Commentary: A ‘Deliverance’ experience through the ‘Rear Window’

One morning last week, I almost met a murderer — and at a time and place when I was very vulnerable. It was at 6 o’clock on the Mt. Lukens fire road, where virtually nothing ever happens, let alone a homicide. As readers of my commentaries know, I hike there regularly at that time, when I have the whole of the Angeles National Forest to myself as far as the eye can see.

And so it was the other day. Or so I thought. As I strolled around the hairpin bends I noticed several hundred feet below two hikers and a dog.

I wondered idly where I would meet them on the trail when I was coming down again after reaching my turnaround spot. A few minutes later I looked down again, and now there was only one hiker, walking slowly. On the entire winding trail I couldn’t see another soul, human or canine.

“That’s odd,” I thought. “Where have they gone?” I walked on, looked again and he was still alone. I’d seen “Deliverance” the night before so I knew danger could lurk behind every tree. So, just in case the evening news that night had a story about a man who had been bludgeoned to death in broad daylight, I fished out my camera. As I got in position, he was there below me alone, but now walking from side to side — looking for a place with some soft earth, perhaps, for a shallow grave. One, two, three — click — and I got my shot.

But now something happened that I had not allowed for. Do you remember in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller, “Rear Window,” when Jimmy Stewart, a bedridden photographic journalist, suspecting that a neighbor had murdered his wife, sent him a threatening note while he watched from his own apartment, hoping to photograph the man’s reaction?

The victim was frightened out of his mind until a glint of sunlight on a ring Grace Kelly was holding showed him where his tormentor was, focusing a camera on him. At that point the walls began to close in on our Jimmy and it was pretty terrifying.

No comparable glint gave away my location — a $50 Nikon is a modest little thing unlike the gleaming professional equipment in the movie — but, amateur that I am, I had not turned off the flash. The point of light came on and in an instant the man’s head jerked up and I saw him look straight at me. He knew! And he knew that I knew.

He seemed instantly transformed into a bundle of energy and began to come up the road with long, muscular strides. There is no way out on that road, it goes up and up to Mt. Lukens seven miles away, and the brush alongside it is so thick it’s almost impenetrable.

I thought of ditching the camera so if I was hacked to death, there would be evidence that my distraught family could use to nail my assailant. But in this wild place how would anyone find it?

I looked again, and now he was much closer and moving fast. So instead I stopped and waited at my turnaround point, the bench with its glorious view over the entire Los Angeles basin, hoping to talk my way out of trouble. Either that or Grace Kelly might step out of the thick vegetation and lead me to a secluded spot.

Alas, she didn’t, but my stalker didn’t come nearer either. He caught up with his dog who had scampered ahead, gave it a good talking to for running away, turned around and, with the second man who had remained far below, they all trotted home where I now feel sure the only skeleton in the cupboard is a well-chewed bacon- and chicken-flavored bone from Petco.

So it was all fantasy. Still, it’s a nice confirmation that even in the most humdrum circumstances there is an underlying excitement to life waiting to burst through — and you can either take every precaution to keep it there or embrace its myriad magical possibilities.

I’ve always chosen to dig a bit to find what is down there. The only trouble this time is that from now on, when I tell this story, the opening sentence will be somewhat less than riveting. How about, “One morning this week I almost met an almost murderer. Nearly.”

Reg Green lives in La Cañada. His website is www.nicholasgreen.org.