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her?” I asked.
    â€œTo my boat,” Alan grunted. “She needs a place to lie down.”
    â€œHow far is it?” I asked.
    His jaw stiffened with exertion and effort. “Just over there,” he said, motioning with his head toward the next dock. “It’s not far.”
    Maybe not as the crow flies, it wasn’t far. Hitting a tennis ball, from one dock to another, even I could have managed it. But for a man carrying more than his own weight, down half the length of one dock and halfway up the other, it was a hell of a long way. Still, that’s one thing I remember about Champagne Al from way back before he even had that name. He was always stubborn as hell. Stubborn and tough.
    By the time we started up the other dock, beads of sweat popped out on Alan’s brow. Else had come to and was already arguing. “Put me down,” she insisted. “I’m all right. I can walk.”
    â€œI’ll put you down when I’m good and ready,” Alan Torvoldsen replied.
    He finally stopped in front of one of the ugliest excuses for a fishing boat I had ever seen. Instead of the graceful old Torvoldsen family schooner Norwegian Princess , this was an old steel-hulled, T-Boat-class army lighter trying to pass itself off as a respectable member of the fishing fleet. The name of the boat was newly lettered on the stern— One Day at a Time . That name told me a whole lot about where Champagne Al might be coming from as well as where he’d been during the almost thirty years between then and the time when we’d been schoolmates together at Ballard High.
    â€œHere,” he said, setting the protesting Else down on her feet and turning to me. By then his whole face was drenched in sweat. Rivulets rolled down the back of his bald head and neck. He took off the cap and scrubbed away the perspiration with the sleeve of his shirt. “You hold on to her until I hop aboard,” he ordered. “Then we’ll both help her over the rail.”
    â€œI don’t need any help,” Else asserted, but she wasn’t able to deliver. As soon as she tried to move under her own power, the wooziness returned, and once again she leaned against Alan for support.
    In the end, it took both of us to help her climb aboard One Day at a Time . As he led her toward the galley aft of the pilothouse, I heard Alan Torvoldsen mumble something about “…one stubborn damn woman.”
    And although the remark was true as far as Else was concerned, I don’t think Alan Torvoldsen had a whole lot of room to talk.
    I climbed aboard and followed both of them into the galley, where I found Else Gebhardt seated on a narrow bench beside a tiny, bolted-down, Formica-topped table. She sat there with her elbows resting on the table and her hands clasped tightly to her face. It looked to me as though she was using her hands and fingers to physically hold back tears.
    Without a word, Alan opened a locked cabinet with a key and took out a bottle of aquavit. Silently, he poured a generous shot into a glass and then placed it on the table next to Else’s right elbow. Then he turned to me, one eyebrow raised and questioning.
    I remember trying some of that potent stuff long ago. I know the heart-pounding, head-zinging rush. Even back in my most capable drinking days, I couldn’t handle aquavit. “None for me,” I said. “I’m working.”
    Champagne Al nodded sagely, returned the bottle to the cabinet, and turned the key in the lock.
    â€œDrink it, Else,” he told her kindly. “You need it.”
    But when Else Didricksen Gebhardt dropped her hands away from her face, there were no tears visible. Strangely enough, her grief seemed beyond tears. Shock works that way sometimes. Her face was pale, verging on gray, and the fierce blue light in her eyes had faded. She stared dully at the shot glass of liquor without making any effort to pick it up, almost without