Appetite for Change

Today's protagonist—like many of the characters in Cenotaphs, longs to get away from it all. Alas, even the best-laid plans gang aft agley (both of wee sleekit beasties and of tartan-kilted men). Ah dinnae ken why I’m channeling Burns (it’s months before his birthday).

The story posted below has nocht to do with Scotland. Perhaps it’s just a repressed longing for haggis, neeps, tatties, an a wee dram…

Southern Exposure

Tom Charles had known the story of Henry Hudson’s end—in the bay that bears the explorer’s name—since elementary school. It had always held a strange fascination for him. He could picture the castaways, rowing ashore to build some hasty shelters, and trying to plant a futile garden, which was—literally—fruitless, considering the Arctic’s short growing season.

They might have had some contact with Inuit inhabitants, who might have taught them how to survive in the north without benefit of British supplies. They might even have lasted until the following Spring.

But it seems unlikely.

Even as a child, the rigors of adult life held little appeal for Tom. If only he could live on a remote island, like Peter Pan, and never have to grow up! He dreamed of escape (with better resources than were available to Hudson’s little party). When he reread the little account of Hudson’s last days, it finally dawned on him. The fundamental flaw in Hudson’s survival strategy was geography.

None of the earliest European settlers in the frozen north managed to make it. Even those from cold climates, like the Norwegians, couldn’t survive. The remains of stone buildings at L’Anse aux Meadows, at the far northern edge of Newfoundland, are silent testimony to their failure. During a few uncharacteristic warm centuries, Icelandic settlers made it to Greenland. Their colonies lasted for almost five centuries, a halcyon period in which they even managed to grow some crops. Alas, by the time that Columbus rediscovered the New World, the world had begun four centuries of colder weather—a period known as the Little Ice Age.

The New World’s first colonists were gone.

If Tom had any hope of escaping from the endless responsibilities of modern life, he would have to look further south. Unfortunately, almost all available land, further south, is taken. Settled. Overcrowded. Not an ideal spot for the kind of hermitic life he envisioned. He would have to look much further south.

He remembered another favored story: the one about Robinson Crusoe. Now there was a guy who managed to survive on his own. Tom had forgotten a lot of the religious stuff in the story, since it hadn’t mattered to him, as a child. What he did remember was that Crusoe’s island was somewhere near the South American coast.

A tropical island sounded perfect.

He began, with mild interest at first, but with increased longing, to fantasize about the islands of the Caribbean. Especially the lower Leeward Islands, Grenada, and—finally—Trinidad. Unfortunately, most of these islands (like the temperate parts of North America) were too developed. They were the playgrounds of well-to-do people from places cursed by inhospitable winters. They didn’t offer many ideal spots for a hermit to disappear. There were a few tiny uninhabited islands but, lacking fresh water, he ruled them out. Also, even if they had water, being so close to the more popular islands no recluse could hope to remain unnoticed for long. It was painfully obvious: as appealing as the Leewards might seem, they weren’t going to work for Tom’s getaway.

However, heading further south, there’s Trinidad—with the promise of a Crusoe-like paradise. It doesn’t have the intense tourist trade of the more northern islands. It’s largely fishing villages, and oil-drilling outposts. Tom learned that, while there is some tourism, it’s less uniformly distributed, or aggressively promoted, than in the Leewards, to the north, or the Antilles, to the west.

This was more promising.

East, of course, is the Atlantic, but it’s a long way to the Azores, Canaries, and Africa. While he might be able to find some places to hide there, it seemed too difficult. He’d look more deeply into the Trinidad option. The first thing he noticed, when looking at the map, is how close it is to South America.

At one point, Venezuela is only ten or fifteen miles away, across open water. Venezuela, a land he imagined to be filled with impassable jungles: a place where explorers went in, but almost never came out; a place teeming with life; a place as different from Hudson’s Bay as one could possibly imagine.

Just across from Trinidad’s southern shore, the great Orinoco River empties into the waters between the eastern Caribbean and the western Atlantic. Visions of tropical splendor, with glorious years of jungle solitude, formed in the head of Thomas S. Charles, future explorer.

This would take some doing but, since he now had a clearer goal in mind, he was prepared to make any and all necessary sacrifices.

He began by simplifying his life. After all, where he was going, modern amenities would be nonexistent; why not dispense with them now? He sold his car and put the cash in his safe deposit box. He stopped his cable service (but kept his internet access; he still had lots of research to do, but was careful never to search for “Orinoco” from his home computer). He sold his condo (more money in the box), and moved into a tiny fourth-floor walk-up studio apartment. The added exercise would serve as additional training.

He got rid of his phones… both cell and landline. If he was going to become a hermit, he might as well start practicing being incommunicado. “Incommunicado,” the word itself was redolent of tropical enchantment.

For recreation, he took sailing lessons, down at Battery Park. He brought his inoculations (for a wide range of tropical diseases) up to date, and renewed his passport. He took adult-ed classes in navigation, utilizing both astronomical and modern GPS-based methods. He studied Spanish, using recorded lessons and, as —he became more fluent—by shopping in Hispanic neighborhoods (especially in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights and Flatbush neighborhoods). He spent hours in various libraries, reading up on everything from local customs, flora and fauna, tides and weather patterns, simple construction methods, and first aid techniques.

For someone who planned to move to the least urban spot imaginable, it was amazing how much preparation could be done, right there in New York City.

In January, he started bitching about New York’s winter: the interminable gray days, the stinging wind ripping up the avenues, the slush running over the sides of his shoes when stepping off a curb, the endless series of nasal infections (his own, and those of his neighbors and co-workers, not to mention the numberless noses of closely-packed strap-hangers on the IRT). He made sure to tell everyone in the office that he found January far too depressing to bear.

He told his manager he desperately needed a vacation, some mental health time in a warm climate. Everyone more than understood. As Tom was a valuable employee, his boss said he could (and should, by all means) take his vacation time now, when it would do him the most good.

Before giving February a chance to do its worst, he booked, online, a round-trip from JFK to Port of Spain, on JetBlue, for the following week. He arranged for a friend to stop by the apartment each day: to feed the cat, clean her litterbox, and pick up any mail delivered in his absence. He emptied his safe deposit box of everything but his life insurance policy, an extra set of apartment keys, and a handwritten list of passwords he always had trouble remembering. He left several thousand dollars in his checking account, enough to allow his rent and utility bills to continue being paid automatically as they became due during his vacation (just as he always had).

He took the E train to Sutphin Boulevard, where he changed for the Airport Airtrain to JFK. While he was waiting for his night flight to board, he watched the travelers from other Caribbean islands as they came off their planes. He noticed a man in a tropical short-sleeve shirt struggling to push a broken-wheeled suitcase through the crowd. “This guy has no clue what he’s up against here,” Tom thought. He took off his down coat and handed it to the new arrival.

He knew he wasn’t going to need it anymore.

After touching down at Piarco International, and pulling his bags from the carousel, he went directly to the Hertz counter. He was relieved to find the car he’d reserved was waiting for him, and that he did not yet need to make use of his newly-acquired Spanish.

He wished he’d had more time to become accustomed to driving on the wrong side of the road— in the country, instead of on the crowded streets around Port of Spain’s airport—but he got used to it. He drove down the Sir Solomon Hockey Highway, turning onto South Trunk Road. The road was lined with coconut palms, and the still-soft morning air was perfumed by countless tropical flowers.

His Airbnb, in Port Fortin, was exactly as it had been pictured on the website: the room was a bit cramped, but the front porch made up for it. “The Veranda” looked out onto turquoise blue Caribbean waters, and its structure was enveloped by flowering vines that shimmered magically with fluttering butterflies and the whizzing of dozens of jewel-like hummingbirds.

The next morning, he drove to Guayaguayare where, at a boat basin near the mouth of the Lizard River, he purchased a motorboat and dinghy. He arranged to pick it up later that day. In town, he visited a buildingsupply store, where he bought up some hand tools, rope, plastic sheeting, and various kinds of connecting hardware. At another store, he purchased a lightweight bicycle. At yet another, he bought a month’s worth of food and a case of bottled water (enough to last until he could establish his own food supplies and boil his own drinking water).

At each of these stops, he paid only in American dollars.

He packed everything but the bike into waterproof bags, stuffed them into the back seat and trunk of his car, then went back to the marina, where he transferred everything, again. This time into his new boat.

Once done, he went to a different boat basin, on the river the locals still call El Rio de Pilotas. There he rented, using his credit card this time, a fully-equipped boat for a day of deep-sea fishing the following day. Leaving his rental car in a public parking lot, he walked back to the dock on the Lizard River.

He sailed his own boat along the south coast of Trinidad, all the way to Icacos Point. He anchored the boat, far enough from shore where it would not be easily spotted. After transferring the bike to the dinghy and rowing to shore, he hid the dinghy in some thick manzanillas, then biked up the Southern Mani Road to get back to the Airbnb.

It had been a long and complicated day, so he treated himself to a tall piña colada and settled into one of the rocking chairs among the hummingbirds on the veranda. He then biked to a taxi stand, ditched the bike in the bushes, and took a gaudily-painted cab back to a restaurant on the seawall, in Guayaguayare, for dinner. There was a better selection of eating places, up the coast in Mayaro, but his rental car was in Guayaguayare—and he was going to need it, in Port Fortin the next day.

After a dinner of conch fritters and a local beer, he drove back to his room, where he dropped off to a sleep filled with dreams of exotic tropical splendor.

He woke before dawn, and lingered in the shower, savoring every minute of soap and hot water. He knew it would be a long time— if ever—before he’d have another chance to enjoy such first-world luxuries. He left the bed unmade. In his open suitcase, on a chair in the corner, his return plane tickets and passport tucked safely into an inside pocket. He left his toothbrush, razor, and other toiletries sitting on the sink. He then got in his rental car and repeated the drive back to Guayaguayare.

Once back to the Pilote River marina, he checked to make sure there was plenty of fuel, bait, and a good lunch in the rented boat. Before casting off, he left the keys for his rental car with the dock manager, as a courtesy, in case it needed to be moved for any reason.

He headed out into open water, far from shore, then swung westward, parallel to the coast. It took less than two hours to get back to where he had left his own boat the day before. He rowed ashore in the fishing boat’s dinghy, pulled the other dinghy out of the spiny bushes, and towed it back to where the two boats were anchored. He hitched the two dinghies’ lines to the cleats of their respective boats.

He checked to make sure everything was safely secured in his own boat. He then climbed across to the rented boat, and loosened the fuel line, allowing gas to spill into the bilge. He poured additional gas around the cockpit, and even on the boat’s deck. He pulled up the anchor, secured it, jumped to his own boat, and shoved off.

When he was far enough away, he fired a flare gun toward the rented boat and watched it burst into flames. He ate his lunch thoughtfully, savoring each bite, watching as flames consumed the rented boat.

With any luck, no one would start searching for it for another day. Only when they found the charred floating remains, would they begin a half-hearted search for the missing American fisherman.

With several hours of daylight left, Tom pointed his boat across what Trinidadians call “Columbus Channel,” due south, toward the mouth of the Orinoco River. Tom had seen the strait listed on Venezuelan maps as La Boca de la Serpiente, and hoped the name did not mean what he thought it did.

A few more hours, and he entered one of the Orinoco’s many mouths. He moved past the only settlement, Pedernales, and soon found himself in a network of tiny islands, tributaries and distributaries running in all directions.

Thankfully, there were no serpents to be seen.

Amazon river dolphins led the boat into the sluggish current. The shoreline was thick with mangroves that were, in turn, thick with birds of all kinds. Whirling around toward the sound of screaming scarlet macaws, Tom was stunned by the quick flame of color against the impenetrable greenery of the delta. The air vibrated with the sound of insects, occasionally punctuated by the hooting of howler monkeys.

For a Manhattan boy—whose only concepts of nature were pigeons, and the small population of black squirrels who made Madison Square Park their homes in stressed-out trees dwarfed by the Flatiron Building to the south, and the MetLife Building to the northeast—directions, other than “uptown” and “downtown” had been meaningless to him. Today, he was quite aware that he was moving due south, but was primarily concerned that he was moving steadily upstream.

He followed one of the hundreds of small channels leading away from the main river. Once he found a suitable place to stop, he hid his boats in the mangroves, pitched an impromptu tent of 8-mil polyethylene sheeting, and hung a netted hammock beneath it. Having completed his first day’s work, he fixed himself a celebratory first dinner as a disappeared person. In true pirate fashion, he toasted himself with a swallow of rum, right from the bottle. Before going to bed, he made sure nothing unpleasant could crawl into his boots, while he slept, by pulling his socks over their open tops.

This was a man who had taught himself, from books, how to survive in the wilderness.

The Orinocan night was as full of sounds as the day had been; but they were different sounds. Mostly different sounds. Lying awake in his hammock, the endless drone of insects continued, changing neither in tone or intensity. Superimposed on that hexapodian obligato were a host of smaller sounds: the rustle of tiny rodents or lizards in the leaf litter around his camp; a faint hiss as a snake slithered across dry leaves; some kind of nocturnal bird he could not yet identify; a subtle digging sound, a little further away, he assumed was made by an armadillo.

Gradually, he became accustomed to them and he started to drift off to sleep. Then he heard something else. A low rumbling sound, somewhere between a purr and a growl.

Jaguar!

He knew it instantly.

He rolled out of the hammock and shimmied, barefoot, up one of the mangroves at the edge of the water. He suspected jaguars could climb—probably better than he could—but hoped, as prey, a treed mealy-white New Yorker wasn’t as appealing as the juicy tapirs or other easily-captured meals on the delta. He could still hear the jaguar below him. He heard its claws in the mangrove’s bark. He could hear, almost feel, its hot breath as the big cat climbed the tree.

Tom backed further out along his branch. He reminded himself that he’d need to be careful not to fall in the water. Jaguars—unlike the pampered pussycat that was, at that exact moment, lolling atop the radiator by a window of Tom’s Manhattan apartment—are excellent swimmers.

Water would not offer any protection from a hungry jaguar.

He heard small creaking sounds coming from the branch, seconds before it broke, tumbling him into the Orinoco. In the dark, the jaguar watched from the shore, but did not attack.

There was sudden swirl in the water, and Tom vanished beneath the surface of the espresso-colored river.

Thomas Charles, late of New York City, had planned, with extreme care, his disappearance. He probably hadn’t imagined it would be in the digestive tract of Melanosuchus niger, a huge black caiman.

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