Riddle in the Sand

Entering the office that first night through French doors to the far right, on the first floor, Jackson had been startled by the dingy, peeling wallpaper. He was inclined to turn and walk out, satisfied that the façade that had arrested him was a fraud (and hadn’t that word come to mean just that?) But before he could flee, Maggie had plunged forward and begun her typically unsentimental evaluation of the matter. Upon closer examination, she discovered that the walls were not peeling but rather scaling. They were covered from shoe-molding to crown-molding with individual tarpon scales, and each one bore a handwritten record of the date its body was caught, its total weight upon arriving back at the dock, and the signature of the conquering fisherman. Gazing around the room at the thousands of catches recorded there, the story of the tarpon’s demise in Tarpon was written on the motel’s walls – or tacked there.

The sight had fascinated and repulsed Jackson. On the one hand, it was an enduring memorial to the tarpon, and a fitting public record of the village’s popularity with fishermen. On the other, it was more sad evidence of the insatiable obsession of men (and women) to subdue the earth and its creatures, as if to prove forever they have dominion over both. Jackson had wandered around the room for several minutes reading various scales and wondering about the events recorded by them. Were there twin scales nailed to walls in paneled rooms all around the country, or pressed between the leaves of books and wedged on overcrowded shelves, perhaps never to be seen again by the owner, or anyone? Was this the purpose of these valiant fish – to placate the desires of conquering humans, or to provide a seedy authenticity not only to this room, but to the village as a whole?

Jackson was jolted out of his reflection and back to his balcony by a blast from the jetty boat’s horn as it launched, carrying the fishermen to be transported across the channel and deposited on an adjoining island for the night. He marveled at the passion, and then scoffed at the folly, of fishing all night on an otherwise uninhabited island when the same catches would be available at several restaurants and even the local grocery store tomorrow. Clearly, those fishermen – and women, too, he noted - had developed a sense of purpose.

I don’t think I want that much direction, Jackson thought, even if it means having the certainty of knowing it comes directly from God.Suddenly, he heard a different voice, that of his wife, calling from the kitchen. “Tequila!”

He stood quickly, as if compelled, and his head rushed. He leaned forward and grabbed the railing with both hands - the night falling over the water briefly fell also over his sight and mind. The sensation passed, and he stood up straight and looked directly out across the port. At that moment a silver ribbon fish jumped and reflected the first visible rays of the security light from the jetties.

‘Would you give up your life to be famous?’ He asked the fish thoughtfully. Jackson wondered if the last scale that he had viewed at the Inn was the answer to that question. As he had finally turned to leave the motel office, he had paused at the door beside the check-in counter, where one more scale caught his eye. There, under the glass top of the desk, beneath an old ledger-book, laid another historic record — an archive, even - a small crinkling tarpon scale inscribed with these numbers: “5/9/37, 77 lbs., 8 oz.” Below the shakily written numbers was an even shakier, but legible, signature: “Franklin D. Roosevelt.” Even the Nation’s president had been drawn to Tarpon by tarpon during the worst period of the Great Depression, perhaps to show the country that he (and they) could overcome something, or anything. Jackson’s initial reaction was to be impressed, and he had even called Maggie over to show it to her. Now, however, the thought of a crippled U.S. president being lowered into a boat in his wheel chair to hasten the tarpon’s demise depressed him mightily. Did the tarpon die for its country or did the country just destroy it? And should the village of Tarpon be praised or razed as a consequence?

He was staring into the water searching for an answer as Maggie returned to the balcony and handed him a margarita made as he liked it – on-the-rocks, with salt. He took a sip, and tasted first the salt, and then the liquor, feeling relief. He raised his glass to Maggie, who returned the salute with her own. Jackson then reached out and touched “play” on the portable cassette player balanced on the railing between him and the port. The machine clicked and growled and broke into the gathering silence with words from quite a different prophet than Paul — one Jackson quoted more often, and perhaps valued more highly, and certainly consulted more often. Jimmy Buffett prophesied or philosophized in a high-spirited wail:

“Salt air it ain’t thin. It’ll stick right to your skin and make you feel fine.

And I want to be there, I want to go back down and die beside the sea there,

With a tin cup for a chalice, filled up with good red wine.”

Wine or tequila, it didn’t matter. Jackson breathed deeply, as if inhaling the sentiment of the song. The words were more cheerful than those that had stuck in his head earlier:

“Spinning around in circles, living it day to day.

But still twenty-four hours, maybe sixty good years, it’s really not that long a stay.”