Pepper Lee had a modelling career that included three “Sports Illustrated” appearances, which led to a film career and two Supporting Actress Oscar nominations. When she aged out of ingenue roles, she made a vaguely successful transition into action, and became an exercise addict in the process. She kept working through her late thirties on the strength of determination and a cheerful disposition, and eventually landed what looked like a comeback role.
The comeback tanked. It was very much NOT Pepper’s fault, but association with a failure was enough to kill a career that was already on life support. Pepper liquidated her life in Los Angeles, and started walking.
She had always enjoyed backpacking, and she threw herself into a life on the trail, living a solitary nomadic life out of a well-worn camper van between the trailheads. And then one day while standing on a cliff looking out over the Pacific, she had a conversation with a pod of dolphins.
She said later that she had been watching the horizon when suddenly the air was full of the pops and squeaks and whistles of dolphin communication. Pepper looked down into the small cove below her to see a half dozen dolphins standing on their tails and talking at her; she sang back to them. Eventually they swam away, and Pepper headed back to civilization.
She asked around, and was told that the stretch of coast where she had seen the dolphins was considered suitable for kayaking only by experts with a death wish, so she set out to become an expert. She researched and rented and wandered and paddled; it took her most of year to feel well-enough informed to consider actually buying a boat. Eventually she returned to the coastal town closest to where she had seen the dolphins, rented an apartment, and began to explore.
She started out with half day expeditions, but those soon led to full days, and multi-days. She was soon spending more time on the water than she was in town, only coming back to do maintenance and resupply. The locals quickly got used to her; she was always polite and personable, but no one doubted that her kayak was her best friend, and she liked it that way.
One of Pepper’s maintenance tasks turned out to be writing a novel, a sad, sweet thing about a lonely woman who was befriended by a group of mermaids in a world that didn’t know mermaids existed. The woman found herself being drawn into the life of the mermaids, and gradually surrendering her humanity the process. In the end, the woman realized that she had become a mermaid in fact, and she left her old life behind with only a trace of regret.
Pepper had enough residual fame to find an agent and a publisher, and the published book was generally well received. Pepper endured the publicity tour with good humor, and the book went into a second printing. Pepper celebrated the news that the book had paid out her advance by buying a round for the house at the local tavern.
The following morning she filed a float plan with the harbormaster that said she was going up the coast for ten days. The harbormaster thought nothing of it; Pepper had been following the same practice since she had arrived in town.
Ten days later, when Pepper was due back, her kayak was found on an unused mooring. Pepper’s dry suit and flotation vest were packed in the boat’s cockpit, along with a dry bag that contained her phone, all of her ID, and a note that read, “You will probably conclude that I am dead, and that I killed myself. I’m not, and I didn’t, but you have my consent to lie to yourselves. –Pepper Lee.”
P.D. Haynie
September 14, 2022