That same evening, Hunter switches on the television. His parents are chatting away in the kitchen to some friends they’ve invited to dinner about things that don’t interest him at all. Having run through the public channels, the boy stops at the only one that is showing a film. It’s Jaws by Steven Spielberg. He is impressed by the film as much as any other boy who sees that film at his age. Lots of blood, the shark devouring human flesh, waters stained red, high tension when a body falls into the sea… There’s one part, however, that not only impresses him, it bores a hole into his chest: the monologue by Captain Quint, a survivor of the World War II USS Indianapolis disaster, relating the sinking of the ship that carried the uranium and parts of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima to the Mariana Islands. Three minutes and forty-seven seconds during which Hunter remains on the alert, his fists clenched, his senses fixed on the television screen in a kind of paranormal connection with Captain Quint. The monologue is impressive and alarming, both because of the way it is told and because of the gravity of the content. That night, Hunter dreams of Quint. He wakes up early, startled by the image of the huge shark’s set of teeth. The story of the USS Indianapolis seems so real, so true, he decides to visit the library in search of information. At that moment, he can’t even imagine to what extent reality is going to surprise him. Because Hunter, at eleven years of age, has still not lost his ability to be amazed by the world.
AN ANIMAL CALLED MIST
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THE LAST MISSION OF THE USS INDIANAPOLIS
Hunter Scott
In childhood, something magical happens with books and films. Because children possess that special thing that is then lost with the passing of the years: the ability to be surprised. Surprise is a helium balloon in the shape of a star. The seller, who has been standing for four hours at the entrance to the fairground, knows this well. She has an enormous clutch of moored balloons in her right hand. She is quite sure, were she not so large and corpulent, any moment now she would go flying after them to some wonderful place, driven by the inertia of the wind and expectation.
The woman blew them up and tied them one by one, with all the carefulness of her fifteen years of experience. Her mother was a balloon seller, and her grandmother before her. She has lots of forms: a whale, a bird, E.T., a dragon… It’s strange that, with this vast bouquet of showy colours she is holding in the air, she should be invisible to the grown-ups. They pass alongside, brush against her, even bump into her. They know she’s there, standing next to the stall where a Gypsy woman prepares candy floss while breastfeeding a child. They know this, but don’t see her, don’t take her into consideration. She is part of the furniture. With the children, it’s not the same. They see her. Each and every one of them. And as soon as they set eyes on that cluster of balloons, they start tugging at their father or mother’s arm with all their might, begging them to buy one. They put all their heart and soul into this. They wish for it with such intensity that, at that moment in time, nothing else exists on the earth.
At the age of eleven, Hunter Scott thinks he’s too old to hold hands with an adult, but not to wish for one of those helium balloons with all his heart. He’s taken a fancy to one in the shape of a hammerhead, its enormous mouth in the shape of a ‘T’. But with that natural tendency some adults have for saying ‘no’, Hunter’s father explains that eleven is very old to be holding hands, but also to be wanting a helium balloon. So, no hammerhead sharks. The boy, perceiving that his years of childhood are being left behind, adopts a wintry expression and makes for the shooting galleries.
