Randy White - Shark River

I was lying in bed reading The Windward Road, a classic by Archie Carr, the great Florida biologist, and listening to my shortwave, Radio Bogota. I had just heard a news reporter say in Spanish that Colombia’s military had suffered casualties in three days of heavy fighting against guerrillas. Fifty-four soldiers and police were dead, and a United States-built army helicopter had been downed by suspected rebel fire. Another seventeen were feared dead or taken prisoner by the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, FARC. According to the reporter, the rebels were reacting to a recent U.S. antidrug policy of interdiction by force. Some of the smaller producers were being put out of business.

That made me think of Hal Harrington. It also brought back some memories of Colombia, a place I love.

Colombia is one of the most beautiful little countries in the world and also one of the most tragic. When its economy flourished, then became dependent on the drug trade, the first casualty was Colombia’s own legal system and the respect its citizenry had for that system and their republic. It started with marijuana, then cocaine. Now Colombia is the second-largest producer of heroin in the world. The beautiful little country of rain forest and ancient stone cities just keeps getting dirtier and more ruthless as the drug whirlpool sweeps it around, dragging it deeper and deeper into the abyss.

If Colombian drug merchants had come to care nothing for the lives of other Colombians, they would not hesitate to kill me. Ransom was exactly right: I was afraid. Afraid for good reason. Somewhere beyond the night and across the Caribbean, Amador Cordero, oldest son of Edgar Cordero, was hooked up to tubes and hoses, a paraplegic. I was the cause and his father would have his revenge.

The only question now was when… and who would come looking for me?

I heard Ransom laugh louder, then the slap of Tomlinson’s bare feet on wood. I saw his silhouette fill the doorway, told him to come in before he had a chance to knock, and there he was: Hair more matted than usual, eyes glassy, pupils fixed, completely naked. His lower body was caked in what looked to be gray mud, his torso painted red, his face streaked with tribal designs, black and yellow.

I said, “You get kidnapped by Indians or just showing off your artistic side?”

Behind him, wearing one of my T-shirts as a nightdress, Ransom made a clicking noise with her tongue and said, “He all man, that for sure. From the top to the bottom. Lordy! That something I no longer got a question about!”

Tomlinson was staring at the wall beyond me, maybe looking out the window… no, just staring. He seemed to be in some kind of trance, and weaving, too. I realized he was very drunk or stoned. Probably both. I listened to him say, “I spent all night, all day, praying and meditating about what to do. I pounded up leaves and drank the sacred Black Drink, what the Indian shamans used to drink when they were on a vision quest. The Calusas I’m talking about, here on Sanibel. That’s why I’m here.”

Still amused, an approving smile on her face, Ransom said, “You been smoking some herb, too, that what I smell. Smell very nice, too. That the bad thing about not having no pockets, you walking around naked like that. You got no place to carry a little present for your friends.”

I crossed the room and found a towel. I wasn’t wearing the sling now. My arm was still bandaged but it felt a lot better, no longer so stiff, although the bruise had darkened, spread and turned a sickly shade of blue-green.

Which was not much different than the shade of Tomlinson’s face right now. The unpainted areas, anyway.

I said to him, “I think you should sit down before you fall down. Maybe some food would help. There’s a piece of grouper in there from dinner.”

He was shaking his head. “No, man. Not now. It came to me. In my vision. That I should come here and tell you how it was, what I did. Everything. We need to talk. I don’t know why I put it off for so long.”

“You want to talk now? This instant?”

“Damn right, amigo. I wait ’til I’m sober, I might lose my courage.”

I tossed the towel to him. “Okay. I’ll listen. But do me a favor first.”

Tomlinson said, “Nearly fifteen years ago, I was a member of a political activist group that was responsible for sending a bomb to a San Diego naval installation. It killed three people and injured another guy pretty bad. One of the people killed, he was a naval officer. I think he was a friend of yours. You didn’t know? I’ve always wondered if you knew or not.”

Instead of answering, I said, “A political activist group that sent a bomb? That seems like a pretty mild way to describe cold-blooded killers.”

“Well, revolutionaries then. Or anarchists. That’s more like it. This was back when I was a teaching undergraduate in Boston. What we really were-there were thirteen of us who were super-active; the core group of true believers, I’m talking about. Power to the people. Up the establishment. Death to the pigs. That’s where our heads were at, but we were so young, man. So fucking young! Really, what most of us were was just a bunch of dilettantes who thought violence was like what we saw on television. Good guys and bad guys, cowboys and Indians. Like that.”

I said, “A lot of people wouldn’t have the courage to admit that.”

Tomlinson said, “It’s the truth, man. The truth. Back then it seemed like we were doing the right thing, trying to crash the establishment so we could start all over and make things better. You’ve got to know yourself, some things going on during that time period really sucked. Until I saw the film footage of the people we’d killed. That’s when it got real, man. Way too real. I’ve never been the same person since.”

I was sitting on the bed. Tomlinson was in the reading chair by the north window. Instead of wrapping himself in the towel, he’d borrowed a pair of khaki shorts. They were baggy. He had his forehead braced in both palms, looking at the floor as he spoke, not looking at me. The floor lamp above him made his hair seem a brighter blond, the shadow of his goatee darker, the tribal paint on his face surreal.

Through the window behind him and to his right, I could see black water and a fringe of stars. Out on Periwinkle, the island’s main strip, bars such as ’Tween Waters and Sanibel Grill and at Casa Ybel were probably still going strong, but this side of the bay was given over to darkness and silence.

I’d asked Ransom to leave. She was outside somewhere. Maybe eavesdropping, maybe not.

It didn’t matter.

I sat there and listened, saying nothing, as Tomlinson told me how it was. The rallies, the demonstrations, the late-night talks about civil disobedience and insurrection, discussions of violence becoming gradually more and more acceptable and extreme as the subject of violence became commonplace. Their words making it seem doable and real, the fantasy of their small unit making bloodless war, accomplishing good, changing the world. The women members into it, a communal feeling, sex and drugs and revolution. Like it could really happen and they, the elite, had a responsibility to make it happen.

Conditioning is one of the least appreciated dynamics of human behavior. Take a group, any group, and condition them to a philosophy or pattern of conduct one tiny deviant step at a time and, within a few years or less, you can convince them that such atrocities as mass suicide or marching one’s own neighbors into ovens are both perfectly reasonable acts.

Tomlinson’s group had found a book called The Anarchist Cookbook. It gave detailed directions on how to make bombs and detonators. They’d already rented a little farm. They began to experiment.