Between the Lines

...while just then the police started searching neighborhoods and homes where Fay and Keisha were known to have lived, and even after professional trackers were called in with their Bloodhounds, the girls still could not be found.

And as the King Air flew over the Gulf of Mexico, and then over Florida, Brad told Peter and Angela and Carol about his father, about growing up without a real father because his Old Man was always off somewhere flying, and not for an airline but for a strange, almost non-existent company that flew spies to Central America one week and then humanitarian relief supplies to Somalia the next. People had tried to have his father killed more than once, too, and ever since a veil of secrecy had shrouded his father's comings and goings. And these days his Old Man lived in the Bahamas, alone most of the time -- because his mother simply hadn't been able to compete with his father's life.

And a few hours later the King Air landed at a small, unlighted airstrip on a barren, windswept island just a hundred miles off the Florida coast, and yet days turned to weeks, and weeks to a month, and still no one knew of the two girls whereabouts...

Until one February evening, when Angela Eastman came on live, apparently from the studios of BBC4. And with her were Fay Polk and Elise Washburn, and it seemed the broadcast was coming live from an undisclosed location referred to only as "somewhere in London." The women didn't know a whole lot about their escape from America, only that they had been on a bus, then on an airliner bound for somewhere, where they had in due course been granted asylum. Fay was awkward and shy and remained silent during most of the interview, and she seemed terribly self-conscious that all this had happened because of her poor baby, while Elise had a few choice words to say about some people's political choices, but she graciously told the world that she was okay now and practicing medicine as she'd always wanted -- without Big Brother peering over her shoulder and telling her what to do or how to do it. The broadcast ended, for the time being, the long political nightmare endured by many of the politicians who had crafted the laws used to tear apart their country, but as that had always been their intent none were upset for very long that the two women had "escaped justice." They had bigger fish to fry, for their country had not yet been completely torn apart, so there was still work for them to do.

Coda

It said there a house out on the point, not a very big house but even so they say it be nice inside. After the hurricane it be not so good and it empty for long time, but now we hear that a pilot-men has bought it. These pilot-men be strange creatures, they usually Americans that drinks too much, but they fly them crazy machines everywhere there be money.

But the man who move into the house on the point ain't no pilot-man. No one know the man, not even his name, and the police has told everyone that the man not to be disturbed.

Though somedays, and for almost a month now, the man slips carefully out of his house and walks down to the beach in front of his house -- and on most days he just sit there, usually he just stare at the dark clouds over Florida, but even so the man be pulling off his shirt and swimming out to the reef from time to time. Then one day the pilot-man come by the house, and several people got out of his car and went inside the man's house -- but wasn't long 'til the pilot-man left all those people and they don't come outside much. At least not during the day.

Of course they still lots of tourists on the island, but few being from America anymore, because America be closed off now, in a kind of war with itself. But tourists still walk the beaches, especially to see the sunset, and then everyone gather by the fire pits and sing the songs that make them happy and then they eat conch fritters and drink rum drinks and then go do the things people always do late at night. Now we hear there be nights when the stranger come and walk among the tourists, but I hear people say he always be lookin' to the west -- where his home used to be.

There be a new lady-doctor at the clinic in Cooper's Town and it be the strangest thing because she American too, and most doctors around my islands be British, but she a good doctor and people say she fine.

And a funny thing. A few weeks ago a famous lady from London come to my island, and there be a new rumor that she move in with the strange man in his house on the point, and I know 'cause sometimes we be seein' them walk on the beach the way some people do, holding hands and all that. Another story I hear say he a teacher, another say he a writer, but ya know that soon enough no one care. He just the man who live out on the point and who look at the tall clouds to the west before he walk out into the deep deep blue and be swimmin' out to the reef. Sometime the woman with him out there, but I ain't gonna talk about that stuff.

© 2023 adrian leverkühn | abw | fiction, plain and simple, every last word of it...