I’d
like talk about “The Mystery of the Jacques Cousteau Notebook”. It remains to this day one of the most
inexplicable enigmas and most regrettable actions of my life, and it shall probably
never be resolved this side of Heaven.
The
Jacques Cousteau Notebook dated back to my middle school years, from about the
same time as the Old Green Mill “Earth Tones” notebook mentioned yesterday. It
too was a spiral notebook, but a full 8x10 one. It was originally bought for schoolwork,
but I eventually ended up using it for some of my earliest drawing, creative
writing, and copying poetry.
What
I remember most are a few of the pictures. I know there was at least one Loch
Ness Monster (like the one shown yesterday), a dragon, a Bigfoot and an
Abominable Snowman that John drew for me, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it had
one or two of my early maps in it and some pictures of Dwarves. It also had a
drawing of “The Three Loonies”.
The
Three Loonies were three characters from a ‘Shakesperean-type’ play I was working
on. One was fat, one was skinny, and one was old and bearded. If I let my mind
go unfocussed for a moment, I can almost see the picture, with them dressed in
that type of fairy-tale Medieval clothing I used to draw. Anyway, the ‘plot’
(such as it was) centered around a mysterious letter as the McGuffin that got
passed around, stolen, and restored. Imagine a Laurel-and-Hardy film, if they
were joined by a wise if absent-minded elderly gent. Anyway, the play never got
any farther than the picture and, perhaps, a few notes.
I have
no firm memory of this, but the poetry probably included some copied verses
from The Dark is Rising books and may even have included one or two of
my own prototypical efforts at rhyming. There might have been a guide to the Futhark runes, as well. As I say, it’s something of a blur at
this distance, as even is the exact timing of when the tragedy happened.
It
was of my own devising; that alone is devastatingly clear. The time had come
for our annual summer camping trip. Somehow, I had conceived the idea that
something might happen to my precious Notebook while I was away (What was I
thinking? Stolen? Maliciously destroyed?) Anyway, I was overcome with some sort
of Tom Fool romantic notion that my efforts must be hidden for safekeeping, so
I went about searching for the best hiding place imaginable.
I
clearly recall at least four places I considered for the stashing. The simplest
was behind the towels in the bathroom closet. Rejected as too easy, and in
danger of damp. Then was slipping it into the access passage to the roof or
possibly down the access passage under the house, both available in the boys’
room. The last place I remember considering was between the piles of blankets
in the closet of Mom and Pop’s room.
All
I know now is that I hid the Notebook. And then … I did all I could do to put
out of my mind where I hid it.
Why?
Why? Why did I do it? The closest answer I can come up with now is that it was
a kind of game, a real-life playing at a sort of adventure, a hide-and-seek,
treasure-mappy thing that appealed to my youthful fancy and self-importance.
Only I seemed to have played it all too well.
When
we returned from out two or three days of camping, I went to retrieve the
Notebook from where I seemed to remember having put it … in the blankets in Mom
and Pop’s closet. It was not there, scramble through the folds how I might. I
would have taken the pile apart in desperation if I could, but the closet was
pretty much off limits to us kids (which I had thought in my sneaky way added
to its safety) and I could not just go digging around. But it was
pretty plainly not there, anyway.
I
checked the other hidey places as best as I could (they were all predicated on
how hard they were to reach) but came up with nothing, and Mike (the biggest
kid ahead of me) wasn’t sticking his head up or down any holes for me. I was
left with the wretched recognition that something bad had happened to the
Notebook after all, and that it was me.
The enigma
only deepened over the years as with time all the possible recesses of the
house were explored. Finally, after Pop passed away, the time came to sell
the house, and it was thoroughly emptied from stem to stern. Some surprising
relics turned up, from ancient clippings of newspaper comics to old tracings of
mine from Cinders, but nary a scrap of the vanished Notebook. Had it been inadvertently thrown out? Eaten by
mice? Disintegrated by time? I wonder still, mourning my foolish loss, and
pondering, every now and then, The Mystery of the Jacques Cousteau Notebook.
