Reedsport was in between Crescent City and Eureka, and not much different than its sister town along the Oregon Coast further north. However, here the lumber mills and catch basins for the wood weren't in the immediate vicinity, so the air was fresh and clear and without the dull haze of burning sawdust. The cannery Marleen Franklin had referred to lay over the crest of a large hill, out of sight and smell, built along a sand and rock jetty, which had once been the home of an oyster processing plant during the Depression. Reedsport itself had a quiet but not sluggish atmosphere, the residents going about their affairs with civic pride and shrewd dignity, without the paranoiac hysteria which can so easily infect a growing area. Not the target for hordes of invading tourists, the zoning laws permitted motels and amusements only along the strip of US 101 Alternate, the old Coast Highway which ran through the center of town.

To his right, David Preston could see the residential area, sprawling for some distance around the peninsula, its homes covert and blended with the firs and pines and redwoods, showing logical and ecological building rather than the flattened bareness of tract developments. While the fishing harbor was at the bottom of the town and increasingly more at the cannery, the bay was dotted with piers and boathouses of the shore-owners; Reedsport was the perfect mix of pleasure and business.

Directly ahead of him was the back yard of the sporting goods store. It also had a pier, a wooden finger of planks sticking out in the water; a klinker-built Thompson fourteen footer with some sort of outboard attached bobbing in the salty swell, covered with a green tarp: and high wood fences on both sides running from the building out into the water.

"Excellent," he said. "I really do want to stay here, Mrs. Franklin. Or… may I call you Marleen?"