Saving an Innocent Man

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Saving an Innocent Man Page 21

by Robert E B Wright


  “I can’t do this, Mom. I’ll never make anything good come out of this.”

  “You will son,” his mother insisted. “You will.”

  “I can’t. I never will.”

  “In life, we all try to do things we never did before. And just because it’s hard to do, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”

  “I am trying, but it’s not working.”

  “Malcolm, that just means you have to try harder.”

  The clouds moved and everything faded to darkness for a few minutes. But the upper winds blew, and the clouds moved again. The moonlight shone down on another spot in the clearing. Through his closed eyes, Malcolm saw himself at only seven years old at a computer screen. His father was next to him.

  “This problem is too hard for me, Dad. I’ve been trying and trying and I just can’t figure it out.”

  “You just have to keep thinking about it. Look at all the possibilities.”

  “I want to give up. I can’t do it.”

  “Malcolm, do you think there is an answer somewhere, somehow?”

  “Yeah, I guess there is, but I can’t see it.”

  “If you stop searching, stop trying, you’ll never see the answer, will you?”

  “No, I guess not,” little Malcolm said.

  “So, what does that mean?”

  “Keep trying.”

  “Right. Keep trying. You’ll find the answer, Malcolm. You’ll find it. Just give yourself a chance!”

  Then off to Malcolm’s left, another moonlit spot. His mother’s face came toward him.

  “Never give up,” she said.

  Then his father’s face.

  “Never give up,” he said.

  His mother again.

  “Never give up.”

  Malcolm opened his eyes as if hoping to see them both before him. There was nothing but blackness. Then, to his right, the light of the bright moon came down in a shaft like a warm spotlight. In its glow was a beautiful pine tree. Across it lay a broken tree that had fallen at an almost perfect horizontal. Malcolm opened his watery eyes wider.

  The sign of the cross was a sign of hope.

  Twenty-Nine

  Splashes of soft, mid-morning light gave a safe, comfortable feeling to Malcolm's hideaway under the tall cypress and shaggy pines far from the Tamiami Trail.

  Birds nested and chirped in the trees, frogs churubbed in the nearby shallows, a marsh rabbit hopped through the underbrush and an armadillo ambled by beneath the spiky palmettos.

  Malcolm had erected a sleeping platform in the muscular arms of a convenient tree and padded it with a fragrant mattress of pine needles. He had even fashioned a roof of large green leaves to protect himself from rain, sun, small falling acorns and anything that birds might drop on him, too.

  He had already started a lunchtime cooking fire and his mess kit was laid out on a log. He had made a mat by interlacing the sword-like leaves of the palmetto. And on this mat sat his lunch.

  The appetizer had scales of silver plus some brown speckles along its side.

  The entree had scales of white and a dark brown chain pattern on its back. The appetizer was a large mouth bass. The entree was a diamondback rattlesnake. And dessert? Dessert would be peanut butter on one slice of whole wheat washed down with a nice, hot can of soda pop.

  Malcolm picked up the dead snake by its tail, pulled his large hunting knife from its sheath and made an incision around the base of the snake's rattle. Then, stepping on the snake's head with his right foot and stretching out its body with his left hand, he peeled the skin right off the snake as if he were pulling down a zipper. It even made a zipper sound. The chef then cut the body into four-inch lengths and skewered them with a stick.

  The bass was next. Malcolm cut moist white filets. Then he stabbed the point of the chrome-plated knife into the log. He skewered the fish and the snake with long twigs and placed both upon the fire. Except for the shapes, it was hard to tell which was fish and which was snake. But when it came to taste, the difference was obvious.

  For the first time in months, Malcolm ate cooked food. A feast of it! He stuffed himself, like a pagan king on a remote island in the South Pacific. He ate everything at once. Or tried to. He couldn't finish it all. There was a time when he'd have had no trouble polishing off twice this much food, but all that had changed. Because Malcolm had changed. Even he didn't yet realize just how much.

  Malcolm was very tired. Almost drunk from his feast. He went to his sleeping platform, curled up like a big panda and nodded off.

  • • •

  The shadows of the trees moved only a few feet in the hours that Malcolm slept on this tranquil day. The sun had already reached its closest point to the Earth and had begun its descent marking a time after noon.

  Malcolm awoke peacefully. Lying on his back, he stared up toward the tops of the trees where the sun was flashing starbursts of light through the silhouetted tips of branches.

  Malcolm yawned, stretched and sat up simultaneously. And when he did, he saw a three-ring circus around his smoldering lunchtime fire. A dozen birds of all colors and kinds were battling over the scraps of peanut buttered bread he had left. A family of squirrels was tearing apart the loaf of whole wheat. And three raccoons were stuffing themselves with the remaining fish and rattlesnake meat. The backpack lay empty, with almost everything scattered.

  Malcolm leaped off his sleeping platform with surprising finesse for someone that large. He swung on the strong limb of the tree, rather gracefully, albeit forcefully, down into the mayhem. He screeched and flailed his arms much the same as an orangutan would under similar circumstances. The unruly crowd wasn't easy to disperse. Only after Malcolm thrashed the ground with a large stick, and only after he pitched the stinking fish and rattlesnake meat away, and disposed of the bread, did his uninvited dinner guests leave.

  As Malcolm knelt in front of the log, tossing the last remaining scraps of unsalvageable bread away, he saw something that turned his actions into slow-motion.

  He saw himself. He saw his reflection in the polished surface of the huge-bladed Bowie knife. He leaned forward and then back to make the image of his body fill the blade. He leaned forward to look at his face. His hair was getting longer. And blonder. Not just the hair on his head but the hair under his nose, too. His beard and moustache were full. He had cheekbones now. And a beach-lover's tan that made his eyes seem bright and his teeth look white.

  He leaned back a little, so his chest and arms were visible in the blade. He was hunched over a bit, but as he straightened out his back, as his posture became more erect, his body actually looked better and better. Not a body of bulging muscles, but a fat man's body that had slimmed tremendously and was beginning to show some early signs of muscular definition.

  Malcolm yanked the big knife from the log and stood up. He held it like a woman's compact and eyed himself in the steel. He made a weight-lifter's pose with his right arm and assessed the bicep. "Not Bad!" He sucked in his flabby gut so his ribs stuck out and he pinched a few inches of fat on his belly. His face said, Oh boy! Got some work to do there!

  He held the knife a distance away from his face and looked into the blade. He looked deeply into his own eyes. Searching for his own soul. He looked a long time, eyes penetrating into the metal. He stared deeply, as if trying to communicate with a hidden part of himself. Trying to find identity. Trying to find something that he sensed was in there. He felt that a new self could emerge if he could just get rid of his old self.

  He threw the knife down at the log and it stuck in as it had before. He stood there, looking down at his body, examining it. Appraising it. Estimating what he had weighed months ago and what he weighed now.

  He held out his arms and looked them over as if he were thinking about buying them. He felt the contours of his chest and still abundant abdomen. He pulled up his baggy pant leg and craned his neck to see the sides of his legs and backs of his calves and ankles. He felt his neck and head and face as if he wer
e blind, then something, some idea, struck him.

  Malcolm dove at the ground and started, attempted, to do pushups. He tried furiously, at near hernia level. And he did rather well. His face was as red as a tomato. The veins in his neck were like ropes. His perspiration was like precipitation.

  When he couldn't do anymore, he did some more. Until the only thing he could lift off the dirt were his elbows.

  Then he rolled over, leaves and dirt sticking to his wet belly and chest, and he started, attempted, to do sit-ups. Much to his surprise, he could actually do one. It was a struggle, but he did one. His face showed his delight as his body agonizingly rose from the supine. He let himself back down with only a little help from his arms. Then he did another one. And another. And lots more. Each one with increasing agony. But each one a step closer to the spirit, the soul, the determination that was hidden, locked so deep inside him.

  He did deep knee bends.

  He touched his toes over and over.

  He did painful chin-ups on the limb of a tree.

  He ran around and around the campfire, then ran in a larger circle, around and around his little compound. He ran in an ever-widening circle through the woods. Until he ran back to his encampment and fell in a overheated heap on the ground.

  He breathed in great gasps, his chest rising and falling like a storm tide. The large veins in his neck were pulsing rapidly. The sweat streamed off his body. He had given it his all. He thought he was going to die. But he had been through far worse and he hadn't died yet. Lying there, he crooked his right arm and made a muscle. It wasn't very impressive.

  Before his body was even cooled, before his breathing was completely back to normal, Malcolm rolled over and started his rudimentary exercise routine all over again. He did push-ups with Herculean effort. He did sit-ups with a gargoyle's grimace. He did more deep knee bends, and toe-touches, and chin-ups and he jogged looking as though he were constipated.

  Then he collapsed in the same spot. For the first time in his life, he saw potential. He saw promise. He saw a beginning.

  But it was like a crippled man trying to walk, he reasoned. Like an alcoholic going cold turkey. Like a drug addict kicking the habit. “I’m going to do this,” he said aloud. He'd be more of a man than he ever was. He'd take the opportunity that this whole freak accident had presented to him, or he'd die trying. It was as simple as that. Death would be better than going back to what I was. He bent his right arm and squeezed up another paltry muscle.

  Malcolm rolled over. And the replay started from the top. The straining of his arms, the shaking of his cheeks were all repeated. Until he lay once again in his resting spot. Again, he checked his meager biceps.

  Then he rolled over, slower than previously, and he went through the ritual all over again.

  And again, through a pretty sunset.

  And yet again, right through dusk.

  • • •

  Malcolm's nighttime fire reflected brightly on his face. The licking of the flames made oscillating shadows under his nose and eyes. He sat there, trance-like, Indian style. He was totally detached, alone, isolated from the world. He was physically exhausted from his muscle building. But in his mind was an endless stream of images somehow projected into the flickering flames. Malcolm saw, not a fire, but his thoughts, his fears, his dreams. Mirrored in his eyes were not flames, but the past, and the present, and the future.

  He saw his dying mother once again. “I know he’ll be here. I know he will.”

  Malcolm’s watery eyes were ablaze. He saw himself as a boy of ten being teased by his classmates in the schoolyard.

  The flames of the fire flared in his outraged eyes as a sound something like a siren played in his ears. The small plane was headed almost straight down toward the mangroves.

  The flames of the campfire danced in Malcolm's eyes as his mind continued to project images into the inferno.

  He saw the mammoth gator at the bottom of the black pond, still clenching his arm, waiting for him to drown.

  Malcolm's face was like a stone in the brilliant, pulsing orange light of the roaring fire. His eyes once again had the gleam of discovering the four and a half million dollars locked inside the shiny case.

  His eyes darkened at the memory of being snared like an animal, having a dagger held to his bleeding throat, being shot at and dropped to the ground at the end of a rope.

  Malcolm closed his eyes as the purifying flames seemed to invade his brain. He was organizing. Sorting out. Evaluating. Looking for answers to questions that had puzzled him all his life. "Why has all of this happened?" he said aloud.

  Why was he brought to the brink of death over and over again in the past few months? He could have died in the plane crash. He should have. But he didn't. He was given another chance.

  He was almost captured by the Police Rescue Team in the chopper. He could have been sent to jail, a fate worse than death. But he wasn't. He could have been murdered by his rescuers. But he escaped. He was given another chance.

  He almost died of starvation, dysentery, dehydration, infection, rapid weight loss, intense physical exertion, heat stroke and traumatic emotional stress. But he didn't. He was given another chance.

  He was nearly eaten by an alligator, bitten by a rattlesnake and shot dead by Central American guerillas. But he wasn't. He was given another chance.

  He had survived. Amazingly. And he had changed. Dramatically. Miracles had been taking place in the Everglades and right inside Malcolm. The miracles that were taking place in Malcolm's body and soul and mind could not have happened in a more sanctified tabernacle of natural order.

  The miracle was that Malcolm Raymond Farmer, the overweight computer and math genius nerd, barely existed anymore. Perhaps he died a little at a time since the call at college about his mother, a little with the plane crash, a little with the shock of the alligator attack, a little with each terrifying event that took place over the past few months. Maybe he died little-by-little all his life, with each sneer and snicker, with each humiliating whisper, with each painful joke.

  The old Malcolm was nearly dead.

  The big six-foot, five-inch, three-hundred-and-sixty-five-pound young man that gorged himself on junk food while his emotions and desires were starved was all but gone now.

  The hard disk in his brain was nearly blank now, too. Erased by the spikes, the surges, the blackouts, the emotional and physical crashes of his life. He was almost ready for reprogramming.

  Only a few persistent remnants of the old Malcolm remained. But the sterilizing flames of the fire would soon kill the last deadly bacteria of guilt, intimidation, fear and self-negativity.

  The old Malcolm was dying. And he knew it. Without getting up, Malcolm took two sticks and formed a crucifix. With a rock, he hammered the cross into the earth in front of him. He closed his eyes. And he blessed himself with the sign of the cross.

  "Dear God, Malcolm Raymond Farmer is almost dead. What takes his place on this Earth is in your hands. Take this weak, abused body and create new strength. Take this trampled soul and breathe in new spirit. Bury what is bad and reincarnate the little that is good."

  Malcolm was silent for a long time as the fire popped and crackled. His eyes moved behind his closed lids. His body relaxed. His head tilted to the side. And slowly, as if air were escaping from a balloon of a man, Malcolm fell over on his side in front of the wooden cross.

  With the dying of the fire in front of him, Malcolm Raymond Farmer would die, too.

  • • •

  The faintest wisps of smoke rose from the ashes of the campfire in the early morning. The crucifix of sticks still stood next to the smoldering black patch and lorded over the crumpled body in front of it.

  A finger twitched first. Then an arm. He rolled over on his back and slowly opened his eyes. He paused a few moments studying the tops of the trees and a small piece of blue sky. Then he stood up and looked down at the primitive grave marker.

  He spoke haltingly in a soft,
low monotone voice, his throat raspy with the dampness of the night. "Malcolm Raymond Farmer is finally dead. May he rest in peace." He drew in a heavy breath.

  "I’ve been given another chance. A final chance…to make myself into a new person. A new man.”

  He thought for a moment.

  “And a new man needs a new name.”

  His eyes searched the trees. They scanned the sky.

  “What name? What name?”

  He looked at the crucifix by the smoldering fire.

  “What name fits me? My new life? What have I been given for the past year and a half?”

  He looked for a name in the vast prairie stretching far away. In the cypress domes in the distance.

  “I’ve been given lots of chances to live, that’s for sure.”

  He thought deeply, searching.

  “And what do I have now!”

  “A chance. Another chance.”

  He looked up at the sky. He found a name. His name.

  “Chance!”

  “My name is Chance.”

  “It’s what everyone needs.”

  “It’s what this man has.”

  He pondered.

  “Yes,” he concluded.

  “Chance!”

  “My name is Chance,” he said resolutely, his face lifting up toward the sky.

  "I am Chance!" He threw his arms to the sky, feeling victorious.

  He yelled it out now. "I am Chance!"

  Then a hush.

  The birth was complete. The announcement had been made. Although he didn’t look like it now, this was the beginning of a remarkable man. A man finally born after twenty-two years of gestation. Purely by chance. A man with superior, computer-like intelligence, deep compassion, and understanding. A man who would develop physical strength and animal-like reflexes, and a commanding appearance. A man who, through some miracle, possessed the unique ability to see like a hawk, breathe like an amphibian, run like a deer and think like a fox.

 

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