Saving an Innocent Man

by Robert E B Wright

  About fifteen yards away, another on-the-spot reporter was giving his report: "Awesome! A giant-like Hercules, seven feet tall is the way one person described the man who called himself ‘Chance’ just before diving into the water after rescuing an entire family. `Impossible!' is what another person said. Yet, in spite of his good deeds, police are here, along with lots of spectators, combing the area. Police helicopters are searching the surrounding Everglades for that same person, they say, could be an escaped drug trafficker.”

  Somewhere near Little Havana, there was a living room full of people watching the TV news report. They all spoke Spanish and they all spoke at once. It was almost like a crowd at a Mexican cockfight. Except that there were kids running back and forth, round ‘n round, with Armando Diaz in the middle of it all passionately extolling in Spanish, “Jesus Christ! It can’t be!”

  Craig Mulholland sat up naked on the bed. A naked young woman sat behind him with her arms around him. He ignored her, staring at the TV set, dumbfounded. “I just don’t freakin’ believe it! I mean, I just don’t freakin’ believe it.”

  The news reporter standing next to the canal continued, “In any case, the man who calls himself Chance, is wanted for questioning. Police are ignoring suggestions that Chance could still be underwater.”

  Another fifteen yards away, yet another newsman was in front of a camera. This time, interviewing a young woman holding a baby. Ana's mother spoke into the microphone. "We were all trying to breathe the air trapped inside the car, but there was only a little of it, maybe two inches, at the top of the roof. You couldn't see nothing. I could only try to feel for my baby and try to put her nose up to the ceiling for air. We were all trying to breathe. All of us kicking and moving our hands. Ana got knocked away from me. It wasn't anybody's fault. We all panicked. This...man, who saved us, he never came inside the car. He stayed outside. I thought, maybe he was a skin diver or something, but people tell me he never came up for air. Not once. I don't know how he did it, but he did do it! Thank God! And now, the police are looking for him. If they find him the should give him a medal!"

  The crowd behind Ana's mother cheered their approval.

  • • •

  On the screen of a television set, a man was giving a description to an off-camera interviewer. "He was about seven feet tall, no kidding. He had long blond hair, a dirty blond beard about this long," he indicated with his hands, "and blue, no, no, green eyes. Oh, yeah, he had a reddish scar down his back, kinda from..." the man stopped speaking suddenly and the picture froze. Then the DVD player rewound. "...blue, no, no, green eyes. Oh, yeah, he had a reddish scar down his back..." the picture froze and rewound again. "Oh, yeah, he had a reddish scar down his back, kinda from the back of his neck to about here, about six inches wide..." the picture froze. Chicago Detective Tony DiSantis put the remote control down on the table next to a copy of the Naples Florida Rescue Squad Medical Report and an open map of Florida. He lit a cigarette. An ash blew into his left eye.

  “How’d you get this DVD, Marv?”

  “I just kept checking with the TV stations down there, like you told me. They sent these, too.” Klempner added.

  “What’s this?”

  “Five blank lottery ticket entry forms. I told ‘em how you like to play the lottery ‘n all. Fill ’em out ‘n send ‘em with your money, a buck a piece, by Friday. Do it soon, it’s up to three-hundred and sixteen million this week.”

  “Here, I’ll fill it out right now,” Tony said. “I always use the same numbers. My house number 11240. So that’s one and twelve and forty. Gina’s age, 20. And Anthony’s age, 22. Then Camille’s age, 56. It makes it easy.

  Marv, I don’t know where to send these, do you mind sending them back for me with a thank you note and my five bucks? Here.” DiSantis took a five-dollar bill out of his wallet and gave it to Klempner.

  “No, not at all Tony.” All those years, Marv was always nice to Tony.

  “But I don’t know why I even bother. You know what the odds are?”

  “Never thought about it.”

  “About fourteen million to one.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “Why is that funny?”

  “That’s about the same chance you have of catchin’ this monkey in the Everglades.”

  Thirty-Five

  He looked like a bum sitting on a curb eating something he had just picked out of a garbage can. His long hair was greasy and messy. His beard was getting long too. And it stuck out in all the wrong places. His head hung low between his shoulders as he sat there nibbling at something in his hands. He pulled back the skin of the snake like the wrapper on a candy bar and took another bite of the white flesh. Chance looked tired, but his eyes were alert. If something moved in front of him, he would see it. If something moved behind him, he would hear it.

  He stopped chewing. He stayed perfectly still. His nostrils flared. He sniffed the air.

  Chance put the mutilated snake down beside him and followed his nose in the direction of the smell. He walked through the woods for a least a half mile. And there it sat in the early evening light.

  A small, run-down, wooden two-story house with nothing but woods all around it. There was a dirt driveway leading off somewhere. And a rusted metal swing set.

  Chance stayed well back and hidden in the woods, but he saw something fantastically enticing through one of the screened windows on the first floor. A large aluminum pot steaming on a stove. And a frying pan with flavors he could almost see swirling up from it. Rich, sweet, irresistible flavors he could smell from a million miles away.

  Then Chance saw something even more enticing. The women causing all the heat in the kitchen. She had long blonde hair tied in a ponytail. She had a narrow waist. And she had a nice rear. But that's all Chance could see of her. How he yearned to taste what was cooking. How he hungered to see more.

  A little orange and green biplane flew past the woman's back. The toy plane was held way up in the air by a little six-year-old arm. It dove and looped around the kitchen complete with sound effects. Then it disappeared. The plane burst out of the screen door and the little boy shuffled across the porch and down four steps to the yard.

  "Cody!" She was at the door. "Cody, come back, dinner's ready right now!" She was a woman in her mid-thirties who would be considered attractive by most men. In Chance's eyes, she was a knockout. Her sleeveless shirt was full of womanly qualities. The legs that stuck out of her white shorts were proportioned perfection. Her voice was from a fairytale.

  Cody was a good little boy. He did a barrel roll and a loop-de-loop and headed for home base. The woman went back inside. Chance's eyes flashed to the window. In it he saw a beer can. And a beer belly. Papa Bear was sniffing at the frying pan. When the woman got back, she dished up the food and they all disappeared.

  The early evening light faded quickly, and the little house was now barely visible in the starlight. A bluish light lit one of the rooms downstairs, a pinkish light lit one of the rooms upstairs.

  Chance watched from the dark edge of the treeline.

  The bluish light and the sound of the TV clicked off. A minute later, the blonde woman stood with her back to the upstairs window. Within moments, her blouse slipped off her soft looking shoulders and a wide, white bra strap was visible across her back. She reached behind to undo the strap. It was like second-nature, she had done it so many times. Chance's eyes became much more attentive. He focused on nothing but that spot.

  His superpower vision targeted like a computer-driven telescopic surveillance system. As if inches away, he saw deft fingers, with long red nails, unsnap one, two, three clasps. As she did, she moved away from the window. A naked beer belly passed by the opening. And the pinkish light turned to black.

  Chance blinked once. Long and hard.

  He sat there a long time. The zillions of insects, ever present, chirred and buzzed and rasped even louder. An owl was somewhere in the darkness. The wings of a bat flapped rapidly as it darte
d in the humid air. There were sounds everywhere. Even the sound of snoring could be heard in the upstairs room. But the bare feet of Chance were silent as he walked toward the house. He climbed the four steps to the porch two at a time but with great care. He opened the screen door very, very slowly as the spring on it made little, ip, ip, ips. He placed a rock in front of it to hold it open. He palmed the round door handle and turned it as if it were connected to a bomb. To his amazement, the door opened. His mouth and eyes opened a little wider. A sigh came from his lungs. He looked up and listened. The snoring continued. At least one person was still asleep.

  Chance's face was suddenly lit by a flood of white light. His head was like an elevator as it went up and down, examining every shelf in the refrigerator.

  He guzzled a half-gallon of milk right from the container. Milk ran down his cheeks and hairy chin. He extracted something wrapped in foil. Two chicken legs. He removed a dish holding three quarters of a white coconut cake. Then the refrigerator door swung, and everything went dark.

  • • •

  The squirrel vibrated its tail in the bright morning light as if to shake the sleep out of it. It hopped along the ground and picked up a piece of bread. Another piece landed next to the furry animal. Cody stood there in nothing but a pirate pajama top and underpants reaching into the package of bread. He talked to the squirrel as if it were his baby brother.

  Upstairs, Cody's Mom rolled from her back to her side and opened her eyes. She noticed that her husband was not beside her. He was already up. Her bare feet landed softly on the floor.

  Cody hadn't heard her walk up behind him. Still in her bathrobe, she wiped the sleep out of her eyes. Halfway through a yawn, she said, "Cody!" She picked up a dish from the ground. "The whole cake?" She looked down at the boy. He looked up at her mischievously. Then she noticed something else. She picked up a chicken bone and held it in front of her face. "Chicken, too?" She wrinkled her face.

  "Get in the house!"

  "But Mom!"

  "Get in the house this instant!"

  "But Mom!"

  "I didn't bake a cake so you could feed it to the squirrels!" She shooed him into the house. "And I didn't make a nice dinner so you could throw it away!"

  "But Mom!"

  "No more bread for those squirrels!" Chance's eyes watched, his ears listened, in the safety of the bushes not far away. "Your father works too hard for you to be wasting food. We don't have much of it to begin with. I don't know what to do with you young man. Maybe you need..." Her voice faded out as they walked inside.

  Chance heard something but couldn’t pinpoint the sound. It was a distant sound. A vehicle. A truck possibly. High revs and slow speed. It drove up to the house and parked by the back door. It was a beat-up pickup truck with two rifles in a rack across the back window. There were four pit bulls in the truck bed, snarling at each other. With the engine running, Chance couldn't hear as well as he could at night. All he heard was mumbling and parts of sentences. But he knew exactly what was happening. Papa Bear with the beer belly was going hunting with his two beer belly buddies. From the porch, Papa Bear threw a duffel bag to one of the guys, then carried two rifles to the vehicle. Little Cody carried a six-pack of beer for daddy. And mommy carried a heavy, army-surplus ammo box.

  The hunters helped to load a cooler in the bed of the pickup, then they took turns looking through the new scope on one of the high-powered rifles. They pointed it off into the woods, at the swing set, anywhere. Then one of them pointed it right at Chance. The view through the scope was blurry, out of focus, but the hunter saw something move. "What was that?" he said with mild curiosity. "Something's out there." The hunter drew a bead, as if he were going to shoot. He turned the focusing wheel with his thumb. Chance ducked down. Inside the scope, a squirrel jumped from one side of the crosshairs to the other. "Nope. Just a silly squirrel," the one with the rifle lisped.

  "Don't shoot Nutsy! Don't shoot Nutsy!"

  "We won't shoot Nutsy, Cody. Don't worry. We're after something a little bigger," his father said. One of his sniveling good-old-boy sidekicks added,

  “Yeah, and with only two legs.”

  The men loaded up and big daddy kissed the Mrs. and the kid goodbye. “See ‘ya in a few days. Lock the door while I’m gone. ‘N load the shot gun. And you mind your mother.” Then the hunters were off. Before the dust even blew out of the yard, the blonde woman was inside, and Cody was on the swing. He swung higher and higher, as the rusty chain clinked. The woman was in the kitchen again looking out the window, sipping a cup of coffee. Chance didn't take his eyes off her. In fact, he used his remarkable vision to drift in closer and closer on her as she sat there looking at her son. Cody swung past Chance's vision of her, first forward, then back. Then forward, then back. Blurring past the ever-enlarging picture of a fantasy in the middle of nowhere whose husband had just left home.

  Cody swung.

  The chain clinked.

  The pretty woman sipped.

  And Chance's mind wandered.

  • • •

  Night fell quickly. The pinkish light was the only one on in the house at this hour. The TV had already been turned off. And the insect orchestra had begun tuning up.

  The blonde-haired woman stepped into the window again, as if standing on her mark in her own nightly performance.

  Her blouse was already off. She reached behind her back to unsnap her bra.

  Chance's eyes almost made an audible motorized sound as he dialed them in on the target once again.

  He didn't blink. He bit the side of his lip.

  The pretty woman snapped her fingers. The three clasps parted one, two, three. The single, white line became two and the bra fell off the front of her. Still with her back to the window, she reached up to undo her ponytail. Chance's focus widened a little.

  He bit the other side of his lip. Even from the back, he could see the unmistakable bulge of her left breast. He bit his entire lower lip.

  Her natural blonde hair fell across her back in a splash. She turned off the light, and the show was over.

  At least for tonight.

  • • •

  The white light blasted across Chance's face and body. This time he reached for a half gallon of orange juice and a couple of eggs. He hooked his teeth into a red apple and grabbed a platter of roasted ham.

  The refrigerator door closed, and everything went black.

  • • •

  In the early morning light, everything seemed quiet and peaceful. But from outside the house you could hear, "That's it young man, I've had it!" WHAACK! "Wahhhh!" Cody cried. "Now you've had it!!" WHAACK! WHAACK! "Waaahhhhhh!"

  Chance was sitting like an Indian in the bushes. A full, satisfying belch-bubble formed in his stomach and erupted from his lips. He smiled.

  WHAAACK! “Waaahhhhhh!”

  • • •

  A full moon sat on the tips of the pine trees like a Christmas ornament illuminating the dark. The little old house looked peaceful.

  The blue light downstairs clicked off earlier than normal on the second night of the husband's hunting trip. Chance heard the dead bolt in the door lock slide into its protective position. A sound he hadn’t heard the night before. A minute later, the pinkish light glowed in the upstairs window. Chance stood up this night, the light reflecting in his eyes. He looked like a wolfman there in the shadows. Long full hair covered his head and most of his face. His eyes were deep and haunting. From the looks of him one would think his mouth surely must contain fangs, his mind, the unstoppable calling to satisfy a centuries-old curse, his soul, a desire for bloody death. Anyone who happened upon Chance this night would surely be driven to insanity by the mere sight of him.

  Chance was still. His eyes unblinking.

  There she was. The window framed her. She stood on her mark, her back to the window. She pulled the T-shirt up over her head and her ponytail flopped like a horse prancing.

  She reached behind herself, but before she unsnapped her
bra, she turned around and faced the window.

  The irises of Chance's eyes dilated open like the lens of a camera.

  Her bra fell off her breasts. They were large. Full. Round. Deep creases were under them. Her pink nipples, flat at first, were now blossoming.

  Chance's eyes rapidly focused on them.

  She reached up behind her head to undo her ponytail. Her breasts heaved magnificently. They were graceful, fascinating orbs that danced by themselves with her slightest movement.

  She walked toward the window as she reached up to take her earrings out. Her arms squeezed her breasts like balloons.

  Chance groaned.

  She placed her earrings on the windowsill.

  Chance moaned.

  She turned and walked to the center of the room. Chance could just barely see a little below her waist. She appeared to undo her shorts and let them fall to the floor. She walked from his view and the room went dark.

  As if Chance had been holding his breath the entire time she was visible, he gave a deep, deep sigh.

  He closed his eyes.

  • • •

  Chance pulled a corner of the screening away from the window frame and plunged his arm deep into the opening. His massive hand groped around the inside wall. He strained to reach the latch for the dead bolt. The window sash was in his armpit. His fingertips just made it to the latch. Pushing, straining, the tip of his middle finger managed to push one end of the latch and it pivoted with a CLANK. His lungs deflated and he paused.

  The light from the open door of the refrigerator was like a beacon in the dark kitchen. Chance knelt before the opening as if it were a shrine.