Didn't anybody feel sorry for Malcolm because he had to wear those thick eyeglasses all his freaking life? Didn't they feel sorry for him when he started getting a little overweight? And then a lot overweight?
What was wrong with people, for Christ's sake?
What's wrong with Malcolm? he thought.
• • •
From above, Malcolm was a slowly moving speck on the earth as he was about to leave the huge blackened patch and cross over into unburned sawgrass.
He stopped for just a moment at the incinerated boundary, as if to mark the passage in his mind. Still caked with mud, wearing his turtle shell hat and carrying his shiny suitcase, he turned to look behind him at a world of black ash stretching as far as the eye could see. As he straddled the line between the destroyed and the preserved, between the past and the present, he couldn't help but develop analogies to his own life. From the decaying remains of amphibians, insects and reptiles that perished in the fire, would come a biologically rich mixture for the nourishment of other animals and fish. From the ash and charcoal sediment on the bottom, would spring new life. From the cremated, blackened sawgrass prairie would grow new green shoots. Perhaps healthier and stronger than their forebears.
He listened to the voice in his head. Did Malcolm die back there, too? he asked himself. With the animals that were too slow, too weak to run from the flames and smoke? God knows I'm slow, and weak, in so many ways. I'm sure I died. I died a very long time ago. Years ago. But I never realized it. I went through life as an empty shell, he thought, void of all the things that make life such a gift...family and friends.
He took a step into the low unburned sawgrass and continued slushing ahead into the distance.
I feel like I died and I've been through hell. Maybe some good will come of it. Perhaps from my aching, broken body will come physical strength, he thought.
From cowardly fear…unstoppable courage. From total dependence…self-reliance. From being an outsider in our natural world…a feeling of oneness with it. From depression and despair…new resolve. From emptiness…fulfillment.
Maybe from the ashes of that lifeless pit that was Malcolm, a whole person will emerge. One that I can be proud of.
I know there's a new Malcolm out there, he thought. I just have to find him.
The sun sparkled off the chrome locks and glared off the brushed aluminum of the suitcase. Some time had passed since Malcolm had entered the unburned sawgrass. And he paused now, for only a few moments, to evaluate another tree island that sat in the near distance.
In an instant, he seemed to be there, making his way to the fringe of the island. Hot and fatigued, he sat on the trunk of a fallen tree in the shady edge of the island. He removed the shell from his head and he just sat there, suitcase by his side, like a man waiting on a bus bench. He peered out over the terrain he had just covered. What he saw looked like a Wyeth painting. It looked like the plains of Africa. It looked like a stark, surreal dream. It looked magnificent, with enormous, white puffy clouds decorating a blue, blue sky.
How awesome, he thought, this remote prison to which he was condemned.
How hostile. How fragile. How intense. How serene.
He sat watching the white cumulus clouds change shapes before his eyes. In the hour or so that he sat there, the slow deliberate process of his thoughts made the clouds seem to move in a speeded-up motion. They billowed and fluffed and were swept by invisible winds. They were whipped into wisps and mounds of cotton by unseen currents.
Malcolm sat, transfixed, looking for some meaning to his life. Some reasons for the past. Some direction for the future.
What I'd give to change myself. How many times have I said that? Lots of times, he admitted. But I never did a damn thing to change. Except tell myself I would. I just lied to myself. I spent my whole life lying to myself. Blaming everybody else when I should have blamed myself.
Malcolm's eyes moistened. I know why people ridiculed me. I finally know why. They were trying to tell me something. Trying to tell me I had problems. But they did it in a destructive way, rather than a constructive way. They could have been a little more helpful and less hurtful. But how can I expect others to be helpful when I wouldn't help myself. How can I expect others not to be hurtful when I was hurting myself. I was driving myself deeper. Further away from people. From life. And the opposite of life is death. It's true. I was dying all those years. Suffocating in the poisonous air of my own self-rejection. My own self-pity. Trying harder and harder to get someone, anyone, to show they cared. I should have cared myself. It would have taken a miracle to save me. A miracle. Was that plane crash an accident? Or a miracle? My eyesight is definitely a miracle. I can see things in a way no other man can. Why? How long did I hold my breath underwater with my arm in the mouth of that alligator? Ten minutes? Fifteen? That's not possible, unless it's all been a miracle.
He probed for the answers. Maybe I died in that plane crash and I'm just remnants of my own electrical energy. A ghost, soon to dissipate in the atmosphere. No. I know I'm here. Living. But why was I given a second chance at life. Why was I given that one-in-a-billion chance of coming out of that crash with what can only be described as supernatural vision. And supernatural breath-holding ability. Why was I allowed to find the suitcase in the middle of nowhere? Why? Malcolm yearned to know.
I may never know the reason, but I'm going to make the most of it, he resolved. I’ve been given a second chance to make something of my life. Of myself. And by God, I'm gonna make the most of it.
Malcolm sat on the fallen tree, thinking, for a long time. Time well spent, he thought. Filled with renewed hope and resolve he stood up, took a deep breath, and set off to explore the new tree island he had discovered in the path of his journey.
It wasn’t as big as the tree island where he had just spent four days. But it did reveal a beautiful, tranquil pond.
On the surface of the pond, purple gallinules, hen-sized birds with extremely large feet, appeared to walk on water as they stepped from lily pad to lily pad without sinking. There were three of them poking along, minding their business, looking for fish below.
Suddenly, one of them disappeared with a splash. Then another unsuspecting bird. And finally, the third. Rising up from the shallow depths was master hunter Malcolm, water draining off his water lily crowned head and plump body, with a smug smile all over his face.
Later in the day, Malcolm's stubby fingers gently held a hand-made crown of purple feathers and woven vines just above his filthy hair. And when he fitted his colorful crown to his head, it was like a coronation. Malcolm smiled as if someone were snapping pictures of him.
Adding a colorful touch to the ceremonies was a necklace of yellow, white, purple and blue tree snails strung on the strong hair-like fiber of the yucca plant.
Malcolm had put a lot into this day. And now, the light was fading. He would have to spend the night and get an early start in the morning. He hung his newly-made crown and necklace on the branch of a tree and found a soft spot on the ground to bed down for the night. Hoping he’d be safe here at least until daylight.
Twenty
The sunrise sent a strong shaft of light to Malcolm’s sleeping face and he awoke with a start. Within minutes, he slung his loop of turtle shells over his shoulder – they now numbered six in all – he got a good grip on the handle of his valuable suitcase, and he was ready to embark on the next leg of his journey into discovery of the unknown. And discovery of himself.
At this time of year, the thunderheads moved in quickly overhead and turned burning heat and blinding reflected rays into foreboding black skies and teeming rain. Only to change back to searing broil within an hour. And then change its mind again a few hours later. It was all part of the mercurial system that brings more than fifty-five inches of rain to the Glades every year. Thirty-five inches of it in the summer. It felt like thirty-four inches fell on Malcolm that afternoon.
Water moves more in the air, Malcolm thought, than it
does on the ground. Up when it's sunny and hot, down when it's rainy and hot.
But whatever the weather, Malcolm kept on slugging it out. He couldn't sleep out here in the river of grass, for sure. And the threat of alligators in the dark was more than he wanted to even think about. He kept going. Through the glare. Through the rain. Through the heat. Through the drenchings.
He just kept sloshing along.
The terrain had changed dramatically, yet nothing had gone away. The sawgrass and water and sky were still there, but dwarf cypress trees were now dotting the landscape.
The trees were only three or four feet high, but they were mature, stunted copies of the old cypress trees that grew some ten feet in diameter and more than one hundred feet tall. These bonsai versions had the same gray slender trunks, feathery, flat crowned tops and buttressed bottoms as the big ones. And they could live just as long. Some of them may have been as much as six-hundred years old.
As Malcolm splashed on in a more or less northward direction, guided by the movement of the sun, the dwarf trees got taller and taller. And they grew in denser numbers. Great balls of spiky epiphytes were pasted on the trunks at varying heights. And once in a while, a cabbage palm, with its basket-weave patterned trunk, would be found strangely among them. Malcolm stopped to freshen-up his mud pack, and in the distance he could see a green dome rising in an almost perfectly symmetrical shape above the flat surrounding tree line. It looked like a cypress covered hill from where Malcolm was standing. There was another cypress dome off to his left. And yet another farther away. With the sun low in the west, the cypress hills of the Glades looked enticing. He hurried onward.
The sun was setting quickly now and the sky was a watercolor of orange and red, like the embers in a dying fire. The cypress trees were set in hard silhouette against it. Darkness would be falling fast. A full moon was already climbing in the sky.
As Malcolm penetrated the edge of the cypress dome, he saw no hill, no rising earth. He saw no land at all. He saw only cypress trees growing in the water, and an eerie mist hanging about the glassy black surface. The trees grew taller in the center of the dome, perhaps as high as seventy feet, and gradually shorter to the outer edges. Concave depressions in the limestone base beneath the water caused the increased growth of the trees in the center of the dome. The thicker accumulation of nutrient rich submerged soil in the deepest pocket of the depression encouraged healthier, stronger, bigger trees.
But Malcolm couldn't have cared less about the geological forces behind the creation of a cypress dome. Malcolm needed a place to sleep. And he needed it fast. The bases of the tall, straight cypress trees were flared out, like trumpets standing on their bells. And most of the swollen, buttressed bases were fluted. The shafts of the great trees grew rather straight, like utility poles, and they were literally infested with enormous puffs of hairy air plants. The limbs that he could see were high up on the tree, draped in long gray beards of Spanish moss.
In the dim light, the spooky cypress dome forest scared the hell out of Malcolm. The trees had a ghostly appearance. Mysterious cypress knees, apostles of the root system that help bring oxygen and stability to the enormous trees, rose out of the black, still water like shapeless spirits of the dead. And he swore he could hear alligators beginning to bellow in the coming night. He looked into the gloom of the fortress and the ricocheting of their guttural call off the canyon of trees made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. His eyes grew wide. His head turned in bird-like movements. A great screeching, from a crow probably, echoed through the towers. He heard the flapping of the large unseen bird. Malcolm decided not to trespass into this frightful place.
He retreated from the watery cypress dome the way he had entered. He headed back to where the cypress trees were a mere twenty or thirty feet high. There, he just might be able to do something to get himself out of that water for the night. He didn't know what, but he had to do something. Fast.
On the wet prairie Malcolm eyed each cypress as if he were buying a Christmas tree. He shook the trunks of some. He tried to reach the branches of others. He even tried to shimmy up one, suitcase in hand.
Then, in the twilight, Malcolm spotted a perfect tree. It was only about fifteen feet high, but it was beautifully knurled and twisted. It had limbs branching off in three directions at the crown, offering, just possibly, an uncomfortable yet important resting niche. But how in the world could he get up there.
Twenty-two feet to the south side stood his answer. A dead and branchless thirty-foot cypress. Straight as an arrow. He just might be able to topple it into the crux of the other tree and climb up. That is, if it didn't break into pieces when he snapped it off at the base.
His geometry-precise mind said it would work. His no-choice determination said it would work. He only hoped he could get his body to work.
Malcolm put his weight behind the dead spire. And he pushed. And he pushed. And the tree vibrated up its length. But it didn't snap. Malcolm wrapped his hands around it and shook. And he shook. And it swayed. But it didn't snap. Malcolm backed up a few feet, took a run at it and put his shoulder into it. It snapped. And fell right into place the way he planned.
Malcolm took a half-hour to creep and crawl up that round ramp to his roosting place. And when he got there, nothing could have kept him awake. He hung his suitcase on a branch overhead, draped his body over the bisecting limbs the way snoozing leopards do, and he let the moon slide by overhead.
• • •
In the early morning light, Malcolm was ravenous. He had hardly eaten anything the day before. He shook a spindly cypress violently and three eggs fell from a nest high in the branches. One egg splattered against the trunk, one plopped intact into the shallows and Malcolm caught one in his hand.
Suitcase in hand, Malcolm slyly slipped past a band of lethargic alligators that floated near the cypress dome and basked on fallen timbers. These were, no doubt, the ones he had heard the night before.
"Someday I'm gonna nail one of you creeps. Just wait," Malcolm threatened out loud but softly as he moved cautiously by a short distance away. Not one of them stirred.
• • •
Time was passing swiftly this day. With each step the cypress trees grew to larger proportions, and larger numbers, around him. The shallows began to drain off under his feet, and the sawgrass had all but vanished. Low bushes and shrubs took their place. As he walked, the earth became drier, and soft, and brown with the withered feathery leaves of the pine-like cypress.
Sunlight filtered through the lofty green crowns of the mature cypress forest and splashed upon the ground in fractured shimmering patches. In the moist shade, ferns of many kinds grew from the rich soil in bursts of four-foot streamers. Fox squirrels were aerial artists high above. Vireos and wrens dodged and darted on their high perches. Frogs and toads had jumping and croaking contests closer to the ground. Hemp vines and Virginia creeper snaked their way up and around tree trunks. Pond apple, arrowroot and pickerel weed thrived in and around the small swamps of water Malcolm passed occasionally. And ornate bromeliads, twisted air plants, wild orchids and other epiphytes made it seem that a landscape artist had become overly enthusiastic.
As Malcolm wove his way through the palatial forest, he paused to study the trees that were not cypress. Although he didn't know their scientific or common names, he placed each one in a logical, computer-modeled directory in his mind. The cabbage palm was the basket palm. The pond apple, simply the apple tree. He called the gumbo-limbo the peeling paper tree. And the mastic tree became the yellow olive tree, so named for the olive-sized fruit that tasted nothing like olives. He named the wild tamarind the peapod tree for its flat, brown five-inch pod-like fruit. He named the cocoplum, quite aptly, the plum bush. And the small, shrubby trees with the blueberry looking fruit, he called the stopper. Malcolm had done pretty well naming the trees that grew in his path. But the name ‘stopper’ was particularly right on. He had eaten bushels full of the small black berries a few da
ys ago, and it made his diarrhea stop within hours. Malcolm picked a few of these berries and put them in his pocket. Just in case.
Further northeast in the forest, the soft mat of leaves underfoot turned soggy. Malcolm found himself walking in mud. Just as well, he thought, because much of the mud pack that insulated him from biting flies and mosquitoes had dried out and had fallen off in chunks. He noticed a family of raccoons ahead of him.
Two adults led a procession of four cute fur balls on a foray for salamanders, snails, snakes, toads, and just about anything edible. Malcolm stopped to store the pattern of their tracks in his mind. He also pointed-up the cracked mortar on his body.
Fifteen minutes later he studied other tracks in the muck. Tracks that were difficult for Malcolm to identify because they weren't well defined. It looked as though a human had made a fist and had pushed his knuckles into the ooze, but in an elongated shape. Malcolm thought he saw claw marks at the forward edge of the prints, but he wasn't quite sure. He followed the tracks for a few yards and something else was added to the pattern. A wavy line between the footprints, as if something had been dragged by the animal. Whatever this was, it wasn't small. And Malcolm had second thoughts about being anywhere near it. He followed for a dozen more yards and there it was. A large gator making tracks for a wide channel of water dead ahead.
"Oh, Jesus!" Malcolm said under his breath. "I'm not ready for revenge just yet."
Malcolm detoured in a wide arc to the left. But he came to the same small river the gator was headed for. Malcolm could see gators floating in the quiet water, only their nostrils, eyes and a small part of their backs breaking the surface. He saw a few basking on the opposite bank and assumed that there had to be gators on his side of the channel too.
Saving an Innocent Man Page 14
