Footprints of Thunder (4 page)

It had been Ellen’s idea to stop at the caves on the way back from a convention—really a vacation—in Los Angeles where Terry had presented a paper on dysfunctional families but skipped most of the other sessions. Cruising up I-5, Ellen had studied the literature she picked up at a visitors’ information rack at a rest stop. Ellen was in a tourist mood, and it had been years since they’d visited the Oregon Caves, so they cut off the interstate at Medford and headed west to the caves. After a morning tour they’d still make it back to Portland that night. Vaguely remembering his last tour through the caves, Terry was anticipating one particular part: When the guide turns out the lights, it’s the first and only time most people experience total darkness. Terry recalled feeling the darkness around his face as his eyes vainly struggled to detect something. In retrospect, it seemed unpleasant, but, strangely, Terry was looking forward to it again.

As the tour progressed members developed an informal understanding. The couple with the baby hung back, since the baby’s noises distracted the guide. Front positions were reserved for the older couple since they listened more attentively than the rest. The little boys went wherever they wanted, and the parents didn’t care. The young man with the yellow backpack was always in the rear, staring at their guide, a sad determined look on his face.

The group came to a large cave with several branching passages, its well-packed trail testimony to the previous thousands of tourists. The guide, directing them into a side passage that dead-ended into a small cave, stood by the entrance and let the group pass.

“You will now experience something that few of you have had the chance to experience. Total darkness.”

Immediately the lights went out. Several people gasped as their eyes became useless. Then the lights were back. There were murmurs of relief and cheerful kidding among the members of the group, until a masculine voice ordered: “Stay where you are and don’t move.”

“Kenny, what are you doing? Are you crazy?”

Terry turned with the group toward the voices. The kid with the backpack was standing by the entrance with a gun in his hand, the guide at his side, her mouth and eyes open in disbelief. More murmurs from the group but no longer cheerful. The little boy whispered he was scared. The baby gurgled cheerfully while she yanked on her dad’s hair. Terry noticed the black man start to move from the back of the group toward the kid.

“I said don’t move.” As he spoke the kid turned the gun toward the man, who froze in midstep, his face determined— while Terry felt near panic.

“I want everyone to sit down right where they are. Sit down. You too, Jill. Now!”

Everyone but the guide sat down. Terry noticed the military man sat down last, his eyes never leaving the gun in the kid’s hand.

“Kenny,” the guide pleaded softly. “Please put the gun down. You’re scaring everyone. There are kids here. You’re scaring the kids.”

“It’s your fault, Jill. I tried to get you to listen. It’s going to happen … happen soon. I want my family with me when it does. At least you, Jill. Now, sit down!”

At the last words, the kid shoved the gun in the guide’s face, and the shock sent her stumbling back a few steps until she melted into the group, which sat in stunned silence.

Terry thought about the guide’s reaction. The kid called her family, yet the guide seemed genuinely frightened, and that was a red flag. The kid had strong feelings for the guide, and yet she was afraid he would use the gun on her. Terry didn’t need his professional training to diagnose Kenny as unstable and potentially dangerous.

The group sat in silence, the only sound the collective deep breathing. Finally, the old lady spoke.

“Son,” she said, attracting his attention. “I’ve never heard of anyone hijacking a cave tour before. What is it that you want?”

“You won’t believe me! No one will believe me! My own sister won’t believe me.”

“I promise to listen to you and keep my mind open. Ask Hank, here,” the old woman said, indicating her husband. “He’ll tell you I’m a good listener. Have to be when you live with Hank for forty years.”

Hank smiled at his wife, but the kid with the gun didn’t.

“You won’t believe me, but if you want to know … I’m going to save you. At least I think I am.”

Nervous conversation spread through the crowd. The old woman ignored it and asked, “What is it that you think you’re saving us from?”

“He’s crazy,” the guide responded. “He’s hooked up with a bunch offtakes that think the sky is falling.”

Anxiety washed across the kid’s face, and he reddened. He looked away from the old woman to his sister, pain in his eyes. Then, with what could have been embarrassment, he said, “I’m saving you from the end of the world!”

4. Offshore

We were three days into the desert when the flood occurred. Great waves washed over our caravan. Three men and two camels of great value were lost. When the waters receded we were surrounded by a great number of fishes. The water was of no use because it tasted of salt.

—
Abu al Assad, 1413

Off Naples, Florida

PreQuilt; Saturday, 1:35
P.M
. EST

R
on was so obvious about trying to please Rosa that even Chris noticed it. “Geez, Dad,” he said finally, “why don’t you just kiss her?” Ron took the kidding but didn’t give up trying to get Rosa interested in sailing. He showed her how to mind the helm, hoist and lower the sails, told her what the different sails were called, and explained the compass and what a heading was.

He let her take the helm and talked endlessly about his experiences at sea and the time he had sailed with his uncle in the greatest of the offshore races, the Fastnet. With forty-one other entries they had set sail from Cowes on the Isle of Wight, raced to Fastnet Rock off the coast of Ireland, and then back to Plymouth, England. Thirty-two competitors finished that year, and Ron’s uncle’s boat finished seventeenth. But that seventeenth place was as good as a victory in Ron’s memory. They had raced through fog banks, fought whirligig currents, and finished in the middle of the pack. But they had finished. Ron talked about it with more passion than Rosa had ever seen in him, and as a result she listened respectfully. Even Chris, who had heard the story for years, listened attentively this time. Telling the story at sea gave it a feeling no living room could. In the afternoon Ron brought out the sextant and tried explaining navigation to Rosa and Chris. Carmen sat at the helm, a bemused look on her face.

“The key to figuring out our position is what we call the navigational triangle. We start by identifying three points on the earth’s surface. We know where the earth’s pole is, so that is one point.”

“Which pole?” Chris cut in. “There’s two, you know.”

“Yes, I know. The closest pole, in this case the North Pole. We also know the geographical position of stars and planets … that means where the star or planet is over the earth’s surface.”

“But the earth is turning,” Rosa pointed out.

“Yeah,” Chris echoed, “the earth is turning fast. Maybe a million miles an hour.”

“Yes,” Ron said with exaggerated patience, “the earth is turning, but not millions of miles an hour, more like a thou-. sand. That’s why we need a clock, a very accurate clock.”

“The one in the cabin, right?” Chris said.

“Right, Chris. We leave that one in the cabin because it’s set to Greenwich mean time and must be exactly right. Then, I set my watch by that clock.”

“I thought you used the radio to set your watch,” Rosa pointed out.

“I use the radio to see how far off our clock is from Greenwich mean time. They broadcast Greenwich mean time signals so people at sea can check their clocks.”

“And if their clocks are off they can’t navigate?” Rosa asked.

“Yeah, they get lost forever, and become ghost ships,” Chris said.

“No, they just need to correct their calculations based on how many seconds off their clock is. You were right about the earth moving, but we know where a star will be above its surface at a given time. We use the Nautical Almanac to find that out.” Ron held up the book. Chris reached for it, but Ron pulled it out of his reach. “I’m not finished yet. Okay, so we know where the pole is, and we know the point on the earth’s surface where a star or planet will be directly above at a certain time of the day. Then we use our position to complete the triangle.”

“But if you know where we are why do you have to do all this?” Rosa asked.

“Yeah,” Chris echoed his new sister. “If we know where we are why do we have to do this?”

“We don’t know exactly where we are, we estimate it based on course and speed from our last position. But an approximate position isn’t good enough. We have to know exactly where we are. This is where the sextant comes in.” Ron lifted it out of its box. Chris made a grab again, but Ron held it up high. “I use the sextant. Maybe I’ll show Rosa how to use it if she wants.”

“What about me?” Chris whined.

“Well, maybe,” Ron said doubtfully. He looked to Carmen for help, but the look on her face said she was enjoying his predicament.

“We know the three points of our triangle, and based on that we know, at a certain time, how high the star should be above the horizon. We use the sextant to read the exact height of the star above the horizon, and mark the time of the reading. Then, since we know for sure two points of the triangle, we can adjust the position of the third point based on the difference between our estimated altitude of the star and the actual altitude.”

Ron looked around at his miniaudience. Carmen was still grinning, Chris was staring blankly, and Rosa glared angrily at him. Ron couldn’t imagine why his navigation lesson would make her mad. Then Rosa blurted it out.

“This is geometry, isn’t it? This is some sort of trick to get me to do homework, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s not a trick. It is geometry, but I thought you would be interested. … I mean, you have to do this to sail offshore.”

“Just what I want to do, float around the ocean doing geometry. Just how often do you have to do these calculations?”

“Seven or eight times a day. You do the first before sunrise, a couple of sun sights in the morning, a noon sight…”

Ron stopped talking. He knew he was making Rosa’s hostility worse.

“Eight times a day? You have to do the calculations eight times a day? And you get to get up early to do them? What a sweet deal”

“Well, it’s not that bad. Most of the calculations are done for you, you just use the tables, or the electronic navigator in the cabin.”

“I know if I tried to pay someone to do my geometry homework you would ground me forever. And now I’m supposed to do yours? Well, if I have to do geometry to sail, it’s another good reason to stay on land. There all you have to do is read the signs, or a map.”

“But the stars are the map out here.”

“Yeah,” Chris cut in, “the stars are a map. Kind of a connect the dots.”

Ron scowled at Chris while Rosa got up and stomped down the deck to the bow. Carmen gave Ron a look that said “You should have known better.” Ron thought about Rosa and then he thought of Bermuda, and then he got depressed, Chris was still sitting there with him, looking at the sextant. Maybe, Ron thought, if I get Chris interested Rosa will come back.

“You want to see how the sextant works, Chris?”

Chris lit up like a kid on Christmas morning.

“Yeah, sure. Can I hold it too?”

Ron spent a few minutes with Chris, showing him how to sight the sun and the horizon and make the readings. It was clear Chris mostly wanted to look through the sextant’s telescopic sight, so Ron gave up and let him. Rosa never came back. Instead she was sunbathing on the bow. Finally, Ron set Chris up with a fishing pole and then settled in next to Carmen at the helm.

The
Entrepreneur
sailed southwest into the afternoon. When Ron dropped the sea anchor they ate. Carmen had cooked crab in the icebox, and they cracked and ate it with salad, and soft bread sticks. The lunch warmed Rosa’s heart enough to get her talking to Ron again. After lunch Chris talked them into playing spoons, his favorite card game. Carmen had never played, and Chris expertly explained how the cards are passed in a circle until a player gets four of a kind, and then picks up one of the three spoons on the table. Then, in a race, the other players try to grab the remaining spoons. Chris cautioned her not to get faked into grabbing one too soon but in the first round feigned a grab and tricked her. Laughing as they played, they shared a good feeling. Finally, Carmen announced it was time for swimming.

They spent the next hour jumping off the stern into the warm blue waters. Finally, exhausted, the kids stretched out on the bow to warm themselves while Ron and Carmen settled in the stern.

“You’re being too obvious, you know?” Carmen said. “About Rosa, I mean. You can’t force her to want to go to Bermuda.”

“I know. I gave up after the navigation debacle.”

“That was pretty funny. Trying to get a teenager to like sailing by teaching her geometry. Did you notice things went better after you stopped trying?”