Chasing Fireflies

by Charles Martin

  I turned to follow her and Unc stopped me, whispering, “He cuts himself . . . even nicking a hangnail, and I’m holding you responsible.”

  “Thanks.”

  Chapter 35

  Uncle Willee taught me how to fish from the first summer I came to live with Aunt Lorna and him. We’d fish off the pier in Brunswick, in the tributaries of the Altamaha or the Little Brunswick, in the pools around the Sanctuary, and anywhere else we thought fish would bite. If he wasn’t working, and I wasn’t in school, then chances were good that we were somewhere wetting a line.

  In high school I bought a used kayak, put in at the harbor amongst the shrimp boats, and slipped out through the grass where not even the guys in flatboats could go. That took me along the shoreline for miles. I caught trout, drum, reds, and even hooked up with a tarpon or two. This produced a lot of good dinners during high school.

  After my sorry attempt to tell Unc his own story, I needed to clear my head, which is often the point of my fishing. So I woke before daylight, loaded my kayak atop Vicky, and drove to Brunswick. I put in near the Brunswick harbor and started hugging the coastline, wanting to fish the first of the outgoing tide.

  Maybe a half mile downriver—still well in sight of town—my paddle struck something in the weeds that was hard but not necessarily rock, and it certainly wasn’t an oyster bed. The marsh grass had grown up around it and the mud flats had mounded over it. I dug around and uncovered what looked like a coquina drain. Nearly three feet square, with a two-foot opening, it came out of the hill upon which some of the town sat—including the ZB&T. The mouth was blocked by a tic-tac-toe of crude iron bars.

  Given the Spanish influence, forgotten coquina structures lie scattered all over these islands, so it was not entirely unusual, but it was the bars that really piqued my interest. They were hinged. Meaning they would swing out, but not in. And they were locked. Somewhere further up that two-hundred-year-old “pipe” was a mechanical release that triggered the lock to allow the bars movement. After two centuries in salt water, the bars literally crumbled when I applied pressure. Twenty minutes later, I wrestled the spindly remainders out of the coquina.

  Scratching my head, I looked around. Something didn’t make good sense. High tide covered up the drain completely. But I also knew that the tidal fluctuation ranged from four to six feet. The reds were circling the schools of shrimp, so I fished a few hours and paddled back in as the tide was halfway out. What I saw answered my questions. While the incoming tide filled the pipe, and high tide covered it up, the outgoing washed it out and allowed it to empty.

  I’d heard of Spanish and Moorish forts using this very “technology” to drain the latrines of their coastal forts and castles both state-side and in Europe. So I timed the tides, and knowing I had a couple of hours before the water returned, I strapped on a headlamp and belly-crawled through the pipe. It snaked uphill for what must have been a couple hundred yards. About the time I was totally and completely freaked out and starting to wonder how in the world I was going to crawl out backwards, the pipe turned straight up. More iron bars covered the opening. They, too, were hinged but in working order. I flipped the latch and swung the bars up and open.

  I climbed up into a coquina cavern, maybe twenty feet wide and sixty or so feet long. Two rows of columns, maybe ten feet apart, supported the ceiling, which was some twelve feet above my head. The ceiling above me was a twentieth-century combination of steel support beams, rebar, and poured concrete. Again, I scratched my head. Certainly, whoever poured the concrete floor above my head knew the coquina was here. Whether or not they knew about the drain was another matter.

  The walls were covered in names and dates carved into the coquina, starting in the 1800s. Most were from the mid-1800s. Some quoted Scripture, while others listed their names and those of their family. On the wall just above the entrance of the drain, someone had carved the word FREEDOM and drawn an arrow toward the drain.

  I, like everyone else in Brunswick, had grown up hearing rumors of the underground railroad that freed slaves from nearby plantations. But with the passage of time, no one ever really knew where truth ended and rumor began. Looking around, I had a feeling that the truth had been buried pretty close to where I stood.

  I checked my watch, gauged the tide, and spent some more time studying the walls. In the southeast corner I found a spiral staircase that led up to a wooden trapdoor. I tapped it, but it didn’t budge. It was solid wood, and judging by the sound of it, thick. I pressed my back against it and shoved with my legs. It moved. I did it again, and it broke free, scurrying roaches along the wall and covering me in dust. The door must have been six inches thick and weighed seventy-five pounds. Finally, I lifted the hinged door and slammed it against the concrete wall. A small shaft led upward, maybe two feet, to another piece of wood. This one was thinner and looked like plywood. I pushed, and it, too, lifted upward this time more easily. I pulled upward, felt carpet on my hands, and looked around.

  Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.

  I stood up and found a light switch on the wall. I clicked it on and found myself in a bank vault, maybe ten feet long and eight feet wide. It took me maybe a nanosecond to figure out which one. Unc had never talked much about it, but between the newspaper articles, town gossip, and what I could dig out of him, I’d put together a pretty clear picture of him spending the night in here during the storm that changed his life forever.

  Two walls were lined with individual safety deposit boxes, while the opposite walls were lined with much larger ones. At the far end, opposite the door, sat a chair and single table. One last thing caught my eye. A small oriental rug lay crumpled above the carpet-covered door I’d just climbed through. I spread it out over the trapdoor and realized that it was there less for decoration than to cover the cut lines in the carpet. Between the poor lighting and the rug, you’d never know the door existed. Add to that a power outage, and, well . . . I left with one question.

  Did Unc know about the trapdoor?

  I wanted to snoop around some more, but I knew the tide wouldn’t let me—unless I wanted to spend the next nine to ten hours in the basement. I stepped into the basement and finally down into the drain, where I heard the echo of water lapping against the coquina. It was time to go.

  I crawled quickly, scared a few fiddler crabs in the process, and slid out the mouth of the drain just as the tide was rolling over the lip. I slipped back into my kayak just as the shrimp boats were idling out to sea.

  I don’t know why I discovered the drain that particular morning. I’d paddled by that spot more than a hundred times since junior high, and why my paddle never banged against the coquina before is beyond me. Proximity to shore, water level, how far I was inserting the paddle on each stroke—all of these things played a part, but that still doesn’t explain the mystery of why then and there.

  That night, I sprung it on Unc. I was mad, and he could tell from the tone of my voice. “I found something today.”

  He looked at me over the top of the newspaper. “Yeah?”

  “I did some digging today in the basement . . . the bank basement.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Yeah . . . until today, I thought it was just a cool piece of slave history. How come you never told me about the door under the carpet?”

  My question caught him off guard.

  He set the paper down and tilted his head, studying me. “Chase, I didn’t steal those bonds.”

  I crossed my arms. “Then you’re saying you knew about it?”

  “ ’Course I knew about it. Jack and I found it as kids.”

  Pieces started falling into place. “So you knew all along that he took the bonds?”

  He nodded.

  “Why?”

  Still he said nothing.

  “Unc?”

  “Some things are worth more than money.”

  I studied him and for the first time, understood that he was hiding something. Something close. “W
hat’re you hiding?” Then it hit me. “Oh, I see. He’s got something on you, and you both know it.”

  He didn’t move.

  “What’s he got on you? What’s he been using all this time to keep you quiet?”

  Unc just nodded and smiled. “You’re gonna make one heck of a reporter someday.”

  “Let me get this straight—you lost your dad, your wife, your son, your job, most everything you ever owned . . . heck, even your name.” I looked around. “Now what on earth is worth that?”

  He studied his fingernails and chewed his lip. “I heard about this guy one time who, back in the fifties, went off into the bush and tried to convert the natives. He got off the plane, and they surrounded him and shoved about eight spears through his chest.” He shook his head. “Seems like a waste, don’t it? Before he left, somebody asked him why he was going.” Unc walked toward the edge of the porch and talked to me over his shoulder. “He said he gave up what he couldn’t keep to gain what he couldn’t lose.”

  Unc stepped off the porch, looked around what little world he had left, and then turned and looked at me. “I’ve tried to remember that.” He smiled. “And some days I do.”

  In the five years since that conversation, I’ve written over a thousand newspaper articles—several of which have been syndicated nationally. Readers say I have a nose for the truth. Red would be the first among them, which is good because he’s my boss. That may be correct, except for the one story where it really matters. Now, when I look at the collage on my wall, I can only scratch my head. Like the Scarlet Pimpernel, the truth is elusive. I know the who, the what, the when, and the how, but I have yet to crack the code on the why.

  I’ve crawled back up that drain many times and spent hours in the vault. Despite this, I can’t prove what happened in the summer of 1979. My nose tells me only one man can do that, but for some reason he’s not talking. When he does, he quotes dead people or says something that only he understands.

  Discovering the basement and the trapdoor in the vault didn’t help my case any. By giving him access, it only added nails to Unc’s coffin. By keeping it a secret, he’s thrown dirt on it. By admitting he’s known all along that Jack stole the money, he etched his own tombstone. Contrast that with my college philosophy class—my professor said there are five ways of “knowing”: personal experience, revelation, empirical evidence, logic, and hearsay. Given those methods of knowing something, I know this—and I’d stake my life on it: William “Liam” McFarland willingly took the fall for something he didn’t do.

  I have lived my entire life in a chasm, pulled between two polar tensions. On one side stands the entire town, what they believe, what history has recorded and suggests. And at the front of that crowd is Uncle Jack, confirming everyone’s belief. Helping him out is Unc’s silence, which only makes matters worse.

  But on the other side stands Unc. Battered. And unbending.

  Somewhere in the middle, scratching my head, is me.

  Chapter 36

  Due to some beltway traffic, an overturned car, and a bypass around Spaghetti Junction, Mandy, Unc, Sketch, and I arrived at Turner Field just a few minutes before the game started. Unc left the windows cracked, giving Bones a cross-breeze as he curled up in the backseat. Scurrying across the parking lot, we were intercepted by a one-legged man in a wheelchair. His hair was matted, and he reeked of alcohol. He spun around in front of us, slurring his words, his lips thick and numb, and spit across the asphalt. “Chhhhhangggge?”

  I walked past him without a second glance. As did Unc and Mandy, who had turned her head and was breathing into the wind. About the time I took a deep breath, a small hand tugged on my back pocket. I turned to find the kid standing with his hand out and palm up. I pointed toward the stadium. “Wait ’til we get in there, and I’ll get you whatever you want.”

  He shook his head and jerked his hand.

  “What?”

  He pointed at the man in the chair.

  “Sketch, if I give that man money, he’s going to wheel himself out of this parking lot and down to the corner liquor store.”

  The kid stomped one foot and jerked his hand a second time.

  “I’m not giving that man money.”

  The kid opened his notepad and wrote in dark, bold letters, GIVE TO ALL WHO BEG FROM YOU.

  I put my hands on my hips. “Who says?”

  The kid looked up, then back at me, expressionless.

  Unc and Mandy stood behind me, trying to decipher this round of charades.

  I looked up and behind me. “Who!?”

  He flipped a page, drew a cross on a hillside and the words MATTHEW 5 beside it, and held it up for all three of us. By now, the man in the wheelchair had rolled himself up behind the kid.

  “You’re quoting scripture?”

  He opened his notebook and pulled out a single wrinkled page that had been torn from its binding.

  I turned it over in my hands. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  The kid shook his head.

  Unc stepped in front of me, pulled five dollars from his pocket, and stuffed it into the man’s shirt pocket. Looking at me, he said, “I should’ve raised you better. Come Sunday, you’re front and center. You been spending too much time fishing.”

  We walked into the stadium, up a couple ramps, and out into the stands. Our seats were down past first base, about thirty rows above where the clay meets the outfield. We bought a program, sat down, and I took a long look around. The park had changed, the roster had changed, the music was louder, and the food and drinks were twice as expensive, but it was still magical. Sketch’s face told me that he thought so too.

  I studied the program and looked at all the new faces and talent. Terry Pendleton was now the hitting coach, and Chipper Jones was in the fourteenth year of his career and a shoo-in for Cooperstown. I counted—it’d been fifteen years since “the slide.” I looked over toward where our seats would have been in the old stadium and tried to remember being there with Tommye. I caught Unc’s eye and realized I wasn’t the only one who remembered.

  We bought food and drink from most every vendor who walked past our seats: popcorn, cotton candy, peanuts, hot dogs, cold beer, pretzels, a couple slices of pizza, cokes, water, ice cream. By the sixth inning, the kid’s stomach looked like a little Buddha’s. Mine too. We had to slouch in our chairs just to make room for them.

  I looked around the stadium at all the fathers and sons sitting side by side, gloves ready to catch a foul ball, rally caps turned up, and smiles spread earlobe to earlobe. Despite the multimillion-dollar insanity, the steroids, and the egos, baseball still does that. It brings them together.

  Then I thought about Sketch’s life and what lay ahead. Since the means of terminating parental rights was a public process, the DA’s office had placed ads in nearly twenty papers around the Southeast. That’s like waving a sign that reads, “Hey, come pick up your kid.” And —no matter what I thought of them—they might read that ad, show up tomorrow, throw him in the backseat, and disappear. Forever. ’Course, they’d live under some close scrutiny for a while, but if they kept their noses clean, they’d keep him. They could be the worst, most abusing white trailer trash in the country, and yet neither Mandy nor I could do anything about it. The law protected the parents.

  Sketch’s right arm rested next to mine. He slid his arm down the armrest, rubbing his elbow along my forearm. The skin was thin, tough, and felt like it’d been run through a cheese grater.

  When I was about his size, Unc had me working in the green-house. One night after dinner, we went out there to check on his plants. He clicked on the light, sat me down, and slid a purple orchid with a three-foot stem close to my nose. “Pretty bloom, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  He tapped it. “The bloom doesn’t come from up here”—he brushed away some crushed bark and loose dirt from around the roots—“it comes out of here.” He held the orange clay pot in both hands. “Care for the roots, and the flower
will bloom all on its own.”

  Unc then took a slender but strong bamboo shoot, about four feet long, and slid it into the dirt along the stem of the orchid. Then he loosely tied the stem to the shoot. “That’s to guide the stem. Otherwise it’ll bloom too much, and the weight of the blooms can break the stem. So, let it bloom all it wants, but give it something to lean on.”

  Mandy caught my eye and the look on my face. “You okay?”

  “Yeah . . . just . . . taking in the game.” It was a pitiful lie.

  I watched Sketch study the field, follow the path of fly balls, read the scoreboard, and saw how his feet dangled from the seat when he leaned back. Mandy watched, too. He was no longer just an assignment to either one of us.

  I thought about my story, the last in the three-part series, which Red wanted on his desk in a few days. He said our readers would tire and lose interest if we didn’t reach some resolution, so “find it . . . because it’s out there.” Resolution? How can an orchid bloom if the roots have been twisted off with pliers, burnt with Marlboros, and drowned with beer? Where’s the resolution in that? Where’s the happy ending?

  Sketch was watching the batter at home plate, intensely trained on the movement. His right hand—sticky with sugar—unconsciously sketched lines and shades in the thin air, showing that the pencil was tethered to his brain. To his left, Unc was feeding him a constant stream of information, telling him about the batters, the players, who was good at what and why. For once Unc got to play the role of color man. Not surprisingly, after thirty years of following the Braves, he was good at it. But listening to him, I missed Tommye.

  With two outs in the middle of the seventh, the batter hit a high pop fly to center field, where Andruw Jones caught it for the third out. The Braves ran in, ground crews pulling screens across the field ran out, and the music began to play. On cue, Unc and I jumped up out of our seats, took off our caps, crossed our arms around each other, and sang at the top of our lungs with the rest of Atlanta. “Take me out to the ball game, take me out with the crowd. . . .”