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Gill, Igg and I's Land

By: StangStar06



 Hi Folks. Don't take this one too seriously. It's just fun. Thanks to Mikothebaby for her usual excellence in editing. Just sit back with a tall, cool glass of whatever and let's take a trip.

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As we strolled along the dock holding hands, I looked at my wife Natalie. Despite the fact that we were approaching fifty, she was still as beautiful to me as ever. I guess we needed to do more things together to re-kindle the flames of love into a roaring fire again, but the embers were still alive.

I looked back at the parking lot to assure myself that my other great love, my 2013 Mustang Boss 302 was still okay. Then I grabbed Natalie's hand and we started walking along the docks.

Besides the other strollers, there were plenty of people on the docks. There were games of chance to play, different types of food to sample and lots of performers. I saw jugglers, stilt walkers, singers, musicians, clowns and even a mime. I hate mimes.

We hadn't made any concrete plans or a schedule. The point was just to spend a day together and rediscover whatever we'd lost. I didn't think that we'd lost anything. Maybe I saw it as a case where over time our hot burning romance had simply cooled to a level of heat that we'd be able to maintain for a longer period of time.

It's almost as if Natalie thought that we were still supposed to be constantly smooching on each other like when we first met. We'd been together for a long time now and we were no longer young and fresh. It didn't mean that I loved her any less or that I was less attracted to her. In fact, I probably loved her more.

Over the years we'd become more important to each other. We'd become more a part of each other's lives. It would be far more difficult for me to walk away from her now than it would have been shortly after we met.

My viewpoint about the whole thing was different than hers. She seemed to think that we had lost the passion in our relationship. I was sure that we'd only lost the desperation and the uncertainty.

I took Natalie's hand and pulled her closer to the water as the mime approached us. "Take that Marcel", I thought, with an evil grin on my face. Apparently he was a better mime than I thought though because he was able to convey exactly how pissed off he was about being snubbed, solely through the expression on his face.

"Ooh, let's go for the lake tour," giggled Natalie. "It looks interesting."

I looked at the boat with a mixture of skepticism and outright scorn. The boat just didn't seem to be all that seaworthy.

"Come on Rob, it'll be fun," cajoled Natalie, sounding more like the young woman I'd fallen in love with than she had in years.

I looked at the boat again. This time I looked at the two man crew. The captain looked like a former athlete who'd gone soft. He still had all of the bulk he'd had before, but he hadn't retained the definition or hardness of his muscles.

He tipped his hat and smiled at us. The longish, greasy hair and yellow toothed smile reminded me more of a biker's mom than it inspired me with any degree of nautical prowess.

The only person I could think of who made me less inclined to feel safe was his crewman. The guy was a one-man screw up squad. Even as he walked up the gangplank to stand by the captain who was standing by the safety rail on the deck, he tripped over seemingly nothing and almost fell overboard.

And the boat itself? It was called the Guppy? It looked like it had to be left over from the war...the Revolutionary war. There was no way I was getting on that boat.

"Come on Rob," she said. "I need my big strong husband to protect me from the dangers of the sea."

"Don't worry, sir," said the captain. "It's only a quick tour of some of the interesting places around the great lakes. We show you some of the coolest hidden islands and some of the most famous wrecks in history."

"Do you show the area where the Edmund Fiztgerald went down?" I asked.

"Are you high?" he asked. "I've been sailing these waters since I was about 12 and I'm still scared of that area." He looked at me like there was something wrong with me. I noticed that Natalie was looking at me like I'd done something wrong too.

I was about to just grab her hand and go home, when the crewman stepped in. "What I like is all of the mysterious islands in the lakes," he said. "Some of them are uncharted and some of them are haunted. In fact, there's one of them that people say an Indian chief lives on, that boats can't get anywhere near because of the high winds and crazy waves. We could probably sail past there."

"But wouldn't we be in danger of sinking?" I said. "This boat doesn't seem to be very seaworthy."

"Nah," said the captain. "That island is only dangerous in November. In the summertime like now, it's perfectly safe. But give it a few months and that place is like hell on earth. There are winds so strong they'll strip the paint off of your hull. I've heard about rogue waves that come out of nowhere that are fifty feet tall and move like watery freight trains."

"Wow, have you ever seen one of them?" I asked. Once again he glared at me like I was an escaped moron.

"If I had, I wouldn't be here talking to you now," he said.

Again I noticed that my wife appeared to be siding with this lard-assed, tuna smelling boat jockey.

"The rumor is that the Indian guy...I mean Native American guy is some type of Shaman and he's in love with the spirit of the great lakes. I've heard of weird, purple lightning and other worldly screams coming from there in the fall. Some people say that those conditions are what wrecked the Fitzgerald. I've also heard that the storm followed the boat from that island to its final resting place. So we might not go near where the Fitz went down, but maybe going near the island is the next best thing."

I nodded my head and paid for the tour. I figured that if I had to spend the next three hours with my turncoat wife, I may as well be doing something interesting.

I looked at the passengers that were already aboard and saw what could best be described as a truly motley crew.

There was a group of four women in their mid-twenties who'd already begun the expected whispering and giggling. Two of them were reasonably nice looking, if average. The other two also fit the expected stereotypes. One was the tall, well built, blond goddess type who needed to check her lipstick every seventeen seconds. I imagined that the real reason for her to pull out her compact and turn away from everyone that often was because she was using the mirror to look around and make sure that everyone could see her.

The last member of their party was the fat girl of course. And while not comically obese, she was rather stouter than all of her friends and she obviously worried about it. She wore slacks instead of shorts and a long sleeved blouse to cover her thicker arms. But, of course, in the grand old tradition of her kind, the blouse was low cut enough that it highlighted the assets that she was the most proud of.

Seated somewhere near the chattering women was a guy. That's the only way I could describe him. He was just a normal guy. If I wasn't already me, I'd have thought that he was. Like me, he was in his mid to late forties. He was average sized and built neither skinny nor fat. His hair, like mine, was brown and had yet to succumb to either baldness or graying. In short, he was just a guy.

In the area close to the guy was another woman. She was a very light completed black woman. She seemed to be alone. She was very attractive and probably could have been very beautiful if she'd bothered with makeup or any of that stuff. Her hair which was long and thick and silky was pulled away from her face and tied into a very severe bun. Her clothes were very loosely fitting and did nothing to either add to or take away from her body. I couldn't really make out the contours of her shape either. I could tell from her arms and hands though that she was relatively thin.

Across from her but clearly not with her were two nerdy type guys. They were both small with huge glasses and were locked in a discussion about something that sounded like schoolwork.

The captain and his first mate started getting the boat ready to leave the dock. Just as they started to untie the lines holding the boat to the dock, two more guys appeared.

They each handed the captain some bills and then stepped on board the boat. They looked around and then settled in somewhere near the women. They were both bigger guys and both relatively young. One of them walked around looking as if he thought he ruled the world with the other as his sidekick. It almost seemed as if the second guy was paid to agree to everything the big blond guy said.

I did notice that Natalie seemed to take a particular interest in the two latest arrivals far more than anyone else on board. I got up and went and sat on the other side of the boat. A few moments later she came and sat near me.

"Nat, maybe you should go back to where you were sitting," I said.

"Why, Rob?" she asked.

"I'm beginning to see your point," I said. "Maybe we have drifted apart over the years. I guess I never saw it. I always thought that everything between us was fine. I guess I thought that we still loved each other and though we'd gotten older we were still the same people."

"But we are the same people," she said. "Maybe we've made a few mistakes. Maybe we've put things in front of our marriage and we need to get back to what's important. That's what today was about. We just need to spend more time together and rediscover what it was that we fell in love with. We need to put the past behind us and step into the future together. I think that we've grown apart a little bit, but not so severely that we're not the same people."

I looked at her and she seemed to be sincere. She seemed to be pleading for this, but I just didn't understand any of it.

"Well, if we're different," I began. "Maybe we should do what Steve and Edie did."

"Rob, we don't need that," she said. "Our case is nothing like theirs. And I don't know if you still speak to Steve, but Edith is miserable. All of the crap that she's gone through has aged her before her time and she's never happy anymore."

"We just need to get to know the people that we've become over the years," she said. She hugged me and rubbed her hand on my cheek the way she used to do when we were first dating. I let out a gasp as I realized that it had been years since she'd done that. It's surprising how much little gestures like that can mean.

"There was something that I wanted us to talk about today," she said. "But perhaps with the mood we're in it should wait. Let's just have a good time and see if the captain and his "Scary Great Lakes Tour," can entertain us."

"We may as well talk about whatever it is," I said. "I'm really not in the mood for any bullshit. I'll take my bad news straight."

"Rob, it's not something...When too people have been together for a long time they experience life at different rates sometimes and..."

"What you're saying is that we've grown apart like you've been hinting about all fucking morning," I snapped. "And to make a long story short, you're bored with us so you want a divorce. And since the kids are both out of the house and off to college, this seems like a good time."

She looked at me with absolute horror in her eyes.

"Rob, why the hell would you think that I want that?" she asked. "You need to know that more than anything else I want us to be together." she grabbed my hands in hers and looked into my eyes.

"Rob, we've done our duty to society. We raised two great kids. Sure we've both made some mistakes, but you're still the man I want to spend the rest of my life with and...."

"I can't tell," I said. "What kind of woman repeatedly takes another man's side over her husband? I'm not sure I want to be married to that kind of woman."

"What are you talk....Rob, you aren't jealous of the Captain are you?" she laughed and squeezed my hand even tighter.

"Rob, I was about to tell you that we've raised our kids, our mortgage is manageable and we've done it before we even turned fifty. We're riding the gravy train and headed for the home stretch, but I think we see things differently. I think you want for us to continue saving money and you intend to keep slaving away at your job for another eighteen years until you're ready to retire at sixty five."

"That's what normal people do," I said. She cut me off with a look.

"That's why normal people die or get too old to really do anything with their lives," she snapped. "Today is the beginning for us, Rob. It's not the end. This isn't me telling you that I want a divorce. This is me telling you that I want us to get to know each other all over again. I want you to cut back on your hours and start using some of that vacation time you've got coming to you. I want us to take trips and go camping and visit every little oddity we hear of. I want you to make me remember exactly why all of my girlfriends think you're so special and so cute. I want us to spend the rest of our lives falling in love all over again."

Before I could answer her, there was a blast of both vibration and engine noise as the good ship Guppy pulled away from the dock. The movement of the boat wasn't as smooth as you'd expect, but both the captain and his mate seemed to be used to it. As we moved further and further away from shore, safety and my Mustang, I got used to the erratic nature of the boat.

"It's not a car," I told myself. So I shouldn't expect it to feel like a car.

Lake Superior is huge. In terms of surface area it is the world's largest fresh water lake. It is also the world largest "true" lake. The only lake that is larger is the Caspian Sea which isn't really a lake. It's a sea; but since it is completely surrounded by land, it narrowly meets the definition of a lake.

"The lake is so large that if we got lost it would take them days or weeks to find us. The lake covers more than thirty six thousand square miles. That is a lot of area to search," the Captain said. He droned on about how the lake touched three separate states and a different country.

"But don't be afraid folks," he said as he grinned. "I know this lake, as well as I know my own bathtub."

That brought a laugh from most of the passengers including Natalie, but it didn't do much for me. Two separate thoughts went through me. The first was that the Captain had a pretty foul fishy smell about him. His first mate didn't have it. So perhaps the Captain didn't know his bathtub that well. The second thought was that perhaps the lake WAS the Captain's bathtub. It would explain why he smelled like a damned fish.

True to his word, for the at least the first hour and a little bit more we headed in one direction away from where we'd started. I did notice several minor course changes based on the relative position of the sun but the more we drove, the more the Captain's tales of the Great Lakes drew me in.

Several times during our excursion, I did notice that the first mate, Gill, looked at the sky. As I've mentioned, the passage of the Guppy through the water had never been smooth but about eighty minutes out, I noticed an extreme increase in both the choppiness of the water and the roughness of the Guppy's movements.

When we first started out, the sun was high in the sky and there were few clouds. During the trip, the sun had gone behind the clouds several times and with the heat of day we were glad of the respite from the sun's baking rays. But now, the entire sky was full of dark angry clouds. I realized that Gill had seen those clouds a long way out and they had been what he'd been watching.

"I hate to cut our tour short," said the Captain. "But we're very close to a certain mysterious island that I warned some of you about. These waters that approach that island are known for being unpredictable. And even though we don't have that island in site, Superior seems to be in a frenzy. I probably shouldn't have spoken about that island out loud."

At first, I thought he was just ramping up the drama, to cover up his ineptitude. What kind of sailor doesn't watch the weather? Even Gill, who I was sure wasn't wrapped too tightly, had noticed the clouds.

But even as the Captain spoke, lightning crashed, very near the boat. Huge raindrops started to drop into the water all of a sudden and all of the passengers abandoned the deck for the cramped areas of the crew quarters below deck.

The weather began to increase and the small boat was thrown around. I had to hand it to the Captain and Gill. They were bravely doing their jobs and it was them more than anything else that kept that boat from going under. Wait...I should rephrase that.

Perhaps it would be better or at least clearer if I said, "The weather started getting rough. The tiny ship was tossed. If not for the courage of the fearless crew, the Minnow...I mean the Guppy would be lost.

Looking at the frightened and angry faces of the passengers around me, I could tell that we were all regretting getting on the Guppy.

I heard several people say the same things that I had. They voiced the same fears. The boat hadn't looked as if it was in the best condition and the Captain smelled like fish. Gill appeared to be a moron at best. And now our lives were in their hands.

"I'm going to sue," said one of the women.

"Who are you going to sue?" asked the man I'd described as just a guy. "The Captain is probably the boat's owner and from the looks of things the boat is all he has. If the boat goes down what are you going to get? Maybe you'll get the ownership of a sunken, worthless boat?"

"Yeah, then they'll charge you with all kinds of fines for cleaning it up to prevent damage to the lake's ecosystem and all of that kind of crap," said one of the nerds.

The nerd next to him didn't say a word. He just turned green and ran over to the small sink in the galley area. He immediately emptied the contents of his stomach and did so very loudly.

He may have been the only one to vomit, but he wasn't the only one who wasn't enjoying the voyage. As the boat rose and fell and crashed into the waves, we all screamed and begged for the trip to be over. 

"Are we anywhere near that island you told us about?" I asked, scared shitless.

"No," said the Captain. "That island is at least a half hour from us."

Over the next few minutes, the passage of time and my senses all seemed to go haywire. I'd looked at my watch and though it seemed like hours had passed, it was more like 5 minutes. The normal up and down motion that the boat took as it passed through the water was gone. The boat now moved in every direction and orientation and seemingly randomly.

The boat's bow was often pointing straight up and other times it pointed straight down and at an angle. We were thrown about the cabin and against walls with what seemed to be some type of malicious external intent.

Natalie held onto me for dear life and I did everything I could to reassure her that we'd be fine. We weren't having as much of a conversation as we were randomly spewing groups of words. We'd bounce off of a wall and I'd say, "Wow! That was a big one." Then we'd slide to the floor and I'd scream, "They're keeping us moving forward."

I tried to keep up a brave front. I did it more for her benefit than for my own. I did notice that a lot of the men were letting it all hang out though. The big muscular guy was screaming like a little girl. I couldn't hold it against him though. He was young and he realized that he and that all of us might die.

Letting it all out was healthy. The nerds were screaming too. The women were screaming almost as loudly as the muscular guy. Then I noticed two things, the first was that the guy who looked like me was doing exactly what I was. He was looking for the best and strongest places on the boat to hold onto and positioning himself so that each time the boat moved he improved the safety of his location.


Gill, Igg and I's Land



The single woman was doing the same thing. That astounded me more than anything else.

After that I was too shocked to notice anything as the boat crashed into something that felt extremely solid and a huge ripping sound blocked out everything else.

I looked at the wall across from me and saw a huge gaping hole in the side and there was water pouring in through it.

"We have to get out of here," I shouted. "Come on, back up on deck. With a hole that big in her side this boat is going down." As soon as I said it, the muscular guy pushed his way past the women and jerked the door open and ran up onto the deck. I helped one of the plain women to her feet and the fat woman as well. Then I got Natalie up and onto the deck.

The captain hadn't insisted that we wear life jackets, so I started looking to see where they were stored.

"What do we do now?" the muscular guy asked me. He looked frightened.

"I'm trying to find the life jackets, in case we have to go into the water," I said.

"Yeah, me too," he said. He started opening cabinets. The Captain and Gill were busy trying to find something to patch the hole in the ship and also trying to connect with anyone on the ships radio to relay our position and request aid.

I pulled out my cell phone and noticed that there was no signal. The rain had let up but the high winds were still buffeting the boat around like a cork in a bathtub. When you added to that the fact that the boat had a very distinct list, I think we were all a little afraid.

One of the women found the life jackets. "I found them," she yelled. The muscular guy quickly made his way over to her, pushed her to the side and then grabbed a life jacket. He quickly put it on and then started handing them out to everyone else.

It was about that time that the boat struck something really hard. The impact was so great that we were all knocked off of our feet. I saw the captain literally leave his feet and land badly on his upper back and shoulders. There was a sickening crack sound as he landed and then remained still.

We all grabbed onto something to hold onto. Natalie grabbed me and sat by me whimpering for a few long scary moments. During that time we noticed that the boat had stopped moving. I crawled over to the captain and called Gill. I felt around on the captain's neck until I was sure that he had no pulse. I looked at Gill then and shook my head.

"The Captain's dead isn't he?" whined the muscular guy. I nodded.

"Oh this is just great," he whined. "How the hell do we get home now?"

I looked around and noticed that the boat was actually aground. I climbed over the side and noticed that we were on a fairly large land mass that we'd somehow run into during the storm. The others also got off of the boat and followed me. We were on a fairly large beach.

"Gill, do you think there's any chance that we could patch up the hole in the side of the boat?" I asked. He just looked at me.

"Why the hell are you asking him?" asked the muscular guy.

"Well, because he's the Captain now. So he's in charge. We need to make a plan and figure out how the hell we're going to get off of this island or signal the authorities to let them know that we're here," I said.

"We don't need to do any of that, Grandpa," he said. "Everything is automatic now. As soon as the company notices that they're out of communication with one of their boats they'll track us down. All we have to do is to sit back and wait. And to tell you the truth, I wouldn't trust a word that this moron has to say. He and his buddy almost got us killed. Some Captain that guy was."

I ignored him and started to walk around the beach. As I got away from the group I noticed that I was being followed. I turned to see Gill, the guy, and the pretty black woman all following me.

The guy who was just a guy caught up to me. "Are you scouting the island?" he asked. I nodded.

"We need to know what's here just in case the rescue that steroid guy talked about doesn't come. I know this is stupid, but there wasn't supposed to be a storm this afternoon. There is supposed to be one this evening and another tomorrow afternoon," I said.

"George Ignikowski," he said holding out his hand.

"Robert Sinclair," I said. "George, I think we'll cover more ground if we split up into two teams. Gill and I'll go East, you go West with this lady. Does your watch still work?"

"Yeah," he said.

"Let's meet back on the beach in an hour. We probably don't have more than three or four hours before the sun goes down. The storm will probably start by then if it hasn't already. We're looking for a cave or any type of natural formation that would make shelter easier to build in a short amount of time."

He nodded and we left. As Gill and I moved around the Island he seemed to come out of his shock.

"How do you know that this way is east?" He asked.

"The sun sets in the west," I said. He nodded.

"You learned that from some kind of survival training right?" he asked.

"Nope, I watched a lot of cowboy movies when I was a kid," I smiled. We saw a few natural rock formations that might work but we'd need some supplies to make them livable. We spotted lots of thin yet strong trees and several larger trees that we could cut or break long slender branches from.

From talking to Gill I got a pretty good idea of what supplies and tools were available aboard the boat. So after an hour I had a pretty good idea of what we needed to do to make it through the storm in relative comfort.

I sent Gill back to the boat with a list of things to grab and bring back. I headed back to the beach to explain what we'd found and the plan. Unless George came up with a better site, we'd go with what I had. Time was short so we needed to do something quickly.

I had only been gone for about an hour. And maybe it was pure luck that I picked the route that I took back. That area was a little bit more woodsy that the rest of the area. I later discovered that they'd decided on the safety in numbers strategy. So whenever someone needed to go to the bathroom two people had gone.

All of the women had gone in two's. Unfortunately, or perhaps by design when Natalie went there were no women available, so she'd gone with him.

I heard them talking as I approached them. I wasn't trying to walk quietly until I heard her voice. "But aren't you married?" he asked her.

"This is nothing new," she said. "I've been broadening my horizons for a couple of years now. A friend of mine got caught, so I decided to quit, but maybe this isn't the right time for me to do it." Then I heard a slurping sound that I recognized all too easily.

I also heard the sound of a guy moaning. I knew what was going on and I knew what I'd heard but somehow it wasn't enough. I crept closer and saw my forty plus year old wife's head bobbing up and down in his lap. Then she straightened up suddenly. I almost thought that she'd heard me. But she looked off in the direction they'd come in. I saw her looking towards the beach and checking to make sure that everyone was there.

"Why'd you stop?" he asked.

"We're just getting started," she said. She reached down and pulled her panties down and bent forward. In a few minutes he was grunting away behind her.

"Just remember those younger girls are prettier," she said. "But they won't do everything that I will. And since you're in charge, I'll be expecting you to make sure that I'm okay and that I get out of this okay. As long as you do that, I'll give you as much as you want."

"But what about your husband," he grunted.

"What he doesn't know won't hurt him," she said. "You can always give him something to do to make him feel important. Like send him off scouting or something."

I guess I should have been shocked. But once she talked about how she'd been cheating on me for years, everything had fallen into place. I understood the reason that she'd suddenly decided that we needed to discover each other again and it all made sense.

She'd been screwing around with Edie and when Edie had gotten caught, Natalie hadn't. She'd seen how Edie had ended up. And she didn't want that to happen to her, so she'd run the whole renewing the romance bit on me.

The thing that hurt, even more than the betrayal, was the fact that she'd done it so coldly. She hadn't given a single thought to me. Being a practical man, I put it behind me. Broken heart or not, there was still a storm coming in.

I backed away from the woods and approached the beach from a different angle. As I came towards the beach, I saw George and the woman he'd gone with coming from the other side.

We met in the center and George shook his head. "We found a small cave," he said but it's nowhere near large enough for all of us. The woman yanked his sleeve. "Oh yeah we did find some berry trees. Some of them are ripe. I saw a bunch of squirrels too.

"Okay, Gill and I found a natural rock outcropping that'll do for tonight. We can use some of the tarps that Gill says they had on board and some rope. We'll need to make some kind of frame to strengthen the tarp and use as walls to prevent the storm from blowing it away though and we'll need to get started on that pretty soon so I..."

"We're not doing any of that," said a voice from behind me. "While you guys were gone off on your little hunting expedition we had an election. This is still the United States after all. And I'm in charge." I noticed that the two nerds and the idiot's friend were nodding their heads in agreement. So were the other four women.

"So we don't get to vote?" asked George.

"It wouldn't have mattered," said the muscular guy. "There are only four of you. There were nine people here. Anyway I've decided that if the rescue mission doesn't come by tonight, which I'm sure it will. We'll just sleep on the boat. Why should we waste time, energy or effort trying to build something when we have the boat?"

George and I both shrugged our shoulders and headed off towards the location I'd picked.

"Hey," screamed the muscular guy. "Where are you going?"

"There's a storm coming," I said. "We don't have the time to waste on you."

"But I'm in charge," he said.

"We didn't vote for you. So you're not in charge of us," said George.

"What about your wife?" yelled the guy. "She's with us. Don't you want to try to convince her to go with you or try to fight for her?"

"You already said it," I said. "She's with YOU." I looked right into Natalie's eyes and she gasped. "I only fight for things that I think are worth it."

"But Rob," whined Natalie.

George, the quiet woman and I started off away from the beach. As we left the chunky woman ran towards us.

"Dana, where are you going?" asked one of the other women.

"Look Peggy, I already know how this movie ends," said Dana. "Four guys, five women and I'm the fat girl. I'll take my chances with the other side. And to tell you the truth, they seem to have a plan and they have reasons for it...I hope."

Once we got to the area I'd found before, we all introduced ourselves. The chunky girl was Dana. The quiet one was Ella. Ella was miraculous. She didn't talk much because she didn't like explaining her accent. She was a mutt as she called herself. Her father had been half black and half Latino. Her mother was an Irishwoman who lived in England. Ella had grown up in London and had the accent. She was a librarian and very proud of it.

George, like me, was an engineer. The difference was that he was mechanical and I was manufacturing. I gave him my idea for how to fortify the site.

The place I'd picked was the side of a relatively steep hill. On one side of the hill there was a vertical notch formed. It was like a "V" rotated onto its side. The idea was to build a fairly large lean-to that would take advantage of the sheer wall against its back and blend in with the slope of the hill. As a bonus there were several large rocks and fallen trees that we could place in front of it as we settled in to further protect the front from the winds. Since the tarps were water proof, I wasn't nearly as worried about the rain as I was about the wind.

Gill arrived shortly after that and we filled him in. The tarps were larger than I'd expected and thicker. We filled him in and I sent him back out on another trip. George decided to start building. Dana and I went in search of the limbs we'd need to lash together to form the walls and Ella went back to gather as many of the berries she'd seen before as she could and anything else she could find that was edible.

As Dana and I looked for the right sized limbs, we talked and I kept an eye out for smaller pieces of dry wood. I expected that it might get cold during the night and I'd asked Gill to bring a couple of things I'd seen on the boat that might be useful for building a fire.

Ella came back with more than enough berries for the five of us. I crooked my finger at her and she smiled and came towards me.

I handed her a fishing pole. "What am I to use for bait?" she asked. The precisely clipped syllables of her words were magical.

"What did you say?" I asked. She smiled and repeated her question. I pretended I didn't hear her again. Dana came over and told me that George had enough poles for the two layers of the wall that we needed.

"Is it a color thing?" asked Ella.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I asked you the same question two or three times and you couldn't hear me," she said. "But when Dana came over you heard her immediately and answered her question and sent her off."

"Sorry," I said. "And it's not a color thing. Shit your skin is probably lighter than mine is."

"Is it a cultural thing then?" she asked, looking at me as if she was really disappointed.

"Ella, it's a stupid thing," I said. "And I'm sorry."

"You think I'm stupid," she gasped. "I'll have you know, my good man..." That was when I burst out laughing.

"Ella, I never said that you were stupid," I laughed. "I meant that I was." She calmed down and looked at me.

"I highly doubt that you're stupid," she said. "And since we're all following your plan, if I'm wrong, we're all going to suffer."

"Ella, I kept having you repeat things because I love hearing you talk," I said. "Your accent, your tone of voice, even the phrases you use are just magical. I could listen to you talk forever." Both of us turned red and we walked away.

"Ella," I yelled as she picked up the pole. "There are all kinds of worms on the ground near some of the muddy areas. Try some of those and also some of your berries as bait.

A few minutes later she came over and grabbed my hand and pulled me over to a puddle. "Put that on my hook," she said, pointing to a large fat worm.

George had started pounding the long spars into the side of the hill if you looked from a distance you almost couldn't tell they were there because he had come very close to the exact angle of the hill. The next step would be to lay the tarp on top of them followed by another layer of spars to protect the tarp from being blown away by the high winds.

I got Gill to take the large flat metal disk he'd brought from the boat and place it in the center of the large lean too. I put a lot of crumpled paper and kindling and the pieces of dry wood I'd gathered in it. A few carefully arranged metal skewers above it and we had both heat and a stove.

On Gill's last trip back he brought a few bottles of water and three cans of soda. The clouds had begun to fill the sky. It took all of us together to push the large rock and the split stump in front of the wall. With some of the smaller pieces of tarp we made blankets. We also had life jackets that we stretched out and piled to serve as mattresses. The final piece came together as Ella marched up carrying three nice sized fish.

"These are all I caught," she said.

"I got 'em," said George. "I'll fillet them."

"I got Gill to take that first one off of the hook for me," said Ella proudly.

I noticed that the other two fish were still attached to lines on the poles. Ella gravitated towards me after George had relieved her of both fish and poles.

"I'll just eat berries," she said. "I'm just not a sushi girl."

"Well not a sushi girl," I said. "What do you make of that?" I pointed towards my impromptu stove.

"I dunno, what is it?" she asked.

"That's where we're going to cook the fish you caught," I smiled at her.

"Clever boy," she smiled back. "I might have to eat some of that after all."

"Ella, we really don't know how long we'll be here. We're not going to be able to survive and keep our strength up on just berries and greens. So whenever there's any sort of protein available, I want you to eat it. Whether it's fish or squirrel or whatever we find, even if it tastes like fried shit, you eat it, okay?"

She nodded. "Rob?" she called. I turned and looked at her.

"I was just wondering," she said in her musical voice. "What exactly does fried shit taste like?"

We both erupted in laughter and soon everyone came over to find out what was so funny. Before we could explain it to them, we felt the first rain drops. We went inside of our hastily built structure. We left the flap behind the rocks open but slid the log as close as possible. After a few tries, I lit the fire using my lighter. The small fire and the open flap provide some light. I took a skewer and put Ella's fish that George had filleted over the open fire. I very slowly turned them every few moments. The smell of the cooking fish was tantalizing.

As we waited for the fish to cook, we took turns telling the others more about ourselves. Dana was full of questions.

"I feel good," she said. "Considering the circumstances, I feel very good. But why didn't we want to ride out the storm in the boat with the others?"

"Because the boat is sitting very precariously on that same spar of rock that split her hull," I said. "It's not stable. Once the winds start and the tide comes in either one of them may lift the boat off of that rock," I said.

"You mean they might sail away without us?" she asked.

"I mean they might sail straight to the bottom of the lake," I said.

"The lake is over a thousand feet deep in some spots," said Gill.

"But, what about your wife?" asked Ella.

"I'm pretty sure she can swim," I said.

Nothing but silence and the crackling of the small flames filled the tent as everyone looked away from me out of embarrassment.

"Look guys," I said. "Natalie and I were supposed to spend the day today getting to know each other all over again. I didn't think we needed to. It was her idea. A couple of hours ago, I caught her doing something that she shouldn't have done if she wanted to stay married to me. I also overheard her telling the person that she did it with how she'd been cheating on me for a couple of years. So as far as I'm concerned, whether we get off of this island or end up stuck here for years, our marriage is over. It wasn't love that suddenly made her want us to become closer, it was the fear of finally getting caught, mixed with guilt."

"In a way, I'm glad I found out. Now I can get rid of her and find someone else to spend the rest of my life with before I'm too old to start over. So good riddance to bad rubbish, let's eat."

We ate fish and berries and drank water or soda and talked about other things including what we'd do the next day until we all dropped off to sleep with the wind howling outside and the rain pelting the lean to. We'd built it well though so we stayed warm and dry.

The next morning we all got up to take care of the jobs that we'd decided on the night before. Dana would take care of straightening out and neatening up the lean-to. Ella was fishing. George was hunting for any small game he could find and berries. Gill and I were going to try to make some kind of signal that would be visible to passing ships. Dana also wanted to visit her friends.




Gill, Igg and I's Land



Gill, George and I put our heads together and came up with two practical ideas for signaling devices. One was to build a bonfire that could be lit instantly that would provide both fire and smoke. A fire would be visible for a long way at night, but the smoke would be far more visible during the daylight hours. We also decided to try to get the large mirror from the head, in the boat. It would be a great way to signal during the day and it didn't require flame or a power source.

We decided to go for the mirror first. As we got near the beach, we thought at first that maybe they were all still on the ship. Then we saw them all huddled around a tree trying to hug each other to stay warm. I knew they would dry out during the heat of the day but it was still slightly chilly and they looked as if they were freezing.

Then we noticed that the boat was gone.

They saw us at about the same time that we realized the boat had sunk. Natalie and one of the young women got up and staggered towards us. One of the nerds came with them. They looked awful.

"Why didn't you tell us the boat would sink?" asked the nerdy guy. "You knew didn't you?"

"How are you guys dry?" asked Natalie. I ignored her.

"Rob, we need to talk, Honey," she said. "I have the feeling that you're angry about something. Okay I did it again. I didn't side with you. Obviously I was wrong and..."

"Gill, let's swim out and see how far the boat is beneath the surface," I said. "We can always dry our clothes by the fire. Hopefully, they'll have something for us to eat when we get back."

All of the others snapped their heads towards us when I said that.

"Where did you get food?" asked the muscular guy through chattering teeth. "You stole all of the food from the boat didn't you?"

"Of course not," said Gill. "There's plenty to eat on the island. You just have to know what to look for and work together to get it."

"Show us," said Mr. Muscles.

"We have things to do," I said. "Since you're in charge you should get off of your ass and figure out your next step. But from what I remember from the weather report, it's supposed to rain again today."

"What do you mean work together?" asked one of the nerds. 

"We all have different jobs to do and different parts of the plan," I told them. "Some of us are cleaning up our area. Others are out getting food. Some of us are going to work on a way to signal boats from a long distance."

"You clearly took all of the good people," said Mr. Muscles. "That isn't fair."

"You left me a bunch of useless women and the nerds," he continued. "I thought nerds were supposed to be smart, but all these guys know about is comic books and Lord of the Rings. This is truly not fair. We should all come together and be one group again."

"I'll talk to the rest of our group at lunch and see what they say," I said.

"Why don't you just tell them?" he said.

"Because no one in our group is in charge," I said. "We discuss things and act on the ideas we think will work. We all have opinions and we all have jobs."

"Why aren't you guys wet?" asked the blond woman. Her makeup had run down her face and she was cold and just looked awful.

"Our shelter is dry and windproof," said Gill. "And the fire kept us all pretty warm."

"Where did you find a shelter?" asked Mr. Muscles.

"We didn't find it. We built it," said Gill. "Rob came up with the design, Igg, that's what we call George Ignikowski, Igg built it. Dana made it comfortable."

"We're clearly screwing the wrong guys." hissed the blond. Gill and I dove into the water and swam to the rocky edge of the island. The boat was there but it was at least eight feet below the surface of the water. I took a deep breath and swam below. I stayed under as long as I could and still didn't manage to make it into the head for the mirror. Gill did far better than I did though. He came up with a small hibachi grill.

"Not that I didn't like the way you cooked last night," he said. "But this will make it a lot easier. The other group started to follow us as we left. I turned and spoke to them.

"Less than twenty-four hours ago you all made a couple of really stupid decisions," I said. "You're all lucky you didn't drown when the boat went down. I'll talk to our group to see what they say about all getting back together. We'll let you know." 

Natalie was still following me.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

"With you," she said. "We ARE married, remember?"

In the coldest voice I could muster. I told her. "Yesterday while you were sucking that asshole's dick you told him that what I didn't know wouldn't hurt me. You were wrong, Nat. I DO know now and it still hasn't hurt me much. I'm ready to put you and the past behind me. As soon as we get off of this island, we're getting a divorce. We're done."

She just stood there in shock as Gill and I walked away.

Over the next three days, the two groups had minimal contact. My group prospered. We found a way to use several long sections of tubing from the ship as makeshift snorkels. That allowed us to stay underwater long enough to retrieve the mirror and several other things that we needed.

The only real contact between the two groups came from Dana. She visited her friends every day and came back with horror stories. The other group was supposedly near starvation and desperate. Troy, the guy with all of the muscles had turned into some kind of pocket tyrant. He ruled his group through fear and intimidation.

The women there, with the exception of Natalie, all wanted to switch to our group but were afraid of what Troy would do.

Dana looked at me when she told us that Natalie had fallen into a depression.

"I'm not saying it's your fault," she said. "But she seems to think that you just wrote her off."

"I did," I said. "What else was I supposed to do? How would you feel if you discovered that for the past twenty or so years you'd worked your ass off supporting someone. You'd loved them with all of your heart. You'd done any and everything you could think of to make them happy and you discover that they'd been cheating on you for years. Shit, I wish I could start my divorce while we're on this island, so I could be rid her ass even sooner."

"Don't you want to talk to her," asked Dana. "Don't you want to know why this happened?"

"What difference would that make?" I asked. "She wasn't raped, she wasn't drugged, and she probably wasn't blackmailed into it. But even if those were true, she could have come to me and I'd have moved heaven or hell to help her. Why she did what she did doesn't matter. The fact that she did it and more than one time tells me that I don't want to be married to her anymore. Women always talk about how all men are dogs and how we'll go after anything with a hole in it, but some women are just as bad. It was just my luck to find a woman like that. It's over. I'm not going to turn into some bitter old guy who hates all women. I'm sure I'll find someone who looks at things the way I do."

That morning I'd gotten up early to go over to our section of the cliff that was closest to the water. We had roughly divided the island with the other group. The beach was on their section. It was a good trade because most of the fish seemed to stay away from the beach, but they were plentiful around our cliff.

As I came up to the cliff to check on the pole we'd mounted in the rocky ground to attach the large mirror to, I noticed Ella. She was sitting on the edge of the cliff fishing and she was only wearing her underwear. She had on a very lacey bra and panties that matched it. She was thin yet curvy and her boobs were humongous for her size. I wondered as I watched her why a woman who was built like her would wear such sack-like clothing.

Over the past few days, we'd sort of paired off except for Gill. Dana and Igg seemed to spend a lot of time together. And Ella seemed to seek me out most of the time. We sat together at meals and she slept right next to me at night, often rolling over near me when it was chilly, but that was as far as we'd gotten. I wasn't sure that I could say the same for Igg and Dana, despite their age difference.

I was just about to approach her when I saw them. Troy, his side-kick and the two nerds came out of the woods that separated the beach from our area. They made a beeline straight for Ella. Troy had grabbed onto her arm and was trying to pull her back the way they'd come. I ran as fast as I could and didn't slow down until I got to them. I pushed Troy away from her and got between the two of them.

"What are you doing old man?" asked Troy.

"This isn't your side of the island," I said. "We have sort of an unspoken agreement since we don't believe in each other's ideas."

As I was speaking Natalie and the young women came up. From the other side Dana, Igg and Gill came over.

"This side is the side that Gill, Igg and I picked, while you sat there on your fat, steroidal ass, telling us that we were wasting our time. This is Gill, Igg and I's land...I mean this is Gill, Igg and my land. It's Dana and Ella's land. You belong on the other side."

"Did he say that this was Gilligan's Island?" one of the women asked.

"I'm tired of all of this bullshit," yelled Troy. "I'm tired of being hungry. I'm tired of being thirsty. I'm tired of being fried by the sun most of the day and freezing at night. I fucked up. I picked the wrong people. I thought that with Dave and I being the strongest guys on the island and my nerds being the smartest, we'd have the best of both worlds. It turns out that my nerds are useless. Between the two of them they have three or four PhDs. But who needs a degree in particle physics when you're stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere? Then I thought that we had all of the women and it turned out that you somehow kept the prettiest one for yourself. I think we need to share some of the resources on this island to make it fair for everyone."

"You and the other old guy are obviously the brains around here, and your girlfriend here is the hunter and gatherer. If I take her, I get food. And since you'll want her back, you'll build me a place to live in or even give me yours, won't you, Pops?"

"No!" I said.

"Bullshit," he spat again. "The fat girl comes over to talk to her friends every day. And while those stupid bimbos are talking to her, I'm listening in. I know they all want to come and stay with you guys. I've heard all of their crap about us forcing them to fuck us and not having any food. Dana was smuggling them little bits of squirrel and fish. And she talked about all of you guys. I know that the fat girl is fucking the other old guy. And I know that you and the little English girl here haven't done anything but you like each other. So all you have to do is decide whether you're going to build me a place like yours or just give me yours."

"No!" I said again.

"So you aren't even going to try to get her back?" he asked.

"I won't have to," I said. "You're not taking her."

Before I could say another word, I couldn't say another word. A huge fist flew out of nowhere and busted me in the mouth so hard that I left my feet.

"I guess you weren't smart enough to see that coming," he quipped. "You're smart and all of that, but it's time someone showed you your place around here."

Just as I got up he punched me again this time his fist smacked into my eye. "Stop!" said a female voice. "Don't hit him anymore. I'll go with you. I'll fish and get you berries and anything else you want just leave him alone."

"Smart girl," he said. He stood over me and I was pissed. I hadn't been in a fight since high school.

"No!" I said again. I exaggerated my lack of balance as I got to my feet.

"I have to admit for an old guy you have some balls," he laughed. "You're the only one around here who'll stand up to me."

I balled up my fist and clumsily swung it at him. I missed him by a mile on purpose.

"We don't have to do this, Pops," he said. "Although, I am curious about one thing. Why are you so willing to fight for her, when you wouldn't fight for your own wife?"

"That's easy," I said, still struggling to stay upright. "Ella's worth it."

I got close to him and cocked my fist back again. He smiled. I threw the fist clumsily and he leaned backwards. It was then that I reared back and kicked him in the nuts as hard as I could. I was sure that his scream was heard across Lake Superior and all the way back home. As he bent forward to grab his aching clock weights, I brought my knee upwards and into his face. He spat out a couple of teeth and tried to grab me. I punched him in the side of his head and he went down. There was a popping sound from his outstretched arm as he fell on the rocky ground.

His side kick looked up at me in shock. "You were faking it," he said. "You weren't that badly out of it. That's cheating."

I laughed. "He's six inches taller than I am. He outweighs me by probably eighty pounds and has a much longer reach than I do. Plus he's twenty years younger and in better physical shape. You call that a fair fight?"

"He was desperate," said Dave. "We don't know shit about surviving. Troy has always been a hothead and he's always thought that he should be in charge. When we were on the boat, it was always you who came up with the ideas for what we should do. Even during the storm, Troy was screaming like a girl. That embarrassed him, so afterwards he needed to get his balls back. While you went off to search the island, he turned everything into a popularity contest and held his little election. You were supposed to go along with it, but you just left us there. I think that you were more pissed off at your wife than anything else."

Troy groaned but still didn't wake up.

"And you can't blame Troy for your wife. He's a guy. She offered him some pussy so he took it. She isn't even his type. She's way too old for us. It was just fun. I thought it was cool because it meant I got Blondie with the water wings. Boy is that a disappointment..."

"Fuck you, Dave," hissed the blond woman.

"You already have, several times," said Dave. "And it ain't that great."

The blond who without makeup didn't look nearly as hot stood there grumbling. At that moment Troy woke up. "Dude, are you okay?" asked Dave.

"My nuts hurt so bad they're throbbing," moaned Troy in a whiney voice. "I need you to take a look at them." Dave took two steps backward.

"Maybe you should get Natalie to do that," said Dave. "After all she knows what they look like up close and personal." He looked at me. "No offense meant, sir." I just shrugged my shoulders.

"Natalie and whose nuts she plays with is no skin off of my ass," I said. Ella was slowly making her way over to me. Dave and the nerds were having trouble taking their eyes off of her. She'd taken her hair down from the unflattering bun and had it in one long ponytail that hung down her back like an inky black waterfall.

Her breasts were barely contained in her bra and the succulent flesh jiggled with every movement she made.

Troy tried to get up and suddenly screamed so loudly that he nearly passed out again.

"What's wrong with your nuts now?" asked Dave.

"It's my arm," whined Troy. I could see that the arm was dislocated. I grabbed his shoulders trying not to move the arm. He shrank away from me even as I touched him.

"Look asshole," I snapped. "Your shoulder is out of the socket. The longer it stays that way, the greater the pain and damage will be."

"What're you going to do?" he asked.

"If you'll lay down and shut up, I'll pop it back in the socket, or try to," I said. I grabbed his arm and put both of my feet on his side. I yanked quickly and very firmly. He screamed again and then let out a gasp.

"Oh shit, that feels good," he said.

"You need to make a sling for your arm," I said. "For the next week or so it's going to be very sore and after the soreness wears off it'll be weaker than the other one for a while. You should go back to your side of the island and rest."

Dave helped him to his feet and they all left. There was a lot of grumbling going on though as they walked away. I suspected that there would be a new leader before long.

Ella took one look at my face and then ran off. "Just let her go," said Dana from behind me.

"What did I do wrong?" I asked.

"Absolutely nothing," said Dana. "She's even crazier about you now. You got beat up trying to protect her. Do you know what that does to a woman?"

"When did she get to be crazy about me?" I asked.

"Uh Duh, ever since the first night, when you told her how much you loved listening to her talk," she said. "Rob, do you know what women hear all the time? We hear, "Look at that ass," or "God, I'd suck those tits." I mean didn't you listen to the things that Dave said about Becky. Do you have any idea how hurt she is right now? Trust me, where Ella is concerned you can do no wrong."

I went ahead and worked on the mirror. I got it mounted and tried sweeping the beam across the edge of the cliffs and out over the water. I was beginning to remember that we'd missed breakfast, when I heard a few tentative footsteps behind me. I turned to see Ella there. She had two of the wide square boards that Dana had made for us to use as plates. There was something green on them and some kind of meat. It was cut into chunks. We had three or four chunks each and there were cups of berry juice for each of us too.

She looked at me and then looked away quickly. "What did I do now?" I asked.

"Rob, your eye," she said. "And your lip."

"They'll heal," I said.

"But they shouldn't have to," she said. "I could have fished for him for a couple of days and found berries for him. Maybe he'd have learned how to fish himself and..."

"And maybe I didn't want to be away from you for a couple of days," I said. Her eyes got very wide and she had to hide her smile.

"The greens are different," she said. "I saw them growing underwater near where I fish. I got Gill to go into the water and cut them. It's like Kale but it has a slightly different flavor."

I could tell that she wanted to change the subject.

"So what kind of meat is this?" I asked.

"Taste it," she smiled. I took a bite from one of the chunks. It was different from squirrel. It was less greasy and tasted more like chicken, but I knew there were no chickens on the island."

"Is it gull?" I asked chewing it and trying to figure it out from its taste. She shook her head.

"Don't tell me this is pigeon," I said taking another bite.

"Igg caught it," she said. "It's snake..."

I spat it out quickly and took a gulp of my berry juice.

"Rob, do you know when the first time I knew that you cared about me was?" she asked. I shook my head. "When you told me that you wanted me to eat whatever type of protein was available even if it tasted like fried shit. You didn't say that to anyone else. It just seemed so important to you that I stayed healthy. So now I want you to eat your snake for me. It's not as good as the fish, but it is protein and it's better than fried shit."

From that moment on something had passed between us. We never qualified it or declared anything, but we were an item. We were also never separated either.

Since we couldn't store food or preserve it either, we started giving our excess to the other group. When we showed up the first time, with a bucket of grilled fish and some greens, they pounced on the food and devoured it by the handfuls. Unlike us they had no idea about sharing or working together. They each just grabbed as much food as they could and backed away.

Ella and I were sitting on the cliffs one morning a couple of days later, with her fishing and me staring at her in her underwear. Ella rinsed her clothing in the clear cool waters and left them to dry in the morning sun every day. While her clothes dried she fished in her underwear. Usually by the time her clothes were dry she had enough fish to last us a day. When she put her clothes on, she rinsed her underwear.




Gill, Igg and I's Land



Since we'd become an item, we hadn't had sex, but we'd begun kissing a lot. So that morning, as she sat there fishing and smiling back at me, I knew we were going to end up lying in the soft grass and exchanging lots of slow wet kisses that lasted for hours.

As I stared at her, she absentmindedly brought one of her hands slowly up her side until her long fingers rested on her bra covered breast. She tugged one of the lacey cups and then the other downwards releasing two spectacular pale tan breasts with dusky rose colored nipples. Even as I watched, the nipples stiffened and stood up. She lifted her heavy breasts and pointed those nipples in my direction.

That was when teleportation came into existence. One second I was sitting on the grass about ten feet away from her. The next second I was in her lap sucking those nipples and I had no memory of ever touching the ground anywhere between us.

I tried my best to lick every inch of that succulent flesh and I sucked those nipples hard enough to pull milk from them. All of a sudden she gasped and said, "Rob."

"I have no intention of stopping," I said. "I want you so badly."

"Not even for that boat," she said.

"What boat?" I asked. I was on my feet and looking out at the water and she was right. It wasn't very big but it was moving. I ran to the mirror and flashed the beam off of the boat. At first I thought that it would go right by but it slowed and then Ella and I started jumping up and down to signal them. The boat turned in towards us. Gill had heard us yelling and he ran over. As the boat approached the cliffs we saw that it was a very small motor boat. It was probably no more than ten feet long and there were already three people aboard it.

Igg and Dana came running over, they'd heard Ella and me screaming. In her excitement, Ella had neglected to cover up and Igg's eyes almost rolled back in his head.

We decided that we could only send one person back with them. It was immediately decided that it should be Gill. They wanted me to go but I declined. Gill could let the authorities know about the boat and its registration number and insurance information and all of that type of crap. They also radioed our location to the coast guard, but cell phones simply didn't work in that area.

"Why didn't you go?" asked Ella as we watched Gill go off in the boat.

"And leave you?" I asked. "Never gonna happen."

"Good answer," she said.

As Dana and Igg disappeared again to do whatever it was they did when they weren't around, Ella and I headed for the other side of the island.

As soon as we got there they all gathered around. Before we had even begun to speak, I heard a small gasp. I looked up and saw that Natalie had noticed that Ella and I were holding hands.

"Where's the food?" asked one of the nerds.

"You'll have all the food you need soon," I said. "We've been rescued."

"What?...How?" asked Dave.

"The mirror," I said.

"Ella and I were on the cliff fishing, when she noticed a boat. I used the mirror to signal it. The boat was too small to take more than one person, so we sent Gill. They're going to send back a rescue boat."

They were all excited. And we heard plenty of talking about the first thing that some of them wanted to do when they got back. There were also other things being said.

I heard someone ask if Ella always sat around in her underwear. I also heard someone ask what we were doing on the cliffs alone in the morning. "Who cares," said someone else. "It's over we're going home."

A little over two hours later I was leaning against the rail of a Great Lakes rescue ship. As I watched the island slowly recede, I could still make out the area we set up camp in. I wondered what would become of our little lean-to.

"A dollar for your thoughts," said the tiny voice beside me. Its clipped British accent made the mis-quoted phrase even more special.

"My thoughts are worth at least five dollars," I said.

"Can I have a guess first?" she said. "That's a lot of money, especially for a poor librarian."

"Okay," I said.

"I've been talking to Dana. She's back with her friends. She and Igg got together and had a talk. He explained to her in a very nice way that what they had will always be special to him but it was just something that happened while we were on the island. It would never survive in real life. She told him that she absolutely agreed with him and that he was too old for her. So she's going back to being a bar-hopping whore and he's going back to his wife. The island was an interlude nothing more," she looked at me as she said it. I nodded my head.

"Is that what you were doing?" she asked. "Were you trying to figure out a nice way to tell me?"

"Something like that," I said. I watched as she tried and failed at keeping her face composed.

"I was just thinking that after we're married, we should rent a boat and come back here for our honeymoon. Only I can't decide if we should invite some of our friends along. And, of course, if we have kids we should bring them here someday. And, of course, the kids I already have might want to see it, depending on whose side they take in the divorce and..." The next thing I knew she'd flung herself at me so hard I almost fell over the railing. Somewhere in that tangle of arms and legs our lips locked together for the briefest of instants before I heard the sound of someone clearing their throat.

I turned and saw Natalie standing behind me.

"Ella, is there a chance that I might talk to Rob for a while?" she asked. Ella just nodded.

"I'll go and try to console poor Dana," she said. "Is she on the list?"

"Definitely," I said and the germ of an idea was forming in my mind.

"Rob, what's going on?" she asked. "You haven't said more than ten words to me since you let me find out that you knew what I'd done. We need to talk about this. I spoke to Dana while we were on the island. She told me some things that just don't make sense. I think that you have the wrong idea about what happened here."

"Natalie, as soon as this boat hits the dock, I'll be filing for my divorce. If you telling me what you want to say saves me time, let's do it. It just means that we won't have to waste time doing it later," I said.

"Okay, Rob, I don't know how you found out, but yes I did cheat on you before we got to the island. But I had quit on my own and decided to dedicate the rest of my life to making you happy. That was why we went on that God damned boat in the first place. I wanted us to fall in love all over again. I had quit, Rob. I wasn't ever going to do it again. That has to count for something," she said.

"It does," I said, and she smiled. "It counts for nothing. Mathematically, zero is something. What else were you going to say?"

"Well, you know that Troy forced all of us to have sex with him and the other guys and..." even as she said it she knew that I knew that she was lying.

"Nat, how do you think I found out about you screwing Troy and you cheating on me?" I asked.

"Dana told you, right?" she said.

"No Nat. You told me," I said.

"Before you sided with Troy against me, which was the same thing you did with the Captain, I was there in the bushes. I saw you suck him off and I saw you fuck him. I heard you tell him about your cheating. It's really funny that a guy that I can't stand the shit out of cared more about our marriage than you did. I heard him ask you, "What about your husband?"

"Rob, I was scared," she whined. "I wanted the best chance of surviving."

"Yeah well, you picked the wrong one," I said.

"And I suffered for it, Rob," she said. "They treated us like whores. Ella only had to have sex with you. She probably enjoyed it. They passed us around like party favors whether we agreed to it or not and those two nerds are sadists."

"Natalie, Ella and I haven't had sex yet," I said. "I think we're going to hold out until we're married."

"You can't be serious," she said. "You're not seriously thinking about really divorcing me?"

"That's the plan," I said. "Just like Steve and Edie."

"Rob, Steve and Edie are nothing like us. They haven't been married for as long and they don't have two kids to explain it to. So okay, I had sex with some guys. The whole time that I was messing around with Edie, it was all in fun. It was only sex. And there were no permanent partners. It was just random nameless sex and I always came home to you. I never embarrassed you and I never did anything with anyone we know."

"So what?" I said.

"So it was just as much your fault as mine," she snapped. "I had twenty years of waiting around on you. Every day I was stuck in that house while you went out and worked. I was bored. I felt like less than a person."

"Tell that shit to Oprah or Doctor Phil," I snapped. "After our divorce is final, write a book and go on The View, but don't give me that bullshit. It's such a cliché. I went out every day and busted my ass to give you the things that you wanted. I bought a house in the neighborhood that you wanted to live in. I bought you the car that you wanted to drive. When you ask for shit like that, you have to pay for it. My part of paying for it was working my ass off to make the payments. Your part was keeping our house taken care of and watching the kids. If you wanted a change or you wanted to get a job yourself, all you had to do was say something. All you needed to do was say "Honey, I want to get a job and help out." Even if your job only paid for daycare for the kids, it would have been pretty much breaking even. You can sit here and tell me all of these bullshit excuses but you couldn't tell me that you were bored?"

She looked at me like she'd never thought about that.

"Well, what you're doing isn't the same thing that I did," she snapped. "I had a few innocent, meaningless flings with some guys that I can't even remember. You went out and found a woman to replace me with."

I laughed.

"Are you laughing because you don't see things with Ella as being serious?" she asked. "Okay, how long do you need with her before your wounded pride will allow us to get back together?"

"Natalie, Ella would never be able to replace you," I said. She smiled. "Ella is younger than you are, smarter than you are, prettier than you are, built better than you ever were and the biggest difference and most important thing is that she believed in me. Before we ever met, she listened to me and to Troy and she chose to be on my side, when my own wife didn't. And as far as time goes, I want the rest of my life with her."

"What will we tell our friends? What will we tell the kids?" she whined. "I don't want to end up like Edie."

"You can tell them whatever you want," I said. "I'm going to tell them the truth."

As soon as we hit the docks, the race was indeed on. I'd already told Natalie that I intended to keep the house so she needed to make other arrangements. And since she couldn't afford the mortgage anyway without a job or substantial alimony, she agreed. She decided to move in with her parents and to pick up her things on Saturday.

I got into my Mustang and drove home. While I was there, I called the same divorce lawyer that Steve had used. Steve ended up paying Edie next to nothing and that was what I hoped for as well. I had another trick up my sleeve. Actually I had two.

While I was taking care of splitting the bank accounts and canceling all of the credit cards that Natalie used, she took a different tact. She called our kids and told them a bunch of truly ridiculous lies. She got her own lawyer and tried to fight every settlement I proposed. We got counseling. Even our therapist was shocked at Natalie's actions. The counseling was unsuccessful but it did eat up eight weeks. As a last ditch effort to avoid going to court, we went into arbitration. I finally realized what Natalie was trying. Edie had taken Steve to court and tried to rape him in the divorce. She figured that if she couldn't save their marriage, she'd get as much money as she could. Then she'd use that money to go ahead and screw all of the guys she wanted anyway.

The judge hadn't given her nearly as much as she'd expected and even then it was limited to two years. After a few months of screwing around as much as she wanted, Edie discovered that being a full time whore really wasn't as much fun as she'd thought. She was also lonely and running out of money.

Natalie had seen that and she was trying something different. She was doing everything she could simply to delay the divorce for as long as she could. Her thinking was that if she could hold out long enough, I'd take her back. She also had our kids, her parents and lot of our friends that she'd told the same bunch of lies to trying to convince me to work things out with her.

I begged her to accept one of my settlement offers just so we could get it over with. The arbiter grew frustrated with Natalie's behavior as well. He finally just asked her what she wanted, figuring we could use that as a place to begin the negotiations. Natalie kept making the most outrageous demands and saying that if she couldn't have them, she wanted to stay married. One of her demands was for two million dollars a year for ten years. Since I make less than a hundred thousand dollars a year, it was ridiculous. The arbiter wrote a note to the judge about Natalie's behavior and remanded us to court.

Natalie didn't realize it but going to court was the worst possible thing for her and the best for me. Our kids, who are adults, came to court. Neither of them had spoken to me since Natalie had filled them with her garbage.

There in the courtroom, in front of our parents and our children, Natalie made her last stand. The first witness my attorney called was Natalie's ex-friend Edie. By the time Edie was done outlining the things Nat had done behind my back, my son was angry and my daughter was crying. Neither of them believed Nat's story any more.

When my second witness was called Natalie sank down even further in her chair. She got her lawyer to try to stop Troy from testifying but the judge wanted to hear what he had to say.

By the time that Troy was done outlining all of the things that Natalie had done on the island even I was stunned. The judge used every bit of leeway he had in determining the settlement. According to the state guidelines all assets had to be evenly divided, but he was allowed some wiggle room on how that was done. I'd already given Natalie half of the checking and savings accounts and allowed her to keep any and all of the things in the house that she wanted. He let her keep her car, allowed me to buy her out of the mortgage and gave her a grand total of one dollar a week for two years for alimony.

Natalie had already spent the money from our checking and savings accounts that she'd been given so it put her in dire straits. Since we'd taken out a second mortgage to put both kids through college we didn't have very much equity in the house. Natalie had to pay her own legal fees and while her lawyer had stretched out the divorce at Natalie's behest, he was still charging her for his time. Natalie ended up in the hole.

Our house was worth one hundred and ten thousand dollars. We owed thirty on it. We owed another forty on the second mortgage. That meant that our combined equity in the house was forty thousand dollars.

I gave Natalie twenty thousand dollars. She owed her lawyer twenty two thousand. To help her out, I offered to pay her all of her alimony at one time. I gave her five crisp twenty dollar bills and sixteen quarters and walked away from her.

Almost six months to the day that I walked out of court, I was back at the docks. As Ella and I looked at the huge boat docked there, she squeezed my hand. "Dad, Ella," someone screamed from behind us. My daughter, Susan, came running up and hugged both of us. She introduced us to a small quiet man, who turned out to be her boyfriend, and went aboard the ship. Her grandparents on both sides were already aboard. I was still shocked at the fact that I'd remained relatively close with Natalie's parents but they were, after all, the grandparents of my kids.

Igg and his wife smiled down at me from the upper deck. I shook my head and Ella elbowed me.

"Be nice," she said. Dana arrived with a guy who looked like and was Gill. There would have to be an explanation of how they got together later. Troy and Dave arrived and both were escorting nice looking college girls. The events on the island had done a lot to turn both of their lives around. The nerds had arrived solo. My son was already on the island. He'd chartered a helicopter and flown there, it was part of our back up plan.

The only people who'd been on the island with us, that weren't attending, were Dana's three friends. They all felt that they had been treated badly there and didn't want to remember it. And, of course, Natalie wouldn't be there. Not that she hadn't wanted to. But since our divorce Nat wasn't doing well. Most of the men she hooked up with weren't very nice and she'd received a few bumps and scrapes. There was also the fact that the money from her job as a receptionist didn't pay very well so she couldn't afford a nice dress. The biggest reason, though, was because she was in jail. She'd felt betrayed by Edie for her testimony in court. Edie, on the other hand, had felt abandoned by Natalie during her own divorce, so though they were birds of a feather, they very rarely flocked together anymore. A few nights ago they had however flocked to the same bar and got into a fight over the same guy. The judge gave them each a week in jail, for damaging property, disturbing the peace, mutual counts of assault and public drunkenness."

As the big ship left the dock, a second smaller ship followed us at a distance. I wanted to see our little island again. I wanted us to get married there and while everyone else slept in comfort on the boat, Ella and I would spend the first night of our honeymoon in our lean-to. Then we'd take the chopper and fly back to be on time for our real honeymoon in Vegas.

"A dollar for your thoughts," said Ella beside me. "Ooh, I don't have to pay for them anymore. In a couple of hours, we'll be married and we'll be together forever. I'll never do anything to lose you. I love ya too much."

"I could listen to you talk forever," I said. "But actually I was thinking back to just before the fight with Troy over you on the island. Remember what I called the place?"

"Yeah you called it Gilligan's island," she said laughing.

"No, what I said was Gill, Igg and I's land. Maybe the three of us should find out about buying it?"

"Maybe not," she said. But we did live happily ever after.

The end