THE LAST LOST SAILORS
Long Ago and Far Away
copyright 2012 Edwin P. Cutler
North of New York
Pedestrians screamed and backed away when a grizzly bear crawled out of a cab in downtown New York. But it was not a bear, it was a man. James Vernon Cook pushed back the hood of his bearskin coat and stood in his leather boots, an outfit that had protected him from the ravage of blizzards in his Rocky Mountains.
He chuckled at swarms of people squeaking and screaming in the late afternoon streets of downtown Manhattan rushing to and fro to flee the devastation of this dangerous snowstorm.
He lifted his face to enjoy the soft feel of snowflakes falling from the sky and wondered if he had brought the storm with him from the far northwest, three thousand miles away.
"Well, I'm here," he announced and looked at the four story bookstore where his father had told him he could find texts to study the stock market. In the hustle and bustle of the streets converging on Union Square he heard bells clamoring, horns proclaiming a right-of-way, the growling of huge buses, and the gnashing teeth of cars, big and small, competing to get their way, their purpose in life must be to find Nirvana around the next corner before someone beat them to it.
He saw people, some with covered heads, some with brightly colored umbrellas, all busy going somewhere or doing something with apparent purpose, but fading like ghosts in the shadows that gathered at the end of his two day trek.
He looked up. "The New Yorkers have built a maze of towering skyscrapers, higher and higher as if attempting to gain access to heaven without waiting for the pearly gates to open."
He could hardly believe he had drawn such a long line across the face of the earth in only thirty six hours. His flight south started yesterday at dawn, far to the North of New York in the Canadian Rockies. He had thrust the throttle of his plane to the hilt and accelerated across the small lake of his valley, his pontoons cutting slices in the mirrored surface.
"I can fly!" he bellowed his triumph over the elements when his swan-like wings, reaching out over the cold clear water, lifted him with a serene hum and carried him up into the mountain air.
Though his plane could carry four people and their luggage, it was but a tiny sparrow flitting into the foothills of the mighty walls of his Rocky Mountain valley. Nature had built those walls, walls crested by mountain ridges which sported crenelations silhouetted against the clear blue dome of the northern sky, walls built eons ago to hide and protect the secret valley that an old Indian had shown his father, the only place James had ever called home.
He cleared the ridges and looked beyond the tips of his wings into the surrounding wild domains where he had hunted and hiked as a youth, valleys and ridges, one after the other, that went on forever, fading like a painting into the blue haze of the far horizon.
He sighed, Your past looks so different when you fly over it. James was a bush pilot and had flown many times from the Rocky Mountains to the wasteland barrens of the Arctic Ocean. He had had enough of blizzards, destruction, and despair and was looking forward to an easy peaceful challenge. What could be more peaceful than living in civilized New York City and trading on the Stock market where the men who run the show live by the rules and are not corrupt or plagued with greed.
James knew that to be successful, he had to study the market. So he turned his back on the street and pushed inside the book store whispering, "Okay Wall Street here I come."
He also knew he would have things to get used to, but laughed when he saw a crazy deployment of people from strange places, people of different nationalities, different races, some dressed in their heritage habiliment. Smiling with flashing hazel eyes, he stomped slushy snow from his boots and set his suitcase down to shrug off his bear-hide coat, a coat with stovepipe sleeves and dangling tassels that touched the floor.
He amused himself by saying, "No wonder everyone dresses so oddly, this is New York the melting pot of the world."
Standing in corduroy trousers and a modern blazer and surrounded by displays of more books than he had ever seen and racks of even more books beyond the counters of busy clerks, he had a claustrophobic reaction and worried that he might lose his way in a suffocating miasma of people.
"I'll have to learn to accept that this is a busy but peaceful place, like a beehive," he stated and let his squared shoulders relax until a lady burst out of the book racks and started toward him as if ready to attack. He saw her shed her light coat and, tossing it behind a book display, charge straight at him. She was dressed in a long sleeved blouse with a frilly bodice and a full pleated skirt.
Braced to repel her, he saw her look back with fear-filled eyes, as if the teeth of a mountain lion were snapping at her heels. He smiled when she came dancing on sensible boots, but frowned when after another frightened look back she grabbed his huge leather coat and plunged her hands and arms into the long sleeves.
"That's my coat!" James picked up his suitcase lest she snatch it too.
"Please help me," she pleaded as her fright-filled eyes disappeared in the voluminous hood she lifted to cover her head. Obviously desperate, she peeked out to scan the forest of book racks. Covering her face again, she hooked her arm in his and urged him to turn toward the street, imploring in a small voice, "I can't stay here. Will you hail a cab for me?"
"Someone chasing you?" he asked and took a step to help her escape from the, as yet, unseen threat.
"Please, hurry." She ignored his question and pressed him toward the street.
Approaching the door, James glanced back and saw a nattily dressed man rush out of the book racks. He tensed when the man looked around, then with frantic urgency, charged toward him and the girl in his coat.
James had time and again been faced with greedy gold miners and drunken trappers in the wilds of the northern Rockies. He had learned to appear unaware and unaffected by their threatening presence, but if action was required he was always ready to thrust a fist into a swarthy face or draw a deadly gun.
He warned her, "A man just came out of the racks. He looks villainous. Keep walking. Don't panic."
"Yes, keep walking," he heard her whisper and felt her hand tighten on his arm urging him toward the door to the street.
The ploy of innocence worked and the man rushed past him and his walking coat, out into the crowds that were half hidden in the falling snow.
James saw him stop and look around. Then apparently having decided that she could not have escaped to the street in such a short time rushed back inside, certain she must still be somewhere in the bookstore.
They were outside now, with the snow flitting around her face. She looked at his suitcase and asked, "Are you leaving town?"
"I just arrived," he explained.
"Where are you staying?"
"I hope to get a suite at the Chelsea Hotel."
"The Chelsea. That's nice," she breathed and without warning stepped closer to him and, sliding her hands around inside his blazer, snuggled herself against him as if she belonged there and repeated her plea, "Please, help me."
He looked at the people, cowering under umbrellas or folded newspapers, trying to avoid the onslaught of the unusual weather. Feeling the warmth of her touch, he was reminded that this was not back in the Rockies where to touch a single stand of a woman's hair was a rare privilege. Recalling the glimpse of her face, before she pulled the hood over her head to hide, and remembering bright eyes widened by fright, he had the crazy feeling that if they were up in his mountains he could pick her up and carry her into his cabin.
Using his free hand, he surrounded his coat with the lady inside and tugged her close.
"You misunderstand," she whispered and pushing at his chest backed away and plunged her hands into the pockets of the coat she had borrowed.
"So this is peaceful New York," James whispered.
"Yes. New York," she replied and clutching at his arm to keep from slipping on the underfoot slush let him lead her through the fantasy world of swirling flakes that dazzled like confetti in a celebration. She had to step gingerly to avoid tangling the heels of her boots with the rawhide laces of the coat that drug in the melting snow.
"Was that man chasing you?" he asked.
She adjusted the hood without uncovering her head and looking up into his face whispered, "Thank you."
When her feet slipped, he reached an arm around his coat with her inside and half carried her to the curb where he looked into the traffic for a cab.
When she twisted in his arms for a quick glance back, James looked back too.
Through the glassed entrance they saw the frustrated man, climbing the steps to the second floor two at a time, a hunter who had lost the trail of his prey.
She breathed a frosty cloud into the cold air and looking into his eyes apologized, "Please don't think I was hitting on you, and thanks for rescuing me."
A cab deigned to stop, and like a molting lobster she slid out of his heavy coat and cuddling her frilly blouse against the cold opened a door.
"If you're not what you don't want me think you are, what are you?" he asked.
Quicker than a loon on a lake; blouse, skirt, and sensible boots dove into the cab where she yelled out to him, "I'm a computer programmer."
"Wait!" he cried. But handicapped by his rawhide coat in one hand and his suitcase in the other, the cab escaped and sped away as if she had an address on the tip of her tongue.
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As snow dappled his hair and made epaulets on his shoulders, he worried that without a coat she might get chilled. Helpless to further help her, he shrugged and returned to the warmth inside where the nattily dressed man, a man so agitated he appeared dangerous, was plunging his hands into the pockets of the lady's abandoned coat.
A young lady clerk, with a name tag, Maggie, had no customers and was busy sorting and stacking books, so he picked a copy of James Oliver Curwood's, The Valley of Silent Men from a rack and laid it on the counter.
"Maggie, I'd like to buy this book."
"Oh, fine. Just a moment please," she replied and after a glance at him returned her attention to the teetering pile of books.
He bit his lip when she moved them aside and leaving them sitting half on and half off the edge of her counter gave her full and undivided attention to him.
"How may I help you?" she voiced as if a recording had been implanted in her brain during her training as a clerk.
"I'd like to purchase this book and do you have a book on game theory?"
She looked up at him with a startled expression and asked, "Game theory? You mean like Monopoly?"
"Game Theory is useful when playing the stock market. It's a math formulation about how players compete for the available resources."
"Resources? Like hotels and houses and places like Park Place?" She brightened. "I always like to get Park Place if I can. Monopoly is fun."
"The United States Constitution doesn't permit monopolies," James joked.
"You must be mistaken. I saw Monopoly for sale at Macy's just yesterday. Besides, what has that old sailboat, the Constitution, got to do with who can play games?"
"Well, anyway. How much do I owe you for this book?"
While she punched buttons on a point-of-sale keyboard, he turned his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief when the nattily dressed man shrugged as if he had failed and tossing the lady's coat aside charged out the swinging doors and became one of the shadows in the darkening day.
James picked up the abandoned coat and felt in the pockets for some form of identification. But the pockets were empty so he laid it across his arm with his own coat, wondering how to return it to the mystery lady.
"Perhaps I should have tracked the man who was pursuing her," he mused but gave up when he saw people outside disappearing off stage beyond curtains of swirling snowflakes.
"That will be fifteen dollars and thirty cents, with tax that is," Maggie announced proudly and put the book in a bag and laid it on the counter.
Still thinking of the lady he had helped escape he whispered, "But I didn't come to New York to rescue pretty girls or track dangerous villains."
Maggie looked at him with even wider eyes and folded her arms across her Barnes and Noble blouse protectively. "Is that what this book is about? Pretty girls and dangerous villains?"
"No. It's about the mountains where I grew up. The dangerous villains are bears and mountain lions. But the pretty girls are all here in New York," he smiled and reached into his pocket for his wallet.
"What's the matter?" Maggie worried at the startled look on his face.
"My wallet's gone!"