Chapter 12

As advertised on the radio every evening, we were continuing to visit the park area next to the Battleship Alabama, on the Mobile waterfront, every day at an appointed hour. This is the location we advertised for people to go to and wait, if they wanted to join our group. It was not a site visible from where our ship was anchored, and we always took precautions, in approaching the park area, to assure that it wouldn't be too easy for someone observing our approach to know from which direction we had came.

We'd been in Mobile now for several days. I was beginning to wonder whether anyone was out there in Radioland, listening.

But when we arrived at the park on the late afternoon of the sixth day after establishing this routine, we found two black men, standing out in the open, waiting for us.

Roald was with me that day, and he got out of our minivan, approached the men, and shook their hands. Roald introduced himself and me to the men. The younger of the two, a tall, rangy fellow dressed in what looked like farmer's clothes, spoke up. "I am Raymond Pryor," he said. "This here is my friend, Elbert Franklin. We're from Louisiana."

"There's just the two of you?" Roald asked.

The two strangers looked at each other and I thought there was some kind of communication going on. "Just us," Pryor said.

"Well, we have a larger group," Roald said. "We are onboard a small ship -- a yacht. If you want to, you can come with us."

More eye signals now, between Prior and Franklin. Finally, Franklin, who seemed the older of the two -- maybe 40 or so -- spoke for the first time since mumbling his initial "hello" to Roald when they had shaken hands. "How many people you got?"

"More than you," Roald said. Obviously, he was wary of these two men at this point.

"You want us to come?" Franklin asked.

"We've been calling out, on the radio, for survivors to join us."

"Yeah, we heard you. That's why we came," Pryor said.

"We want to gather more people," Roald said. "We are concerned about... safety. We feel that a larger number of us, together, will have a better chance to survive."

"You don't care about... we're just a couple of laboring men," Pryor said.

But Elbert Franklin cut to the chase. "He's askin', whether it matter to you we're black men."

"We've got black people -- some -- in our group already," Roald said. "That's not going to be a problem."

There was a long pause. "We got a young girl," Franklin said, finally. Pryor looked at him with an expression of alarm on his face.

"We hid her," Franklin said. "Until we could see about you people."

Roald smiled. "A good thing to do. Cautious. You can see, that we, too, are cautious. If you want, you can come back with us -- without this girl -- and see where we are living. You can meet our people. Then, if you don't want to be with us, you can leave -- drive away alone. We will not follow you. You can just go and pick up your girl, and leave."

The two men looked at each other. "We ain't got no better place to go," Franklin said. "We going to go ahead and trust you. The girl is my daughter, Geneva. Geneva Franklin. She's 14. We got her hid, in a building downtown, there. You want, we can go together, back to get her."

"Sounds good," Roald said. "You need this car you brought?... Or you can come in the van, with us."

"We got all our stuff, in the car," Raymond Pryor said. "How about, you just follow us there?"

We followed Raymond Pryor's SUV into the downtown area for about four city blocks before he came to a stop in front of a storefront restaurant. He honked his horn three times in short bursts, and a slender young girl emerged from inside.

Geneva Franklin looked older than 14 to me. She looked delicious! The fact that she was black, and very dark-skinned, was no deterrent. For me, it was love at first sight. I felt my loyalty to Bridgett draining out of me like blood from an open wound. And, speaking of blood, it felt like most of mine was rushing to my groin.

We stopped long enough to introduce ourselves to Geneva. Roald and I both shook hands with her, and Roald welcomed her to our group. He then turned to Raymond again and, for the first time, explained that our ship was moored away from the shore, well out into Mobile Bay. "Pretty good idea," Raymond Pryor acknowledged.

They followed us back to the waterfront in their vehicle, and we stowed their SUV with our others, in the same locked warehouse where our two RVs waited for future use. With all five of us helping to carry their belongings, Roald piled the newcomers into the motor launch, and I joined them.

Our three newcomers were duly impressed with our quarters on the yacht. They were assigned the three remaining cabins below decks, aft of Harry's and Roald's cabins, in the back gangway, or whatever the nautical term for it was. I noticed Geneva's cabin was in the middle, nestled between her father's and Raymond Pryor's.

So much for midnight assignations.

It didn't take long, after we got back and introduced our new people, for Bridgett to read my body language. But she wasn't jealous of my blatantly obvious attraction for Geneva. She was amused. Later, when we had a chance to talk alone, she teased me about it. "There goes your heart," she said. "You want to revise your previous request to be on my team when we divide up the boys and the girls?"

I probably turned a pretty dark red, but I figured it was better not to try to lie my way out of it. "She's a pretty girl," I said. "But she's only 14, her dad said."

"She's a woman; don't kid yourself, or me," Bridgett said. "It's a new world, Carter."

"Yeah."

"We've still got a pretty serious imbalance, here, of males and females," she observed. "Raymond looks to be in his thirties, and Elbert is maybe 40. So now we've got five of you, and six, if you include Martin Kazner. And only three of us girls."

"And there's Edward, too," I reminded her. "He's 12... If Geneva's considered a woman at 14, well, maybe Edward's a man, too."

"Whether he is or not, he soon will be," she agreed.

"Is Geneva going to be -- like -- an adult, for voting purposes?" I asked.

"Well. I don't know. We said age fifteen, didn't we? But you're right. She looks older. She seems to act older, too. It'll be a close call. I guess the group will have to decide."

"Group's going to have to decide a lot of things, pretty soon," I said.

"Yeah. And now there's no more extra cabin space, aboard this ship."

That's when we heard Edward holler. "There's somebody on the radio!" he shouted. We all went running.

Despite my youth, I was still given a certain amount of deference, on matters associated with our radio communications. Edward happily stood aside and let me handle the conversation with whoever-it-was who'd responded to our routine 6 p.m. transmission.

"It's somebody, says he's in Florida," Edward said.

"THIS IS MOBILE, ALABAMA, RESPONDING TO YOUR TRANSMISSION, OVER," I said into the microphone.

"WE'RE IN FT. MYERS, IN FLORIDA," a male voice responded. "WE'VE HEARD YOUR BROADCASTS FOR SEVERAL DAYS. IT TOOK US UNTIL NOW TO FIND A TRANSMITTER SO WE COULD TALK BACK."

I wondered why, if they'd known about us for days, they hadn't just found a vehicle and driven to Mobile. It was a long way, but it wasn't that far. "WE HAVE A GOOD-SIZED GROUP OF PEOPLE HERE, TOGETHER," I told him. "WHY HAVEN'T YOU JOINED US?"

"HOW MANY OF YOU ARE THERE?" the voice on the radio asked.

"WE HAVE A GOOD-SIZED GROUP. HOW MANY ARE THERE OF YOU?" Obviously, mutual suspicion was at work here.

"WE'RE A GOOD-SIZED GROUP, TOO," my unknown caller responded.

Ingmar had been standing beside me, listening to all this. "Let me do it," he said.

"WE NEED TO HELP EACH OTHER, IF WE CAN," Ingmar said into the microphone. "WE UNDERSTAND YOU'RE BEING CAREFUL. THAT MAKES GOOD SENSE. WE FEEL THE SAME WAY. BUT SOMETHING'S GOT TO GIVE. WE'LL GO FIRST. WE HAVE TWELVE PEOPLE HERE. MOSTLY ADULTS. MOSTLY MEN. WE ARE IN GOOD SHAPE, GOOD RESOURCES. NO ILLNESSES. AND WE'RE MOBILE, BY LAND OR SEA... OK. NOW YOU TALK."