Beloved Evangeline (20 page)

I swore aloud.

Fortunately the Gainesville authorities are unfamiliar with me, and other hikers had seen the poor man fall. I wasn’t even questioned. My state—which was alternately catatonic and expletive-laden—was attributed to shock.

Hands shaking uncontrollably when I got back to my car, I shuffled through the music on my iPod. Only the hard stuff would do. Most of the music I love defies labeling. Several groups have industrial qualities but can’t really be put into that category. What unites them is more rawness of emotion and a haunted quality that I crave. After a few songs, the pieces of my soul pulled back together somehow. I settled on a
breathtaking
song by Ministry before beginning the drive home.

16.

I don’t remember the point at which I finally closed my eyes. Usually I do. I remember the moment at which I either make a conscious decision to close my eyes or just give up because I’m too tired to fight. On this night I must’ve finally been overtaken by sleep sometime shortly before dawn.

I awoke with a sharp gasp for air, the intake of it so sudden that my throat immediately burned raw. After a few moments of reflexive coughing, I found the outside world was dark. The clock said 10 p.m. I’d slept an entire day. I threw off the covers as my stomach growled.

In the refrigerator I found my last sacred batch of green chile and immediately began preparing breakfast burritos. Scrambled eggs, potatoes, bacon, and green chile to top it off—what could be better? It’s so hard for me to get green chile here in Florida, but I simply can’t live without it in my homemade salsa or green chile pork roast. Recently I discovered hatch-chile.com, where I can have the fire-roasted delight shipped directly from Hatch, New Mexico, to my doorstep. When I asked for it at the local grocery stores, they thought I was asking for green
chili
, thinking me crazy for wanting green
meat and beans
. No one I’ve talked to in Florida can understand what all my fuss is over a pepper. Green chile is a staple in New Mexico—you can get it absolutely everywhere including on your hamburger or pizza at chain restaurants—and I miss it dearly. In Albuquerque, on the other hand, they think all we eat down south is fried chicken grease, and make relentless fun about grits being disgusting. (They are
not
.)

Can’t I like both places?
I’ve often asked. Furrowed brows and headshakes indicate the answer is no.

Scarfing down the breakfast burrito, I stared at the stupid parchment on my kitchen table, imagining at this point that it was some kind of joke. Until—I remembered something I’d read in a story long ago about the ways different inks can become visible. Weak moonlight glowed from the window. I snatched the parchment and ran outside.

Holding it up to the moonlight, at first there was no visible change. But gradually, silver-blue characters began to take shape as the parchment soaked up the soft lunar glow. Within moments, the following message appeared:

G+*V Z;@!*D> =;Z*DXVZ*@ >+* *<*@ K@?Q+> K—V>+* D-XQ+> ;=>*@ Q?=>

T?*D D;=*TN*V>-K/*Z+?ZZ*V G;>*@D @XV /T;&!Z*;>+ ;VZ T?Q+>Z;@! ;VZ Z;N

;TT D>?TT ;Q;?VD> >+* V?Q+>G+*V T?Q+> DT-GTN =;Z*D?V Z;@!V*DD –V* ;T- V#G?>+ BX@*V*DD -= +*;@>;TT B?*&*D K;Z* G+-T*

A cipher? I was much too tired to think clearly, but the pent-up excitement from weeks of waiting gave me just the burst of wild, manic energy I needed.

After counting the characters, I deduced “*” was the most common, occurring no less than 28 times. I sat down in front of my laptop and Googled the frequency of letters in the English alphabet, with the following result: e t a i n o s h r d l u...

I plugged “e” in the place of “*” and settled in for a very long night.

Google also lead me to the knowledge that “the” is the most common English language word. Therefore, “>+e” must logically be it. Which led me to two more letters: “>” = “t” and “+” = “h.” Several hours—and much trial and error—later, I had arrived at a key. I seriously considered calling Lyle on several occasions, but I felt a need to solve this thing on my own. After plugging in the last of the corresponding letters, the message was revealed:

When darkest night falls

Under the ever bright moon

The sought after gift

Lies safely entombed.

Hidden water runs black

Death and light

Dark and day

All still against the night.

When light slowly fades

In darkness one alone

With untainted heart

All pieces made whole.

Unfortunately staring, rubbing my temples, and the entire
Lost Souls
album by Doves failed to make its meaning any clearer. The only decipherable bit I arrived at was found in the first line: a full moon. Other than that, the rest was a load of gibberish.

Days passed, and still I made no progress. In this, the internet was no help. The cursor on my laptop blinked unhelpfully. Only the ringing of the phone pulled me back from one of my daydreams.

“
Can I speak to Evangeline?”

“
This is she,” I replied cautiously.

“
Do you have you have a brother named Chris?”

“
Yeah….”

“
I’m the manager here at the Palace Saloon in Fernandina Beach? You’re brother’s had a bit too much to drink. He’s… disturbing the customers. Before he drank so much he seemed like a really good guy. Told him I wouldn’t call the cops if someone could come get him.”

“
I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

“
We’ll be waiting.”

Forty-one minutes later I stepped into the Palace Saloon. I hadn’t been here in years. Being the oldest saloon in Florida and the supposed haunt of deceased pirates—of course it has long been a family favorite. The mahogany bar is 40 feet long and lit with gas lamps. The ceiling is embossed tin. Nearly every time I’ve been inside Billie Holiday was playing.

I found Chris slouched in a booth. His car was nowhere to be seen and I couldn’t get out of him how he’d gotten down here. Some of the friendlier barflies helped me get him into my car without uttering a word. I nodded a silent thank you.

In the car he muttered nonsensically about me always having to take care of him.

“
Not true,” I reassured him over and
over
.

In response, he turned to me and said, “You could never finish you’re treasure-ghost hunting with Nicky when we were kids—you always had to turn back and look after me.” He would never admit this sober.

“
Also, not true,” I remind him.

“
Don’t tell Dad I got drunk again.”

“
Why
would I tell dad?”

By the time we get to his apartment, he’s forgotten all about it. I get him tucked in bed, prepare some chicken soup with what I can salvage from the fridge, and make iced tea for tomorrow morning. Any other time, I’d have stayed the night on the couch and we may have even watched old movies once he’d sobered up. The next day would’ve been spent going out to breakfast and sightseeing in Savannah. But today was no ordinary day.

I manage two or three hours’ sleep on the couch before checking on Chris, who was luckily sleeping—vomit-free—and snoring soundly. I tiptoed out the door.

Of course Chris would’ve gone to breakfast and put up with me if I asked him, but he wouldn’t have been his usual happy-go-lucky self. He would’ve sulked and mumbled through the entire day. Not because he was embarrassed from a night of drunken debauchery—because I know Chris and he doesn’t get embarrassed.

He would be a mess all day because today is December 7
^th
—the anniversary of the exact day our mother was taken away.

I listened to
Not Your Fault
by AWOLNATION the entire way home.

I could not have slept for very long. Yet before I was fully awake, a strange thought began to grow in my mind. When Nicky and I were kids, there was a lot of talk about lost treasure in the swamps and wilderness. Treasure hunters scoured the banks of Black Creek and the St. Johns searching for lost loot, supposedly buried under a waterfall, though nothing substantial was ever found. We had even looked for it ourselves in the woods where we played. Our favorite place was deep in the forest—a place where streams merged together and disappeared into the earth, the sounds of an underground waterfall fueling our imaginations. The Palace Saloon and talking to Chris had jarred something deep inside my memory. I huddled under the covers until I’d achieved a sufficient level of warmth before discarding them to hunt for a calendar.

The next full moon was two nights away. My sign had finally arrived. I grudgingly admitted that only a true moron would’ve been able to miss it, and all the preceding worry had been needless. Now, instead of worrying, I occupied myself with preparations.

On the first night of the full moon, my quest was underway. I don’t know if it’s common knowledge or not, but trudging through a muddy swamp in the middle of the night causes you to involuntarily take stock of your life. First I need to examine why I call in sick periodically. I sort of need to recharge—maintaining the appearance of normalcy is at times excruciating. I can only keep up with my daily routine for so long before I need time to myself to focus on one of my little projects. It’s a fragile facade that I can’t really maintain for very long. I think my record was a month, but sometimes I can only make a week or a few days at a time. Luckily, I can work on research at home to catch up if I need to, so I’ve been able to make it work. I don’t think that’s so pathetic—just the price I pay for trying to seem normal. All that effort would take its toll on anyone eventually.

Actually, maybe it’s a little pathetic. It’s funny how, when you’re just trying to get by the best way you can and you’re caught up just in
survival
, you don’t realize a lot of things. I definitely didn’t realize how I came across to people at work. Aloof?
Really?
I just wanted to keep things private. It never occurred to me that people would view that as snobbery or even hostility or contempt. And then there are the pictures. Tangible proof that I am not really living. So what was the point of this facade really, anyway? It clearly wasn’t working the way I’d intended. Now I do have a purpose, to see this thing through, but before that, what
did
I really have? Sir Talbot was right about that, my dog really was the last thing.

So for quite a few years now, I’ve been doing absolutely nothing: just treading water. It’s kept me alive, kept me from sinking, from drowning, but it’s also kept me from reaching all of the destinations I imagined reaching by the time I turned 35. Funny how you don’t realize the years are passing, not until something happens to snap you out it, take you out of yourself to see things from someone else’s perspective. I thought I’d have been practicing advocacy law for awhile by now, and be immersed in rewarding work, changing the world for the better. Instead, I’m... doing what exactly? I’m still not too sure.

Which leads me to the medication. A doctor prescribed that years ago, back when the facade was much... harder to maintain. I spent some time not really being able to function at all, which may be why I have accepted things the way they are now, because at the very least, I have been able to
get by
. I took it for about a month before realizing—even through the fog—that no panacea for failure exists, and I didn’t really want any pill making me feel okay about it.

More importantly, I had to at least consider the probability that my soul was irrevocably damaged, broken, after all I’d been through. Most things, once they’re broken, or particularly if they’ve been allowed to shrivel up and die, will never, ever be the same again, let alone be fixable at all.

Pondering all of this at once seemed to make my head spin. I was lost now. My chest began to tighten. Before, I hadn’t been going anywhere, so it was impossible for me to get lost. Now, I had a purpose, a destination—however mysterious. Now I could make mistakes again, even fail. People might get hurt. No— people would almost certainly get hurt. There was my own personal
Catch 22
. And yet, here I was, trudging on. I had sworn to never, ever, let any of those things happen again no matter what it cost me. By that rationale, was I the same still even the same person? I really have no idea anymore.