He closed his eyes and concentrated with his ears.
He heard nothing.
He drew in a deep satisfying breath and exhaled completely. He closed his eyes as if to rest them.
Then he heard it. A very faint snarl. A far-away growl. The slightest snap of a branch.
One more deep breath and the marathon continued. This time, about half-speed.
Thirty-Six
The sun was one hour away from setting as Chance, exhausted, dehydrated, famished, walked on bloody feet toward survival.
He didn’t know where he was. He didn’t care. As long as it was nowhere near the canine killing machines.
He hadn’t heard them in more than three hours. Yet he still stopped and listened.
Feeling safe now, he turned, zombie-like, and begged his body to go just a little farther.
The sun was dropping as he inched forward with little baby steps, his body listing left and then right. He had never felt this exhausted. This depleted of energy. If any mishap were to befall him now, any emergency situation, any threat at all, he would succumb to it.
The light around him brightened a little. He had entered a clearing. A small body of black water lay ahead, then meandered off somewhere. At the edge of it were the skeletal remains of a structure, what appeared to be an old house or building of some kind. Even in the fading light he could see that it was made of log posts.
As Chance approached, he could see a raised floor of boards about thirty inches off the ground. It was only part of a floor, but big enough for what he wanted. What he needed. What he yearned for.
“Just five minutes,” he said as he lay down. “Just five minutes to straighten out my back.” He moaned as his aching body eased itself backward, almost collapsing.
“Just five minutes and I’ll feel like a new man.”
“Maybe ten.”
Fatigue and darkness overtook him.
• • •
At daybreak, the twelve-year-old Indian boy, in a kaleidoscopic-colored-shirt, carried his fishing pole, a just-caught six-pound bass and a proud smile. He carried his catch high and his quick walk said he could hardly wait to show his mom and dad.
But wait.
He stopped.
What is that?
It’s a man laying down in the new chickee hut his brother and uncle had been building. It’s a white man. A big white man. Sleeping.
The boy ran off.
• • •
Chance’s body lay as if dead. Like a fallen soldier, but in the garb, however brief, of an Indian. His breechcloth was hardly common Indian dress today, but about one hundred years ago, it was. The dried bloody markings all over his body were like war paint. How ironic, yet appropriate, to present such an image while genuine Indians gathered over him, waiting for the right moment to awaken the resting spirit.
As if electrically shocked, Chance rose up on the heels of his hands, then crab walked backwards on the platform, never taking his eyes off the colorful group before him.
After a few crab steps backward, he stopped, right at the edge of the short deck. He looked around urgently. There was an unbroken circle of them.
No one said a word, the only sound was Chance’s deep breathing.
Then two men stepped forward and stood at the edge of the platform. One was about thirty-years-old. One was about ninety.
The younger man was dressed in blue jeans, a straw cowboy hat with a feathered band and a long-sleeved shirt made of fabric designed something like a quilt. The older man’s costume was much more ornate. On his head was a faded red cotton turban. He wore iridescent earrings and four or five beaded necklaces. His shirt was a mixed-up pattern of triangles, T-shapes, lines, boxes and zigzags of yellows, reds, blue, black and white. It was very long and cinched in the middle by a beaded belt from which hung a number of leather pouches. His short-bowed legs were sheathed in deerskin leggings, tied with thongs at the back. His face was brown and wrinkled like an old apple.
“Are you the man the police have been looking for?” the younger man asked softly, but firmly, in perfect English.
Chance paused. “I, I imagine the police are looking for a lot of men.”
The man blinked once and stared.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m the one who everybody’s been after,” Chance conceded.
“Are you the one who saved the family that drove into the canal?”
“Yes.”
The man looked confused. “Why did you save them? Weren’t you worried about being caught?”
“I didn’t think about being caught. I only thought about helping them. And saving their lives if I could.”
“At the cost of your own?”
“Yes,” Chance answered without hesitation.
The younger man turned and spoke to the old man in a language that was foreign to Chance.
“How did you survive in the Glades?” the younger man questioned.
“It’s a long story.”
“What did you eat?”
“Everything.”
“Snakes?”
“Yes, lots of snakes.”
The old man recognized the word even in English, and he began to chatter to the younger man. The old man spoke continuously and grew louder and louder. The younger man finally turned to Chance.
“We are Indians of the Miccosukee Tribe.”
“You’re not the Seminoles that I’ve read about?”
“Well, yes, but… it’s a long story.” The younger Indian half smiled. “This is our Shaman, you might call him a medicine man,” he said, motioning to the old man still speaking.
“You still believe in medicine men?” Chance asked, incredulously, wondering what was going to happen to him next.
“We are probably the last remaining sect or clan of Seminoles or Miccosukee. Some call us the Tamiami or Trail Indians, we hold fast to our traditions, folklore customs and legends. We are the last Indians to make peace with the white man and adopt some of his ways. Some of us have and some of us,” his head tilted toward the old man, “haven’t. We respect our elders and their teachings. And the taboos. One of our individual tribe’s taboos is eating snakes.”
“Eating snakes?”
“Eating snakes. We don’t eat snakes,” the man confirmed.
“A taboo?”
“A big no - no,” the young Indian said resolutely.
“So what’s this got to do with my food preferences?”
“You put nature out of balance. And it is the Shaman’s responsibility to correct that mistake. You are not pure.”
“Hey, why don’t you just let me go?” Chance said, tiring of this conversation.
“We can’t. You must be purified first. Then we’ll decide what should be done with you. You can’t remain with us unless you are purified. And if you don’t stay with us, you stay with the police. The Shaman cannot let you go back to the world our creators gave us because you are poisoned with bad behavior.”
“So how do you purify me, rip my guts out?” Chance said, his eyes wide.
“Sort of.”
There was a long pause.
“Ready?” the young Indian asked.
The old man never stopped speaking. Not for a minute. And now his words became a chant as Chance slowly and cautiously climbed over the sawn logs of the decking and into the grasp of a dozen young Indian men more than a foot shorter than he was.
The group of thirty or so men, women and children of all ages, followed behind in an impromptu procession. Only one man lingered behind, watching the last person leave the site. A mid-thirties man with greasy black hair who appeared to have a limp as he turned. He had a week’s worth of stubble on his brown, craggy face. And, after he took a swig from a small whiskey flask. Two missing teeth were noticeable in his alcoholic’s grimace. He slid the flask into his back pocket and took something out of his shirt pocket.
The business card made a snapping sound as he fingered it.
• • •
The colorful throng
surrounded Chance as they walked. And in only a minute or two they stood before what looked like a small igloo made of sticks and mud. It could not be meant for more than one human, he decided. And that human was decidedly him. At least there were not big black boiling kettles. However, he did spot smoke rising from a fire near the small round structure, which was only a dozen feet from a black water canal.
Chance eyed the water, longing to make a break for it and escape beneath the surface. His eyes moved to the rifles a number of the men held in front of them, almost as a dare. Then to the old silver-colored western revolver one of them used to scratch an itch.
Chance glanced at his possible escape route once again. Then the rawhide and bone handles of big knives caught his attention. In his mind he measured the distance to the canal. He counted the guns he could see. He guessed the seconds of flight. The wondrous mathematical mind of a genius was at work. So was the calculating savvy mind of the Indian spokesman. He was now in Chance’s face, or rather, in his neck looking up at him.
“Let me give you some neighborly advice. Maybe you could hide from others, but we’ve lived here for hundreds of years. There’s nothing we don’t see, there’s nothing we don’t hear, there’s nothing we don’t smell, there’s nothing we can’t track, there’s nothing we can’t kill. And nobody asks us nothin’.” He paused to let his little speech sink in. He drew a breath, “You could run. You could. But you can’t hide. Not from us. Now, do you think you can sit still for one hour so you can be purified?”
“In there?”
“In there.”
“What are you gonna put in there with me, snakes, rats, spiders, what?”
“You’ll be the only living thing in there.”
“Will I be a living thing when I come out?”
“Everyone has been so far.”
“No sweat,” Chance said with confidence.
“Remember you said that.”
Chance walked to the small opening and crawled inside. Someone covered the opening with wet cloths and troweled on a mud covering. Others took long sticks and, shuffleboard-fashion, pushed very hot stones out of the nearby fire and slid them through holes at the bottom edge of the sweathouse. One of the Indians dribbled water from a bucket on the stones to see if every one steamed and sizzled.
This was probably the only one-man sauna in the entire State of Florida, Chance thought, sweat running from every pore in is body as he sat there in the dark. How exclusive. How lucky. How intensely hot.
He sat there forever, it seemed, his body flooding the earth he sat on. He was convinced his body would be reduced to mere fiber and flakes if he sat there any longer.
He was just slumped like soft mashed potatoes in the blackness.
Then there was a loud cracking sound. Like a flash, bright white light washed over Chance. His body, basted in its own juices, was glistening and unmoving. The oven had sapped his energy. Slowly, Chance crawled out of the sweathouse and into the light. He struggled to his feet with help from no one as the crowd stood around him watching. Without warning, four buckets of cold water poured on him from different directions. He shivered in the heat.
The Shaman was once again chanting, but now he poured a small quantity of herbs from one of his pouches into a vessel of clear glass creating a black potion. He stirred it with a hunting knife and offered it to Chance, who looked dazed and confused.
The younger man took the clear glass cup. “Drink this.” Chance looked at him as if it were poison.
“It won’t kill you. It’s part of the ritual.” There was a pause. “It might even do you some good. But you must drink it all at once.”
Chance stood there, dripping, feeling off-kilter.
The crowd stood there. Waiting.
Chance reached for the cup and wrapped his fingers around it. He licked his lips as his eyes moved from the cup to the man and back again.
“Drink it,” the man said. Then a few Indians chimed in. “Drink it,” they said. Then a few more voices chorused in, “Drink it,” they intoned. They grew louder, “Drink it!” urging him to do it.
Chance moved the cup closer to his lips and in one quick movement drained the black contents into his mouth. Liquid ran from the corners of his lips. He gulped loudly as it went down.
By the time Chance had removed the cup from his mouth, the crowd had moved away from him, giving him plenty of room. He could have easily escaped into the canal. That is, if he had the energy. Standing there, he started retching violently. His diaphragm was like a bellows. His body was heaving in spasms. His face was the color of algae and he began vomiting as if he were in an upchuck contest. The emetic worked like a charm, which in a sense, it was.
The Indian audience laughed ‘til they cried as Chance did his gagging dance.
Soon all would be right with the world. Just as the creator had intended.
• • •
Everything was blurry, out of focus. All Chance could see was a fuzzy silhouette of a human against the vague edge of a thatched roof. His eyes rolled around in their sockets and he blinked trying to identify who was in front of him.
“Here, this will help.” It was a woman’s soft voice that he heard. Sweet and friendly. She had something in the palm of her hand that she wafted under his nose. It smelled bitter and stringent.
His head wobbled to the right to evade the stink and there was another human shape.
“That would wake the dead, don’t get it near me.” It sounded like a teenage boy was speaking to the girl.
Chance’s head wobbled back the other way again and the picture before him became clearer and clearer. She was beautiful. And each time he blinked she became more so. Her ink-black hair was parted in the middle and it fell away forever, down past her waist. Delicate beaded strands of turquoise, orange and white collected it loosely and held it off her face. A face that was perfection. Flawless. Soft. Creamy and smooth. The color of copper or bronze. Earrings of amber and jade echoed her brilliant hazel eyes. Her lips were luscious and full, the color of not-yet-ripe cherries. But Chance was becoming more and more sure they were as sweet as the reddest ones.
For some reason she couldn’t hold back a smile. Perhaps she was a little embarrassed over Chance’s obvious hypnotic enslavement.
Her smile was warm, vibrant and glowing.
Chance struggled to get the words out, “I, I feel so…purified.” She smiled bigger, but shyly.
Chance was sitting in a low chair, sort of a beach-type chair but made of sticks and leather. The girl, not more than twenty-one years old, and the boy were kneeling.
“Are you feeling better now?” she asked.
“Well, I think there’s definitely potential for that happening.”
“You must be really thirsty,” the boy said. “How about something cold? A beer maybe?”
“This is too good to be true.”
The boy swung around on the balls of his feet and opened the door of a very old, rusty refrigerator, right there inside the open-sided thatched hut. Chance had his bottle of beer in seconds, a gassy mist still smoking from its top.
“Hey, where am I? I mean, what’s going on? Why are you being nice to me? And how do you have a working refrigerator out in the middle of nowhere? Is this a dream?” He took a solid slug from the wet brown bottle.
“So many questions from someone who just woke up,” she murmured as the boy chuckled.
“You’re just keeping me busy ‘til the police get here, aren’t you?”
“Your safe for now. That was the decision reached by the elders. And all your questions will be answered, if you have the patience to hear the answers. But first, you must be very hungry.”
“I could eat a horse,” he knew he had made a mistake. “I, I don’t mean that literally. I, I wouldn’t want to eat anything that’s taboo. God, or rather, the creator of the natural world, forbid,” he was thinking again. “I say that with all due respect.” He appeared to be begging. Where was Chance getting all this charm?
Chance looked around at the chickee. It was perhaps fifteen feet by thirty. The thatched roof was held up by six stout cypress logs that rose from the packed dirt. You could see sticks and dried palm fronds on the inside as well as the outside. It was open on all four sides. It was remarkably cool in the shade of the chickee. There were other chickees that Chance could see, too, and the sight of them imbued the whole scene with a primitive, yet peaceful Tahiti or Fiji Island ambiance. It was a good feeling, he thought, looking around.
At one end of the dining chickee was a plump woman in a colorful, crazy-pattern dress sitting on a portable stump. She, apparently, was the cook. She sat before three enormous frying pans, bottoms as black as coal, which began to sizzle and spit furiously when she tossed things into them. A wood fire burned obligingly beneath them in a raised earthen hearth to protect the fire from potential flooding from heavy rains. Logs radiated out from the center of the fire, like spokes. As the logs burned, they were pushed further into the center. Everything above the fire was black from soot. Even the roof, where the smoke filtered through. Pots were already steaming, too. She checked them, and soon had her hands in a large mixing bowl. A whitish powder flew up in clouds. An old 55-gallon oil drum was the garbage can and a rough-built wooden countertop served as the food prep area. All-in-all, pretty nice. And it started to smell fantastic!
The cook delivered a bowl to Chance.
“This is…” she was saying.
“Don’t tell me!” Chance cut in.
She giggled lightly, “Beef Stew,” she answered.
“You mean regular beef stew?”
“Well, yes. We’ll save the turtle, alligator and deer for another time.”
Saving an Innocent Man Page 27