Under a Firefly Moon

by Donna Kauffman

  “Then what did you do? After Iceland?”

  “When the season ended, Femo—Johan Filemonsen was his full name, but we called him Femo because that’s what his little granddaughter called him—he was going back to Nuuk. The capital city of Greenland. I asked him if I could go with him. I had a hunger then, to see more. Do more. Knowing I had a passport and just had to earn enough money for a ticket was intoxication. I could literally see anything, go anywhere. I just wanted to see this place he’d talked about, experience it. He said he could get me a job there. I planned to go back to Iceland the following summer and work the trawler again, so I had a safety net of sorts. And off we went.”

  “Did you ever go back to Iceland?” she asked.

  He nodded. “About four years later.”

  “Years,” she repeated, shaking her head.

  He smiled. “I picked up a cheap, secondhand camera before I left Iceland the first time. Writing things down wasn’t enough. The phone technology back then, at least the one I had, didn’t allow for pictures, and I wanted to record the things I was seeing. I wanted to keep all of it with me as I continued onward, the sight, the smells, how the air felt. I couldn’t do all of that, but pictures plus my words were a start.” He looked out across the lake now, and she could see that his mind had wandered back to that time. “I had this idea that I’d become a photojournalist. Me, with my rodeo schoolroom education and GED.”

  “You were a voracious reader,” she reminded him. “You read everything you could get your hands on, from the classics to science books, graphic novels to the history of the world. If the point of higher education is to expand your mind, I’d say your education is far more complete than most.”

  His smile was self-deprecating. “Thank you. I appreciate that. But it was still a pretty far-fetched dream to have.”

  “A kid who took off from a rodeo crew with next to nothing, and his first stop ended up being Iceland, then Greenland? Yeah, you were already overachieving at far-fetched.”

  He laughed. “Well, when you put it that way. And there’s a grain of truth to that. Because of what I’d already done, I felt kind of fearless. I mean, what did I have to lose?”

  “So, how did you start?”

  “Femo’s brother lived in this tiny village a distance from the capital—you have to understand, when I say capital city, the entire population of all of Greenland is like, less than sixty thousand people—so his tiny village was the true meaning of the word ‘tiny.’ He was fighting to keep the halibut fishing revenue for their village. I took photos, interviewed him and others, wrote a story about it, then tried—admittedly very clumsily—to sell the story.”

  “Did you?”

  He laughed. “No. But I knew then that I was on to something. My story did change things for the village, got people talking about the problem in a different way, and they figured things out. I didn’t come up with the solution to their problem, but my talking to them about it got them to discuss it in a new way.”

  “If you didn’t go back to Iceland, where did you go from there?”

  “From my time in Greenland and Iceland, I knew I wanted to bring a voice to those the world rarely heard from. I just didn’t know how. In Greenland, the direct route hadn’t exactly panned out, but the goal had been reached. So I started thinking about things differently.”

  “Greenland certainly seems a good place to start. So, was that the fluke?”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t stay. I couldn’t in good conscience take a job away from someone who was born there, who needed the work because they wanted to grow old and die there. I could leave, go anywhere.” He lifted a shoulder. “So, I did.”

  He pulled one knee up and looped his arms around his bent leg, and Chey flashed back to a memory of them, sitting in the flatbed of her uncle’s pickup, late at night, looking at the stars, watching the moon rise. It had become something of a ritual for them. Zachariah had usually passed out drunk by then; their chores were done. It was the only time that it was quiet, and, for Wyatt, safe. They could really talk without fear of interruption, or of anyone overhearing their secret thoughts and dreams. They’d always start off sitting just as they were now, each leaning back on a wheel hub.

  Wyatt would pull up his knee like he had just now, so she could stretch her legs out. Hours later, they’d always end up lying on their backs, staring up at the moon. Talk of the day, the current gossip swirling around camp, would eventually turn to hushed recounting of their future dreams. They’d make plans for what they’d do if they won the lottery—not that they’d ever bought a ticket, but Chey’s aunt and uncle often did—nonsense plans, but it had been fun, and stretched her mind, made her think about a life beyond the circuit.

  “I felt so utterly liberated,” he said, drawing her thoughts back to the present. “The confidence I’d gained from working commercial fishing in some insanely rough conditions, traveling through such an inhospitable terrain, meeting the most wonderful people, people who were so different from me, but at the same time, wanting the things I’d always wanted. Fairness, respect, the right to feel equal.”

  Chey felt that hard pull inside her chest again. She was looking at the man who’d taken her on a wild ride not twenty minutes ago, thrilling her with his brash smile, palpable enthusiasm, and easygoing assertiveness, all while risking life and limb to help others understand the complexities and challenges of living in worlds she’d never even known existed.

  But she was hearing the boy she’d grown up with, yearning to simply be treated fairly, with the kind of respect that everyone should be due, just by default. That Wyatt, the one she’d laughed with, cried with, talked into the wee hours of the night with, surrounded by flickering fireflies, under full moons and galaxies of stars . . . the one she’d loved, he was still there. He would always be there.

  She’d changed, too. She’d suffered a tragic loss, yes. She’d lived through the horror of watching her only sibling be trampled to death by an enraged bull whose back he’d been on moments before. Images and feelings that could never be erased. But even that didn’t touch on the horror that had been every single day of Wyatt’s life. His pain had been inflicted on him personally, directly, for years.

  It wasn’t that she’d pretended not to know the truth back then, or shoved it aside, but Wyatt had always been able to step outside himself in that way. Not being the poor kid with the drunken, mean-as-a-snake father, but just a kid. With her, he had been exactly that. And that’s how she remembered him.

  Hearing him now, though, she felt as if she’d done him an injustice. Because she didn’t think about him the way he clearly thought of himself.

  She blinked at the sudden moisture that gathered at the corners of her eyes. “You know, what you’ve been able to do,” she said softly, hearing the raspy edge in her voice, “is nothing short of a miracle. Truly.” She blinked a few times, then looked at him and smiled. “You really were meant to do what you do. If there’s such a thing as a calling, that’s what it is, what you’ve found.”

  “Thank you.” He ducked his chin. “It’s as good a word to describe it as any.” When he looked back up, his gaze searching hers, she was certain he was seeing all the things she was feeling for him.

  “So, when the journalist thing didn’t pan out, did you ever think about running for public office somewhere? With your passion for illuminating the need for change, you could be on the ground floor of making it happen.”

  He shook his head. “I didn’t stay in one place long enough for that. And I didn’t want to just try to help one place. I didn’t want to limit myself to that.” He grinned. “Which is the selfish part of it. Once I’d had a taste of feeling like I was on another planet, I wanted to visit the whole galaxy. Traveling suited both of those goals.”

  “So, how did it happen? How did you go from that dream to Reed Planet?”

  He leaned back against the piling, his face lighting up as he continued the story. “I was in Uganda, maybe eight or nine m
onths after I left Nuuk.”

  “Uganda,” she repeated.

  He shrugged. “I wanted to see gorillas.”

  She laughed. “As one would.”

  “There had been a few other brief stops between Greenland and there, with me just working odd jobs wherever I landed, still taking pictures, still writing everything down, trying to figure out how to make that particular dream come true. I’d started going to the local libraries wherever I was, like I did when we were growing up. Not for the books this time—well, not only for the books—but to use the computers to look things up, do research, figure out what I wanted to see where I was, where to go next.”

  “Did you learn other languages? How did you communicate?”

  “Most of the time not very well,” he said with a laugh. “But I figured out early on that if I made an honest effort to learn enough of the language wherever I happened to be, people would meet me halfway and try to figure out what I was attempting to say. English is spoken in more places than you could dream of, which is humbling, but I worked hard to be respectful, to speak to people in their native tongue whenever possible.” His lips curved in a dry smile. “I’m not fluent in anything, and I can’t read or write in a foreign language to save my life. But I’m a whiz at picking up a few dozen phrases and getting by.”

  Chey bet it went a lot further than that. He didn’t just want fair treatment and respect for himself; he gave it to others. That’s who he was. “So, the video? Or streaming, or whatever you call it. When did that start?”

  “It was video first. Streaming wasn’t even a thing then. It happened by accident really. The fluke,” he added, wiggling his brows. “I was actually truly playing tourist for a change. I was tagging along with a sightseeing group in a protected animal preserve, so I could hear what the tour guide was saying. One of the young guys on the trip didn’t heed the warnings about not feeding the wildlife. He’d snuck some crackers or something in somehow, and I don’t know how, because they controlled that kind of thing. Anyway, when we went to leave one area for the next, the wildlife in question thought they’d like to keep the young food source behind with them.”

  “Oh no!”

  “No one else had seen him slip off the side of the vehicle we were in. I didn’t want him to freak out, and I definitely didn’t want his parents to freak out—”

  “Wait, how old was he?”

  “Nine, maybe ten?”

  “Oh my God, Wy.”

  “I didn’t even really think about it. I just hopped off and went and got him. It wasn’t that I wasn’t scared. I was, but I’d spent years learning how to fit into new environments, so I kind of adopted the same strategy. I stayed calm, much like the guides were, joking, smiling, you know, no big deal. Talking to the gorilla, and to the kid, acting like I belonged there.” He shook his head. “The whole thing lasted maybe five minutes. Felt like a lifetime, I won’t lie. My heart was in my throat the whole time. But someone in the tour group filmed the whole thing and posted it to the Internet, and it went viral, as they say now. Which back then wouldn’t have meant what it does now, in terms of numbers. YouTube wasn’t that old at that point. So, it didn’t take as much to get noticed. I didn’t even know about it until way later. I got a call from someone who’d spent a few weeks tracking me down after seeing the video, wanting an interview.” He chuckled. “Instead of being a photojournalist, I got interviewed by one. I felt like such a failure; my goals were a joke.”

  “Hardly, you saved that kid’s life.”

  “Maybe. But I didn’t want to be the subject of a story—I wanted to tell the story, you know? Then I got to thinking, about the number of people who had viewed that video clip, and it finally clicked. I realized I was going about my dream all wrong. Why write about my experiences and try to show what was going on with still pictures, when I could bring my audience right there, invite viewers right in to experience it live and in person, or feel like they were, anyway. A lot of the comments on that video clip were about my attitude, how I came across, that people related to me, or found me funny, or easy to watch. So, as much as I didn’t want to put my face on things, I thought that might be the way to do what I wanted to do and be in total control of the story at the same time.”

  “Pretty brilliant actually,” she said.

  “I realized that I didn’t need anyone’s permission. I didn’t need someone to hire me to do this. I just needed some decent equipment, to be willing to put in long hours while I supported myself and pursued this passion on the side. Then it was a matter of figuring out where I wanted to go, what story I wanted to bring attention to, and using my five minutes of fame to start my own channel. The livestreaming part started much later, just a few years ago, in fact. That took things to the next level, opened more doors for me and for the work I’m doing.” He lifted his hands, then wrapped them back around his knee. “I haven’t been home much since.”

  “Home,” she said, still marveling over his story, but not truly surprised by any part of it. He’d finally done what she hadn’t been able to do, connect the person he’d been then to the man seated before her now. She could see the evolution clearly now. He was a good storyteller. “Where do you call home these days? Not Nepal.” She shot him a wry look. “Or do you still feel like you have to tuck yourself away in the most remote place possible all the time?”

  He shook his head. “No, not anymore. I have a croft in Wales, near Mount Snowdon. I bought it thinking I’d start my own little farm there, something to ground me between trips. Only somehow seven years have gone by since I bought it and I never seem to not have another proposal before I’ve finished my current trip.”

  “What do you mean, proposal?”

  “The work I’ve done in getting people to learn about various plights in far-flung places has come to the attention of a lot of small principalities and municipalities that otherwise have no voice, no beacon. I get asked all the time to come help shed some light on this story or that.”

  “That’s . . . amazing.”

  “Trust me, no one is more amazed than I am at how this has all taken off. It’s also a little overwhelming. I can’t do them all and it’s gotten increasingly harder to decide which to say yes to. I’m not a miracle worker. Some places see more benefit from the spotlight than others, but—”

  “Like you said before, any is better than none. Without you they’d have no chance.”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything else.

  “So, do they pay you? These principalities? I mean, not to sound dense, but how do you keep a roof overhead? All this travel has to add up.”

  He shook his head. “They may comp me and my crew a place to camp, a few rooms, or something. It all depends on where we are. But we don’t take compensation from them. We’re trying to help them, not be an additional strain on their resources.”

  “So, is it sponsorships? I didn’t see any ads on your YouTube channel.”

  “And you won’t. I want the access to be immediate, not ‘wait, watch this thing you don’t care about, and then you get to see.’ We do get sponsorships for our equipment, some clothing, a few other items and tools we use, in exchange for a credit at the end of the video version.” He shrugged. “We’ve started selling hard copies and digital downloads of some of the trips, made into a sort of documentary. That’s what I’m working on this summer, actually, for our Nepal trip. That revenue is what we live on now—me, and the few people on my crew I employ full time. Occasionally I do interviews, things like that, not to get paid directly, but to donate funds to the organization. The less overhead we have to deal with, the more we can do.” He lifted a shoulder. “Otherwise, we all live pretty simply, my crew and myself. The ones who work for me have been with me from the early days. Abroad, we usually hire some locals, translators, people who can help us navigate the cultural aspects of things. And we have others who hire on for each venture, depending on where it is, what we need, whom we need. They may come and travel with us for a while, then mov
e on when it’s time to settle down. It sounds like an exciting life, and it is, but it has become pretty nonstop, and most folks need a home base, at least periodically.”

  “And you? Is that something you ever see for yourself? Settling down?”

  His smile was more fleeting then, and she saw a hint of the weariness he’d only alluded to. “I can’t do what I want to do and be home at the same time. I figure when the call to settle down somewhere is louder than the call to keep going, I’ll listen to it then.” A moment later, his grin was back, and the peek into that part of him was gone.

  “Sounds complicated, or complex, anyway, working things out as you go, and juggling all the external things, like the documentaries, and getting them made and distributed. That by itself has to take a lot of focus.”

  “It is, but we kind of learn as we go. If the revenue from the documentaries starts to really pick up, then I can hire someone to take it on.”

  “I can’t even imagine.” Chey shook her head. “Where do you go next?” She wanted to know, and not know, all at the same time. Getting to know the stranger Wyatt was a lot easier than navigating the past with her old friend Wyatt. She felt like she was just getting to know this person. And she liked him. A lot.

  “After the summer in Wales? I don’t know yet.”

  “A whole summer in one place,” she said, then smiled. “How will you stand it?”

  “I think I can handle it for a few months.”

  She saw flickers of that weariness again, and wondered if, for all his enthusiasm, he was feeling a little burn out. Not about the work itself. He clearly was still deeply passionate about it. Still, how could it not take a toll? She suspected he said yes to more projects than he should, in an effort to disappoint as few as possible. “Good on you then.” She let out a little laugh and said, “Self-care.”

  “What?” he asked, laughing with her.

  She waved the question off. “Nothing, just a little private joke.” Here she’d run off to Ben Campbell’s place to assuage her sudden fragile sensibilities. While Wyatt was just hoping to lay his head on the same pillow for more than a few nights in a row before he jaunted off again to risk doing God knows what to be a champion for those with no voice. “Maybe the difference you need to make is for yourself this time around. Just for a little bit.”