It’s been about six and a half weeks since the shadow men, or his “handlers” barged in to my office and demanded information from me regarding his disappearance, or more truthfully, how they lost track of the old man.  I haven’t heard from them since, but I imagine they have been replaced by new colleagues after that major screw-up.

  But the emptiness I felt inside from his absence had been there since Easter, when we went to church together and he was the only one in the congregation to get down on his knees to kneel, even when there were no kneeling pads.    I remember the last words he said to me: “when you see evil, you need to get mean and kick evil’s ass.” Then, I asked him when I would see him again, and he said, “I will find you, Carson.”

I guess I was too dense to understand that he was trying to say goodbye, maybe forever, or at least, for a long time.  I should have grabbed the car door, and not let it close, and demand that we talk just a little bit more, so I could suck all the information I could out of this elderly diamond of courageous life.  It seems I’ve been dragging along in life, going through the motions: eating, breathing, exercising, working, and of course, drinking Guiness, in his honor, but clearly, my inspiration found itself sucked down the swirling drain of blankness.

So, I decided to take a swim in the ocean, then run on the beach, the same beach where I found him the first time when he wore that damn silly T-shirt.   Maybe I would find him again.  But no luck.  I started to walk the long sandy shoreline that stretched for miles, peppered by noisy seagulls searching for crumbs from the humans, but all the while, I kept my sunglass-covered eyes straight forward in the distance, hoping I would see some old man with wavy white hair coming my way while flipping his cane in the air.

Unfortunately, I could feel the sun rays cooking my tender skin a little too much, and I realized it was time to go.  So, I put on my shirt and sandals and got ready to head back to the parking lot, and then, I heard the familiar sound of a Beechcraft Bonanza engine flying low overhead, right above me, then he passed by, parallel to the shoreline, and after he was far off in the distance, maybe a half a mile down the strand, I saw him dip his wings, right then left, then right then left!  Then, right after him, a King Air twin engine thundered down the shoreline, and sure enough, right behind him, about a half a mile down, he dipped his wings too, back and forth, it seemed, in the same location!

I knew it was a salute, the same salute they gave Ollie back then when I met him on the beach, but I couldn’t see anyone walking in the distance —just an empty beach with waves slapping the shore.  So, I started to sprint, arms pumping hard, as fast as I could so that I could get to the approximate position of the wing salutes and hopefully find Ollie again.

Once I arrived, out of breath, to the approximate point I saw in the distance. I saw nothing.  No Ollie.  Just a couple of families with kids, building sand castles.  I stopped and scoured the beach up and down then ran into the parking lots nearby, but I couldn’t find anything that resembled an old man with a cane. Disappointment seemed to be the norm recently, so I went back to the beach and started my journey back to where I parked my car, a couple miles away, and as I passed people on the beach on their blankets, I could hear them playing Billy Currington’s song:  People are Crazy: God is great. beer is good. I wondered, was that a coincidence, or a sign from the past?

I smiled and the goosebumps appeared when I felt his presence, started running faster and faster with new hope, because I now realized that Ollie was still here, and he was definitely alive somewhere, probably drinking a Guinness and dancing a country dance in an unknown bar.

©SRCarson Publications, 2023