His mother, Elizabeth, had grown up in the Episcopal Church, and, with her parents, she had worshipped at St Andrew's over on the west side of town, the 'money' side of town, every Sunday. And though James was her 'sweetheart' even then, he wasn't drawn to the church – had never been interested in any church – yet that didn't seem to matter to her. She talked James into going with her a time or two but nothing stuck, yet she was true enough to him to let the matter rest – "in the Lord's hands," she liked to say. When the war in Europe started, actually during the Battle of Britain, James went down to the Post Office and signed up for pilot training; he ended up in California learning to fly the earliest models of the B-17, and it turned out he was a very good pilot.
They corresponded, by mail, after he left Vermont, and soon she understood that he had lost all interest in religion – and why; she, at home on the other side of the country, had started going to St Andrew's several times a week – and her interest in religion only deepened. By the time December Seventh rolled around, he was training new pilots and she was teaching Sunday School; when James shipped off to Britain in '42 she went to study religion at Boston College.
And so it went. They were polar opposites set on a collision course from the very beginning, and at the end of James' war, after he returned from Britain, he was a very different man. As different as Elizabeth had become over the intervening years.
Yet they picked up where they'd left off – in each other's arms, still madly in love with one another. Weeks after his return they walked the aisle in St Andrews hand in hand, as husband and wife, yet, if anything, his understanding of God and His Church had only diminished in his eyes. James had, he told his wife, been on many of the so-called 'thousand plane raids' over Dresden and Munich, he had fire-bombed whole cities, killed thousands upon thousands of human beings; there was, he told her, "no room in God's House for the likes of me."
They had talked about salvation and confession and he told her those were mere words to him, and she could feel the flames of burning cities aglow in his eyes. She said she understood after one bitter night, and she never pressed him further. Not once. She was, she told him, content to let God come to him when He was ready.
They wanted to wait a few years to have kids, or so they said, so he could earn some money and build up his bank account, and she told him late in 1949 that she thought it was an opportune time. Why 'opportune' he did not know, but he agreed and soon she was with child.
Yet he was too good a pilot for the Army Air Corp to let go of him completely, and, because he'd signed on to participate in the newly formed U. S. Air Force Reserves, when asked he was soon flying B-29s over Canada and the Arctic. When war broke out in Korea off he went, and two months after he arrived in Japan his daughter Rebecca was born, though he very nearly never got to hold her in his arms.
On a mission over the North his formation was attacked by Mig15s and his aircraft was damaged badly in the brief skirmish. He nursed the -29 back to the sea and had almost made it back to South Korea when fire broke out inside the right wing; he got his men out and rode the aircraft down, belly landing in the Yellow Sea. He managed to crawl out of the sinking wreckage and into a life raft, but both his legs were badly mangled.
His war officially ended on a hospital ship in Japan; he was back in the States a few weeks later, though he spent months at a succession of military hospitals in Maryland and Pennsylvania. And, finally, in White River Junction, Vermont, and that's where he finally met his daughter.
And though in many ways James was the same sweet man Elizabeth had always known, he had come back a changed man – for the second time. Whereas he had exuded an infinite invulnerability when he came home from Europe, he now cast a wary eye almost everywhere he looked...like he was suddenly unsure of the very ground beneath his feet. Still, he persevered, met his doubts head-on. He walked, then he ran back to his life in St Johnsbury, and Elizabeth knew then that God answered all prayers.
When Rebecca fell ill – some sort of meningitis, the physicians told them – she prayed and prayed, and yet Rebecca passed. In the aftermath Elizabeth fell away from the Church, and in the fullness of time she completely lost her faith in God.
She finished her graduate degree – in social work – and helped coordinate social services throughout northern Vermont...everything from helping the recently disabled to the newly homeless. She came to be regarded as something of a saint among the 'down and out' – and even to the pastors and bishops that worked the pews around the region, hers was a well-regarded soul.
And then something horribly unexpected happened. A girl, an eight year old Chinese girl, was raped one summer's evening near the old highway that went from St Johnsbury south, and a trucker who had been passing through on his way from Montreal to New York City was apprehended. And this mysterious truck driver – who was, apparently, from Hong Kong – was being pursued through the forests south of town. It was only a matter of time, they heard on the radio, until the monster was caught.
+++++
The rain had let up a little, and he could see faint patches of blue through thinning clouds from time to time. Melissa was sitting with him in the enclosed cockpit, rain and wind-driven spray still spattering on the canvas overhead, while Ted and Tracy were standing at the mast pulpit, looking for timbers on the Sound's roiled surface.
And yet he and Melissa had said little to one another since she boarded. He didn't know what to say to her, and she wasn't sure she had anything left to say to a man like him.
Then, up on the bow, Ted pointed to the left and he looked that way too, saw a massive timber sjust awash and corrected his course to miss it – and as suddenly Ted was pointing frantically to the right – and he saw more timbers roped-up in a tight clump. He stood to get a better view of the way through the knotted seas, then he cut back on power, slowed to bare steerage-way and worked his way around and through the flotsam – and he found he was holding his breath more than once...until they were through, anyway.
"This is really bad..." Melissa said moments after he sat behind the wheel again. "I've dealt with crab-pots in Maine, but never anything like this."
And he knew he was beginning to tremble a little – only for another reason. He'd had three cups of French roast and his bladder felt like it was about to rip apart, right down the middle, but he didn't want to leave the wheel...
"You okay?" she said when she saw the expression on his face, the perspiration on his brow.
He shook his head. "Nope. Bladder's about to..."
And she stood, took the wheel – and he looked at her like she was out of her mind – until the need to let loose from both ends grew like a three-alarm blaze. He nodded and ran down the companionway steps to the forward head – and didn't return for ten minutes.
And when he did she was still behind the wheel, steering deftly between timbers, taking the hand signals Ted gave her without the slightest hesitation.
"You tired?" he asked.
"Not in the slightest...this is – exhilarating!"
"Well," he mumbled, "that's one way to look at it."
And she laughed at that, then leaned over to look forward again. "I'm making for that buoy up there," she said, pointing to a can about a mile ahead. "That marks the entrance to the inlet, right?"
"Yup."
"Damn, this is a fine handling little ship, Jim. World of difference between my 325 and this thing..."
"Nothing beats displacement in seas like this."
"I'll say. Man, if you ever want to trade, give me a call..."
He laughed at that. "Yeah, I'll do that." He watched her watching the sea, watched the way she shifted her weight with her knees to roll with the swells and he nodded his approval. "Yours have a pedestal, or that rig under the seat?"
"Pedestal. That other rig always felt dead to me."
"So I've heard." He turned and looked forward then, content to let her steer for a while longer, and he noticed more and bigger patches of blue sky. "You may get lucky. Looks like some sun is trying to break through."
"Yup," she groaned, working Altair down the backside of a large roller.
Yet she kept her course, he saw. She bore down on the rise, fell off the crest, never missed a lick. "You do much racing?" he asked.
"A little. Why?"
"Because you're damn good on the helm, that's why."
He wasn't looking at her just then so he didn't see the look in her eyes.
"Can you come up a bit?" he said. "I want to head straight in the inlet, not come in at an upwind angle."
"Got it," she said, and he watched the bow swing to starboard a little...twenty minutes later they passed the buoy and he turned and looked at her.
"You wanna take it now?" she asked.
"No. You're doing fine," he said as he came to the pedestal and changed the displays on the plotter.
"What's that?" she asked, pointing at the display.
"Chart with a radar overlay here, and forward-looking sonar here, on the right."
"Sonar? You mean...those are the walls of the inlet – underwater?"
"Yup."
"Holy moly, this is like cheating..."
He grinned. "Kinda, yup, but it sure beats driving your boat up onto the rocks."
"I'll say."
"Slow her down to 1600 RPM," he said in his typical flight instructor's voice, then: "Come to 3-3-0 and let's see how much the current plays with us."
"Got it."
"Okay...see how it's pushing us to starboard? Let make 3-2-5 and bring the revs up to 1800."
He watched as she adjusted the throttle and made the course change, then he looked at the sonar readout and the plotter for a moment. "You're doing great...okay, fall off a little more...okay, you got it..."
And then, just like that, they were through.
"Moorings in here?" she asked.
"Nope."
"Anywhere, in particular, you want to drop the hook?"
"Depends. If there's room there's kind of a waterfall all the way in. Nice sound to sleep to."
She nodded her head; smiled a little, too. "Did I see a store back there?"
"Yeah. If you run out of food it's okay in a pinch."
"Expensive?"
"Man."
