Salvation of Sam Read online

  “Sam, my friend, we all get lost at some point,” said Jonas comfortingly. “Some deal with it, some fall to pieces. I took the latter path and it was a mountainous climb to get back up. I guess in a way I’ve never really dealt with anything in my life, because I still run out here every weekend to escape. I’m always running, always trying to lose myself for one reason or another.” Jonas took in a long look of the dolphin. Not only was the situation beyond belief, but there was a certain cry of desperation in the way the creature looked back at him. A look that seemed to share and understand Jonas’s grief. Jonas swallowed hard and nodded.

  “But you know what Sam? It’s damn well not good enough. I won’t sit around here and let it happen again.” Jonas drew back his shoulders and puffed out his chest, desperate to lay waste to the pain in his knee. “Just you hang on a little longer buddy and I will save you Sam. You’ll get back to the water. Just you wait. I will save you. I will. What I couldn’t do for Jolene, I will do for you.”

  Jonas tried his best to ignore the throbbing pain in his knee as he hobbled away down the forest track, frequently looking back over his shoulder as part of him was reluctant to abandon Sam. Aware that the afternoon sun would only be around for another couple of hours, Jonas pushed himself on, breaking into an awkward limping trot. Death wasn’t going to get the better of him this time. This was his chance to be the hero which he had never before been able to summon enough courage from within, to be.

  Jonas knew that he had to hurry, but as Sam was left further and further behind, Jonas’s progress slowed. Knowing that retracing his steps back to Sam’s location would take him further from civilization, he had decided to push on ahead where he knew a small village lay just a few miles through the woods. The injured knee was hindering him and delivering him ever increasing pain with each and every footstep.

  Before long, at a cross-roads in the forest path, Jonas stopped at a fallen tree trunk to gather his bearings. But, in drawing his breath, he noticed that the familiar forest around him now looked so different. The paths travelled so many times before were becoming confused through panic and sorrow. Jonas had stumbled his way there navigating around trees and had cut his way past ferns to take short cuts, all in familiar surroundings. Everything had been in its usual arrangement, but somehow now everything had surreptitiously shifted into a maze like configuration.

  Jonas bent at the waist and gasped for air, his chest pounding hard as he looked around to try and get his bearings. He drew a few deep breaths, knowing that Sam’s salvation was in his hands. There appeared to him to be too many paths, too many options. He knew that one was a path which was ready to draw him back and retrace his lost steps to Sam. Wasted steps. He knew that others would lead him off into the unknown, deeper into the forest or towards the edge of the earth. None of the directions seemed right however. His instincts told him that the village lay off the beaten track over to the east, through the thickets, but he wasn’t sure that he could trust his instincts right now through the pain.

  But he surely couldn’t be lost right now, he just couldn’t. Not when so much was at stake. One decision.

  One moment in time.

  Holding his breath for silence, a faint sound of a voice reached his ears. Immediately turning his head to the source of the noise, Jonas peered into the dense forest, trying to pick out movement. There. Behind the big patch of ferns, someone singing to themselves. “Hello?” called Jonas, his throat dry, selfishly wishing for a moment that he hadn’t given the last of his water to Sam. “Hello? Is someone there? I need a little help. Hello?”

  Jonas watched impatiently as the dark shape of a person made their way through the thickets, brushing them aside like someone trying to tread water. “Hello?” an inquisitive voice replied. A woman.

  “Hello?” inquired Jonas. “I’m over here.”

  “Just a moment!” came the reply.

  Jonas sat down on the fallen tree trunk, ignoring the uncomfortable nature of his seat, instead focusing on the help that was about to come his way. The chance to make good on his promise to Sam.

  A young woman in a dark blue track suit stepped out of the thick bed of ferns and onto the path. She brushed stray foliage from about her long, slender legs and stood upright, hands on hips, greedily gathering in deep breaths.

  “Hi there, I was just out for a hike. Is something wrong?” she asked, looking at the red-faced Jonas.

  “Yeah,” replied Jonas, a mixture of relief and pain in his words. “I’ve hurt my knee and it’s burning me up with every step. I need to get to the village to get some help.”

  “What happened?” asked the young woman, wiping her brow before removing a small band from her hair and letting long brown locks fall about her shoulders.

  Jonas looked at her, momentarily distracted by her unkempt attractiveness. She looked to Jonas to be a good few years younger than him, a lot younger than he felt at the moment anyway. Flushed in the face from her obvious exertions, Jonas could sense an air of confident pragmatism within her demeanour.

  “Um, I just stumbled and fell awkwardly back there. Feels like I’ve twisted my knee or something. It’s probably nothing serious but I’m just in a hurry to…”

  “Ok,” interrupted the woman. Put your leg up on the log there and I’ll take a look. I’ve done a little first aid. You have to be careful out here, there’s more dangers than people realise.”

  “Oh, I’m out here all the time,” replied Jonas, wondering if he sounded a little too full of misplaced confidence sitting there in his black suit. “I just came blindly around this corner and there was this…”

  “Can you roll up your trouser leg?” the woman interjected again, her chest still breathing hard.

  “Um, not really. These trousers are quite snug,” explained Jonas. “It’s been a long while since this suit has seen the light of day. I’ve gained a few pounds since…well, since my wedding day.”

  The woman smiled politely at him and moved to stand close to him. She took her backpack from her shoulder and dropped it to the ground. “I’ve got some water in here. Looks like you need some,” she said looking at his flushed face.

  “Thanks,” said Jonas. “The knee’s been painful, and I’ve been walking for some distance on it.”

  “You shouldn’t aggravate it. Now, can you just drop those trousers, and I’ll take a look.”

  “Excuse me?” said Jonas, his hand hovering near the offered water bottle.

  “Your trousers. I’ll need to see the knee, and if the trouser leg can’t come up, it’ll have to come down. Don’t worry yourself. I’m a big girl, I’ve seen it all before,” smiled the woman.

  “Oh right. Ok, well, um, Jonas.”

  “Huh?”

  “My name, it’s Jonas. I usually like people to know my name before they get me out of my trousers.” Jonas joked, trying to deflect the awkwardness he was starting to feel about the situation.

  “Elizabeth. Pleased to meet you. Now get them off and take some of this water, you still look pretty flushed, I don’t want you passing out on me.”

  Jonas did as instructed, grateful for the help and any comfort which could be brought to his knee. Easing down his trousers, he let them drop to his ankles and rested back against the fallen trunk.

  Elizabeth squat down in front of him and lightly touched his knee. Jonas quivered slightly at the feel of her gentle touch. Her hands were warm and he could feel her soft breath like a zephyr against his inner thigh.

  “Well it’s pretty swollen,” said Elizabeth, “and there seems to be a bit of bruising already forming. We need to get you to a doctor or home so you can rest up.”

  “No, I can’t,” said Jonas. “I need to go and find help for….” Jonas thought for a moment about the absurdity of mentioning the dolphin. “For my friend way back there. He’s not in good shape at all, much worse than me. I’m supposed to be the rescue party.”

  Elizabeth, looked up at him, still cupping his knee. “Well,” said she, “you�
��re a right pair aren’t you. I don’t have a phone that I can call out on, and we’re still some way from the village. All I can do is….”

  “Elizabeth!”

  Jonas jumped at the sound of booming voice from his right. He turned his head and stared wide-eyed at the bald-headed, well-muscled man approaching them. His eyes then dropped down to look at the top of Elizabeth’s head near his groin.

  “Mark!” Elizabeth bolted upright.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the Herculean man screamed as he forcefully approached. “Can’t you control yourself woman?”

  “What?” protested Elizabeth. “I was just…”

  “Don’t give me anymore of your crap,” said Mark now standing face to face with Elizabeth. “Is this any way to mend our relationship? We come out for a hike and you leave me way behind. I turn my back for five minutes and you’re here with this guy with his trousers down around his ankles. Christ, I knew you had a commitment problem Liz, but…but who the hell is this anyway?” asked Mark sternly, jabbing a burly thumb towards Jonas.

  “Oh, I’m no-one,” stuttered Jonas.

  “Who asked you?” shouted Mark in his face. Jonas reached down for his trousers but felt two great vices on his shoulders preventing him from getting down that low.

  “Mark,” shouted Elizabeth. “Let him go. I was just trying to help him.”

  “I’ll bet you were,” sneered Mark, digging his talons further into Jonas. Jonas suddenly felt himself being dragged from the log and was stumbling across the track. The momentum saw Jonas hop and lurch away from his assailant, his arms unsure whether to protect himself or grab for his trousers. Unfortunately for Jonas, the combination of pain in his knee and obtrusive trousers around his feet conspired to topple him to the ground face first. Jonas yelped in pain as his face hit the ground and Mark closed in on his fallen prey.

  With Elizabeth pounding on Mark’s wide back, Jonas cowered as he felt the blows rain in on his head and the crushing weight of his attacker bearing down on his back. All he could hear was Elizabeth’s screaming and the sickening sound of fist meeting cheek. He had experienced nothing like this on earth before. He felt alive, adrenaline sweeping through his veins, but at the same time the pain and the terror he felt for his life, made him feel nauseous and put him on the brink of passing out.

  Before any darkness could descend on him, Jonas felt the entire mass of Mark lift from his back. There was a dull aching all over his body, and he wanted to move his limbs to try and shake the pains away, but all he could do was roll his battered head and spit blood to the ground.

  Suddenly his knee seemed inconsequential, but he still remembered how he’d hurt it in the first place. Sam. Look at Sam’s hero now, Jonas said to himself, really not wishing to have a mirror placed in front of him for some time to come.

  Jonas lay there, sucking in as deep of a breath as the pains in his chest would allow. He rolled over onto his back and from his supine position he watched Elizabeth storm away from the scene, Mark following her, the harsh words directed at each other spoiling the picturesque woodland scene. As their arguments faded away into the distance, Jonas rolled back over and forced himself laboriously up on to his knees. As he stood upright, nursing his battered face, he wondered how much time had passed since leaving Sam.

  He had no real idea of how far he had come and he figured he was not much closer to saving the desperate dolphin. Pulling up his trousers and willing himself on for Sam, Jonas started off again staggering down the path. He considered briefly as to how far Mark and Elizabeth may had gotten, and wondered if somewhere down the path he would find a battered and bruised woman lying in the ferns, a little embittered by the fact that Elizabeth had been more concerned about storming off than seeing if Mark had punched him to death.

  Slightly disoriented, Jonas was no longer sure in which direction the village lay, so he only had just the path at his feet to guide him. Still spitting blood from his pained mouth, he couldn’t ever have imagined himself getting into this state. All through his school years he’d managed to avoid confrontation and fights, instead using humour to charm his way from sticky situations. The closest he had come to drawing fists was during his last year of Comprehensive school when his girlfriend came crying to him that Jonas’s friend Darren had started calling her unsavoury names because of her mixed heritage.

  Jonas, filled with bravado had stormed the school grounds looking for this adolescent bigot and had found him sitting alone in the corridor leading to the swimming pool changing rooms. As his eyes had fallen upon his friend all his anger has flushed from his veins and he was left fighting to control his nerves. Instead of clenched fists he’d just waded right in with quiet questions to Darren, asking what was going on, why was he doing this and above all, did he want their friendship to last.

  Jonas had felt pathetic afterwards, and whilst Darren had acquiesced to his demands to stop with the comments, he was probably off somewhere laughing to others about how weak Jonas had been and how anyone else would have picked a fight to protect their girl. “And that was the closest I’d ever been to a fight,” Jonas mused to himself, cursing his weakness. Not that the encounter with Mark could exactly be called a fight, more of a one-sided pounding really.

  Finding himself on the path again, Jonas realised that he found something familiar about his current location. It had taken what had felt like an eternity to make any headway down the forest track from the scene of his attack. But he had pushed stubbornly and determinedly on. He took a small side path, believing it to lead to the village which he was searching for, but instead saw another recognisable place from an alternative perspective. A low wall which signified to him a place which he had recently seen but from a different view.

  He approached the stone wall perimeter of the cemetery and leant against it, looking over the yawning death bed before him. He hadn’t ever been over this half of the graveyard to have witnessed it from this point of view. Why should he have? Jolene had just been laid to rest down the other end of the cemetery near the entrance. Even from way back here he could see the bright array of fresh flowers that had been offered out of sympathy to her that very day. All the deceased at this end were just anonymous names carved in stone, mysterious vessels of grievance for people he didn’t know. He had arrived at a familiar world that loss and emptiness had filled.

  Jonas looked across the cemetery, to where a path swept in a long curve, separating the cremation plot from that of the regular interred masses. In the smaller plot at the apex of the curve, a small gathering of people were huddled together, all heads bowed, staring at the ground. At the head of the group stood a vicar, draped in a white robe conducting the ceremony, his mouth working hard but his words not reaching Jonas. A small child pulled at the leg of the nearest adult, probably not understanding why everyone was sadly staring at the upturned earth.

  Jonas watched the black horde and the pang of sorrow he felt for them suddenly transformed into a stab of optimism. Here were people that could help him help Sam. Jonas touched his sore face, wondering whether his grizzly appearance would further hinder any efforts to gate-crash the ceremony. Part of him wanted to bound across the freshly cut grass and grab a hold of the nearest black lapels and plead with someone to help. Jonas rolled his head and let it fall backwards, letting his eyes gaze lazily at the sky. The lowering sun washed across the tip of his nose and the warm sensation was welcomed.

  It wasn’t right, he couldn’t just invade the union of grief. Jonas turned his gaze across the way to where the mound of fresh flowers lay, a brightly coloured quilt for the resting Jolene. Before he knew it, he found himself being pulled back there. He sat on the wall, swung his legs over and towards the fresh grave of his wife, his sombre strides took him.

  Jonas looked down at the disturbed earth and the colourful flowers that tried their best to add beauty to the occasion. He had left the scene earlier that day with the coffin still exposed, still staring up at the Heavens. But now it was bur
ied, the bouquets and wreaths covering the ground within which she lay.

  Suddenly he was in no hurry to make his way back into the forest. He knew his efforts to find help in order to cheat death on Sam’s behalf were really in vain. He glanced over his shoulder to see if the funeral party was any closer to breaking rank. The mourners were still huddled together and Jonas’s eyes drifted from their private moment to look around the rest of the grounds. The sense of doom that the tree lined cemetery imbued upon him, suddenly drained all of his energy. He suddenly felt torn between running to the funeral party for help, between leaving them be in their mourning, between getting back to the path and finding his own way to salvation and between leaving everything to the fates and to just remain there by Jolene’s side.

  When was the last time that he’d remembered how alone he was? Today, today was an exception. The dolphin, the brief company of a lost soul, saying so much to Jonas through having said nothing. Jonas remembered something Jolene had said once to him, “I hear the voices in the street. I hear one telling me not to cross the road, I hear another crying constantly when I’m trying to get to sleep. Screams for help.”

  Jonas squat down and put his nose to some of the flowers, trying not to read the inscriptions on the cards, wanting to enjoy their beauty and not the dark messages they disguised. Jonas felt again at his battered face.

  Just by the side of the car park, a small, neat, single storied building of red brick stood. The Chapel of Rest. Jonas’s attention moved towards it, and wondered if anyone would be inside right now, or perhaps a phone would be available.

  “I can’t stay Jolene. I’m sorry. I have someone to save. I will be back.” With his words, Jonas turned and walked a lonely man across the cemetery, leaving Jolene in peace for the second time that day. He crossed the car park and tentatively pushed open the heavy wooden door and stepped inside.