6 Miles With Courage (9 page)

Missing his family he brought out his wallet to look at pictures. There were pictures of his brother and sister
, and of his mother and father. He had a picture of his dog too. He glanced at his watch; it was 12:01am. One minute past midnight.

“Holy smokes,” he said as he cleared his throat
. After turning the wallet with the pictures toward the fire he began to sing with alternating looks between the campfire as if it were a cake, and his family in the wallet, as if they were
there
.

He sang,
“Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear Ryan, happy birthday to you—me.” He closed the wallet kissed it and put it away. He wiped a tear on his sleeve and looking into the fire he said, “Hang in there Dad, I’m coming for you, so help me God if it kills me, I’m coming for you.”

Looking up into the sky he said, “Good Lord, give me the strength.” He had no sooner got the words out when the brightest shooting star he had ever seen streaked across the sky.

Ryan smiled.

Back at home a restless Judy rolled over in bed. She looked at the clock; it was 12:02
am. “Happy birthday Ryan,” she said falling back to sleep, “I love you.”

Over at the wreckage, a comatose Rob, sees a distant towering storm of electricity at the edge of the blackness. In it a face—it’s Ryan’s face. He manages a smile.

Ryan turned 18 years of age. Legally he is now an adult but Ryan will not consider himself to be a man until he has brought help to his father. The events of the day had finally taken its toll on Ryan. He quickly fell fast asleep.

Bob Mallory arose to the alarm clock like he does every morning but today he doesn’t head to the office. After a shower, several cups of black coffee and a fried egg sandwich he is out the door—first stop Brown’s Airfield. But he is greeted by a thick fog, so thick that his squad car—parked in the driveway—is not visible.

“I’ll have to wait a bit,”
he turns back into the house and puts a weather channel on the television.

“A
warm front is moving up from the south, clashing with the cool autumn air,” said the weatherman, “the fog will burn off by the late morning, then a grey day. There will be a steady drizzle in the late afternoon.”

Not the best day for a search party
, but then you can’t pick and choose those days. Besides it could be much worse Bob thought, turning off the television. Sipping his coffee he looked out the window in the direction of the driveway. “I’m not going anywhere, anytime soon,” he said. He opened the aerial map that he took from Rob’s office and spread it out on the kitchen table to look over his route.

His plans were to
check-in at Browne’s Airfield to make sure Rob had not returned. Then he would head up to the grass airstrips near the area that Rob had marked to be scouted. He had no way of knowing it, but while he was looking over the map he glanced at the exact spot of the crash, and while he was admiring the winding river he looked at the very spot where Ryan had made camp. It was while he was looking at the vast wilderness along the river and the area between the river and the new job to the north that it hit him. “What if they never made it to where they were going?” he said, “It would take a miracle to find them.”

P
utting the map away and seeing the fog had lifted-some he decided to give it a try. After filling a thermos with coffee and taking the map he makes his way out to the driveway—in the midst of the fog—he heads to Browne’s Airfield. If he does not find them in five hours it will be noon and time to call in the bird.

Judy is up early. The business line has been busy
this morning which is a good thing. She is singing and going about her business, for today is the day that they find her husband. She should not have another restless night.

Ryan was sleeping and dreaming when the first light of day turned the blackness to grey. The fog rolled in along the river like a tide. It rose
-up from the swamp and the river until the only thing visible was the embankment.

Ryan was dreaming
that he had crossed the river and was now at Bear Creek. In his dream a huge black bear was holding him down with its paws on his chest. Ryan thought the bear was going to devour him but instead it started to lick his face with its huge tongue. As dreams would have it Ryan could not scream—he was drowning in slobber.

It only took a few minutes of the tongue lashing for Ryan to realize that it was not a dream at all! His face
was
being scrubbed by a huge
pink tongue
. He woke up screaming.

“Uh—get off me! Get off me!” he cried.

But it was only Red!

He was trying to tell Ryan come on it’s time to get up and get moving, time is a wasting
and you have to build your raft.

“You scared me boy,” Ryan told him. Red
panted and looked away not feeling the least bit guilty for licking Ryan’s face. It was the first time that Red came close enough for Ryan to look him over. Amazingly he had no visible wounds from the fight. He did have a thick red coat, maybe it was hiding a wound or maybe it just protected him. Now that Red had done his job in getting Ryan to
get moving
he went back to his guard post at the edge of the foggy swamp.

Ryan, yawning and rubbing his face
, sipped some water and ate the last of the granola bars. The fire was out but still smoking. The dampness hung in the air like a blanket making everything wet. It was very early so Ryan knew he had plenty of time to get his logs together. With a few puffs and a couple of twigs the fire came back to life giving Ryan some comfortable dry heat while he gathered his thoughts for the river crossing.

Looking up in the tree Ryan noticed the owl was gone. Ryan smiled as he thought how he had made for a good companion
, but the light of day drove him back to the darker regions of the swamp.

“I am not crossing the river in this fog,” Ryan said loud enough for Red to hear but Red paid him no mind.
“But I can start on my raft,” he said.

Ryan walked up and down the embankment and after finding two logs just the right size
, dragged them one at a time down to the river’s edge. The plan was the same. Put the backpack on one log and with an arm around each log, paddle his feet between them like the paddlewheel of a boat. Standing down by the cypress trees the whole thing seemed awkward and downright scary. Ryan began to have his doubts about the two-log method and if Red was going to cross with him he needed something more stable.

“I got it,” he said, “I’ll build a raft I can kneel on.”

He abandoned the two log idea and went to work on finding smaller yet longer logs. He gathered up eight logs, six inches in diameter and ten feet long. He tied them together with vines. He then tied a brace across each end and a diagonal brace to sturdy it up. When he was finished he had a platform four feet wide and ten feet long. He slipped it out amidst the cypress trees and crawled out on it to see if it would hold his weight. It did, but when Red jumped on, it went underwater. They both jumped off and it floated again.

“Ok boy
, I’m just going to have to put in more cross logs for your weight.” Ryan tied cross logs all the way across the bottom instead of at the ends only, and this time it held them both above the water. Ryan made a push pole and after gathering his belongings onto the raft he made sure the fire was out. He put all of his valuables into the pack tying it and the machete down with vines. The fog had lifted slightly. It was time to get going.

Red took his place promptly in the front of the raft
(as any good birddog would do) while Ryan stripped down to his pants and put his shoes and shirt in the pack—just in case he fell in.
The stability of the raft had not been tested in open water. If Ryan had to swim he wanted to be light of clothing. Ryan looked back over his shoulder at the camp.

“I’ll see you soon,
” he said as he pushed off with the pole and then he snaked the little craft through the cypress trees until he reached the last tree before the open waters of the river. He tied the last of the survey ribbon generously around the tree, this will be the “flag”’ tree that he would look for with the search party as they make their way down the river. From here they would follow the ribbons to his dad. With one good shove of the push-pole they were on their way across the river.

With the cypress trees fading
behind them Ryan poled ahead. The fog was too thick to see the other side but he could see twenty-feet. The water made a trickling sound at the rear of the raft as they glided across the black water. Clumps of water hyacinth drifted downstream moving across their path from right to left. Red was barking at them and fidgeting at the front of the raft making Ryan nervous. When Red moved the raft moved also.

“Red, calm down boy, it’s only weeds,” Ryan said dropping to his knees
to keep his balance so he would not fall in. Ryan looked down at the water lapping up through logs. It gave him an eerie feeling of helplessness as they floated above the black-water abyss. He shook his head gathered his thoughts and stood up.

Just as he arose he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. Red saw it also. An alligator was moving out of the mist twenty-feet off their port side and it was barreling straight for them.
Red started barking and ran down the side of the raft to get a closer look. Ryan tried to drop to his knees to catch his balance but it was too late.

The last thing Ryan saw before landing in the river was Red jumping off the raft towards the alligator
. As it turned back to escape the leaping dog, Ryan slipped beneath the black water. He could hear the splashing of Reds paws paddling towards the alligator. The noise of his paws grew faint.

Ryan kicked towards the surface, breaking it he gasped in a lungful of air. Luckily the raf
t had not gone far. With a couple of quick strokes he managed to grab hold and pull himself up. He lay on it, eyes closed, face down, breathing heavily. In the distance, downstream, he hears Red climbing out of the water and shaking his coat of water.
Then Ryan hears the voice of a stranger.

“Good boy Red! I knew you would come back to me. Go on now and take your place at the front of the boat,” the stranger could be heard
saying.

Ryan could not believe his ears. He lifted his face off the raft
, and with water streaming down he looked in the direction of the voice. Faintly through the fog Ryan could make out the silhouette of a wooden rowboat and an old man with Red at the front. The old birddog was gingerly waiting for the man to start rowing. The man started to row away from Ryan and their image grew faint. Ryan let out a weak yell. It was more like a half-cry.

“Wait! Don’t go!” he managed to get out. But
neither the old man, nor Red heard him. As he slowly rowed away the man started to sing.

“Fair well, and ad
ieu, all ye Spanish fair maidens.”

“Wait!” Ryan screamed much louder, more like a panic now that they were leaving.

“Fair well, and adieu, all ye ladies of Spain,”
the old man continued.

Ryan wiped the water away from his face and looking back again to make sure he was not imaging things
, watched as the man, and Red, rowed off into the fog.

Ryan looked downstream and realized the old-man was rowing the
wrong way. Ryan needed to go west, upstream for two miles if he was to use the river to get help. And just as the raft bumped into the cypress trees on the other side of the river Ryan realized he was better off sticking to the game plan. Even if he had gotten his attention it was unlikely they could have rowed against the current and made it to Highway 19 before the ranger passed-by on his scheduled rounds. No it was far better to stay with the certainty of following the direction to Forest Road 77, and Ryan had full confidence in his abilities to do just that.

Bumping the raft from tree to tree Ryan made
it to the south shore of the river and the embankment on the other side.

“I shall name you the
U.S.S. St. Christopher
,” he said to the little raft as he stepped off.

After
somewhat
securing it, he pulled out the clothes he dried by the fire last night from his backpack and put them on. Tossing the wet ones onto the raft he pulled out the GPS unit for a quick check on his direction.

Everything was on schedule. The GPS unit showed it to be 2.1 miles
to Forest Road 77. Putting the GPS unit back into the pack he took out the compass.

The compass was light and slipped in
to his pocket easier than the GPS unit. In reality all Ryan needed to do was to stay on the compass bearing until reaching the forest road, and then turn right for two miles to Highway 19 to flag down the ranger by one o’clock sharp. Ryan slipped the compass into his pocket and leaving the backpack and machete at the raft, headed up the embankment to look at what was on the other side.

From the
top of the bank Ryan pointed his compass to S20°W and looked out across the foggy swamp. The fog was thick—it suppressed all sounds— there was nothing but the sound-of-silence.

There is a sound to silence
, and if you’re lucky enough and privileged enough to hear it you will have to be in a spot such as the Oklawaha River basin when the fog rolls in on an early morning. And if you are devoid of all things manmade and of man, and there are no planes flying overhead, then you will be fortunate enough to hear the sound-of-silence.

It is a sound you will never forget.
It starts out a low buzz and then rises to a loud hum as your ears beg for a sound, any sound. The rush of the wind, a falling acorn, your ears ache for something to fill the void. Then it happens, there is a splash in the swamp or the wind blows and then instantly the sound-of-silence is gone.

As Ryan looked across the swamp towards his destination he was caught up in his own moment with the sound-of-silence. It had built-up to a loud hum.
This, along with the fog made him feel closed in and alone.

Behind him
lay a
dark wide river, and several miles away his father. Ahead there lies miles more of a fog shrouded swamp. Fear begins to creep in like the dampness into his clothing. The mind can play tricks and a man-alone can be a man in trouble. A chill runs over his body. He shudders and shakes it off. His courage begins to wane.

Courage is a fickle thing. You seem to have it most when you are surrounded by others of like
-mind. You wouldn’t just climb the ladder and walk out to the edge of the high-board, if it were not for your friends down in the pool egging you on. Nor would you walk through a graveyard on a moonlit night alone. Ryan would not have come this far were it not for the courage his father instilled in him at the wreckage. That inoculation of courage was wearing off. And now for the first time since he left his father he needed another dose of it.