The first call he placed was to Amelia’s mother, Amy Otis Earhart. George knew she would be waiting for word of Amelia’s triumph. How could he tell her that her daughter was missing over the Pacific? His voice quivered out of control. Nevertheless, he tried to remain positive as he spoke.
“Mother Earhart, this is George...”
“Where are you, George?” implored Amy Earhart.
“I’m in San Francisco, at coast guard headquarters. Have you heard the news yet?”
“It’s all over the radio, George,” said Amy. Considering the circumstance, she sounded surprisingly calm.
“I don’t want you to worry, Mother Earhart. Everything possible is being done to find Amelia. This is not the time to think the worst.”
“Amelia is not dead, George,” said Amy matter-of-factly. “I’m quite certain of that.”
“Of course not...” He seemed to be reassuring himself as much as giving comfort to his mother-in-law.
Amelia’s mother took charge of the conversation: “Weeks before she left on this flight, Amelia said there were certain things she could not tell me. At the time I thought she was being cryptic for the sake of drama, but now it all makes sense to me. I’m convinced this has something to do with those visits to the White House, George. You must urge Roosevelt to tell us everything he knows!”
“Mother Earhart, he’s the President of the United States! What can I say to him?”
“Whatever is necessary, George... I’m certain he knows what’s happened to her. And I know she’s alive, George. I feel it in my bones.”
The son-in-law promised to call the White House.
G.P.’s next call was to Jackie Cochran, Amelia’s long time friend and psychic consultant. Personally, G.P. doubted her abilities, but he was desperate for any information whatsoever. “Anything you can tell me, Jackie,” he implored, “might save Amelia’s life!”
Of course Jackie Cochran wanted to help Amelia, but her consent held conditions. “I’ll share my impressions, George, but you must promise to keep my name out of the papers. Not one word to the press!”
“You have my word, Jackie.”
The psychic began, “I was aware immediately that Amelia was in peril. She came down quite unexpectedly... On a deserted island south and east of her intended landing site. She’s quite disoriented, but definitely alive! Exact location of the island is uncertain, I’m afraid...”
“Is she hurt?” he wanted to know.
“She has only minor injuries, though Mr. Noonan fractured his skull on a bulkhead. He didn’t make it, I’m afraid. I’m terribly sorry, George.”
“Anything more?” G.P. solicited.
“There is a boat called the Itasca nearby. Also, there is a Japanese fishing vessel in the vicinity. But, search as they may, neither will locate this island.”
“Why not?” G.P. asked.
“This is very, very strange,” Jackie noted. “While they are apparently searching for her in the right place, they seem to be in the wrong time...”
“I don’t understand, Jackie,” said G.P.
“Nor do I,” said the psychic. “And neither will anyone else. This mystery will persist until the nature of time itself is clear to everyone.”
To say the least, G.P. felt spooked by the psychic’s discarnate forecast, though he wasted no time requesting that a search be initiated for an obscure island southeast of Howland in the Phoenix group. Close contacts at navy headquarters accommodated him without delay, and the U.S.S. Colorado made full steam to the locality in question. The ship’s captain sent up all three of his 3U-3 spotter planes, but each pilot reported that he could not even locate the reefs and atolls for which he searched.
Nevertheless, the Colorado continued searching, visiting Enderbury, Phoenix, McKean, Gardner, and Hull Island. Only Hull was inhabited, but the islanders had never even heard of Amelia Earhart.
Besides visual search efforts, radio massages were broadcast repeatedly, a simple hail devised by G.P. himself: “AE—Land or water? North or south?”
Coast guard navigators prepared, at G.P.'s insistence, a chart of the great circle ‘base course’ from Lea, New Guinea to Howland Island. Putnam assumed Noonan would have attempted to calculate a drift angle as soon after take-off as possible. From available weather reports G.P. was able to predict their possible drift to be plus or minus eleven degrees. Projecting this track across the breadth of the south Pacific, he surmised they might have passed as much as one hundred forty miles south of Howland. That course concurred with Jackie Cochran’s vision. And there remained the enigmatic conundrum proposed by the psychic concerning a fundamental discrepancy in time itself! Yet it was also possible that exactly the opposite drift ratio had occurred, putting Amelia and Fred one hundred forty miles north of their target, down somewhere in the outlying islands of the Marshalls. G.P. knew that each atoll would have to be searched.
All the while Putnam never stopped talking to the reporters who gathered at coast guard headquarters in San Francisco. “AE will pull through,” he told a writer from the New York Sunday Mirror. “Of course I’m worried, but she has more courage than anyone I know. And I have confidence in her ability to handle any situation. She’s likely to turn up with hardly a hair out of place. That’s AE!”
While G.P. was talking to the reporters the radio operator who had kept him informed over the course of two days passed him a transcription of a communiqué from the PBY flying boat:
“LAST TWO HOURS IN EXTREMELY BAD WEATHER BETWEEN ALTITUDE 2000 AND 12000 FEET. SNOW, SLEET, RAIN, ELECTRICAL STORMS. IN DAYLIGHT CONDITIONS LOOK EQUALLY BAD. CLOUD TOPS APPEAR TO BE 18000 FEET OR MORE. RETURNING TO PEARL HARBOR.”
By now Vidal had arrived from Washington. Going head to head with G.P., he had his own ideas concerning the parameters of the search. Hardly the best of friends, the two men here had a common cause—Amelia’s rescue and well-being. They found a quiet corner out of earshot where reporters would not disturb them.
“Look!” said Gene. “They’re out there trying to cover three million square miles. Obviously that’s an impossible task. The search must be narrowed.”
“Narrowed to where?” Putnam wanted to know.
“Before the flight,” said Gene, “she told me that if they could not locate Howland she would probably turn back toward the Marshalls. It’s there we must concentrate our effort!”
“Can we get help from high office?” Putnam asked.
“What exactly do you mean, George?”
“I mean from FDR?”
“I don’t have a direct line to the president,” said Vidal.
“What about the DOC? They built the runway!”
“Yes, I’m sure I can count on the secretary,” said Vidal.
Putnam nodded. Acknowledging Vidal's influence, George began to trust that someone in a lofty position would spearhead a concerted search and rescue effort. He implored Vidal to cable the Secretary of Commerce at once.
“...REQUEST YOUR GOOD OFFICES IN OBTAINING COOPERATION OF BRITISH AND JAPANESE IN CONTINUING SEARCH ESPECIALLY REGARDING ELLICE, GILBERT, AND MARSHALL ISLANDS, OCEAN ISLAND AND AREA NORTHEAST OF SAME. ALSO IF POSSIBLE REQUEST SOME EXAMINATION OF ISLAND NORTHERLY AND NORTHWESTERLY OF PAGO PAGO. CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION: EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE SEEMS TO EXIST INDICATING CASTAWAY STILL LIVING, THOUGH OF SUCH STRANGE NATURE CANNOT BE OFFICIAL OR PUBLICLY CONFIRMED.”
“If we’re narrowing the search,” George inquired, “why the Gilberts? We’re talking about sixteen coral reefs located six hundred miles west of Howland—a mere two hundred square miles of land scattered haphazardly over more than a million square miles of ocean!”
“Consider the titanic ocean current,” said Vidal. “It swirls westward along the equator in that area. The drift, aided by constant trade winds, could possibly carry a floating object westward for a significant distance.”
So with the impetus of Washington the search continued. Unprecedented, the cost of such an operation mounted steadily, past
four million dollars. President Roosevelt took some heat for the expenditure on behalf of a private citizen, but he was able to fend off his detractors, stating that the ships and personnel would have been engaged anyway, and that the search enabled the navy to survey areas which were previously not well-charted and were now under Japanese control. Deeply concerned for the welfare of the young, female flying ace, the president publicly expressed his solicitude. And in her weekly newspaper column Eleanor Roosevelt also voiced her regard for Amelia: “I feel that if she comes through safely she will feel that what she has learned makes it all worthwhile. But her friends will wish that service could be rendered without such risk to a person whom many love...”
By the end of July, the official search was called off. Still, George was unwilling to give up hope. From Washington he told Amy, “Opinion seems unanimous that Amelia is somehow, somewhere, still alive. We are doing everything possible to find her.”
CHAPTER 16
Wili-Wili
FOR FIVE DAYS the trade winds had not come. The cruel heat would not relent, and the humidity wrapped round the island like liquid amber. Pestered by biting flies and swarms of gnats even at midnight, Julian lay, naked, on his hammock, fanning himself with a frond. The air remained motionless and stifling.
Waking to leaden skies he decided to hike over the divide to look for Amie where the great waterfall plunged endlessly into the Seven Sisters. There they might languish in the cool water to allay their torrid misery.
Her endurance tested by oppressive weather, Amie welcomed him as a friend, and together they bathed in the restorative waters. In her hair Amie wore a brilliant red blossom; around her neck, a plumeria lei.
The compelling glow upon her cheeks made Amie’s face seem like a floral corolla. Amidst many splendors, Julian saw Amie as the most beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes upon. Helplessly enamored, he was left breathless and reeling. Julian did not want to take his eyes off her. Not ever!
Afflicted and depleted on the beach, Julian had seemed almost pathetic to Amie at first, but now, as she washed his shaggy hair and trickled clear water over his face with her fingers, she acknowledged the obvious change in his physical bearing. The rejuvenating reservoir was working its magic on him, just as it had, over time, on her.
Now convinced that she did not want him gone, the very idea of being cast again into suffocating loneliness seemed a desolation Amie could not endure. Yet her sentiments for Julian had outpaced mere need. She had begun to experience feelings of unabashed desire for the man. For Amie, such empathy had been long suppressed—not only since being marooned on the island, but perhaps before that.
“What relief!” Julian proclaimed as he submerged himself in the cool, fresh water, then came up sputtering.
“I don’t mind the heat,” said Amie, “but the humidity is unbearable.”
“Is it like this often?” Julian asked.
“Only when the Trades don’t blow.”
“It’s miserable out of the water.”
“I know a place where it’s much cooler,” said Amie. “It’s quite far, though. And it’s a difficult ascent. There’s a cave near the cinder cone where we can sleep.”
“I’m up for the climb,” said Julian. “What do we need to bring?”
“Very little: A basket of fruit and a tapa cloth on which to lie. Nothing more.”
Walking over a narrow trail, just behind Amie, Julian moved along sheer cliffs that in places dropped hundreds of feet to the ocean. Venturing deeper into these primitive hanging valleys than he had yet gone, Julian was amazed by the wild profusion of flowers. Ginger and ti formed the understory in forests of kukui, mango, and bamboo. Pandanus abounded along the rugged and precarious coastal cliffs. And as they neared the cone-studded, volcanic crater, streaks of yellow, gray, and black traced the courses of ancient lava flows. Pictographs painted by long-forgotten artists were carved upon stone walls.
“This place is called Po,” Amie informed Julian. “Do not ask me how I know this: I simply know it. Po is an ocean of time. It is eternity. A place where sea, sky, and land become one.”
“You’re trying to frighten the hell out of me,” Julian conferred.
Having nearly forgotten the emotion herself, Amie was surprised by his allusion to fear. “When I landed here,” she told him, “I thought I was ready for death. But I did not die. In fact, as you’ve seen, Julian, there’s a regenerative force present in this place that defies explanation.” She sat near to him on a stone and offered him water from her salvaged canteen. “Now I often dream about my own death—though I question if death even exists here. Perhaps the most cruel tragedy of all would be to wander forever over strand and through forest, homeless and hungry to the point of craving, an intruder in Heaven, welcome nowhere.”
At the volcano’s summit, looking over steep, variegated escarpments, and finally to the shore where the open sea boomed upon carpets of untrodden sand, Julian vicariously felt the pulse of the earth throbbing within his veins. Understanding the reverence he felt for term and creation, Amie took Julian by the hand and led him over the warm loam to the mouth of a cave once consigned to ceremony—or perhaps sanctioned as a sepulcher. Smooth and dusky stones, slippery with moisture, shone in the pale light, and soft, green moss framed the cavern’s aperture. Though she spoke softly, her voice echoed within the recess.
“We experience ourselves as fevered, dancing electrons, revolving in this fanciful orbit or that, barely acknowledging the nucleus we circle...”
His hand tightened within hers, and she noticed in his grasp a slight trembling. She was moved by his trust. With dream-like improbability, a geological fault had opened in the ground upon which they’d been treading. Suddenly they seemed enfolded within an incalculable moment—a segment beyond all apogee—one that might be shared only by complementary souls. Amie considered how uncommon it was to find one of compatible disposition. Their eyes met in a headlong glance of affection.
Inside the burrow they felt the respite of a subterranean sanctuary. This retreat, with its mysterious odors, shadowy niches, and images of half-seen forms, challenged perception to move beyond the customary margins of the senses, and into more empirical realms of understanding. Abandoned or lost, they had discovered one another within the very pitch of remoteness, and for Julian the flesh he had not touched in love was now radiant in proximity. He offered the brush of his fingertips to bridge remaining distance and calm apprehension.
And while barely perceptible, internal currents warned Amie of something both imminent and profound, she was neither afraid nor resistant. Though the egotism and impatience of other men pulled at her memory, she acknowledged that Julian—though perhaps graceless at other endeavors—was nonetheless a gallant suitor.
Amie moved closer to better feel his presence. His skin gave off the scent of freshly milled koa wood. His hair was dressed with an herbal potpourri of her making. Amie embraced the luxury of abandonment as rings of thunder moved through valleys and over mountain tops, gathering its energy round their refuge. Outside, the drops began to lightly fall.
Moving to the mouth of the cave she stared at the rain. Inevitably it came after a humid interval. Experiencing an ecstatic desire to go rushing into the shower, she pulled off her halter and unfastened her skirt. Spreading her arms, Amie ran, naked, from the cave into the mist.
Julian rushed to the opening to see her frolic in the sprinkle. Her figure was lithe; wetness glistened upon her shoulders and back. Without qualm, Julian shed his clothing and went running in her footsteps. Over coarse volcanic ground he moved, into the dense and humid forest. What exhilaration! Ahead he could see Amie’s angular body moving swiftly through the dripping boughs—a mercurial animal in flight. Once Julian might have been breathless in pursuit, but now he was practically equal to her agility. Overtaking her in a field of ferns, he reached out and encircled her bare waist with his well-muscled arm. Amie’s rain-soaked hair was plastered over her forehead and face, and her lips glimm
ered. He tried to pull her close. She shrieked playfully, resisted half-heartedly, then laughed. The rain continued drenching them, and Amie shivered slightly in the uncharacteristic embrace of his arms. Boldly, Julian strung nearly imperceptible kisses, like the beads of a necklace, round her throat.
Trying at once to lift the mantle of little remembered sensations, Amie was out of synch with each overture. Julian moved to kiss her lips. She did not resist. His breath smelled of mint and his tongue went round and round inside her mouth, stopping finally for a single touch upon the tip of her upper lip. The sparks of an erupting volcano ignited long-forgotten passions as he ran his open palms over her thighs and legs, as if he were sculpting her out of clay!
They fell together among soft ferns. Slippery with rain water, their bodies were cool yet burning. The heat of his parched lips passed to hers. His tongue explored the recess behind her small earlobes. Her skin tasted sweet, like dampened flower petals. Amie’s body rolled like the waves of the great ocean and she did not close her eyes until they lay, rain soaked, in the afterglow of fulfillment. Amie realized she would never again hear the sound of rain without remembering these first intimate moments with the castaway.
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