Part Fifteen

We Are So Vulnerable

Joan Lansberry

August 8, 1997

Scene in Flagstaff - ©JAL

At work, the sweat rolls down my face in small rivers. When we are out practicing bowshooting in the evenings, it stings my eyes. The heat presses down into you and never lets you forget it. However, last month, while we were in Flagstaff for a bowhunter happening, the heat was a distant memory. The scent of pine, in the cool cathedral of tree columns reaching high into the heavens, was rejuvenating. We walked on a thick carpet of dried pine needles and twigs, interspersed every so often by thistle blooms. Laura, thanks to some new medicine, was able to be in the high elevation for two days. She tested her mettle on the various 3-D animal representations set up as one would find the living targets in the wild.

Laura among the tall pines...

Laura hopes to try her aim on the real thing this fall. When faced with the death of "Bambi", will she be able to carry out her threat? I tell her, turkeys would make good cannon fodder. They don't have soft pleading eyes, and turkey meat tastes real good.

But perhaps I'm being hypocritical. I rarely eat beef, but I don't abstain entirely. I'm sure the cow had soft pleading eyes before it met its end.

August 9, 1997

We are so vulnerable,
Our skins have not toughened.
We have not walled off ourselves,
The aperture, though small, is never shut.
Cold the trickle from the rain,
The sun's glare can blind.
But the fresh air, so good,
so pure,
to these nostrils so needing.

JAL, 8-9-97

August 11, 1997

An Intriguing Mystery

At the cleaners where I work, the owner thoughtfully subscribes to People magazine. Occasionally I will glance at it. But today I read a story which particularly intrigued me. The mystery of it haunts me. Twelve years ago, a reporter for the Tacoma News Tribune just up and disappeared, without a trace of what happened to her. Jody Roberts never showed up for an assignment at Pacific Lutheran University on May 20, 1985. She left behind two cars, a cat named Poika and all her worried relatives, friends and co-workers. Perhaps they thought she was murdered. Her sister, Anne Corning of Beaverton, Oregon, told the Scripps-McClatchy Western Service reporter, "She would do a lot of undercover stuff,'' and "She was putting her nose in a lot of places people didn't want her to. She was very tenacious."

When the investigation turned up nothing, she was presumed dead, and the case laid dormant. Then the Pierce County Sheriff's Department reopened it as a homicide investigation. The case attracted much public attention when the Pierce County Sheriff was suspected of being somehow involved. So then it was brought to King County officials. This renewed search brought results. She was located in a small town of about 8000 people in southeastern Alaska. In this peaceful fishing town, she lives with her fisherman husband and her four children, two sets of twins, in a yellow trailer facing the water. She's not shy, having a reputation as a friendly and devoted mother. Making a living as a webpage designer, her own Miss Nikita's Parlor pages give evidence to her artistic skills.

However she claims to have no memory of anything beyond twelve years ago. She insists that walking out of a mall in a Denver, Colorado suburb is her first memory. Roberts said she was "thinking she was looking for her parked car, and then realizing that she didn't know if she had a car, or where it was parked." Mall security people tried to help her match her set of keys to a car in the parking lot, but weren't able to. She had no identification on her, as well. There was no clue to where she was or who she was. So she checked into a hospital. Officials there gave her the birth date of Jan. 1, 1963, -- four years younger than her actual age. She sought refuge at another hospital for four months, but then decided she'd better start getting on with her life.

She chose the name Jane Dee, one letter different than the standard 'Jane Doe'. Jody/Jane enrolled in classes at the University of Denver. She was able to support herself by working up the ladder to being a manager of a hotdog and hamburger restaurant near the university. Her boss, Shelly Panter, praised her as being a energetic and hardworking employee, although quite enigmatic. All he had known of Jane was that she was an A+ student. When he asked about her parents, Jody/Jane told him they had died. Panter could tell it was a very sensitive subject for her, "I knew this was a fragile little psyche here." So he never pressed the subject again.

Jody/Jane worked at Mustard's Last Stand for about a year, when she told them she was moving to Alaska. Obviously she was a good employee, for her boss tried bribing her into staying. But her mind was made up. To Alaska she went. She got a job as a waitress at the biggest hotel in the small Alaskan town. The move was life changing in other respects, for she met her spouse Dan Williams there in 1989. They got married in 1990.

But just finding where Jody Roberts disappeared to doesn't answer all the questions of this mystery. Some people wonder if Jody/Jane really did have amnesia. Normally amnesia only lasts for a short period. Even neurology experts have questioned whether it's possible to suffer from amnesia for twelve years. To add more fuel to the fires of suspicion, some of Jody's former colleagues said that she emptied her bank account and took several cats to the Humane Society before disappearing. Was it a conscious decision to start a new life? Was she afraid her life was in danger, because of a sensitive story she had been working on? Did she merely grow tired of her old life? So far, she claims not to have a shred of recognition of anything in her old life.

Her family members are convinced the claim is genuine. Marilyn Roberts, her mother, said "They wouldn't keep her in the hospital for four months if it wasn't. We're sure." Her sister believes it was a traumatic shock that caused Jody to lose her memory. If so, what kind of shock would be that great?

And perhaps it's only a coincidence that her web alias, Miss Nikita, is similar to "La Femme Nikita," the popular 1990 foreign film in which a young woman assumes a new identity to become an undercover agent. In any case, she is happy now. Jody/Jane enjoys her laid-back lifestyle in a serene environment. She's not upset to have been found, for she's overjoyed to at last have family connections.

Conscious decision or true amnesia? The mystery tantalizes me. How romantic it might have seemed to quit one's old life and start anew! But one can do that without disavowing all knowledge of the past. I certainly did that when I took off with Laura for Arizona. Was her life in danger? Or can such an extreme case of amnesia really happen?

sources: Scripps-McClatchy Western Service, and The Seattle Times Company, from articles found on the web. And memory of the People magazine article.

August 14, 1997

Across the sky,
Thunder cracks its wild whip.
Witness to its power,
We mortals are in awe.
Why must wonder and horror
Be so intermixed?

JAL, 8-14-97

August 16, 1997

The interactive section of Dispatches, the on-line magazine of Starnet is asking for people interested in writing about their vision of the future. I haven't volunteered yet for it. It involves passing an e-mail around in which everyone adds to it. But it has got me wondering about what the future will be like.

What will the world be like when my body has long been turned to ashes? Will the sky still look the same? Will the blue be as blue? Or will it be a sickening shade of gray that varies in its hues, perhaps lightens, but never scrolls away to reveal any hint of blue? What will the air be like? Will it hurt our lungs to breathe it? Will it sting our eyes? Will the sun burn with a relentless heat, even in the winter? Will there be sufficient food for the day? Or will the pangs of hunger always be reminding us of never ceasing ache?

Will we go to bed at night on a lumpy bed, tossed and turned by our worries? Will each unusual sound wake us from our slumber, with fears as to its portent? Or will we go to sleep feeling safe? Or will the sounds of gunshots punctuate the air periodically, accented by screaming, wailing, metal on metal, wailing, fierce agonies, more frequent than the rain? As if the rain could purify this mess; but will it too sting and burn when we are trapped within its pelting force?

Will we not ever be able to escape the harsh realities, no space to go to, not even within our own skull? Will we know too young, much too young, that we are simply born to die?

I shudder with thoughts of this possible world? Will it be like this? It could be already much like this somewhere in the world. Places that seem safely distant. Could this be our future? Will this be our future?

A screaming hope deep within the pit of my stomach rages that this must not be our future. A screaming hope within me breathlessly cries that this must not be our future. A screaming hope prays that all of humanity will wake up in time and see what we are doing to ourselves.

later this day...

...And where will the frail birds fly
If their homes on high
Have been torn to the ground...

(from Lift The Wings, by Bill Whelan for RIVERDANCE)

August 17, 1997

Still the rain falls. It streams down in curtains. Floods have been happening all over the country, even the world. Why so much rain?