Chapter 3: Into the Sunshine
The Sunshine State takes a while to traverse from Tallahassee to its tip. The Butler siblings have found that, but they do so while thoroughly enjoying each other's company. Outside their open auto windows, orange groves and tall green grass flash by in noonday's golden splendor. As though drawn to be cute, each Butler kid adds to the scene's beauty.
Passenger Greg preens his thick sandy hair in the scintillating side mirror. He is a thewy guy approaching thirty with features sharp as a thistle and a smile alluring as a whistle. The wind gently ripples his outstretched jacket sleeve. The National Park Ranger points-out features in the Everglades, also a national park, as the auto passes through them, and Greg mentions previous time that the Butlers spent there (E14). His hand retracts, and his fist beats the cardoor to Clapton's blasting "Mainline Florida". Gleaming teeth grin in his goatee, fashionable in the '90s.
Beside him, Katie's eyes twinkle while taking-in the scenery. They widen excitedly upon spotting a sign for Homestead, Florida, ahead. Homestead is where the kids' parents are. And, the youthful Katie anticipates a good visit before leaving for enterprises in Brazil. Possibly, father John and mother Kim will have some solid knowledge and advice to pass along; they certainly have been good with clever solutions over the years. Although, in their adventures, Katie always has a pretty good head herself. Her noggin was educated more than many 1960s girls' after mother Kim had to educate herself incognito in earlier times. Upon that pretty head, young Katie has let her long hair down, and it plays wildly in the wind as she laughs.
U.S. 41 leads to State Road 997, and that thoroughfare leads to the parents' homestead in Homestead. Along a side street, palms wave in seeming greeting, and a person can almost smell the Atlantic on the breeze. In the distance, a person can actually see the vast blue ocean beneath wide blue sky as though inviting the daring to endless possibilities.
The car parks. "Merry belated Christmas, kid!" Kim calls from a front deck.
"Oh, mother, I mailed gifts," Katie disembarks the auto.
"Don't worry, we received them," John sits adjacent to his wife on the porch's hanging swing, "Your aunt Mary got and appreciated her presents too."
"Yeah, I'm sorry that I could not simply fly from Minneapolis to Miami this year—well last month, so last year, but research kept me extremely occupied," Katie treks her heavy boots toward her sandaled folks basking in the sun.
"Nothing is more important than science," states John Butler, "That is why I wanted you kids to explore the entire world outside of Brooklyn—from Vermont to the Valley of the Dinosaurs. In the pursuit of knowledge, all is worth it, and nothing should ever be forbidden."
"And, missing Christmas—and Thanksgiving—shouldn't be forbidden either," Greg kisses his mom's brow, "Although, I am glad that I made both this holiday season."
"You're a good boy," Kim's kind hand pats Greg's own.
Sometimes, mothers favor sons, and fathers their daughters. That is just scientific fact, for whatever reason.
"Anyway, Happy New Year," jointly blurt the septuagenarians, who have seen a few years themselves.
A short time later, three Butlers sit around the dining room table while de facto cook Kim carries the sizzling shark steak from the outdoor grill to the interior area. One can smell the citrus and peppers seared along with the big fish. Kim places the enticing entrée before John for the carving. Previously, John always handled the science of the grilling, but that circumstance has changed over time. His wife is sufficiently liberated to use the grill but to also be the cook.
"It isn't megalodon, but it is impressive," Katie compliments.
"Heh-heh, that's megalodon," John points the butcher blade at the mantel. There are large fossilized teeth arranged as knick-knacks. A person can find the prehistoric fish remains off the Florida coast.
"This fine fish is blacktip shark—which your father caught by the way," Kim points to the prize Pisces.
"Good, good," Greg goes. He remembers a recent Yuletide fishing voyage spent with his dad. His dad has still got it.
"Yes, I caught ol' Jabberjaw here from the neighborhood pier, in fact," John grins, "It was an epic struggle. Or, it at least makes for an epic fish tale. However, this Carcharhinus limbatus was no megalodon. 'Tis true."
"Our family has yet to meet the Otodus megalodon," Katie contributes, "Of all the leviathans that we met in the Valley, we never encountered the meg."
"Perhaps, thank God for that," Kim crosses herself and prepares to pray. The gabby family pauses to pray with her.
Husband John completes mother's thought, "Curiosity can kill the Kim or Katie or two other cool cats. We beheld the Kraken plenty in the Valley of the Dinosaurs. Maybe, we never need plumb it further in this lifetime."
The elders perhaps do not. However, the kids, both approximately tricenarians, must try again to find their Oz, their wonderland that defined them. When you're thirty in the '90s, you still believe in mid-life crises, though social science has started to question the concept, such "pop psychology".
Katie speaks, "Well, you guys may not need investigate the Valley again. After all, you continue studying biology in the Everglades. . . . ."
"No gator is a Konga the T-Rex. I grant you," John grants, "But, I find Florida's great swamp interesting enough."
"However, I sense that you were about to say 'however'," Kim tells Katie.
Ex-Marine Mom Butler will always have some authority presence. In fact, she almost sounds like Wonder Woman on The Super Friends or voice actor Shannon Farnon. One of the two.
"Well, Mother, I was," Kim's kid comments, "Although America is the greatest country in the world. And, Greg and I love exploring her from sea to shining sea. We have a bold opportunity in Brazil."
"It is along the same stretch of Amazon as we visited in 1974," Greg discloses, "We investigate some anomalous animal life reported around there."
"Of course, we hope to not be again castaways in the Valley of the Dinosaurs for a few years," Katie quips, "Despite me resembling Dawn Wells and Greg a skipper."
At the table, a pregnant pause follows. The parents would not want their offspring again in prolonged danger, imprisoned by a perilous prehistoric land in which each passing day is a lesson in survival in the Valley of the Dinosaurs.
However, John soon smiles supportively. He says, "Okay. Enjoy, and be safe. Please report in before the next Ice Age."
Motherly Kim bids, "Tell us a little more about this project."
"My friend Jana, from the jungle, wrote me about an incredible bipedal 'gill-man' sighted along the junction of the Amazon and the Xingu. He appears almost human and almost amphibian or fish—or even reptile," young Prof. Butler narrates.
Mother mugs amused, "There is a gill-man from around the Black Lagoon?"
"Well, a creature of some sorts," her daughter divulges.
Father John admonishes. "The person could have ichthyosis vulgaris, a skin condition that produces so-called 'alligator people'. If so, you two kids should treat the person courteously than objectively."
Katie chuckles, "Oh, I know all about political correctness. I work on a university campus in liberal Minnesota. I think that the movement may just spread."
The Butler family continues chatting into the evening. As it turns out, John and Kim are also taking a trip south of the Miami area. They soon visit Puerto Rico and its grand Arecibo Observatory. The old scientists have never studied astronomy too much, and they ever appreciate adding to their knowledge so long as they breathe. Besides, Arecibo does some SETI stuff, so that speculative science is kind of cool.
Somewhere else, in a lost land, Katie Butler sits cross-legged on the earth before a great bonfire, and she studies the wide night sky. As a child, her elders, John and Kim, taught her the constellations for orienteering purposes. They never wished her to be lost.
However, the celestial bodies above have never quite looked right over the last twenty years—or however long that she has been here. The North Star has never rightly looked like it would guide her truly back to Brooklyn. Rather, Polaris pulls in an askew kind of way. Its kin coruscations do the same.
But, a girl, of thirty years, cannot fret. Butlers have always been better at biology than astronomy, so she will just have to investigate the stars further some other day.
Right now, there is all of the life around here. The lunar year having passed successfully, the tribe dances loudly and lovingly beneath the full, refulgent moon. They twirl, stamp, gambol, and leap as though the occupants of Neverland, with Katie their Wendy. Shamans Po and Coco shimmy and shout. Chief Zmed zig-zags about his throne as jovial villagers Hensa and Orlo accompany his play. In the distance, sacred Stegosaurus Rokar trumpets from its pen, and dino Glump gratingly "harmonizes" with it. Tribal big man Toland taps his foot and raps his drum while similar sub-chief Yayuk swigs fermented fruit juice.
Nearer to Katie, Gorak and Gara seem perpetually in their prime. They prance about with pep. In their proximity, daughter Tana delightfully dances from young hunter to young hunter. The young woman dallies flirtatiously with one and then another before her darling lodestone necklace twirls and takes her magnetically to another. Someday, she will get married. Someday, she will age even more than she has now. (Within, Katie thinks that Tana should be older after twenty years, but that thought departs Butler's bonny head. It cannot be right). Between Katie and Tana, Lok lopes about in revelry. He comes to Katie and cutely captures her. They look into each other's eyes and the enrapturing fire. They get lost in this lost world, which exists who knows where.
