INTRODUCTION TO THE 20th ANNIVERSARY EDITION

 

by John Thomas, ex-reporter, The New York Times, deceased.

 

 

EVERYONE IN THIS STORY died a long time ago. They condo-ed up to the Sweet Hereafter with a view of the Eternal Strand, while I hitched my star to a legend and stayed put. Now I’m the one who walks the beach, bereft of shoes but also of feet—of bodily substance in general. Yet I’m not bitter.

So why do I linger?

I think about it. I have time.

My own book is forgotten, yet the legend survives. Some time back, gliding the shore at dusk, my moonish glow reflected in the mirrored picture windows of seaside mansions, I paused beside an abandoned beach umbrella. I observed a crab digging a home in the sand and flicking clean a hardcover’s mildewed corner, eventually revealing the book’s dampened-and-dried pages, reshaped by the sea into a wavy image of itself. Soon the entire volume emerged—a discarded ex-library copy, a first edition of the very story in your hands.

A story I thought I knew.

Its crusty pages had been marked up in blue ink, edited by an unknown hand. I read it. I was intrigued.

I don’t come off so well. I had ambitions back then. I was opportunistic and greedy for fame. When I lost it all, I blamed everyone. So far so good. But no accounting of a life can be complete without a view of its entirety. How could this writer leave off my final years? I wasn’t fired by Southwind Cruise Lines, as the book claims; I jumped ship in Biscayne, where I wrote tropical romances for lovelorn ladies under a pseudonym. I don’t deny I drank too much.

One night, deep in my cups, I was jumped by a wonderfully buxom Indian woman who tossed me into a gator hole. Once sober, I found myself admiring her spunk. I sought her out and wooed her with my advanced vocabulary.

And so it went. In our later years, we lived on and off as husband and wife. She’d disappear for weeks at a time, during which I’d pen my next romance. When she’d return with money and valuables, I asked no questions. Her thieving and my drinking obtained a delicate balance.

Until at last she disappeared for good. It didn’t surprise me. She’d been complaining about her eyesight, how everything around her had turned white. I thought she was going blind or senile. Reading this book, I discovered another possibility.

I wasn’t bitter when she left. I’d had my pleasures and died happy enough. Yet I had unfinished business . . .

So here I am.

You’ll find none of these facts in the first edition. And there are other problems. Anachronisms. Historical inaccuracies. Brazen misrepresentations. Rookie mistakes. If I weren’t dead, I might have been outraged.

But to whom would I complain? I know nothing of the author. And who’s this narrator who introduces himself in a preliminary note, withholds his biography, then promptly unspools his yarn like a self-appointed deputy of fate? I’ve sifted through the narratorial possibilities, deliberating over the minor characters, rooting for one or the other. Mely! Weimy! My very own China! (The exclamation points are added for effect; ghosts don’t exclaim.)

The mystery rankled.

I read and re-read the book. I had time.

This is not, I concluded, a historical novel. Rather, it’s a book about Florida, assembled from, among other things, scraps of Florida’s history—a patchwork job perfectly suited to a lazy author who would rather indulge his passing whims than visit a library. Still, the book has its charms. Whatever the inaccuracies, the story followed a pattern I knew well, having lived it in part, and later having walked its beaches gathering newfound perspective since my death.

In the end, a second edition seemed in order. Clearly, the author is not around to do it himself. If he was indeed the owner of that beach umbrella, he may have been washed to sea by a rogue wave and drifts now in the Gulf Stream or cavorts with mer-people in the murky depths. Those are best-case scenarios.

Besides, in addition to adventure, love, and laughs, the story has me. Me, the centerpiece of the whole enterprise, the only man with a dedicated part. That’s Part III, if you’re keeping track. As the man who begat the legend, it is right and proper that I should disseminate accordingly.

I honored those edits uncovered by the crab, resisting the urge to rewrite the whole thing myself, deciding only to add this introduction to set the record straight.

Time has passed. The world has changed. The beaches today are squeezed between a swelling ocean and a crowded shore. Yet I’m not bitter. It’s been a century since I was bitter. I’m just incomplete.

And now a little less so.