It's Still the Language

    I am still finding changes to make to My More Than Sister, and still impressed at my startling originality, my sly wit, my literary brilliance.  That will last for another month or so.  Meantime, there are the giants to read, to study, to absorb. 
     I used to wonder why I enjoy Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin novels; I normally shudder at the thought of reading historical fiction.  Yet I've read each and every volume in the twenty-book series three times. 
    The obvious reasons are there, but at first they didn't impress me: twenty best-sellers in a row; raves from every reviewer working in English; rousing adventure stories of the Napoleanic wars at sea.  My son (a deep-water sailor) even paid $50 for one from a black-market vendor because book stores couldn't keep them in stock.  O'Brian described the sea and most of its shores.  He explored loyalty and love: man-man, man-woman, woman-man, and examples (that’s a verb) jealousy, generosity, apathy, addiction, fury and, in one glorious scene, believable nobility of character. 
     Still, why did I want to reread them?
     It’s the language.  Yeah.  I finally figured it out.  It's a little formal (he used the period vernacular), and the exciting stuff is preceded by sometimes hundreds of pages of character study and sly or slapstick humor.  But you see towns and meadows and islands; you smell stuff; you enjoy the touch of rock, of skin, or heat and wet.  And he had a lot of fun writing; he admitted it.  There's a lesson there all us novelists; remember, this is supposed to be fun.
     I sure hope Patrick O'Brian reincarnates before I die, and as another novelist.  In English. 
    Here's Chapter Eighteen of Dead on Dutcher's Mountain:

Eighteen

Gunderson was unaware of any discourtesy to McCoy; Jessica had just announced another nap, gone upstairs, and Altstock was up there too.  Feelings flared like flags before a bull.  With mug in hand he headed up the spiral stairway. 
And saw Altstock enter their bedroom without knocking.
Gun strode into the room ready to fight, remembered his coffee, stopped short at what he saw and set the mug on a table.  Altstock was supporting Jessica as she wavered toward the bed from the dressing room.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, Joshua.  Never mind,” Jessica answered.  She sat weakly on the edge of the bed, trembling and wet with perspiration.
“She was sick, Gun.  I heard her,” Altstock explained, and skittishly moved away from the connubial bed.  He looked miserable with concern.  Gunderson knelt in front of his wife, felt her racing pulse and checked her forehead for fever.
“Forget it, Joshua,” Jessica repeated, “It’s over.”
“What was it?  Shall I call a doctor?”
“No.”
Altstock cut in.  “There’s one here in the compound.  Shall I get him?”
“No, absolutely,” she repeated, and shook her head for emphasis.  “I’m all right, you two.  It’s just a touch of nausea.  It’s gone.”
“But what caused it?  You’re never sick!”  Gunderson, still kneeling, held both her hands in her lap in his big one. 
“I don’t know, probably my allergies.  Maybe I got into some peanut oil, mold spores, something like that.”  She looked up and tried to smile.  “But I could use some coffee.  Do I smell it?”
“Over there, Gordon.” 
Altstock handed it across the bed so that Gunderson half-embraced Jessica when he accepted the mug.  He blushed and stood awkwardly to hand it to her.
“I’ll get going, then,” Altstock said.  “You’re sure about the doctor?” Jessica nodded without turning.  “You can change your mind later.  Remember that.”  She nodded again.  He reached across the bed to pat her head and left the room. 
Gunderson eased down beside her as she tasted the coffee.  Her color began to return.
“You frightened me when you came in, Joshua.”
“Did I?  I was frightened too.”
“You didn’t look it.”
She wanted him to say something about Altstock, he’d bet on it.
“Gordon just barged in, Joshua.  I didn’t ask for help.”
“I didn’t think you invited him.”
“No?”
She’d just been sick, she was sounding rocky, and her piled hair exposed her neck and the pretty line under her ear.  Feelings; they just grew stronger, took his attention when all he wanted was to get the VenLoo thing over with so he could sort out his wife, his putative friend Altstock, his future.  Aloud he said, “He’s still in love with you.  I know that.  If he wasn’t so God-damned upright about friendship and honor he’d be fighting me for you.”
Jessica’s answer was a sweet smile.  “Of course.  Everyone knows that.”  She drank more coffee.
“Then--never mind,” he said.
“Because, Joshua.”  She studied his puzzled expression with no hint of a smile.  “I left him for you.”
It bounced right off his head.  “What do you mean?” 
She set the mug on the bed table and folded her hands.  “That.”  She sighed, rearranged her hands, her shoulders, lifted her chin, gazed fixedly out the window.  “Bull by the horns, Joshua, and it’s hard for me to say this because I don’t want you to misunderstand anything else about Gordon and me.”
Slowly he said, “Yes?”
“That summer I graduated in Flagstaff, remember?  You taught some mining thing, I forget, but I took your class.  See, I saw you when you first got off the train.  All you brought was one silly duffel bag.  You were wearing a flannel shirt and braces, and singing leider to yourself in German, and you just walked past the station in the grass and stepped over that split-rail fence to the sidewalk.  I followed you onto the campus.  I realized right then that if just seeing a man walk like you walk and look at things the way you do could make me feel that way, I wasn’t in love with Gordon.  I was living with him, but I left him.”
Gunderson did his best.  “What?  Feel what way?”
“Like there were things I could do with a man who walks like that.  I’ve been thinking about it.  And now Gordon has become I don’t know, he’s just a, well, he’s pompous.  And a bigot  And still I don’t want to hurt him.”
Gunderson stood up, trying to hide his expression until it could settle to just one; relief, indignation, gladness.  “That’s harsh on the man,” he finally said.
“Do you disagree?”
“No,” he admitted, “but I didn’t exactly think you’d noticed the change.”
Another smile.  “I didn’t say I don’t like the man, from a certain distance.”
“Sometimes the distance is just about imperceptible.”
Jessica pulled a face.  “I realized he’s pushed, Joshua.  So have I.  I’ve been so angry at you for being jealous, I guess I got stupid.”
For the life of him Gunderson could not reply.  “So you thought I was jealous when I came in?”
“Weren’t you?”
“Give me a gulp of your coffee, woman,” he said, and helped himself.  It was sweet and carried the perfume of her hair.  He didn’t believe her, not a word of it.