Hole In My Life Pgs. 41-99

As Jack goes onto try to find his inspiration for his writings and to jump start his career, he devises a plan to criss-cross the Florida peninsula from coast to coast. He would do this for two weeks. Jack will go from the Gulf coast to the Atlantic coast traveling back and forth to all the great landmarks in great American Literature that he can find in Florida. First, he has to move out of the welfare hotel he was staying in and sell all the unnecessary items he does not need. Also on the way, an old friend named Tim Scanlon visited him from Florida State and introduced him to the chronic. While they were visiting and smoking pot, Tim introduced Jack to a while new theory to how the way the human body works through genetics being a look to our past lives. Also Tim goes on about the way behavior is all chemical and encouraged him to take some time to read into science. This got Jack into thinking and Tim and Jack decided to make some quick cash by selling pot. This turned out to be a bad idea because as Tim “sampled” some of the lab grown pot when they got to the campus, he was in a daze wandering around the school until the security guards caught him and confiscated the pot. This left Jack back in the hotel with nothing to do and no clue where his friend was. After a couple days, Jack made a beeline for the Keys to get to Earnest Hemmingway’s house to see it before his trip to St. Croix. Jack spent two days in Key West, Florida writing in the side yard of Earnest Hemmingway’s mansion sitting in a tattered old lawn chair. After Jack writing and pot smoking escapade, he made it to St. Croix to help out with the family business. But, what jack ignored was the rising tension in St. Croix between the black indigenous people and the white tourists and business owners. This turned Jack’s Dads construction company into a crate building company to help ship crates of people’s belongings out of St. Croix. As Jack beings to work for his father for very cheap, just enough to get him gas and a place to stay, he meets a man named Rik. Rik gives off wrong vibes for Jack which should alarm Jack right there. Rik wants Jack to make him a crate with a false bottom in it, Jack doesn’t know for what purpose he is using the crate for and doesn’t really care. As Jack completes the job, Rik pays him in hash, which should have been an indicator that something was up. A couple days later, Rik found Jack again to offer up a job for Jack. The job is smuggling a ton of brick hash into the United States through New York City. Rik will fly up to New York and Jack will accompany a strange British sailor named Hamilton. Jack is uneasy about Hamilton until they get to the secret island with the hash and load it on the boat, from there on Jack knows it’s all business now that they have the hash. As the journey continued Jack found the ship’s captain log and uses it as a journal and writing doodle pad to jot down his thoughts on books and his quest to become a writer. The team of two then sailed all the way up the eastern coast until they got to Cape May, the United States Coast Guard academy. The team then entered in military waters and almost foiled the whole plot. The coast guard ended up escorting the ship to public waters and they continued their voyage up the Atlantic coast.

Jack seems to be an interesting character because he wants a calling in life but does not seem to be dedicated to it because he keeps getting side tracked by stupid little tasks and adventures. I feel that Jack should just sit back, relax and write. I also don’t get why he would accept such a risky job from a complete stranger. Rik could be an undercover cop or dea agent trying to bust little punks trying make a few bucks. I guess it just shows how desperate Jack is to get off the tumultuous island.