LIKE SO MANY AMERICAN towns and cities, San Diego pulled out all the stops on the Fourth of July. Clive Bennett made the most of the 1888 holiday with a rollicking party on the premises of the Times to which he had invited all of his most loyal advertisers and many of the big wigs of local commerce and government. Alonzo Horton was throwing his own shindig across the plaza in the garden of the grand hotel that bore his name. And it seemed like most of the rest of the citizenry had somehow squeezed themselves into the dusty open space that San Diego claimed as its town square, the bandstand in the middle of the plaza protruding from the swirling, shouting, swaying sea of humanity.
Cradoc Bradshaw had planned a much different Fourth of July than the vast majority of San Diegans. Spurning the Independence Day Parade and the boisterous parties, he had removed the tarp from his skiff, lowered it into the water for the first time in years, and asked Emma Lee to join him in a day of sailing.
She had readily agreed, and around nine o’clock in the morning, Cradoc and Emma Lee hopped aboard with picnic lunch and sundry beverage, as well as towels and an umbrella to shield the lady from the unrelenting California sun. It was, after all, high summer. The marine layer that hovered above the coast through most of May and June had vanished, leaving glorious sunshine and temperatures expected to reach well into the eighties.
Feeling rusty beneath the mast, Cradoc decided on a practice spin around the near shore before cruising into deeper water. At just under twenty feet, the skiff represented the outer limit of what the marshal could handle in a moderate breeze. Yet by no means was it easy going. Cradoc went through several erratic tacks before he got the hang of working the main, the jib, and the tiller in concert.
Snuggled up in the stern beneath the umbrella and a colorful Mexican blanket, her back against the gunwale, Emma Lee watched him battle both wind and boat. She was beside herself, couldn’t stop laughing when the boom came around and whacked Cradoc in the back of the head, and then again when he almost ran them aground on the mudflats along the north side of the bay.
“Have you done this before?” she asked sassily.
“Wouldn’t know it, would ya? It’s hard to grow up in these parts without learning a little about boats. But that doesn’t make you a master and commander.”
“Did your daddy teach you?”
Cradoc normally wouldn’t go down that road. But today he thought what the hell.
This was a good test of how far he had managed to wean himself off the past. “Nick taught me,” he said flatly.
“Nick, the newspaper fella?”
“That would be him.”
“So you and him really were friends?”
“Once upon a time….”
“I didn’t believe Mrs. Earp when she told me. Not the way you two are now.”
“Yeah, we were friends,” Cradoc sighed. “And he’s the one who taught me how to work one of these damn things. He used to live up there.” Cradoc pointed to the lighthouse atop Point Loma. “His daddy was the lighthouse keeper, and my father commanded the U.S. Army garrison. They knew each other through work, and Nick and I were tossed together when we were barely out of diapers. When we got old enough to go to school, Nick lived with us in town during the week and went back home for the weekends. Sailing is how he got back and forth.”
It was strange hearing himself talk about growing up with Nick after so many years of shunning that part of his life. Even odder was pulling it off with no trace of emotion. Maybe he had finally gotten over the events that had split them apart. And maybe this woman at the front of the skiff had expedited his healing. She was babbling on about her own past now, something or other about Missouri.
“We don’t have a lot of these kinda boats back home. Least, not on the river. Keelboats and flatboats for sure. Barges and paddlewheelers, too. But not much with sails. I don’t know if it’s a lack of wind or what. Never really thought about it until I got out here. It’s a whole different way to travel. So smooth and quiet.”
“Didn’t your husband make his living on the river?”
She flashed him a funny sort of look, and Cradoc thought maybe he shouldn’t have mentioned her dead spouse. Other than the fact that she had once been hitched, and her husband had accidentally died—prompting her move to the West Coast—he didn’t know an awful lot about Emma Lee’s marital history. Not being the type to meddle when it came to personal matters, Cradoc had not previously broached the subject. Still, if he was willing to divulge a smattering of his own past, perhaps it was only fair that Emma Lee should do the same.
“He worked a couple of the big paddlewheelers, like the Natchez.”
That didn’t seem too painful for her to answer, so Cradoc continued. “What was his job?”
“He was what you might call a jack of all trades.”
“Did you ever get a chance to travel with him on the Mississippi?” She looked at him sort of cockeyed again. And Cradoc backtracked. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. Sometimes I don’t know when to keep my mouth shut. But I do find myself wanting to know everything there is about you.”
“You do?” she asked, surprised by his frank admission.
“Well yeah. You know what it’s like when you … fancy someone.”
They had made love several dozen times, but this was the first time that either had said anything remotely affectionate to the other.
Emma Lee’s face broke into a warm smile, her eyes going a little bit watery as she considered the implications of what her lover had just confessed. She tossed aside the blanket and crawled to the stern, her face hovering just inches away from his own, staring into his eyes. They came together in the deepest kiss they had yet shared … and the boat shot sideways as Cradoc released his grip on the tiller.
Scrambling to bring the vessel under control, Cradoc once again found himself the butt of her amusement. She doubled over laughing at his distress. “My granny always said that men can’t do two things at once.”
“Your granny was dead right,” he answered, ducking just in time to avoid the boom as it swung around from starboard.
Cradoc decided to concentrate on skippering the boat, lest they end up beached along the bay rather than the romantic rendezvous spot he had in mind. Soon they were cruising past the village of La Playa, the waterfront alive with the local fisherfolk in a smaller version of the same Fourth of July revelry going on in San Diego. Ballast Point and its whaling ghost town loomed dead ahead, and suddenly they were out in the open ocean. Off to the south, Cradoc pointed at the red-tiled dome of the new Hotel Del Coronado and the Coronado Islands in Mexican waters below that invisible line called the international border.
At the foot of Point Loma stood a brand-new lighthouse that had recently taken the place of the one above where Nick had grown up. The new beacon soared higher, boasted far superior technology, and would be less encumbered by fog. While it might be more efficient at saving lives and ships, it would never replace the earlier light station in local hearts and minds. Cradoc wasn’t the only one who mourned the loss of the old gal. Many of the old-timers considered the quaint whitewashed structure one of San Diego’s most endearing symbols.
Cradoc cleared the rocky shoals and kelp beds off the tip of Point Loma and forced the skiff into a sharp right turn, tacking back and forth in a northerly direction until they reached a secluded cove with a sliver of sandy shore. “This is it!” he said and tossed the anchor overboard. Then a thought occurred. “Do you know how to swim?”
“As good as a dog,” she answered. Emma Lee glanced warily at the expanse of water between skiff and shore. “Why do you wanna know?” she asked suspiciously.
“I thought we’d swim over to the beach.”
“I didn’t bring a bathing costume.”
“Who says you need one?” Cradoc said teasingly, removing his shirt and flinging it onto the deck.
“But how are we going to … ” It suddenly dawned on her what her lover had in mind. “I’m not stripping naked in broad daylight!”
“I’ve already seen your birthday suit,” he reminded her, delighted that for once he had surprised her with salacious insinuation rather than the other way round.
“It’s not you I’m worried about,” she shot back.
“Look around,” said Cradoc, sweeping his arm across the uninhabited shoreline. “We’re alone.”
“You don’t know that!”
“Trust me, I do. You can only reach this cove by boat.” He kicked one boot off, and then the other, undid his silver buckle and dropped his drawers. “You coming or not?” he asked, standing at the bow in his red long-john bottoms.
She looked him up and down, obviously liking what she saw. She licked her lips, took a deep breath. “Turn around.”
“What?” He couldn’t believe his ears.
“Turn around!” she repeated.
“How many times have I seen you naked?”
“Don’t matter. Either you turn around while I get undressed or you wet that little willy by yourself.”
Feeling little willy get hard, Cradoc readily complied, staring at the water, the beach, and the chaparral-covered slopes of Point Loma while she removed her clothes.
“Don’t turn around!” she said from behind.
Moments later, he heard her shuffling along the wooden deck on her way to the bow.
“Drop your long-johns,” she ordered from just over his shoulder.
The marshal did exactly as he was told, pulling the underwear down and around his ankles until he stood buck naked on the deck of a boat bobbing up and down in the ocean. A lady next to him, naked herself. Who would have thought? Not even Wyatt.
Suddenly he was flying off the bow and into the water. The little witch had pushed him! His head sinking beneath the surface, Cradoc took in a huge gulp of seawater and came up coughing. Emma Lee floated nearby, having made the transition from boat to water without Cradoc snatching even a fleeting glimpse of her disrobed body. While he found her modesty confusing given all that had already passed between them, he also found it charming. She surprised him in so many ways.
They slowly made their way towards shore, Cradoc swimming proper strokes and Emma Lee dog paddling, tumbling through the waves as they neared the beach. He took her by the hand and pulled her onto dry sand. It was only then that he noticed her socks—sopping wet on both feet.
“I told you my feet get cold,” she said timidly.
Cradoc wanted to say they’d get even colder wrapped in damp wool. He didn’t buy that her feet were chilly; had to be another reason. Maybe she had webbed feet or crooked toes or another malady brought about by birth or childhood accident. But if she didn’t want to say, he wasn’t going to force the issue.
On the cusp of surf and sand they fell into a deep kiss. Cradoc pushed the wet hair off her face, caught her eyes and said, “You’re beautiful, you know that?”
She actually blushed. “Nobody’s told me that in a long time.”
“Then I’ll say it again. Everything about you is stunning.”
They made love on the beach, the surf splashing up and over their bodies, the sun glistening off their skin, oblivious to anything but each other, like they were the only two people in the world. Bringing each other to the brink and then backing off, starting over again and again, no concept of space or time.
Emma Lee flipped him around and crawled on top, her legs astride his thighs. Using her hand she slipped him inside. Bracing herself with outstretched arms against the sand, she began to move up and down on his manhood, a slow progression from ecstasy into something that nobody had yet invented a name for, a state of bliss so acute it was almost torture. Cradoc tried holding it as long as he could, clenching his fists, actually gritting his teeth in an attempt to stretch the rapture as long as possible. And when he heard Emma Lee shudder and scream, Cradoc finally let himself go, a spasm that ran through his entire body and deep into hers.
Slumped against his chest, Emma Lee lay quiet for the longest time, sobbing softly. He didn’t want to ask why—if it was happiness or sadness that had prompted the tears, a statement on the present or the past.
Cradoc went back to the boat, stuffed supplies into a waterproof goatskin bag, and swam back to shore. They enjoyed a picnic lunch on the sand, drank more grog than perhaps prudent, made love again, and stayed way too late for Cradoc to attempt passage back into the bay. He made a fire, and they curled up to sleep on the strand, cozy beneath the Mexican blanket and wrapped in one another’s arms.