Randy White - Hunter's moon

Even out of office, Kal Wilson remained presidential. He stayed cool -cold, some said. The exception was when he denounced the media for not running the Danish editorial cartoons that sparked riots.

Tomlinson was wrong when he told me the incident was after Wray Wilson’s plane had crashed but right about the former president becoming more outspoken in the weeks after her death.

Wilson began using the term “Islamicists” and “Nazis” as synonyms.

He referred to the Islamic cleric who offered a bounty for his head as a “failed paperhanger” who didn’t have the courage to look an enemy in the eye-an obvious comparison to Adolf Hitler.

In an interview with BBC television, Wilson warned that the United Kingdom, Holland, France, and Germany, through their policies of appeasement, were “providing the knife and whetstone” that Islamicists would use to cut Europe’s throat.

He said, through the “dangerous charade” called “political correctness,” the United States was doing the same.

Both political parties began a subtle process of distancing themselves from Wilson. Newspaper editorials hinted that his thinking had become “unsound” as a way of explaining why they now refused to quote the man.

“Even former presidents sometimes need editing,” an editorial suggested.

“Censorship through intimidation,” Wilson responded, “is the first objective of tyranny. Once accomplished, the truth is easily perverted to serve the tyrant’s goals.”

For the first time in his career, Kal Wilson was criticized for behavior that was unpresidential.

Did Wilson believe there was a link between the million-dollar bounty and the former First Lady’s death? In the next few days, I would find out.

That was one reason I’d felt disappointed when I thought the trip was canceled. Another was that it was my chance to find out how Wilson was different. It interested me as a biologist and as a man. Extreme environments catalyze extreme adaptive mechanisms. By virtue of having inhabited the White House, Wilson was unlike other men.

But how?

I thought about it as I banged the canoe through the Intracoastal’s rough water into the slick, moon blue shallows. It was a question made more interesting because the man was a few feet away, motionless but no longer snoring.

Had the office elevated him? Or only isolated him?

Both, I guessed.

All U.S. presidents are awarded a place in history, but the spatial corridor is limited-eight years or less. What happened before is historical context. What happens afterward is postscript. A president’s life is defined by the office, then cast in bronze, often long before the man’s death. Typically, the life of a former president consists of a long, polite silence that ends with a bugler’s farewell.

Did ex-presidents chafe at inactivity? At the perception they are the walking dead?

Maybe that’s why Wilson was determined to spend his final days as a free man. He was a cool one, sometimes cold. But history’s bronze statue still had a beating heart, a warrior’s soul. A river flowed beneath the ice.

I liked that.

But he wasn’t an easy man to get along with, as I was learning.

“You could’ve cut off five, maybe ten minutes if you’d pointed us a few more degrees south. Get sloppy like that in an F-14, you could end up in Austin instead of Boston-if the pencil pushers hadn’t retired that beautiful machine.”

Wilson hadn’t spoken for half an hour. I thought he was still asleep.

I continued paddling, the island now so close I could smell the salt pan musk of cactus and sea oats. “I played it safe. We’re only a couple hundred yards north of where you told me to land.”

“A quarter mile, is more like it. But that’s okay. That must be the cabin-do you see it?” As he stretched, he used his paddle to point at a shadowed geometric set back from the water. Its tin roof was ivory, the windows glazed. “We can lay in close to shore and no one will see us take our gear inside.”

He was concerned for a reason. A few hundred yards down the beach, the bonfire was encircled by a cluster of men and women, their shadows huge. Some were dancing; others sat shoulder to shoulder, their faces golden masks.

I said, “Are you sure you want to risk landing where there’re so many people?”

“I told you before, I don’t think the public’ll recognize me. And if they do? Well… it’s better I find out now.” He tilted his head for a moment. “Why the hell are they doing that, you think? Banging away at this hour?”

The beach people were pounding drums… tin cans… plastic buckets, too, judging from the noise. They maintained a steady, low-resonance rhythm that, for a while, I’d mistaken for the rumble of ocean waves. It was 5:45 a.m. Sunrise was in an hour.

I said, “It’s called a ‘drum circle.’ A fad. People who normally wouldn’t give each other the time of day meet to play drums, usually on a beach around sunset. But this time of morning? It’s weird.” I paused, surprised by a sudden word association. Tomlinson’s face had jumped into my mind. “This friend of yours,” I said slowly, “how long have you known him?”

In the chiding manner of a football coach, Wilson said, “You’re an expert navigator who ignores shortcuts and a marine biologist who makes assumptions. I’m worried about you. Those are unexpected flaws in a man of your accomplishments.”

“Huh?”

“You made an assumption, Dr. Ford. When I said we were meeting a friend, you assumed it was my friend.”

He began to snub his backpack, getting ready to land, communicating the obvious through his aloof silence. It was worse than him saying it.

You assumed wrong.

Even though he was down the beach, I recognized Tomlinson’s scarecrow dancing as he juked his way to the center of the circle and took a seat on a log-Ray Bolger from The Wizard of Oz. He was barefoot, shirtless, wearing a pirate’s bandanna. The muscle cordage of his arms moved at languid angles as he slapped at an ebony drum angled between his knees.

A couple dozen people danced free-form around the fire to the beat of tambourines, cowbells, congas, Jamaican steel drums, water bottles, a surfboard, beer bottles, and at least one frying pan.

The former president seemed fascinated. “The reason they’re dressed like that… it’s because of Halloween?”

I said, “They’re Tomlinson’s friends, so I don’t think it would matter.”

Some wore full body paint: jaguars with breasts for eyes, or flowers, rainbow streaks, and bizarre tribal designs. A few were naked, others wore shorts and bikini tops. Those who weren’t painted wore costumes. It was a popular year for angels, demons, and Gilligan’s Island.

“I expected the place to be deserted. When he told me about Cayo Costa, I got the impression it hadn’t changed much in the last forty years. That it was still unpopulated.”

It was Tomlinson who’d also told the former president that he had friends who owned a cabin, that the cabin was empty, and where the keys were hidden.

“This isn’t typical. Except for weekends, Cayo Costa’s quiet.” Because Wilson had said still unpopulated, I thought about it for a moment. “You’ve been on this island before, sir?”

We were carrying our bags from the canoe to the cabin. He slowed. “A long time ago. Our first trip together, Wray and me. I’d graduated from the Academy the previous spring. We took the train from Maryland to Tampa, borrowed a buddy’s car, and drove to the Naval air base in Key West. Sanibel was on the way, so we spent a couple nights on the islands. We honeymooned on Useppa, the Barron Collier Room.”

That explained why he’d attended a party there.

It was too dark in the shadows to read his watch, but he glanced at it, anyway. “It was exactly forty-one years ago to the day that Wray and I came ashore here. Cayo Costa Island… only, back then, I’m certain it was called ‘La Costa.’ Palm trees and sand; not a human soul for miles. Pretty exciting for two hick kids just starting out. It was forty-one years ago, and”-he looked at his watch again-“forty-one years, plus… plus about an hour, that I… that we…” He caught himself; his pace quickened-getting too personal.