Saving an Innocent Man

by Robert E B Wright

  Chance got down on his back and slid under his crude bunker like a mechanic working under a car. As soon as he did, a fast-moving rivulet of water moved toward his life-saving shelter.

  Large drops of rain hit the protective logs as if they were bullets. Larger trees were bending in the gale. Tops of trees were crashing to the flooded ground everywhere. The wet soil had disappeared beneath rising water. Smaller trees were being plucked from the earth now, their exposed root systems looking like the nude branches of underground treetops. They tumbled through the air like gymnasts, a one-and-a-half here, a handspring there. Unbelievably, the wind intensified. An air-generated siren had gone off in the frightening sky. Large trees were now falling to the ground, their roots fanning high up into the storm. Mud, dirt, water, limbs and bushes were moving through a world turned on its end. Rising water was now flowing over Chance's chest. His nose was snorkeling for air through the irregular separation between the shelter's log roof. He was safe for now. But for how long? The water flooded over his chest, above his ears, almost to his nostrils. He could survive underwater, but he didn’t know for how long. He forced his fingers between the top logs and attempted to separate them. He pushed and pulled and tugged with all his strength. He took a deep breath, then put his head completely underwater. Prying the logs apart as hard as he could, they began to move. Little-by-little at first, then finally, they slid to a wider opening. Chance's head came up through the opening like a jack-in-the-box. Directly behind him, a massive tree had yielded to the wind and rain and was falling toward his head. He inhaled deeply. Blinking rapidly in the pelting rain, he glimpsed the mass coming down.

  He pulled his head into his shell as quick as a turtle. The big tree pounded on the exact spot like a pile driver, hard enough to make every log in his sturdy shelter jump six inches.

  Chance didn't stick his head out again.

  In his dark stockade, the wind sounded like a freight train. Certainly nothing would be left standing the next morning. It seemed like nothing would be alive.

  The thick heavy limbs protecting him shook like the shutters on an old house. A furious whirlwind was picking up everything in its path and flinging it far away. It had the fury of a thousand tornadoes. The sound of hell come to Earth.

  • • •

  The darkness finally faded to an overcast dim light. The sound inside the chopper was loud, but you could hear the reporter’s voice over the whirling blades and engine and the rushing air. He was yelling at the young cameraman practically hanging out the open door. “Holy shit, look at this! Get a shot, get a shot of that, right over there!”

  Below was an awesome sight of destruction. House after house was blown apart as if they were made of toothpicks. As if they exploded from within. Block after block, entire roofs of warehouses were collapsed inward. Entire sides of apartment buildings had not merely fallen, they had actually disappeared. Hundreds of boats appeared to be driving down streets and were strewn everywhere close to the water’s edge. A ninety-foot freighter was marooned on dry land in someone’s backyard. Miami was a war zone of devastation.

  Clyde left a path of destruction from winds over 150 miles per hour and a storm surge from the ocean of nearly twelve feet. 20,000 homes were destroyed, 140,000 were left homeless in a few hours.

  After punching Miami’s lights out, Clyde blitzkrieged westward across the Everglades, where it had passed directly over Chance.

  • • •

  Smoke appeared to be coming out of the mouthpiece of the telephone, but it was actually coming from the mouth of Tony DiSantis, bellowing into it. “Marv, I want it now. Now, Marv!”

  The tall, thin, fifty-one-year-old man with the shock of pure white hair and cheap polyester shirt who was grimacing on the other end of the phone was Detective Marv Klempner. Over the years, Tony DiSantis depended on mild-mannered Marv for almost everything.

  The receiver found its target and so did Tony’s cigarette. In the ashtray.

  It said HURRICANE PLOTTING CHART on the map that Tony unfolded and spread out on his crowded desk.

  Marv Klempner bumped the closed door hard in his haste to open it and get into Tony’s office. Marv was a bumbling, absent-minded sort, but loveable.

  “What took so freakin’ long, I asked for these numbers yesterday, Marv?”

  “I…don’t know. I guess I… I don’t know. Anyway, we’ve got ‘em now.”

  Another voice chimed in, “Did I hear you say you got ‘em now?” It was Stan Goldman, the fastidious staff psychologist who tried to keep everyone’s head on straight but couldn’t keep his own head out of Tony’s office.

  “You finally got Bigfoot, Tony?” Stan said intruding into Tony’s office.

  “We didn’t get Bigfoot, but maybe Clyde got Bigfoot,” Tony said. “Marv just got the coordinates and info on what the storm did over the part of the Everglades where he might be.”

  “Ahhhh,” Stan replied knowingly, “Mother Nature does often have a way in meting out just rewards.” Stan looked intelligent in his bow tie, wing tip uniform.

  “The storm hit right here,” Marv said, pointing at the chart. “And it moved westward between 25.4 and 25.6 latitude, with gusts around the eye at about 100 to 130 miles per hour. This is where he was spotted,” Marv added.

  “Yeah,” DiSantis said, “but that was months ago.” DiSantis looked up from the map and stared at Klempner for a few seconds. “Don’t you have more recent information than that, Marv?” Tony looked puzzled. “Something seems to be telling me that …” Tony was looking down, pointing to the map now, “…that there may be some indication of him being in this area. Around here.”

  Marv was gone.

  “Guess he had to take a piss,” DiSantis mumbled.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Stan offered. “You’ve known Klempner for a long time, haven’t you Tony?”

  “About twenty-five years. Longer than I’ve been married. He was even my partner for a few years. Why do you ask, doin’ another evaluation to justify your salary?”

  “No, I was just wondering about something, that’s all.”

  “Like?”

  “Well, I could swear I heard him taking that information you wanted, you know, the last reported sighting of this guy, over the phone just this morning.”

  Tony looked worried. “Well, that may not be the worst of it.” DiSantis continued. “I didn’t want to tell you this, but I had to use Marv’s phone yesterday and I spotted a note stuck on the side of his blotter. It was dated two weeks ago. It was a call in from somebody who saw a column of smoke from a fire out in the middle of nowhere and they decided to call it in. Marv never mentioned it to me.”

  “So that’s the reason for your sudden revival of interest in the case?” Stan said.

  “Of course. What do you think, I’m crazy?”

  “Well, that had crossed my mind, yes.”

  “Don’t worry about me, worry about Marv.”

  “Maybe the stress of losing his wife eighteen months ago is still getting to him.”

  “You know, you shrinks are always lookin’ for an angle.”

  “There always is one.”

  • • •

  In the Everglades, everything was still in the early morning haze. Trees dripped. Frogs opened their eyelids as if from a long sleep. A small bird shook droplets from its ruffled feathers. Debris on the surface of the water floated back in the direction from which it came.

  Chance's shelter was now a mound of branches, fallen limbs, wind-blown brush and a few dead birds. Chance's water-logged body slithered out from its den much like the alligators that had survived here for millions of years.

  A turtle that had found refuge in the tangle on the top of Chance's storm shelter turned its head and looked at him, too tired to run. It moved off slowly.

  "Go on! Get out of here, before I turn you into a fruit bowl!"

  Chance's camp had been destroyed. Half the logs of the sleeping platform were missing, and most of those remaining hung down at angles
. Its leafy roof had exploded in the first blasts from the storm. His carefully constructed cooking area had been flattened and the other primitively constructed comforts and conveniences of the camp – his crude body-building equipment, his hurdles, his make-shift toilet, a chair, a tripod for hanging and skinning animals – had now gone back to just being sticks.

  Chance searched for his prized possessions. Only the bright tip of the fishing rod stuck up from the mud. Chance fished it out. Pieces of the mess kit glinted from the bushes and from under sticks. He retrieved them. His valuable set of turtle shell bowls, still on their woven rope, was dangling from a tree limb. The backpack was sopping wet and flat against the ooze that was everywhere.

  • • •

  Sticking one arm out of the soft mud, as if waving to be rescued, was a child’s doll. The tiny hand looked almost real as Armando Diaz pulled it form the wet earth.

  Armando’s wife, Margarita, stood beside him holding her face in the middle of the rubble. Their home, at the northern edge of the Sunset Acres development, was still standing. A miracle, since seventy-percent of the houses in the area had been literally blown apart.

  They poked and kicked at the mess in front of their severely damaged home, seeing what they could salvage from the piles of clothes, furniture, toys and tools. They could see that half their roof was missing as an Army helicopter flew relief supplies overhead.

  Margarita’s parents were huddled nearby with the children, six-year-old Enrique and four-year-old Pilar.

  Across the street, at a home that was only forty-percent destroyed, a makeshift sign said LOOTERS WILL EAT BULLETS. A framed picture of Jesus was just below it. The homeowners were already nailing blue tarps to the roof to stop the rain that would undoubtedly fall from the foreboding gray clouds.

  A priest was making the rounds, leading one family, with no house left at all, in an impromptu prayer in the middle of endless litter of roof trusses and cherished possessions.

  A National Guard Medical truck drove by slowly, looking for the ill or injured.

  Craig Mulholland was already out of his car striding toward Diaz. They hugged warmly, but briefly, as did Mulholland and Margarita.

  “Thank God you’re all OK.”

  “Thank God,” Diaz said, his eyes moist.

  “Thank God,” Margarita said, making the sign of the cross.

  “You didn’t stay here, did you?”

  “Oh no, no. We wouldn’t’ be alive now, none of us. We went to my cousin’s house in Sweetwater. We just made it. It wasn’t too bad there. Bad, but not like this.”

  “Hey, whatever you need, anything, you got it. You need a place to stay, you come and live on South Beach with me. Not big, but we can squeeze. You need food, a hot shower, phone...I mean, whatever I’ve got, you’ve got!”

  “Thanks man, thanks, but I think we’ll be OK. You see that man over there?” There was a small white car parked nearby surrounded by twenty people. It said STATEWIDE INSURANCE on the side. “He just gave me a five-thousand-dollar check and he said that’s just to get me started. We’ll be staying with relatives for a few months, but thanks anyway. There is one thing you could help me with though. What you can do is help us look for the pictures of when the kids were born, you know, the ones we took in the delivery room. More than anything else, those are the most important things in this pile of crap. No insurance money, nothing, can ever replace them. Everything else we can get…” Tears welled up in Armando Diaz’s eyes now. “Those pictures….” he found it hard to speak, so Mulholland finished for him “…are probably right next to the ones of you and me graduating from the Academy.”

  Diaz smiled courageously.

  “I’m glad you came to my rescue, partner.”

  They put their arms over each other’s shoulder and waded through the family’s possessions, which were now not much more than trash.

  • • •

  Possessions collected and flung over his shoulder, Chance took one parting look at his destroyed camp-home. He paused longer now than he had when he left his prior hideaway homes. Perhaps this one meant more. Then he turned and walked away, not looking back.

  A small songbird on a branch wished him good luck.

  • • •

  The little bird sang a pretty song. It was a yellow canary in a small white cage hanging on a white metal stand in a darkened apartment. The bird seemed excited as soon as it heard Marv Klempner unlocking the door. There was a mezuzah on the frame of the door, a decorative symbol of the Dead Sea scrolls which indicated that the Jews living here lived under the rules of God. Marv nailed it to the door jamb years ago and now forgot it was even there.

  As Marv walked in, he did what he did every day. He slipped his jacket off and hung it up in the hall closet. He unbuckled his old brown leather shoulder holster, holding his trusty blued .38 Detective Special, and hung it on a hook. It mattered little that he had been issued two more modern guns since he got this one. He walked over to the dark oak dining room buffet and picked up the picture of his deceased wife, Myra. He kissed the likeness of her and wiped the glass with his hand. He unhooked the water and food cups from the front of the bird’s cage and replenished them.

  “Pretty Henrietta, how are you today? Were you lonely? I should get a mate for you. A nice young and handsome boy to keep you company. It’s not fair for you to listen to all those birds outside is it?” Marv never knew that it’s the male canaries that sing, not the females.

  The canary cocked its head side-to-side and looked at Marv, confused. It chirped at him, as if to say, “What the hell are you talking about, you old fool.” Funny, that’s just what Marv’s wife would have said.

  Marv went into the small kitchen and started cutting carrots on a white acrylic cutting board.

  The knife clicked against it with each cut.

  Thirty-Three

  Chip! Smack! Chip! Smack!

  About once a second, Chance struck a basketball-sized limestone rock with a smaller, fist-sized one. The dull rhythmic sounds commingled with the chirps, twitters and buzzing of insects everywhere in the tall trees and thick brush. Chance was sculpting jagged spikes all around the large rock making it look like an underwater mine, or a limestone copy of Sputnik. Sweat and natural oils covered his impressively muscular body as he worked, blacksmith-like, in the heat. He eyed his creation, imitating an artist. Then he hefted it to his shoulder and strode, heavy-footed, through the jungle.

  About three hundred feet away, at the edge of a very still, black-water canal, Chance set the stone on top of two other similar ones he had already made.

  His fishing rod was there, too. Chance took the medium-sized bird he had killed earlier and tied the end of the fishing line around its legs. Chance cast the bird-bait to the middle of the canal, where it floated like a bloody water lily.

  Chance stood there motionless. His unflinching blue-green eyes drilled past the bird and a long black shape on the opposite bank came into sharp focus. It slid off the muck and sank into the water, causing barely a ripple.

  Chance's eyes bore down on the floating bird. He didn't even blink. He just waited, hands tensing on the rod. Chance sang to himself, "Come on, baby, dinner time. Come and get it." He pulled the monofilament taut and it rose up from the surface of the water, silver droplets hanging like clothes on a line. Then, slightly, ever so slightly, the soft feathery form of the bird rose up on the most subtle of swells. Chance's eyes tightened. His grip tightened. The line tightened. And as the alligator's massive jaws rose in a splashing, misty froth from beneath its prey, Chance jerked the dead bird twenty feet closer and reeled in the slack. The alligator's jaws snapped shut on air and water.

  Again, the gator submerged. And again, Chance waited. Frozen. Intent. Chance thought, Come on, you mother, go for it! It's really yummy!

  In a heartbeat, gnashing, white teeth rose up from the black water, and just as quick, Chance jerked the meal to the edge of the embankment. This time the gator settled back beneath the surface
a little slower, eyeballing Chance as it descended.

  Chance could see the eleven-foot length glide slowly into the shallows near the dead bird, not ten feet from where he stood. The gator's eyes periscoped through the surface. Its protective nictitating membranes rolled like window shades revealing the same kind of satanic eyes Chance had come so horrifically close to once before.

  The gator floated there, the front edge of its mouth at the water's edge, its body balanced on its short arms barely touching the shallow, mucky bottom. The dead, bloody, muddy bird was four inches away from its snout. Don't give up now, big baby. It's so close. And you ain't scared of me, are you?

  The gator didn't blink. Chance didn't blink. The bird definitely didn't blink. Insects darted and buzzed around the gator's head, around Chance's face, and, of course, around the dead bird.

  In a blur, the gator lunged forward, tilted its head and bit at the mud where the bird was just before Chance snatched it away. The soggy bird, wings splayed out awkwardly, lay at Chance's feet.

  The gator, its mouth half open, its eyes transfixed on Chance, let out a long hiss. You could almost see its breath.

  Chance squished his face. Jesus, try a little mouthwash next ti...before Chance could finish his thought, the eleven-foot demon thrust itself out of the shallows in a splashing fury, propelled by its muscular tail. Its short legs were in four-wheel drive. Its mouth was enormously agape, all fleshy pink with white killer whale size teeth everywhere. It raced right for Chance.

  Chance threw the fishing rod to the side. The gator was before him astonishingly fast. The dragon-like creature was unstoppable.

  In a moment, it would tear Chance to pieces before it ever got him into the water. Chance wasn't much faster than the gator, but just enough faster to pick up one of the spiky rocks he had chiseled. And just enough faster to heave it into the wide-open mouth of the gator. The jagged rock went deep into the reptile's gullet. A horrible gurgling, hissing, burping sound came from the beast. The gator couldn't close its mouth, the rock was too large. It was choking.