Synopses & Reviews
We had spent the night anchored up at the far end of Lagoon Pond and were heading back down toward the drawbridge at midmorning when I saw the big, blackhulled powerboat coming fast toward us, throwing a wide wake toward both sides of the pond. I don't like speeding powerboats, and I particularly don't like them when they're speeding at me. We were ghosting along in front of a small following wind and were in no shape to get out of anybody's way, so it was a relief to me when the boat curved off to our right and pulled smoothly alongside a dock on the Oak Bluffs side of the Lagoon. Beside the dock was a boathouse, and behind that was an embankment that was topped by a big, new house.
As the boat swept toward shore, I saw the swordfishing pulpit on her bow and then the name on her stern: "Invictus." A moment later we were rocked by her wake, and Zee and I hung on to the kids until the waters quieted, making unkind comments about people who drove their boats the way the skipper of the "Invictus" drove his.
"You and your sister won't ever sail a boat like that, will you, Joshua?" Zee, holding Diana the huntress, who was hungry as always, looked at her firstborn, who was hooked in one of my arms while I held the tiller with my other.
Joshua shook his head. "No, Mom."
"Joshua isn't going to race stinkpots," I said. "He'll be a sailor, like his father. Won't you, Josh?"
Joshua, quick to catch on to parental biases, nodded. "Yes, Pa."
"Nice-looking boat, though," I said, looking at the Invictus" as her skipper made her fast to the dock. She was a yacht, but with several features more typical of a fishing boat.
"I like a pulpit and a trawler hull," agreed Zee. "Too bad the guydoesn't know enough to keep his wake down when he comes in from outside."
We sailed slowly on toward the drawbridge under a fine fall sky. Labor Day was behind us, Martha's Vineyard was pretty much emptied of its summer people and its summer yachts, and Zee and I were on the last leg of an experimental test cruise to see how well we'd hold up with two little kids on board. We were amateur parents who had just begun to think we might survive Joshua when Diana the huntress had made her appearance, and we were right back at the starting line again. Still, it had seemed to us that the "Shirley J." would be a good boat for kids; being beamy, she offered a good deal of room for her size, and because of the jiffy reefing system I'd installed, she was pretty easy to keep flat even in a breeze. Besides, catboats were pretty rough-and-ready vessels, and we didn't think the piles of gear that go with babies would do ours any harm.
And so we'd packed up and taken the little ones on their first cruise because you're never too young to go sailing and because Zee and I wanted to know if we were up to being a family afloat. We'd sailed from Edgartown to Hadley's the first day; then, the next day, we'd reached along the north shore of Naushon, had ducked through Robinson's Hole back into Vineyard Sound, and had pulled into Tarpaulin Cove for the night. Then we'd sailed back to Vineyard Haven, passed through the open drawbridge, and anchored far up in the Lagoon. And now we were headed home.
And we'd found out that we could, indeed, sail together, as long as we didn't mind tight quarters, for our little eighteen-foot Herreshoff, none too big for Zee and me even before we'd added Joshua and Diana toour household, was pretty stuffed with the essentials needed for children under two. One of the things that made the cruise possible was keeping some gear, and particularly the plastic bag full of used disposable diapers, in the dinghy we towed behind us. Without that dinghy, who knows what our feelings about family sailing might have been?
But we did have the dinghy and we were happy as we headed for home.
The drawbridge keeper opened his bridge for us, and we sailed into the outer Vineyard Haven harbor, then hooked to starboard, toward Nantucket Sound, rounded East Chop outside of the Oak Bluffs bluffs, and reached southeast, toward Edgartown.
As we passed the bluffs, I could see the big house that belonged to Stanley and Betsy Crandel up there at the top. It was one of the places I dosed up in the fall, opened in the spring, and kept an eye on in the winter. I also took care of boats, caught and sold fish, and did a little bit of a lot of things to supplement the small checks I got from Uncle Sam and the Boston PD as a consequence of having been blown up and shot while working for them earlier in my life. When I got home, I was scheduled to replace a leaky faucet at the Crandel house, in a bathroom off the kitchen, because a Crandel niece was coming in a few days for a short Vineyard holiday.
But that was later; this was now. Under light blue sides and over dark blue water, we headed down to Edgartown, tacked into the harbor, and made fast at our stake.
Zee buttoned her shirt and wiped Diana's mouth. "Home again, home again. Your girl child eats like a horse, Jefferson."
Like mother, like daughter. Zee, too, could eat like a horse and, much to the annoyance of her womenfriends, never gain an ounce. Moreover, it wasn't long after her babies were born that her belly was as flat as ever. It was quite unfair, said her friends. I thought it was just fine, but I doubted if Zee thought about it at all, any more than she thought about being beautiful...
Synopsis
Two Hollywood actress vacationing at Martha's Vineyard incur the wrath of a pair of local gangsters and a stalker. To make matters worse, a deadly hurricane is brewing. Ex-cop J.W. Jackson isn't about to abandon these two helpless visitors. He sends his family off-island and dives headfirst into the tempest.
Synopsis
Martha's Vineyard is home to ex-Boston cop J.W. Jackson, his adored wife Zee, their toddler Joshua, and newborn daughter Diana. For others, the picturesque vacation spot is a relaxing escape from a world filled with trouble. But there is no escap for Julia Crandel and Ivy Holiday, two Hollywood actresses staying in the Vineyard town of Oak Bluffs. Their arrival has incurred the wrath of a pair of local gangsters, and a deadly stalker from out of the young ladies' past has found out where they are hiding. Twin hurricanes are about to slam the idyllic island -- one a natural climatic disaster, the other an all-too-human catastrophe -- and it looks as if J.W. is going to get caught in the middle. And since his conscience won't allow him to abandon two frightened, helpless visitors to the fury of the coming storm, he stows away his fishing gear, sends his loved ones off-island ... and dives headfirst into the tempest.
About the Author
Philip R. Craig grew up on a small cattle ranch near Durango, Colorado, before going off to college at Boston University, where he was an All-American fencer. He earned his M.F.A. at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. A recently retired professor of English at Wheelock College in Boston, he and his wife Shirley now live year-round on Martha's Vineyard.