The Widower Awakes

Although I suffered only minor physical injuries in the car crash, there are three months following Miriam's funeral for which I still cannot account. I'm told I suffered a form of post-traumatic stress due to an overactive adrenaline response during the event. It apparently created deep neurological patterns in my brain that could result in periodic violent episodes if not treated. But all I recall from that time are pale green walls, flickering florescent lights and black and white photo images from the 1960s. Then I saw Jack's face sharpening through the motion blur and I was back. It felt like a rough night's sleep but ended up being three months. I'm told that I participated in group sessions, albeit quietly, and when I wasn't found in a heap in the corner of my room, I was reading anything I could find with words; old magazines, milk cartons, shampoo bottles until, finally, they put a stack of Colliers Encyclopedias from 1968 in my room.

I was closely observed for two weeks after coming to and showing signs of lucidity. Visits with Jack became more frequent and longer and I was able to receive other visitors during the final week. The Governor was scheduled to come during that week but was suddenly committed to last-minute meetings arranged for him by the First Lady. He sent Seth, the family's official photographer instead. I introduced the governor to Seth years earlier after meeting him at the Grand Lodge in DC and we became very close over the years. While his position was formally the Family Photographer, we all knew that he was really only meant to capture the First Lady at every turn. She would pour over the carefully staged "candid" shots of herself that would be "leaked" to the Santa Fe Tribune and various society rags. Seth had spent the nineties as a photojournalist in Sarajevo so this was a welcome and cushy gig for him. He was the logical stand-in for the Governor and I was happy to spend the last few days on the hospital grounds with him catching up on Lodge news, crying about Miriam and making plans.

I was released back into the world and able to settle back into a routine with Jack, provided I committed to a year of weekly grief counseling sessions with Dr. Sarah Kamen and medication. I told them I did but didn't take the meds and most of the time these sessions seemed a waste of time as I worked to get Unearthed back online. But I decided that, in order to keep Jack and me together for the long haul and get on with our lives, I would use these sessions as a mental break — something I was never very good at doing for myself. I would volley responses to Dr. Kamen's probing questions as if I was really engaged but all the while I was planning my next show or my next pitch to the networks in my head. I could tell she was worried that I wasn't making progress in dealing with the loss. She called it Perceptual Blindness. But for me, getting back to work and some semblance of normalcy at home was all I needed.

Before the accident, when Siméon and I would pitch the show to networks, it was always fifteen minutes of Non-Disclosure Agreements followed by fifteen minutes of ideas then fifteen minutes of executives acting like they were late for a meeting and assuring us that the real decision makers would be glad to meet us provided our schedules could be coordinated. Forty-five minutes flat. Every time. But after the success of the Coba Codex finding — but more so I'm sure, due to the morbid curiosity of sitting in a room with a man who accidentally killed his wife and spent months in a psych ward — the meetings included an extra fifteen minutes of half-hearted condolences and awkward pauses. As if they expected me to breakdown right in front of them at any moment. 

After my initial disgust with these gallows watchers, I soon realized that I could use this new-found sympathy to our advantage. My pitches became more about closing the deal than presenting the ideas and before long we had buy-in from InTV — the preeminent online original programming network. Only now, years later, alone with my thoughts at night in the middle of western Colorado does the disgust turn from them to me for using the death of Miriam to my own advantage.

Almost a year had passed since the accident before the final deal with InTV was penned. With only a session or two left of mandatory counseling, Siméon called to tell me that the network was ready to produce six webisodes — not the usual thirteen because I was still considered a risk. But six was fine with me. I was eager to get back out there. I also understood why the network wanted to keep me within driving distance, at least for the first show back. That's when he followed up with the news that a Hopi shaman in New Mexico claimed to be in possession of a Spanish conquistador's helmet. I was only mildly interested as we had covered conquistadors before.

"You don't understand, Emit." Siméon interrupted. "The morion is embossed with the seal of Hernan Cortés himself."

"Jesus. There were only six of those ever forged." I said, "The only other one, anywhere, is at Del Prado in Madrid."

Baaleth shared my enthusiasm although mine was for the find and his was for the ratings, but ours' was a symbiotic relationship of obsessions.

"It will be a magnificent comeback episode, Emit. There's even a built-in hook because the shaman is convinced this morion has prophetic significance — something about the Hopi fifth world or something."

"Right!" I said. "We're supposed to be at the cusp of the Great Turning..." I started excitedly but Baaleth wasn't interested in these things. He was all ratings and revenue.

"I'm sure you'll frame this one right, Emit. I've just texted you GPS coordinates to where the Shaman will be tomorrow..."

"Tomorrow? That soon? Um, okay — I've got some things I need to work out but can probably leave around noon."

"Oh and there's one more thing..." Siméon began with a noticeable change in the timber of his voice, "...because this morion has been in the shamanic line for nearly 500 years, it's never been authenticated and so it's not protected. So call me right after you have authenticated it."

"Of course. I know the drill, Sim." This had been our normal procedure for years so I was a little taken aback that he repeated the need for a post-authentication call. I supposed that, because it had been almost a year since our last production and because of my situation, he was probably just making sure I was still sharp. And the fact that I never brought up what Miriam saw at the dinner party the week before the accident must have made him unsure of my memory. I didn't forget all that but at this point in my life, work was all I cared about. And Jack.

I hung up and immediately ran to my studio to collect my testing kit and gear. This comeback show would not only allow me to regain my viewership (beyond the morbidly curious) but also allow me to present an artifact that could very well put me right back on track toward prominence in my field. I was right where I was before the accident. Baaleth always knew how to appeal to that ambitious side of me — for his own good of course — but again, symbiosis.

It was that dovetailing of personal desires that kept me working with Baaleth. Even after his run-in with the law. I knew what he was about but, like other areas of my life, I was deft at denial.

Years prior, Baaleth and I shot a webisode in Nicaea, Turkey where many artifacts from the actual Great Council of Nicaea were, well, unearthed. We descended on the shores of Lake Iznik with a crew of cameras, authenticators and lawyers. After almost three weeks of negotiating our way through the disjointed bureaucracies of Turkey, we were finally led to the archive where the artifacts were stored. Plates etched with reliefs of the meetings and goblets embossed with the names of known participants. I was holding dinnerware from 325 A.D. — just ten years after Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire. The men who drank from these grails and ate from these plates would claim, for better or worse, doctrinal authority over the Christian world. For me it was a miracle. For Baaleth it was a temptation.

Days after our departure, while I was back in LA, our production offices in France were raided by INTERPOL officers. Baaleth, six producers and their assistants were hauled in for questioning. Apparently one of these miraculous chalices went missing from the collection in Turkey and we were the prime suspects. Having already come through U.S. Customs, I was practically pre-screened and therefore merely questioned. News of Baaleth's arrest crossed the globe and production of Unearthed was halted until and if the matter was resolved positively. Four months of investigation by INTERPOL and Turkish officials were suddenly dropped when the chalice was found at the site. Formal apologies were made and production was restarted and with a bigger budget. But I knew that a chalice of such value wasn't just misplaced like a set of keys then found. I knew this was a fake. And a really good one. But I let it go.

Looking back, I always knew that Baaleth was a thief of artifacts and of virtues. The subtle nuances in his behavior and evasions of my questions, the sudden uptick in opulence at his homes and in his driveways could not be explained away by the network's generous budget. But again, I am as deft at denial as I am at finding artifacts.

Miriam knew even before she saw the First Lady and Siméon in the back of the museum. She all but said it right out with her casual wonderings. Even that night, while putting on her silver jewelry for the dinner party she said, "Have you noticed how chummy Siméon is with the First Lady?"

"What? No. No I haven't. Is paisley still in style?" I said frantically leafing through my decade-old tie collection.

"Relax, Purple Rain," she said smiling, "Wear the silver one I put on the bed." She pointed to the suit and tie already laid out for me. "I'm just saying they seem to spend a lot of time together and keep stealing away to that damn in-home museum of hers..."

"They share an interest in artifacts is all. And she's got a lot of them. Siméon has helped her build that collection you know. The man's got a lot of connections all over the world." I said in their defense. A lot of connections was right. None of whom I ever wanted to know. 

The First Lady was an epic, albeit manufactured beauty. The only daughter of the wealthiest peanut tycoon in Eastern New Mexico but none of that impressed or intimidated my wife in the slightest. After all, Miriam's beauty was real and indisputable and her knowledge of the cultures that produced any of Angelica's artifacts far exceeded anyone's in our group. Her apprehension of the First Lady was born solely out of a protective feeling toward the Governor whom she adored.

I can see and recall all of these nuances now, but for the three months while in the psych ward and months afterward, I could not. The French philosopher Henri-Louis Bergson once wrote, "The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend." and to that end, I was, as Dr. Kamen asserted, perceptually blind.