The Adventurer's Son(68)
We returned to the Iguana for lunch. The sea breeze blew the sound of gentle surf past palm trees and into the open Pearl. Roman, so clearly missing from what felt otherwise like a family vacation, obliged an unspoken agreement that we carry on as if we’d soon be sharing with him the delights we’d seen, then hearing his own humorous, self-effacing stories, his awkward guffaw.
As Roman’s younger sister, Jazz had often felt overshadowed, but she needn’t have. Even as a preschooler, she’d been the family spark, its nucleus. It was Jazzy whom Roman missed most on Umnak. She made him laugh; he took great pleasure in humoring her, too. Still, there was sibling rivalry, and while Roman was praised for his intellect, it was Jazz who had the highest grades, Jazz who had the common sense, Jazz who’d win at nearly every game. As much as I included Roman on outdoor adventures, Peggy did even more with Jazz at home and daily: making homemade Play-Doh, holiday cards, beaded jewelry, baking, sharing as only mothers and daughters can share. “I’m the only normal one in the family,” she would remind us.
Before high school, Jazz discovered a variety of short-season summer camps: Super Camp, Surf Camp, and Golf Camp. She then researched, applied to, and attended each. She also wanted to play soccer, but unlike the shorter camps, and because we traveled in summer, there wasn’t an opportunity for her to join a team. Instead, she became a competitive climber at the local rock gym in high school. She did well and competed at a national level. After graduating from Lewis and Clark College on a full scholarship and majoring in psychology, she took up body building and entered in a local competition, finishing fifth.
Ever since she was old enough to understand the chores assigned her, Jazz has been responsible and reliable. And since earning her driver’s license, she has always held down a job. As a teen she shopped for groceries, drove the family car for oil changes and tire swaps. At sixteen, she sided our house with me, eventually taking the lead, thinking ahead, measuring then marking the boards for the cuts, and hitting the first nail. After college, she was the one who solved problems at home when Peggy and I were away, once calling the plumbers to unfreeze our frozen pipes after checking in at our empty house to find the water didn’t work. Just like she had on the Harding Icefield, Jazz anticipates problems and asks the right questions to solve them.
But Jazz, I sensed, felt helpless in Costa Rica. As brother and sister, she and Roman had been very close, one of Peggy’s goals as a mother. Being here likely distressed her, although she showed no sign of that. All of us had girded ourselves in search-and-rescue mode, but Jazz saw no reason to stay. She didn’t want to do the hike Roman had sketched out and needed to get back to work in Anchorage.
After Jazz left, Lauren and Toby encouraged Peggy and me to assemble a poster offering a reward for Roman’s missing gear. Todd Tumolo sent a photo of Roman’s green Salomon shoes on his feet during our trip to Mexico. We copied and pasted Internet images of a yellow folding sleeping pad, a blue-colored Jetboil, a red dry bag, a puffy blue Patagonia pullover, the Kelty logo of his tent. I asked Lauren if we shouldn’t hold back a few items, in case someone was—as with David Gimelfarb—trying to take advantage. “I don’t think so,” Lauren said, who’d been a defense attorney for a decade. “We want to get as much information out there as possible. It’s time for a criminal investigation. Having lots of people looking for distinctive gear is useful.”
We posted copies at every pulperia, soda, cantina, and colectivo stop between Los Patos and Carate. Everywhere we went, people sympathized with us, the parents of the muchacho. It felt good to be doing something new that might have results. For nine hours one day we hung posters, heard stories, peered into every backyard we drove past looking for his clothes on laundry lines. We studied every young man’s feet for shoe color and brand, wondered about every kettle of vultures circling above forests and pastures.
One ex-pat said that when she had moved here in the nineties, it felt like paradise at the end of the world. Now, fifteen years on, she had nothing good to say. She wanted off the Osa but had her life savings tied up in her house and property. She had married a local Tico and had his child, but his substance abuse led to their divorce.
“I knew those two Austrians. I knew Kimberley, too, who was beaten and shot right at her house. And I knew Lisa, smothered in her bed. And you know what? I lock my front door each night, and then I take my child in my bedroom with me and I lock my bedroom door, too. I got a gun. I keep it loaded right there with me. And to top it all off, I let my ex live with me. Otherwise the criminals will just come and take everything. I’m trapped. Cody’s disappearance is part of this,” she concluded. “This inbred, lawless, uneducated, unscrupulous backwater of a place.”
She stood up and took a deep breath. “Look, I’m always around. Stop by anytime. And sorry I just talked about myself. I hope you find your son. I can’t imagine what a nightmare this is for you two.”
Chapter 38
Cerro de Oro
Pulperia, Cerro de Oro, September 2014.
Courtesy of the author
After my return from San José with Josh and Vic and ten days before Peggy arrived, Vargas had called me at the Iguana to say he’d heard a story about a lone gringo at Cerro de Oro, an off-the-grid mining community on the north side of Corcovado’s mountains. Cerro de Oro is beyond La Tarde, where Dondee had abandoned Thai, Pancho, and me. To go there, Peggy and I hired a guide named Andres who spoke good English and knew the trails. Tall, young, and curly-haired, he led us to Cerro de Oro with the patient, attentive gate of a nature guide. He pointed out a mother sloth in a cecropia, a fast-growing, hollow-stemmed tree that looks like the house plant called an umbrella tree and is the sloth’s favored food. Through our binoculars we could see the baby clinging to the mother’s greenish-gray hair, looking down. Elsewhere, a stately king vulture, biggest in the Americas, dried its white wings at the top of a tall snag.