WALKABOUT - Taking a Mulligan (41-45)

41

Any way you cut it, my marriage with Dianna was in ruins. Financial problems were a big part of it. Any day now, the bank would serve notice of foreclosure. And I would lose my part of the family farm that had been passed down to me because I had used it as collateral to pay for the big new house and the barn, the stables, the motorhome and horse trailer,  and all the things that Dianna needed to show all over the country on the Quarter Horse show circuit. And, of course, Dallas Remington.

I thought about all that, all the reasons I wanted a new start. All but one. The big one. The real reason.

“No,” I said aloud. “The problem’s not with them. It’s me.” I was the one I couldn’t live with. I was the one I wanted to get away from. So, there it was. The truth. Sitting with a dead man on an island in the middle of a river in severe weather can be downright therapeutic.

I looked again at the name on the driver’s license. Jared Mulligan.

42

Ty Hamilton

In golf, a Mulligan is a term used to describe a do-over, something that you do when you hit your tee shot off the first green into a water hazard. ‘Take a Mulligan,’ someone in your foursome says. And, more often than not, you do. You tee up another one and let it rip. The previous attempt is forgotten. As if it never happened. Hopefully, it will result in a long drive down the middle of the fairway, or at least something better than the first attempt. Depending upon the group you are with, you may be limited to one Mulligan per round, or you may take more. There comes a point, though, when it is deemed excessive. Taking one per hole would be considered to be in poor taste, a breach of etiquette.

Of course, there is no such thing as a Mulligan in the legitimate rules of golf. Phil Mickelson or Tiger Woods don’t take Mulligans on the PGA tour. Jack Nicholas and Arnold Palmer wouldn’t dream of it. But guys like me, hackers who will never play with big money on the line, heck yeah. I take a Mulligan from time to time.

Too bad you don’t get any do-overs in life, I lamented. Too bad you can’t just tee it up again and take a Mulligan.

I tilted my head and rubbed my chin, as I tend to do when deep in thought. I had an idea. My mind turned it over again. And again. And, yet again. I looked once more at the photograph on the driver’s license. You would have no trouble telling us apart if we were standing next to one another. But, there was more than a passing resemblance.

Too bad you don’t get any do-overs in life . . . I mean, hell, the guy’s name was like an omen in itself. Jared Mulligan. That he had literally dropped into my life from out of nowhere, only to die right in front of me, and by my hand—well, maybe that was some sort of sign. Maybe God, the Universe, Karma, whatever higher power you choose to believe in, was talking to me. He had been about to shoot me and missed when a lightning bolt knocked a tree down on him, if I needed any more proof.

Just tee it up again, Ty! Take a Mulligan!

Guys like Tiger Woods and all the others who are rich and famous can’t do it. They could never do it on the golf course. They have to follow the rules. They could never pull it off in life, either, because there is literally nowhere on the planet that they could go without being recognized. But maybe, just maybe, I could. Did I have rules that prevented me from taking a Mulligan? Would I be recognized anywhere but Page, Indiana?

There had to be a hundred reasons not to do it. And a thousand things that could go wrong. So why was I even thinking about it? More to the point, did I really have the balls to go through with it?

43

Ty Hamilton

I had acted in self-defense. It might be hard to convince a cop or prosecuting attorney, or if it ever came to it, a jury. Especially since I had tossed the gun into the river. That would look suspicious. I figured my odds of getting off without being sent to the state pen to be about fifty-fifty at best.

As I look back on it now, hindsight being twenty-twenty, I doubt my situation was really as grim as I thought at the time. And I probably should have taken a smarter course of action than the one I was contemplating, but hell, what would you do if you’d just gone through all that I had?

I sat there, naked as the day I was born, soaked to the gills in the torrential rain, staring at the dead man. Jared Mulligan. There were so many things that I wanted to ask of him, dozens of questions whose answers would determine if the idea that was forming in my head had any merit.

How did he get here? He wasn’t wearing a flotation device. And he wasn’t dressed for a day on the river.

I remembered seeing a car in the parking lot at the launching ramp. What kind it was, and what color, I couldn’t say. Maybe he had driven to the launch ramp. But why? There were no keys in his pocket.

Once again, I asked myself, How did he know my name? And, why did he try to kill me? After I’d tried to save him. Not once, but twice. I pulled him out of the river. And he tried to kill me. I pulled him out from under a tree trunk that had fallen on him. And he tried again. I’ll say this about him: Jared Mulligan was one ungrateful son of a bitch. And, another thing—Why was he bleeding when I found him in the river? It looked like he’d been shot.

So many questions. But Jared Mulligan wasn’t talking. I was going to have to find out for myself, or forget about my idea and report his death to the authorities.

I can now see that this was the moment when I reached the proverbial fork in the road. That moment when you have to decide one way or another, and once you do, you can’t change your mind.

44

Ty Hamilton

I took the granite slate that I had used as a tray for the burning kindling over to a spot no more than thirty feet from the fire and dropped to my knees to begin digging. I kept to the task, stopping occasionally to drag another log to the fire and stand next to for a couple minutes it to warm up. I was still naked. As long as the fire was burning, it would keep my clothes dry for later. To put them on now would not be of any use. In the pouring rain, they would be soaked again in no time. I had lost all track of time, and I was totally exhausted. I had dug a hole roughly seven feet in length and two feet wide, maybe three feet deep. I kept hitting tree roots and rocks. The bottom was solid rock, and kept filling with water. I couldn’t go any deeper. The sun was coming up. This was just going to have to do.

I sat down next to the fire, and for a few minutes the rain let up a bit. I was hungry, and wished I’d bought more snacks at the convenience store. I’d finished off the last of the beef jerky just before heading back to the boat ramp. Looking around the small island, I saw nothing that looked fit to eat. Maybe in another couple of days the tree bark or earthworms might have some appeal, but for now I wasn’t that desperate.

One way or another, I needed to get off the island, the sooner the better. If I chose to stay on the island and wait for rescue, I would be the prime suspect if the body was ever found.

I stood, walked over to the dead man and removed all his clothing, along with a gold necklace and a pinky ring from his right hand, put them all together on his pants, which I wrapped up in a bundle and tied the corners off. Anything that would not decompose. Mulligan had one tattoo. The Marine Corps eagle, globe, and anchor on his left shoulder, with the words, Semper Fidelis inscribed at the top. I grabbed him by the ankles to drag him to the shallow grave. His legs and my hands were all wet, and the footing was slippery. I fell on my ass three times. I needed a better plan.

45

Ty Hamilton

After studying the situation, I decided to get behind him, hook my arms under his armpits and drag him that way. Before trying that, though, I needed to at least put on my undershorts. The idea of my uncovered genitalia making contact with any part of another man, dead or alive, dictated the decision.

It was slow going, but I managed to get him next to the pit, dropping him with a thud. The rain had resumed its intensity, and the hole was already filled with water.

I looked down at the dead man. At the watery grave. The time had come. The moment of truth. Was I really going to go through with it? Once again, the rest of my life would be determined by what I did next. That seemed to be a theme for the past few hours.

“Rest in peace,” was all I could think to offer as a eulogy for this man I’d never known. I tried to nudge him into the hole with my foot, but failed to budge him. I dropped to my knees and used both hands to push him in.

The body floated. I tried pushing it down under water with one hand and scooping mud onto it with the other, but that didn’t work. I sighed heavily. This was going to be a problem. Dawn would come soon and if there was a break in the weather there might be people out in boats or helicopters, looking for survivors to rescue. Hell, they’d probably be looking for me, considering that I’d left my truck and trailer sitting unattended on the ramp. I needed to get this job done and get off the island.

I tried weighing him down with rocks, but they just slid off him and fell. I could leave him there, and cover him up with brush. Maybe wild animals would consume the remains, scatter the bones around so that no one would notice. That of course would take weeks, months, maybe, but it could be quite some time before anyone came to the island again, after all this flooding, if anyone ever came here at all. I couldn’t envision why anyone, save a modern-day Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer would want to. I doubted there were any.  In this day of Internet video games, kids never went outside anymore.

Nonetheless, I had to operate on the assumption that someone, be it a mushroom hunter, a ginseng harvester, or some fisherman just looking for a place to take a dump, would eventually come along and discover the body. It occurred to me then that I was going to one hell of a lot of trouble to hide the body of a man that I had tried to save. I was acting more like a murderer than a would-be rescuer.