Panic Ch. 03

"Of course you can," I said. "I had a wonderful time. I'd love to see you again if you're in town." I took a business card out of my purse and gave it to him. I'm not one for waiting by the phone for a guy to call, no matter how much fun I've had with him, but if he ever did come to Houston, I most certainly would make time for him.

Kyle and Kymilla never did get back together, although I believe he sent her stuff back to her. Kymilla's experience transformed her into a rabid environmentalist. Those who know her say that she's still obnoxious, but that's not surprising; after all, Saul of Tarsus was essentially the same person after he became St. Paul. My company got the printing contract for a magazine called La Mujera Latina, and Kyle started dating the woman who owned it. They are going to be married this fall.

That all happened last year. Then this month I got a letter from Karen. As I said, we mostly don't correspond between our annual meeting, so when I saw the postmark and the return address, I was curious, and a little worried.

It looks like we're going to find another place to camp—our site, the one we've met at for more than twenty years, has been shut down. Even though we're mostly by mutual, largely unspoken agreement treating the weekend we had as if it were a dream, evidently it was real enough that people talked about it to others; rumors began to get out. A special committee from the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee came out with bell, book and candle and performed a formal exorcism on the whole area. And then the Florida Department of Agriculture Forestry Division put barricades and a culvert across the road leading to it.

I wept when I read this, because I think I know what's going to happen to it in the end. Pensacola is expanding, and all those little towns north of it are good places to commute from. Public lands, for the people now running the country, are no more than plums to be handed out for cheap to their friends. Our beloved forest, and the farmland around it, will eventually fall into private hands—Pulte, Mercedes, DR Horton, Lennar, it doesn't matter; eventually there will be subdivisions where there were once farms and forest. Sure, the real estate market and the housing industry are in the toilet now and pulling the rest of the economy down with it, but no downturn lasts forever. There will be a recovery, and the whole engine will start up again

And everyone who's read the history of this country, and this state, knows that Hell itself, let alone one pissed-off and desperate woods deity, cannot hope to prevail against landowners who have God on their side.