The man sitting in the prow of the skiff was a short, brown-haired Englishman. He was smiling in a self-deprecating way. He was hunched forward, and he looked a little gray. I thought he was scared but trying not to make a big deal out of it. I gathered he had been sick, although he didn’t say so directly. He looked a little like a refugee, I thought. It was some sort of thing about his heart, maybe? Not a heart attack, but perhaps angina. I was worried for him, and so was the red-haired woman he was with. “You need to eat,” the red-haired woman said. “Have another one of the granola bars.” She was direct and not sentimental. She didn’t fuss. They didn’t talk much. “How long have you lived in the States?” I asked the Englishman. “Eighteen years,” he said. “My family says I sound like an American.” He didn’t. He had a neat little Van Dyke beard. He worked in California, doing something in the television industry.
