The Life List of Adrian Mandrick
Page 19
Stunning. Unimaginable.
Adrian tries to take in this list, the incomprehensible depth and breadth of it. Where are they?
He scans the list for familiar names, only finds a fraction he knows: Algonquin, Apache, Arapaho, Catawba (his maternal grandfather’s tribe), Cherokee, Cheyenne, Chinook, Crow, Delaware, Hopi, Iroquois, Mohican, Nez Perce, Pueblo, Seminole, Ute, Wichita, Zuni.
His breathing becomes shallow and rapid, and he gulps down air to compensate when his heart skips a beat. If he keeps this up, he’ll have to go into the house for one of Michaela’s lunch bags. He lays back his head.
Your staying will be the beauty’s undoing.
He glances again at the list, then clicks off it. Urgently now. Back to his document, scrolling down to the man’s November eighteenth Wood Stork posting “by Yellow River.”
He Googles “Yellow River,” and he finds one in Georgia, noncoastal, emptying into a lake. Then a coastal Yellow River in Florida and Alabama that drains into Blackwater Bay in the Panhandle, only an hour from the Poarch Indian Reservation in Southern Alabama. Yes. He may be getting warm.
Finally, the man reported the Ivory-billed Woodpecker perching on a cypress. Said he was taking down nesting boxes for Red-cockadeds before driving to the swamp . . . This is key.
Red-cockadeds only nest in living longleaf pines infected with a particular fungus. The trees are only susceptible to this fungus when they’re between eighty to a hundred and twenty years old. The “red-heart disease” that results from the fungus’s interaction with the old trees softens their inner heartwood and only then can cockadeds build nest cavities. If the trees aren’t old growth, you won’t find Red-cockadeds. The Ivory-billed Woodpecker also happened to thrive in this type of terrain—hardwood swamp with lots of dead and decaying old-growth trees, and the two birds were sometime companions for centuries, until one of them went missing.
When Adrian checks the National Resources Conservation Report on the Poarch Indian Reservation to search for longleaf pine, he does find some, but it’s new growth only. Then he types “Florida Panhandle,” “Reservation,” and “longleaf” into the Google search bar.
In addition to the price of beachfront hotel reservations and reservation-only horseback riding, several links appear in which reservation refers to, of all things, a military installation. Of course. The man’s references to night training, the boys arriving from Georgia, the hands of the men, burned and black—Eglin Air Force Base. Its 463,000 acres happen to contain the largest remaining old-growth longleaf pine forest in existence.
Back at Backyard Birder’s chat, this in a private message—
4601 (11/26/09): Hey Doc.
Wanted to tell you something. Morning before I saw the bird I woke up with my buddy Trammel pressing a Miller lite up against my cheek telling me wake up I need to help him get a family of possums out from under his porch.
His whole house was trashed with our weapons of mass destruction (not actually) but we did have a long night. I didn’t want to shoot any possums which he calls alien rat bastards and not many people do like possums. but he says I owe him since he paid for the booze ect. Anywy he sets me up in a lawn chair and hands me his rifle and hes got a length of PVC he shakes around under the porch and we do the dirty work. Spare you the details. When I’m getting ready to take my last shot I look up and see this brown sparrow staring down at me from a limb. Staring at me Doc like what the fuck are you doing. What the fuck are you doing. I stand up and chuck Trammels gun at the ground and walk out. Him sayingk what the fuck to??
Its my lunch that afternoon I’m taking a slug of mountain dew when I see him. The huge woodpecker on a tree in front of a crack in the clouds. This bird has the power of rightiousness. You should come see it. Might never have another change.
Adrian glances up one last time at the place where his family is sleeping. The lights in the house remain consistent. Outside, all is pristine Colorado darkness now.
• • •
“I’ve had lots of great relationships since my divorce,” Jeff says, as he peppers his matzo ball. “I went to Junior’s in Brooklyn once. Their matzo balls were much smaller. I like ’em big like this.” He’d brought home some soup from the deli.
“Yeah, these are good,” Adrian says, but he’s listening for the ding of his cell phone in the pocket of his robe—waiting for a reply, an address, GPS coordinates.
Twenty-four hours have passed since Adrian messaged the man beside the water asking for his exact location, but no reply. No word on the Ivory-billed Woodpecker either, no earth-shattering sightings posted on any of the websites, no urgent phone calls or messages from his birding colleagues. (If the bird exists, at least the man has kept his word about exclusivity.) Adrian is about to tell Jeff everything, show him everything, ask him to come on what may be the greatest adventure of his life. “I’m not divorced, by the way,” he begins, “but listen—”
Jeff barrels forward. “You know the woman I’m seeing now, with the New Age record company? Incredible girl, but—we’re being straight with each other, right?”
“Uh . . . I assume so.” Impatient, Adrian rhythmically ladles the rich chicken broth into his mouth.
“You know when you go house hunting?” Jeff says.
“Jeff—”
“You notice how when you first see a house, you block your mind to all the faults it’s got? You’re in a bubble, kind of. A self-imposed real-estate bubble. You don’t even want to see the real house. You just want to see what’s great about it. Then you and your wife or whoever start thinking where the dresser is gonna go in the bedroom, what wall your favorite painting’ll hang on, where you’ll plant the garden. You’ve got yourselves moved in already, before you even make an offer. Before you walk back out to your car. You just want to make it to closing before the lights go on. Well, that happens to be bullshit. Gets you in a dump truck of trouble down the line.”
Adrian takes out his phone, glances at the screen, and lays it on the table.
“See, I know about that,” Jeff continues. “What I do is, I wait. Doesn’t matter if the house goes while I’m waiting. If it does, it’s not meant to be. I wait until I feel the bubble go ‘pop,’ then I go back, see? I look at the peeling paint around the heating ducts, I look at the furnace real close, I look at the ceiling stains and the water pressure and the foundation and the zoning. See what I’m saying? I let the bubble break open and spill its guts before I make my move. Most people want the bubble. I don’t want it. I’m on to it.”
“So . . . what are you saying?”
“I’m talking about women, I’m talking about a lot of things. I’m not looking to fool myself, is what I’m saying. Been there, done that. Doesn’t mean I’m not having a good time.”
“Well, there’s a difference between a bubble of illusion and a bubble of . . . possibility,” Adrian says, out on an unfamiliar limb.
“Ha ha,” Jeff chuckles with condescension. “You ever notice how when you look through a bubble, everything’s distorted?” he continues, holding possibly the best metaphor of his life in his mouth like a cat with a canary.
“Yeah, whatever. What about your potential book deal, huh? You’re picturing yourself on the back jacket, signing your autograph? Isn’t that a bubble?”
“That’s entrepreneurship.”
There is a short silence between them as they scrape their spoons along the bottoms of their bowls and Adrian watches Jeff out of the corner of his eye.
Though Jeff is the man he considers his dearest friend, if he’s attentive to signs, and he is now, Adrian is convinced in this moment that Jeff is somehow standing in his way, waiting with a sharp pin around the corner of his future, a future that requires an almost spiritual suspension of disbelief, that requires complete surrender to the unknown.
“Yeah, well, thanks for the soup,” Adrian says, standing. “Have a good night.”
He will journey to find the bird alone.
• • •
He takes his binocular in its case; the digital video camera—essential; he borrows Jeff’s backcountry backpack from his basement; he borrows his camo chest waders and boots from the coat closet. He’s going to have to get wet.
When he’s packed, he pens a note on one of Jeff’s index cards and props it against his outdated Dell desktop, saying, “Have to leave for a few days. Not to worry, all is well!”
Then he calls home, hoping it will go to voicemail, but Stella picks up.
“Hey. What’s this about your taking the kids into a house full of wild horses?”
“Hey,” Adrian says, startled. “No, they were really gentle.”
“Mm-hm. What’s up?” She never says that. She hates that expression.
“Just,” he hesitates, then continues, measured, “I’m going out of town for a few days. I didn’t want you or the kids to worry if—”
“I thought you were recuperating.”
There is a short silence when only his breath, still a little thick with the vapors of infection, is audible.
“Okay, then,” she says. “I’ll let them know.”
She hangs up.
Who can blame her? How can he possibly expect her to understand? He might never have another change.
• • •
Within minutes, Adrian’s driving to CVS to fill his brother’s prescriptions: Xanax, Lunesta, Vicodin, some Adderall, and of course, he’ll bring along the antibiotics he’s been taking for the infection. Then on to Eastern Mountain Sports (avoiding Jeff at A Good Sport) where he will fill the gaps in supplies—first aid kit, new knife, insect repellent, water purifier.
By two in the afternoon, he’s flying high over the clouds toward Tallahassee.
Chapter Thirteen
* * *
Highway 20 past Dismal Creek. Adrian drives mile after mile on roads so straight he takes his hands off the wheel. He’s been taking Adderall to get through the travel day, and he’s buzzing. He’s driving to drive, sucking in the dense air of the Panhandle, the eerie darkness of the roads. Dreaming of the bird.
Still wired, he turns into Ebro Greyhound Park past ranch houses so small you want to call them something else, patchy yards cluttered or bare. Jeff’s called or texted eight times in seven hours, and when Adrian pulls into the parking lot, he hammers one back, saying Jeff’s clogging up his phone and to “please leave me the hell alone. ”
The murmuring dog track is teeming with suspects. Adrian loiters along the wall, watching tellers shuffle bills—eight dollars, twenty dollars, three hundred. Only when the bell rings do they glance up to watch disappointment wash over the horde like baptism.
Adrian picks up a racing form to check out the dogs: Blue Bayou, Wayward Son, Jenny’s Best Hope, Wilmington Willy. He won’t bet. He’s not looking for that kind of sign. But he ambles outside all the way down by the fence, standing in the surreal light, when the mechanical rabbit, Rocky, is released, and the lean, muscular dogs shoot after it, lapping up the track.
He finds himself searching for the man beside the water, watching for a particular gait or tone of voice, a cigar, and he walks among the customers, along the fence line, along rows between bleachers in the stands, into the men’s room, at the food stand. He imagines zeroing in on a stranger, saying, “Are you the one who saw the bird?” and the look on the man’s face when he knows he’s been found.
• • •
He weaves onto side roads and sandy drives off Highway 20 on his way to the hotel, tired now but too excited to sleep. He’s got to see the water. He follows a sign toward a place called Historic Freeport—down a county highway through the town, out the other end—and nearly slams into five gargantuan circular white tanks (he can’t fathom how big—50 feet in diameter, maybe 500,000 gallons each?).
Murphy Oil Terminal.
A ghostly compound surrounded by chain-link and sky-high gates above disco ball waves. GPS calls the water it borders LaGrange Bayou, which flows to Choctawhatchee Bay, then on to the Gulf. Adrian’s the only human in sight. There’s only a high, tight electrical hum and the smell of oil.
Adrian gets out of the car to stand on the gravel shoulder. It feels illegal, hidden—both his presence and the operation itself. He can just see a flat-bottomed oil barge approaching some quarter mile away, parting the dark water to push wide into the port. He remembers now: Murphy Oil—the million-gallon spill from their Louisiana refinery, the one that ruined Katrina’s floodwaters and slicked the neighborhoods with poison. Now they’re drilling deeper, penetrating the sandy bottom of the Gulf and the cold shelf of the Arctic, with only the seabirds to make report.
Spooked, Adrian gets back in the car. He idles a minute until the insects begin singing again, then drives away. He will search for the small thing that matters, and follow the sound of what’s lost.
• • •
Not an hour later, he’s gathering himself in earnest for the quest—sitting at the table by the air conditioner at the Niceville Hampton in Bluewater Bay, heartbeat rapid but steady, feet flat on the floor, surrounded by pamphlets on white-sand beaches, the armament museum, and the Indian burial grounds.
Google-Earthing Eglin Air Force Base on his computer, he zooms in from the top of the world to the Yellow River that worms along forests and unmarked military buildings, then slides into Choctawhatchee Bay to the south. He pulls out, and it’s a whole country—then a whole continent—the earth itself.
Zooming in again to Florida, the Panhandle, Eglin, he flies like the most omniscient bird over the satellite-induced landscape of the base, taking in the tops of thousands upon thousands of longleaf pines. On the periphery, pods of military housing dot the streets, like streets in any town where people work as accountants or sell computers or patch drywall instead of sharpening and lubricating the churning blades of war and defense. He’s lived his whole life without ever having set foot on a military base. He reads about drone strikes on the New York Times website, debates with Jeff about the quest for oil that drives US foreign policy, and laments with Stella the debt accrued, both fiscal and moral, under various administrations. But he’s never known anyone, personally, who fought in the desert wars, and the prospect of venturing into this alien world of soldiers and their families makes him feel both anxious and captivated.
It’s the way he felt when he rode behind his father on the back of his motorcycle as a child. Dean’s ribs were thick under Adrian’s fingers, and the road was hot beneath them. The powerful machine roared between Adrian’s legs, guided by the reckless man who’d been designated by some crazy mechanism his de facto protector.
He must sleep. He swallows his pills with bottled water, plugs in his phone and two extra battery packs to charge, and makes his last plea of the night to the man beside the water.
mandrake3 (11/27/09): Please tell me exactly where you saw the bird. I’m here now! I’m assuming I follow the Yellow River? Then what? GPS? Call or text me day or night. 303-749-6202.
• • •
Adrian phones the base early the next morning, having received no call or text and slept fitfully from joint pain, anticipation, and Adderall. He wheedles his way through the Eglin AFB operator and various stiff-lipped receptionists, who will tell him nothing—nothing about the birds. When he tries to negotiate using his ornithological credentials, they pass him along to other phones in other offices where he has to leave messages. Finally, from a woman in Natural Resources that he impresses with his knowledge of longleaf habitat, he learns the base is the largest refuge in the world for Red-cockaded Woodpeckers as well as an important refuge for the Piping Plover, the Pine Barrens tree frog, the Okaloosa darter, and the leatherback sea turtle.