Tag: canoe paddling | Frankie Bow

The Cursed Canoe

Professor Molly Barda investigates a mysterious paddling accident, and realizes it isn’t just business majors who cheat to get what they want. Whether it’s moving up in the college rankings, getting a seat in the big canoe race, or just looking out for themselves, some people will do whatever it takes-including murder.

Excerpt

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Emma do a double-take at the wine shop.

“Actually,” Emma waved her hand to get my attention, “don’t call back. Let him wait. You don’t want to look too eager. You know he’s there and you have his room number, right? I have a plan.”

“A plan? Why does there have to be a plan? What are you talking about?”

“You don’t want to grow old alone, do you? Here’s what you do. You know what kind of wine Donnie likes?”

“I think so.”

“Go in there and pick something out you know he loves. We’ll get checked in, you go shower and clean up, and bring the bottle of wine to his room. Let nature take its course.”

Emma took my arm and moved me toward the door of the wine shop.

“I don’t know, Emma—”

“It’ll be perfect. It’s exactly like the story of Ruth and Boaz.”

“I don’t think Ruth stopped by Boaz’s hotel room with a bottle of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano.”

“No, but she waited until he was asleep, and climbed under the covers with him.”

“What?” I protested. “No, she didn’t! I mean, not the way you’re making it sound.”

“Oh yes she did, Molly. She let him know she was interested. She didn’t leave any doubt. She got cleaned up, put on some nice perfume, and snuck into where Boaz was sleeping. And her mother in law was the one who put her up to it.”

A woman inside the wine shop stepped out from behind the counter and beckoned us inside. We smiled at her and entered the narrow space. It was stacked floor to ceiling with bottles.

“What do you know about Ruth and Boaz?” I whispered to Emma. “You’re Buddhist!”

I scanned the shelves for something reasonably priced that I could buy for myself. They didn’t offer much in my preferred price range, and certainly nothing that came in a box.

“So?” she whispered back. “Aren’t you the one who said an educated person should know about the world’s different belief systems?”

“When did I say that?”

“At our last General Education Committee meeting.”

“Oh. Maybe you’re right. I guess it sounds like something I might say.”

“You did say it. In fact, Molly, what do you know about Buddhism?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re an educated person. Tell me something you know about Buddhism.”

“Buddhism? Uh, well, there’s Nirvana, and you have a…”

I knew there was some kind of wheel. Wheel of fortune? That couldn’t be right.

“Oh, this is childish, Emma. It’s not a competition. Come on, help me pick out the wine.”

The Cursed Canoe is available on these platforms

In The Cursed Canoe, Professor Molly Barda’s best friend Emma Nakamura is the captain of a paddling crew. With seven women on the crew and only six seats in the canoe, things get a little competitive.

In fact, there’s a word for this kind of infighting:

Paddletics.

“We call it paddletics,” Yoshi said. “When paddlers get too competitive within their crew, and turn on each other.”

Yoshi has mellowed a lot since he first moved here with Emma as a freshly minted MBA. At first, he didn’t like living in Mahina. He claimed there were no decent jobs to be had, and would say things like, “I can’t live in a place where no one can tell I’m wearing a two thousand dollar suit.”

Tired of his grumping around the house, Emma got him into canoe paddling, which he embraced with the zeal of a convert. Most of his time is now spent paddling and hanging out at the beach. Today he wore board shorts, a souvenir t-shirt from the previous year’s Labor Day canoe race, and a cap with the logo of a local paddling shop.

One thing that hasn’t changed about Yoshi is his need to be the Expert. His favorite pastime is explaining things to people.

“Paddletics!” Pat exclaimed before Yoshi could expound further. “Molly, isn’t that one of those words you hate? What do the Word Police have to say?”

Pat knows I hate sloppy neologisms: Homophobe. Anything-gate. The worst of the bunch is the suffix –holic, which got snapped off the end of ‘alcoholic’ and now is attached to any word you can think of to indicate addiction or even mere affinity. Normally I enjoy arguing etymology with Pat, but right now, I wasn’t in the mood.

“I’ve heard worse. Paddletics could mean affairs of the paddle, in the same way that politics means affairs of the city.”

–The Cursed Canoe

It’s not just at the office or in the PTA that people vie for position and undermine their colleagues. Paddletics (derived, as you might guess, from “Paddle” and “Politics”) describes all of the infighting and backbiting that comes with a competitive endeavor. Paddlers have been known to talk down teammates, undermining the coach, or even threaten to leave for a competitor club.

So does this mean you should avoid canoe paddling?

No. The blog LiveScience tells us that spending time around the ocean can improve your health and well-being. Some paddlers describe their experience as almost spiritual:

“I’ve learned that sometimes I can’t change things, but I can go with the flow. I’ve learned to harness nature’s energy and use it to my advantage. I’ve learned not to get in Mother Nature’s way. I’ve learned to listen when she speaks. I’ve learned to respect, love and celebrate nature and her ocean.” (source)

And if you’ve been yearning for shapely, muscular arms, you can’t beat the hours of repetitive upper-body work required to push a four-hundred-pound canoe through the waves.

What if you live far from the water? You can get a taste of Hawaiian outrigger paddling from The Cursed Canoe, a Professor Molly mystery.

Originally published on Lynda Dickson’s Books Direct