Salvation of Sam
Copyright 2015 Lee A Jackson
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Ever since his youth, the forest had been an adventure playground for Jonas. A place to run, jump and climb within a world of isolation and freedom. A world away from the health and safety conscious confines of the modern world. Away from the collective aggressive mind-set of the society around him; fighting neighbours; customers causing arguments with shop tellers; the incessant noise created by the pace of the modern want-it-all world.
Feet pounding along the mulch track, Jonas rounded the corner by the familiar landmark of the petrified stump, that art installation of nature which appeared to wear several tortured faces upon its surface. Striding boldly past it in his own world, his mind enjoying the quiet, Jonas suddenly stumbled, veering sideways to avoid collision with an obstruction on the path.
Trying to keep his balance, and reaching out to the nearest tree for support, he let slip the bottle of water he was carrying, as he felt a sharp pain, a sudden pull in his knee as he stumbled up a verge.
Having cursed his luck before realising what truly was in front of him, Jonas hopped and supported himself against the tree. He had nearly trodden on something which had been poking out from beneath a grey, spongy blanket before him.
A large obstruction
A hefty, bulky body.
The mass of the body was shuddering and shaking violently underneath the wet cover. The sudden vibrations at the feet of Jonas pulled his focus back into focus. A sudden sense of grief gripped him as he watched this body, trapped in a foreign location, continue to convulse and shudder.
Jonas pushed himself off the tree and hobbled around the fallen mass, trying to quieten down his own pain in order to check for signs of obvious wounds to the unfortunate soul at his feet. Finding none, Jonas tentatively reached out to touch leathery but smooth skin. He tried as best he could to look underneath the wet, grey cover, lifting it from the centre. The cover was of a sponge-like material which Jonas assumed had been left soaking wet by whoever had left it there, most likely out of a hollow gesture to abolish guilt. It offered some protection against the heat of the summer’s day. Lighter dry patches, however, were already beginning to form on its grey surface.
Jonas patted the side of the body gently, relieved that he could see no blood anywhere after his rudimentary attempt at triage.
It hadn’t taken long. Looking down at what was before him, taking in and beholding the sight had acted as a temporary anaesthetic to his knee. Very rapidly the pain running through him was numbed as he saw clearly a tail and flippers flailing limply out from underneath the spongy wrap. The protruding flippers slapping gently against the forest track, almost appearing to be applauding the comedic arrival of Jonas.
Laying down a gentle, consoling hand was the only gesture of comfort that Jonas could think to offer. But, as small as the gesture had seemed, with consistent petting, the dolphin appeared to calm itself from its tremors, as if just needing a bit of reassurance.
Jonas tentatively squat down, nursing his knee, easing himself further down to sit with his legs stretched out on the path, his back against the solid mass of the dolphin’s side. He stroked the dolphin’s flipper beside him to offer further comfort to the abandoned creature. The sun was late into the afternoon sky and the trees were casting long shadows over the ground. The forest was more than 50 miles from the nearest sea. To be meandering idly through the woods only to stumble across a dolphin blocking the path ahead was somewhat unexpected, Jonas mused to himself.
Feeling through the trouser leg of his suit, Jonas inspected his knee for signs of bruises, fractures or breaks. He stroked at the painfully swollen area as he stared around into the dense forest, hoping for other signs of life. But with the solitude of the forest, Jonas realised he was unlikely to run into anyone else. Here he was, knee hurting and a stranded dolphin weighing on his conscience. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t just wander off and pretend that he hadn’t seen it. Not after the day he’d already had. The funeral had been tough enough to get through, without extra guilt on his soul.
Jonas listened to the stillness, something he valued and enjoyed but now would have given anything to have had that peace broken. He listened for other signs of life, but no-one else appeared to be in their locality. The area of the forest was as deserted as it always had been, in a way, beautifully devoid of other people who could spoil his private retreat. Just to make sure, Jonas called out loudly, trying to hail anyone in the immediate distance. With no replies coming back to him, Jonas looked back down the path from where he’d come. The track wasn’t wide enough for any large transportation, and was only ever used for the Forestry Commission’s 4x4 vehicles. What was going on? Was this all for real?
A dolphin?
How had this creature arrived here, and why oh why, did it have to land in Jonas’s neck of the woods?
Jonas patted the dolphin’s fin again, realising that as much as the dolphin needed the comfort of a stranger, he himself was, in a way, just as grateful for the company.
“I was lost once,” explained Jonas, taking the opportunity to talk to the dolphin, an injection of further comfort. “Many years ago when I was like four, or something. We were in the city, shopping. Mum, dad, sister and I. Walking in and out of shops, avoiding crowds of people that never seemed to see me. Maybe it was because I was too small to be noticed. Anyway, there was a split second of panic. Sheer dread when I turned around and I didn’t see any of the few familiar faces that I should have. This was now outside on the street. People everywhere. Blurred faces rushing past me with their heads in the clouds, and little me, frozen. Mum, dad and my sister, they had vanished. Simply gone in the blink of an eye. I was too hopelessly-scared that I couldn’t even cry. I can almost physically feel the sensation now just thinking about it. That stomach-churning hopelessness. I just felt useless and invisible. What could I do? How is a four year old child supposed to act in a situation like that? I didn’t know in which direction to turn, I didn’t know who to call out to first. I was just frozen. The tears only actually came out of relief when, from nowhere, mum swept me up in her arms. But instead of cuddling me, giving me a comforting hug, she proceeded to scold me for getting lost. It’s probably the only time I actually welcomed a smack on the legs though, even if it had all been their fault for losing me.”
Jonas looked over towards the dolphin’s head and smiled. “See, no matter how lost we get,” he advised, “we’re always somewhere, and never too far away from help. Even if we feel we’re isolated and in a foreign land, lost forever.” Jonas thought he could see a thoughtful gaze in the dolphin’s eye.
Jonas looked around the forest again, hoping still to see someone who could help him, or at least explain away this situation. He longed for someone to come along and help him make a decision about the fate of this poor creature. He didn’t feel that the weight of its dilemma should rest solely upon his shoulders. Jonas pushed himself up onto his feet to test his knee and survey the scene some more.
He hobbled around to the head of the dolphin, almost hesitant to look too deeply into its eyes. Despite being free, the dolphin was clearly still trapped. It had nowhere to swim to and no water to aid its survival other than the wet sponge blanket that someone had
thoughtfully left it with.
‘Thoughtfully,’ pondered Jonas, shaking his head.
The dolphin was here, lost in the forest, an unfamiliar domain. Jonas imagined himself stranded out at sea and could see himself being panicked and as scared as the creature must have felt within. As distraught as it must have felt, there were no more outbreaks of tremors since Jonas had gotten there, the dolphin had just lain still. Only the movement of its eyes, an occasional twitch of a fin showed any signs of life.
The forest. The place where Jonas would run to in order to escape everyone. Ironically, once immersed in the depths of the trees, he never truly felt alone, mainly because he always had someone to run back to. But this dolphin, thought Jonas, gingerly laying a hand on its tough smooth nose, had nowhere to swim to. No friend to call for help. No loved one or sibling to nurse it into the afterlife. No essential water.
Water!
Jonas looked back down the path, looking for the bottle of water he’d taken from the wake. Jonas saw it lying in the grass verge near where he had stumbled, sunlight glinting off the plastic. Jonas hobbled across the path and fetched it. The bottle was half empty and against the bulk of the dolphin, the tiny amount of liquid looked pathetic. Jonas silently asked himself whether it would be wrong to taunt and tease the poor creature with a few splashes of water in the container.
Would it just get its hopes up?
“Hey listen. I don’t know your name,” Jonas spoke again. “Hell I don’t know if you’re a he or a she dolphin. But look, I am sorry. I am sorry that you’ve been left me with as your guardian angel. I am going to give you some water. It’s just a little ok, but your blanket thing, it’s starting to dry out. I understand you don’t suffocate, that you overheat before that happens. I just remember reading that somewhere. But you can have the little that’s left in this bottle, I’m sorry it’s all I have. You know, there are no bodies of water for miles around here, not that I could even get you there of course.”
Jonas emptied the last dregs of his drinking water directly onto the dolphin’s head just forward of its blowhole. The meagre splashes looked pitiful tickling down its skull and Jonas hoped the dolphin wouldn’t begrudge him this meaningless gesture. Jonas patted the dolphin on the nose and returned to sit down against its side.
“Ok, I’m not going to patronise you by calling you Flipper or anything,” Jonas continued, clutching at his knee. The dull throbbing ache raising a sickness in his stomach. “I guess in the sea you’d have your own identity, so I’ll just call you Sam. It’s generic. Asexual. So, how’d you get here, huh? How do anyone of us get to where we are? Some bastard dumped you here out of malice? A horrible mistake that you’re having to pay for with…with your life?” Jonas took a moment of silent reverie. Through the ludicrousness of the situation it was only now that death was about to raise its ugly head again in his life.
Jolene had been his childhood sweetheart. After 18 years he had just laid her to rest, that very morning. He had skipped out on the wake to escape to the forest, and he realised that he had been running from the painful and tender memories of her enduring illness for years. Deep down inside he told her that he’d never forget her, but it had to be on his terms. He couldn’t bear seeing the photos of her in the newspaper, the pictures of her looking angelic on their wedding day. He didn’t want to see the photographs of them together hanging around their home. It was too much for him to bear every day since she had passed away in the hospital and so he’d hidden all traces of her in a box in the attic and ignored all offers of visits from relatives.
“None of them understand, Sam. Really they don’t. All the questions about how I was feeling after the funeral today. Seeing her being put in the ground like that, that’s the lasting memory I carry with me. Not of sitting in the backyard, laughing over a bottle of wine. No, just the cold harsh look of death on her pallid face in the funeral home. I don’t want to be reminded of her every day. I don’t, because when I think of her, that’s what I think of. Shit, why is there no-one around here?” Jonas pounded the ground in frustration.
“I’ve never experienced loss before, Sam. She was my life and it feels like I never, well, I say never, but I’m sure I did, show her enough love. It’s hard to keep giving so much away of yourself before you start changing and subsequently your partner doesn’t like this person you’ve changed into from when you first met. Yet it’s them that’s changed you. Then it’s so hard. So goddamned hard. You try harder to change again and make a million efforts to get back to the person you were, but the goalposts have been moved. So we were left in limbo. Arguing. Fighting. Laughing occasionally and a little love, just enough to keep the bond together because we’re all too proud to be the one to say it’s over…and then she gets struck down with this illness. Then I couldn’t leave her. Then it was over for good, and I never had time to say sorry.”
Jonas wiped a tear from his cheek and patted Sam on the fin to make sure he was still with him. “Did you have a partner, Sam? Kids? No, no kids for us. Jolene, bless her, had long before the terminal illness caught an infection that left her barren. It’s all I could think about the night after she’d died. The fact that I never really knew if it bothered her, because she never said and I was too blind and ignorant to ask. Some things though you don’t want to ask, don’t want to find out. We don’t like the truth, it’s a big flaw of our human nature, you see Sam. We’d rather lie to others and mostly to ourselves about what we want and don’t listen properly when someone speaks. It’s easier staying silent sometimes.
“You guys, what, whistle or something to each other under the water? Maybe you can say a lot more with your squeaks and clicks then we could ever say with our convoluted quagmire of words and lies. I wanted kids myself. Down the line, you know. Not that she’d deprived me. I don’t think like that at all. But everyone was so distraught and busy feeling sorry for her empty womb that no-one ever stopped to see if her heart was breaking. Me included.
“I should have saved her. But I couldn’t stop her heart from breaking and I wasn’t tough enough to fight off whatever it was inside her that was taking her from me. I feel like I’ve failed her and myself. I should have saved her. There’s a cemetery a couple of miles away that’s a testament to my lack of bravery. She’s just been interred there today. It’s where I was coming from, why I’m wearing this suit.” Jonas pondered for a moment, lost in his thoughts.
“You know Sam, I never even made the decision of how she’d spend eternity because I didn’t know the way she wanted it. Interment or cremation? Why didn’t we speak of these things? It sounds stupid now but I think we probably knew less about each other than our raging sex drives first duped us into believing, and we never in the end had enough time to find out the small details. The things that matter most. And now here you are, Sam.
“Do you know? I mean, do you know that I can’t save you either? Do you know you’re dying? I’ll sit here and I’ll keep you company my friend, but I can’t tell your family and friends. I can’t lay you peacefully to rest. What happens when dolphins die? Are you just food for sharks? Is there anyone to mourn for you? You’ll probably get a few column inches you know, in the local newspaper and, oh crap, that means they’ll want to speak to me if they find out I was the one who discovered you. Then I will have to eulogise about you.
“Well what can we say about Sam? That we hardly knew him? Assuming you are a ‘he’. I could inappropriately use the fish out of water maxim for finding you in the forest, but hey, here’s me worrying about making of fool of myself while you’re here doing the dying. Sorry Sam. I guess you’re weak. You’re not moving much there. I think your blanket will dry out completely before long and that’ll be it. Where were you going, Sam? Where were you trying to get to? Where did you come from? Surely someone somewhere has to be missing a dolphin.” Jonas shook his head in disbelief at his own thoughts.
“I don’t know, do people poach dolphins? Were you to be some trophy exhibit in a private zoo?
It’s no fun being lost, or feeling lost is it? You lose someone and you feel empty. I cried with my pillow all night after Jolene had passed. I was on the floor because I couldn’t sleep in our bed. And, ironically the following day I came out to this forest as I couldn’t deal with everyone asking if I was ok. Of course I wasn’t, right? But again the first few times I’d been asked I’d lied and said I was fine. But losing her just made me want to lose myself. I ran out here, thinking maybe I’d trip and crack my skull open, or plough into the biggest tree, or just keep running till I fell off the edge of the earth. But as I was running, Sam, I felt selfish for feeling like that. Like I felt guilty for being alive and she about to be laid to rest. I tell you Sam, these emotions they have no sense. They all get scrambled up in your head or your heart or wherever they reside and all end up just getting shed in buckets full of tears and you don’t know why. Useless tears that have no purpose other than to make you feel embarrassment and shame because you break down in tears in public. You go to pieces at the slightest thing like hearing a song in a shop that reminds you of the time you surprised your girl with a picnic for your first wedding anniversary. Reminds you how that same song was playing on the car radio when you rolled up in the park and removed her blindfold.
“Life. It sucks. Death, it sucks even more for the ones that are left living.
“I won’t forget you Sam, my dolphin friend in the forest. You know what I’ll do? I’ll carve a little RIP sign on that big oak over there. You need something. You can’t just go and leave this earth without some formality. I’ll come back and lay a flower at the base of the tree and have a moment of reflection. February 12th, I don’t know how old you are but February 12th will be Sam’s day. Even if it’s just me that remembers. I won’t forget, Ok Sam. Sam? Sam?”
Jonas scrambled to his feet again looking down at the helpless dolphin. The dolphin’s movements were getting less frequent, but Jonas could see it was still fighting to survive with what little strength it had left.