Milk, eggs, a head of lettuce…Chance gathered up these things and more to take with him. He spied something in the very back of the refrigerator that caught his fancy. He reached all the way in and the white light blared in his face. Chance stood up, his arms laden. His big toe guided the door closed. The door shut with a quiet slap.
But somehow, the room was still lit.
His head didn't move, but his eyes looked left. He saw a toaster. He looked right. He saw a rack of big knives. He slowly pivoted where he stood. In the bright florescent lights of the kitchen, he looked like he had just come home from the supermarket. The blonde lady with the shotgun looked like she was about to kill him.
She pushed the slide of the pump action shotgun forward and back with an unmistakable CHU-CHUNK.
Chance's arms went limp. His groceries went crashing to the floor. Milk flooded the linoleum, broken eggs slimed over Swiss cheese, strawberry jelly bled from the glass jar.
Chance pressed back against the refrigerator, waiting for the blast that would add his guts to the ooze on the floor.
He didn't move.
She didn't move.
He spoke. "I....I just wanted some food. I didn't come here to hurt you."
"Well, I'll hurt you. I'll blow your head off!" She spoke slowly, afraid, but trying not to show it. "You've been coming in here every night stealin' food the past two nights."
"That...that should prove I'm not here to hurt you."
"Yeah, right, sure! First the food, then what?"
"If I wanted to hurt any of you, I would have before you hurt me. I wouldn't have taken a chance." There was pleading in his voice.
She looked at his chest. It was massive. She looked at his arms. They were thick and muscular and lined with a few heavy veins. His waist was relatively small. As was his deerskin breechcloth. Strong, muscular thighs descended into iron-like calves. He could see her eyes searching over his body.
He glanced at the cleavage at the top of her bathrobe. He eyed the lovely leg she had thrust forward for balance.
"You the guy who saved those people in the canal?"
"Yes, I am."
"What's your name?"
"Chance."
“Chance. Yeah, that's what they said on TV. Unusual name."
She looked up at this hairy face now. She held the shotgun at her hip and aimed it at his chest.
"You look awful."
A slight smile came to Chance's face. "You look…terrific." His left eyebrow went up. Her left eyebrow went up. She thought for a few seconds. "Oh, yeah? Well, clean up my floor while I decide what to do with you." She threw him a roll of paper towels. "Try anything, anything at all, and you'll be hamburger, understand?"
She kicked the plastic garbage pail at him. Chance got down on all fours and began to clean up the mess. She stood over him, shotgun at the ready, like the foreman of a one-man chain gang.
She couldn't help but notice the muscles in his shoulders and back as they rippled, the muscles in his arms as they flexed. He was like a tiger, almost, a leopard from the jungle. Some kind of enormous man-cat.
He couldn't help but notice her legs. He tried hard not to be obvious, to make her afraid, but he couldn't help an occasional glance.
"How long were you gonna keep stealin' my family's food, until you ate us out of house and home?"
"I was going to leave after tonight."
"Oh, sure, you're like a bear, once people start feeding you, they can't get rid of you.”
"I guess that remains to be seen."
She thought for a few moments. "Why are the police after you? You into drugs?"
"No, I'm not into drugs. I don't even take aspirins."
"Yeah, but you sell drugs, is that it?"
"I wouldn't even know who to sell drugs to!"
"Then why are they after you? And why are you running? And why did you take a chance to save that family?"
"I'd try to save anyone who needed help."
She thought for a few moments again. "Well, if you saved eight lives, you can't be all bad."
He finished cleaning up the mess on the floor and stood up. His head wasn't too far away from the ceiling. He towered over her. He wiped the slop off his hands with a paper towel and threw it into the pail. He clasped and unclasped his hands a few times. "Sticky," he said.
"It's the eggs," she said.
"When's the last time you had a regular meal?"
"More than a year, no, almost a year and a half ago."
She raised her eyebrows. "You've been running around out in the Glades all that time?"
"Yes."
"How did you survive?"
"It's a long story."
She didn't say anything for a few moments. She just pondered. She thought about her next move. Or his.
"It wasn't easy," Chance said, "living off whatever food I could find or catch. Getting drenched by rain, burned by the sun, running from people and alligators that wanted to see me dead. Never feeling really clean."
"I'll tell you what. I'm gonna let you go. I probably shouldn't, but you did save the lives of those other people. I'll save yours. Just don't hurt us and don't ever come back here, understand?"
"Understood. Thanks. And don't worry, I won't hurt you. Why would I save their lives and take yours? There is just one thing I'd like to do before I go." She looked at him with skepticism.
"And what might that be?"
"I'd just like to get cleaned up with some real soap and clean water." She still had the shotgun pointed at him. She hesitated. "OK, fine. Right in there," she motioned with her head. "But I'm not putting down this shotgun for a minute. You'll find fresh towels under the sink."
She kept the shotgun pointed at him as he walked into the hall bath. Her eyes followed his rear end as it disappeared behind the door.
"And don't get any ideas," she shouted to him, "if you know what I mean!"
She heard the water in the shower. Then the shower curtain. Then manly sighs and watery splashes.
She simply stood there for a few minutes, gun pointed at the door but sagging lower and lower. Finally, she turned the rifle upright and walked away.
Chance's head and face were a clump of foamy white lather. He scrubbed furiously. He dug in deep with his fingernails. The water pelted his back with stinging dots. He reached down and soaped parts that were always too soft to rub with sand. The soap bubbles ran down his legs and swirled around his feet. The sound of the shower was loud in his ears.
The steak in the pan sizzled like the sound of the shower. Steam rose up in swirls. A pot of vegetables boiled on the back burner. Biscuits browned in the toaster oven.
The lithe blonde captor was watching over the stove as something caught her eye. She grabbed the shotgun which was leaning against the cabinets and swung it around.
Chance stood in the doorway. The top of his hair was actually higher than the door jamb. His body filled the opening completely, except for around his legs.
His blond hair was parted and combed back. His beard and moustache were gone. His clean-shaven face was strong. His eyes were piercing yet gentle. His body was magnificent. Muscular. Tan. Clean.
He wore nothing but a towel and a smile. He held up his wet breechcloth. "No point in washing me and not washing this."
Her mouth dropped a little. Her left eyebrow went up a little. The shotgun drooped a little.
"Would you…like to eat?" she said as she turned off the burners on the stove.
Chance didn’t answer. Something told him he didn’t have to right then. It was all instinct now. They just looked at each other’s eyes. Trying to read them. To look inside. Taking a chance, risking it all, Chance's hand moved very, very slowly toward her. Finally, his fingertips touched feather soft on her cheek. She didn’t move. She appeared to be frozen. But not from fear. It was from something else, and Chance knew it. Something primitive and deep was in control now. And neither one of them could stop it.
His hand traveled down, slowly, follow
ing the contour of her body. It reached her breast and stopped.
Everything was in slow-motion.
Everything was bathed in soft pinkish light.
His strong shoulder descended from its towering height to just below her face. She looked at him in awe.
He buried his face in her neck and kissed her passionately, wetly, open mouthed from her ear to her shoulder. She melted against him, her body warming to his heat. Her bare leg rose gently between his bent legs as he kissed her lightly, then very deeply. Their mouths opened. Their tongues touched. They tasted sweet, overwhelming sensations. They began a feast neither of them had ever experienced.
Her small, feminine hands kneaded the large muscles of his upper arms. Her red fingernails left crescent impressions in his skin.
His large hands swept slowly down her back.
Her left hand caressed his side and moved downward.
• • •
The tips of her long blonde hair touched the pillow first. Then the rest of the pretty strands followed, making a golden nest for her head. Her profile was perfect against the pink lamp behind her. Chance's profile descended to meet hers.
His corrugated abdomen came to rest upon her soft, supple tummy. She raised her knees on the side of his hips.
She tilted her head back, leaving a hollow spot under her neck. His hands held her breasts and his head lowered into them.
She moved her head to one side, losing herself in the pleasure radiating through her body. Chance cradled her ankle in his hand and kissed her leg again and again in different places, moving ecstatically, slowly upward.
She combed her fingers through his hair.
She arched her back against the mattress.
Her mouth opened. And her wet tongue moved side to side. She was high with the natural pleasure-drug that was being dispensed by her brain.
Chance was rolling over on his back. She rolled with him, on top of him.
She had her hands on his chest, pushing herself down his body.
His head turned to one side.
His mouth opened with a sigh.
Her breasts hung down between her arms, swaying to the rhythm of hot, sweating passion. He was drunk with intoxicating sexual desire. They were both breathing deeply. Moaning. Drugged with the narcotic of primitive sexual drive. She moved off of him and placed herself on all fours next to him. He knew instinctively what to do behind her. He was high above her. Stroking her back, waist and hips. He grabbed a handful of her long blonde hair and gently pulled it back, like the reins of a horse.
She was under him now. Her knees up to her shoulders. His arms behind her knees. Sweat dripped from the creases in their skin. It rolled off their faces. Saliva dripped from the corners of their mouths. They pulsed together to a primitive rhythm to which their bodies were enslaved. Hot blood rocketed through their veins. Their hearts were bursting from their chests. The rhythm accelerated. The song of lust intensified. The passion deepened. Every cell in their bodies was alive. Screaming. Pumping. Thrusting every ounce of energy into the piston-driven sex-engine that was nearing redline and about to explode. Suddenly heads went back and bodies arched. Shock waves coursed through their bodies simultaneously. They quivered together, the spasms gradually subsiding. The heavy breathing slowly quieting. Bodies suctioned against each other. The rapid beating hearts slowed. The euphoria still glowed radiantly. The natural sexual drug had been released throughout their bodies. They were high. Drunk with total physical pleasure. Total satisfaction of the mind. Total rejuvenation of the soul.
They looked into each other’s faces. They seemed to study the moment and each other. They each laughed a little. Relieved. And pleased.
She opened her eyes wide and said, “You’re an animal!”
Chance playfully bit her neck and snarled.
• • •
They must have fallen off to sleep. Early morning light was seeping into the window. She sat up quickly and gasped.
“Shhh!” They were frozen.
She bolted up to cautiously peer out the corner of the window. By this time Chance could hear the engine of the truck coming down the dirt drive.
Chance had never seen anyone get dressed so fast. “When I get my shorts on, if you’re still standin’ there, I’m grabbin the gun,” she nodded to the rifle rack on the wall behind her, “and shootin’ you dead! I don’t have a choice!”
As Chance scooped up his breechcloth from the floor and rapidly slipped it on, she let out a scream that would have woken dead civil war soldiers at Gettysburg! Cody, who was still asleep in his bedroom, started screaming, too, “Mom! Mom! Mom!”
Chance ran to an open window opposite the driveway, punched out the screen and jumped, without hesitation, the two floors to the ground. As his head just cleared the bottom of the window, a shotgun blast pulverized a branch of leaves on the tree outside.
Another blood-curdling scream!
“Linda! Linda! I’m comin’, baby!” The door of the pickup had already flung open and the men were locking a round in the chambers of their bolt-action rifles.
Linda leaned the upper part her body, now clothed, out the window and yelled down to the men. “It’s that big guy everybody’s been lookin’ for. He took a runnin’”
“You alright, babe? You hurt? Does he have a gun? Does he have a gun!?” The questions came fast.
“No, no gun. He’s not armed. Nothin’. I’m not hurt. He didn’t do nothin’. Just stole some food, is all.”
“We’ll get ‘em, babe. I’ll kill the motherfucker!”
Linda said quietly, “Well, you got that right.”
Three of the pit bulls were already on the way, like torpedoes thrashing through a leafy, bushy green ocean. Once released, they would sooner self-destruct than give up tracking, catching and tearing their prey limb-from-limb. The three hunters, with the fourth pit bull on a leash to track the other three, were right behind calling out encouragement to their Robo-dogs, like Romans in the Coliseum feeding Christians to lions.
As Linda turned the shower on, she heard rifle blasts in the distance.
Her shorts dropped to the floor.
• • •
Chance was almost a blur as he hurtled through the tangle of thickets, vines, thorn bushes, fallen trees and arrow-shaped fronds that let-blood on his bare skin. The three pit bulls were also a blur but had less foliage to deal with. And each had four-leg drive.
Where Chance’s racing bare feet left an impression in muck, the dogs sped over before it even filled with water. They could see the soles of his feet always before them, practically slapping them in their noses, as they all ran furiously. They could already taste his blood. His body odor, plus the smell of recent sex, made them berserk. Each one was armed with a war head of bone crushing teeth and jaws. Semi-domesticated hyenas, Chance thought. If three hyenas in Africa could bring down a two-thousand-pound water buffalo, what could these three do to him? Like the hyenas, would they go for his genitals first and eat him rump to shoulders? The mental images made Chance generate energy like a nuclear power station. The fuel for the reactor was pure fear of being ripped to shreds and eaten before he died.
Chance was running frantically. His arms and legs were pistons and connecting rods of some humanoid machine revving so fast it would destroy itself.
A thin branch whipped him in the face and left a welt across his cheek. Another ripped a small bloody cut at the corner of his mouth. A thorn bush left a dozen horizontal red lines across his abdomen. And salty sweat poured into his wounds.
He didn’t even wince.
The dog’s tongues were hanging long. Dripping. Their eyes were wild. Non-blinking. Their sturdy legs and paws churned up the soft earth as they sprinted non-stop. Their visual and olfactory guidance systems were locked. But Chance had managed to somehow gain a little ground. He was now, maybe, a dozen strides ahead of them. Obviously, this was a race of endurance.
But what about intelligence? Climb a tree? The hunters would shoot h
im like a squirrel. Use a stick as a weapon? Not against all of them. There were too many. Turn and kick them like footballs? Maybe one, but not three. Zig-zag and spread them out? They could turn a lot faster than he could, they had a lower center of gravity.
No, this seemed to be a straight-line race to the finish. Wherever the finish happened to be.
• • •
Branch after branch, each thick with leaves, came at him fast, as if a hundred batters were swinging at him from both sides. He had to run hurdles over fallen branches while the demon dogs ran underneath. He had to duck under heavy limbs at head height. He had to slip and slide through muck and mud.
Suddenly, the dense branches and leaves battering his bloody face flew open like saloon doors.
“Thank God!” There was a canal right before him. He sprang off the bank, without stopping, his body straightening like a spear aimed at the other side.
His body was still in mid-air when the K-9 Kamikazes skidded to a halt at the canal. One pulled in his dripping tongue and gulped. One eyed Chance’s trajectory and growled with a sharp-toothed grimace. One tore up the dirt with his front paws. As if communicating telepathically, they all leaped into the canal in death defying pursuit. Their eight seconds of hesitation gave Chance an eight-second advantage. The fact that dogs, even these dogs, just couldn’t swim as fast as Chance, gave him even more of an advantage.
When the muscular pit bulls reached the other-side they were up and out and gone. They disappeared into the jungle like missiles. Only the sounds of snarling, growling and gnashing of teeth could be heard.
• • •
Chance’s shadow was directly beneath him and the sun directly overhead. He trotted now, stooped over, legs shuffling in a stiff gait. His body, bloodied by the torturous whipping of branches during his flight for life, slowed. He stopped, grasping his legs just above the knees in a bent over position. Drool hung from his mouth in long, elastic strands. The air was burning hot in his throat as he breathed open-mouthed. He sucked the humid air in as if he had nearly drowned on land. His eyes moved slightly faster than his body and he looked into the wilds he had just run through. He cut the tendril of saliva from his mouth with a slash of his forearm. He held his breath now and listened.
Saving an Innocent Man Page 26
