Chapter 1

“Motor vessel Dorable is going through the lock, headed upstream,” I said into the microphone of the marine VHF radio. I strongly suspected that the only one listening was the lock master, sitting in his little control house, probably watching a video or reading a book or listening to music.

The lock was open, would stay open all day as long as the river was up a little, making sure that salt water didn’t intrude upstream.

I flinched as two powerboats growled past me, pretty much ignoring common sense in the narrow confines of the lock.

M/V Dorable. Forty feet long. Fourteen feet wide. Loaded as she is right now, she draws a whole two feet. Not pretty to look at, but that’s part of her heritage. She started out as a work barge, just a rectangular tub with a blunt bow and a little bow and stern curve in the interests of hydrodynamics. When I bought her she was just that, a metal tub. I had her blasted and epoxied inside and out and I argued and fussed with the shipyard until they installed a Norwegian diesel engine and a rudder and a skeg.

That made her powered. The rectangular hole I cut in her deck and filled with a cabin, that made her home.

And I paid cash for it all. Some of that cash was my receipts from Dad’s life savings. When he passed away, as the sole heir, it was all mine. Well, mine and the government’s. After the government finished looking, Dad’s nest egg still put a bit over three million in the bank for me.

I quit work. Change that. I quit the nine-to-five job as an engineer. I could call myself a writer now, full-time. I’ve actually been paid for my writing, the odd magazine article, technical work, a few flights of fiction, enough off e-books to actually pay a light bill or get me half a tank of diesel. Somehow the idea of showing up at the same place every day just didn’t fit my ideas of a chosen lifestyle any more.

Wasn’t just Dad’s money, either. I’d made some pretty good moves with my old employer’s stock over the last few years. In short, I was in the happy position of NOT having to meet a schedule and I wanted a houseboat. Dorable is the happy result.

I can pilot her from inside the main cabin, looking out through a big window, just in case the weather’s nasty, or I can pilot her from the hurricane deck, perched under a roof, enjoying the breeze and 360- degree view from eight feet over the water. I have assistance in the form of a grey neutered tomcat, Admiral Sir Pickles of Choupique. That name’s pronounced ‘shoe-peek’ where I come from. And I call ‘im ‘Pickles’ from when he was a mere curious kitten who pestered me for a lick of a dill pickle I was eating on the aft deck. The face he made cemented the name.

Inside I have a full-sized bed, a kitchen complete with a range (propane) and a refrigerator that will run on either electricity or propane. Air conditioner, too, but I only use it when I connect to shore power.

The fore-deck in front of the cabin was short, enough room for handling anchors, room for a couple of chairs if one wished to sit there, and there was a tie-down for a motor scooter. The scooter was my ticket to land-based activities. I had my SUV parked at the home marina, but if supplies ran out while I was on a trip, I could tie up to the bank, lower a gang-plank to shore, and putt-putt off to get what I needed, as long as what I needed could fit on the scooter.

A bag or two of groceries, a case of oil, that sort of thing was doable. Past that, I’d had some success with bribing somebody to haul things to my boat for me.

I went on trips. That little Norwegian (an antique, almost) diesel had a pleasant note, each stroke a distinctly separate pop instead of the annoying buzz of newer, high-speed engines. If I pushed the throttle wide open, I could do almost eight knots. If I pulled the throttle back half-way, still seven knots. Dorable was no speedboat. I’d determined that just being on her was destination enough, and if I wanted to change the scenery, then I could do so in easy day-length jaunts.

That’s where I was today. The destination was a state park on a lazy river. We don’t have any other kind of rivers in south Louisiana. The big question is always fresh or salt water. This one was fresh. I’d nosed along close to the bank, tied off parallel to the shore with loops of line that would allow me to cast off single-handed from the boat, and I went ashore to make arrangements with the park rangers. Pickles remained on board to guard the place.

Some parks had no problem with me tying off. Some did. Sometimes those problems could be fixed by paying a fee just like I was a motor home parked in that big lot I walked past.

These people? “Just don’t block the boat launching ramp.” I walked back to the boat, dropped the gangplank, and rode the scooter off onto the shore. Once I got there, I dismounted and slowly guided it up the bank to the top of the bluff, then remounted and took off to the nearest grocery.

When I got back, the bluff overlooking my boat was filled with a crowd of young people. I looked around, spotted a church bus. There were ice chests sited on picnic tables and groups of teens were scampering out in various directions. Oh, well. I have a task to complete. I park my scooter near the edge of the bluff overlooking my boat and unload a double handful of canvas bags – my groceries. I work my way down the path and deposit them on the deck of the boat.

The next step is retrieving the scooter. I crank it up, use its engine power to ease it down the slope as I walk alongside. I got the scooter on board and was tying it down when I heard a female voice behind me.

“Neat boat. I bet I know where the name comes from.”

I turned to see who was talking. There she was. Mid to late twenties. Closer to six feet than five, wearing a cotton T-shirt with a church logo and a pair of loose shorts, khaki. And naturally, athletic shoes.

“Okay,” I said, “where’s the name come from?”

“Robert Heinlein. Time Enough for Love.”

“Not exactly the kind of book I’d expect a church lady to read,” I countered. “And it could be the name of my unrequited love.”

She laughed. “I’m Georgina Bates. My friends can’t decide on Georgie or Gee-Gee or Gee.”

“Georgina,” I said carefully.

“My great grandmother’s name. I thought about changing it but that would dishonor a nice lady who held me when I was four.”

“Good reason to keep it, I said. “I’m Joshua Bertrand. ‘Josh’ works.”

“So this is your boat?”

“All mine,” I said. “Wanna come aboard and get another cold drink?”

“How about if I go get us each one and come back while you stow your groceries.”

“Oh, wow! ‘Stow’. Look at you bein’ all nautical.”

“Coke, Sprite, root beer, ginger ale...”

“Bingo,” I said. “Ginger ale!”

“Be right back.”

By now the music was going pretty good at the top of the bluff. I put cold milk and butter and eggs and bacon into the little fridge and stowed (really did!) the dried beans and rice and onions and some canned goods.

I felt the boat rock, then a cheerful “Ahoy!”

“Come in...”

“ ... to my parlor, said the spider to the fly...” She extended a ginger ale, dripping with cool moisture. Pickles met her, did a cat scan, apparently approved, then went back to sleep.

“Then let’s leave the parlor and sit on the back deck.”

I keep a couple of chairs back there. I’ve passed many a great hour talking with other river denizens, mostly retirees who had homes on various rivers. I keep an eye out for docks and landings in good repair and frequently ask about tying up for the night. I’m not so much of a hermit that I don’t enjoy the company of others, especially if the ‘other’ is blue-eyed, with her titian hair in a whimsical ponytail.

“Music’s getting kind of loud up there,” she said.

“Definitely intrudes on my solitude,” I replied, the last syllables almost over-ridden by the sound of a powerboat at full throttle in the middle of the channel. “Weekends are notorious.”

“You do this during the week?”

“I live in this thing,” I replied.

“No regular house?”

“Actually I’m pretty close to my house right now. I could be there in an hour on this scooter. Or I could take a couple or three hours to go back to the home marina and get my car. But I like being a river rat.”

“That’s it? River rat?”

“I write a little. Got some money in the bank. If push comes to shove, I guess somebody would need an engineer for a while, but really, this is it. Me, the river, the boat...”

“Interesting,” she said.

“Makes your Coke taste bad?”

“Don’t be silly. I saw the bookshelf when we walked through the cabin. And that MacBook on the desk...”

“Navigation station,” I corrected. “Not a desk...”

“Gotta be hard navigating this thing. This is a river. You go upstream or you go downstream. Tough.”

“You think too fast.”

“Notorious smartass,” she laughed.

“Church ladies don’t use the word ‘smartass’.”

“I don’t work for the church, so I’m not a church lady. I came along as a sort of chaperone. Won’t work, though. Those are teenagers. I’d need an icewater firehose and a cattle prod.”

“So you abandoned ship.”

“Ooooo, a nautical joke,” she tittered.

“I have smartass cred, too, Gee. What kind of work do you do?”

“I’ve a bachelor’s in biology, so naturally I’m an assistant manager at one of those trendy shops at the mall.”

“Seriously?”

“Sadly. Most of the wildlife I see has baggy pants and multicolor hair...”

“I got pictures. Wildlife. On my computer.”

“Pictures?”

“Uh-huh. Nose Dorable into the shallow end of a cut, sit quietly, put the camera on a tripod with a good telephoto ... And wait. Pictures. Or take a kayak.” There was a kayak bungeed to the port side of the cabin roof. “Or the skiff.” The skiff was twelve feet of welded aluminum with a ten-horsepower outboard. A nifty hoist picked it up out of the water and bedded it on the cabin roof. “I can explore. Fish. Take pictures.”

“Show me.”

“Okay.” I flipped a couple of switches, bringing up a big screen monitor, then I opened my MacBook and started looking.

“Sofa. Sit. I can control it from here or there.”

She sat on the sofa. I plopped on the opposite end, started flipping through pictures. After a dozen or so, she said, “You have some good ones. Is this what you write about?”

“No,” I said.

“I could do something with every one of these. A picture or two, a few paragraphs of facts, maybe some color about the surroundings.”