Mr. Sinclair said nothing; he just pushed his way through as they snapped a million pictures of Edgar.
Edgar could hear the cameras from the darkness beneath the coat. It was all very strange.
“Give us something, Commissioner!” they continued to shout. “C’mon, sir!”
“Fellas,” he said, when he arrived at the hospital doors, “you’ll know what happened soon enough. But not tonight, OK? This kid’s had a rough few weeks.”
The hospital doors opened for them as Edgar was ushered inside, and soon they were in the hospital room that Edgar’s mother had told him about.
The one that held his dad.
As Edgar was placed on his feet and the raincoat lifted off his head, there, lying on a bed just a few feet away, was his father.
In all his weariness, Edgar did not know what to say. He just abandoned trying to speak and simply limped over to his dad.
“Got into my dynamite, huh?” asked his dad, smiling, and reached out a hand to him.
“Every stick,” Edgar smiled back.
“Good thinking,” said his dad as he broke into a fit of coughing.
Edgar grasped his father’s hand and squeezed it tight, hard as he could, as a lump rose in his throat.
“Is he going to be OK?” Edgar said, turning to his mother.
“He’s suffering from asphyxiation, exposure, and dehydration,” informed the doctor, who also stood nearby—the same doctor who’d tended to Edgar’s jellyfish sting, “but we do think he will be OK. Son, I’m not really sure if you know this, but your father’s a real hero.”
Edgar had heard.
On the plane ride home from Madagascar, there was footage of people telling stories of how his father had navigated them to safety around the burning hillside, using wet tree limbs for walls, gathering foliage from the mountainsides to treat their wounds, predicting wind and weather movements from the skies, and, of course, fishing small streams using crafted spears and even the metal from his jacket zipper.
Like his mother had said: he nearly roasted a wild boar.
In doing all this, his father had been able to keep the team alive for five days in the fiery wilderness—as well as the young boy they first set out to save—until, in the meantime, as they remained hunkered down, Edgar had brought them rain.
“I lost your tackle box,” Edgar confessed. “And also the Abu Garcia.”
“Yeah?”
Edgar nodded. He hated that the pole was gone—it was truly the finest rig he’d ever known. It had caught so many fantastic fish. “I think some sharks ate it,” he revealed.
“Sharks?” whispered his father. “Oh, wow, you got into a swarm of sharks? What did you do to get out of it?”
“Well, I did what any good sailor would do,” he explained. “I killed them with a machine gun.”
His dad smiled and grabbed his hand, then shut his eyes and squeezed his hand tight. As he did, the doctor walked over and placed a hand on Edgar’s shoulder. “You need to get into bed right now. You need to rest, son. Resting is healing.” He turned Edgar around and looked down at him sternly, but also, with a smile of respect. “Do you plan to stick around this time?”
He guided Edgar to a bed that was adjacent to his father’s and Edgar laid down. Edgar nodded and surrendered to the cool sheets, shuddering at how good it felt. Shay was standing near the door and quietly watched the reunion transpire. Turning to whisper her goodbyes to Edgar’s mother, Milly looked down at the girl and warmly opened her arms wide, hugging her with all she had. Then, she turned and hugged her father, with a deep look of affection in her eyes, tenderly kissing both of their cheeks.
“I cannot even begin to thank you,” she said, her voice suddenly shaky, her eyes filled up with tears.
“Oh, Mrs. Dewitt,” said Mr. Sinclair, “the pleasure was all ours.”
“Can I have a second, Dad?” Shay asked, who, when he nodded, strolled over to Edgar’s bedside and looked down at him. He watched as she sweetly brushed the greasy hair from his forehead and gazed down at him. Yanking a corner of the sheet up a bit higher to his chest, she leaned down and whispered in his ear.
“Get better quick,” she said. “I’ve got a huge surprise for you.”
He nodded. “I love surprises.” Reaching up, he ran a hand through her hair and said, “Tell Flounder to come visit me. I’m bed-ridden, man.’”
She giggled and turned to leave. Then, when the door shut behind her, and as Edgar’s family was alone for the first time since his father had gone missing, the three smiled at each other and began to laugh.
Millie walked in between the two beds and took a hand of each of her men, and then, when she did, they formed a chain.
__________
Two Saturdays later, Edgar was giving his last interview of the day. This time it was Rolling Stone Magazine, and the question was:
“Edgar, now that you know what it’s like to be a hero in two different towns: in Mount Lanier, where you put out the wildfire by your . . . clever means, and Bon Secour, where you secretly mailed your fishing profits to the out-of-work fishermen, if you had the choice to live in either, which town would you rather live in?”
Edgar thought about that deeply. “Well, my mom always says we should ‘Bloom where we are planted.’ So, I guess I can live anywhere. I suppose they’re both my hometowns. Is that OK?”
“Sure! And how does it feel to be a hero?”
“Well, it’s great,” he answered. “Especially when they keep giving you free stuff.”
Both towns had given him the keys to the city, and pretty much every restaurant in Mount Lanier declared that Edgar Dewitt got free food forever, since, why not? If not for him, it would have all burned to the ground weeks ago.
Abu Garcia, the rod and reel company, had mailed him a brand new Commander fishing pole—this one with a gold plated reel. He had really loved his father’s rig, but this thing was the most beautiful red rig known to man.
He couldn’t wait to go try it out.
A note came with the package:
Thank you, Edgar, for calling our Commander the ‘best fishing pole ever made’ when you appeared on The Tonight Show! We are so sorry you lost yours to the terrible sharks! But here, have one on us! Happy fishing!
Shortly after the Rolling Stone interview, at a small airport north of town, Edgar rode his bike up to the tarmac and discovered the Sinclairs’ passenger plane idling on the runway. This must be the big surprise. Shay was standing in the doorway of the plane, waving hugely at him, as beautiful as she ever was.
He rode up and parked his bike in an empty hangar, then jogged up to her and smiled.
“Look who’s here!” she said above the roar, jerking a thumb to the back of the plane. There, clinging to the back wall, sat a horrified Flounder, cursing both of their names.
“But we haven’t even taken off yet!” Edgar laughed, climbing in and greeting his friend. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Listen, Edgar!” said Flounder. “I don’t want to be messed with. You have no idea the horror of this!”
Laughing again, he squeezed Flounder’s shoulder and gave it a shake. Flounder was freshly back from California.
“It’s good to see you again,” said Edgar, elbowing his friend.
“You too,” smiled Flounder. “You too.”
Flounder added, “My parents want me to tell you something. You get free seafood from now on for the rest of your life, for saving our house. But I told them, ‘Just don’t let him fillet it because he leaves too much meat on the bone!’”
Once they were airborne, Shay gave the pilot instructions. “Could you please go that way, sir?” She motioned and pointed south.
The pilot swooped down and took them on a route around the grand peak of Mount Lanier, where the plane was nosed down toward the tree line, and circled. From there, Edgar
could see the wide, gaping hole in the Earth. His hole. Just seeing it again made his heart skip a beat.
Oh man, he thought. I’d love to go falling right now! The pilot swooped even lower, giving Edgar a better look.
“Wow,” he said. “The cabin’s totally gone.”
“Yeah,” Shay nodded. “It completely disintegrated when the water shot up through it. They said people have been finding planks in their yards as far as four counties away. The cabin, the hole, they’re so famous right now, people’ve been selling the boards for, like, fifty thousand dollars a plank on Ebay.”
“Fifty grand a plank?” he asked. “Are they crazy?”
He looked down again at all the masses. “Look at all the people,” he marveled, pointing down. She nodded in agreement. Around a perimeter, tens of thousands of people had camped in a circle around the hole, who had come from all over the globe to get a glimpse of the wondrous hole. The only thing holding the people back was the healthy line of armed military and government officials and swarming scientists who converged on the hole.
Inside the perimeter, large construction crews had been working tirelessly to seal it off, the hole spewing sea water like a volcanic geyser as each high tide rolled in on the other side of the Earth. Meanwhile, in the Southern Hemisphere, large ships scrambled around the clock to seal the hole there, too.
As they glided by, Edgar noticed the scientists at the hole’s edge running samples back and forth to mobile labs that dotted the area. As of yet, nobody could even wager a guess as to why the hole even existed: Who’d dug it? Who’d constructed it in such a way that heat and gravity were impervious to it? When it was dug? And especially, how it was dug?
Of course, of greatest interest to them all were the bricks from the hole’s walls. The ones with the writing on them. The magical bricks.
Apparently, they were indestructible.
The scientists had not yet discovered a way to so much as chip one, rumor had it. They’d used diamonds, lasers, acid—even the largest jackhammers in the world, but nothing was denting them. Every machine that had attempted to break the bricks had been broken themselves.
Of course, the island around the bricks was obviously destructible, but not the bricks themselves. Each brick back in the Indian Ocean currently kissing the water’s surface remained perfectly intact—had been completely impervious to the dynamite blast.
“Check this out,” said Edgar, unfolding a piece of paper for Shay. “It’s a letter from Captain Cali. He sent it to me when I was in the hospital.”
My family is thanking you for saving my life, Edgar Dewitt.
Please come to Somalia for a visit. I will show you how to shoot the gun for real!
“You have any idea you were flying around with such a badass pirate hunter?” he asked her, laughing.
“Sure!” she said. “It totally takes a pirate hunter to find an Edgar Dewitt!”
“So, hey,” he said. “You wanna go to Somalia with me and learn to shoot it?”
Mr. Sinclair, who’d chartered the CH-46 Sea Knight Helicopter, who’d led the search for Edgar and had recruited Captain Cali at the request of Edgar’s mother, was the one to finally discover that Ambercod was actually seabass.
And Captain Cali readily agreed to navigate them, since he knew the seas so well and owed Edgar such a huge debt. Cali had brought with him his most skilled pilot, and used his own helicopter, staying in the air for longer than any other search party in their scramble to save Edgar Dewitt. Like Edgar’s mother, Captain Cali never even considered that Edgar might be dead.
The boy was magical, he believed: the one who pulled him from the sea and dragged him kicking and screaming down into the center of the Earth.
“It’s all dead,” shouted Shay, pointing out the window, indicating the wide expanse of scorched ground below. He looked out over the world and saw nothing but an endless swath of deep, dark brown, where sea salt had poisoned everything.
His flood and its destruction stretched across the landscape like a brown plague, as far as the eye could see.
He winced painfully.
“Oh man,” he groaned. “I did more damage than the drought.”
“Yeah,” she said. “But which would you rather have: a brown world, or a living father?”
“There’s no question,” he said, returning his gaze to the wide world of brown.
“Dr. Van Rossum says everything’ll grow back anyway,” she said, discounting his worry with a wave of her hand. “He says the dead Earth was worth it, too, to see the biggest baking soda and vinegar volcano ever made.” She giggled at this and took his arm. “He says you get an automatic A for that.”
“An A? Really? Well, his will be the only class I get a passing grade in.”
Moments later, when they hit 8,500 feet, Shay tossed him a parachute.
“How are you doing back there?” Edgar called to Flounder, who was currently as pale as an olive-skinned Italian kid can be. A nice, thick sweat was beading across his brow at the moment.
“I hate both of you,” Flounder muttered through clenched teeth, “so much.”
Edgar giggled and then to the pilot, he said, “Sir? Would you please take this young man to solid ground? I don’t think he’s airworthy at the moment.”
“Roger,” said the pilot, grinning.
Shay moved in close and strapped herself to him. “OK,” she said. “Just let me know when you want me to pull the cord.”
He could feel her warm breath on his neck, which felt exceptionally good.
Stepping to the door, the two gave the pilot a pair of enthusiastic thumbs’ up and then, they leapt into the sky.
It was his first jump. But not really.
“Hey!” she screamed into his ear, just after they’d fallen a couple thousand feet. “Isn’t this like falling through the hole? It is, isn’t it?”
The world below him spun delightfully around.
“Yeah!” he shouted. “Almost!” He leaned up and gave her a soft, passionate kiss.
Smiling, they fell back to Earth.
About the author
Ferrill Gibbs is a writer and singer/songwriter from the Alabama Gulf Coast, whose songs have been featured in American Songwriter Magazine and CMJ, material that iTunes has called,
“. . . fully arranged pop songs that literate and mature music fans could enjoy.”
He graduated a touch beneath summa cum laude in English at Auburn University, widely regarded as the off-off-Ivy League of the South. Clinging to the oft repeated axiom that C students rule the world, Ferrill wakes each day in gleeful expectation of the profits to start rolling in, and has a blog that is highly trafficked by his mother, Linnie.
Having worked in several industries including food service and construction, Ferrill now manages a chain of family-owned convenience stores with his wife, “Fish,” in his hometown of Mobile, Alabama, where they live with two wonderful dogs and one feisty kitten.
The Secret Island of Edgar Dewitt is his first novel.
Acknowledgements
First of all, I’d like to extend a huge, heartfelt thank you to my wife who steadfastly stood by me in all my pursuits, who believed in this story enough to drag me to seminars and conferences these past few years and who rallied me when I was low and demanded I defy my corrosive self-doubt at each and every turn. How could I thank you enough, sweet Fish?
To Eric Elfman, who taught me how to write for an audience, who urged me to keep up the faith in my darkest hour, thank you.
To Kerry Kijewski, the smartest mathematician I’ve ever known: thank you for all your help with the Physics. Like Edgar says about the wacky Dr. Van Rossum, Google just can’t explain it like you do.
Thank you to my English teachers at St. Paul’s Episcopal School: Mrs. Gonzales, Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Strachan, and Mr. Courie. Without your inspiration and creativity, I know I�
�d be living under a bridge somewhere.
To Mrs. Marsh, how lucky was I to have crossed your path? Maybe, hopefully, I’ll get to see you again one day.
To Dennis Braswell, thank you for all you’ve done, for guiding me in this process and for being an all-around mentor. Now let’s go publish that book of your poetry!
To my sisters, thank you for all your inspiration in my life. To Barb, who shared stories with me at a young age, and Carol Anne who taught me piano and how to sing vibrato – you’ve both made a tremendous difference in my life and made me appreciate all things “artistic.” Nothing would be the same without you.
To my Dad, who told me big stories like this one back when I was a kid, like the time he bought a globe and plotted a course for us to set sail from Alabama to Australia, telling me how we could build a raft from pine trees from the front yard and go drift amongst the whales and glowing creatures of the deep like Ahab did - I believed in it for years and it was daydreaming like that that got me living in my own imagination. How could I ever thank you enough, Dad?
To the hard working ladies out at the stores who held things down so I could go play “hooky” and write this book: thank you so much for all you do. To Mrs. Pam, Mrs. Liz, Missy S., Mrs. Erika, and especially you, Mrs. Missy Elsworth – none of this could have been done without you.
To the publishers and editors at Amberjack Publishing – to Kayla, Dayna, and Jenny, and all the crew - thank you for finding me and for finding this story. It has all been a dream come true.
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