A Locket Like No Other

A Very Special Locket

My wife and I honeymooned in Ibiza, staying near Es Cavallet, a well-known nude beach. The beach was refreshingly undeveloped. It had a section of beach allotted for nude sunbathing, located near the center of the beach. If you were a more modest soul, such as myself, you could stay on the edges where people mostly just went topless while sunbathing.

Isobel had Spanish heritage and more than a streak of hedonism (pun intended). She left me on the beach near El Chiringuit, a restaurant we would later learn served flambeed mussels and very fresh fruit juices.

As my gaze tried to settle on anything but other peoples' nakedness, I noticed a similar dynamic to mine and Isobel's playing out nearby. The husband shucked off his clothing casually and sprinted to the centermost area of the beach. His wife stood there nervously, so I smiled and motioned for her to join me. Since I was fully clothed and look relatively harmless, she did.

"Yours too?" I asked amiably.

"Yes. Paolo grew up here and is accustomed to all of this." I noticed she wore a heart-shaped locket, some simple thing usually worn by schoolgirls.

"But you are not," I replied.

"No. I am a nice New England girl. We don't do this sort of thing on Old Orchard Beach."

I laughed and told her I was from Vermont.

"Ah, so you know just what I mean."

"Oh, ayuh," I replied, which is the Down East Maine way of responding in the affirmative.

She laughed. I liked her a lot.

"What do you do for work?" she asked.

"Freelance journalism. I mostly write about our need to rescue the planet from ourselves. What do you do?"

"I am an environmental researcher. I measure water pollution levels and chart the replenishment rates of aquifers."

"So we have a lot of similar interests," I remarked.

"Indeed."

"So, how is the planet's water faring?" I asked.

"Not so well. I have seen signs of trouble lately."

"I know that surface pollution is a problem, but the aquifers are capable of replenishing themselves, right?"

"This was once the case," she said, her voice growing serious. "But there are different types of wells; an increase in artesian wells that oft times pierce confining aquifer walls are taking their toll on the stability of these underground caverns of water. The demand for water was a problem as well. Industries and agriculture use more and more water every year, all while increasing their contamination of the surface groundwater. In time, groundwater can recover from such abuses, but we are talking about refraction periods of hundreds of years of nature doing its best to restore balance. Big business and farming need water now. They cannot afford to give the environment the chance to recover."

"Is there anyone doing anything about this?" I asked her.

"Oh, sure. We wring our hands, proclaim our worries, and go right on polluting. We have over-populated this world, yet we still insist on food, clothing, and equipping ourselves with the latest technology."

My brow furrowed. Everything she had said filled me with apprehension.

"Don't let me ruin your vacation," she said with self-accusation. I felt sure she heard this from her husband many times.

"Tell me about some of the things you love in nature, " I suggested.

"That's easy. I love water bears and foxfire."

"Okay, I know about water bears—they are also called tardigrades. But what on earth is foxfire?"

Her eyes lit up. I was glad to see her smile.

"Foxfire is a mycelium—a fungus—that grows on trees in damp areas. If you go out on the right sort of spring or summer night, you might see them."

"What am I hoping to see?"

"These fungi glow with a soft blue-green light. You won't see them unless the forest is pitch-dark. I have read that sometimes they can glow brightly enough to read by, though I have never encountered them in such number."

"I think you believe I am gullible," I said, laughing. "I have been in the woods at night many times and never seen anything like that."

"No, not at all. One of the things I love about both water bears and foxfire is that they go into a sort of hibernation when their environment dries up, and they revive once more when water returns. It's magical."

I looked up to see Isobel striding across the sand towards us. She did not seem amused to see me talking with some other woman.

My new researcher friend sensed Isobel's ire and wisely stood to leave. She knew our conversation was over. She removed the heart-shaped locket and pressed it into my hand.

"I should go now, but please keep this. One day, when you need a little magic, open it up."

I promised I would and wished her well.

"Your girlfriend didn't have to rush off," Isobel snarled.

I tried to pocket the locket, but my wife saw it.

"What's that?" she asked.

I showed her.

"Probably has a condom all scrunched up inside it. You just missed the world's clunkiest come-on!" Isobel laughed. She rummaged violently through her day-pack, looking for her fancy foreign cigarettes.

We left the beach and I never saw my New England friend again. I did keep the locket, however. I enjoyed the mystery of wondering what was inside it.

In the years that followed, my researcher friend's predictions came true. It started with industrial corporations and agriculture needing to dig far deeper wells to provide the vast quantities of water they required. These deeper wells allowed more groundwater contaminants from the surface to seep deeper into the earth.

Private wells, drilled more shallowly, began to fail. The closer one lived to a large aquifer, the slower one's well went dry. But when these started happening on a large scale, the public was outraged. Imagine the anger you would feel if you couldn't turn on your tap, but some farmer down the lane had all the water he needed for his cows.

These things were not just happening in the United States. It was a global event, and people were getting scared. As water levels dropped, the pollutions in this water became concentrated with salts and toxins. The once-wet ground above acted as a sponge for the effluvia pouring in and seeped in from both there and the collapsed walls of aquifers now thoroughly contaminated.

If the caverns beneath us could right themselves, we might yet escape a pandemic level failure of life as we know it. Rather than give nature the time it needed, we pushed on with business as usual, and as the aquifers emptied of fresh water, our chemicals seeped in to destroy what freshness remained.

Our destruction had not required nuclear waste or God's wrath. We were destroying through indifference and the Machiavellian pursuit of things.

No one person could make a stand against something like this. Even my New England friend ended up shot down at a protest march. I saw her photo on the Internet and learned her name was Alison. She had seen the problem, but no one listened to her when it might have mattered.

We did pass legislation ordering the industrial and agricultural use of water to cease, but it came far too late to make a difference. We further ordered these corporations to retool their operations and run as desalinization plants. These efforts were doomed, for the seas were dropping their levels, and what water remained became more and more highly concentrated with chemicals and gunk. The machines could not fix the magnitude of the problem.

Isobel left me for a rich man who harvested glaciers and icebergs for the fresh water therein. She didn't love the guy, but she did have all the cool, pristine water she could drink. There were days I wished I was pretty enough to do the same, but I was not, so why belabor it?

Alas, here I am at the end. I have one last glass of gray and putrid saltwater here in front of me. The high salinity of the water would probably make my thirst rage. I hoped there was enough chemical contamination in there to kill me quickly. You will pardon me if I do not lift this glass in a toast.

I drank it down swiftly. There was no electricity in my house, so I sat there crying in the dark. I felt sorry for myself and everyone else in the world. There were a great many people out there tonight, 'enjoying' similar doomsday cocktails.

I did not know why but I suddenly thought of the locket. If I was on my way out of this life, I wanted to know what was in there. She had told me to open it when I needed a little magic—I was sure this moment counted. I had kept it in my wallet all these years. While some men's wallets showed the round outline of a condom, mine bore the shape of a heart.

As I pried it open, my tears were finally stopping. All I needed was something to take my mind off this deathwatch. Maybe this would prove the last amusement I got from this life.

I could not tell what had once been in there, but whatever it was, it had turned to dust. I held it nearer to my face, trying to discern an aroma, but there was none.

I was so frustrated. The cruelty of life had even denied me the knowledge of what the locket once held. I began to cry again, big tears of hopelessness that coursed down my face and dripped off my chin. Some of those tears landed on the open locket, and a blue-green glow emanated from within it. I was looking at foxfire! The moisture of my tears had reconstituted the foxfire fungi long ago turned to dust.

Yes, we were all doomed, some of us sooner than others.

But I was looking at foxfire, and that was enough for me.