Oliver Benjamin
speaking about that man that the police were looking for?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Oh, didn’t you hear? They caught him an hour ago.”
“Caught him?” I gasped, disbelieving.
“Well, not exactly,” she explained as if telling a juicy bit of
gossip. “They were looking around for him on the beach and
suddenly these coconuts started to fall from the sky. They even
knocked a couple of the police out. But before they could shoot at him
he did a perfect swan dive into the water.”
“Did he get away?” Oscar asked.
“Have you seen the water around Samrin?” I said. “It’s only
about a foot deep.”
The girl nodded. “Personally I don’t know why he didn’t just
turn himself in, but they say he was crazy. Killed his wife and
tortured his poor daughter too. It’s just as well, don’t you think?”
I remained silent.
“Sorry,” said the girl apprehensively, turned around and put on
her walkman. I looked out the window to follow the last molten drop
of the sun drip below the horizon. A tremendous weight tugged at my
heart. First Yippee, and now Tree. Death was striking down all those
close to me. It was as if it was trying to mock me with its capricious
displays of might. “You’re next,” it was saying, “Give yourself up nice
and easy-like and no one else gets hurt.”
I had a slightly different perspective now. What was my
personal crisis compared to the story of this amazing man? How
many more stories like his existed in the world? Tragedies of
misfortune and suffering. What did I have to complain about?
He wrote: We’re made mostly of water. And now he was back
there at the source, where we would all return someday. For the time
being, Oscar and I would skim over the surface of that water in the
speedboat, only to leave it far behind, ascending to a strange human
destiny as we traveled.
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