When I asked why he wanted to go to Cayo Costa, the former president told me I’d find out when we got there. It was the answer I expected.
Cayo Costa was now an undulant darkness less than a mile away, ridged like a sea serpent floating on the Gulf’s rim. The moon was over the island, its reflection linked to our canoe like a tractor beam, drawing us away from mainland Florida, leaving sleeping tourist resorts and city lights behind.
Wilson noticed.
“The way the moon hits the water… it’s like a passageway. Almost like the deck of an aircraft carrier opening up.” After a pause, he asked, “Do you believe in omens?”
“Umm… no.”
“Would you admit it if you did?”
I smiled. “Probably not.”
“Me, neither. Which makes us both a couple of superstitious liars. There was a moon like this the first time I landed on the Kennedy. It turned out to be good luck, so I take this as a good omen. Did you ever make a night landing on a carrier, Ford?”
“No. Well… in a helicopter once. But not what you’re talking about.”
I expected him to add something, tell me how terrifying it was. He was a Naval pilot. He’d experienced it. But all he did was nod. It was another of his techniques: Say little, imply much. You had to listen or you might miss something.
I continued paddling as Wilson opened his backpack. His back was to me, a precise silhouette in the liquid light. I watched him roll his sleeve and wipe his shoulder. Disinfectant. The Angel Tracker had been just under the skin, he told me. Easy for Vue to make a tiny incision and remove it.
Wilson patted a fresh bandage in place, buttoned his sleeve, then swallowed a couple of pills. For the first time, I noticed that his profile lacked a familiar contour. His stylish hair had been buzz-cut.
I assumed he’d figured out some kind of disguise. Was that it?
“I’ve got all my medicines, vitamins, and things in here.” He was talking about the backpack. “I can’t lose this. Or get it soaked. I hate taking pills, but they buy me time.”
Lightning flickered on the horizon, revealing distant cumulous towers. I waited through a minute of silence before saying, “That storm’s ten, twenty miles out to sea. You’re okay. But if we travel by canoe tomorrow, you’ll need a waterproof bag, plus flotation.” I paddled a couple of strokes before adding, “ Are we going by canoe?”
He rolled down his sleeve and closed the backpack. “When it’s time for you to know, I’ll tell you.”
As expected.
Useppa Island and Cabbage Key were behind us. Windows of sleeping households twinkled through trees, and Cabbage Key’s water tower was a solitary star above mangroves, bright as a religious icon. To the south, lights of Captiva Island and Sanibel were a melded blue aura; Cape Coral was an asphalt fluorescence to the east.
Separating us from Cayo Costa was the Intracoastal Waterway where navigational markers blinked in four-second bursts: white… red. .. green. The Intracoastal is a federally maintained sea highway that runs from Texas to New Jersey. Big boats depend on it. I avoid it. The water would be rougher there because its deep channel accelerated an outgoing tide like a faucet.
I told Wilson, “You can stop paddling. We’ll let the tide do the work. Get some rest-but secure your life jacket first.” I explained why.
“I wondered why you were bearing north. You being such an expert paddler, there had to be a reason.”
The man didn’t miss anything
I said, “The channel’s going to be running fast, like a river. If we get swept too far south, we’ll have to wait for the tide to change, then work our way back.”
“We can’t wait,” he said. “I don’t have time. So stay as far north as you need to be.”
I nearly responded, “Aye, aye, sir.”
For the last half an hour, I’d been watching a light on Cayo Costa. A yellow light that brightened, then dimmed-a fire, I realized, on the island’s point. There was pink sand there, where the water of Captiva Pass swept past, fast and deep, into open sea.
“Are we meeting someone?”
He realized I was talking about the fire. “Yes. A friend.”
I knew better than to ask who.
“Did you tell him to do that?”
“No. I’ve been wondering about the fire myself. It’s the last thing I’d want.”
“Maybe he has camp pitched and breakfast cooking. That would be okay. We both need sleep and I didn’t pack a tent.”
“Don’t worry about details. But there wasn’t supposed to be a fire.” His puzzled inflection read Why draw attention?
“It’s not a private island. Maybe he has company.”
The former president replied, “That would not be surprising.”
The way he said it, it sounded like his friend might be an interesting character. I wondered if it was Vue. Vue could’ve hopped a boat and beat us to the island by an hour. But why?
I could feel the running tide beneath us now, the canoe beginning to hobbyhorse among black waves. I adjusted our course, got my paddle rhythm set, before I said, “Give me twenty, twenty-five minutes and we’ll find out.”
8
I concentrated on paddling while Wilson sat with his forehead in his hands, resting I hoped. He had such a powerful personality it was easy to forget he was sick.
Leukemia contributed to the illusion. I’d lost a friend to the disease recently so I had a layman’s knowledge. It’s a progressive cancer in which the abnormal production of white blood cells destroys red blood cells. In the final stages, a person can appear healthy even while a microscopic war is being waged within. Anemia and bruising are the first symptoms. Death can be the next.
Even the word carries a chill. Like many cancers, leukemia seems inexplicably random and is therefore more frightening. Without clear cause and effect, the disease hints that life itself is random and without design. My friend Roberta Petish had a bright spirit, a huge heart, and she lived big up until a few days before her internal war was lost. I understood Wilson better because of her.
I liked the man’s aggressiveness. Instead of lying back waiting for death, he was determined to race the bastard to the finish line. I was glad to be with him. For now…
Paddling rough water kept my hands busy and allowed my mind to drift. Wilson’s silhouette at rest was an amorphous gray. He sat as silently as the battle raging inside his circulatory system. The man had survived his share of battles and prevailed in many. The research I’d done reminded me that my traveling partner was an unusual example of the species, sapiens.
Kal Wilson was a man of contradictions and one of those rare people who was stronger for them. His legal name, Kal, was actually an acronym comprised of his first name and two middle names. He’d been born and spent the early part of his life in the village of Hamlet, North Carolina, but his family had moved to Janesville, Minnesota, when he was an adolescent. Having roots in the Deep South and Bedrock North was an unusual political asset.
Wilson was a decorated combat pilot who, as a midwestern congressman, became known as his party’s steadiest antiwar voice. He was a conservative on some issues, liberal on others, but refused to be typecast as either.
Criticized by his party for refusing to join the rank and file, he ran as an Independent and won three more terms in the House and then a seat in the U.S. Senate. Wilson switched parties yet again when he ran for the presidency. Even his campaign platform bucked Democratic and Republican stereotypes with unorthodox positions on gun control, abortion, the death penalty, and drugs.
Wedge issues that defined lesser politicians set Wilson apart as a freethinking maverick. He was passionate about stem cell research but pushed hard for returning the Pledge of Allegiance and prayer to public schools. He was an environmental hawk who railed against the hypocrisy of not relying on our own oil preserves. He was an antiwar dove, although he warned of a “global fascist awakening.”