Mayday

by Karen Harrington

  DATA

  List of Medical Miracles

  Two-year-old boy with cancerous tumor near spine. Day before his surgery, doctors find the tumor has vanished.

  Man injured in car accident wakes up from coma ten minutes before life support was to be turned off. One week later, says his first words to parents: “I love you.”

  An Irish woman with terminal cancer in her kidneys baffles doctors after her scans and X-rays show the tumors have disappeared, possibly attributed to her own immune system and fervent prayers.

  My throat cracked.

  “Tell me what we’re looking at here,” he said, gesturing to the closet door.

  I took a deep breath. “These are maps of East Texas. The red dots show where the NTSB has searched, and the yellow pins show where someone found a piece of the wreckage.”

  “And the area circled in pencil?”

  “Caddo Lake State Park. The area no one has searched because it’s too far east and out of the estimated debris field. But look at this.”

  I showed him the video about Nelda White’s found tree skirt.

  “Heavier objects were thrown from the plane, and the pull of gravity allowed them to land at a distance of about 17 miles from the crash site. My theory is that, with winds reported at fifty-plus miles per hour on the crash date, a four-pound, five-by-nine-and-a-half-feet cotton US burial flag might have taken on kite-like qualities and gone aloft farther east. Nelda White, the woman in 14A who sat next to us? The tree skirt and the flag went out of the plane simultaneously. They must have landed near each other.”

  “Quite a theory.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Let’s just stand here and have a good, long look.”

  I didn’t so much study the data as wait him out. He might compliment me or he might make fun of me. It could go either way.

  “The weather forecast for this week is clear. Good driving weather, in fact. Good week for a road trip.”

  Grandpa’s voice was as clear and confident as ever. His don’t argue with me voice. His healthy, precancer voice. Still, I didn’t know if he was serious. One thing I learned from having lost my voice was this: I’d made my voice say and do things that didn’t match my mind. A lot. Lots of times when I’d uttered facts, my voice sounded more confident. Like the voice of another person.

  “Your face is a question mark, son,” Grandpa said.

  “But… the liver?”

  “Remember how I told you about Henry Dalton, who fought in the Revolutionary War? He died on the steps of his home. Got all the way home on foot after a long fight on the battlefield.”

  Mom walked in. “What’s going on?”

  “Planning a road trip,” Grandpa said.

  “What? A road trip?” she said.

  Okay, I admit I was giddy. Happy. I’d been hoping for a chance to go east and explore areas even the NTSB and Liz Delaney hadn’t considered.

  So I said to her, “Mom! We’re going to go and get Uncle Reed’s flag! Even though, you know, it’s sort of impossible.”

  True story.

  “Isn’t that like looking for a needle in a haystack?” Mom asked.

  “Denny says it’s the ultimate needle-in-a-haystack search.”

  “Well, my grandson has a theory,” Grandpa said. “And so we’re going to search or die trying.”

  “Dad!” Mom had her hands on her hips now.

  “What? Oh, well…”

  “Don’t say stuff like that.” Her voice sounded hurt.

  “The person in the room with cancer can say whatever the Sam Hill he likes. It’s a law!” His voice had laughter in it. In fact, he slapped his knee and laughed out loud. And it made me laugh. A little.

  “It’s not funny,” Mom said, but she laughed a little, too. Then she got teary-eyed. “You can’t. You can’t go.”

  “Jennifer, we’re going,” Grandpa said. “Three days maximum, and then you can worry over me as much as you wish. Give me your silver bell and wait on me hand and foot. How about that?”

  “I just don’t know,” Mom said. “Wayne?”

  She said my name like a question. I looked at her straight on.

  “Mom, do you trust me?”

  “Wayne, honey, I trust you like I trust the sun will rise tomorrow.”

  “I’ll take care of him. I will. Let me do this for you, okay?”

  Then Grandpa took Mom by the shoulders and he hugged her tight. Sergeant Grandpa, the hugger.

  “Hey, you raised him,” he said. “He didn’t get that stubborn streak from me.”

  Yes.

  Mom swallowed hard. Her fear was trying to stomp out our plan. Her mind was racing, I could tell.

  What if he gets sick?

  What if they need a doctor?

  What if? What if? What if?

  Do you know what? What if is also a plaguing question.

  DATA

  Caddo Lake borders Texas and Louisiana.

  It is the largest natural lake in the South.

  Home to the world’s largest cypress forest

  Total of 26,810 acres of swamp

  Items found from Flight 56 in the park = zero

  Conclusion: Odds of finding the lost item are likely to match odds of being in a plane crash = 1 in 1.2 million.

  CHAPTER 31

  The next morning, Grandpa drank hot tea and seemed to come alive with the force of a confident drill sergeant.

  Or, just like Grandpa.

  I walked into the kitchen and caught him dancing with energy.

  “Hurry up, Wayne.”

  I filled a bottle with water and packed a bunch of snacks in my backpack.

  Mom came in, holding the phone in her hand. “Wayne, our neighbors are calling around to see if anyone knows about the decorative snowman on their porch. Know anything about that?”

  I looked away from her and scanned the kitchen. My eyes landed on her blue glass birds.

  “Did you know that the color blue is thought to help a person solve creative problems and that people are more productive in blue rooms?”

  “Mmhmm. Just as I thought,” Mom said.

  Within minutes, we had Grandpa’s old truck packed. We were soldiers on a mission. Like we were just going to walk into the woods and point to it. There it is! Can’t you see it?

  “You’ll call as soon as you get there?” she asked.

  “Of course,” Grandpa said, swinging his duffel bag up over his arm. It seemed like his sickness had vanished. He wasn’t complaining or sleeping or wearing a worried look on his face.

  “Soldier, you ready to head out?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Flashlight? Pocket knife? Compass?”

  “Check.”

  “Clean white shirt? Success loves preparation. You never know when a clean shirt will be needed.”

  I went to my room for a clean white shirt.

  And we were off. Driving east in the pale morning light. Plane lights blinking above and car headlights twinkling in the distance. We covered miles and miles of road without stopping or saying anything. Even our posture in the cab of his truck was tilted forward, as if the lean of our bodies would help us get there faster. About an hour in, I could see Grandpa twisting around in his seat, trying to get comfortable.

  “I need to stop. Restroom break.”

  “Gee, Wayne, you’ve got the bladder of a little girl.”

  He exited the highway.

  “That looks good.” It was an old, beat-up-looking café. Harry’s Café. We went inside and sat at the counter.

  I went to the restroom, and when I returned, there were two mugs on the counter.

  “That’s yours,” he said, pointing to a steaming cup of coffee. “If I can’t enjoy it, you can. Ha!” He patted me on the back, and I sat down in front of the cup. Some guy walked over with a plastic bear full of honey and handed it to Grandpa. His name tag read HARRY, and his appearance matched his name.

  “Anything else?” Harry asked as he looked at me. “Hope
that coffee doesn’t stunt your growth.”

  I took a couple of bitter sips. It tasted like brown salt.

  “It’ll put some vim and vigor in your bones, Wayne.”

  “I can’t believe you love this stuff.”

  “Less of a love. More of a habit. Remember to separate the two in your mind if you can. Many an unwise person has fallen in love with his habits.”

  “I know what you’re doing.”

  “What am I doing?”

  “Trying to pelt me with all your knowledge.”

  “Says the boy with a university of facts in his head.” He tousled my hair. An actual hair tousle. Who was this guy?

  Back on the road, Grandpa turned up the truck’s radio.

  By lunchtime, we turned off the highway and headed north toward Karnack, right on the border of Caddo Lake State Park. Where the tree skirt of Nelda White in 14A had been recovered. Cruising down the two-lane stretch of highway, surrounded on both sides by tall, dark green pine trees so thick that daylight couldn’t shine through, I revisited the logic of our mission.

  It was void of logic.

  Epically so.

  Looking out on that forest, you realized how anything could get lost in those trees. A herd of yellow elephants could be hidden in there and you wouldn’t know it.

  Even though I wanted everything to make sense, I tried to shake off the notion that there was nothing scientific about this whole trip. The steps to our process consisted of (1) drive east, (2) get out of car, and (3) look around.

  New topic.

  “Did you know that a California couple struck gold while out walking their dogs?”

  “Is that so?” Grandpa asked.

  “They found two old buckets full of gold coins. Just on a walk, they became rich.”

  We turned off the main road and drove up a path near a cabin Grandpa had rented, just a half mile from where Nelda White’s tree skirt had caught in the trees.

  “Never guess the name of this town, Wayne.”

  “What?”

  “Uncertain. We have arrived in Uncertain, Texas. How d’you like them apples?”

  Weeks ago, when Uncertain, Texas, was a tiny red pin dot on my map, I’d looked up the origins of the name. The town of Uncertain is right on the Caddo Lake shoreline. The town got its name years ago when surveyors tried to determine the true border between Texas and Louisiana. They were uncertain about which side of the state line they were on. The word stuck.

  I could see the happy thoughts form behind Grandpa’s eyes. I didn’t want to ruin his moment by blurting out those facts. But if you want to know, I was blazing with hope, too. The town’s name made me more certain that Reed’s flag was hiding here. Wasn’t it the kind of detail Uncle Reed loved to include in his great true stories? It was almost like he was winking at us, daring us to go into the giant cypress forest with nothing and emerge with found treasure.

  CHAPTER 32

  Grandpa burst into my cabin room before dawn. I’m not kidding when I say burst, because the force of his entrance made the door hit the wall and left a dent.

  “What? What time is it?”

  “Get dressed. We’re burning daylight.”

  “But there’s no daylight yet!”

  Outside the cabin, it smelled green. The sky was edged with light. Grandpa checked his compass.

  “Good day! I can feel it,” he said. “I’ve packed our provisions and water. Grab that orange backpack and binoculars.” His voice was powerful. I wondered if this was the voice his soldiers got to hear all those years ago.

  Our cabin was situated in the midst of other cabins, each maybe two hundred feet from the other. We headed away from the cabins and down a path marked with stumps and etched numbers. Mile 1.5. The ground was thick with leaves and rocks. Grandpa found a sturdy branch and used it as a walking stick.

  “Always protect your feet. If your feet are fine, you are fine.”

  The first knowledge pelt of the day.

  I found a branch of my own. It was handy to have a stick to feel out the path ahead. And we continued, walking through twisted and craggy cypress trees and brush. A sweet smell hung in the air, and morning light awakened everything. Birds sang. Leaves rustled. We marched. I got lost in the unfamiliar, beautiful woods and the steady step-crunch-step-crunch of my feet. But no signs of red or blue in the trees. Just thick drapes of olive-green Spanish moss.

  “See anything?” Grandpa asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Did you know that in 1861, during the Civil War, Captain William Driver sewed his twenty-four-star Union flag into his bedcovers so that Confederate forces descending upon Nashville couldn’t take it from him? Flags can be hidden in unusual places, Wayne.”

  Knowledge pelt number two.

  I gazed up at the trees just as a plane emerged from the branches. My hand automatically went up into the air and carried it, and I told the passenger in seat 14A hello.

  “Did you happen to see that guy who delivered and installed your mother’s new dishwasher? His truck was spotless. Never do business with a man who has a dirty truck. The way a man keeps his ride tells you a lot about how he keeps his books.”

  Pelt.

  “Grandpa?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I wish things were different.”

  And that made the air around us awkward.

  And silent.

  “Think we’ll find the flag?” I asked finally.

  “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Just then, a park ranger drove past. His truck was scuffed and muddy and blended into the woods.

  “I also wanted to tell you that there’s a correct way to edge the grass. Straight, deep cuts an inch from the sidewalk.”

  “That’s random.”

  “Isn’t everything?” He was smiling when he said that.

  “I guess.”

  “Your great-grandfather, RB Dalton, taught me all these things, you know. A great student of history, that man. Always said a young boy needed to fill himself with knowledge and passion. Empty vessels get filled with the wrong things.”

  Pelt. Pelt. Pelt.

  “What does RB stand for?” I asked. “You never told me.”

  “His name was a problem. His mother named him RB from birth, God knows why. But the United States Army requires a full name, no abbreviations. So he had to fill out all his forms R-only B-only. He went through the service called Ronly Bonly Dalton.” Grandpa laughed. “When he got out of the service, he was so sick of it that he decided to call himself Howard.”

  “Howard?”

  “That’s where you get your middle name.”

  I’d never been a fan of my name. And now to know I was partially named after Ronly Bonly Dalton? Well, let’s just say I would’ve changed my name, too.

  “Glad I’m not totally named after him.”

  We stood at the edge of the water. A little sunlight shone on its surface. It was so quiet and beautiful. We walked out onto a dock and scanned the trees for uncommon colors. Once again, they gave back greens and grays. Nothing red, white, or blue.

  I lost track of time. I just followed him. By the time we made it back to the cabin, we were tired and silent and flagless.

  The next morning, we headed out in the opposite direction from the previous day, winding through the tall cypress and pine trees.

  “Tired?” I asked Grandpa.

  “Not too much.”

  But he was.

  “Just wishing Reed was with us. That boy could find a whisper in a whirlwind.”

  We walked alongside the banks of the lake. The water was a pea-green color and dotted with lily pads and dead cypress stumps. I turned my focus upward, adjusted the binoculars, and searched the treetops again.

  I guess we’d walked for a while, looking skyward. I pressed my walking stick into the ground and kept moving. At one point, I almost lost sight of Grandpa. I turned around to find him about fifty yards behind me, perched on a rock. His whole body appeared heavy. It might have been
time to quit the search for the day, if not forever.

  I scanned the lake as if it might give up an answer. Where should we go?

  The waters glimmered and sounded cool and reassuring, as if to say, Come on in!

  “You gents need a ride?” A man not far from us was working on his boat next to a wooden dock. Along the dock, there was a sign: JOHNBOAT RENTALS. “Going fishing?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but not for fish,” I told him. “Can you give us a tour up Big Cypress Bayou and back? We’re scanning the banks and trees.”

  “For what?”

  For everything.

  For all the missing treasures in the world.

  For a needle in a haystack, otherwise known as an impossible adventure.

  “Be right back,” I said.

  Soon enough, we were on the water, guided by the man who called himself Cap.

  There were three bench seats inside the johnboat, and we sat behind Cap as he took off down Caddo Lake. In the center of the water, I scanned from the left and Grandpa searched to the right. The flag might have been deep in the woods, near the banks waiting for us, or nowhere.

  There was only so much green I could look at. I wondered if anything could be found in this much thick spring green. Maybe if we’d come in another season when the trees were bare. That thought had tugged at me all morning. The only thing that gave me hope was that 14A’s tree skirt had been found in this same season. I clung to that piece of data.

  And the steady hum of the boat and the cool breeze off the river made us press on. It gave Grandpa a chance to rest. I worried that all his energy was used up. The liver causing its trouble again.

  After a half hour of Cap telling us about alligators and waterfowl and a little history of the lake, he turned the johnboat backward and headed around a bend.

  “Wait! There!” I said, pointing to a dock up ahead. All I could see was a patch of red. It stood out from the ten shades of green all around. And it sent a quickening through me. A flash of hope.

  “Head over there, Cap,” Grandpa said.

  It was a perfect dock hanging over the murky water. Spanish moss draped from one side. There were two sets of steps descending into the bayou. A tin-roofed, fresh-painted double-wide a hundred yards beyond the water’s edge. And smack-dab in the center of the dock was a pole flying Old Glory. An American flag. A flag picking up a little of the breeze.