Harry had come home to arrange for his most trusted allies to go to Washington with him on Monday. The meeting, which included Bill Payne’s young filmmaker, didn’t go quite the way Harry expected.
Clay had reports to give to Harry’s committee. He did this twice a year, when he came alone. Bill had an entire summer’s research to go into, but it was Bill’s comment that Logan Warren had finished his documentary and was coming to Florida for a showing at the university that got Harry making plans for Clay, Bill and Logan to come for a meeting of his committee the following Tuesday.
Most intelligent men were eager to please a senator. Having an audience with one usually had the best of men on good behavior. Logan Warren had something on his mind besides the documentary Harry was anxious to see. Logan, a rather young man, made it clear to Harry that he needed to listen if he wanted Logan’s cooperation.
The easiest thing to do to get on with the show was give Logan the floor and at least look like he was paying attention. He wanted Logan to go Tuesday. He wanted to show Logan’s film as part of the presentation he had in mind. He needed Logan more than Logan needed him. Harry didn’t like the position he was put in.
Clay had told the senator that Dylan had a film Harry would find interesting. Harry’s reactions to Dylan’s attempts at moviemaking weren’t always positive. Lacking experience, Dylan’s transitions were rough and left Harry feeling a bit seasick.
He would humor Logan and he’d allow Dylan to show his film. If it got too tedious, he could close his eyes. It was remarkable the things a senator had to do to keep the peace at his own house, but he needed these men and he’d go along with their requests for his time.
At that time, the plan was for Clay, Bill and Logan to fly to DC on Monday. They’d appear before the committee on Tuesday. Like all good plans, this one changed as the events at Harry’s house unfolded.
Clay told Harry the week before that Dylan’s film was back to being edited. Harry’s hopes were on the rise. Maybe he’d get away without getting dizzy watching it. Dylan had a good sense of composition but he wasn’t smooth. He had been with a professional filmmaker during the summer and Harry hoped for the best.
What Harry didn’t know, was that Dylan had told his father that the fish kill sequence had come back from being processed. This footage was vital to Clay’s contribution when he appeared in front of the committee. It was footage Harry was looking forward to seeing.
The fish kill and the discovery of benzine in the water were key elements that he wanted to put in front of the committee. This was solid evidence of the consequences of dumping things into the world’s waterways on a regular basis.
Clay standing in front of Harry’s committee guaranteed media coverage. Giving his report on benzine in the water would raise eyebrows. Having footage of the fish kill would be a showstopper. Having Bill there to discuss his summer’s research and show the documentary about it would ensure that senators and media would want to be there, even if some of the senators would see it as an opportunity for a nap.
If there was anything Americans liked more than a good movie, Harry didn’t know what it was. He felt good about what he was about to put on the table in the ongoing battle to fight pollution.
Press releases by his office ensured national media coverage. There was nothing new about Harry’s committee making the nightly news. By Tuesday evening every network would be buzzing about the latest hard-hitting presentation Senator Harry McCallister had put in front of the senate and the world.
The environmental senator built his reputation by delivering the goods. Nothing enhanced his appeal more than when he brought the problems with the water and the air into sharper focus. Senator Harry McCallister might never be able to field another lineup like this one. Each piece was a natural invitation to go to work to pass legislation to improve the environment. Put all the pieces together, and it could even move the most reluctant senators into joining the fight to improve the quality of water and air for everyone.
*****
The lights in the theater went down and Dylan’s film began to play. It drew in anyone watching with a simple hand printed sign that told the viewer exactly what he was seeing:
In & Out of the Cove
The sign was held in front of the camera before the Sea Lab appeared on the screen in a long shot. She was in the mouth of the cove on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. The craft moved directly west. The bow raised as the boat accelerated into Gulf waters.
The shot faded and the next shot opened up on the bridge of Sea Lab. A look at the gauges, like anyone operating this size craft might do, and then a look out at a panoramic view of the green waters surrounding the vessel as Sea Lab hurried on her way.
There were seabirds hanging in the sky beneath large fluffy white clouds that spread out toward the horizon. The rich azure sky was a perfect backdrop for another wonderful day in paradise.
Sea Lab, with Clay at the helm, wasted no time. The Gulf waters were nearly smooth as glass. The boat cut easily through what appeared to be endless waters ahead. The day had grown warm and a slight breeze kept the increasing humidity tolerable.
The camera faded to black while shooting from the bridge. It refocused just above the level of the water. As the boat continued its westward motion, the water swiftly passed under Sea Lab’s bow.
“This is brilliant, Dylan,” Logan said to a silent room. “I love it already.” Harry hadn’t gotten the least bit dizzy as he watched the journey of the Conservancy’s research craft in motion. After another smooth transition, the wake of Sea Lab appeared as the camera was positioned on the stern now. At first it shot the rear of the boat and a shot directly down into the churning waters. The cameraman lifted the camera in slow motion to show the wake as it spread out behind. It kept its shape for forty or fifty yards behind the craft.
Sea Lab moved right along.
There was no doubt they were being taken for a ride on a good sized boat. There was no doubt the boat was Sea Lab. It was a view Clay and Dylan got each time they went out in the Gulf.
Another fade to black and then the dolphins were pacing the boat, swimming a bit too close for the viewer’s comfort. One passed Sea Lab, crossing out in front. Clay had already dropped his speed to give the dolphin the right of way. It was a school of dolphin on the starboard side now. With a nifty smooth move, the pod of dolphin dropped behind, crossed to the port side, and matched Sea Lab’s speed.
Dylan giggled. He enjoyed a dolphin show until it came to an end. The fade to black opened up on deck with Clay in the middle of the next shot. The boat was still and Clay was on deck with SCUBA gear at his feet.
After checking the gauge on the air tank, he slipped into the tank’s straps. Putting his face mask on his forehead, he picked up his flippers and sat on the edge of Sea Lab’s starboard side with his flippers in one hand and holding his face mask in place with the other. Dylan’s dad rolled backward out of sight. It was a move Dylan had never made, but he never got tired of seeing how his father entered the water when going on a dive. This transition was easy. Clay was there. Clay was gone. Dylan and the camera moved to the starboard side and Clay was swimming away from Sea Lab before disappearing under the water.
The next shot was of Clay surfacing. He pushed his face mask up on his forehead before swimming to the ladder. He climbed until he could step onto the deck, flippers in hand.
Clay set the flippers down, took off his tanks and put them beside the flippers. The face mask went on top of the flippers. Taking a towel from a deck chair, he went about drying his hair and to catch the water that still dripped off him.
Clay put the towel back where he got it and took a net off his waist. Reaching inside he brought out several gorgeous shells, two specimen bottles, and he was most careful in removing a plant. Clay placed each item near the deck chair where he sat to look over the day’s collection.
Another transition and the camera was moving down the ladder with the cameraman. The camera continued moving downward and into the water. At first the lens of the camera was half covered as the side of Sea Lab was visible in the shot.
Then the camera was in the water and moving slowly downward. At first rays of light from the sun were visible. It took five minutes for the camera and the cameraman to get to the bottom, which was white sand. After the camera filmed the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, a diver came into view some distance away.
The color of the air tanks told the viewer they were watching Clay at work. The camera’s eye was on him. The bubbles emitted from his tanks made it clear he was underwater. The flippers’ gentle motion left him suspended in place as he examined something that caught his attention. Things in the sea circulated near and around him.
At that distance, no one could see what it was, but the camera began to take the viewers closer and closer, until Clay’s bare hands came into view. The diver was examining a plant that was part of the reef that had taken over a sunken ship. As the camera moved back away from Clay’s hands, it brought the hull of a seagoing vessel into view. It wasn’t going anywhere, after settling on the floor of the Gulf. The sea was busy claiming the ship as its own. Coral had almost completely taken over anything above the main deck and it had almost taken over the hull of the ship, which sat at an odd angle.
As the camera moved up toward the main deck, the coral became more dense. Little of the seagoing ship remained. Coral distorted and took over what man had created. The bridge and even the smoke stacks appeared to be made of coral now.
The camera and the viewer lost track of the diver at work below. This scene examined the intricate patterns and shapes the coral took as it obscured the shape of the ship. In this world, coral was king.
The only thing more startling than the coral was the examples of sea creatures the camera caught in action in a diminished light. Fish and more exotic creatures went about their business.
Decades on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico left little that could be recognized as a sunken ship. In another decade or two, no evidence that this was a freighter would exist.
An open hatch caught the camera’s attention. The cameraman lingered at the open hatch, photographing the blackness inside. This was where the crew came and went from the galley, their quarters, and sought refuge in a storm.
Did the crew huddle here while the doomed ship was caught in a gale that sent her to the bottom? No one knew the answer.
The camera withdrew and focused on the bridge that wasn’t a bridge at all, but a coral reef with sea life swimming in and around it as the camera journeyed down the side of the hull and settled back on Clay’s hands.
Clay seemed insignificant now that the viewer knew where he was. He might look small compared to the freighter where this reef had grown, but what he was doing and the knowledge he collected wasn’t insignificant. Clay Olson was in the process of trying to find a way to save his world.
Clay used a tool to remove a small piece of the reef he stowed in the net secured around his waist. He reached for a plant that looked like a fern and gently removed it and stowed it in the net.
As Clay examined life present on the reef, tiny colorful fish darted into the frame and back out of the scene in a split second--sea creatures as curious about Clay as he was about them.
They were brightly colored shapes that were only in the camera lens for an instant, before they sped off and away from probing fingers examining plants that lived on the reef with them.
It was all in a day’s work and nothing new to either Clay or Dylan. They’d been doing this together since Dylan was ten, when he first tagged along to see what he could see.
Now, Clay’s son was as important a tool as any in Clay’s laboratory. Dylan told the story of what his father did and then told people about it from sea to shining sea.
After too short a period of seeing a coral reef up close and revealing its brilliant secrets, the camera pulled back so the viewer could see the diver, his tanks, his flippers, and one side of the hull of the freighter, and then the pictures were of nothing but water with rays of lights visible above.
The camera was on the move again, until the lens was only half submerged when it first caught sight of the Sea Lab with Clay swimming toward the ladder. Clay climbed the ladder and moved onto the deck and out of sight.
Next the camera appeared to be flat on the deck and pointed at the equipment Clay had taken off. The distinctive color of Clay’s air tanks told the viewer who the equipment belonged to. After a minute a hand passed in front of the lens as the scene went to black.
Senator Harry McCallister’s theater was silent except for the sound of the projector. The movie showed Clay in all his phases. It
was captivating from the first frame. The Sea Lab was going about her business. Clay, Harry’s man in the Gulf of Mexico, was on board. There was still visible evidence of Dylan’s splices, but they were only a slight distraction from the story being told. Harry didn’t doubt for a second that this was Dylan’s best filmmaking effort. He hadn’t gotten even a little dizzy and the plan that had him adding Dylan to Tuesday’s lineup was already working its way through his head.
The film kept his interest and he’d forgotten Logan’s ambush and the tedious presentation that was interesting but distracted from the business at hand. Seeing how much Dylan’s filmmaking had improved diminished the negative energy Logan had created.
Harry was delighted with what he’d seen and the fact the film seemed to go on when it could have ended surprised him. It was good right where it seemed to end.
Dylan wasn’t done yet. After it went black for long enough to have the audience squirming, the same hand that turned the camera off in the last sequence, now retreated as the camera came back on. Harry was ready for the lights to come up and movie night would be over, but then he remembered what Clay told him about the film. Once the hand was gone from the shot, Clay stood on deck with tears running down both cheeks. The pain in Clay’s eyes was clear to the camera.
Clay said, “If you won’t shoot it, give me the camera. I’ll do it.” The camera reluctantly left Clay’s face to film something shiny and white in the water in every direction. It surrounded Sea Lab. Dylan’s plan for the film was to film Sea Lab coming and going from the cove. He’d done that with Ivan’s perspective in mind. The underwater filming was nothing new. Dylan’s knowledge of his cameras and the work his father did increased his ability with the motion picture camera. The scenes he shot these days were already inside his head before he turned the camera on. He knew what he was after and what it would look like if he did it right.
There were some things he couldn’t see and didn’t expect. Whether he liked it or not, unpleasant things needed to be filmed. Dylan learned that lesson too. Gritting his teeth, he kept the camera rolling. He got the shot through his tears.
Dylan knew how the film would begin and where it would end, until he and his father went out on a dive shortly after they returned from a summer in the Pacific. Dylan had all the shots he needed before that day’s dive. All he needed to do was assemble the film.
Dylan knew the saying, ‘The best laid plans of mice and men.’ He realized that included filmmakers too. He didn’t want to add a scene to the movie he had in his head, but Clay made it clear that’s just what he was going to do, because it was part of what he did.
The camera moved to the stern. Dylan filmed straight down into the water. The white swollen bellies of dead fish were what he saw. It made him sick, but he would gut it out, because it was what he did. This was part of the story he was telling. This was the story Clay was living as he studied the Gulf of Mexico.
As far as the eye could see, as far as the camera could see, there were dead fish. Dead fish behind Sea Lab, dead fish on her starboard side and one hundred and eighty degrees to port. Thousands, possibly tens of thousands, of dead fish. There were too many to count but Dylan climbed along the railing to film them. When he reached the bow, he filmed straight down into the water and then he filmed as he raised the camera to take in more dead fish for as far as the camera could see.
As he continued to film, the engines of Sea Lab hummed to life. As he stood on the bow filming to port and then to starboard, Sea Lab began a slow rotation to starboard for one hundred and eighty degrees. Clay was going back to the cove. Dylan filmed for another five minutes until they’d passed through all the dead fish. Clay kept the boat at idling speed until Dylan was done.
“I never expected this,” Harry said, sensing the ending would come soon.
No one else dared say a word. The movie did the talking now.
Sea Lab began making her way home.
As soon as they ran out of the dead fish, Dylan turned the camera off and let it hang by his side as he worked his way back to the main deck.
The movie was over except for blank film that continued to run through the projector.
Everyone watched the blank screen. No one moved.
“Sorry,” Algie said a minute later, and he turned off the projector.
It took another minute for the lights to come up.