Naked Girl on the Island

© 2021 by Gene Majors

To the reader:

This Novella comprises 18,000 words (33 book-pages) in 4 Chapters (all 4 published here).

Chapter 1

Ah, yes! A quiet evening among British Columbia's Inner islands.

From the splash-rail of my Catalina-25, I slid down and leaned against the back of its port cockpit seat, stretching my legs from the twenty miles of being scrunched-up while sailing over from Crandell River to the Barely Islands. The local mosquitoes had yet to discover the sun had slipped behind the trees on the pair of Barely Islands to my west, and the mid-August temperature still held warm and comfortable. The evening promised to be wonderful. The faint, evening breeze carried tiny ripples to splash them against my boat's fiberglass hull. Yes, wonderful.

Now, if I could only keep my mind off the four, earlier annual vacations I'd spent here. Or off Molly, if she were here as she had been those four previous, precious years. Oh, Molly! Why did you have to kill yourself by skidding into the path of that eighteen-wheeler on Northway Pass last winter? I still had nightmares of her SUV tumbling two hundred feet into that bolder-filled canyon.

"Come on, Lance," I told myself. "Get a grip, Boy! She's gone and nothing can bring her back."

Like telling myself? That was going to help?

I tidied up the main sheet and lashed the mainsail around the boom. Molly would have already done these things by now. She would also have bagged the Genoa and secured the lot to the deck, almost before I got the anchor set and its rode perfected so it was safe for the night's stay. She was handy that way. You could tell she loved sailing, loved my little boat, loved this tiny bay formed between two small islands that became one at low tide. But best of all, she loved me, 'Captain Lance' she insisted on calling me, and left no doubt about it.

"Stop it!"

All right, already! Get down in the galley, heat up a can of wienies and beans, and slug down a couple cans of Fosters. Maybe they would help. I reached over the transom, turned on the galley's propane supply, then clambered down the companion way into the cabin.

The stove. Yes, I knew how it worked. I'd converted it from alcohol and installed it, but the only time it got used was on our vacations. And Molly had always been our chef.

"Stop it, Lance!"

Find your can of supper and the can-opener. There. Yes—in the sack where you left that can while readying the boat for departure from Crandell River. And the can opener, in the drawer below and forward of the stove, where Molly always stowed it. Stop it, Lance, before you get that butcher knife from the drawer next to the can opener and put yourself out of your misery!

***

I wasn't in much better condition the following morning. On top of missing Molly, I was stiff from nightmarish lack of sleep, and it was cold, as temperatures always were here mornings, even in mid-August. Dew on the cockpit surfaces made it seem even more so, but I hauled myself up the companionway and gazed at the sun just peeking over the trees atop the larger island to the east of my little bay.

At least that much seemed promising. Maybe more of a stretch would help.

What was that? What is that? Someone else high on the strip of beach connecting those two islands to the west side of Barely Bay? Never before had Molly and I come upon anyone else out here, twenty miles of salt water away from town.

Too far away to see well, but it must be a woman. In a teensie swimsuit this early in the morning? Before the sun warmed everything up? Even a little?

I gave the shoreline a quick check to either side: No other boat anchored and no dinghy pulled up on the beach. Nothing. She must have come across from the other side of the island. I mean, this whole pair of islands couldn't cover sixty acres; I always figured there was a reason this was called Barely Islands. Molly and I had given their whole land mass a fair hike-around one evening last year. Sixty acres—at the most. We did find the tumbled-down remains of a one-room shack, but they were the only signs habitation had ever occurred here—and those remains looked to have been abandoned maybe a hundred years ago.

I watched the shape stop, stand there as if scoping-out my little boat, then disappear behind an indistinguishable bush near the upper north end of the gravel/sand strip of a beach. I watched a while, still trying to get my eyes to work better than they could, but all I achieved was a clearer impression that not only had that been a woman, but she looked near-naked in a flesh-tinted swimsuit.

I kept an eye out the whole time I heated water for cocoa mix, fried a couple eggs, and made one of those man-hole-cover size pancakes my bachelor hunting buddy used to make. But over that half hour, the sand strip remained uninhabited—like the rest of the beach and shoreline.

So? What else did I have to do that day? I was on vacation, and as my only goal for the day, I wanted fish for supper this evening. So maybe later I'd pull my anchor and try jigging the bottom in the narrow channel just outside my little bay. I'd caught a nice rockfish out there last vacation.

But then again, that could well wait until this afternoon. Curiosity was getting the better of my male hormones, I'll admit. I'd go ashore and have a look around. And if I ran into whoever that had been up there? So what? I'd run into her.

Half hour later, over the side I went and rowed ashore, skidding my Livingston dinghy's twin hulls onto the sand/gravel beach. There I tied a fifty foot extension onto it's painter, took this extension up the shore with me and tied it to a rock hefty enough it appeared it would stay put, even if the tide came in faster and earlier than I expected.

Then I hoofed it on up the gravelly beach to where I'd last seen the interloper.

Now, that was interesting: Barefoot tracks. Made me wonder what else was bare. A guy can hope, can't he?

I knew about where we'd found the remains of that cabin last year, so I headed that direction. Not long after my start, I came across a barely used trail that went the direction I wanted, so I followed it. Yes, there were bare footprints on it, too.

At the cabin's remains, I found questionable evidence whoever had been out on the beach above Barely Bay had been here, too: Decaying wooden rubbish uprooted from where it had lain over the years, sunken into the pine needles, remains of a small fire (an old one), a couple rusty tin cans strewn around.

What? More barefoot tracks, and what appeared to be a ground nest for an animal of some sort. What again? No deer would bed down there, not on this little island.

So, I wandered off to the south, coming to the end of the islet and finding nothing more except a smattering of barefoot tracks. I circled around the west side of this island, came again to the sand and gravel neck connecting this bump of land to the slightly larger island to the north, and continued on around that, too.

At my guess of mid-afternoon, I reached the north end of that one, finding nothing except a few more bare footprints above the high tide line. Time to cut across the island, find my little boat, paddle out, and make some lunch—and maybe snag a couple herring to gut and fry up for supper. Not great, but they'd be quick and filling.

This island was more a rock pile than the smaller one, so by the time I reached the north end of the sand and gravel neck, I was keeping my eyes more to the ground to save tripping over rocks. More barefoot tracks, but nothing beyond that. Back at the bay, I shuffled down the beach to my moorage rock, rescued my extended painter from the rock, and rowed back to my Cat-25. But why the profusion of barefoot tracks around my anchor rock—as if the owner of those felt a quandary as whether to set my dinghy adrift or not?

Oh, well. Supper here I come—when the sun quit for the day. And maybe tonight, with the exercise I'd gotten today, I'd get some sleep—if Molly didn't keep me awake all night again.

My evening fishing attempt was good to me. I caught a very nice rockfish so I wasn't forced to catch herring for supper. I rowed ashore once again, walked to the end of the sand/gravel neck to several promising rocks, and proceeded to gut and skin my rockfish. Because I was out of practice, I kept my eyes on my work, not wanting to skin away any morsels of rockfish by accident. But when I did look away, in the distance at the top of the sand/gravel neck, was that the swimsuit girl again? Almost hidden at the edge of the woods and boulders? Again?

I washed the filleted rockfish and scooped it into my pan with a little clean saltwater to keep the bugs off my supper, put the pan—fish, water, pan and all—in the dinghy and headed up the neck at a good pace, watching to see what happened to the swimsuit.

It disappeared.

When I arrived where I thought it had been, I found nothing but bare footprints. So I headed up the trail again, the one toward the ex-cabin. Although I've hunted a bit, I'm not much of a tracker. But I did see something in those tracks that led me to think: 'Crippled.'

So? If that swimsuit was crippled, what was it doing out here—here with no boat (I had seen none during my all day hike), on an island with no drinking or fresh water of any kind, apparently no food, and nothing I'd seen that would keep her (or it) warm during the night?

I kept up my pace and soon came in sight of the cabin's remains.

What surprised me was the naked woman collapsed on the ground in what I'd before figured was an animal bed. She came to and cowered as I approached.

"Don't touch me!" she screamed.

"Not touching, okay?"

"If you touch me, I'll scream!

"Go ahead and scream. Nobody will hear you. It's ten miles to the closest habitation."

"I kill you if you do."

"What you got for a weapon? A naked body?"

Her answer was to futilely attempt to cover herself.

"I got a knife."

"Bullshit. You're naked on an uninhabited island with no boat. I haven't a clue what's up, but my guess is you're marooned here and can't get off."

"Am not. I'm making a boat."

"Well, nice try. But you'll die of thirst before it's finished or you get found and picked up."

"I'll manage."

"Can't you swim? There's a settlement about ten miles around that island that-a-way. You could try that."

"Can't swim."

"Can't swim and gonna build a boat." I shook my head and aimed back the way I'd come. About fifty feet later, I turned back. "You know where my boat is. If you change your mind, walk over there and holler, really loud. I'll row ashore and bring you out to my boat."

"I'll mange without you."

"Have it your way. But I'm leaving this area mid-day tomorrow, heading north. So if you change your mind, get down there before I leave. Otherwise, in two days when I get where I'm going, I'll tell the authorities there's a naked woman dying of exposure down here somewhere on Barely Islands and they should send somebody down to find your body so they can bury you."

"Fuck you!"

"Your choice. But tomorrow about noon I'm leaving." With that, I turned back to my path. I wasn't really that tough—after all she might not be physically able to walk to my boat—but I'd come back up here tomorrow before I left, and if she couldn't walk to my boat, I'd carry her. Even in her condition she looked 'interesting'.

***

I slept a lot better that night, so well the sun peeked over the trees to the east well ahead of my eyes popping open and not staying shut. I rattled around for ten minutes as I got dressed and got water ready to heat on my stove. My glimpse, as I crawled from the cabin into the cockpit to turn the propane on to the stove again, said there was some sort of non-maritime object wadded up on the beach just above where I'd grounded my dinghy the afternoon before.

Well, she could wait while I started heating water. I'd be quite surprised if she wouldn't take some hot cocoa when I bought her aboard.

From the noise on my boat, she'd awakened by the time I got into my dinghy and headed for shore. Whether it was her dehydrated condition, the cold, or lying unprotected on the beach all night, I won't guess, but she couldn't stand. I all but had to carry her into my Livingston. She couldn't sit up, so I just piled her into the dinghy as best I could.

The real test came when we reached my Catalina-25 and I had to get her up and on-board. Too weak to climb aboard on her own, that was for certain. As I tried to wrestle her around and hoist her by hand, she kept fighting me and shouting, "Leave me alone!"

"Look, Lady!" I said. 'You're getting in my boat if I have to conk you one the head and winch you aboard. Your choice. I'm not leaving you here to die, no matter how stupid you act."

First she tensed, then relaxed—at least a little.

But when I moved toward her again, she tensed and said, "Please don't hurt me!"

"Look. I don't how you got into your pickle here on Barely Island, but I'm not going to hurt you, okay?"

"Please. Don't hurt me?"

"Okay, I'll try not to, but you might get bumped a little. I can see you're no feather-weight."

"Only a hundred and forty-five pounds." That response sounded a bit peeved

"You got any strength left? At all?"

"Not much. I couldn't even stand up when you came with your boat."

"How tall?"

"Five foot ten."

I hadn't seen her stretched out, but even as slim as she looked, she'd have to be that heavy.

"No wonder. I think I better lift you in with my boom and main halyard winch. That way you won't go in the drink if something goes wrong." She nodded to that, and I heard her teeth chatter. "Just keep in mind I got hot water for cocoa mix once you get aboard."

For that I got the beginning of a smile with her next quake and shiver.

Once aboard—Yes, if you haven't figured it out by now, she was stark naked—I got her into a pair of my undershorts, jeans, polo-shirt, and a flannel shirt. With those, and two large cups of nearly scalding cocoa, she began thawing out. Then I fried up eggs and man-hole covers for each of us. After that I put her in my cabin's only berth and commanded her to sleep. Four hours later, as I motored into Crandell River, she still slept. I just hoped she didn't take it upon herself to die on me. Explaining that to the cops would really ruin my vacation!

It must have been my commotion as I readied to land at Crandell River's City Dock, I felt the boat shift and a moment later her barely alive face looked from the cabin at me.

"What's your name, anyway?"

"Lance Baker—from down in Washington."

"Well, thanks, Mr. Baker. Sorry I was such an ass. Should that be Captain Baker?"

"Not that formal on my boat. And you're welcome on here anytime. So, what's your name? I suppose I should know, in case the police question me."

"Louise Pendergast."

"Well, there's a mouthful." The way she said it sounded as if she expected her name announcement to cause some sort of reaction from the listener.

"Pendergast Timber Products, farther up the island, and over on the mainland, too."

Oh. That sounded like big money! What would the cops want to know about where she'd been and how she got there? But I had little time to consider this further; the dock was coming up fast. I found a bare section of dock, idled the Honda auxiliary down, and steered for it. Some guy on the dock made a dash down the pier to head me off.

"You can't tie up there," he said as if I were some form of life below that of those sea worms you see on the Nature Channel.

"I got sort of an emergency here."

"Well, this is reserved."

"So, where can I tie up? Close by? I really do have an emergency."

"Down there, around the outer end. Go about a mile south beyond there. McNaughton's has tie-ups for rent."

"Too far. I'm tying up here. Now, you go call me an ambulance. Quick!"

"I'll call the police."

"You do that, Sonny, but you call an ambulance first—before I kick you ass!" I waited a moment to see him not move to comply. "Now, Sonny Boy! Move! If you want to keep your job here!"

Mission accomplished, at least so far.

You'd have thought he told the police I had a murder victim on board. More flashing lights than a carnival midway ride arrived with the ambulance. But an ambulance did arrive, and I got poor, shivering, Louise Pendergast out of my cabin and loaded into the ambulance and headed for the hospital.

The police were another situation. Seems I'd offended the dock warden by being so demanding and not complying with his edicts. That was, until somebody remembered the Pendergast name and the fact that Pendergast Timber money could buy the whole town of Crandell River along with the western half of British Columbia. I hope that dock warden gets his comeuppances—in the form of the opportunity of hunting for another job for which his attitude is better suited.

By the time I got loose from the police and got to the hospital, Louise was resting comfortably and sound asleep in a hospital bed. But I did get another grilling from the police.

"Tell us what you know?" the bossiest cop said.

I suppose they figured they'd have to alert her parents and better have a good story ready when they arrived.

"I arrived yesterday evening in Barely Islands Bay for a night camping on my boat. You know where I mean?"

He nodded. Who that lived here wouldn't? It was a wonderful place and close by.

"I anchored out, eased around a while, made supper—canned wienies and beans, if you want to know. A couple Fosters, too."

He nodded again.

"During all this, I thought I saw someone—maybe in a flesh-colored swimsuit—up at the top of the sand neck connecting those two islands. I figured somebody had beached their boat on the other side. So, I cleaned up, read 'til it got too dark, then went to bed."

"You didn't go up and see who or what it was?"

"Went up, but found nothing except that old cabin I already knew about. And lots of bare foot prints."

"Didn't find the girl?"

I nodded. "Yep, found her, but she told me to get lost, so I did. I figured she'd find their own way home—or her own camp."

"Huh."

I only shrugged. I'd learned from old Perry Mason movies, in a situation like this, you're better off to say less rather than more.

***

From the hospital, I walked back to the city dock, to find my Catalina-25 had been re-moored in space so small I knew I'd have one hell of a time alone getting it free without scraping something at one end or the other. Where I'd tied up earlier, there instead sat a boat that qualified in the small ship category, and took up most of the dock length where there had earlier been open dock. The name on it's prow as Louise P. 'Interesting coincidence', I thought. 'Oh, well. Everywhere in the world, there are lots of oddly strange names on boats.'

After making up a lunch of sorts, I took a stroll around the dock, mostly to step off that 'ship' and see just how long that vacant section of dock had been: 130' by my three-foot pace estimate. And ship it may have been, but even from the dock you'd say it definitely qualified as a 'luxury yacht.' It certainly cast a longer and higher-class shadow than my Cat-25! And those people aboard? Looked like paid crew to me, something I could never afford on my boat.

I didn't quite need a shoehorn to get my boat out from between the ones at its either end, but I came close to scraping a couple times. I did make it, though, and headed up the channel, north toward Port Hardesty, or maybe for an overnight or two at Kesley Bay.

But I never made it past Kesley Bay. A morning later, my late breakfast was interrupted by