Saving an Innocent Man

by Robert E B Wright

  Malcolm took a close look at a tall weed called a pokeberry. He held the purplish black berries in his hands. "I can't try this one now," he said. "If I do, I won't know which berry killed me, the one I already ate or this one. Don't go away!" he said to the berry. "I'll be back tomorrow." He let the poisonous fruit drop to the ground and he moved on.

  He heard the baby-rattle sound of a diamondback in the thickets not far from his bare feet. He saw lizards in every shade of green and brown, darting everywhere. He saw large, jewel-like tree snails in a rainbow of banded colors. They tasted as wonderful as they looked, he thought. And he saved the shells in his pocket.

  __________________________________

  Don’t eat apple snails either, as pretty as they may be.

  __________________________________

  At the center of the island, Malcolm discovered a mysterious grotto. A sunken, black pool surrounded by an edge of pitted white limestone and a profusion of large spear-leafed plants, dangling vines, lush, giant-sized ferns and pineapple-looking bromeliads clinging to imposing, shady trees.

  The strong sun shone through the backs of broad, paddle-shaped green leaves giving an eerie stained-glass effect. A slight foggy mist wisped just above the surface of the water, the result of the cool rain on the warm pond. It was a solution hole, a pit about twenty-five feet across and twenty feet deep, filled with clear coffee-colored water. Solution holes formed when the limestone bedrock, just two or three feet below the rich black soil, caved in. Now it was the heart of the hammock, helping to support a variety of life that would not exist here without it. Fortunately for Malcolm, one of those varieties did not include the alligator.

  Malcolm felt a peace here that he had never felt before. He paused and soaked in the quietness, the stillness. A pond apple tree hung over the pond, its green fruit ready to ripen and plop into the still mirror. Tiny duckweed floated on the pond's surface. Wild orchids ornamented the trees with splashes of delicate color and Spanish moss hung in long beards from lofty branches, like silvery-gray angel hair. A plethora of small songbirds sang in a quiet chorus as Malcolm reflected in reverence, as if to pay his respects to the magnificence of this sacred place untouched and unseen by a human since the beginning of time.

  Malcolm continued to search the tear-shaped island. He was walking north, and it didn't take him long to reach the rounded end. The entire island was only about a half mile long and about four hundred feet wide. On the way, Malcolm had dodged dive-bombing dragonflies, swatted a few mosquitoes, ducked under a dozen silken spider webs and detoured around a number of ominous looking serpents. The island was a swooping, hopping, menagerie of colors and sounds.

  At the northern tip of the tiny island, Malcolm came to a limestone outcropping. The soft, white rock was composed of the organic remains of sea animals such as coral, mollusks and the like, proof that this whole area, in fact most of Florida, had been under water as little as fifteen thousand years ago. This was exactly what Malcolm had been hoping to find. When the cavemen needed tools, they made them from stone. "When in the stone age, do as the caveman did," Malcolm said to himself. Finding an appropriate hand-sized rock, Malcolm ground a small hole in one end of his turtle shell bowl, close to the edge. The soft limestone kept pulverizing, so it took a while, but he finally bored a hole through the shell. Malcolm blew the hole free of dust and started back for the south end of the island.

  On his way, he snapped off a length of strong vine for his turtle bowl. Then he froze in stop-motion. A person with normal vision may have missed it. He squinted his eyes and a deer came into sharp focus. It stopped and sniffed the air. Its ears rotated like radar discs. Then it continued browsing.

  Malcolm lowered his arms and crouched down with the slowest of movement. The deer meandered closer, nibbling leaves.

  My God, it’s a deer! If it comes close enough I'll.." he thought to himself as he envisioned himself sitting at a table laden with roasted venison. Just come a little closer. That's it. Just a little closer. He kept repeating the words in his mind, trying to urge the animal telepathically.

  The deer's slender legs carried it closer to Malcolm.

  Beads of sweat were running down Malcolm's face. Nothing else on Malcolm moved. He was trying not to breathe. He could only see pieces of the young female deer through the tangle of brush and green leaves. He saw a hoof through a small frame of foliage. A swishing tail. A nervous black nose. An attentive ear. He heard the snap of a twig. The rustle of leaves being torn from a small branch. He heard the animal breathing. It was right beside him, the deer's leg no more than a foot from Malcolm's hand.

  Malcolm dove through the bushes! He grabbed the animal's right front leg between the knee and hoof. It pulled backward, like four-wheel drive in reverse, dragging heavy Malcolm along the soggy earth. The moaning animal thrashed and kicked. Clumps of black dirt flew in the air.

  Malcolm grabbed for the animal’s other front leg but missed. There were legs everywhere at once and the animal was bucking like a rodeo horse. When the deer lost its footing for a moment and seemed to be going down on its hindquarter, Malcolm bolted to his feet and threw his arms around the deer’s neck. Malcolm was at least twice the small deer’s weight, but the animal was so determined to escape that it dragged Malcolm to-and-fro in the bush.

  The deer was wailing in fear. Malcolm was grunting with force. He was practically on her back, riding her the way a lion would ride a seized zebra.

  The deer's spindly legs were splayed out beneath her tense shaking body. Then, with a sudden crash, she was on the ground. The deer and Malcolm fell together. Malcolm had succeeded in bringing the animal down barehanded. Adrenaline coursed through his body. Elation filled his head. A sense of power swelled inside him. His arms were locked around the animal’s neck. Malcolm’s eye looked straight into the eye of the deer. It was a large eye, Malcolm thought. A sensitive eye. Maybe this deer has a family, he thought. My God, it even has eyelashes! Malcolm could hear the deer breathing deeply. He could feel the animal’s body expand and contract with each breath. He could feel the warm-blooded pulse through the large veins in its neck.

  Malcolm stared into the soulful eye of the deer. Then he let her go. The young doe shot to her feet and was gone.

  He couldn't do it. He couldn't kill that deer. At least not now. Not yet. He wasn't ready for that. Not quite. But to survive, he knew he'd have to get a lot tougher. There was a lot to be said for the old cliché, ‘only the strong survive’. He wouldn't survive by being weak. By having everything handed to him. Nobody said life would be fair. Malcolm pitched something invisible into the ground and said, "Shee-it!"

  All the way back to the south end of the tiny island Malcolm cursed himself for not having the guts to kill the deer, and at the same time he rationalized why it was the right thing to do. He congratulated himself on bringing the large animal down, barehanded, yet rebuked himself for vacillating at the moment of execution. The truth of the matter was that Malcolm hadn't a clue as to how to actually kill the deer when he got it on the ground anyway. And he chided himself for that, too. Malcolm had learned a lot since this whole ordeal began. But he had a lot more to learn, he told himself.

  He headed straight for the water's edge where he caught the turtle the day before. There on the banks, dozens of turtles warmed themselves in the sun. A chance to redeem himself, he thought.

  Malcolm crept carefully through the underbrush, practicing slyness. He concealed himself as best he could. He got as close to the basking turtles as possible without setting off an alarm. Then he hurtled toward them. By running into the water first, then doubling back on them, Malcolm managed to snatch up two of them and kick a third one high on the bank.

  The day wasn't turning out half-bad after all. Malcolm was very pleased with himself. He actually smiled all over the place. But how amazing, he thought, that a man's self-esteem could be raised by catching three turtles in one run.

  It's all relative, isn't it? he thought. It’s all relativ
e. And so it is.

  • • •

  Malcolm's face was that of a slumbering infant. Peaceful. Satisfied. But his nose began twitching like a rabbit. He sniffed deeply in his sleep. A furrow formed over his closed eyes. He snorted in and out in arousing spasms. He awoke with a start, the way someone about to faint wakes up to smelling salts.

  Malcolm sniffed the air, resembling a homeowner who suspects a fire, but he saw nothing.

  At the base of his gumbo-limbo, a full-grown skunk waddled by, its fur shaking like a cheerleader’s pom-poms. Malcolm, up on one elbow, noticed the stinker. "Good morning, Mr. Skunk." Malcolm said in a narrator voice. The skunk, startled, lifted its tail and showed Malcolm its behind. But it didn't spray. "Oh, I'm sorry. Good morning, Mrs. Skunk." That seemed to satisfy the pretty polecat, and she moved on.

  "Imagine that, a skunk for an alarm clock," Malcolm said out loud as he gave a morning stretch to his arms and a yawn that watered his eyes. It was the kind of morning that made you feel good to be alive.

  Malcolm tucked his shoulder and rolled off his bunk with a flair that was unexpected. Even to Malcolm. His move was clumsy from a gymnast’s point of view, but quite good for someone of Malcolm's six-foot five-inch height and three hundred and five pounds. He landed squarely on his bare feet with a little dip of his legs, then came a slight upward movement, Olympic style. "Opa!" burst from Malcolm's lips. "Opa!" The Greek exclamation signifying pleasure and surprise.

  Malcolm was waking up to many new things in himself. The least of which was his less-heavy body. Fat still clung to his massive bulk, but now it hung loosely, in less-thick patches. His skin was now oversized and it sagged and creased nearly everywhere, like gathered drapes in an antebellum mansion. But beneath the layers of tenacious fat and drooping skin his muscles were already beginning to respond with a new vitality. The painful, torturous do-or-die passage through the mangroves had caused his legs to strengthen. The agony he endured through all those days of bulldozing his bulk through tangles of brush and miles of sawgrass toughened his back and arms. The deep breathing of the oxygen-rich atmosphere, hour-after-hour, purified his blood, expanded his lungs and increased his stamina. The monumental physical exertion should certainly have caused coronary insufficiency, the inability of the arteries to deliver an adequate supply of blood to the heart. Or the heart muscle should have cramped, or simply given up under the strain in a person the size of Malcolm. It hadn't. Perhaps because Malcolm had begun shedding pounds while waiting under the wing of the crashed plane. Or had Malcolm, without realizing it, developed a way to bio-physically control his body and ensure his survival under even the most taxing physical conditions? Maybe that's what helped him to survive underwater in the jaws of the alligator. Malcolm didn't have any of the answers, but he thought about it all as he walked toward the cocoplum trees he had discovered the day before. Looped over his head and shoulder was now a vine strung with four turtle shell bowls. They nested in each other, like dishes, at his side.

  Malcolm breakfasted at the cocoplum tree. And when he was stuffed with fruit, he turned to walk back, but then he stopped. Something had caught his attention. He turned his head and parted the branches of a leafy bush. About a mile away, across the watery prairie, on another tree island, he saw a reflected light, as if someone were playing the brilliance of the sun off a mirror. He dashed behind some bushes to hide. But when nothing happened, he cautiously stood and found the bright glare again. He squinted his telescopic eyes at the glare, but it just got worse. He hid his eyes behind his hand. He imagined it was the reflection of a policeman's badge. Or a gun. Fear overtaking him, he turned quickly and took a few strong strides toward camp. But not more than fifteen feet away, Malcolm stopped dead. He thought for a few moments. Only his eyes moved, first to the lower left, than to the lower right and back. He suddenly swiveled his head around in the direction of the far-away glint. Leafy branches parted and he was off, trudging into the calf deep water toward the point of reflected light a mile away. He sloshed, he splashed, he plunged his way across. As he moved closer and closer, the glint flared again and again. Now reaching the tree island, he was nearly on top of it.

  Malcolm saw part of a silvery metal box sticking out of the ground. It was dented on one corner but otherwise in good shape.

  Malcolm pulled the aluminum case from the soft earth it had partially sunken into. It was the size of a suitcase. "My God!" Malcolm whispered. "My God! It can't be! It can't be!" Strange tingling sensations flooded over Malcolm. He looked like he just found a million dollars. But he hadn't. He had found four and a half-million dollars. He tried, but he couldn't get the locked case open. He searched urgently for anything solid to use as a tool.

  Malcolm pounded the combination lock with pieces of limestone. He smashed it over and over, pulverizing the limestone like talc with every hit. Rock after rock smashed into bits. Finally, the lock sprang open and he unsnapped the two side latches.

  Malcolm looked up at the sky with closed eyes and took a long breath just before lifting the lid of the case. When he did, it was so full of money that banded stacks of cash spilled out from the three open sides.

  Malcolm inhaled sharply. Then he spoke three words as if each were a complete sentence. "Look! At! This! Great God almighty, look at this!" Malcolm touched as much of the cash as possible.

  Then the flashbacks came in rapid succession. The scenes playing in Malcolm's head starred Mike Galvo and Steel in the front seats of the airplane.

  Malcolm rifled through the stacks of money.

  Malcolm once again saw the syringe in Steel's hand. He saw the long hypodermic needle and the amber fluid inside the glass tube. He saw Steel plunge the needle deep into Galvo's neck.

  Malcolm whined at the memory.

  Steel was hanging outside the plane with Galvo pounding, shoving and beating on him. With one powerful thrust, Galvo pushed Steel from the door opening to his death below. Steel's foot caught the steering yoke as he fell and the plane lurched violently to the right. The shiny case of money cartwheeled end-over-end in slow-motion right out the open door. It flipped to the ground below like a metal playing card. Some trees broke its fall. It bounced off some springy branches and fell with a dull thud in the soft earth. As Malcolm opened his eyes, the case seemed to fall right in front of him at this very moment connecting the past with the present. Malcolm shook his head back to sobriety and replaced the stacks of banded unmarked bills in the suitcase. He had to force the lid closed. The side latches held.

  "My God, I'm rich! Son of a bitch! I'm rich!"

  "Now, what am I gonna do with it?"

  Nineteen

  The early morning sun cast long shafts of light through the canopy. Malcolm slung his prized turtle bowl collection over his shoulder, put on his new necklace of colorful tree snails, picked up his shiny suitcase and looked at the scene around him. With reluctance written all over his face, he knew it was time to leave the seclusion of his tree island sanctuary. He turned and was gone.

  The sawgrass was now only two or three feet tall and grew in sparse clumps, perhaps, six feet apart. But the water was ever-present. And always consistent in its depth, at Malcolm's ankles. The miles yet to walk in front of him were a duplicate of the miles he left behind him. Burned sawgrass. But already he could see new green shoots beginning to reach out from the ankle-deep water.

  Malcolm felt like he was burning up alive, walking half naked through a God-made broiler. The sun burned from above and the water reflected brightness and heat at him from below. He had to do something to protect himself from the scorching rays. Mosquitoes were starting to bite again, too. The protection was right beneath his feet. Once again, Malcolm frosted his body with mud wherever skin was exposed. He put gobs of the black, rich goop on the top of his head and cemented one of the turtle shells to it, like a hat. It cast just enough shade to protect Malcolm's eyes, at least from overhead rays. The decoration gave the Mud Man a new, more fashionable dimension.

  Wow, now this is c
ool, man. This is cool, Malcolm thought lightheartedly.

  Sloshing through the shallows reflecting in his face, hour after hour, gave Malcolm plenty of time to do some reflecting of his own.

  He had come to think of the tree island he just left as a kind of home, if only for a few days. It was indeed his home. He found shelter there. Protection. Food. Renewal. Regeneration of spirit. Determination. And hope. He also found four and a half million dollars there. Doesn't it figure, he thought, the first thing a kid wants to do when he makes some money is leave home.

  Malcolm congratulated himself for having a sense of humor in the face of adversity. Without a sense of humor, life would be pretty miserable and depressing. Maybe that's why his life had been pretty miserable and depressing. He had never really smiled much. Never had a social life. He never had much hope for one. There goes that word hope again. Boy, is that important, he thought. He was realizing that hope means there's a way. And if you have just a little bit of hope and a lot of determination, you can fix just about anything. And if you believe in that idea, then you may as well smile along the way.

  The trouble with Malcolm, he thought to himself – he thought in the third person for a moment – is that Malcolm always wanted everyone to feel sorry for him. Malcolm's father died when Malcolm was very young. Didn't anybody feel sorry for him about that? Malcolm was bullied by neighborhood kids. Didn't anybody feel sorry for Malcolm about that? Didn't they feel sorry about the guilt that Malcolm felt? After all, he never once was able to take care of his mother. To take his father's place.