After a couple beers each, the four of them decided to find a restaurant for dinner – Earlene’s Kitchen was closed – but there was a chain place that served the purpose. After dinner the guys left to head back to Mayport, and Amanda went back to the motel, taking her notebook with her to get some of the things she’d discovered over the course of the day onto her work list. In a couple hours of thinking and writing she filled several pages, and was dead sure it was only a start on the problem. She thought about Ron’s comment that the list was going to get longer, rather than shorter, over the next few days, and knew in her heart that he was right.

With the amount of work she’d done in the cabin over the course of the day, she’d come to realize that her doubts about the cabin layout were correct. The boat was set up as a weekender, not as a live-aboard, and the only real good thing about the way it was set up was that there was just enough room in the cabin for her to stand upright. Given the amount of woodwork that was going to have to be redone, she figured she might as well do it right. There was no point in making serious plans right away; she knew she’d be living, well, at least camping out in the boat for the next several months, and that would give her ideas a chance to mature.

When they’d left the boat for the night it had still been a little damp in the cabin, and Amanda didn’t feel like she was up for the extra effort of moving on board, but it probably would be a good idea to do it the next night. The motel was fairly cheap but there was no point in wasting the extra money. But she was here this evening, so she figured she’d better enjoy the shower and the relatively comfortable bed – it was probably the last chance she was going to have either one for months.

It didn’t take her long to pack up in the morning, after having a good night’s sleep. She hadn’t brought much into the room with her and didn’t leave any of her stuff behind, except for leaving the key in the drop box. With the progress that had been made the day before, she was eager to get to work on the Rag Doll; while there was sure to be tons of it to be done, she hoped to at least be able to see a little progress each day.

On the way she came up on Earlene’s Kitchen. She figured she might as well stop for breakfast. She did it a little reluctantly; eating out all the time was going to cost money too, but there was no food on the boat yet, and only the small amount of her camping gear to cook it. That was something else she was going to have to deal with, and soon; a grocery stop was definitely on the priority list. Maybe she could figure on eating out once a day or so – it would at least give her a chair to sit in while she ate food that someone else cooked. That seemed like something of a luxury, even though it would be more expensive than doing it herself.

Earlene’s was busier that morning than it had been the morning before – or at least more crowded. From what she could figure out, the waitress that had been there the day before was missing, so Earlene, a heavy-set woman perhaps in her fifties was trying to both wait tables and cook, so was rushing around madly. When she brought coffee to the stool where Amanda was sitting at the counter, she seemed exhausted, and sweat was running. Not surprising, she thought as she took a sip of coffee; she knew what a rush at the breakfast hour was.

Amanda was just thinking that maybe she could offer to help out a little – after all, she had nothing better to do – when Earlene sighed and collapsed to the floor, not far away on the other side to the counter. Amanda set down her coffee cup and rushed around to see if she could help. Kneeling down beside her, she asked, “Earlene, are you all right?”

She didn’t get much response, and was wondering what to do next when she heard a voice: “Earlene,” a familiar voice said loudly. “Have you had anything to eat today?” Amanda glanced up to see that it was Cordy speaking.

“No,” the heavy woman mumbled. “Too busy.”

“Well, shit,” Cordy said. “Help me get her up,” she said to Amanda. “We’ll get her sitting in a chair and feed her some orange juice.”

“Orange juice?”

“She’s diabetic,” Cordy explained. “If you take insulin, don’t take anything to balance it off, and work hard, well, this ain’t the first time it’s happened.”

Earlene was heavy enough that it took the help of another couple patrons to get her off the floor and to a seat at the nearest table. While they were managing that, Amanda filled a big glass with orange juice, and took it over to the table, where Earlene was sitting sweaty and dazed, breathing deeply. “Now what am I going to do?” she said after a moment. “I got all these people here and God knows where Roseanna is this morning.”

“We’ll make do,” Amanda told her, making a decision in the process. “Cordy, if you can wait tables I’ll handle the grill.”

“You know how to be a cook?” Cordy sneered.

“Been doing it since I was maybe ten,” Amanda said. “It’ll take me a few minutes to figure out where everything is, but once I manage that I can keep the orders coming.”

“You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. My family runs a place about this size.”

“Guess it can’t hurt,” Cordy sighed.

Amanda headed back to the kitchen area – it was in a corner of the room, partly walled off. Mostly she was hoping that breakfasts in this area wouldn’t be too different from breakfasts anywhere else; if someone ordered something like fried turtle or anything off the wall like that she’d be up the creek and she knew it. But a glance in the refrigerator and at the setup table made it clear that there was nothing too far out of the way, but it was going to take her a few minutes to find where everything was. There were several meals in various stages of readiness on the grill; Amanda allowed herself a quick hand washing, and then started to see what she could do about making sense of the order slips and what was cooking.

Again, there was nothing too far out of the ordinary. In perhaps a minute she’d figured out two of the breakfasts that were already under way: hash browns, scrambled eggs, toast, one with bacon and one with sausage links. She scooped the meal onto plates, set them on the counter and yelled at Cordy, “Order up!”

In a moment she heard Cordy yelling, “Who had the scrambled, hashies, and bacon, and who had the scrambled, grits, and sausage?” Apparently Cordy had taken charge in the front, but Amanda was too busy to worry about it beyond that.

There was a big backlog of orders, and it took a while for Amanda to get into her normal rhythm, but soon she had several meals going on the grill and was working on some of the other things. Every couple of minutes she was able to get orders out, and when she had a minute to breathe she spent it trying to deal with the dirty dishes Cordy was bringing in. In fifteen minutes or so she could see she’d been able to reduce the backlog of both considerably. But there were orders coming in, too – this was apparently a busy time of the day. There was no way in hell, she thought, that Earlene would have been able to do this and wait tables, too.

Eventually things began to slow down a bit, at least an hour later and it could have been more – Amanda wasn’t exactly keeping track of the time. Finally she reached a point when there were no more orders waiting, and she turned to the sink to deal with the last of the dishes. She felt good that she’d been able to help out in a pinch, even though it wasn’t anything much different than she’d often done back at the snack bar at the Channel Stop.

Eventually Earlene got her attention – she was obviously feeling better now, although Amanda hadn’t taken a lot of notice. “Thank you, honey,” she said. “I don’t know what I would have done this morning without you and Cordy. Why don’t you make up whatever you and she wants for breakfast, and then I’ll take over again.”

“You sure you’re all right?”

“Lots better,” the older woman replied. “Every time Cordy came past me she’d put more sugar in my orange juice. My glucometer is going to go nuts when I get home tonight. I’m just glad the two of you were here to pitch in.”

“Not a big deal,” Amanda shrugged. “I’ve done this for years up at home.”

“Well, I still gotta thank you a lot. I’ve had a number of cooks in here over the years, and I’ve never seen anyone work as quick or as smooth just starting out in a strange kitchen. You wouldn’t be looking for a job, would you?”

“Afraid not. I’ve got a big enough one facing me as it is. I’m going to be spending most of my time restoring a boat I just bought.”

“That’s a darn shame, ’cause I could sure use you. Cordy did pretty well too, once she figured out what she was doing. You make a breakfast for the two of you, and make it a big one. You earned it.”

Amanda glanced up to see Cordy bussing tables and wiping them down. “Cordy,” she called. “What do you want for breakfast?”

“How about two over easy, waffles, and sausage links?”

“Coming right up. Should only be a few minutes.”

“You need anything, like maybe a cup of coffee?”

“I could really stand one but let’s wait till I get our breakfasts done.”

Working with her accustomed efficiency, Amanda soon had the two breakfasts ready; she carried them out to a table where Cordy was sitting, along with two cups of coffee.

“Wow,” Cordy said when Amanda sat down. “I never figured you’d be able to work like that.”

“Just practice,” Amanda shrugged. “I started helping out in the snack bar kitchen at home when I was maybe nine or ten. By the time I was twelve I was doing the whole thing when times were slow, and that included working out front, too.”

“I’m just damn glad you were here to help out. There’s no way in hell I could have done what you did, and do it that easy.”

“Had to be done,” Amanda said, noticing with a little surprise that Cordy wasn’t being surly, like she had been on Saturday.

“I’m sorry,” Cordy shook her head. “I gotta say that when I saw you I thought you were some rich Yankee yachtie bitch with a good-looking boyfriend and more money than you knew what to do with. And I figured we were going to have that piece of shit boat cluttering up the slips until we had to take the crane and dump it into the weeds. It looks like I was really wrong about that and I should have known that you were really a worker.”

“I always have been,” Amanda replied, a little surprised at the apology; after the way Cordy had acted on Saturday it would have been about the furthest thing from her mind. “Like I said, I grew up working in the snack bar, or on the fuel dock, or working on one of the fishing boats.” She smiled and added, “But I’ll be glad to tell my brother that you think he’s good looking.”

“Shit, he’s your brother? I never figured that. Did he come down here to help you with that boat?”

“Well, he helped this weekend. He’s in the Coast Guard, he’s a third-class petty officer over at Mayport.”

“Well, crap. I guess I was wrong about that, too. He looks like some college kid. I never figured him to be a Coastie.”

Being that Cordy had loosened up quite a bit from the snappy bitch she’d been on Saturday, Amanda decided to have a little fun. “Actually, the folks are a little disappointed in him on that. They never figured on him being a Coastie, either. They sort of had plans for him to help out with the business when he graduated from high school, but he fooled them and joined the Coast Guard instead. He likes it, and it’s beginning to look like he’s going to make a career out of it.”

“What all kind of business does your family have? I know you said a restaurant, but you were talking fishing boats, too.”

“Actually, it’s a little bit of a lot of things,” Amanda replied, and spent a couple minutes explaining about the fishing charter business and the Channel Stop.

“Wow,” Cordy shook her head. “Sounds like you got enough to keep you busy. What are you doing down here?”

“It’s all pretty seasonal, and the season is all but over with,” Amanda replied. “There isn’t going to be diddly to do until March. I spent most of last winter restoring a smaller boat, and wound up selling it at a pretty good profit. As to why I’m here, this is where the boat is, and it’s got to be warmer here than it is in Northern Michigan.”

“I guess,” Cordy nodded her head. “I ain’t never been much farther north than Savannah, so I guess I wouldn’t know. It gets a little cold here in the winter, but I guess nothing like you’ve got.”

“Right, the harbor will probably be all iced over in the next month or six weeks or so,” Amanda replied. “There have been years we haven’t been able to make the start of the fishing season since the harbor is all full of ice.”

“What do you do on those fishing boats?”

Again, Amanda took a couple minutes to explain the charter fishing operation, and that she did most of the normal seaman chores around the boat, plus help the customers with the fishing. “One of the things I have to do this winter,” she explained, “is to get my six-pack license squared away so I could be relief captain on one of the boats if I have to. It’d simplify scheduling quite a bit.” She was getting a little tired of talking about herself, and decided she wanted to know a little more about Cordy. “So what is it you do?” she asked. “I’ve seen you scraping paint and running the push boat. I have to say that you can really handle it.”

“Oh, just this and that, whatever Pa wants me to do,” Cordy said with a shrug. “I sure as hell didn’t want to work in some factory, or some damn fast food place where you’re doing the same damn thing all the time, day after day, without being able to be outside.”

“Hey, I know what you’re saying,” Amanda smiled. “I made the mistake of working in a fast food joint in the winter a couple years ago, and I learned my lesson from that. So do you plan on keeping going with what you’re doing?”

“Probably not,” Cordy shook her head. “Working for Pa isn’t that bad, but I don’t think it’s something I want to do the rest of my life, either. Pa says it’s hard as hell to get good workers and I believe him. Hell, I think back to some of the guys I went to school with and they don’t have enough brains to empty piss out of a boot. I don’t know how the hell they’ll ever manage to make a living. Shit, I made the mistake of getting mixed up with a guy like that, but fortunately I was able to come to my senses before it got the best of me.”

By now both of them had finished their breakfasts, and Earlene had come by to refill their coffee cups. Amanda was finding her discussion with Cordy interesting; while the local girl was still pretty foul-mouthed by comparison, the two of them at least superficially appeared to agree on quite a bit. Amanda could see that Cordy wasn’t exactly the nasty bitch she’d appeared to be on Saturday, at least not all the time. “What happened?” she asked.

“Well, like I said, he was a dumbass. I didn’t really think I wanted to get serious about him, since I think what he was looking for was a wife who would do most of the work for him, but I came to my senses in time and gave him the boot. I wouldn’t mind finding a nice guy, but you don’t meet very many of them working in a place like ours. Maybe someday some guy will turn up who ain’t a total loser.”

“It’s kind of the same thing with me. I mean, I more or less had a boyfriend in high school, but we both knew that as soon as we graduated he was going to want to go to some damn city somewhere. I don’t want to do that since I want to stay working with my folks, so we let it drift apart even before we were out of high school.”

“You were lucky in that.”

“Yeah, I guess. But I figure it this way. I’m not in any big hurry to find a guy. If it takes me a while, then it takes me a while. My guess is as they get older it starts to get more clear who’s going to be a loser and who’s not, and who’s going to want to fit in my life, as opposed to expecting to fit me into theirs.”

“Yeah,” Cordy nodded. “You might have something there. Hey, I’ve got this friend I went to school with. She was in such a goddamn hurry to get married that she barely made it out of high school before she got married and had two kids, one right after another. Then she found out that he still liked to party and run around. He’s not very damn good at making child support payments, either.”

“I can tell you stories like that, too,” Amanda agreed. “I guess we must both be lucky we missed out on that.”

“So what are you going to do with that boat? It sure didn’t look like much when I towed it over here Saturday.”

“Fix it up,” Amanda smiled. “I agree, it looked like hell, but Ron and a couple of his buddies helped me work on it yesterday, so it’s not quite so damn dirty now.”

“I didn’t know that. I wasn’t around all day, I got up early and took off. I mostly looked up some old friends from high school and hung out a bit. It’s good to get away once in a while. Did you get a lot done on the boat?”

“Not much in real terms but it looks a lot better with all the dirt and crap off of it. I don’t think I can get it finished before I have to head back north for the summer season, but I ought to be able to get it at least part of the way done.”

“Are you planning on flipping it over for cash?”

“Maybe, and maybe not. I mean, if someone comes along and offers me a huge wad of cash I might just have to take them up on it, but I’ll be looking for another boat. My long range plan is to get a boat comfortable enough to live aboard down here in the winters for a few years, maybe go a few places with it. This one has a lot of potential to be the right boat if rebuilding it goes all right.”

“That’s going to take some money.”

“Yeah, it is,” Amanda agreed. “But I work all damn summer without getting much time off, so I ought to have it to spend in the winter. Don’t get me wrong, I like sailing and I like going places, but I don’t get to do very much of it in the summer since I’m so busy up there. You remember I said I redid a boat last winter? Well, the guy who bought it from me wound up taking it to Georgian Bay last summer, that’s over on the east side of Lake Huron in Canada. Beautiful place, not very built up, lots of clean, cool wild country. I got a few days over there years ago, but there’s no way I could spend the summer over there the way I can spend the winter down here.”

“Well, that makes sense. I’ve never been around sailboats much or got to do much sailing, but with the cost of marine fuel being what it is, I can see how it could save you some money. It’d be fun to try sometime.”

“Maybe later on this winter, maybe next winter, we’ll have to get out and go sailing sometime,” Amanda smiled. “It wouldn’t surprise me if it goes over into next winter, since I don’t know how fast the work is going to go.”

“That would be fun,” Cordy smiled. “Something to think about, anyway. But I suppose we’d both better get to work.” She spoke up a bit. “Earlene, what do we owe you for breakfast?”

“Not a thing,” Earlene said from behind the counter. “I don’t know what I would have done if the two of you hadn’t showed up and pitched in. Amanda, are you sure you ain’t looking for a job?”

“No, I’ve got enough to do, I don’t have a local food handler’s card, and I don’t know if they require one here or what. But I’ll probably drop by most mornings, and if you’re getting behind again maybe I can pitch in.”

“Well, you did enough I can’t ask either of you to pay for breakfast.”

“All right, I guess,” Cordy shook her head. “Just don’t you let that happen again.”

“I’ll try not to, but you know how it is.”

“Yeah, I do,” Cordy said. She turned to Amanda and went on, “We can sit here and drink coffee but that isn’t getting the paint on that hull scraped. Damn, that’s a miserable job.”

“You acted like you didn’t want to quit when you were working on it on Saturday.”

“That’s because it’s got to get done,” Cordy shook her head. “I figured it would take me just about the rest of the day to finish it. Then when Pa wanted me to go over and pick up your boat, I could just see most of my day off going away so I could finish it. I mean, the idea of losing a day off because of a couple rich yachtie types who didn’t know what they were doing just didn’t set well with me.”

No shit, Amanda thought. That would account for her being so angry, and I guess I can’t blame her. “It worked out OK, I guess,” she said for lack of anything better to say.

“Yeah, and I’m sorry about it,” Cordy nodded. “I mean, I should have known better. You sure didn’t turn out to be the rich bitch I thought you were.”

“Works both ways,” Amanda smiled. “You sure aren’t the nasty bitch I was thinking you were. I guess that ought to teach both of us a little about not letting first impressions go to our heads.”

“Yeah, you’re right on that,” Cordy smiled. “At least we made up for it on second impressions. I guess we’d better get going.”

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