Alligator Park

by R. J. Blacks

  “Hey, that’s got a nice spin to it. We’ve got to get you on the telly. Can you follow me to the studio for a live show?”

  “You know, I’m kind of exhausted. How about another time?”

  “We could put you on at five o’clock. It might even go national.”

  “I’ll tell you what; give me a day to rest up, then, I’ll give you an interview.”

  “Great! What’s your number?”

  “Take this down,” I say, and recite off the digits as he types the numbers into his tablet.

  “Thanks, got it,” he says. “One more thing. Smile.”

  He raises the tablet to shoulder height, snaps a picture, and then, makes a hasty departure, giving me no time to rebuke him.

  I suddenly realize why those stars shun their fans. It’s not that you don’t like the attention; it’s just that when strangers confront you, you’re expected to be the persona you’ve taken on, all the time. You’re not a person to them, but an icon. And maintaining that image when you’re hungry, and tired, and cranky, when you wish they would just go away, can be challenging to say the least. It’s no wonder the rich and famous travel incognito.

  I make my way down the hallway with my carry-on in tow and detect the heavenly aroma of fresh-ground coffee beans. It’s from a coffee shop off to the right. I haven’t eaten since breakfast and I’m tempted to pick up a sandwich and coffee for the trip back home. But I decide to pass. It’s only an hour’s drive and I’m anxious to bring Will and Fargo up to date with the exciting things that happened in Baltimore. And more importantly, I was planning to put together a special dinner tonight to celebrate. It won’t kill me to refrain from eating until then.

  I locate my truck in the airport parking lot and load up my things. I pay the fare at the check-out window, exit the airport, and within minutes I’m doing seventy on the highway heading back to Lake George. The landscape around the lake is like home to me now, and I have no trouble finding the turn-off for Fargo’s place. I make my way along the dirt road passing Palms, Cypress, and alternating sections of grasslands and swamp. The sign for the Seminole Reservation appears on the left. As I glance at it, I am shaken to the realization this may be the last time I drive down this road. I’ve achieved my goals, what I originally came here for, and soon I’ll be leaving. A new job and a PhD wait for me in Philadelphia, and this adventure will fade to a memory.

  But I’m sure going to miss those guys. Fargo will probably go back to his former lifestyle, and I’m confident Will and Juanita will eventually get married. The restaurant should provide them with a decent income so they can buy a house of their own, and maybe even start a family.

  As I approach Fargo’s bright new sign for Alligator Park, I catch a glimpse of a silver sports car parked behind some bushes, as if the owner had intentionally tried to hide it.

  “A poacher,” I say to myself.

  It’s obvious this is not the car of a local resident because they all drive Jeep’s, trucks, or SUV’s. Vacationing snow-birds often sneak onto Indian land to take advantage of the really excellent fishing because they think it’s so remote no one will notice them. But they underestimate the passion with which Native American’s defend their hard-fought territory. They’ve lost far too much land to take trespassing lightly and reservation authorities have no compunction about administering a hefty fine to the intruder, unless he can convince them it was all an innocent mistake.

  When I arrive at the house, the parking lot is deserted except for Will’s SUV, but that’s not surprising since we all agreed to close the grounds for a week. Juanita took the opportunity to drive her parents to New Mexico to visit their extended family and Will has told us he would use the free time to catch up on his well-deserved rest. I was hoping Fargo would be around when I returned, but I see both airboats tied up at the dock and his SUV is missing so he’s probably at a soccer game with friends, something he does almost every Wednesday afternoon. I park in my usual spot, grab my carry-on, and then make my way toward the cabin.

  As I get close to the porch, I see Will reclining in his usual high-back chair. I’m bursting to tell him all the exciting details of my trip; after all, it was he, in the very beginning, who motivated me to come down here, and he’s every bit entitled to share my sense of achievement and satisfaction from its amazing success. Later, after I rest up a bit, I’ll treat him to a meal he’ll never forget, and Fargo too. I wave, try to get his attention, but the serene calmness of the afternoon appears to have lulled him into a well-deserved nap.

  I drag my carry-on up the stairs, one step at a time, until I reach the last one, and then drag it onto the porch. The wheels make an annoying rumble sound as they roll along the wooden boards so I pick it up by the handle. I walk as quietly as I can, lifting my heels, to prevent them from rapping against the old wooden floorboards which resonate at the slightest provocation. I stay close to the wall, putting as much space as possible between us in an effort to avoid waking him. But then, as I get closer, I notice he’s sitting in what appears to be a somewhat uncomfortable position. One arm is hanging over the side, and from my limited viewpoint, it appears his head is leaning in a way I’m certain he’ll awaken with the most unbearable neck ache. I put down the carry-on and approach the chair from the back.

  And then I see it, blood. Red stains all down the front of his tee-shirt and onto the chair. There appears to be a slash across his neck and his eyes are partially open staring out with no emotion.

  I shake Will’s shoulder.

  “Will, Will, wake up,” I cry out, my voice shaking.

  “Wake up, Will, please, my God, please, wake up,” but there is no response, and then I realize, neither is there any warmth to his body.

  I grope through my purse scrambling for my cellphone and then realize it’s still turned off from the flight. I frantically press the “on” button and stare at the display in unbelievable exasperation as the phone goes through its oppressively long start-up routine.

  “Hurry up,” I say to the phone, not expecting it to make any difference except to lull me into the illusion I’m doing something, anything, to speed it along.

  “Hurry, hurry,” I repeat.

  Finally the phone springs to life and I tap out 911 followed by SEND. But nothing happens. I try it again, carefully typing in 9-1-1 and once again pressing SEND.

  I hear footsteps from the part of the porch that wraps around the far side of the cabin, the part that is hidden from view. They’re heavy footsteps, like the sound of boots against the floor boards, the boots of a large man.

  Fargo, I think, he’s returned; he’ll know what to do.

  A feeling of calmness envelops me as I dash down to seek his solace, but as I round the corner, I stop in my tracks. It’s not Fargo, but another man, the man I fear more than anyone on the planet.

  It’s Damon!

  He strolls toward me, casually, as if he’s got all the time in the world. He’s not wearing boots as I imagined, but hard-soled dress shoes, which imitate the sound of boots against the wooden floor boards. He’s got on his usual green designer shirt, open at the front, and a pair of stylish dress pants.

  I back off a few steps, round the corner, and then dash back to Will’s chair. I frantically push 9-1-1 and hit SEND. But nothing happens. He rounds the corner and stands there, at the far end of the porch, watching me, making no effort to approach me.

  “The booster’s broken,” he says.

  I study the cellphone and then notice the unimaginable; there are no bars on the display!

  “How do you know about the booster?” I ask.

  “I saw you on the news,” he says. “Came here to congratulate you.”

  He studies me for a moment.

  “I like you better with blue hair.”

  He reaches into his pocket, retrieves a roll of “Lifesavers”, and then nonchalantly unwraps one end. He holds the opened roll at arm’s length offering me the first candy.

  I shake my head “no” so he casua
lly takes it for himself, slips it into his mouth, and then gazes at Will.

  “Shame about him,” he says, shaking his head from side to side. “I was shocked when I saw it. Tried to get an ambulance, but the cell didn’t work. Figured it had to be the booster.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I swear. He was like that when I got here.”

  It’s obvious the man is a liar, and a killer, and the more I argue with him, the more opportunity he will have to do to me what he did to Will. I have to get out of here.

  And then I remember the sports car, a mile down the road, hidden in the bushes. It all makes sense now. It’s his. He left it there so he would have a clean getaway. A clean getaway in case someone else shows up, someone he didn’t want to tangle with, someone like Fargo. He could slink back into the woods, work his way back to the car, and disappear with no one the wiser.

  My mind races, what to do?

  The gun, it’s in the glove compartment. I’ll dash to my truck, lock the door, and drive to the police station. If he tries to stop me, I’ll shoot him through the glass.

  I turn and run, but before I can complete two steps, my purse is snatched violently from my grasp. I glance over my shoulder and see the strap snagged on the armrest of Will’s chair and the contents spilling out all over the floor.

  I watch in horror, as if in slow motion, as the car keys fall through a gap in the boards.

  “SHIT! SHIT-SHIT-SHIT!”

  I drop to my knees and try to retrieve the keys, but it’s too late, they’re gone, and then Damon starts running towards me. I scramble down the steps and run towards the dock.

  I snap my head backwards to see how close he is and then a strange thing happens; Damon observes me from the porch with no apparent urgency to come after me! He must be feeling a sense of complete control, amused by my desperate act of escape. My thoughts flash back to that chilling night in the ladies room, how he whacked me in the mouth, how he tore at my clothes, and how he feeds off the terror of his victims. It was clear to me now; he had a strategy. He was the hunter, and I was the game!

  I race across the shoreline, but my dress shoes keep sinking into the sand, slowing me down. I tear them off, throw them aside, and resume my escape barefoot.

  I run onto the dock, jump into Fargo’s airboat, and then unhook the ropes, allowing them to fall into the water. I push against the dock with the oar, creating a gap between me and the pier as the airboat floats away into the channel.

  Damon dashes down the steps and runs toward me as he grasps the notion I might actually get away. Whatever plan he may have concocted, I’m certain he’s determined to conclude it tonight. And then he’ll disappear, drift back into anonymity, to work on his next victim. But I wasn’t about to let it happen. If physical strength is the law of the jungle, it was intellect that enabled humanoids to exert dominance over bigger and more powerful animals. Damon has superior strength, there’s no denying it, but I have intellect, and with nothing else to fall back upon, intellect would be my savior.

  I rack my brain, desperately trying to remember how to start the engine, the sequence Fargo taught me.

  First, open the gas petcock. Second, throttle at one-quarter. Third, close the choke halfway. Finally, turn on the ignition.

  I go through each step, one at a time, exactly how Fargo told me to do it. Wah, wah, wah, goes the engine, the propeller struggling to come to life, but it doesn’t catch. I try again. Wah, wah, wah, a few pops, and then, a roar; the engine springs to life.

  Okay, now, open choke all the way, set the throttle to half, point the rudder in the opposite direction you want to go.

  I do all these things, just as I saw it done before, and miraculously the airboat starts picking up speed. I narrowly miss hitting some pylons but manage to maneuver the airboat into clear water. As I pick up speed, I see Damon jump into the other airboat.

  He doesn’t know what to do, I think to myself optimistically. But suddenly, I see the propeller turning slowly.

  He’s trying to start it!

  I ram the throttle to the three-quarter mark causing the airboat to accelerate aggressively. The hull dances across the surface of the water, scarcely making a ripple. I set a course for the tribal hunting grounds, that special place no one but the Indians know about.

  I look back at Damon again. He’s managed to get the engine started and the propeller is spinning rapidly. I see him maneuver the airboat in my direction, but I’m clearly gaining on him. Perhaps he doesn’t understand all the subtleties of piloting an airboat, or perhaps he did something stupid like leaving the choke on, effectively choking off engine power and squelching his ability to catch up to me.

  I manage to put a couple of miles between us, so now he’s nothing but a dot on the horizon. I head for the tiny cove, the one where Fargo leaves the airboat while he’s hunting. Once I get the boat hidden, it will appear to Damon that I just vanished off the face of the earth. He’ll never figure out what happened to me and I’ll be safe. I could wait him out for days, living off the stores of food and water Fargo keeps hidden for emergencies, until he gets tired of waiting, or until he presumes I’ve long since left the area. It was a perfect plan.

  Damon is nowhere to be seen so I begin the long wide sweep around the island and towards the tribal hunting grounds. I reduce the throttle to one-half power slowing the airboat and navigate closer to the shoreline. I maneuver the airboat to about a hundred yards from the shoreline and slow it even more, searching desperately for the little cove. It’s hidden so well no one would ever suspect it’s there, but Fargo has shared with me the secret. I remember him telling me: “Look for three towering slash pines about a quarter mile inland. The center one lines up exactly with the cove.” He explained that these were planted more than a century ago by the Seminoles for that very purpose when they were playing a cat-and-mouse game with Federal troops. The U.S. Government had decreed that Indians were to be relocated to Oklahoma, but the Seminoles had skillfully outmaneuvered the troops with these clever little tricks. The markers are easy to see from the water, but look so ordinary no one would ever suspect they are anything more than just another random group of trees.

  I locate the trees and ram the front of the airboat under the dense canopy of bushes. Just beyond me is the secret cove; I can see it clearly. The low-lying branches scrape along the seat tops, but I keep the airboat going forward until so many branches push against the propeller cage I can go no farther. Then I cut the motor.

  The back end of the airboat still juts out into the lake so I use the oar to push the branches aside and around the engine just as Fargo had done. The long pole stored on the airboat, used for pushing against the lake bottom, facilitates my efforts in getting the airboat past the obstructions. But the work is strenuous, and I’m not as strong as Fargo, and I’m making little progress.

  And then I see it. It starts out as a dot on the horizon, but gets bigger by the minute. I stare at the growing dot in disbelief, but there’s no denying it; Damon has seen me!

  I redouble my efforts to slip past the branches, but with little success. I decide to abandon ship and slip into the water. It’s about six feet deep at this point so I have no difficulty swimming under the lower branches. As I get closer to the shoreline, I let my feet drop down, feeling for the sandy bottom with my toes. The water is now just above my waist, shallow enough to walk, so I stand up, and work my way to the bank. My clothes are drenched, and weighing me down, but I persist, going as fast as I can.

  The distant buzz of Damon’s airboat has now become a roar telling me he is very close. I can’t see anything beyond the thick underbrush, and fortunately, I know he can’t see me either.

  I dash down the trail towards Fargo’s canoe. Once I launch myself in the canoe, and get past the first group of Cypress, I will be safely beyond Damon’s reach. There’s only one canoe and it would be suicide to attempt to swim after me. The swamp is not forgiving to swimmers, especially after dark.

 
The sun is now low on the horizon, and soon, the nocturnal world will come alive. Deadly creatures of all types will crawl out of their hiding places and seek out a victim to feed their hunger. I feel a sharp pain in my foot, a cactus or thorn, but I press on. There’s no time to worry about it now.

  Suddenly the sound of the airboat stops. He’s here. Will he attempt to follow me, or will he give up? I can’t take any chances, I must continue with my plan. I run even faster than before. The canoe is now only a half-mile farther and I haven’t seen or heard any evidence of Damon. Perhaps he gave up. Did that maze of tangled bushes dissuade him?

  I reach the clearing where Fargo stores the canoe and proceed to pull it out of the underbrush. It’s up-side-down, the way Fargo always stores it to keep out the rain. I struggle to get it right-side-up and uncover the items hidden underneath. There’s a bow, a quiver filled with arrows, his fish spear, two oars, and his leather pouch. I toss the items into the canoe to keep them from Damon and then drag the boat into the water.

  I climb in, sit on the floor, and push the oar against the soft sandy bottom, attempting to get the canoe away from the bank and into deeper water.

  And then he appears; Damon is flying down the trail and heading right for me.

  I redouble my efforts, paddle frantically, try everything possible to get into ever deeper water. But Damon is undeterred. He runs right into the waist-high water and grabs the end of the canoe holding it firm.

  “Rose, you’re leaving without me?” he says, grinning like this was all a game.

  I scramble for a weapon, grab the fish spear, and then point it at his face.

  “I’m not Rose.”

  “Oh, but you are. You belong to me now, and that’s the name I gave you.”

  “I don’t belong to anyone,” I say, pushing the spear closer to him.

  “Rose, Rose. There’s no need for this. I just want to be friends.”

  “Is that why you killed Judy Swass?”

  “She wouldn’t be my friend. Come on, let’s shake and forget the past,” he says, holding out his hand.