the slot of a piggy bank. Or in this case a lighthouse shaped bank to which his best friend Mert held the key.
The genius of what the old man had done stunned me. If he had told his murderer that he had given copies of the photos to a friend of his in case anything happened to him, he told the absolute truth. If Carl came to harm who would open the Ashes Fund bank to scatter his remains at sea? Mert, his best friend. And when he did and found the memory card . . . or had he already found the card? Had he opened the bank when Carl was killed? If so, did he find it? Did he know what it was?
I had to find Mert. But first I called Alice at the gift shop where she was working late on the last of the inventory. I wanted to race right out and go looking for Mert but she brought me back to reality. It could wait. There were a few considerations to attend to first - for one, I had to go to work in the morning.
For another thing, Mert might not react well if I descended upon him in full gale. I took a deep breath. One thing I wanted to know was whether Carl’s body had been released to a funeral home. Alice said she would call around during the day and see if the police would at least tell her that much. She could claim that as his “boss” at the museum she would like to plan a memorial service.
She also gently suggested that even though I might have come up with a plausible scenario, it was still an airy nothing without concrete knowledge that the memory card existed in the first place, and that Carl hid it in the Ashes Fund.
I thanked her for bringing me back down to earth once again. It seemed as if lately I was constantly flying of into the stratosphere like a faulty weather balloon.

Blurry eyed I hung my purse on the lower hook beside the walk-in freezer, shrugged out of my jacket and hung it on the higher hook.
“Before you say anything, C. J., I don't feel pink today,” said Cindy as I turned.
Her hair was a spiky platinum halo that made her head resemble a dandelion gone to seed.
“It is . . . really different,” I said. “What's going on?”
She didn't look like a happy camper. Cindy’s face had that drawn, gray look that would have been worrisome on a woman twice her age. Something bad had happened.
“Mom is not doing so good. I think I'm going to have to get her into one of those assisted living places.”
“I am so sorry, Cindy.”
“Yeah, well, I knew I couldn't keep her at home forever,” she said. “Aunt Marj kept saying Mom needed more than I had time to do for her. Guess she was right. I got home last night and she was sitting on the floor by the bed. She didn't want me to help her but what can I do?”
“Is there any thing I can do? Maybe check in on her when I get off work?”
“Thanks, but I don't know what Mom would think about someone she doesn't know coming around. I am having enough trouble convincing her she needs more help than just me. Wait ‘til I tell her I think she needs assisted living! She is going to go ballistic.”
“Could Marj help to convince her? I get the impression your Aunt Marj does pretty well on her own, but she must have some kind of help around the house. Maybe she knows of a household aid or something that would take the pressure off you.”
“Yeah, Aunt Marj has a nurse’s aid who comes in to help her with showers and all the rest of the bathroom stuff. But I think Mom would hate that. She has always been so damned independent.”
“Cindy, I'm sure your mom would not want to trouble any one but there comes a time that things have to change, you know?” I said. “We all need someone else to help us from time to time.”
I wondered how true that was. Hadn’t I been trying to go it alone myself for quite some time? But it sounded good - something that Oprah would have approved.
“Say, Cindy, I wanted to talk to Marj about something else entirely, so if you would like I could put a bug in her ear . . . “
“I wouldn't turn that down right now,” she said. “Might work, coming from an outsider. Not that you are an outsider - I did not mean that!”
“Ah, but I am an outsider. Still, I see what you mean. A third party.”
“Right. That was what I meant to say. A third party.”
“Do you think Marj will be in the charter office this afternoon? I went looking for her the other day and Garvin’s was closed up tight.”
“She was probably at her doctor’s. They are gearing up to give her a new hip,” said Cindy. “You might try later. There is not much business this time of year so she doesn't open all that often. I'll give her a call later and see if she's coming into town.”
“Thanks, Cindy. I appreciate that,” I said.
“Don’t mention it,” she said, putting a batch of bacon on the grill to fry. “Could you flick on the open sign? I think it is about time we feed the thundering herd.”
“Sure. Although it has been pretty quiet recently.”
“Yeah, too quiet. I think people are still a little shook up about Carl. You know, with someone still out there. Makes people nervous.”
“Hey, kind of on the same subject, has Captain Merton been in for dinner recently?”
“Not that I know of. Of course I'm in the kitchen mostly.”
“Well, sure. Just wondered.”
“Are you guys still on the outs? I thought he had better sense than to keep you out in the cold.”
“That was what I wanted to talk to Marj about,” I said. “I want a chance to talk to him but I know if I call his cell phone he's not going to answer as soon as he sees who's calling. I wondered if Marj could talk to him about it - get him to at least hear me out.”
“That is pretty damned juvenile, if you ask me. Him, not you.”
“Tell me about it. But he just lost his best buddy. He must be devastated.”
“No excuse to take it out on you,” she said, turning the bacon.
We had a reasonably busy breakfast shift. The shipyard was going strong on a new yacht for some Saudi prince. From what I gathered the whole thing was rare wood, silk, and gold plated plumbing. Must be a nice life, I thought. Here, I go into blissful raptures if I get a twenty percent tip on a ten dollar plate of ham and eggs, and this guy sinks a couple of million dollars on a shower stall. It is a very funny world.
When the last person straggled out after lunch, I grabbed purse and jacket, punched out and went downstairs to see Marj Garvin.
“Cindy said you would be comin’ down. So what ya got on your mind, girl?” She had wheeled out from the back room at the first tinkle of the shop bell.
“This and that,” I said. “Most of it having to do with your partner, the elusive Captain Merton.”
“Cindy told me you two had a scrap. What’d that lummox do, pinch your tush?”
“Wish that was all it was. Marj, do you mind if I sit down for a minute? I have been on my feet since four a. m.”
“Damn! Where the hell is my manners?” she said. “I swear I get dimmer every day. Just ‘cause I am already sittin’ down is no call to keep ya standin’. Come on in the back. Got a nice comfy desk chair my Earl used to say was the best chair ever built.”
I followed her wheel chair on back to the charter office. The office was a blizzard of papers but the chair she pushed my way was one of those big squeaky oak office chairs with leather seat and back. My grandfather had one of those in his office when I was a kid. Sitting down in Captain Earl’s chair flooded my mind with remembered smells I associated with Grandpa - Old Spice, cigars, blotter paper. Who knows what all made up those wonderful masculine, comforting scents?
“Earl had very excellent taste in chairs, Marj,” I said.
“He had pretty good taste in everything, my Earl - especially women, or so I kept telling him up to the day he died. Fine man, was my Earl. Lousy businessman though. He would have been the first to tell ya that. That was one of the reasons he married me - so he had someone runnin’ the business end of things while he took folks out for tuna and salmon. Boats, he knew just fine. Fish, he knew.”
“They say a wise man knows his own limitations,” I said.
“No truer words were ever spoken,” said Marj. “Now that we got you comfy in the chair, what is this beef you and Mert got going?”
“You know that Mert got bashed on the head, right?”
She had heard the whole story of the boat being ransacked and the house being broken into, so at least I did not have to rehash the whole chronicle. She had not heard that Carl’s cabin had been torched.
“Damn, that is plain crazy. What the hell is happenin’ around this town anyway? You sure it was not a plain old accident?”
“I'm not sure. I just think it's too strange a coincidence to be a coincidence. Alice Burnbaum - you know, the woman from the museum - thinks so too,” I offered. “Actually so does Mert - but he's dumping the blame at my door. His take on it is that since I am the new kid in town, I have to be behind all this mayhem.”
“If that is not the craziest thing I ever heard it's a close second. How does he figure you did all that on your lonesome? You don't look like much of a Jack the Ripper type to me, girl.”
“I think he is grasping at straws,” I said. “I wondered if you'd try to talk some sense into him, Marj? At least get him to agree to talk to me. If I call him on the phone, he'll just hang up.”
“I can try. He is one stubborn man when he wants to be,” she said. “Now, how ‘bout tellin’ me why you care what that man thinks of you, Cora Jane Dooley.”
“Normally I wouldn't care one wit, however I need some information from him,” I said. “I have an idea about why Carl was killed. It's pretty far fetched but without Mert’s help I don't see how I can prove or disprove it.”
“What is this idea you have?”
“I don't think I should say yet. It's still in the rough stages. And as I say it might be worthless.”
“You suspectin’ me?
“No, of course not! But Marj, if I am right, then anyone with the knowledge might be in danger. Think of what happened to poor Carl. I don't want to say too much until I know whether I'm onto something.”
She chuckled. “No need to get all defensive on me. I was just foolin’ around. Sure, I'll give Mert a jingle for ya. And he better listen to me - for once.”
“Thank you, Marj, you are a sweetie!”
“Wouldn't want that to get around. It might ruin my reputation as a tough old bird.”
“It's our little secret,” I said. “One more thing, do you happen to know anything about . . . well, whether there is going to be a service for Carl?”
“Nope, no service. Carl was not one for any kind of fuss,” she said. “Mert took him out just the other day.”
“Took him . . .”
“Off the coast near La Push. Carl always liked La Push. Scattered his ashes out in the ocean,” said Marj. “Mert set out soon as the funeral home gave us the call to pick up the box.”
Oh no, I had been right the other day when I found that Angel Face was not in harbor. She was on a run off shore to scatter someone’s ashes, all right. Carl Heslop’s! Mert had no doubt already opened the Ashes Fund to help pay his expenses. Though I would not know whether he had found a memory card in there or not until I could talk to him. If he was willing to tell me, which I now doubted he would.
There was no reason to tell Marj about the lighthouse bank or (at this point) purely mythical memory card. I would have to let her try to talk Mert around to seeing me first. I had to wait. I hate sitting around twiddling my thumbs waiting for other people to do things. It flat drives me crazy. But there was not a thing I could do about it. Mert was entitled to his opinion and his privacy. - he did not have to have anything to do with me. By now he may have printed off the photos (if there were photos) and decided to destroy them and the memory card to protect the memory of his friend. That was certainly a possibility. It depended on what was more important to him - protecting Carl or finding his killer. That decision was not mine to make.
* * *
In the dream, I have lived on the small cabin cruiser tied at the end of a long dock for many years - then someone I do not know gives me three dogs - one large black curly haired animal, a medium sized white short haired dog, and a small gray wire haired dog - they run all over the boat yipping and tumbling and shedding fur all over the boat - I have never owned a dog and do not know how to take care of them - know I need dog food so I go to the store and overwhelmed by the variety of foods - do not have any idea what I should buy - there seems to be different foods for different kinds of dogs and I can’t imagine what kinds of dogs I have exactly, only their size and color, which is not the kind of information I need - but I buy many small bags of many kinds, with the hope that I will by chance have the right food for the right dog, and that perhaps the dogs themselves will know what the proper food is for their needs - back at the boat the dogs have ruined the boat with fur and dirt and dog messes everywhere on the smooth teak decks - they will not come to me - I cannot get the three dogs to stop running full tilt over the decks - fear they are going to fall off the boat into the water - fear my friend will come back and find I am not caring for the dogs - fear the dogs will hurt themselves or me - the teeth flash, the dogs growl at each other - should they be washed, I wonder - I have heard that dogs need to be washed and walked - but where do I walk the dogs on a small cabin cruiser if not on the decks or the dock but should I not have leashes to control them so they will not fall off into the water - I do not know and the days are going by and the three dogs are looking lean and filthy - they look at me with hungry eyes and foul breath - I take to sleeping up on the bridge with a chain link gate to keep the dogs out - at night I hear them prowling the decks, snuffling and scratching - I give up sleeping altogether, have decided to cast off at first light, head out to the open sea and sink the boat into the black depths.
* * *
I woke with a start, irritable and cramped up. My pillow had somehow fallen off the bed and the sheets were in a knot. Turning on the bedside lamp I took a hard look at the alarm clock. Two-thirty a. m. I wondered just what were my chances of getting any restful sleep before the alarm sprang into action at four. It did not seem promising. I shut off the alarm and got out of bed.
By three in the morning I was peddling into town through heavy fog. At first I had entertained a vague idea I might try out my camera on night shots at the marina before I had to clock in, but I doubted I would get much in the way of photographs in that gummy, icy haze. Our fog having crept back during the night I had only a few bike-lengths of visibility. Carl Heslop might have taken fog shots in stride I had no idea if my camera was capable of such challenging lighting. I knew it was beyond my amateur abilities. It was tucked into my jacket pocket though, just in case I got the urge to experiment.
There were no twinkling harbor lights tonight - or should I say technically morning, though dawn was at least four hours away. The light standards along the embarcadaro struggled to dispel some of the darkness but made little more than orange lollipop blobs of glow that did not quite reach the pavement. The sleeping boats were ghosts lost in opaque mist. I sat down on a damp memorial bench, glad of the length and thickness of my olive green jacket.
The last tendrils of my dog dream faded slowly. I had never liked dogs. They are slavish and demanding and have disgusting habits. I am a waitress - I am an expert when it comes to slavish, demanding, and disgusting animals.
What had prompted the dream I could well imagine. I had too many unruly forces pulling me this way and that, too many people I was trying to help or hinder as the case may be. Less than a month out of Boise and I was hip deep in disaster and destruction. So much for some quiet moments by the rolling sea. Perhaps I am not suited for calm reflection.