“Way I hear it told… they’re glued.”
“S-some.”
“Has it got a title?”
“Not that I know of.”
He laughed. “You mind letting me read it?”
“No sir, I d-don’t mind.”
When he’d finished it, he called and said, “Son, I think you’d better find a title for your book.”
“I can do that.”
I called Jody. Asked her if she had any ideas. She thought a minute and then said, “Call it Pirate Pete and The Misfits—Book One.”
“Book one?”
“Well, sure. How else are you going to title the other stories?”
For a ten-thousand-dollar advance, the New York house bought Pirate Pete and The Misfits, printed five thousand copies, skipped sending me on a book tour, and placed the story on the shelf, somewhere near the back of the store because the publisher had second-guessed himself and didn’t want the hassle or the embarrassment of a failed book. While he liked it, he didn’t know who the audience might be and therefore couldn’t predict who might actually buy and read the story. He thought the story of me reading to the kids was engaging, but he wasn’t sure that the story I’d written was. On second thought, he simply wanted to recoup and save face. Before it printed, the lady assigned as my editor asked me who I wanted to dedicate the book to. That was easy. It read: “For Jody. The bravest kid I’ve ever known.” I walked into the bookstore and saw my book, spine-out, wedged between a million other books.
I’d joined the conversation. Found my seat at the table. Joined my voice with the chorus of the thousands who’d come before me.
Unfortunately, buried between two other stories is where it sat. Collecting dust. Dead on the vine. But life has a funny way of bringing about the intersection of the known and the unknown. The living and the dead.
The wife of an actor stumbled upon it. The title caught her eye. She was adventurous. Read it in one sitting. Then read it to her kids. Their response surprised her. She commented to a friend of hers about it—an anchor on an L.A. evening news show. She read it and mentioned it to the friend of an editor at the Miami Herald who suggested it over wine to a guy who produced commercials for cosmetics companies who suggested it to a lady who could care less and couldn’t figure out what the big deal was. But, somewhere in that, something happened. And the one and only thing that sells a book began to build and spread—word of mouth.
I fished during the days. My clients were oblivious. Had no idea. At night, I read to the kids—more installments of other stories I was writing. After almost a year in the hospital, Jody was released and moved home with Rod and Monica. They had me over for the party. Said they wanted it to be just family, so it was the four of us. We had cake and then burgers, in that order—just the way Jody wanted it.
Months passed. Whispers on the street mentioned a writer who’d managed to pen what so many kids wanted to hear. Took them places they wanted to go. Through characters they hoped for. With a voice they believed. While marketed mainly at kids, parents were having trouble putting it down. One of the early reviews said the book sat “outside genre.”
You’ve heard of the tipping point?
I didn’t believe it so I drove to the bookstore, sat in the shadows with a bottle of water, and watched readers out of the corner of my eye. One by one, I measured their facial expressions. Wasn’t too hard. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised; Peter Pan and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and The Chronicles of Narnia grew out of similar circumstances—some man telling stories to a bunch of kids. Then I watched an amazing thing. A father walked in with three kids. Each holding hands. They ran to the shelf. Pulled it off. Then pleaded. “Read, Daddy!” He sat down, they followed suit, cross-legged and wide-eyed, and he read, inserting their names for mine, turning page after page after page. I sat one aisle over, leaning my head and back against the shelf, listening. I sat there, shaking my head. No other thing or power or force in the universe does that.
Six months passed. The fire spread. No one really knows the one single straw that broke the camel’s back, but one thing is certain. Life changed.
The critics raved. “A stunning achievement.” “Mesmerizing.” “Monumental.” “Not seen since Tolkien and Lewis.” “The measuring stick…” The comments left me scratching my head. Although I will say that I smiled when they said, “The reincarnation of L. Frank Baum.”
In truth, I had no idea what these people were talking about yet readers devoured it and a literary star, i.e., me, was launched into the stratosphere. My publisher was pleasantly pleased with sales. He called. “Do you have another book?” I had many. Book two released soon thereafter. Jody titled it Pirate Pete: Return to Misfit Island.
They put me on a book tour and if I signed one I must have signed ten thousand books. As a result of the book, the hospital got noticed, and so did the kids. Santa came to the island and I got to go to the courthouse four times that year and hear the words “irrevocable right.” It was a good year.
A Hollywood studio bought the movie rights to books one and two, so winning the National Book Award seemed after the fact. When they asked me to attend the dinner, I, with Rod and Monica’s permission, took Jody as my date.
She walked up on stage with me and accepted the prize. Her carbon-fiber braces snapping, clapping, and her double-thick oak-leather soles scraping the stage. Peacock feather waving. The audience stood and clapped for ten minutes. The noise was deafening. Rod and Monica hugged each other and patted me on the shoulder. Monica’s mascara was running everywhere. The emcee asked her why she wore the hat. She responded, “Because, like Pete, I live in a world without limits.” Funny how three words can change things. The New York Times ran the story the following day. Front page. The headline read: WORLD WITHOUT LIMITS.
Overnight, Jody became the poster child for hope. Her purple-hatted, peacock-feathered picture hung in hospitals and on magazine racks across America.
The kid who’d never been picked had found his place in the world and as a result I poured out all the love, and words, I could find.
Interviews, articles, talk shows, people wanted to know me. Touch me. See me. Know my opinion. What I thought. Hold up my books and ask me, “Where does this come from?” I just shrugged. I didn’t know. They kept calling me a “writer.” I told them they should reserve that term for someone who deserves it. I was a fishing guide.
My critics confused my pitiful answers for arrogance and poked fun at what they didn’t understand and could never be. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to answer their questions. It was just that I couldn’t. I squirmed in my seat. Such big questions for so small a man. So insignificant in the span of time. They said I’d written a story that “spoke to a generation.” One night, Larry King asked, “How’d you speak to so many?”
I shook my head and offered a tepid whisper. “I d-didn’t speak to many. I spoke to me…” I pointed to Jody. “And a little g-girl named J-Jody. And it just so h-happens that several million m-more liked it.” I was quiet a minute. “I w-wasn’t telling a story to the millions, I was t-telling it to a little girl who might have been d-dying and certainly about to l-lose her leg—and maybe I was telling it to the b-boy I used to be.”
From there the book flew off the shelf.
My third book, Pirate Pete and The Misfits: The World Is Flat, spent forty-two weeks at number one. When the movie version of the first book was released, the top three spots on the New York Times hardcover best-seller list were my three books. I am told that Academy Award–winning producers, directors, and actors called studio heads requesting my stories, explaining why they desired the roles. My publisher hired a staff of people to handle my mail. I certainly couldn’t. I was too busy fishing. I bought a sixty-thousand-dollar flats boat, a passel of new Shimano reels and St. Croix rods, several pairs of Costas, and set off for the backwater. When it came to tackle, I spared little expense. I fished during the day, taking my clients same as always, and told storie
s to a roomful of kids at night. Never had my heart felt so alive. So full.
The expanded library had grown too small. Folks from all over the hospital came to hear me read. The sick, infirm people hooked up to chemotherapy drips, women with no hair, men with swollen prostates, kids with scars on their chest—all shapes and sizes, all sicknesses and illnesses. I was seldom happier than when I was reading a story I’d written.
’Course, a good tarpon run was a close second. As was catching snook or a forty-inch red. But the thing that gave me value was reading a story I’d told.
Five years. Five books. Dozens of languages, over sixty countries, more than seventy million copies sold. They said my career trajectory had been unlike any they’d ever seen. All because I opened my mouth and told a story.
And then there was the money. I made more money than I could ever spend, and paid more in taxes than most make in a lifetime.
And while all this exceeded my wildest imaginations, I learned something and I learned it the hard way. Words can make people hope. And they made me rich and famous in an odd sort of way. Put my picture on the cover of I magazine. There is one thing words cannot do.
They can’t bring people back to life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I’d finished final edits on my latest book and was spraying the boat with water while I thought about where I was going to fish tomorrow. It was how I let my mind unwind. My editor and publisher had been chomping at the bit to get their hands on it. They had big plans. I’d planned to read it to the kids first. Always did. They were the litmus. The only person I’d given it to was Jody. She had the only copy of the manuscript and from the message she’d left on my machine the night before, she’d finish it that day.
I’d told the kids and they were excited. We’d start that night and I’d finish in four or five nights. The hospital loved the exposure. The excitement. They’d called and asked if we could move the “reading” to a nearby auditorium. Include a couple hundred people. I said no.
I was moments from driving to the hospital when the phone rang. It was Rod. His voice was trembling. “She’s asking for you, and… hurry.”
About ninety seconds later, I looked down at the speedometer. It read “110 mph.”
She was sixteen now. A beautiful young woman. When I arrived, they briefed me. She’d been leaving school. Standing on a street corner. Chewing grape bubble gum. Headed home to get all gussied up for the homecoming dance. She was on the court. They said she never saw the bus that blindsided her. They also said she was reading. Engrossed.
A honeybee distracted the driver of the bus, she swerved, jumped up on the curb, and caught Jody at over forty miles an hour.
Nurses were sobbing in the hallway.
I slipped my hand beneath hers. “Hey, kiddo.”
Her eyelids flickered. Her body lay twisted. Canted. Her lips were caked in blood. She tried to speak. Tried again, swallowed. Her eyes were focused midway between this world and the next. “Tell me a story.” She squeezed my hand. “Read me—”
She slipped into a coma. Breathing tube. Life support. A nurse handed me a plastic bag filled with my manuscript. They’d gathered it from the street. I put the pages in order and read to her around the clock for ninety-seven hours. When the monitor above me flatlined, the cup inside me, the one that held my love, shattered into a million jagged pieces—the slivers embedding deep within me.
We buried her a few days later. I stood next to her casket, listened to Monica make noises I’d never heard a human make, and watched my tears streak down the wooden grain of the lid. I stood there hurting. Pain I’d never known. Of the six billion people on the planet… why her? What kind of a God would do this? I swore I’d never tell another story. Never dog-ear another page.
Victor Hugo once said that hope is the word that God has written on the brow of every man. Really?
Then to hell with hope.
Days passed. My phone began ringing off the hook so I walked down to the dock and fed it to the fish. I didn’t want to read to the kids. That night. Or any other night. And I didn’t care if anyone ever read anything of mine again. I didn’t eat, and didn’t sleep. To medicate the pain, I crawled inside a gin and tonic and stayed there a month. I did not want to fish. Did not want to talk. Did not want to live.
Alcohol and isolation fed my anger. And I was very, very angry.
The word “recluse” didn’t scratch the surface. I disconnected my heart from the body that fed it. I saw no one and no one saw me. A year passed with no book. Speculation grew. A persistent reporter paid a minimum-wage employee at the mail-it store where I rented the P.O. box to call her when I picked up my mail. He did. I emerged and she stuck a microphone in my face. The camera light blinded me. “Are you writing?”
My answer was not unkind. “N-no.”
“Then, you’ve finished it? Book six in the Pirate Chronicles is finished?”
A shrug. A nod.
“Do you like it?”
I pushed my Costas up on my head, squinting from the glare off the water. I tilted my head to one side. Stared at some indiscriminate point far away.
“Can you tell us anything about the story?”
I found her smile attractive. Her eyes warm. Not too over done. She was pushy but also just doing her job. I’d known worse. I wondered for a brief moment if she’d like to get a cup of coffee. But what was the use? My mind never stuttered. She proffered the microphone again. “Would Jody like it?”
“Yes. V-very much.”
I stared at her. The tears soon followed. I climbed into my truck and disappeared.
The New York Times proclaimed, THE RECLUSE REAPPEARS: PENS HIS MASTERPIECE. I never understood the fuss. I didn’t understand most of it. Six months before my September release, preorders on the web placed the untitled manuscript at number one.
September came and went but the book never showed. That’s not to say it didn’t exist. Rather, it just never appeared. Reporters exhausted every detail. Every lead. My P.O. box filled, overflowed, and I never checked it again. No matter how many times I changed my phone number, they always got it. I stopped answering.
A tabloid published a rumor that I’d met a girl. Married. But she’d left me after only a year. Speculation grew. Someone whispered, “Tragedy.” I had no idea what they were talking about.
A couple years prior, when my books had sold beyond my wildest imagination, my editor gave me a gift—a Mercedes. Fastest one they made. Shiny black. An S65 AMG. More than six hundred horsepower. Manufacturer’s suggested retail price was over $210,000. A little flashy for me, so I didn’t drive it much, but it was fast, so I backed it out of storage.
I left Jacksonville at noon. The manuscript beneath a bottle of Bombay Blue and a liter of tonic, wrapped and tied up in a trash bag because that’s where it was headed.
I called my editor and said, “Thank you… r-really.” I called my accountant and told him to record the phone call, where to put the money, and what to do with the remainder of my library. I called my agent and said, “G-good-bye and th-thank you.” Soon as I hung up, my phone rang. A South Florida news affiliate had tracked me down. I took the call. With little introduction, the reporter asked: “We understand the parent company of your publishing house has sued you in order to force the release of your next book.”
“Th-that’s true.”
“Have you finished it?”
“Yes.” The less words the better.
“Where is it?”
I glanced in the passenger seat where book six, Pirate Pete and The Misfits: The Last Sunset, sat wrapped in the plastic bag. “H-here.”
“What are your future plans for it?”
When I answered honestly, the nature of the interview changed. My response caught everyone off guard. The local story abruptly became national and they patched me through to the anchor during a live broadcast.
“You have the manuscript? Why final? Where are you right now?” I swigged from the bottle and answere
d her last question by telling her not where I was, but where I would be. Then I tossed my cell phone out the window where it shattered on the asphalt at eighty miles an hour. I sped up, unbuckled to make sure that nothing would prevent my head from impacting the glass, and opened the sun roof so that there’d be plenty of oxygen to fuel the fire I was about to light.
My blood was already on fire. Three-quarters gin, one-quarter me.
I’d picked the time and the place—now, and Card Sound—for two reasons: First, by a fluke of luck some years back, I’d had the best day of tarpon fishing there that I’d ever had. I figured that’d be a good place to end things. Second, I wanted finality. The Card Sound Bridge spanned the waters I’d fished and provided an adequate launch. As a bonus, pedestrians were not allowed and it was very tall. Sixty-five feet above the water. More than enough.
I switched lanes and wondered if anyone would show. Would anyone care.
They did.
Cars had stopped. A long line of taillights. Traffic was backed up. A crowd had gathered. Video cameras shone in streetlights. One news van had arrived and telescoped its receiver. The reporter stood in front of the camera, framed against the backdrop of the crowd, bridge, and toll plaza. I was glad. Witnesses meant no doubt. I lit the end of the rag dangling from the gas can on the backseat, then laid on the horn and flashed my lights. The cameras swung. The crowd waved. A few waved my books. I eyed the bridge, pushed the accelerator through the floorboard, crashed through the toll plaza gate.
Then I drove the car up, and off, the Card Sound Bridge.
Eyewitnesses—of which there were many—said the crash was horrific. Reports described my car crashing through the railing, spewing glass, concrete, and twisted pieces of a light pole. The high-performance engine red-lined, sending the vehicle arcing out into the darkness. It rolled a quarter turn and dove vertical to the surface. Some said the car hung briefly in the air, almost pausing, while others swore they heard me, locked inside and screaming—burning alive. Because darkness shrouded the water’s surface, the impact was sudden and loud but not as loud as the silence that followed.
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