WITHOUT FEAR OR FAVOR by Bob Morrill
WITHOUT FEAR OR FAVOR by Bob Morrill Bob Morrill 1 A Sunday in July Chapter 1 M.V. Owaissa Piscataqua River Portsmouth, New Hampshire “Tony, I told you I‟d do it myself,” my wife Jennifer hissed. “Okay, okay, I was only trying to help,” I whispered back. We were spectacle enough without starting an argument, especially one that I was sure to lose. I had accidentally pushed the right wheel of Jen‟s wheelchair off the gangway to the M.V. Owaissa. An excursion boat, the Owaissa was already half full of sightseers. The other half, blocked by Jen‟s wheelchair, were lined up behind us. The gangway had only a slight incline and Jen could have easily propelled herself up it. But I had insisted on pushing her— with predictable results. Rather than watching where I was wheeling her, I had been looking up at the head of the gangway, trying to catch the attention of my niece Lexie, Owaissa‟s first mate and ticket-taker. When Lexie spotted us, her broad grin triggered an involuntary reflex, and waving back, I had steered Jen‟s chair off the gangway. Only a knee-high guardrail prevented her from nose- diving onto the dock below. I wrestled with her chair. “Hold still!” “I am!” The bottom of her right wheel hung over the edge of the gangway. Yet when I pulled it up, the rail, which had saved Jen a moment ago, trapped the top of the wheel. The harder I pulled, the tighter the gangway gripped, like some stupid Chinese fingercuff.
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