Night Vision
Randy Wayne White
Everything that has happened, everything that will happen, it all exists in this single moment, endlessly surfacing and submerging; natural order, perfect law. The word “coincidence” is an invention that defines our own confusion better than it describes a unique occurrence.
One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.
ONE
On an Everglades-scented evening in March, as I drove my pickup truck west, toward the Gulf of Mexico, my hipster pal, Tomlinson, reached to switch off the radio, saying, “Life is the best thing that can happen to any of us. And it’s also the very worst thing that can happen to any of us. Problem is, our luck begins with mom’s location when the womb turns into a slippery slide. That’s why I self-medicate. It makes the shitty unfairness of it all almost bearable.”
We had just dropped my chatty cousin, Ransom Gatrell, at Regional Southwest, and I was eager for a few minutes without conversation. I nodded toward the radio and told him, “Hey, I was listening to that. We can talk later.”
“The Guatemalan girl deserves your full attention,” Tomlinson reminded me. He leaned back in his seat and stuck his hand out the window, surfing the Florida night. “She’s gifted. And she’s in trouble.”
He wasn’t referring to Ransom, although my powerhouse cousin, and my other neighbors at Dinkin’s Bay Marina, Sanibel Island, Florida, are a gifted, eclectic bunch.
“Your friends are always in trouble,” I said. “Your female friends, anyway. Percentages suggest the problem is you, not them.”