So, there you have it. My first book. First draft. Finito.
As they say in ham radio-speak: Over and out.
I’m pinning21 the microphone to the inside of my shirt now, running the wire down under my clothes to the device in my back pocket. I want to keep telling you what’s happening, but for obvious reasons I can’t keep a running commentary of everything, nor can I reflect on it or fill out the full picture in the way, hopefully, I did earlier. I want you to hear it all. Listen to the constant ambient sounds of sea and gulls crying.22 I’ll be describing visuals to you mostly. And some of what I’m feeling. Deal? It’s this or nothing, and, well, we’ve come this far. It’d feel wrong just cutting it off behind the seawall. After all, this is what we came for.
Waking life abuts dreaming life.
Okay. [sigh] Moving forward.
Whaddya say, Miss Maggie, shall we climb to the top of this wall to see what all the fuss is about?
Stepping nearer to the wall. Way beyond it I hear a thudding, the squeak and scream of stressed wet wood.
In the shadow of the seawall now. I feel sick.
Though I haven’t seen a kid for days and miles, now I hear them.
Oh—
Their song welcomes. You hear that?23 One note. Beautiful. Layered harmonics, and though it comes from their throats and out their mouths, it is sourceless, endless, and without rhythm. They sing for my arrival. They rejoice!
Listen to that!
Climbing up the sandy slope to the top of the wall now. Scrambling on all fours. Would be easier without the trombone and binoculars.
I hope you can hear that. Beyond that low, constant sound of the breakers, the clatter of surf on hard pack, its hissing retreat—I hope you can hear it. Though they’ve sung and hummed their lullabies to me often on this trip, it’s never been like this. This is…I don’t know. Divine.
I stand atop the seawall. I look down on the beach now [sounds of KGM’s fast and heavy breathing].24
They fill the beach. All those little faces…facing me. Hundreds of thousands.
My eye is drawn out to the horizon. Blue and gray. Darker than sea and sky. There’s something out there.
Way beyond the white line of breakers, something…I see a…Is that a deep-sea oil-drilling platform? Yeah. Gotta be. But what…sits on top of it? Can’t be a helicopter. It’s as big as the platform. The indistinct winged thing I think I’ve been seeing wasn’t so big as to take up all the space on a drilling platform. But it’s so far away. It heliographs fiercely whenever I try to look at it. I don’t see it when I’m looking through the binoculars though. It’s when I take them away and squint. That’s when I see the shape.
Naked eye, there it is, shimmering, bouncing that sunlight at me. Through the binoculars, it’s not there. Yet it is. That space is…full. It’s opaque and it shimmers. I see the ocean through it.
Don’t have time to ponder this quirk of ocular physics because just as I’m noticing this thing out there, they sing louder with harmonics that want to split my head with euphoria. Listen to that! I feel a rising, blooming, bloodwarm…joy. This scene, the sea, the breeze, the scree of birds, the singing of multitudes of children, my feet rooted to the top of this seawall. It’s glorious.
What must the children think of me talking to myself up here? They’re used to it, I suppose. I’ve been talking to you for days. And if not you, this dog.
Maggie, you’re trembling. It’s okay. Oh-kay. I put my hand on her head. She’s shaking. Poor girl. You stay with me. You’ll be all right.
It moves [whispering]. Adjusts itself, like it’s just alighted there and now settles in for a long wait. It’s miles out there. If I can make it out from here…How big is it?
The mass of children fills the beach out to the water and under the long jetty fishing pier that stretches out a couple hundred yards out into the surf. Matagorda barrier island splits just off to the west and I don’t see them beyond that, but in the other direction, to the east, they fill the beach for as far as I can see. Among them are the whale carcasses. I don’t know how many. By the holes among the kids, there’s fifty, maybe more up the beach. With the binocs I can see a few of their rotting jaws agape.
There are a couple of whales floating and rolling with the surf near the beach, running up against the jetty pier’s concrete columns. Big ones, black and gray. When they roll into the pier there’s a thudding and a wet-wood squeak. Shark fins pop up all around them. I can see one thrashing and tugging with a mouthful, its eyes rolled back white. In the frenzy the water whitens and foams.
Dear reader, gotta tell you: there’s fear in this much ecstasy. They fill me with it. Euphoria, intoxication like I can’t explain. I want to laugh out loud, I brim so.
I feel the burden of their need. They need me. They hum now, low. Competes with the waves’ roar and hiss, the pier’s thud and squeak. They pull me.
I fall apart here…I can’t explain. I just can’t. What I’m seeing, hearing, feeling. When a writer can’t do that, he puts his utensil aside and waits. Maybe he comes back and picks it up again. Maybe he doesn’t because he just can’t, and more, doesn’t want to. The story finishes for him and it’s then that it belongs to the world and to time.
The elation I feel is exquisite. I could die feeling this good.
Alas, Mags. A beach. Where we crawled from the smile. I mean slime. Heh. Feeling a little woozy. Sitting a seawall sit in the sun. Hey, alliteration. All litter rationed.
That thing just sits out there. I know it moved. I saw it. Staring contest it wants? Fine.
The kids make me feel welcome with their humsong, yet they won’t approach. Like one wouldn’t approach a powerful force, a hot electrical wire, or wild flames. The euphoria I feel juxtaposed to their wariness of me. Cognitive dissonance doesn’t cut it as a description because it’s beyond mere cognition.
The sun marks the sky’s midpoint. Time I stand up. I’m standing to face them, reader. When I lock my knees, their singing stops. Maggie sits next to me. The euphoria lifts up and away, venting out through the top of my head so suddenly I think I might throw up.
I think of that lipsticked nurse and that little girl. How I threw up right there on the Hancock Bridge.
Thud. Squeak. Here, listen. [thud-squeak of whales hitting pier]
The thing perched on the drilling platform. Does machinery move and flinch like that? It’s miles out there. It could be anyth—
—wait. Way out on the pier. The very end of it. I hear a voice! Solid, old-world weight and fricative. Not a nauseous song.
I’m wincing through the bright. She’s walking, now running down the pier to shore.
Kodie.
I’m jogging along the top of the seawall. [breathless] Toward the dunes in front of the nature center. She’s running parallel to me on the fishing pier which is about a hundred yards to my right heading inland. She’s running and waving.
“Kevin!”
Is she glad or fearful? Seems like she’s good. No kids running after her. C’mon, Maggie! Let’s go see Kodie!
The kids know to back up, give us room, we relics of the old world reconnecting. I’m on the beach in front of thousands and thousands of them. I feel the weight of their stares. Their faces contain ghosts of smiles. They all have the same look, measured in the same amount of ghost. I scan for Johnny. No eyeglasses on any of them. Not one.
Here she comes. Wearing new clothes, like a wispy sarong wrapped around her hips. Toga-like scarves and stuff on her torso. Barefoot. I’ll shut up now.
KJL25: You came! You’re actually here! Oh my god. [the microphone pops and scrapes, sounds of deep long kissing]
KGM: When they took you, I thought you were—
KJL: Oh no! No no no! They’ve been good to me. They’ve bathed me, fed me, sang to me. They put me in…this.
KGM: You look good.
KJL: I feel fine. Unsure, but okay. I’m good, actually. Believe it or not. I’ve been in such a daze, though. How long has it been? What’s this? [tapping sound]
KGM: What? Oh, yeah. On my way down here, hazy days, maybe a week? I’ve been recording what happened to us since the morning of. Like a woefully raw and unedited audiobook memoir.
KJL: Why?
KGM: You know I wanted to write. Dunno. For me. For us. So we don’t forget. Make it a real book someday.
KJL: Hummm.
KGM: Because things are going to change.
KJL: Oh, I know.
KGM: This is a transition period. To remember these early days…You’re nodding, smiling, blinking.
KJL: Yeah?
KGM: Sorry. Sometimes I may lean down into this mike and say something. I’ve been doing this for so long now, talking into this, to myself. This running commentary now…Maggie thinks I’m crazy.
KJL: Hi, Maggie. You kept her. All this time. Brought her with you all the way on the road. I can’t believe it.
KGM: No. No no. The river. I kayaked down here from Lady Bird freaking Lake.
KJL: What?!
KGM: Yeah. They didn’t tell you I was coming?
KJL: They don’t talk, Kevin.
KGM: You wrote that note? How did—
KJL: What note?
KGM: Your handwriting. Look. [Velcro ripping, papers shuffling]
KJL: Um, yeah. My writing. I have no memory of that.
KGM: Is Johnny here?
KJL: Yeah. Out there on the pier with me.
KGM: Why were you all the way out there? Johnny!
KJL: They wanted me out there. I stopped asking why a long time ago. They take me wherever. I don’t struggle. They’re never mean. But they are rather insistent, just by their sheer numbers. Johnny says they won’t be like this for much longer, things are about to change. Like you said, a transition period. Shaky and weird. [pause; beach sounds] Ah! You’re here! But, wait. Hold on. You kayaked, with a dog, all the way from Austin?
KGM: Yes. Floated mostly. River’s completely flooded. Nobody manning the damn systems upriver. Tons of rain, Austin, Utopia—
KJL: You were in Utopia?
KGM: I drove out there to see if maybe I could find those guys who contacted us on the radio.
KJL: Did you?
KGM: Nope. Nobody there.
KJL: What? What’s wrong?
KGM: There was a kid there. Nate. They say anything to you?
KJL: Did Johnny say anything to me about a Nate? Huh-uh.
KGM: Look at that. Guess they’re burning whales’ blubber?26
KJL: Living on the fat-o’-the land.
KGM: They do this before?
KJL: Huh-uh.
KGM: How’d you stay warm?
KJL: Nature center.
KGM: They keep…guard?
KJL: Kind of. You know how they are. They don’t do anything like it was done before. Whenever I’d stir in the night, get up to go to the bathroom—
KGM: The water works here?
KJL: Oh hell no. No. Out in the sand.
KGM: Oh.
KJL: Yeah. So, when I stir or start wandering around they just kind of show up. The numbers increase as needed. Reminds me very much of how ranch dogs herd. They just kind of…insinuate violence. They hardly ever touch me. Their numbers just increase as I get more and more agitated.
KJL: You try to run off?
KJL: Oh yeah. I’ve tested them a few times. They won’t let it happen. They surround, urge you back, create these corridors with their bodies. So quick, it’s just…well, it’s frightening. They seem so on edge. Jumpy. Especially in the last day or so. Guess you were getting close.
KGM: Fighting some internal conflict. Yeah. I got that from Nate’s behavior.
KJL: Hmm.
KGM: Johnny, and that Simon kid on the day of, and then Nate in Utopia, they all said there was a beginning coming. I think you and I together, here, mark it, cause it.
KJL: They do seem docile now that you’re here.
KGM: All the way down, every fifty yards. Those whale fires going on into the dark.
KJL: Hmmmm. Pretty.
KGM: But you’re okay, right? No attacks of white stuff?
KJL: No more coughing either, huh-uh. In fact, after the shock of them taking me, and me losing some time there, I’ve been incredibly bored. The new world is boring. Watching them gather and hum and fish.
KGM: Fish?
KJL: Yeah. Oh man, you won’t believe it. They’ve got it down. No tools, nets, boats.
KGM: Yeah?
KJL: Yeah. They go out in teams. They’re good, I mean, like you wouldn’t believe. One thing about these kids is that there’s no hierarchy or leadership. But it’s always a complete mix of older kids and younger. Little mentorships going on. I guess the older ones tend to be stronger and faster, but the little ones hold their own.
KGM: Speaking of little ones. I haven’t seen babies. And I don’t hear any crying.
KJL: Oh, they’re there. Just they’re out in the middle of them. How they protect them, I guess. I mean, Kevin, they’re a new species, okay? I know we batted this around in Austin, but I’ve been with them for a while now and I’m telling you it’s…you and I are…I don’t even know. New rules, that’s all I know.
KGM: Are you scared?
KJL: See, that’s the thing. I’ve felt very…okay. Very pacified. It’s like I’ve been euphoric, some times more than others. Usually at dawn it’s most intense.
KGM: Me too. On the way down here they’d lay into me. Man, it’s—
KJL: —ecstasy.
KGM: Yes.
KJL: Actually, your arrival today? I knew you were here not because I saw you. I felt you.
KGM: How?
KJL: I felt normal. Old world. Gravity and heaviness, at home in my own skin. I actually settled into myself, and I don’t mean psychologically or emotionally. I mean I felt my bones tug, my pelvis and skull feel the weight again. I felt…tethered, like I wasn’t about to lift off into the sky like those sparks out there, as I have for days and days.
KGM: You’re pointing.
KJL: Huh?
KGM: I’m just telling the recorder here that you’re pointing out at the beach fires.
KJL: Ah, right.
KGM: Now you’re nodding. Nodding and pointing doesn’t work. Say something so the court reporter can hear you.
KJL: Oh, sorry. Yes, your honor. [Kodie’s voice loud and close to the microphone]
KGM: Actually, it’s dear reader.
KJL: Huh?
KGM: Who I’ve been talking to.
KJL: That’s cute. Dear reader. You’re cute.
KGM: You’re batting your eyes at me. You mock.
KJL: I’m a mystery wrapped in an enigma.
KGM: How’d you get down here?
KJL: I don’t know.
KGM: Really. You remember nothing. What do you remember?
KJL: Flashlight beams crisscrossing over all those stones. Screaming “no”.
KGM: That’s when I went out. They tackled me. So much for nonviolence.
KJL: Really though, they haven’t been. Not once since I’ve been with them.
KGM: But they won’t let you leave.
KJL: True.
KGM: And how’s that not violent? Kidnapped by kids.
KJL: You know what I mean. They haven’t physically hurt me. Fed me. Kept me warm. Let me have the run of the nature center.
KJL: A cage at the zoo.
KJL: If you look at it that way.
KGM: I do.
KJL: Don’t think I haven’t thought that too. That’s how I’ve felt at times. Serious case of Stockholm Syndrome has overtaken me. And the kid-ecstasy ha
s certainly helped. [sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]
KJL: Can you declare your love to me on that thing? Make an official record of it.
[sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]
KGM: What’s happened?
KJL: [pause] It’s a reset, I think.
KGM: Clicking refresh.
KJL: Nature, God, she’s hit the reset button on humans. The whales are collateral damage.
KGM: Jespers’s Gene. Fleming’s letter. I’ve been reading Jespers’s paper. I can see why his peers didn’t review it favorably.
KJL: Yeah. His lab-slash-lair certainly raised hair on my neck. To see our names on his whiteboard. Do you really think what he was doing in some way caused this?
KGM: My Grandma Lucille once told me there’s no such thing as coincidence. In all the thinking, and talking, I’ve been doing on my way down here I’ve come to believe her. Best I can gather is Jespers was scratching the surface of something bigger than we can understand and that maybe it triggered the event that morning.
KJL: I don’t think he was alone. There was that guy in France he was talking to.
KGM: I get the feeling a cabal of big-brained people like them were on to something.
KJL: If there were any scientists and theologians left, the debate would be raucous.
KGM: Yep.
KJL: Why did we make it? You’re shrugging.
KGM: Look at those fires.
KJL: No, really.
KGM: We’ve got the conch. The keepers of the flame.
[sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]
KJL: Something I haven’t told you.
KGM: What.
KJL: I’m pregnant.
[sounds of the ocean; whales rubbing against the pier; sounds of gulls crying]
KGM: [whispering] We have to try to escape.
KJL: You insane? No way.
KGM: I still have my gun. And Maggie here.
KJL: I told you. I tried. It’s impossible.
KGM: You were alone. Two of us can do it, I think.
KJL: How many bullets you have there? I mean…they need us, Kevin. I don’t think—
KGM: I thought that. They had me thinking that, coming down here. The dreams. You and Bass kept telling me I’m special. I think you’ve been given a whole lot of Kool-Aid.
The Late Bloomer Page 32