Harley's Gold: Harley

By Sandra Keen

Harley's summer began with a new boyfriend and some new boating experiences. Soon, Harley was propelled into a world of danger and she was in a race to find the truth. She discovered secrets about an event that touched her childhood and her family. Harley was challenged to navigate life-threatening situations that tested her limits. She was faced with difficult choices that she knew would define her.  

Join Harley on her adventures, along with her new boyfriend, as she takes center stage in a mystery that lingered for nearly a decade. 

This story was crafted to take readers on a journey. The goal was to satisfy their time spent delving into Harley's world while also leaving them ready for more in the second book of this two part series

• Language: English
• Publisher: Keen Inspirational Media
• Release date: Jun 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386519935

Book preview

1 ~ Date on the Water

T he boat is sinking! I screamed from the dock. Hurry, get out of the boat!  June in New Orleans was as hot as the surface of the sun.  I had felt my sandals melting into the wooden boat dock when we launched the boat from the trailer, but the heat I now felt was from the sense of panic that flowed over me. I searched the faces of the people at the boat launch to see if anyone was reacting to help.  A few folks were there, but no one really seemed to move in our direction. One or two looked up and laughed. What’s wrong with these people ? I thought to myself.   My boyfriend is in a sinking boat, and no one is doing anything .  What was Glen thinking?  He was still in the boat! He must not have heard me. He was bent over the motor fiddling with something while the boat was steadily filling with water. Surely, he must have felt the rising water around his ankles. I felt helpless, standing there, melting into the dock, holding the line. I looked at the white, nylon line in my hand and thought, This can’t be good!

Glen looked in my direction, taking his place in the driver’s seat located in the back of the small bass boat and screamed back at me, Harley, get in! 

Get in? Now he’s really lost it!  I just started dating him last month, and now this nut is telling me to get in a sinking boat! What the heck? He was calm, though. Just yelling to me with more of a sense of urgency. 

He yelled again, Trust me; get in!  His arms were wide open with his palms facing me, as if I was holding up the works. I need you in the front of the boat! NOW! he said in a more assertive tone.  He looked up, and his eyes locked with mine. Greenish – hazel. I had not seen him make that expression before. There was also something about the way he said it. Firm, confident, strong, but mostly comforting. Like everything was going to be OK, but he needed me. Trust him?  I had just met him, but I could not let him sink.

In hindsight, I remember everything as it happened, so slowly, every detail, but really, it all occurred in just a minute or two. Standing on the dock, watching the boat take on water, hearing him yelling for help, there was not a lot of time to think, but it was obvious that so many things could go wrong. At that moment, two things were apparent. There was what I thought I knew: boats filled with water sink; and what I did not understand: cute guys in a boat filling with water think it’s OK to stay in them.

As I jumped into the boat, I thought, What’s the worst thing that could happen?  I figured that I can swim, so no problem. That’s when he took off. I did not picture that. As I made the jump, 40 scenarios blew through my mind, following that split-second decision. Taking off from a perfectly good dock was not one of those thoughts. Not even close. Sinking was one. Swimming was another. Standing in swampy mud was one more. Perhaps even someone throwing a line could have happened. At no point did I think we would be jetting away from the dock in a 20-year-old, brown, 16-foot bass boat, filling with water, hurling through Rigolets Pass, with high swamp grass on my right and the Highway 90 bridge crossing to Lake Pontchartrain on my left. Moron! Now I was convinced he was nuts. It turns out though, he wasn’t.

He was just, apparently, a little forgetful. He had forgotten to put in the plug. My first introduction to boating was something called hydroplaning. I learned later that my weight centered on the front of the boat is what helped it to level and drain as we sped forward. The water simply drained out of the plug hole in the back of the boat, from where the water first entered. When the water leaves the boat, you can then insert the plug and stop the leak.

As we hurled across the deep, smooth, Rigolets Pass toward Lake St. Catherine, I could see him laughing the whole way, but I could not hear anything he was yelling to me. All I could make out was that I was supposed to be sitting at the front of the boat because he motioned toward me to sit down by waving his hand.

I looked back toward the pier as it was fading in the distance, along with the shrinking shrimping and fishing boats in the adjacent small fishing harbor and boat yard. I could still see the few people standing on the dock, busily pulling their boats off their trailers, or tying them to the dock. A few of them shook their heads or laughed as we took off. We plowed through the water, popping up and down as we leveled out, and I glanced at Glen. Why is that fool laughing? I thought.  He motioned to me to stay sitting down.  I remember shaking my head, rolling my eyes, and yelling at him while holding on to the front of the boat, but I can’t remember what happened first because my adrenaline had already begun to surge. I’m pretty sure I yelled at him a lot, but he could not hear me because of the loud humming motor and the wind howling past our ears.  I felt the spray of the warm water as we cut through it. I was holding on so tight to the front of the boat that my knuckles were white, and I could feel the blood pooling in my fingertips. I thought that would be a detriment when I punched him later, if I lived that long. 

The boat was idling when he brought it to a halt. He quickly turned toward the hole with the plug in his hand and inserted it. He turned back to me with a triumphant smile. He stood, balancing with ease in the back of the boat, then he started laughing. He then doubled over laughing and had to wipe his eyes because he laughed so hard that he teared up. When he finally stopped laughing, I awkwardly inched my way toward him on the rocking boat so that I could punch him in the arm. I reached for him and lost my balance, so he grabbed me, apparently to steady me. Honestly! So, this is our first boat-date and you tried to drown me?  Actually, I was impressed that he stayed calm, knew what to do, and solved the problem, but all I could express was how pissed I was that he scared me.

He was still holding me steady; one hand held mine and the other was around my waist. He looked into my eyes and gently said, I’m sorry, Harley, with a slight chuckle. Really, I am so sorry, holding back another snicker. That’s when he explained that he needed to drain the water and how it worked. Physics. It was logical. He said, Boating rule: if the boat is sinking, stay with the boat; part of it usually floats, at least for a while.

How could I stay mad at this 6-foot cutie with the crooked smile and pearly whites to match? His dark brown hair was a little disheveled but never really seemed out of place. The bonus of boat riding, I would learn, was that windblown or hat hair can sometimes be a good thing if you’re always moving forward. It’s like Mother Nature’s blow dryer. Turn your head, though, and it’s a mess, much like the style I was suddenly sporting. I shuffled my hair, trying to put some of it back in place, realizing I would need to put my hair in a ponytail on future rides.   For Glen, though, his boat hair always seemed to work. He liked short hair and always had a close shave. When he leaned in for an apology kiss, my adrenaline, anger, and general state of being pissed just melted away. He smiled and said, Come on, let’s get moving. I have a lot to show you. You are going to love it!

Glen had been a boater for most of his life. His family joked that he learned to handle a boat before he could walk. He knew all the local Louisiana waterways from Lake Pontchartrain to Lake Borgne, and the Tchefuncte River to the Gulf of Mexico. He even spent a lot of time in Mississippi waterways including the Pearl River, the Jourdan River, and Bay St. Louis.  I had learned this through the short time that we had been dating so I had a tiny bit of informed confidence in him when I made the jump.  His grandparents had a camp off the train tracks in the Irish Bayou near the Rigolets of New Orleans, but it was destroyed during Hurricane Katrina almost 10 years ago. They were not able to rebuild it. There he learned to use a canoe, a motorboat, and a fishing pole. Glen was only 17, but he was an incredibly skilled boater, except for forgetting the plug. Glen admitted, You know, I was so happy to finally take you on the boat, that I guess the plug slipped my mind.

We spent the rest of the day on the boat, sliding across Lake Pontchartrain, Lake St. Catherine, and Lake Borgne. It was beautiful. The lakes were so calm and smooth that they looked like huge mirrors as far as I could see. There was a cool breeze generated by the speeding boat, and for most of the ride, there was no one else around. Occasionally, we slowed down in the narrower inlets of waterways as we explored together.

I learned a lot about boating and the waterways from Glen during that first ride, but I also learned a lot about him. I also appreciated the fact that he wanted to share something he loved with me. We brought fishing poles but did not use them. He toured me all around Lake St. Catherine and Lake Borgne, and I loved every minute of it.  

To my delight, we stopped for lunch in the middle of Lake Borgne. Glen turned the engine off, and I was intoxicated by the silence. I did not really understand quiet until that moment. The first thing that I noticed was the sound of the breeze moving through the nearby marsh grass on what I learned was our port side, or the left side of the boat. The water brushed against the hull of the small boat making the sound that water makes in a water jug when it’s jiggled, but with an intermittent tune. I also felt the expanse of the lake as the sun shimmered on the gently rippling sheen of the surface. The high grass flanked the boat in the distance. The bridge looked as tiny as a bridge from a train set because it was so far away. The channel that led away from our lunch spot seemed to be about a mile wide and carved through what looked like two grassy walls. We sat for a moment and did not say a word. We looked at each other and looked around us. As I was scanning the views and taking it all in, I was also taking deep, replenishing and refreshing breaths. I felt Glen watching me, seemingly taking it all in through another’s eyes.

At the time, I didn’t know if Glen planned this stop to impress me or if it was a lucky coincidence, but some dolphins showed up. He was biting into his ham sandwich as he turned slightly to the left, and that’s when he saw the fin. My head was turned the other way. He motioned quietly to get my attention, putting his finger to his lip, Shh. He pointed in the direction of the fin, smiling, looking to his left, and again at me. There were two dolphins playing in the calm, warm waters of Lake Borgne. I smiled and sat up straight, turning to face them more directly.  I put my lunch down on the seat next to mine and swung my leg over my bench seat so that I was now straddling it as if riding a horse. I wanted to get a better view because I had never seen a dolphin up close or in person. During this peaceful lunch break, I had a front row seat as I peered over the side of the boat and rested my hands on the port side.  I felt myself leaning over the edge which was now beneath my torso. I was leaning toward the water, which was still splashing and jiggling on the side. Glen clicked on the trolling motor and moved the boat quietly in their direction; they were so close, inches away and seemed to be dancing, playing in the sun, trading places while moving slowly and gracefully. They looked like they were attached to each other at times. One would surface, take a breath and roll back into the deep, dark, blue water. The partner would do the same while following closely. We were so close that we could hear them exhale and inhale when they surfaced, sometimes spouting a little water when they did.  We watched them swim through the channel leading to the Gulf of Mexico and continued to watch until our lunch was gone. We sat there, listening to the graceful silence, and watched until we could barely see their fins. It was getting hotter, and I realized for the first time that I was really starting to sizzle. I was so distracted by the dolphins that I did not realize that we were just baking in the sun. With that, it was time to crank up the motor and begin the ride back to the dock.  

I did not imagine that the ride would be filled with so much beauty. We had gotten serious during our first month of dating. We were exclusive. Neither one of us liked the dating scene. During that first boat-date with him, it hit me hard. It was then that I knew that I was falling for him.

As we pulled away from the boat dock after that first ride, the sun was setting. Our windows were rolled down. I watched the patches of the sea grass that lined the shore sway in the wind. The boat was bobbing as it trailed behind Glen’s little blue truck in the gravel shell parking lot, dipping into potholes as we crawled forward.  My gaze fell back toward the lake, beyond the park, beyond the boat launch. I watched as a seaplane took off. As I watched it disappear into the clouds, I wondered, What is that plane doing here?

2 ~ The First Flight

Many memories came rushing back as I watched the seaplane take off. Planes have always been such a big part of my life. Dad was a pilot, but I had only ridden in a seaplane with him once. He mostly flew high wing Cessnas with me.  I learned everything that I knew about flying from him at a very young age, but I could not get my own license to pilot a plane with a motor until after turning 17, logging the needed hours, and passing the test. My birthday was in May, so I was just a few months away from having all the hours