by Mike Driver
“But ‘Conjure.’ You mean…like…magic?”
“You might call it magic, but I’ve seen what these folks can do…”
“Powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men,” I interrupted. “Able to change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in their bare hands….” I stopped, hoping to get Tim to crack a smile, or at least tell me to quit being such a wiseass.
He didn’t do either. Instead, he said, “You’re not far wrong, Yankee .
“Let me tell you,” he went on. “It takes a lot out of her. Did you ever notice how tired she gets after she brings something down?”
I did. Even now, Lilly was sitting cross-legged on the ground, taking deep breaths. Tim, Daim, and I did more physical work than she did, but she seemed more out of breath than we were.
“For her, five to ten minutes using her ‘gift’ is like running a marathon at top speed. She’s got to rest. Replenish herself.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Told you. I’ve seen it .”
That night, Lilly and I lay in bed and I broached the subject.
“Tim’s right, Jack. My folk can do things….” She didn’t finish. How does a simple girl born and bred in a remote swamp village explain “conjure” to an outsider?
“When did you first realize you could…do what you do?”
“I dunno. I was about twelve, I guess. I was helpin’ my daddy with his traps. He was standin’ in the water when this big gator started comin’ at him. I was so scared. I started yellin’ ‘Daddy! Look out! There’s a gator comin’ at you!’
“My daddy tried to run, but he couldn’t on account of the mud. The gator kept comin’ and I wanted it to just stay still in the water so I started imaginin’ it stoppin’ where it was. And it did. It stopped and my daddy was able to get out of the water and away from it.
“And he hugged me and said, ‘Girl, you got the gift,’ and from then on, whenever Daddy went to check his traps, he took me with him. And whenever a gator or a Cottonmouth, or a panther was nearby, I’d just think about it stoppin’ or movin’ away and it did. When I was with him, my daddy never got bit.”
“Is it hard?” I asked, thinking about Tim comparing her “gift” to a marathon run.
“If I do it with somethin’ big, yeah. I get real tired. I gotta sit and rest for a spell, else I get all out of breath and I don’t want to do nothin’ but sleep. Small stuff don’t tire me out so much.”
By now, neither of us felt like talking anymore. Lilly cupped my chin in her palm and kissed me. She then moved that hand lower down, proving that she could make things happen without using her “gift.”
It was drizzling when the call came in. A guy called to say he had a gator in a pond on his property.
“He’s in there,” he said, leading us to a pond about about twenty feet long and fifteen feet wide.
“How deep is it?” Daim asked.
“‘Bout ten feet at its deepest.”
“How big would you say the gator is?”
“Oh, I’d put him at eight, maybe ten foot.”
“Okay, sir. You stand back and we’ll take care of it.”
We approached the pond. It sloped down from the guy’s lawn and just beyond it was one of the canals that run through Brownell. Gators make their way through the canals; that’s how they get places they shouldn’t.
The pond’s bottom was covered with Hydrilla plants. The stems grow can grow six feet in length with inch-long leaves. Hydrilla grows in thick clusters, often covering the bottoms of ponds. That makes it a great hiding place for gators.
Ordinarily, one of us would go into the water with a catch pole and snorkel and try to locate the gator. If we were lucky, we’d loop the noose around him right away and wrangle him ashore. More likely, we’d just get it agitated which would stir up the mud and wreak havoc with the visibility. This played to the gator’s advantage. He could attack us from anywhere at any moment and we’d never see him coming.
Of course, that was before Lilly joined our team.
“Okay, Lilly, work your magic.”
We walked to the edge of the pond and even in the fading light, I could see a row of Hydrilla parting like wheat in a breeze, from one end of the pond to the other. Then, the next row, parting, slowly, almost sinuously.
“You’re doing good,” Tim whispered. “Keep it up.”
Gators are great at camouflage. Underwater, they blend in with earth or vegetation. If Lilly was tempted to go too fast, she did a good job of holding back. She had to pore over every inch of the pond’s bottom, otherwise it meant going in there.
She’d been at it for about twenty minutes when Tim pointed to the far edge. “Bubbles.”
Sure enough, a stream of bubbles was making its way to the surface. Tim asked, “Can you get a bead on him?”
“I’ll try.”
Her face scrunched up in concentration, and Tim gestured for Daim and me to head to the opposite bank. As I ran, I saw a humongous shape rise up out of the Hydrilla and float its way out of the pond. It wasn’t swimming, just…gliding.
We got to the bank, and from force of habit took our gator-wrangling positions: me with my arms out, ready to dance out of his reach, Daim off to the side ready to jump on his back.
It wasn’t necessary.
When it got to the bank, it just slid out of the water onto the moist grass. It was levitating, which was a good trick, considering how huge it was. The guy wasn’t kidding when he said it was ten feet. If anything, he understated. I’d put it at twelve to fourteen.
Daim and I had no trouble getting a towel around its head. Hauling it to the truck on the wet grass, though, that was another matter. The thing must have weighed close to 600 pounds.
“Little help, here, babe!” I yelled.
Lilly came through.
We made it back to the truck and I could see that this effort had taken its toll on her. She was leaning against the truck, panting hard, and sweating. I walked up to her, and gave her a kiss. “You done good, babe.”
She looked up at me with that impish grin. “Thanks, Jack.”
“Look!”
We turned to see where Tim was pointing. Coming out of the pond was another gator, a smaller one, and he was making for the canal.
This was bad. Once he got to the canal, he’d start swimming and we’d have a hell of time trying to catch him and God knows where he’d end up. There was no alternative. We had to get him now.
While Daim was loading the big guy onto the truck, Tim and I made a run for the little one, with Lilly trailing behind, still puffing and panting. I stopped her.
“Hang by the truck, babe. We’ll handle it.”
Without waiting for a response, I ran after the gator, got in front of him, stood spread-eagle and waved my arms. He hissed at me and lunged forward. I dodged to the side as Tim grabbed his tail. The gator turned, hissed, and snapped at Tim who managed to get out of his way. I reached for his tail and he turned to face me again. I managed to grab his jaws but before I could firm up my grip, he went into his death roll.
When a gator grabs hold of prey and wants to rend it into smaller bites, it spins its body with convulsive force. It also performs this maneuver when it wants to get away from some cowboy trying to hold its jaws shut.
It was no contest. As soon as the gator began its death roll, I let go and slipped on the wet grass.
I had landed between the gator and the canal. That was where he wanted to be. No gator wrangler was going to stand in his way.
I tried to rise and slipped again.
The gator was bearing down on me hissing like a berserk steam engine, mouth gaping, the back of his throat vibrating. I tried scurrying my butt out of its reach, but the gator was moving too fast for me to get out of its way; too fast for Tim to jump it.
I figured I was done for when it stopped in mid-charge.
I was only dimly aware that Tim was on its back, pulling its head back, clamping its jaws shut and that Da
im was taping its mouth shut. I was only half aware that the thing had resumed thrashing and struggling. My attention was on Lilly.
Lilly, lying on the ground, bloodless and pale, barely breathing.
“We’ve got to get her to a hospital!” I shouted. For the umpteenth time.
“Hospital’s not going to do her any good,” Tim answered. Also for the umpteenth time.
It was night by the time Daim had gotten the gators back to Brownell and the drizzle hadn’t abated.
Tim and I were bouncing our way down a road which didn’t see more than three riders per year, in Tim’s battered Land Rover. Tim was driving, Lilly was stretched out in the back seat, her breathing even more labored, if such a thing was possible. Her head was in my lap.
“She over-extended herself,” Tim kept telling me. “We’ve got to get her back to the swamp.”
I thought back to Tim’s comparison of Lilly’s over-exertion to that of a marathon runner. I could picture a runner out of breath, out of energy, pushing himself, until his heart stopped and he collapsed, perhaps never to rise again. I asked Tim if that’s what happened with Lilly.
Tim nodded.
“So what are we going to do in the swamp?”
“I know a place. You’ve got to trust me on this, Yankee.”
We drove on this bump-laden jarring dirt road that S-curved its way beneath cypress trees so thick we could barely see the full moon. We splashed through mud-filled cavities, dodged lolling gators, jounced over rocks which threatened to reduce the Rover’s undercarriage to scrap. All during this roller coaster ride through Hell, I kept whispering to Lilly, begging her to hold on. I doubt she heard me.
After what seemed like an eternity, we came to a spot where the land gave way to a pool of brackish water, dotted with islands of varying sizes. Tim stopped the Rover and pointed to the nearest island, maybe half the length of a city block , some twenty feet from shore.
“There.”
“There, what?”
“We bring her there. Is she still breathing?”
“Just barely.”
“Then we may not be too late.”
Too late for what? I wanted to ask, but Tim’s sense of urgency had gotten to me. I lifted Lilly from the back seat. So help me, I’ve hefted heavier sacks of laundry. There was an emptiness — it was as if something had been taken out of her.
Tim walked into the water and I followed, unmindful of what might be lurking beneath the surface. The water was tepid, only a little bit cooler than the surrounding humidity. The bottom was muddy and clung to my sandals as I slogged my way after Tim. The dampness in the air stuck to my bare arms as it wound its way up my nose and I almost heaved. It held the stench of death, no doubt from nearby carrion that had been picked almost clean by scavengers. Everything was silent save for the sloshing sound we made as we wended our way through the muck. That and an occasional frogsong, the hoot of a distant owl, or the buzz of hungry mosquitos .
When we got to the island, Tim gestured for me to put her down on the beach.
“You’ve got to be freakin’ kidding me, dude!”
He shook his head. “Lay her down here.”
“Dude…”
“Lay her down, Jack!” There was no arguing.
Without speaking, Tim walked back into the water. I knew he expected me to follow, so I did, but not before giving Lilly a final kiss and a tearful “I love you.”
When we got back to shore, I was half-ready to tear him a new one. “So what happens now? Do we just leave her?”
Unperturbed, Tim answered. “Watch.”
I turned my eyes towards the island and the unmoving shape silhouetted in the moonlight. Part of me hated Tim for what he was making me do, but another part believed in him. Tim had lived here all his life, knew this country like no one else, had never in all the time I’d known him been wrong about anything, and saved my butt from many a careless move when I was a young and stupid rookie. Besides, I wanted to believe in him. I wanted to believe that this thing we were doing – this thing that defied all reason and logic - was going to save my woman; bring her back to me.
So I watched. And I listened.
I listened to the croaking of the frogs grow fainter and more distant until they finally died out altogether. I listened as the sounds of the owls and mosquitos dwindled their way to an eerie silence.
I listened as the stillness of the brackish water gave way to faint ripples, the kind that can only be caused by something moving. Something big.
I watched as the darkness was replaced by moonlight. This was not the warm, gentle moonlight that shone down on Lilly and me when we made love on the beach. This moonlight felt – unnatural. It swathed everything in a cold silvery glow, illuminating Tim and me, illuminating the island and the water, illuminating Lilly as she lay dying, as if to mock our efforts to restore her.
I watched – and I saw….
Under moments of extreme stress, the mind does crazy things. One minute, I’m standing on the banks of a swampy pool, wondering what the hell I’m doing there, the next thing I know I’m in a scene from an old war movie - where the submarine rises from the water like some humongous aquatic dinosaur.
…this black massive thing looming out of the water. Before I could stop to wonder what a submarine was doing in a Florida swamp, I saw its eyes.
Alligator eyes protrude on the top of their heads. The pupils are convex vertical slits against a grey, brownish yellow, or blue sclera.
I could see the whites of this behemoth’s eyes, each with a round cornea and iris, like a human’s; eyes that exuded intelligence, intent, and purpose. They fixed themselves on me for only a moment before they turned to the island. And its size – it made Tiny look like a hatchling.
“No!”
The gator-thing glided toward the beach where Lilly lay prone.
Like I said, under moments of extreme stress, the mind does crazy things. Mine told me to get between Lilly and the gator-thing. I made ready to slog my way to the island.
“Jack, DON’T!”
I ignored Tim and had just made it to the strand between the road and the water when I froze.
The strand was carpeted with snakes, the deadliest the swamp has to offer, coiling and slithering, layer upon layer, one on top of another, rearing up and swaying, forked tongues flicking.
Hundreds of eight-foot Eastern Diamondbacks, wide as truck tires, coiled and rattling, some with their mouths open, revealing one-inch fangs dripping venom, a single drop of which could kill eight men.
Hundreds of Cottonmouths, coiled in threat display, the bridal gown whiteness of their gaping mouths luminous, their brown and black scales reflecting the silver glow of the moonlight.
Beyond them, in the water, hundreds of alligators, mouths agape, their roars mingling with the cacophony of the Diamondbacks’ mad rattling and the Cottonmouths’ strident hissing.
Hundreds of reptilian eyes fixed on me.
Behind me, Tim shouted. “Don’t move!”
“Tim! What is this? What’s happening?”
“It’s the swamp! She’s taking care of her own! Just stay where you are! You’ll be okay!”
As I watched, the black gator from the swamp opened its enormous jaws as it moved towards the motionless figure that lay on the island. I stared, not daring to move, struggling to process what was happening.
How many times had I seen an alligator’s jaws pulverize a bone? Yet, how many times had I seen a mother alligator take her young in her mouth, with a gentleness that wouldn’t break an egg?
So it was with the thing in the swamp. With that same gentleness, it scooped Lilly from the beach and slowly closed its jaws. Transfixed, I watched it back away from the island as it turned those eyes, full of purpose and wisdom, in our direction. Then, with that same meticulous slowness, it submerged into the brackish water, carrying its precious burden to who-knows-where.
I stood there, watching the spot where it sank, half expecting it to reappear. It w
asn’t until the mosquitos resumed their buzzing that I was aware of Tim standing beside me, aware that the strand was no longer covered by writhing snake bodies, nor the water infested with gators.
I fell to my knees and felt them sink into the stagnant muck. My chest was heaving un-controllably as I pounded the ground, sending up clods of dirt and mud with each futile blow. Visions of the woman I loved being lowered into the swamp, all because she overreached herself saving my worthless hide, lent strength to my frenzied outbursts.
“She’s gone!”
I don’t know how many times I screamed those words into the night until Tim laid a hand on my shoulder and said, “Maybe not.”
“What do you mean, ‘Maybe not?’”
“Don’t forget — she’s Conjure Folk. They don’t live the way we do.” A pause. “And they don’t die the way we do.”
I got up off my knees, now caked with swamp gunk. “And what does mean?”
“It means we wait.”
“Wait for what? How long do we wait?”
Tim shrugged. “I don’t know, Yankee. But don’t expect it to be quick.”
It’s been a month since that night in the swamp. Tim and I haven’t discussed it; me because I’m afraid to, Tim because he doesn’t want to.
I’m still wrangling gators with Tim and Daim. After a day’s work, they head to Belle’s, but I don’t. I go back to my place, lie awake in bed and think of things Tim said:
“We may not be too late…. It’s the swamp taking care of her own…. We wait. But don’t expect it to be quick.”
So that’s what I’m doing. Waiting. And hoping…
GO FISH
by Preston Dennett
“You’ve found her.” Please tell me you’ve found her.
“Yes.” Matthew said it with deserved pride, but there was a trace of something else. Disappointment? Fear? Pity?
“Well…?” I asked.
Matthew hesitated. “You’re not going to like it.” It was pity.
“Just tell me,” I hissed. I was tired of the games. Matthew was the fifth investigator I had hired to find my wife. I had spent the last three years and some two million credits— more than most people make in a lifetime— looking for her. I wanted answers and I wanted them now. Matthew stood and looked out the window at the setting sun, which cast a crimson light through the city haze. “She’s on Cantor.”