Chasing Fireflies: A Novel of Discovery Read online

  Something told me this kid had been taken, and somewhere out there was somebody who wanted him. They might not be able to keep him, or even to voice it, but somebody wanted this kid. My nose told me that.

  I remember my first summer with Unc and Aunt Lorna. We celebrated my birthday on July 31, and Unc gave me two things: a Timex waterproof wristwatch that glowed in the dark and the promise to take me fishing.

  He doused us in Muskol bug repellant, and we stepped out the back door at 5:01 Am. I know because I looked. I carried a knapsack filled with lunch, and Unc carried the poles and a flashlight. We walked out the back door, through the back pasture, and skirted the Zuta. There was no moon that I can remember, and it was as dark as I'd ever seen it in the woods. We stepped in under the cover of the canopy of the swamp, and I remember asking, "Shouldn't we wait 'til it gets light?"

  Unc shook his head and stepped into the swamp. I remember this, too, because he did the one thing I won't ever forget. He clicked on the flashlight, but rather than pointing it in front of him so he could see, he held it behind him so that I could. We walked nearly a mile, skirting cypress stumps and bog holes and skipping over ditches. Midway through, I tugged on his pant leg. He stopped and waited.

  I said, "Unc, how can you see?"

  He looked around, shrugged, and said, "Don't need to."

  "Why?"

  He smiled and leaned over, whispering a secret. "'Cause I know where I'm going."

  He turned to walk, and I tugged on his pants again. "But ... but aren't you scared?"

  He stood up, looked around, and shrugged again. "Of what?"

  "Just ..." I looked over my shoulder and out into the blackness. 14 ... of stuff."

  He knelt down and pointed through the swamp with the tips of the two fishing rods. "Ain't nothing out there gonna hurt you."

  "How do you know?"

  "'Cause I grew up out here."

  "What about snakes?"

  "Well ... sure, there're snakes. But, they're a lot more scared of you than you are of them."

  "And spiders?"

  "Yup, there're spiders too. But they're little and squish easily."

  "What about ... monsters?"

  "What, you mean like the boogeyman?"

  I nodded.

  "Listen ... you might as well learn this now." He pulled me close to him. His breath smelled like coffee and his skin smelled like Muskol. "The only monster you need to worry about in this life is the one that stares at you from the mirror each morning. You tame him, make friends with him, and the rest of life is nothing you can't handle."

  "Yes sir."

  By the time we made it to the canoe, I was thoroughly convinced that he had X-ray vision. We loaded into his canoe and paddled out into the Buffalo. We were just downstream from Ellsworth's Sanctuary. Little pink blooms from the crepe myrtle tree were floating on the water. Every time Unc took the paddle out of the water, they stuck to it, only to wash off as soon as he slipped it back in. By 10:30 AM we'd caught nearly fifty bluegills and a dozen warmouth. Our stringer was full and trailing behind us like a ribbon off a lady's hat.

  We fished until 11:37 AM, when he opened the knapsack and served lunch. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, with Oreo cookies for dessert. We tied the stern rope to a cypress and let the current pull against us. There had been a lot of rain lately, so the Altamaha was running pretty quick. Little swirls would appear in the water where the current bounced off the sandy bottom and created an undertow.

  Unc pointed to them and said with his mouth full, `Be careful of those. Keep your head above them when you're swimming. They're not too strong, but if you're trying to come up and get a breath, it'll give you enough pause to make you wish it wasn't there."

  I watched the swirls zigzag around the hull of the canoe. "Unc? How long can you hold your breath?"

  "Oh, I don't know. Maybe a minute." He eyed the swirls again. "If you ever get caught in one, don't worry. They disappear as quickly as they appear. Just let it carry you down. It'll set you on the bottom, where it'll dissipate and let you go. It's just the way they work. My brother Jack and I ... back when things were different ... used to ride them just for fun."

  We finished lunch, and Unc said, "Let me see your line."

  I held out my pole, and he cut off my bobber and hook and replaced it with a little spinner bait called a Beetle Spin. He smiled, spit on the bait, and said, "The afternoon sun makes the fish kind of lazy so you have to rouse them out of their slumber. This"-he jiggled the spinner-"is too good to pass up. Fish just can't stand to let it go by. I'm not sure if it makes them hungry or mad, but either way they hit it with a vengeance."

  He was right. We caught fish on our first three casts.

  He pointed at ten or twelve huge stumps off in the distance. "See those? Back when my daddy first cut this property, he'd cut those huge trees, clear the limbs, then float them down this river to Brunswick and the sawmill. There, they'd cut them into timber and ship them all around the world. He used to tell me that parts of the Brooklyn Bridge came out of this swamp."

  "What's the Brooklyn Bridge?"

  "Oh ... it's a bridge in New York City."

  I dipped my hand in the water, testing the pull of a swirl that had surfaced just outside the hull. "Where's this water go?"

  "Atlantic Ocean." He swallowed and tilted his gaze toward the invisible horizon. "If you're man enough, you can canoe all the way from here to anywhere in the world."

  "Really?"

  "Sure. You might need a bigger boat once you get to the ocean, but barring that, the only limits you face are those you place on yourself."

  "Have you ever done it?"

  "What?"

  "Paddled from here to the ocean?"

  He looked off into the distance again. "Yep ... many times."

  We were floating again, the current carrying us along at a pretty good clip. Unc turned the paddle, using it as a rudder, and steered us toward an arm-sized piece of wood that was lying half out of the water. It was dead and waterlogged. He tied the stern rope to it and tossed it behind us. It sank and dragged in the water about five feet off the stern.

  "We're moving a little faster than I'd like," he said. "The log will give us a little extra drag. Slow us down a bit." He smiled. "'Cause there's good fishing in here, and we don't want to miss it."

  I watched the swirls, saw the log tugging at our stern, and didn't feel quite as comfortable in the boat as I had earlier that morning.

  At 3:07 PM we rounded a corner to find that a huge pine tree had fallen across the river. It would have made a good bridge if we were on foot and trying to cross.

  Unc turned the paddle again and said, "I want you to lean forward and keep your hands in the boat. I'll tell you when you can sit up. Got it?"

  I nodded and leaned forward. The only problem was that I had left my fishing pole sticking up too far into the air. Unc tillered us beneath the tree, but the hook on my Beetle Spin caught on the bark and began pulling against my drag. Without thinking, I stood up and reached for it.

  Unc said, "Nope, Chase, I got it."

  But it was too late.

  My shifting weight dipped the up-current side of the canoe down into the water where the current, and increased flow of the river, caught it. Within a second we were upside down and swimming. The current grabbed me like a huge hand and shoved me to the bottom, where it spun me like a top. Then all at once, just as suddenly as it grabbed me, it let go. I looked up through the rust-colored water and saw sunlight. I reached out my feet, kicked off the bottom, and started soaring to the surface like Superman. Unc was right. It was fun.

  Problem was, the current carried me downstream and into a chaotic mass of downed trees and limbs. It looked like an underwater beaver dam, but looking back, it was just a logjam. The trees were jammed up against an enormous cypress whose hollowed-out stump reached down into the water and spread out like the tentacles of a giant squid. Some were fat, some slender, but all fanned out and tied themselves into
the river bottom. There in its arms, the logs piled up.

  I drifted into the roots of the tree, where the jumbled mass swarmed around me, grabbed my clothes, and pinned my left foot into the V-notch of a root. I pulled at my foot, but only made things worse. I tried to scream, but the water wouldn't let me. I grabbed a limb above me, pulled as hard as I could, and lifted myself into what must have been a waterfall inside the stump. Given the rain and the increased water in the river, the level of the water had risen above the normal level on an old stump and created a small waterfall that would last only as long as the water level remained this high.

  I poked my head in behind it where a cavity had formed and sucked in as big a breath as it would let me. I choked and sputtered, and the current began pulling against me. That's when I felt Unc's hands on my foot. The wood was cutting into my shin and the pain was growing, but I was more worried about my arms giving out. It was all I could do to hold on. I pressed in hard against the back of the stump and took another breath. I rested my head against my left hand, my eyes pressing against the face of my watch.

  I watched thirty seconds pass as Unc pulled on the logs that had latched their viselike grip on me. At one minute, my arms were shaking. At two minutes, my left foot was numb, yet Unc hadn't let go. Two and a half minutes passed, and I felt myself slipping further into the water. Finally, at three minutes, when the waterfall covered my face and closed off the air, I let go.

  When I woke up, I was lying on the riverbank, Unc beside me. He was coughing and sputtering like an old outboard motor. His face and lips were blue, and his eyes were bloodshot. He was sucking in huge gasps of air. I looked down at my ankle, which was cut and bleeding, but my foot was still attached. I wiggled my toes inside my shoe and lay back down. That's when I started crying.

  Unc put his arm around me and pulled me toward his chest. His heart was pounding unlike anything I'd ever heard, and he had yet to catch his breath.

  "Unc . . ." I tugged on him and cried again. "Uncle Willee ... you ... you could have died."

  He tried to laugh, but doing so brought up more water and deeper coughing. "Nah ... I've already been dead once. Can't die a second time."

  "But ... you stayed under for over three minutes."

  "Really?"

  I held up my watch and nodded.

  'Well-" He wiped the spit off his mouth with his shirtsleeve that was torn and frayed. "That'd definitely be a new record for me."

  In a half dozen foster and boys' homes, many men had been my caretakers or guardians. They had come in differing sizes, shapes, and sounds, and those that made promises broke them before they had time to take root. In general, they came and went, gave me as much notice as the gum stuck to their shoe, and never said or did much. Until now.

  "But ... why?"

  He pulled me across his chest, his face a few inches from mine. He pushed aside my hair and wiped the tears out of my face with a muddy hand. He tried to smile, but his breathing was still difficult and raspy. He coughed, blew out more water, and behind his eyes I saw a broken, shattered man. Finally he said, "'Cause, Chase, nothing ... not one thing ... compares to you."

  There, on that bank, soaked in that water, basking in that sunshine, lying on that man's chest, I hoped for the first time that my real dad would never show up and take me home.

  Chapter 16

  lrom inside my boat I can hear distant automobile traffic, the waves lapping the sides, and the wind rattling the rigging, but other than that, it's pretty quiet. So the sound of someone climbing aboard my boat at five in the morning got me up quickly.

  I stepped out of bed, pulled my Remington 870 shotgun from the shelf above my head, and hunkered down next to the engine compartment, giving myself a fish-eye view of the hatch. Shadows appeared over the glass, then a hand rattled the latch, lifted it, and laid it down. A long leg slid into the hole and stepped onto the ladder. I clicked the safety off and waited. A second leg. A set of running shoes was coming down the ladder. Finally the person stepped off the ladder, and I looked down the barrel.

  When she whispered, "Chase!" my knees went weak and I nearly peed all over myself.

  I flicked on the light and saw Tommye standing in the middle of my boat. I lowered the shotgun and clicked the safety back on. "Do you know I nearly blew your head off?"

  She pulled the hood of her sweatshirt down and said, "Well ... that would certainly beat death by Alzheimer's."

  "What are you doing here?"

  She was bundled in sweats even though it was June in the Golden Isles. Probably seventy-five degrees outside.

  "And aren't you hot?"

  She looked around my boat. "I once made a movie in a boat like this. But ... it was a bit nicer. Belonged to a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. Everything was leather and-"

  I shook my head and put the shotgun back in its cubby. "That's too much information."

  She shrugged. "Another life. One I'm glad not to be living." She pulled a shoestring from around her neck and crumpled it into her hand. Then she pulled me by the arm and sat me down. She placed her hand over mine and dropped the lace. "I want you to keep this for me."

  Two keys dangled from the shoestring. I eyed them, then her. "What're you up to?"

  She leaned against me. Her heart was beating real fast, she was pasty with sweat, and yet she didn't seem bothered by the three layers of clothes. "Not now." She breathed deep and then placed the shoestring necklace over my head. It looked like something kids wore in high school. The keys came to rest in the center of my chest. She patted them against me and said, "Perfect, right there in your bird's chest."

  "Thanks."

  She hopped up, climbed the ladder, and looked back down through the hole. "Well ... come on."

  "I'm not going anywhere until you tell me about these keys and whether I'm now an accessory to some crime."

  She laughed and stood looking out over the bow as the sun broke the horizon. "Not now. But soon."

  I climbed up next to her. "What am I supposed to do until then?"

  She looked at me, shrugged, and crossed her arms, looking back out across the marsh, which was yellow and light green. `Just keep them for me, Chase ... just do this for me." Her eyes glistened, the corners turning wet, and her voice fell to a whisper. "I need you to do this for me."

  Tommye had her own timing and her own reasons. I knew digging at her wouldn't unearth them. She'd talk when she was ready. She pulled a MoonPie out of her sweatshirt pocket, tore open the wrapper, and began to eat. She was spilling crumbs across the deck of my boat.

  "Breakfast of champions," I said with a smirk.

  She motioned toward the shore, where Sally was parked next to Vicky. "It was sitting on the front seat." She swallowed the last bit, stuffed the empty wrapper into her pocket, and climbed back down to my kayak, which she'd used to paddle from shore. "I'd better get back. I told him I'd only be gone an hour."

  "I'll be over sometime today. I'll check in on you."

  She paddled across, beached the kayak, and disappeared out of my drive.

  Z got to my office early-which meant about seven. I rarely get there any earlier, because I seldom have anything to say or write before about ten in the morning. It's not that I can't, it's just that Red rarely prints it, so I've learned to let my mind engage first and then start writing-usually somewhere shy of noon. I made some phone calls, sent a few e-mails, and joined an Internet chat room for novice chess players. One of the options allowed new users to view real-time, online chess games. I watched some guy in Portugal beat the pants off somebody in the States, and then someone in Australia barely get by a guy in England. Both matches convinced me that I spent way too much time goofing off in college.

  I learned a few basics, like chess is played on an 8x8 board comprising sixty-four squares. As you face the board, the lower left square is black. There are two teams, white and black, and each has a rook, knight, bishop, king, queen, and eight pawns. It's not checkers, where every piece only moves one way; each
piece has its own prescribed movement. Some move forward, some diagonally, and some can hop around. Lastly, if your opponent ends a move by uttering the word "checkmate," that's bad.

  When I shut off my computer I didn't pretend to understand all the rules, which are many and complicated. Just because he can't talk doesn't mean he's stupid. Sketch is probably brilliant.

  At eight o'clock I met Mandy in the parking lot behind the courthouse. Because we had to drive relatively close to the Zuta, I dropped off Vicky, and the two of us drove her state-issued Toyota Camry to the state prison in Bennersville, about ninety miles away. When we got on the highway, she reached into her briefcase and handed me a wrapped package. "For dinner."

  I hefted the package and felt pretty sure it was a trade paper book. I peeled off the wrapping and found a copy of Fishing for Dummies.

  She flipped her turn signal on and changed lanes. "Thought maybe you could use some help."

  I flipped open the cover and read the note inside, Chase-don't quit your day job.

  I set the book on the dash. "Thank you. See if I ever take you fishing again."

  All around the Bennersville State Penitentiary was a twenty-foothigh chain-link fence topped with razor wire, cornered with four guard towers-each manned with armed guards. Everything about the place screamed You don't want to be here!

  Mandy flashed her credentials at the gate, and we waited while the guard checked his visitors list. He handed us a sheet of paper to place on the dash and motioned us toward a large brick building on our left. It was five stories, the top of which was surrounded with more chain-link-which led me to think that there might be a basketball court or something atop the building.

  We parked and walked inside, where one guard passed us off to another, who took us to two more guards who frisked us, searched Mandy's briefcase, and then led us to a room with two chairs, a table, and a thick piece of glass separating us from a rather unhappy-looking fellow on the other side. Mandy sat down, flicked on the microphone button on the wall, and motioned for the prisoner to do the same. He didn't move.