The next day my body was sore, really sore. I felt the effects of the accident. A few ibuprofen put a dent in the pain and after checking on Del, I went to where they issued ship passes.
It was a new day.
Day one of my search for Lacey’s family.
THIRTY-FOUR – NEEDLE
“I’m sorry, you want what?” the woman at the ship pass table looked at me like I was nuts.
“I want to see what ship a friend got on.”
She laughed.
“That’s funny?”
“Actually it is,” she said. “Do you know if he, or she got on a ship?”
“He left a note that he was coming here with his two kids. That was a few days ago. If he made it, he got a pass. If he didn’t get on a ship, he’s still here. Next ones leave in two weeks right? I just need to find out.”
“How do you propose to do that?”
“When I was in Kansas they kept a log of who got what passes.”
She nodded. “We do.”
“Can you check the log?”
“No. No I can’t.”
I looked around, only a couple of people walked up to the tables. “It’s not like you’re busy.”
“It’s not like it’s easy. Twenty thousand, one hundred and seventy-two passes were issued from this port alone for the ships that left yesterday and the ones leaving now. Twenty thousand names just written down, no data base, no computer, no alphabetical order. It could take days if not weeks of looking at each name. I’m sorry, I don’t have the time for that, or honestly, the drive to do so.”
“I do,” I said. “Can I look?”
She exhaled. “You really want to do that?”
“Yeah, I do. I have nothing else to do but wait. I might as well look.”
She stood up and waved for me to follow. At the back end of the tent, was a long table, there were boxes on top and beneath.
“You look here in this tent and you don’t take them,” she said.
“I promise.”
“Any of the family disabled?”
Lacey had never mentioned a disability, so unless they were hurt like Del, that answer was no. I shook my head.
“Then bypass yellow. I’d start …” she handed me a box, “With Red. Most popular for some reason. Biggest area. There’s another box of logs underneath. Good luck.”
I set up shop at her table. She didn’t seem very pleased with that, almost annoyed. I didn’t see the problem, she was by herself at the big long table and there was room.
However, by the next day I learned her name was June, and she was actually a very nice woman.
By the third day, whenever she had a free moment, June helped me look.
My days were full. Visiting Del in the morning, going to the ship pass tent, looking through the logs then I’d visit with Del again.
I checked each log entry on each page, then checked again.
It took nearly five days to get through the red logs. Suffice to say I was discouraged. Del was optimistic, telling me I’d find them. I was beginning to doubt that. I still had blue, green, and purple. I had only nine days until I had to get on a ship. If they took as long as the red logs, I’d run out of time.
The next batch I grabbed was green. After all, Callie told me to think green. Maybe that was a sign. I needed a sign.
I asked June if she knew where they were sending the soldiers. She told me some of them were staying stateside, others were going on ships according to areas.
In short, there was no way to know where Callie was headed.
Three quarters of the way through the green logs, three days in, my mood went from hopeful to bitter, and June knew.
I slammed the book shut. “All the names are looking the same. Now, I’m probably screwing up.”
“You’re looking for a needle in a haystack. They will look the same. Not to discourage you, but are you sure this is what you’re supposed to do?”
“I believe so. I really do.”
“Then keep looking. You have one more log to go, and two more ships, right? You got to be close. Which one were you going to do last?”
“Other than yellow? Blue.”
“Then do that next.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Always the last place you look, right? So bump it up.” She then turned her attention to a man who approached the table.
That made me smile. I swept up the finished log, set it aside and bent over to grab a new one from the box on the floor.
“Any preference?” June asked.
“No,” he answered. “How about … green.”
“Sure. Name?”
“Herron. James Herron.”
I heard that name and my head sprang up smacking into the table.
“You okay?” June asked with concern.
“Yes.” I rubbed my head, thinking “No, no way. It has to be a coincidence.”I sat up and looked at the college age young man. “James Herron?”
“Yes,” he replied.
I lifted a finger. Lacey’s backpack never left my side, I reached into it, grabbed the notebook and opened it, pulling out the car registration. “Do you know this man?” I handed the card to him.
The second he looked down to the vehicle registration, his body swayed. “This is my father. How did you …?”
“Here.” I handed him the greeting card. “He didn’t get a chance to mail that. I believe it’s for you.”
His fingers trembled as he held the envelope and his eyes glazed over. “You knew my father?”
“No. I didn’t. I’m sorry. He passed away, but my friend ran into him and he helped her get out of Oakland. She wanted to find you, give that to you and thank you for the help he gave.”
Although, Lacey never spoke to James Herron and he was already deceased when she found him, he did help her and that was what his son needed to hear.
He rushed around to my side of the table and embraced me. “Oh my God, thank you. Thank you so much. I needed this closure. Thank you.”
He spoke with me a few moments, then I told him I had to get back to the logs, I needed to find Lacey’s family.
James said after he was assigned a bunk, he’d be right back and would help me look. It was the least he could do.
Knowing how many logs were left, I accepted his help.
After he walked away, June looked at me. “That was real? That really just happened?”
“It did.” I lifted the notebook. “I told you about all this stuff in here.” I was filled with enthusiasm and hope again.
“You realize meeting him was less likely than finding her family. Did you ever think maybe you’re supposed to do more than just find her family? I mean ... that ... just happened.”
“Could be,” I grabbed a pen. I wanted to make a note in Lacey’s notebook that I ran into James. When I opened the cover I immediately saw Amber’s photograph. After the crash, after everything it was still in there. Staring down at it, I thought June maybe had a point.
<><><><>
James returned within an hour and immediately dove into the logs with me. He suggested that he start on blue, kill two birds with one stone. I gave him the names and details to look for.
First blue log, second page in, James called out. “What was her weird maiden name?”
“Some long polish name,” I said.
“Would her mother have registered alone?”
“I doubt it.” I said. “What’s the name?”
He couldn’t pronounce it, so he spelled out the name, ‘Budziszewisky’.
“Shit,” I said.
“One person. Martha?” he asked.
“Oh my God.” I stood up.
“That’s her. That’s them,” James said excitedly. “Three lines down. Kale, Davis. Three people. Jana and Evan.”
I screamed like I won the lottery. June shrieked as well and so did James.
“They’re on blue,” I said. “Do you know where Blue is going?”
Suddenly June went from h
appy to serious. “I’ll find out the details for you.”
“Can you get me on a blue?”
June nodded.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I just know, with all the ports, there are one point three million people slated for blue.”
“Well, it’s better than one point four, right?” I asked.
“You are optimistic.”
“I happened upon him,” I pointed. “He found their names. I’ll find them.”
“I believe you will,” June said. “I believe you will.”
<><><><>
After discovering the ship, James offered to change his pass and go with me. I thanked him, but told him I felt it was something I had to do on my own. However, I asked June if it was possible for James to go with Del. She said one family member was permitted. It meant more to me that James stayed with Del and helped him recover. I also asked him to keep his eye open for a feisty ninety-two year old woman named Ruth.
He promised he would.
My mood was better and I really turned an optimistic page. It was short lived. Suddenly I found myself doing the math.
One point three million people, if I spent ten seconds on each person that was thirteen million seconds.
Two hundred and seventeen thousand hours.
Nine thousand days.
Three years.
That was speed searching and frankly, ten seconds per person wasn’t a reality.
As they days grew closer to my boarding a blue ship, I found out more information. Blue ships were going to Argentina. There were over seven hundred refugee centers planned through the twenty-three provinces.
My undertaking was larger than my optimistic view.
“You want to not do this?” Del asked, as I visited him.
“No, that’s not it. I just don’t know how I’m going to do this.”
“Maybe when you get there, they’ve registered people. It might be a piece of cake.” He reached over to me, gripping my hand. “You have to look at the big picture. Whenever you get discouraged you look at that. This was something that was placed in your hands long before you knew it. This is your task now. God made sure of it. Lacey wrote names of dead strangers, collected souvenirs from them and you ran into the family member of one of them. You’re not a drinker, yet you were drunk the day of the accident, making your body relaxed when we crashed. You moved seats right before. And the biggest thing … after that crash, the job literally landed in your lap in the form of that journal. You don’t get any bigger signs than that.”
“It’s just … seven hundred camps,” I said.
“Some might be big, some might be small.”
“This is all easy for you to say, you’re going to a rehab place. This is going to take years.”
“Oh, yeah?” Del raised his eyebrow. “Got something else, or better to do?”
Del drove home the point. Not only did I have nothing else to do, there was absolutely nothing better to do than to find Lacey’s family.
I had a direction. That was more than I had when I arrived in Norfolk.
THRITY-FIVE – SUMMER
The closest I was, in my entire life, to a foreign country was Niagara Falls, Canada and I viewed it from the New York side. Yet, here I was on a ship heading to a foreign land. I was on board for three weeks. It only took a few days to get there, but we waited miles off shore until they moved the first wave of refugees to camps.
Once we docked, we walked into a mess. It was a slum consisting of poor sewage, tents and rodents. It wasn’t that the government of Argentina wanted the refugees to live that way, there was no choice. They were dealing with their own problems in the aftermath.
I envisioned that south of the equator would be bright and sunny. While it was indeed much warmer and brighter, the sky was not blue. It was gray, almost as if that was our new atmosphere. At least the sun was trying to break through.
There was chaos and lawlessness in the camp, and I was glad to leave. After three weeks I was moved to a permanent refugee camp. I labeled that the starting point.
It wasn’t easy, or advised to go to other camps.
In the early stages, the remaining US government was trying to work with the Argentinean government to give us temporary homes until we could return to the United States. I was told by one official they would have a reliable refugee registry in place within two years.
Two years?
After several months, I was granted a work permit. It enabled me to travel to nearby camps. There I secured a list of the location of every camp, and then I slipped away one night.
It went unnoticed. No one registered me.
I made friends easily with the local people and they were all very friendly and helpful. I grew accustomed to my new lifestyle. Sleeping where I could, staying with host families that took me in, and walking wherever I needed to go.
Thousands of miles of walking.
The first year was so disorganized that I had to make my way back to several camps, because they kept moving people around due to their skills.
Year two, when longer range communication was restored, they started moving people once again. This time to larger camps, trying to migrate all Americans together for when it was time to leave. Things were beginning to recover, the world was healing, technology was slowly returning.
After two years, I was still searching. Every tent, every hut, every face. When I met anyone I showed them my pictures. It seemed as if Davis, his children, and the other people who helped Lacey never existed.
Seven hundred camps became two hundred. Two hundred camps crammed packed with people.
Every time they migrated people, I had to start over.
It was funny, I ran into the same people over and over, but never ran into Davis or the others.
The world had been thrust into a mini ice age, and I wandered a cold earth looking for people I had never met.
Then after three years, finally the clouds began to part. I remember seeing the first speck of blue sky, the first inkling of the sun. The temperature went from an average forty degrees a day to sixty. That first day of sun, everyone gathered outside, staring up to the sky, waiting, wanting more.
The truth was finally discovered.
Everything up to that point was ‘he said she said’, relayed information and speculation. With the revealing of the sky came the reality of what happened.
There was no planetary body that slammed into the moon, no meteor passing so close to earth that it threw us into a tizzy, it was just a longer, overdue cycle that caused a chain reaction. A simple natural burp of earth ignited a firestorm in the Pacific Ring of Fire. That in turn triggered the major eruptions of the Long Valley Caldera, and thirty days of continuous small eruptions at Yellowstone. All of that shot so much debris, smoke and ash into the air that the entire earth was shrouded in a gray cloak. It was more concentrated north of the equator.
It blocked out the sun completely in the north, freezing the landscape.
After three years, the sky started to clear south of the equator. The earth literally spun out of it. Just like a cataclysmic event created the moon, this event created a ring around earth.
Once the clouds parted it was visible. During the day it looked more like a cloud, but at night, it was illuminated, breathtaking and beautiful. I would stare at it for hours. In a strange land, I felt as if I weren’t even on earth any longer.
However, with the bright sun came the dark news. My search would once again take another turn. Not only were they integrating more camps, they were preparing to send people back to America, repopulating and rebuilding the southernmost areas first.
I had befriended a woman named Genevieve. She worked really hard for the new government office, The Department of American Migrants.
We fought a lot, I accused her of doing a poor job of keeping track of people, and she called me insane. I was the biggest pain in her ass at first. She threatened to have me arrested for abandoning a government issued job.
Eventually we became friends and she was the one who told me about the merged southern camps and how they were scheduled to ship back first. She suggested I go there and start, at least if I didn’t find Davis, I knew he was still in Argentina.
The camps were named after states in the US and the first one scheduled to return was the Alabama camp. Under the agreement that I would deliver documents and reports to the camp commander, I caught a ride with a military unit and following a two day ride, arrived at the Alabama camp.
One of the soldiers in that unit told me that he believed the camp had registered everyone.
I didn’t believe it until we pulled in.
I honestly didn’t want to leave. It was the first time that I entered a camp that was organized and clean. The tents were dismal, but they were in order and straight.
I knew that this particular camp had been there for a while and was once smaller. I was there in the beginning. It had grown and matured. Gardens were planted on the perimeter, children ran around, and down the main path people set up vendor stands, bartering fresh cooked food for other needed goods.
It wasn’t a camp, it was a community. It was life.
The command center was no longer a tent, but a small building. I wanted to get in there, drop off the information and find out if they had a registry.
Just as I opened the door, I heard the call of my name.
“Madison!”
I turned around and to my surprise it was Callie.
She rushed my way and greeted me with a huge bear hug, nearly toppling the items from my arms. I was so shocked I couldn’t register the reunion.
“This is amazing,” she said. “I just got here last week. How long have you been here?”
“About five minutes. I just got dropped off.”
Callie looked at the things in my arms. “Are you working for the administration?”
“For today,” I said. “Let me drop these off and we can talk. I missed you. It’s so great to see a friend.”
Callie opened the door for me. “I know. Where’s Lacey? Did she find her family?”
I stopped cold.
“No,” Callie groaned out. “Not Lacey. I thought you were carrying her backpack.”
Under the Gray Skies Page 17