December 5th, 1977
It happened almost five years ago. I never wrote about it till now. Never talked about it after the inquiries were over. My family doesn’t believe me. They still look at me like it’s my fault. But it’s all true. I swear it’s all true¾
December 8th, 1977
All right. I’m going to try this again. To write it. To get it down on paper so maybe I can find something . Try to back track before I go in¾I have to go back there. What could I have missed? A clue. Anything. Ok, so I’m here tonight in this motel just outside Homestead. I’ve got my gear ready and I’m going back in. In a day when this rain lets up. Do I think I can find him? Do I think it’s my fault? No. No to both questions. It’s been too long. But I have to try. Maybe I just need to see it all again in the bright light of day.
Ok. So, what happened. Start. Just Write. What happened¾ok, I know what happened, but where do I start? Ok. Start at the beginning.
Jim was going to come out for while after he’d decided to leave the priesthood. Get himself together. Uncle Jack had called grandma saying maybe coming to Florida and staying with her would set him straight, which really meant the path they wanted him to follow. My grandmother, our grandmother, was kinda like a cross between Queen Victoria and General Patton. She was formidable. But she’s gone now and I know she blamed me for Jim’s disappearance. My God, he said she’d told him once she felt he was her ticket into heaven, his parent’s too. A Roman Catholic priest in a family was supposed to do that, like a rabbit’s foot or something. That’s what they all thought. And until she died, just a few months ago, she still blamed me for “loosing” him she said. I felt my aunt and uncle doubt me too, along with mom. Me, the grandson who quit going to church after reading Voltaire senior year in high school. Whatever. It wasn’t Voltaire that did it; it was more like sensing a metallic taste of falseness. Like pennies on the tongue. Didn’t make sense to me anymore. Pray and wait. Wait and pray. Suffer, pray some more and wait some more. Things would be better in Heaven. So we’d been taught.
Jim wanted to get away though, felt it would be better than back in California where the mountains were a reminder. I’d always loved his mom and dad, my Aunt Peggy and Uncle Jack, and all my “California cousins.” Jim’s the oldest boy. Five years older than me. Every summer grandma, me and mom would fly out for a few weeks to visit them. I’d go hiking with Jim and his younger brothers Tommy and John. We always made camp at Boney Mountain Park. He, Jim, had always been curious about what was under the soil, what kinds of minerals the colors slashed into mountainsides were. He told us it was like learning to read a map, just “look for the signs” he said. He went on to earn multiple degrees in geology, theology and literature before deciding to enter the seminary. He was like a genius to me. I hung on his every word.
He was only a priest for a few years when it happened. The church assigned him to a small parish in Kamploops, British Columbia to assist the aging pastor there¾a few years into Holy Days of Obligation, recommended acts of contrition and visits to shut-ins promising them a coming glorious release from decaying flesh and bone he found he had no more words to offer. He went silent as a priest. This is what he’d told me over the phone:
He said, in hesitant breath-strangled words, that a young couple from his parish had been driving on a mountain road, their baby safely strapped in a rear seat, when a boulder loosened from above and came crashing down onto their car. Their infant child was killed instantly. Their lives were spared. Jim was called to meet them at the hospital. He didn’t know the circumstances. The charge nurse explained what had happened. He went to do what he was supposed to do. To console the parents; but he found no words of dogmatic wisdom to explain to the hysterical mother and the grief-stricken father why God would take their baby to Heaven by way of such a cruel plan. How could he? He said he’d felt like all he’d understood of a compassionate God, of divine plans and mysteries surrounding the trinity felt empty and useless at that moment. He’d only just turned twenty-six himself. Maybe an older more experienced priest could have found words, he said, but he felt doubt and an emptiness creep in like a cold snake under the door.
Jim, my intelligent, well-intentioned, officially sanctified cousin said he went into a state of detachment and disbelief. Maybe he was too smart to ultimately believe all the church teachings that seem to make sense in more ordinary circumstances, if you don’t question too much, until an event like that hit you head on. He talked about it later when we were out there alone¾ before he was gone¾but I’m not ready for that yet.
Jim retreated to an old cabin in the woods owned by the local dioceses, but isolation didn’t help; he became depressed and failed to comprehend the God he’d loved so much. So it was arranged that he’d come to Florida and stay with us. There was an Apollo launch in December, the last of the Apollo launches, and then we’d do some camping in the flat, gentle lowland of the Everglades well away from mountains and boulders. Tired now. Will write more later.
December 9th
I remember when we met Jim at the airport it looked to me like he’d been sick. He was always a big guy, not fat really, just tall and big boned. “Corn-fed” grandma would say. Mom said it was more likely the Pepsi Aunt Peggy served from breakfast to suppertime. When he moved through a room it was impossible not to notice. I think he was about 6’5 and must have weighed 250 pounds last I’d seen him; but seeing him there, in Orlando, he looked gaunt and kind of lost among all the travelers in their Mickey Mouse hats and Disney shirts. He had circles under pale eyes behind John Lennon style glasses. His sandy blond hair wasn’t combed and when I got closer I could see how smudged with fingerprints his glasses were. He looked rumpled and tired. I remember he seemed relieved to see me; he gave the three of us crunching hugs and a smile replaced the grim set his mouth had had before he’d caught sight of us.
He was excited about the launch coming up on the 7th¾geez, that was just over five years ago¾but even more so about trekking out into the Everglades. He’d been studying maps on the area and was curious to get some sediment and rock samples. Might go on to Central America next, he told me later when we were alone, but Mom and Pop didn’t know that yet. Hard rocks, special ones, he said, were in the Maya Mountains, south, in Belize. The only part of Central America believed to have risen above sea level during the Mesozoic period. He was tanked on geology. He was curious too, about the few indigenous peoples that remained there. I’d always looked up to him, with no dad or siblings Jim was my idol. He wrote to me in between summer visits, tell me good books to read; I’d ask questions, he’d answer. He always had the answer.
I remember him being very animated at first. Even though he was from the L.A. area and was familiar with a temperate climate and palm trees, Florida’s just different and he found it fascinating. He knew too, as a geologist, that the porous limestone under the topsoil had once been part of the ancient “super-continent” Gondwana, as he’d called it, and attached to Africa, not North America. Man, a freakin’ walking encyclopedia he was. He told us over dinner that night that about 300 million years ago the two continents merged, and when they came apart again, Florida had decided to “stick” to North America. Funny how land, what you think is so solid and unchangeable, can drift together only to come apart again and rearrange itself.
Within the week he and I were headed south on I-95 in grandma’s station wagon. She’d failed her last eye exam at the license bureau, so the Plymouth became “mine” on the condition I played chauffeur on occasion. She reminded me later she never should have let us use it, then Jim would still be here, at least that’s what she reasoned.
The launch was already behind us. We’d seen it from the beach. I recall looking over at Jim’s upturned face following the manned rocket. We watched it burn its fuel fighting against gravity. His pores were beading up with sweat (it was an unusually hot December) and while I saw his eyes watching the rocket I couldn’t help but sense he wasn’t thinking about it at all. There was a look of emptiness, I thought, behind his glasses, his eyes looked glazed. Sort of fixed-like. Still searching, maybe, for a reason why that small, young life was crushed so easily by something as seemingly insignificant as a falling rock. He had to have thought, a few feet to the right or left and everything would still be the same.
He seemed fine to me all the way down. The mile markers went down in number and we talked. Talked and talked. About our last camping trip. Yosemite. I told him everything smelled like eucalyptus for weeks after that, thank you very much. He laughed and said, “Yeah, sure, but, those plate sized pancakes at the lodge were mighty good, weren’t they?” As I drove the wagon, with the kayaks strapped atop, Jim settled in to a long discourse on the historical, and the magical, aspects of the Everglades. Hell, I’d only been to a club once in Miami, and had skirted the glades twice going taking grandma to and from Ft. Myers on the Tamiami. That was the extent of my knowledge of south Florida. But not Jim, who’d never set foot in the state till a few days before, he’d researched everything. He was careful that way. Always a student, always a teacher. He talked about the origin of man in Africa, migration, the Caloosahatchee and the Mayaimi Lake people. Buried bones, land bridges, and creatures with giant tusks larger than a man bubbled out from his lips as each mile marker counted down. Yeah, he seemed fine to me. Except when we hit heavy traffic in Miami, he turned the radio way down and got kind of serious.
“You know I think spirituality is like the Everglades, it’s like a watershed, leaving behind the impure, a filter of a sort.” He shifted in his seat and leaned forward a little, hands clasped, index fingers pressing against each other. “Yeah, I think everything maybe comes together somewhere and blends together. When I was in that cabin, I got pretty low, but then I started to think. Maybe people are like water, you know? There’s only so much of it that exists¾so we’re like water, there's only a certain quantity of souls. What there was once is what there is now, no more no less, and what there is continues to rotate. Sometimes we're in one form, sometimes another.”
“I can get that. So we never really go anywhere, like Heaven or Hell, just change, right? Like the baby, maybe?” As soon as I’d said it I regretted it. I didn’t want to bring up what he was there trying to forget. But it was ok. He was ok with it.
“Yes, Mac, like the baby. You know, when I stepped out for a while, by myself, I mean to be alone, that solitude, well it was rough at first. Like I was drowning. But then I started to breathe. Man I really started to breathe. Deep breaths. I let them out. I mean I exhaled all the stale pent up fear and shame. I went out each morning that last week and breathed in deep and let it all out with a shout loud as I could. There was no one around for miles. It felt good. It felt great. But then I had to come back down the mountain and make decisions. And people were expecting answers.”
He paused. I remember he looked out the window at the myriad of cars surrounding us. He stuck his big arm out the window and adjusted the side mirror, like as if to see what lay behind better. I was about to offer something up, to suggest he stay out here permanently when he spoke again.
“Stuff can pile up on you. Other people’s desires and plans for you, you know? You can disappear behind them, behind the pile. You have to be careful¾make sure that the self can exist without words¾so a lack of them doesn’t undefine who are, who you are.” That’s how he said it. Just like that. I need to end here¾will pick up again tomorrow.
Friday, Dec. 10th
We arrived that morning, a Monday. The 11th of December. Christmas was a few weeks away. His parents were going to come out.
We took Main Park Road all the way in, to Flamingo. Every mile took us further south, deeper into the glades. I was conscious of the quiet. All the windows were down despite the heat; but it was a clean heat. It smelled so green. Every once in a while I’d roll the station wagon to a complete stop just so we could listen to it; to the nothingness, save for the screech of herons and the slightest, subtle trickling sound of water.
We figured Flamingo was a good central location in the park to branch out from. We’d planned on spending almost two weeks. We had a canoe, tent, sleeping bags, a cooler of beer and all the other usual supplies. Plenty of bug spray. I remember it was OFF! The cans were bright orange.
We thought we’d set up away from the public campsites a few of the nights. Who knew? We figured we’d mostly play it by ear. Checked in with the park ranger’s office to be prudent; we always did that when out west. We hung out at the main lodge area the first day and tentatively planned out our first week.
We figured to be up early the next morning and head up to Coot Bay, by way of Bear Lake Road, then after that head east to Taylor Slough. I remember Jim looking tired in the morning. When I’d asked if he was feeling alright (I thought maybe the heat was getting to him) he said he’d had a fitful sleep. Had gotten up several times during the night. I hadn’t heard him. It hadn’t rained in weeks, but that wasn’t unusual since it was dry season. We munched on granola and apples on the way to the bay, barely speaking, but it wasn’t like anything weird¾to me it felt peaceful, like we were just letting the nature vibes soak in, or maybe letting out the stressful machinery of man, a “giving away” of sorts. That’s what I felt anyway. That’s what I told everyone later.
We saw a few folks at the water’s edge when we put in the kayaks and maybe half a dozen out further fishing, but later in the day when we headed to the slough we didn’t see a soul. If I remember correctly it was around 4 p.m. by the time we headed deep into the slough. We’d left the wagon, locked and with a note on the dashboard, off on the side of Main Park Road and paddled most of the way in, gear on our backs and in tow. We looked for a good dry island to camp on.
It was as remote as it could get. I mean we saw no one. The saw grass and mangrove were impossibly green. Jim said something about all colors brighten the closer you get to the equator. Like heading closer to the sun while still on the planet I guess. I remember thinking only four colors existed at that moment: the blue of the sky, the puffed-out white of scattered clouds, the brownish water, and the grass that was everywhere. Here, the saw grass, it felt, was the ruler, not us. I was excited at first, “exploring” and all that. But getting so far off the road wasn’t a good idea in my book. I remember thinking of gators, panthers and snakes, but Jim was excited and I figured hell, this is what he needs, what he came for. We’d have a fire later and oars to beat on snouts of bold gators. I’d been around them plenty before, in the parks up north. And we had our hunting knives. We’d be ok.
We picked what we thought looked like the highest ground on a shallow island and pulled in to consider it. Plenty of gators had been spotted on the way in, resting on patches of high ground and wading through the clear, tea-colored water. We checked through it, no evidence of fresh gator tracks and it was long past hatching time so we weren’t too worried about disturbing a clutch.
I started to feel uneasy, can’t say why exactly, that time of year the sun had that “wrong” kind of slant to it¾Florida’s brief odd winter light¾and it got dark early, around six. The wind started to pick up strong and I thought I could hear an odd hum, no, more like a vibration I’d say. I looked over at Jim to see if he seemed to notice anything, but he was intent on unpacking the gear. I couldn’t really tell where it was coming from, or if it was maybe in my own head. Maybe it was the hum of the highway still on me. We hurried to get the tent up when the sky took on a greenish-hue and clouds started building to the southwest. There was the look of a storm coming in. It was odd since the ranger had just told us the day before the weather was supposed to be clear and calm but hot all week.
“You considering we ought to head back?” I remember thinking he asked it almost like a challenge. He probably noticed I was looking a little worried. I was¾but at that point I really had no reason to be¾so I wasn’t going to admit unfounded fear. Now I wish I had.
“Hell no, what’s a bit of wind? It’ll die down, probably a bit of late afternoon trade wind. Must be a fluke¾c’mon, let’s get camp set up.” I wasn’t going to cave¾we got the rest of the gear set up and by the time we’d got settled it was dark and the wind had picked up instead of settling down but the clouds had cleared a bit.
“I think we should skip a fire with this wind,” as he grabbed a lantern.
“Yeah, it’s pretty dry right here and the clouds are pulling back towards the gulf. I don’t think it’s going to storm after all. Moon should be almost full tonight too.”
He picked at the contents of the cooler and pulled out two beers, popped the tops and handed one to me saying, “Alright, so if it’s worse in the morning, we head back, if not we stay, deal?”
“Deal.”
By the light of the lantern we gathered up what stones and stray wood we could find in case the crazy winds letup and we wanted to get a fire going; we’d caught a few fish earlier and stowed them in a baggie in the food cooler; they would have made a better supper than the beer.
Jim kept grabbing fresh beers each time one of us emptied a can and the wind started to become downright wicked. There was a slightly sulphurous smell to it. Between the light of the lantern and the rising moon we could see the gusts whipping the saw grass into dark, circular spirals, then it would let up and the grasses lifted their frond tops, but dizzy and still shaking in the remnants of the breeze. Those blades could shred through the skin easy without the right clothing.
We had a pretty good beer buzz going; I recall thinking maybe it was time to turn in. the wind was annoying, whipping my then-long hair into my eyes, and when Jim got up without a word and ducked into the tent, I thought he was thinking the same thing¾but then he reappeared before I got myself upright. He had a big grin and a lit joint. I guess I was a bit surprised and my face must’ve shown it.
“What, you think I quit getting high when I answered a higher calling? A few of us kept smoking all through seminary. We figured the older priests had their scotch and sodas and we had our grass. C’mon, take a toke. Tommy got this special for us, said he wished he could be here.”
Tommy was in the Navy, next best thing to a priest in their family. Uncle Jack had been in the Navy and mom had been a WAVE.
“And you brought this on the plane? Are you crazy? Jesus, if grandma could see you now she’d box your ears.”
We laughed at that mental image of that possibility, settled down, popped another beer and watched the sparks fly off the end of the joint through the air like orange fireflies in the wind. I still had distant, anxious thoughts¾stray sparks making it to the ground starting a wildfire, panthers chewing on us at night, a hurricane coming up out of nowhere, crazy stuff¾but Jim started talking and we both lay back, flat to the wind, passing the joint back and forth and I felt better. The wind buffeted over us as we lay flat to the ground.
The moon was huge and brilliant white. All its little dimples and variations looked rugged and pronounced sharply. It felt good, windy, but good.
“Cernan and Schmitt are up there right now walking around on the surface,” I said. I looked over at him when I didn’t hear a response. He was staring at it, the moon, and rubbing his thumbs across his index and middle fingers. “Tonight,” I said louder against the rising wind, “they’re supposed to walk on the surface again, set off some small explosions; get some samples. I wonder if we’ll see anything weird from here. I bet you’d love to have a few moon rocks to look at, huh Jim?” He stared ahead a few more seconds before speaking.
“I suppose if there’s a literal Heaven, you could say those astronauts are closer to it now than when they’re down here. Or if you were on the moon, you’d look up to here. See? Like it all depends on where you see things from.”
I nodded, it sounded good to me.
“You know except for one time, earlier, the closest I ever felt to God was in seminary. Down there at St. Meinrads, remember?” I knew the place. How could I forget? We’d visited him once with Uncle Jack. It was in Indiana, a real abbey run by the Benedictines. It had been dismantled in Switzerland and re-built here. From the 14th century or something. Right there, in the middle of farmland. Funny.
He continued, half to himself, half to me, “I think it was the quiet, the chanting and those old stones in the walls. I swear they talked at night. Whispered secrets I couldn’t quite hear. When I got out into parish work, after a while, God seemed further away, you know? Like people messed with the connection, sullied up the divinity and the peace part. But mom and pops were so stoked that I’d chosen that path. Everyone in our parish was so happy for me, so happy for them. Like they were guaranteed admittance to the country club of glory and everlasting amens. Hey, did I ever tell you why I became a priest?” I shook my head no while exhaling smoke.
“I’d seen a comet once; it was brilliant blue, racing across the sky. I was somewhere in New Mexico and had been driving too long. I was just out of college and on my way back to my folks in Cali. Pulled over to pour more coffee from my big thermos into my hand-held one when I saw it. I stood there, a thermos in each hand and just stared, mouth agape. I was as alone in the world at that moment as a man could be, out there in that black desert night, but seeing that comet, that damned big beautiful blue thing racing across the sky, man, I just knew there was a power so great, that I just wanted to disappear into it¾to be as close as possible to it, and I felt like I was, I lost all sense of me, you know? Like everything I’d done prior didn’t matter squat, all the calculus, the Plato I’d memorized, the damned Latin classes¾nothing mattered¾it all became insignificant.”
He paused, I wasn’t sure if he had more to say or if he was waiting for me to comment, but then he sat up, his hair tossed about by the furious occasional gusts; he was almost shouting.
“You know mom and pop were always real religious, hell they all are, Uncle Dan and Jim, Aunt Irene, your mom too¾all us cousins were brought up to be good Irish Catholics¾and I felt it man, like at that minute I bubbled over with unexplainable joy, I danced man! I swear it; out there in the middle of the night, in the desert, I did a little King David dance and snapped my fingers and I tell you what, ever since I’ve been trying to get that joy, that childlike, singular feeling of joy back.”
He let himself fall back down to the ground, “And how the hell do I make sense of that beauty, that joy I felt God was sending me when He also sent that boulder crashing down on that little child, that little soft-fleshed body? Those small not yet finished bones?” Silence. He fell to silence. I sure didn’t have an answer. I let the wind carry his words away, down through the slough. I remember thinking, like down the watershed and through the mangroves to come out clean and new.
“Buckled in too, in the back seat for safety. The mother told me she was always freaked out that if they ever were hit or hit another car she didn’t want the baby in her lap, you know? If she was thrown forward she didn’t want the bay to be crushed. So she always put the child in the back seat. For safety…” That was it, his voice choked up before trailing off. This was where I guess he’d run out of answers. Everyone, I always thought, felt a priest should have all the right answers. It’s a lot of pressure to perform, to get the lines right. Our family wanted Jim to stay the priest, the holy man. Their own familial link to God and all the saints. Jesus, I know I couldn’t do it.
We lay like that for a while, hands folded across chests, legs crossed at the ankles and looking upwards. I don’t know where his mind settled to then; After a while I became lost in my own thoughts contemplating my spring schedule, my second year of grad school, and an advanced physics class I’d been lucky to get into when we heard the sound. A shrill-like shriek not unlike a heron, but much higher pitched. It seemed to come from the east, or maybe the south. It was there and then gone so sharply. We both stood quickly; too quickly¾I was unsteady on my feet¾dizzy from too many beers and no dinner.
Jim shouted over the relentless wind that slapped our faces head on now that we were upright, “There!¾ no, no, there! Look over to the south more,” he put both hands to my head in frustration to turn me to what he saw. “What the hell is that?”
There were tiny yellowish lights in the distance, like the tips of torches bobbing up and down across the vast expanse of saw grass. The source too far away to make out even in bright moonlight. There was quite a trail of them, like a line formation, just bobbing up and down. Out loud I guessed a distance of three miles or so.
“Yeah, looks about that Mac, but are they moving? I mean coming this way?” We both squinted. Clouds were moving in over the moon again and the landscape turned to shadows.
“I can’t tell¾I don’t think so but it’s so hard to judge.” By then the wind was booming forward at us; I could here rising swirls of updrafts far above in the night sky. I felt like we were specks at the bottom of a vacuum.
“I don’t think they’re moving. Actually they’re fading, retreating.” He was right, they were still bobbing up and down, but the yellow glow was fading to smaller and smaller orbs, like little fading comets into the black ribbon of the horizon.
“Weird, like people marching out there. Makes you wonder if any Indians made it—are still out there? Settled in a hundred years ago and managed to remain hidden? I mean can there still be something left even when we’re told it’s gone?”
“I don’t know about Indians, but I don’t think we see everything—look at the color spectrum—we only see a small portion of it. The colors outside of it are negative, but they exist, right? Birds and bees supposedly can see more than we do, so yeah, just because we can’t see something doesn’t mean it’s not there.”
He looked down, nodding in agreement or contemplation maybe when we heard rushing sounds swooping in near us, then retreating again. Jim pointed to the saw grass in the dappled moon’s light.
“Look, see those funny shapes?”
I looked all around our patch of high ground at the surrounding grasses. The shapes were like footsteps of invisible giants walking to and fro. A depression would appear, then in an instant it would be gone only to begin again a few feet away; the pattern repeated all around us. The humming in my head was back; hard to tell if it was increasing in intensity or just varying with the rise and fall of the persistent winds. The barometric pressure had to be dropping rapidly.
“It’s the wind rushing in downdrafts.” The queer, continuous humming I’d had in my head grew louder, moving outwards as if to occupy space.
“Hey, do you hear something?” Jim asked.
“Yeah! I heard it earlier, or I thought I did, I wasn’t sure. Where’s it coming from?”
“Up there, I think,” he pointed at the sky, “Or, well, I don’t know, it’s kind of moving, like it’s pressing down and then rising again. Almost like crickets, but louder. I thought I had an earache.”
“I don’t know what it is. It’s not frogs or crickets. More like locusts in the air, not on the ground.”
It was about ten or eleven then, I think¾I can’t remember which one of us suggested we try to sleep, but that’s what we did¾crawled inside the tent and flipped off the lantern. I mean what were we supposed to do? There wasn’t anything we could say that was threatening; we couldn’t really have paddled back in the dark and the wind¾the gators would have been active and we’d be too vulnerable.
We lay there a while, in the dark, listening to all the sounds when Jim blurted out, in a silly falsetto voice, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” We burst into giggles like schoolboys. It was good, relieved the tension. We settled back down. I thought Jim had fallen asleep; I was in and out when in a hushed voice he said, "Take care, Owen...to remember everything is a form of madness.” It was a quote from a play we’d seen years ago, a frantic play set in Ireland about language and attempts to understand each other. I thought it was a funny thing to say.
A good time to stop; hand cramps.
Saturday, the 11th
Still raining, can’t head out yet. Supposed to let up later. Will try to finish, here, till the end.
I remember the cabbage palm outside the tent, yeah; of all things I remember seeing that night, the shadow of the cabbage palm when I awoke stands out. It was the wind that woke me; its sound had shifted to carry something more on it, like a viciousness in its roar; the humming vibrated both in and out of my head and there were booms, not the booms of thunder, more like giant muffled gongs in the sky. I don’t know how the hell to better describe them. When we’d turned in the cloud cover had been spotty, and when my eyes opened (In the middle of the night? Was it early morning by then?) the first thing I saw was the spiky shape of the cabbage palm, the moonlight illuminating its shadow against the side of the tent like crazed hair reaching everywhere at once. I sensed a pressure against the tent, not solid exactly, but a pressure like a balloon inverting inwards. The second thing I noticed was Jim was gone and the flap-door of the tent was unzipped.
The order of things that happened next are hard for me to get right¾I was groggy from sleep and beer¾later the police would ask over and over again about some little detail. Sometimes my stories matched previous ones, sometimes not. I got mixed up. I still do.
The damned wind was still blowing hard. It was warm and moist. It made everything feel and smell wet. My clothes, my hair, the covers; all felt soggy. This was all unusual for the dry winter months, but the winds were so strong I figured they picked up and carried the tea-colored water of the glades on their currents. There was a musty-earth smell in the tent. Like a cellar floor, but fresher, more alive. I kicked off the cover, crawled out and tried to stand. Wind must have been 50-60 miles per hour¾one of the kayaks was flipping over near the water’s edge. The oars were nowhere in sight and the other kayak was gone. There was a queer greenish tint to the sky in the east and the smell of sulphur was strong again. Heat lightening was flashing high in clouds building in the southeast. Odd shapes were racing across the moon. I thought they were low fast moving clouds only they looked to almost move at will, sometimes darting backwards against the wind instead of with it.
I went back in the tent to get the lantern but it was gone too, so I grabbed the flashlight I had in my pack. Back outside I shouted Jim’s name. Nothing. I thought without really thinking. Be logical. Missing Jim, kayak, lantern, oars. He must have woken earlier, seen the kayak or oars or both blown off by the wind. We hadn’t tied them down¾stupid, stupid¾did he grab what he could and go off by himself in the dark to find them? Why not wake me? All questions I asked myself in one seemingly, singular thought.
Order, yes, I remember thinking work in a pattern. So I walked the perimeter of the small island, shining the flashlight out onto the dark waters. The saw grass and mangrove looked like huge beings bending in constant crazed motion.
I thought I could hear something else on the wind, no, above the wind. A human pitch to it¾I kept walking towards the sound, and clockwise, around the island, which I swore later seemed smaller than the night before. The light’s beam filled with swirling flecks of dust. Some areas were wide open to the dark horizon; some edges had saw grass right up to the land’s edge. When I came full circle I stood in an open spot opposite the tent. I was facing north, I think, the direction the wind was blowing. I saw a small light then. It was the lantern out on the water! It was Jim!
He was in the kayak shouting something to me that I couldn’t make out over the wind. A single oar swung wildly in his hand like he was signaling me to stay away, to go back¾I stood there in that wicked, unforgiving wind¾transfixed at the sight of my cousin in the distance. The same tiny flickering lights we saw earlier were out there again, far beyond him, but the kayak was drifting towards them. I shouted to him and pointed to the lights behind him. He turned his back to me. I know he must have seen them. I swear, he took the one paddle he’d been swinging in the air and put it to the water propelling the kayak further from the island and me headed towards the bobbing lights.
There was nothing I could do but watch him. I didn’t have any paddles, and he was almost out of sight. The light from the lantern grew dimmer before it suddenly went out. Just like that it was gone. Like a candle extinguished. Nothing.
I sat outside the tent till dawn watching for him, hoping to hear his shouts again. At full dawn the winds subsided and the humming stopped. Just like that. I walked the island again. I could see how the water was going back down¾it looked to have risen several feet during the windstorm¾despite the lack of rain.
I found several sets of fresh gator tracks along with a narrow set of footprints. Barefoot human footprints. I couldn’t tell if they’d been there before us. The kayak that had been flipped like a toy in the wind last night was floating close enough to shore so I could easily reach it. It had caught in low mangrove branches. I found a single oar nearby. I waited several hours. Nothing. I was alone. So much silence. I walked the island last time then packed up what I could and headed out with the single paddle. I figured it was best to get back to the wagon and the ranger station in Flamingo to get help. Get a search party going.
Later, much later, sunburned and dirty I walked into the station. It felt weird to be in a building again. All quiet noise and artificial lights. Cold. I told them what happened. Winds? What wind, they asked, there was no storm they said. It was a clear, beautiful starry night—no, no I told them—it was frantic! Rising waters, winds had to be over 40 mph, flashes of heat lightening, clouds moving in and out again. They humored me, gave me water. I guess they figured I was dehydrated, not thinking clear.
Later, days later, when neither Jim nor the kayak was found, the formal questioning started. Over and over again they’d ask the same questions. They found Jim’s stash of pot in a small container still in the tent. I hadn’t thought about that. They all accused me of possession, of dealing, of smuggling. They didn’t believe me when I told them he’d brought it, he being a priest and all. They also saw all the empty beer cans. No one believed me. Mother, grandmother, aunt and uncle all thought I led astray. Got him drunk and high and whatever happened to him was my fault. No one believed me.
It’s time to go now. Fog lifted. No more rain. I’ve spent 5 years doubting myself and thinking maybe I’d gotten it all wrong. That’s what I get for letting them pile the guilt and shame on me. I’m done with it. Cashed out accounts. Emptied the closet. I’m going back not to really find Jim, but to remember, to get it right in my head like he told me to. To be sure I can exist without words. After that I’m headed south by way of Puerto Rico, then we’ll see. I don’t know. I really don’t.
Where do I think he really is? Really? I’d like to think he’s down in Belize somewhere or Costa Rica with a pick axe in one hand gathering rock samples and a six pack in the other. He had his passport and wallet. His backpack wasn’t found at the campsite. I bet he’s watching the sky at night too¾waiting to see that blue comet whiz across the night sky again. Florida’s funny that way, it’s like a stepping stone for those who want to start all over, a gateway to paradise some say.
I’ll write more later. After. Maybe on the plane.
