The Erskine of thirty years ago would not have placed an unsure hand on the work of getting his story out. His rolodex, then, had been good all the way from Miami, to St. Louis, to Boston. But now all those reporters and editors had gone up, or out, or under. The list was useless. And now here he was, an earth-shattering story trapped in the videocam, and the only thing missing was the right way, the best way, to get it out.
Floyd had dropped him off with just a minimum of good advice about not dropping or spilling anything on the camera, and to make a copy right away. His hands were shaking, though, and he had trouble even hooking the little white cable up to the computer, but at least he got it to play and the computer to digest it and play it back for him.
Now what? He just hadn’t expected this horrible panic of loneliness and of not knowing what to do. It was almost too much to consider that he was the missing step, that it was up to him climb the hill, to take what he had and bring it, like an Olympic torch, to the world, albeit the world of ornithologists, conservationists, and science writers. It pained him even to think he needed help, but he did and then it occurred to him he had to call Michael Lowe.
“Michael, of course,” he thought to himself. Nothing of this sort could rattle Michael and Erskine even remembered that, at one time, Michael had been the face of Greenpeace in South Carolina, an unlikely assignment that Michael handled with flair, his truck adorned with a “Rednecks for Wilderness” bumper sticker. Michael could calm him down, give him a little coaching, help point him a right direction.
“Michael,” he reported over the phone, “this is Erskine, and I need your help.”
The right thing to do, Michael told him, was to come over and make another copy onto another computer.
“Put the camera in bubble wrap,” Michael advised, “then put it in a box on the floor, on the passenger’s side. I’ll meet you out front.”
The delivery was successful.
“What am I looking for?” he asked.
“Them. That,” Erskine said, as the image of the two birds popped onto the high-def t.v. screen Michael routed the feed to.
They played it back a few times.
Because the bird on the right was partially obscured by a hanging cypress limb, Erskine already knew that his hopes would be flying with the bird to the left. He also felt a little better knowing that it would not have helped him that much to have gotten his camera up earlier because the preferable angle was the one he had, with the trailing edges of the wings in good view as the huge woodpeckers headed back into the woods. It was better than the Arkansas footage, or at least his recollection of the Arkansas footage.
“Very cool,” Michael pronounced. “I already believe your miracle.”
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