Forward from The Lost and Found Book
By: Patrick McGreer
I remember thinking I’d be completely screwed if my cell phone battery expired. I’d be halfway up the hill, blind and alone in the jungle. The dying glow of my cell made every twisted root look like a jumping pit viper. I wiped the moisture off the screen on my jeans and held the phone up again. I was in disbelief. The sign at the fork in the path should have read, “The Lost and Found Cloud Forest Hostel, $14 dorm beds.” The sign had been painted over in black and with dripping red lettering that read; All here is lost. All here is found.
I have been asked about this night so many times that I’m not sure if I am really remembering the details or just remembering telling the story. Like the dull moments that would have drifted away forever were it not for the fact that a great tragedy surrounded it, like how you remember where you were during 9-11. I would just as soon let these moments drift away into the gardens of forgotten memories. But sometimes they ask you to hop the fence and look into the darkest parts of this garden, among the twisted roots. Sometimes they make you take a shovel.
My repainted sign told me that this would not be a homecoming. My visit was unannounced, just a quick in and out to pick up my red rain jacket that I decided I needed before heading to a friend’s hostel in Bocas. I guess it didn’t really matter what the new managers did, as long as they weren’t late with their lease payments and they didn’t fire any Panamanian staff. I made my way up the trail humming Tom Waits’ God's Away on Business, and thinking about exerting at least some authority by changing the music in the bar. Maybe if Matt wasn’t around I would break out the Jim Beam and offer Maria a few on the house and get the scoop on things.
When I approached the fork in the path between the forest reserve and the hostel I expected to hear music and see the lights. There was nothing but dark silence. A thick blanket of fog soaked up all sound and light. I went directly to the bar and discovered it locked. I thought I heard whispers. I put my ear to the door but there was nothing. If there had been anyone inside, they stopped when they heard me approach.
When I walked by the cage of our resident honey bear jumped an inch from my head, startling me. A classic attack when he feels neglected. When I turned on the lights to the main area I saw they had completely repainted. The beetles, butterflies and lizards that we had painted were covered with hieroglyphs and cryptic symbols. The kitchen had surreal, twisting images of mushrooms, snakes and a crazy globe transforming into an eyeball. At least it was clean.
Along the stairs leading down to the tv room was a small mural with one of those Egyptian all seeing eyes. I went down to check the whiteboard where we list which rooms are occupied. I flicked on the switch and saw that the board wasn’t there. It seemed that there were no guests at all. I decided right then and there, that when the one year lease expired I would retake my hostel. I heard breathing behind me. I froze. From the corner of my eye I saw a dark shadow sitting at the table. I turned to face the solitary figure.
It was Steve, one in the group of six, who was leasing my hostel. He was just staring at his right hand. I stood there for a moment just watching. If he were conscious he would have been aware of me. But then Steve was a whack job. I assumed he was stoned on Valium or Xanax.
I stood a few feet from him and positioned myself to see what he was staring at. It appeared he had drawn a tiny snake with a black pen on the palm of his hand. His eyes were open and eerily darting back and forth, like he was sleeping with his eyes open. I reached out to touch his shoulder but out of the blue I heard an urgent whisper:
“Don’t touch him!”
I spun around and saw the man they called Dr. Mike standing in the doorway. He frantically waved me outside.
“You must not wake him,” he whispered when we were out on the main terrace. “He is in a deep sleep. He is a somnambulist in the middle of a dream.” I remember he held my arm as he talked either as a gesture of urgency or feigned familiarity. He slowly pulled his thin wire frames off and began cleaning them while he smiled at me.
“You are the famous Patrick,” he said. “It’s so nice to speak with you finally. You must be proud. This is a wonderful place.”
He sat down and rested his John Lennon rip off glasses on his large stomach and ran both hands through his graying hair. This was the first time I met the supposed psychologist and it’s hard to remember now if I really distrusted him on our first meeting, or if events since have distorted my memory. The truth is, I don’t remember what we talked about. I can only guess, or would like to think, that even on my first meeting with him I detected condescension in his voice. He explained to me the process of taking control of your unconscious, to control reality. I think I was just worried about my hostel. That and I wanted to see Maria.
During a pause in his soliloquy I went to the laundry room and dug through a box for my jacket. Dr. Mike raised his voice and followed. I found what I was looking for and put it on. I was trying to shake him by going into the kitchen and grabbing a beer. I asked if there was a list to mark it down.
I held the beer can to my mouth and right as I was about to drink I saw him staring at me, his eyebrows all crunched up. I think he was confounded that I would talk about something in the middle of a lecture about psychology and unlocking the collective unconscious. I tried to escape to the far side to the terrace where guests usually sat and absorbed the views of the volcano.. Tonight you couldn’t see more than twenty or thirty feet through the fog and it was rolling in thicker and thicker. I looked at the main dorm building below I noticed something was different. Years ago when we built this place there wasn’t supposed to be a dorm. We were going to sleep in tents. We planned a terrace and added a dorm last minute. So we had this strange area where steps led down to nothing but the cement wall of the big dorm.
Now I could see that the steps did not lead down to the wall. They led to an elevator; an old fashioned elevator with an iron-gate door. A surreal rush came over me. It was like that dream; a mundane dream where everything is normal except in this dream your bedroom has a new door. A door at the back of the closet you never knew was there and it seemed to be calling you. Here was one in front of me and oddly I found myself wishing I could enter.
Mike followed me as I went right up to the elevator to reassure myself that it was indeed a well painted mural and not a hallucination. On closer inspection I could see that a panel of buttons had been painted with three floors. Mike must have sensed my discomfort with the changes and started a lecture about the local mythology of the nearest town.
I used the bathroom as an excuse and finally got rid of Dr. Mike. On my way to the toilets I stopped by the guest kitchen to see if it had been in use. A tree that I had never really noticed until now had a light switch on it. I flipped the switch and immediately beams of green light shot up at the trees in the distance, radiating the heavy fog slowly drifting past. The cable that was connected to the switch led up into the trees and strings of light lit up a path down to a vast area I had never been – a neglected area where large patches of beautiful heliconia flowers grew wild. I tried to follow the cable. But after several meters I was stopped by a dense wall of plants. It led down to a stone arch that wasn’t there before. Above the arch were several black and white images of the moon in various phases. Like the dream with the new door, a dark, surreal tunnel seemed to have opened up where nothing had been before.. But this time I really could enter. It called me in.
Immediately I got turned around. I hit a dead end, and then the maze spat me out again. I don’t remember why I felt compelled to solve the riddle of the labyrinth when my hostel seemed to be transforming into a dark, parallel version of itself, but I think my intuition told me I would find answers at its center. It seemed as though I had walked down the same row for the tenth time and I stopped in frustration. I looked up and noticed something that told me I was actually on a new passageway. There, above me, words had been engraved into a tree.
All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks, in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.
I heard growling. At first I thought it was a wild animal. But I listened intently and could hear it was methodic. After listening closer I realised that it was the sound of digging.
“Hello,” I called out a couple of times but there was no answer. But the sound continued, a dull repetitive slicing of shovel into moist earth.
The twists and turns of the maze were exasperating but I was determined to reach the source of the noise. I turned into a small clearing and saw Maria, completely naked. Her skin was ghostly white in the green lights that lit the labyrinth. Even then she was beautiful. She kept digging a hole, about knee deep, oblivious to my presence.
“Maria,” I said and gently touched her elbow.
She tripped backwards into the hole she had been digging. I felt a deep chill and dark sense that I had broken something I wasn’t supposed to touch. She squinted at me.
“Matt?” she murmured.
“No,” I said.
She looked disappointed. “Why are you digging?” I asked.
She hesitated and looked around. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “Where am I?”
She stood straight up in the hole and began frantically rubbing the palm of her hand as though she were looking for some kind of answer there. She stopped just as quickly and raised her hand slowly to allow the light to catch some kind of symbol drawn on the palm of her hand. I saw her eyes widen in abject terror as if she was watching her own shocking death on the palm of her hand. I think she stopped breathing. Her mouth was wide open like she wanted to scream. She looked down at her body. She began running her hands up her bare thighs. I saw something odd and Maria’s expression changed from horror to disgust, like she was about to vomit.
I tried to grasp what could possibly be protruding from between her legs. It slowly started oozing out, covered in blood. It dropped to the ground. It was a bulbous vial full of what could have only been blood.
Her eyes looked like they would bulge out of the sockets. She collapsed in a hysterical fit and began to scream. I reached down to comfort her but she only screamed louder, transgressing into semi-coherent ranting in English and Spanish. “Rip the zipper, separate my flesh, she won’t be born… yellow teeth!” Over and over again convulsing wildly until all at once she passed out. I wrapped her in my jacket.
Mike appeared out of the dark gloom and in a flurry of movement he scooped Maria up and whisked her into the passages of the labyrinth. A bizarre satyr carrying a limp maiden into the night.
Did Dr. Mike try to draw a symbol on your hand too? Where was Matt? Was it a syringe?
Over and over I would be asked these same questions. Over and over again, while I tried to forget, while I literally washed the splattered blood to remove all signs of the sick horror at The Lost and Found. I want to put this to rest and move on with my life even if I can never return to a completely normal one. So once and for all I am going to plunge into the dark corners of the garden of my memories. But sometimes they ask you to hop the fence and keep digging. Sometimes it's the guests at my hostel, sometimes the families of those affected, but mostly it is the so called authorities. Sometimes it would be nice if every tragedy had a happy ending.
Unfortunately this does not. There are a certain amount of unresolved issues. For the police this remains unresolved. For that, Interpol has partially opened the case file for this particular event and you, the reading public, are welcome to it, should you think you are perhaps twisted enough to understand the psyche of Maria.
In the following pages I use the words of those involved; the blogs, the emails and personal diaries and when I have to; my words. I know the Interpol database back and forth and chapter by chapter you will learn more names and more clues to enter into the database. Form your own conclusions and help the authorities reach their closure. As for me, I will bury this tragedy forever with this book. This is what happened.
Chapter Entitled ‘The Red Jacket’, from the book, The Lost and Found
By Patrick McGreer
I have spent so many hours poring over details in their letters and journal entries for things to search in the interpol and Lucky Paw databases that I no longer remember my first impressions of them. Except María, of course. Women as beautiful as her are not forgotten easily.
The Lost and Found is a hike-in hostel seven miles east of an ancient lake – now a reservoir to a huge dam. It requires a fifteen minute walk up from the David to Bocas highway. Like a lot of my guests María was out of breath from the hike up. I smiled and joked that she should have taken the elevator. She didn’t smile back. Her beauty was so disarming that I immediately assumed she would be amused by my joke. But she remained vacant and when she held my gaze I felt a kind of chill I cannot explain. “Tengo alas,” she said. I have wings. I just need to learn to use them. But for the mortals I’ll build you an elevator. One day.”
They arrived at the top. One of our employees, was helping Dr. Mike with his luggage. I am sure I shook everyone’s hands and answered their questions: Why don’t you guys build a zip-line for people’s bags? Did you carry everything up yourselves? Why did you come to Panama? The introduction speech I give is always new for the guests, but for me it is a routine that blurs all memories of meeting new guests at my hostel. It was this monotony that convinced my business partner and myself that we needed to take a break. So we decided to lease out the hostel for a year.
We didn’t build a zip line because, well, we need money for new dorms, new showers, a bigger cage for our rescued honey bear, and composting toilets. Every brick we pulled up costs twice as much once we paid for gas and delivery and on top of that there was the cost to carry everything up by hand. People told us it wouldn’t work. Only expensive eco-resorts are built in the middle of nowhere, not hostels. Local workers carried up six or seven bags of cement per day. I carried one and vomited on arrival.
How I decided to come to Panama is a much more involved question with several answers, depending on who asks. The financial answer is the short one. While most of our peers were getting married, buying real estate and unknowingly heading into the subprime mortgage crisis, my business partner and I taught English around the world. Although we are both Canadian, we met in Korea and bonded over basketball and websites for people who don’t want to go home, like the Escape Artist and International Living.
I had been looking at offshore stock brokers, and Panama, with all its banks, came up frequently. I decided land was a better investment than volatile stocks. Land values were set to rise with the increasing arrival of retiring Americans who came for the cheap cost of living.
I wasn’t sure I would go through with it until a couple of months after I left Korea. What helped me make up my mind was a red rain jacket gifted to me by my girlfriend in Turkey. It was a cold day in Istanbul the day she said goodbye and drove me to the airport so she lent me her red jacket. I was leaving the girl that might have been ‘the one’ for the security of a high paying job in Korea and the freedom money could give. She told me to keep the jacket. I took it and promised to return one day with the jacket. What I really wanted to do was return to her once I had banked money but I never told her that. I didn’t want the weight of a promise like that. But before I could return she met another teacher like me, and although they broke up for a time when he was faced with my very same dilemma, they reunited again. They now have a lovely family. I still have the red jacket. Or I should say, had the red jacket.
The jacket stayed with me in Korea. I led an uneventful life there, teaching every overtime hour offered and dreaming about sitting in front of the 7-11 on Khao San Road in Bangkok with a cold Singha beer and nothing to do. After nearly four years of teaching in Korea, I gave away most of my belongings and brought my jacket to Koh Lanta, Thailand. On December 26th, 2004, I got up unusually early to buy shaving cream. I noticed a big commotion down by the beach, so I walked down and saw Thai kids running down to the receding shoreline to throw flapping fish back into the ocean. Scuba divers shouted frantically, dropping their weight belts and flippers and running in the opposite direction, away from the shore. Moments later a small fishing boat rose from the seafloor and the first wave came.
The Asian Tsunami of 2004 killed twelve on my island, far less than Koh Phi Phi my original destination. The scuba diver’s warning allowed me time to outrun the wave and the slope of the island didn’t allow the wave to travel. I was uninjured but it destroyed my hotel bungalow.
When the chaos abated I took a fire extinguisher and smashed the door of my bungalow and rescued my things. I put on the red jacket and loaded stuff into a black plastic garbage bag and headed back up to high ground. There were reports of aftershocks. There were few injuries in the area I was taking refuge. The sixty other tourists I was with were in good spirits, talking and drinking beer. But the crowd was silenced when a man drove up on a scooter and shouted a name, “Miranda!” he shouted and waited. The crowd silently looked around for a response. “Miranda!” he shouted again. Nothing. He drove off and the crowd was humbled.
I drank a lot of beer with a biker gang from Germany and I woke up late, after most of the other tourists returned to their hotels. A group of Thais were cleaning up garbage and there was a sea of the exact same garbage bags as I had my things in. My garbage bag with most of my life's possessions were gone. Either stolen or assumed to be garbage. But I was grateful. My money from Korea was in the bank. My passport was in my back pocket. And I was wearing the red jacket.
I made it to Khao San Road in Bangkok and finally did what I had day dreamed about all those hours teaching Korean kids… drinking Singha and doing nothing. There was nothing on my ‘to do’ list. Freedom…. Just another word for nothing left to lose. Now what? There’s an old saying: Freedom, standard of living, security. Choose two.
I had all the freedom in the world but no one looking for me. If I had died in that tsunami, no one on a mini bike would have driven up to shout my name. No one in my family even knew I was in Thailand. I had no hockey trophies sitting under a bed somewhere. I was tired of airport goodbyes. I didn’t want to go somewhere -- I wanted to be somewhere for a change. I wanted more than just the red jacket.
The list of places in the world where you can buy land and own a business as a foreigner is a short one. In Canada I am just like all the rest – I’m Canadian. So I decided to build the Lost and Found. The red jacket followed me to Panama.
The building of our hostel wasn’t easy. The owners of the huge hydroelectric plant twenty kilometers up the road from our location did not want us here. Our life savings were in jeopardy when they wrote a letter of objection to the ministry of the environment. Our environmental impact assessment was rejected without reason and we had nowhere to go.
Our fortunes began to turn after a chance encounter, what I would call destiny if I were a superstitious man. About a twenty minute walk from the lodge is a little town. My business partner, Andrew, was there getting some local food at a small restaurant when a grandfatherly man dumped out his glass of water, filled it with a strange red liquid and said, “Dale pues”. I never really got a handle on what that means. Could be, ‘Okay then,’ or ‘Do it.’
Andrew did it. It had bite. It tasted tart and almost effervescent proving after all that strangers do have the best candy.
They finished the bottle and the man pulled Andrew down to his farm to show him how his organic fruit wine was made. His name was Félix González Córtez, but the village knew him as Don Cune. As a small boy he loved to eat an animal known in these parts as a conejo pintado. As a five year old, he could never get the whole word out of his mouth. All he could say was something like ‘cune’ (koo nay). So when he asked for his favorite food, he would say “Quiero cune, quiero cune!” When his parents wanted to get him home quick, they shouted Cune. It became his name.
“Más orgánico,” he would say with a smile that ran ear to ear, beaming underneath his signature weathered straw hat, the brim upturned in the style of the Panamanian peasant.
Turned out Cune had a passion for all things organic. Why kill your customers? was his line of thinking. But Cune had some problems of his own. His coffee yield was down 80% due to coffee rust, a crippling fungus spreading through the Americas. It was a temptation on his farm just to spray chemicals, but Cune had worked more than nine years to obtain organic certification and was just one year away. Because of the rules governing the reserve, however, he was ineligible for any type of loan to improve his farm because he had no deed to his home, no collateral to offer. Although he had lived there for decades, he was, in the words of the CEO of the hydroelectric company, “a squatter that we tolerate.” Andrew had a cup of his coffee -- world class. Then he had some more wine -- wild blackberry, cashew fruit, pineapple… a little sour, with bite reminiscent of Don Cune’s wit, wry but merry.
The two of them became fast friends. And it occurred to Andrew that perhaps the best way to help our business was by finding a way to help Don Cune.
Later, over a couple of beers back at the Lost and Found, Andrew and I decided, screw it. Screw the dam, screw the government. Dale pues, we defied the law and opened. Immediately we started to run tours to Cune’s farm, adding a farm to table lunch, fresh sugarcane juice, coffee and wine with a bite. Neighbors partnered with us to run horseback tours, jungle treks, birding and hot springs tours. Defying all expectations, the Ministry of the Environment left as alone. The mayor of the district noticed what we were doing and supported us, even if it was mainly because he wanted to tax us. The Ministry of Tourism got on board. Despite countless hours of headaches, the legal fees and even more impact studies, we opened and take pride when we extend our middle finger toward the dam, knowing we employ seven times as many locals as they do. Great rewards come from great challenges.
There is still unfinished work. The community needs more English to participate more fully with opportunities our tourists bring. But now I have a to do list and I have a place to be. I am part of the community.
A part of me wasn’t sure, after all this work, that I was really ready to lease it out to Steve. Meeting him didn’t help. Steve was a crass, conceited sexist who made jokes at the expense of others. I had two days to make up my mind before they took over. I had a two day window to veto the whole operation. In a way it was María who helped me make up my mind.
Later in the evening, I was paired with her for our nightly foosball tournament, and she warmed up to me despite my dumb elevator joke. I thought we were getting on well, but I think she just has that way with guys -- she makes you feel like she is interested in your stories. When she hangs off the loft in the bar, showing you her tattoos, you think that this is for you and you alone.
But it wasn’t. I had a feeling she was with Matt, and I saw him from the corner of my eye almost every time I gave María a high-five after a goal and every time I gave her a hug after a win. It wasn’t that he shot me dirty jealous looks or that he was insecure. It was that I saw a little of him in me, following this girl.
Later that same night, Greg from the Bambu hostel brought out his guitar and we sat around the campfire as he played. I sat next to Matt. It turned out we had a lot in common. He didn’t really have a box of trophies under his bed somewhere either. He admitted that Steve had invited him to Panama, but it was really because of María that he was considering dumping his return ticket to help manage The Lost and Found.
I saw him at the same crossroads where I found myself many years before at the airport in Istanbul, wondering if following the girl was the right thing to do. Wondering which path might lead to regret. I saw him wanting community and wanting family. Matt and I walked back to the main area to grab some beers for our friends by the fire. I took the moment to tell him the truth. “Steve is a funny guy,” I said. “But I don’t know if I want to leave my hostel with him. I need to know if you are in too.” Matt paused and looked back toward the fire. “Fuck it,” he said. “I’m in.” Dale pues.
When we went up to the bar to grab another couple of beers. My red jacket was hanging on a peg above the life-sized jenga.. “María looks cold,” I said and I tossed it to him.
The next day, I shook everyone’s hands goodbye. I saw the reflection in Matt’s eyes, and I saw myself. I saw María, mesmerizingly beautiful; wearing the jacket I hoped might one day make it to Turkey.
Very little is actually written about me in their blogs, diaries and emails home. But still, I can’t help but think that my life choice that day had massive consequences. Had I decided not to lease out The Lost and Found, so much pain, so much horror may never have occurred. And I would still have the red jacket.