About 50 miles south of Valdosta, we came to White Springs, Florida. Had we taken the quicker route to Florida, I-75 out of Valdosta, we’d have missed White Springs altogether. But Jim’s dislike of Interstates meant we took US 41, drove through the southwestern Georgia heat, and into White Springs. I was hot and bored and worried, bored because after a while all that scenery starts looking quite a bit the same and we weren’t getting where we needed to be fast enough, and hot because Jim liked to have his window down. The worrying, of course, was about Jerrod.
“It’s a beautiful day. We’re on vacation going nowhere. Enjoying life as we find it.” Jim was smirking as he said it. He knew I was bored. My fidgeting had told him that. As for hot, even though I had the A/C turned up high, it couldn’t compete with the hot, humid air coming in the window. I was sweating, and he could see it.
I didn’t bother to answer, just readjusted the A/C vent for about the sixtieth time. I’d already turned the setting to the max.
We drove into White Springs. Turned out that the dot on the map that marked the place was appropriate: the town really was only just a dot on the landscape. Fewer than 1,000 people lived there. But I liked the fact it was where it was because Jim had to slow down, which reduced the flow of hot air into the car.
“Look,” he said, and pointed to a sign. I looked. It was a billboard advertising river-rafting adventures.
“Yeah?” I said, sounding a little pissed. I wasn’t one to mope; it wasn’t in my nature. But, I was hot and frustrated, and what in the world did river rafting have to do with us? We were going to rescue Jerrod!
“Well, you’re uncomfortable and tense and worried and moody, and what would be the best way in the world to solve all those problems?”
I didn’t even bother to answer. I just gave him a look. Not a very nice one.
He laughed. “Obvious. A quiet, relaxing rafting trip down a slow-moving river is just what you need. The billboard said it was the Suwannee River. That’s probably Steven Foster’s river, which he called the Swanee. You know, ‘way down upon the’; that river. Don’t you want to be able to say you’ve been way down on it.”
I exploded. “We’re going to get Jerrod! Why are you acting like this, like you don’t have a care in the world? I’m upset!”
He gave me a serious look, and I made an effort to calm down. I’d never known him to do anything that he didn’t have a good reason to do. And I believed in him like I did in no one else. So I pulled myself together and just listened.
He waited to see I was ready before he spoke. All the joking, teasing and frivolity were gone from his voice. “You’re absolutely right; we’re going to get Jerrod. But just how are we going to get him? You’re all amped up. Nervous and scared and on edge and not a bit ready for what we need to do. We need to be calm and rational. Every assignment I’ve been on, every one, has taken some unexpected turns, needed some spur of the moment thinking or responses. You plan the operation as well as you can, but you just about always run into the unexpected. If you’re all excited and everything’s going a mile a minute for you, you’ll never be able to respond rationally. You need to go into these things with a clear head on your shoulders. Then, when the adrenalin kicks in, when you’re moving and acting, you’ll still be thinking, and that’s vitally important to your success.”
I felt a little ashamed. He was right. I was ready to go off half-cocked, to tear into wherever Jerrod was, grab him and run off, no matter the risk. Ridiculous.
He gave me another look. “So, what we’re going to do is take a short time to relax, to think of other things, basically to get our feet set firmly on the ground. That will put us in the mood for the first step: to plan out what we’re going to do.
“We’ve got a little time to kill. Tonight we’re going to go look at where they’ve got him, and then we can start to build our plan. This afternoon, we’ll get a motel and do some pre-planning. But until then, we’ve nothing to do, and you’re spending it fretting. You need to let go for a bit. I’ve been in this sort of thing many times, Colt, and I’ve learned to take what breaks I can from thinking about what’s ahead. It refreshes you for the main event. So I say, let’s go rafting.”
The thing was, I not only trusted Jim, I fully accepted his judgment. Yeah, I was upset, but he was right. Just sitting and thinking about it was putting me in a crappy mood. “Okay. We’ll do it your way.”
“You’ll like it if you let yourself relax. I hope you can do that.”
We visited the office of the outfit that had the billboard. We told them what we wanted, and they said it was Class 1 rafting. No rapids to negotiate, no watertalls to escape, just a gentle, tranquil ride down the river. They agreed to babysit Fitz for a couple of hours. They had us park the Escalade in their lot, then drove us upriver, east through Big Shoals State Park. We’d drift back down the Suwannee to White Springs and be chauffeured back to the car when we arrived.
We came to a landing where we would set out on the river. People were waiting for us to arrive. We all introduced ourselves, Jim, of course, using his Card name; I was surprised when he told them my name was Jerry. I decided it was just him fooling around. He liked to do that sort of thing.
Soon, with life jackets on, we were getting in a large inflatable life raft. It held eight people, but there were only seven of us, two other couples and a guide from the rafting company. One couple was an older man and woman, and from the way she was holding his hand, I guessed maybe they were celebrating an anniversary or birthday or something. Or perhaps she was simply the lovey-dovey sort of woman, even at her age. I guessed they were in their seventies.
The other couple was much more interesting. It was two men in their twenties. I guessed twenty-six, twenty-seven, the age when they were still young but beginning not to look all that young any more. They weren’t holding hands, but there was something about their smiles, their rather constant glancing at each other, that told me and I guessed everyone else as well, that they were a couple—and maybe more.
The guide, who sat on the top edge of the pudgy raft, was solicitous of the older couple. He got them settled near the back where he was. They were both inside the raft, and both were given paddles.
“You don’t really need to use them,” he told them, winking. “We give everyone paddles. If they wish to help me out, they can. But either way, we’ll get back to the base in fine fashion. You two just take it easy and enjoy the ride.”
I was waiting to see how he’d react to the gay couple. This was the Deep South. Many attitudes towards gays hadn’t changed here like they had in other places I’d read about, especially with adults. Our guide was probably in his late forties, early fifties.
I was pleasantly surprised when he treated them just as congenially as he had the older couple. He told them they could sit inside the raft’s sides or on the top as he was going to sit. He also told them they could use the paddles if they wished, and smiled all the time he was speaking to them.
One asked him if they could sit together on the side of the raft—if that would affect the balance.
“No problem, especially if you two—” he looked and nodded his head at Jim and me “—sit across from them.”
Jim nodded to the two men and said, “Sure, even though my friend here is afraid of alligators and snapping turtles and such. Sea urchins. He’s terrified of sea urchins. I’ll have to make sure he doesn’t fall in.”
There was no way I was letting him get away with that. “It isn’t river creatures that scare me,” I said. “Actually, it’s something quite different. See, my friend Card here never learned to swim, and he’s deathly afraid of the water. We’re taking this very calm float down the river to try to desensitize him, clear up his phobia. I’m certified as a life-saving specialist, and I’m here to save him if he falls in and panics, like I’ve seen him do. If he does fall over the side, which he’s apt to do because he has balance problems—vertigo, that sort of thing—you’ll see me go into the river after him and see me clock him on the jaw so I can rescue him. So don’t be alarmed. That’s the only way to safely deal with a panicky, floundering, potential drowning victim.” I flexed my fingers, making several fists while talking. Selling the story. Jim had always told me: sell the story.
Jim gave me a look. I gave him one back, and we both sat next to each other on the side of the raft across from the gay couple.
The guide pushed off and took us to the middle of the river. The water was brown, and I couldn’t see through it. I had no idea how deep it was. It was moving slowly, and the guide was doing more steering the raft with his paddle than oaring, letting the slow current pull us along.
He started off with a spiel about the river but only talked for five minutes or so, ending up saying how pleasant it was to simply drift silently along and enjoy the soft, warm day and nature’s natural setting.
So we did just that for a few minutes. The gay couple were into each other more than the scenery, but in a very inoffensive way. They looked at each other often; their hands would brush each other’s; they’d shift their weight such that their shoulders would touch. Each was very aware of the guy sitting next to him.
I was enjoying watching them. I loved Jerrod; but we were both fifteen. These two took their love to a higher level—one Jerrod and I hadn’t reached yet. We were two kids. These were two adults, and their love for each other appeared to be all-encompassing, fundamental.
I wasn’t the only one who noticed. “How long have you two been a couple,” the old woman asked.
I took a quick look at her. She was smiling and looking nostalgic. Young love, I could imagine her thinking and hopefully remembering. The fact they were two men didn’t seem to bother her at all.
One of the young men was blond, the other dark-haired. The latter was the larger of the two, and he answered. “Forever,” he said wistfully. “My life really began when I met Pat.”
“Oh, what a wonderful answer,” the woman replied. “And how long has that been?”
“Six years.” It was Pat who answered. “We were just married. Three days now. We’re students at Valdosta State— grad students. We don’t have much money, so we are honeymooning by just visiting places nearby. We visited the Okefenokee Swamp; now we’re rafting down the Suwannee.”
“Honeymoon,” sighed the old woman. She stared at them for a moment longer, then turned to us.
“Are you two related? Father and son? You look a little alike, and I know you were joking a while ago, like really close people do.
I wasn’t going to let Jim steal the show again. I jumped in before he could reply. “No, actually I’m his man Friday. He’s the South’s largest sausage maker. If you’ve got the biggest sausage,” I stopped to cough “company in the South, you have a lot to do, like visiting pig farms and checking their teeth like someone buying a horse would, checking that the manure isn’t off color or smells funny, that sort of thing, and you need someone with you to help you clean your shoes off afterward and spray you with cologne. I got hired because I’m young and nimble and my dad eats a lot of sausage and got into debt to Card’s company. Dad sort of sold me to Card here to pay off his debt.”
I was going on but Jim jumped in. “Actually, Jerry’s father cleared his debt, plus I pledged him a case of sausage every month for the rest of his or Jerry’s life. I don’t think it’s been a very good deal, actually. Jerry tends to daydream too much and doesn’t do his part in the manure testing. He’s quite squeamish about all sorts of things. A young kid should have a very sensitive nose, but he’s hasn’t learned shit—oh, excuse me, ma’am—about what to sniff for, and he’s is reluctant to get in as close to the stuff as he needs to be. I’m going to cut his father’s sausage ration in half if Jerry doesn’t up his game a little, get a little more enthusiastic about it all.”
The old woman didn’t know what to say. We were both talking very sincerely, not making a travesty of how silly it must have sounded. I was surprised when Pat spoke up.
“You must be Card Spaniard! I’ve heard of you. I’d eat your sausage, but unfortunately it gives me gas. I wish you’d fix that, because the taste is superb. You must be really good at the manure and teeth checking. Some mighty fine pigs are going into your product.”
Jim didn’t miss a beat. “We’re working on the gas problem. Not everyone is afflicted. Seems you have to have a special sort of colon deficiency to be subject to the problem. We’re developing a unique suppository you can use right before eating the sausage that will eliminate most of the gas. It’ll be coming out soon.”
I kept a very straight face when I added, “It’s got an advisory on the label: Wash hands after use. That was my idea.”
Pat’s husband turned his head to the side so no one could see his face. I saw his back sort of jerking, the kind you’d get trying to stifle laughter.
Jim shook his head, looking disgusted. “Advisory! Pah! My sausages are antiseptic enough to kill any germs they come in contact with. That’s why they cause gas. They’re actively cleaning the bowels as they pass through. I wanted to add to the label that no hand washing was necessary, but my lawyer got all uptight over that. Lawyers! The world could do without them, that’s for sure.”
Pat’s husband evidently had got hold of himself, because he responded to that. “My father’s a lawyer. Handles divorces and trust funds. What do you have to say to that, sir?” His eyes were twinkling. I could see he was trying to keep the comedy going. I answered before Jim could. I figured it was my turn.
“Card’s a lawyer, too. He got tired of being the butt of jokes, though, and decided to branch out into sausages. Said it was a more honest profession. You know what you’re getting when you eat sausages. No one’s pulling the wool over your eyes. It wasn’t that much of a leap, actually, from blowing smoke up the backsides of clients to more or less doing the same thing with pigs. Either way, he felt lawyering was a rather nasty job, though one he was equipped to do. His father was a pig farmer. Old Card here, he knows his way around a pig, that’s for sure. Been doing all sorts of things with them for most of his life. Since puberty, at least. What comes around, and all that. But what about you two? Now that you’re settled down, are you going to raise pigs?”
They both turned away. The woman was looking very confused. Her husband was smiling.
We drifted along quietly after that. Pat kept glancing at Jim and me. I smiled at him, and he nodded, and I saw he had intelligent eyes. He was trying to figure us out. Maybe he had that gaydar that I’d read about but never felt myself. I could feel when an attractive boy was checking me out. I’d known the waiter in Niceville last summer and Bryce in the men’s wear shop, were both gay, but I could tell by watching and listening to them. I didn’t think I had a sixth sense about it. But I’d read it was common enough that maybe it really existed, and if so, could Pat tell that about me? Maybe he could. If so, did he think Jim and I were a couple? Or that Jim somehow was using me?
If that were the case, should I disabuse him of the thought?
I decided there was no need for that. If he wanted to think it, so what? And there was something else. If his gaydar worked on me, there was no way it should work on Jim. He was definitely straight.
We eventually made it back to White Springs, and as advertised, there was a van there that took all of us back to our cars. We collected Fitz and said our goodbyes, the sort you say to people you’ve just spent some time with but really didn’t get to know and will never see again. I was sorry to see Pat go. I think I could have been good friends with him. I liked his personality.
Pat’s husband? Well, I supposed he was a good guy. He hadn’t said or done anything to make me think differently. I really didn’t care much for the comment he made to Jim as we parted, however. I’m sure he meant it to be funny, but, well…
What he said was, “Hey, Card, keep grinding that sausage.”
I knew I’d think about that. Which might have been why my thoughts turned to what they did as we drove away.
I was certainly relaxed. Jim had been right; I’d needed that. I felt a lot better. It helped that Jim closed his window, too. Which made me realize he’d had it open for a reason, and it had worked. Another example of him having a purpose in everything he did.
Then I thought some about that and how that closing quip from Pat’s husband had irked me somehow.
I’d never seen Jim with a woman, never heard him talk about one. He was at an age where he should have been sexually active for years. Was he?
I decided something else, then. Jim was my friend. The best one I’d ever had. Very likely the best one I ever would have. He was someone I’d trusted with my life more than once. So, his sexuality? That was his and not my business. We were very close; there was a bond between us that I’m sure he felt as much as I did. If he wanted to talk about it with me, he would. But I wasn’t going to ask him. I figured being sensitive enough to not ask questions that he might not want to have to answer was an important part of friendship.
He never asked me what I did with Jerrod. I guessed maybe he lived by that rule as well.
We arrived at the outskirts of Jacksonville in time for lunch. Jim pulled into a generic motel. He said we needed to stop and think, and he needed to make a phone call and didn’t want to do it from the side of the road. So he registered for us, using his Card identity. They took his credit-card image and gave us room 122, a room in a block where animals were accepted. We went to the room, and Jim got on his phone.
I went down to the coffee shop and got two lunches to go, then brought them back to the room. Fitz liked three meals a day; well, he’d have enjoyed however many I gave him really. But he thought it was right and natural to join us as we ate. That wasn’t happening today; this didn’t please him, but he was getting too much fat by eating human food like he’d been doing. That wasn’t the reason he missed this meal, however, and just a rationalization. The fact was, I was so worried that I’d simply forgotten about him. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done that.
Jim was still talking on the phone when I came in. But pretty quickly after that, he disconnected.
He grabbed his tuna-salad sandwich and pulled his container of fries closer and took a bite of the sandwich.
“What’s happening?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I could eat; I was that nervous.
“That was my boss. He’s going to check on some things. We should know more in a couple of hours. I told him what I thought. I’ve been thinking hard since you read me that message. About the fact it mentioned my name. A lot of thinking. I can only come up with one way to explain my name being known. I think there’s been a data leak in Washington.
“I think someone got into our files. They found out about me and you. Consequently, they found out my ties to Jerrod, sketchy as they are. And, I told him how I thought they might find whoever did this. I got the ball rolling. We have to wait now.”
“I’m not good at waiting,” I said.
Jim snickered, though there wasn’t any humor in it. “We’re quite a bit alike, Colt, you and me. It’s not my favorite thing, either.