WALKABOUT - Taking a Mulligan (Part 6)

28

Ty Hamilton

He looked more like a drowned rat than a man, clinging to life with one bloody arm draped over a small tree branch that hung out over the water from the embankment. Without thinking, I broke off my approach to the trailer and executed a two-hundred-seventy degree turn to the right. I backed off the throttle, made a one-eighty, again to the right, and let the current take me backward, just downstream of him. I then increased the throttle to ease forward. I was on top of him in seconds.

I held the throttle to maintain position against the current with one hand, and just as he lost his hold on the branch, grabbed him by the collar with the other. A second later, and he would have been swept away and my life would have not taken its alternate path.

“HOLD ON!” I shouted, trying to be heard above the now-driving rain and the thunder. You dumb bastard, I thought. How the hell did you get yourself into this predicament?

It was all I could do to maintain a grip on him with one hand while steering and operating the tiller and throttle with the other, but somehow, it was all working. My plan, if you could call it that, was to get back to the public launch, forget about pulling onto my trailer and just run up on the ramp. To hell with the damage it would do to my boat and propeller. It was the only option. And it would have worked, had there been another twenty seconds worth of gas left in the tank.

The motor sputtered, coughed, and, inevitably, died. There was nothing I could do, other than hold on to the man’s collar and try to steer the boat as best I could, using the outboard motor like a rudder as we were swept downstream at an alarming rate. I quickly realized the futility in the effort. I could no more control the course of the boat than I could stop the rain. And, I was losing my grip on the dumb bastard’s collar. I let go of the tiller and repositioned myself so that I could hold onto him with both hands without being pulled over the side to drown for my effort.

The boat drifted out into the middle of the river, did a couple of  three-sixties along the way, and eventually struck hard against a fallen log that was protruding from the beach of a small island in the middle of the river. I fell out of the boat into about four feet of water. I somehow managed to retain my grip on the man, and hauled him up onto the shore. Then, just as the boat was sliding back into the stream, I reached out, grabbed the bow line and hauled it back in. With my last ounce of strength, I heaved it up onto ground. I lay there gasping for breath. After a couple minutes, I rose to my feet and staggered to a small tree a few feet away from the river’s edge, and tied the bow line to it.

29

Ty Hamilton

It was now dark, and the driving rain pelted my face as I knelt by the stranger. I placed one hand behind his neck and the other across his chest to clasp his shoulder, supporting him as he made a vain attempt to sit up. Still breathing heavily, it occurred to me that I could very well suffer a heart attack from all this physical exertion. I looked down at him. “You okay, mister?” I gasped.

The storm was upon us now. A bolt of lightning illuminated the heavily wooded river island, accompanied by a deafening thunderclap. It startled me, and I cried out. The stranger seemed unconcerned by it. His breath was heavy, rattling, and a bloodstain covered his left shoulder. He was going to need some first aid. He reached up, grabbed my shirt collar and with what little strength he had left, pulled me close to him. His breath was heavy, laboring. He looked into my eyes and said, “Thank . . . you . . . I . . . wudna . . .  made it if you hadn’t . . .”

“Glad I could help,” I said. But we were not yet out of danger. We had to stop his bleeding and survive the storm. Then we had to somehow get safely from the island to the riverbank, dry off and warm up. I was about to say all that, but the words got caught in my mouth as I watched him reach across his torso and struggle awkwardly with his left hand to pull a stainless steel revolver from inside his waistband.

I’d flown all over the world, and been to a lot of places where I wondered about my safety, but I’d never had a gun pulled on me. Until now.

“It’s . . . nothing . . . personal,” he said. I watched, paralyzed in terror as he aimed the gun at my head and began to squeeze the trigger. Acting on instinct, I threw up my hands in an effort to shield my face, elbows tucked in to cover up at least some of my torso.

There was a bright flash and a loud report. I felt a solid impact to my forehead. I jerked back, stumbled, and fell to the ground.

30

The wind was nearing gale force as the contract killer reached across his body for the revolver that was tucked inside the waistband on his right hip. It was an awkward move, not easily or quickly accomplished.

He’d trained himself to shoot accurately with either hand, but in all his years of military service and work in the private sector, it had never been necessary to do it on the job. “It’s . . . nothing . . . personal,” he said, and squeezed the trigger.

There was a simultaneous flash of lightning and thunderclap, causing him to flinch like an amateur just as the tree trunk came crashing down.

31

Ty Hamilton

I lay there in the mud, dazed and confused. My head was ringing like a fire bell as I slowly regained my senses.  Surprised to be alive, aware of a weight upon me, I waited for the second shot. I remained as still as I could, hoping against hope that he would believe me dead and not put a bullet into the back of my skull, administering the “coup de grace”.

By now the river had risen to the point that the water was lapping against my mouth and nose. I couldn’t continue playing possum much longer. I opened one eye and saw that I was covered by a rather large limb. Twigs and leaves poked into virtually every part of me. I searched in the darkness for my assailant, fighting the urge to jerk up away from the rising water and gasp for breath. Another flash of lightning illuminated the night for a moment, and I saw him lying face down in the mud, pinned down by a fallen tree. The next flash revealed him groping, searching for something. The gun!

As near as I could tell, the lightning had hit a nearby tree, splitting it in two. One of the halves had crashed down upon him, and one of its limbs had struck me in the head. It was a miracle—or close enough for me.

At that moment, I only knew that I was not hurt, at least not badly. Somehow I had managed to dodge the bullet, as the saying goes. Another flash of lightning revealed the gun, next to the fallen tree trunk, just beyond his reach. I struggled to my hands and knees, scrambled out from under the limb. Slipping in the mud, I bear crawled quickly to grab the gun. I felt him grabbing my leg as I tried to get away with it. I lashed out with my other foot, connecting solidly with the side of his face, and he let out a yelp but did not release his grip. Two more kicks to his face, and I was able to pull away.

32

I crawled through the mud to my boat. The water had risen to the point that it was mostly afloat, only the front one-third was still grounded. I looked to the stranger who just minutes ago I had saved, only to have my kindness repaid by violence. The tree trunk had him pinned, and the water was now dangerously close to him.

“Help me!” he cried out.

My response was, “You have got to be shitting me!” I pointed the revolver at him for emphasis. The water kept rising, much quicker than I could have ever imagined possible. In a couple of minutes, he would either drown, or the water would lift the tree trunk enough so that he could get out from under it. I could just leave it up to God to decide what would become of him. But, what if God decided to lift the tree off him? What would I then do to keep him from killing me? Well, I did have the gun.

I sometimes imagine that God sits in his own private theater, eating popcorn, watching the earthly human drama unfold before him. I further imagined that it was one of those interactive plots, like they have on video games, where He could decide which option to choose for any given scenario, depending upon his mood and preferences on that particular day. Which option will God choose today? I wondered.

“Please . . .” he said, “don’t let me drown!”

I reassessed his predicament. The tree trunk was on slightly higher ground than he was. He would drown before the water rose high enough to lift it off him.  God was leaving this man’s fate for me to decide. “If I help you,” I said, “are you going to try to kill me again?” What a stupid question, I thought. Like he’s going to say ‘Yes’ to that?

“No . . . I swear,” he sighed. "I won’t.” From somewhere deep in my memory came a recollection of a story about a scorpion and a frog. You may have heard it . . . The one where the scorpion begs the frog to take him across the river, but the frog refuses, because he’s afraid the scorpion will sting him? And the scorpion promises the frog faithfully that he would never do that. And the frog figures, Oh hell, why not? So he gives the scorpion a lift.

I stood and tucked the revolver inside my waistband in the back of my pants. I walked over to the tree trunk and tried to lift it. It didn’t budge. I tried putting my shoulder into it and using my legs to apply force. I slipped and fell in the mud. Same result on the second and third efforts. “Come on!” the man on the ground pleaded, “The water . . . it’s getting . . . too close!” From the looks of him, he might bleed out before he drowned. I still hadn’t done anything to tend to his wound. Looked like a gunshot to me.

33

I dropped to my knees, next to the tree trunk, and began digging with my bare hands. "There’s no more time!” he shouted frantically. I looked over my shoulder. The water was now so high that he was straining to hold his head up just to stay above it. He was right.  There was no more time. I walked around, splashing in the rising water to position myself in front of him. I knelt down again and scooped my arms under his armpits. He screamed in agony.

“Grab on,” I said. We held one another in a tight bear hug and I strained, putting everything I had into the effort to free him. He screamed again from the pain in his shoulder, where the blood was coming from. Then, he suddenly popped out from under the trunk like a cork from a champagne bottle, and I fell backward into the water.  A moment later, he was helping me up, and before I knew it, reaching behind me for the gun.

The scorpion couldn’t help himself. Midway across the stream, he breaks his promise and stings the frog. And in the process, seals both their fates. He couldn’t stop himself.  It was just his nature to do it.

Instinctively, I elbowed him in the face, stepped back and pulled out the gun. I hesitated perhaps a second, just enough time for him to hold up his good arm, as if pleading for mercy. I fired twice. He fell. I walked to him, put the gun to his head at point blank range. I began applying pressure on the trigger with my finger. Something stopped me. I could kill him if I had to, but, lying there on the ground, wounded and bleeding, he no longer seemed a threat. He might live, or he might not.

His blood had splattered all over my arm and chest. I think maybe some even got on my face.

I felt a wave of panic course through me, and reached instinctively for my missing cell phone. Not knowing what else to do, I knelt down beside him and pressed the bloodied tips of my index and middle fingers against his neck, checking for a pulse. Faint or non-existent. I couldn’t tell which.

34

Ty Hamilton

I sat there on my knees, thinking about what had just happened. My shirt and the thighs of my denim jeans were now covered in blood, where I had unconsciously wiped my hands. But I had other, more immediate concerns. I was cold, and I was wet. I had no shelter, and no way off the island. True, I did have the boat, but without gasoline to run the motor, it was just too dangerous to put out into the rapidly flowing current in the darkness.

If I was going to save the other man—if he was still alive—and if I was going to survive myself, I was going to have to start a fire. Hypothermia was a very real threat, and I could end up dead if I didn’t get warm,and quick. Already I was beginning to shiver as my body tried to maintain heat.

I had always intended to put together a survival kit to keep in the boat, but I had never gotten around to actually doing it. If I lived through this, I told myself, that kit was going straight to the top of my To Do list. And at the top of the list of items to be included in the kit would be some of those fire starting sticks I’d seen in sporting goods stores, as well as some matches in a floating, waterproof container, and a couple of lighters. I’ve hunted and camped in the mountains in the dead of winter. I’ve ridden snowmobiles in Alaska. But I had no idea of what it felt like to be really cold until now, soaked to the gills on a late summer’s night on a small island in the middle of a river. What I wouldn’t give to have my poncho right now.

Desperate to find something, anything, that could be used to start a fire, I searched the contents of the boat. I grabbed the red plastic gas can and shook it. There was just a bit of gasoline remaining. Not enough to run the engine, but maybe enough to start a fire. What could I use for kindling? Everything on the island was soaked. Then I remembered that I had my wallet. Paper money. Receipts. Photographs.

Getting colder by the minute, I grabbed a couple of rocks from the water’s edge. I scraped some fallen needles from the pine tree into a loose pile. They were wet, but I hoped they might ignite once I got a small flame going. Next, I broke off some twigs and laid them out carefully. In the middle of it all I placed all my paper money – all fourteen dollars of it—along with my receipt from the convenience store. I felt a wave of excitement. Many times, back in the day, I’d seen MacGyver do more with less on television.

I poured the last drops of gasoline from the can onto the kindling pile, picked up the rocks, and began striking one against the other. Over and over. And over again. Nothing. This went on for about ten minutes before I shouted, “SCREW THIS!” And threw one of the rocks toward the river in frustration. It hit the side of the boat’s outboard motor with a clank! I was shivering uncontrollably now, and my teeth were chattering. My mind was beginning to shut down. I was ready to give up. At that moment, I was seriously considering throwing myself into the river to expedite the inevitable.

As I said, my mind was shutting down, so I don’t know where the idea came from, but, there it was, right in front of me. I doubt I would have thought of it had the rock not hit the motor. I ran over to the dead man, pulled the shirt off his torso. Moving quickly, I scooped up the kindling pile that I had so carefully stacked earlier, and tossed what I could into the shirt. I then bundled it all up and took it to the rear of the boat. There was water on the floor, so I laid it all out on the seat. I spotted a couple of flat rocks a few feet away, and went for the larger of them. I lifted the shirt and slid the flat rock beneath it.

I hadn’t remembered to check for fuel earlier in the day, and I had never gotten around to preparing a survival kit, but the one thing I did do right was to keep a small tool box in the boat. I flipped open the latches and found a spark plug socket and snapped it onto its ratchet. I pulled the lead and set to the task of removing a plug from one of the cylinders. Seconds later, the lead was reattached to the plug, which was now placed in the middle of the kindling pile. I could only hope that the gasoline had not all evaporated or been washed away. That at least some small amount of it had soaked into the kindling. I would know in a moment. I pulled the start cord. I could see blue sparks jumping the gap between the center and ground electrodes, but nothing happened. I pulled again. Same result. “Third time’s the charm,” I said with false confidence, and pulled again. And again, nothing. I removed my baseball cap and began flogging the motor. “COME ON, YOU SON OF A BITCH!” I shouted. I put my cap back on, pulled it down over my forehead, and heaved on the cord for the fourth time with all my strength. I fell over backward when the cord broke off.

I lay there, flat on my back in four inches of water that had accumulated in the bottom of the johnboat. Damn my luck! It was true. No good deed goes unpunished. Had I not attempted to help a dying stranger, I would be sitting in my truck, warm and dry. Heading back to my miserable life at home. Now, all that was left was to get up and jump into the water. Let it all end. Maybe it was for the best. Maybe it was meant to—I smelled smoke!

35

Ty Hamilton

Something was burning. I sat upright, and could not believe my eyes. With the final pull of the cord, the spark plug had done its job. The kindling had ignited! It wasn’t a roaring fire, by any means. But it was a start, and it renewed my hope, my will to live. I scrambled to the rear of the boat, retrieved the flat rock and the burning kindling. Very carefully, shielding the small fire from the wind with my free hand and my body, I took it over to the pile of wood that I had originally stacked. A couple of times, the fire nearly went out, and I had to blow on it to revive it. I placed it on the ground and began stacking wood on and around it. There were plenty of fallen limbs. I looked for the ones that appeared to be dead and, hopefully, drier, but it was hard to determine exactly what I was getting in the darkness. My efforts paid off, and in time, I began to warm up in front of the fire, which had grown in intensity to a respectable size. I stripped naked, except for my baseball cap, which I kept on to keep the rain out of my eyes, and placed my clothing on sticks beneath an evergreen branch close to the fire to dry them out. In time, I began to feel warmth soaking into my body. I could think more clearly.