Doomed

^{DECEMBER 21, 9:02 A.M. EST}

Charting a Course for Glory

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Gentle Tweeter,

Contrary to its merry title, The Voyage of the Beagle is not a picaresque yarn about a small, plucky dog who embarks upon a madcap over-the-waves maritime adventure. If I were compelled to write the CliffsNotes summarizing the book, that distillation would go as follows: Stupid wild fish… dumb wild bird… big rock… Snake! Snake! Snake!… slaughtered animal… another rock… turtle. Imagine such a series made long enough to fill almost five hundred pages and you’ve more or less written the Beagle book for yourself. In half a thousand pages hardly a dog is mentioned, and nothing exists in the spotlight for longer than the duration of Mr. Darwin’s ten-second attention span. Instead of evolution, Charles Darwin seems to have invented attention deficit disorder, and his focus is constantly distracted by a different fungus… a novel, new arthropod… a brightly colored pebble. Reading along, one hopes to see a pretty senorita catch the narrator’s eye. The reader expects a romance to blossom among the pampas followed by a lover’s quarrel and the introduction of a romantic rival, kissing, fistfights, drawn swords—but it’s just not that kind of book. No, The Voyage of the Beagle seems more akin to watching five years’ worth of vacation snaps, shown by an Asperger’s sufferer compelled to narrate incessantly.

The title of the tome is a blatant misdirection. The Beagle cited is actually the ship upon which Mr. Darwin and Co. are sailing, apparently christened by some long-ago dog fancier. Nonetheless, it’s within these brittle old pages that I found my destiny.

It takes but a single remarkable victory to cement the reputation of a budding scribe. For my nana’s favorite, Jack London, it required only six months of mucking about in the gold-rush towns of the Klondike. For Mr. Darwin the transformative episode in the Galapagos Islands lasted at most four weeks. Both men had begun their adventure in resignation: London had been unable to secure gainful employment in San Francisco; Darwin had dropped out of college, failing to earn his degree in theology. Both men returned to their ordinary lives while still young, but milked inspiration from their short-lived adventures until they died.

There was no reason why the summer of my eleventh year need be wasted. I had only to find some as- yet-undocumented species of disgusting creature—fly, beetle, spider—and I could write my own ticket back to civilization. Scientific acclaim would be mine. I’d reinvent myself as a world-renowned naturalist who need never kiss and hug her evil, heartless parents ever again.

The morning I’d resolved to begin my fieldwork, I sat at the table in my nana’s kitchen. The dawn light shimmered, brown-orange, through the jar of stagnant water and sodden tea bags that she kept on the windowsill above her sink. I feigned spooning some vile porridge to my mouth, tasting nothing except the bovine growth hormone in the milk. Still, I smiled winningly, my Beagle book open beside my breakfast, and asked, “Nana, dearest?”

My Nana Minnie turned from her stovetop chore—stirring a wooden spoon in some simmering glop—and considered me coolly. Her eyes narrowed with suspicion, she said, “Yes’m, June Bug?”

Keeping my voice laconic, my tone breezy and nonchalant, I asked whether there were any tropical islands within a walkable distance.

Her stirring hand lifted the spoon from her witch’s cauldron and brought it to her crooked mouth, where a darting, furtive tongue tasted the concoction. Smacking her lips with great gusto, my nana said, “Did you say ‘islands,’ baby girl?”

My mouth fixed in a smile, I nodded my head yes. Islands.

Her requisite cigarette smoldered between the fingers of her free hand. This morning as every morning the sunrise found her gray hair wrapped around curlers and pinned tightly to her pink scalp. Papadaddy Ben remained abed. From the world outside the farmhouse resounded the racket and squawk of fowl announcing their successful ovulations.

My Nana Minnie continued to muse over the bubbling production of her noxious cookery. One could almost discern the click and whir of cogs within her head. The tick-tock of gears meshing was nearly audible as she searched her memory for any facts concerning a local island. Giving a short cough, a snort, she said, “No real islands,” adding, “not unless you count the traffic island out in the middle of the highway.”

What she proceeded to describe was a nearby traveler’s comfort station which was sandwiched between the numerous traffic-choked southbound lanes of a major highway and the equally congested northbound lanes. I had seen the place: a squat building of concrete blocks cowering in the center of a parched, lemon-yellow lawn spotted with the dried feces of domesticated dogs. I’d glimpsed the place only in passing, from the tinted window of a Town Car en route to my exile on Nana’s farm, but the concrete hovel seemed to shimmer with the acrid stink of human waste. A small number of cars and trucks had occupied parking spaces along the edge of the ragged lawn, abandoned by the various persons who rushed to void their bowels and bladders.

This place qualified as an “island” because it was isolated, cut off from the surrounding upstate countryside by the slashing rivers of high-speed vehicles. In lieu of a more conventional island, perhaps this one might serve my purpose.

I lingered over my breakfast. Regarding The Voyage of the Beagle, I’d read up to the point where Darwin drinks the bitter urine of a tortoise. Clearly I was not the first reader challenged by the idea of our hero quaffing a frosty mug of turtle pee, for a previous reader had underlined the entire passage in pencil. In the outer margin of the page a different reader had used blue ballpoint pen to write, Pervert. Occasionally these comments seemed fortune cookie–cryptic. Occluded and coded. For example, listed in a column down the outer margin of one page, noted in pencil were the words If I ever have a baby girl, Patterson says to name her Camille. Elsewhere, jotted in blue ink were the mysterious words: Atlantis isn’t a myth; it’s a prediction.

These two fellow travelers—the pencil scribbler and the blue-ink vandal—had become my reading companions, always present to share the Beagle book with me. Their snide, insightful comments leavened my own reaction to the many otherwise tiresome depictions of lizards and thistles.

In what was clearly a child’s hand, another penciled notation read, Patterson says to start collecting flowers for my husband’s funeral someday.

A squiggle of blue pen said, Leonard wants me to pick some flowers for my dad.

As if to illustrate these notes, pressed between the pages were buttercups. Yellow buttercups. Purple violets. Proof of long-ago free time and long holiday strolls and fresh air. Brown ribbons of ancient grass. A record of sunshine. Bits of physical evidence documented a vanished summer. And not just the colors of summer… here were the smells as well! Dried sprigs of rosemary, thyme, and lavender. Rose petals still pungent! These layers of paper and words had preserved them, like an armor. Each primrose and morning glory I came across I was duly careful to leave intact.

From her station at the stove, my nana said something, her words ending on a high note, a question.

I responded, “Excuse me?”

Taking the cigarette from her lips, exhaling a plume of smoke, she repeated, “How are you liking that The Call of the Wild?”

I looked at her, my eyes wide with incomprehension.

“The novel?” she prompted, nodding at my book opened on the kitchen table.

Obviously she hadn’t seen the cover closely enough to know its actual title.

She asked, “Did you read to the part where the dog gets himself kidnapped and took to Alaska?”

Yes, I nodded. My eyes returning to my reading, I agreed that the dog lived a very exciting life.

“Did you read to the part…,” she asked, “…where the collie dog gets took by Martians in a flying saucer?”

Again, I nodded, saying the scene in question was quite thrilling.

“And,” my nana prompted, “was you scared when the space aliens impregnated the Irish setter with radioactive chimpanzee embryos from the Crab Nebula?”

Automatically I agreed. I said that I simply could not wait for the film version. I glanced up just to check the