by Watt Key
“Get out!”
She got to her knees and I pulled her onto the deck. I made some quick wraps around a support column with the rope. Liza scrambled past me as the jon pulled tight and I knotted the line. When I turned I saw her through the window, falling through the front door, Francie rushing into her arms.
I finished tying the line and ran around to the girls. Francie was screaming hysterically, her clothes wet and muddy and torn. Catfish stood in the middle of the floor with a What now? look. Then I felt one of the trees bump the pontoons and rock us gently. I realized that we didn’t have much time to get out of there. If the boat didn’t get crushed against the bank, we’d eventually crash into the cement highway bridge downriver.
20
“We’ve got you,” Liza said, trying to calm Francie. “Everything’s gonna be okay.”
“I couldn’t get back,” Francie cried.
“I know,” I said. “It’s okay. Now we have to get into life vests. Liza, go get them out of the bow.”
Liza began to pull away, but Francie screamed and clung to her.
“Come on, Francie,” I said. “We need to hurry.”
Liza picked her up and carried her to the front storage compartment where we kept the flotation vests.
I have to slow us, I thought. That will buy time to bail the jon and get us off this boat.
I hurried out and ran to each corner of the deck, dropping the spuds. They fell through their sleeves and slammed on their caps at a full drop, touching nothing. I rushed to the bow, dug out the anchor, and heaved it over. I held the rope as it raced through my hand. When it was taut I tugged it. Nothing. All of it—spuds and anchor—dragging under us in liquid space.
I rushed into the generator closet and got a five-gallon paint bucket and ran with it back to the jon. One of the giant trees had its root system against it, nosing it like a whale. The force was deceptive. I looked at the painter, pulled tight, dripping with tension. The support column it was fastened to slowly bowed and creaked and flexed. I took a step back. Suddenly the column exploded outward, tearing part of the roof away with it. The tree swung around and over the jon, pressing it beneath the surface, passing away into the darkness, dragging the boat beneath it.
I turned to see Liza, watching wide-eyed through the window. Francie clung to her leg, frozen with fright. They both had their life vests on.
I hurried inside.
“What do we do now, Cort?” Liza said.
I didn’t have an answer. On the kitchen table was another life vest Liza had pulled out for me. I grabbed it, put my arms through it, clicked the fasteners, and cinched it tight. Lying on the counter was a small compass. It occurred to me that I had nothing on me, not even a watch. I grabbed the compass and shoved it into my pocket.
“I dropped the spuds and put out the anchor,” I said. “We’ll float across shallow water eventually.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“We can’t swim in that river,” she said. “It’s too swift.”
I went past her and into my berth. I dragged the mattress off the bed and pulled it past them.
“Cort, we—”
The floor went from under us and I was in the air. I came down on the kitchen table, which gave way and dropped me to the floor. I rolled over and saw Liza and Francie lying in the hallway. Then there was a hesitation as the river built pressure against the pontoons. The houseboat groaned with torque. Seconds later there came a staggered cracking followed by the sound of splintering wood. The boat jerked forward again and I knew the spuds were gone.
“Everybody okay?” I yelled.
Francie began crying again in a strange, exhausted way. Liza gathered her into her lap and didn’t answer me. The houseboat moaned, and we felt the river current swinging us sideways into whatever we’d run into. I rushed outside as the boat settled against a thin stand of hackberry. The river pressed on the up-current pontoon, trying to drive us over or under the obstruction. The houseboat tilted precariously. It was inevitable that it would capsize or get piled on with trees.
I looked at Catfish watching me from above. “Come on, boy,” I said.
He took a step back and whined plaintively. He didn’t want any part of our plan.
“Catfish,” I urged. But I knew I was telling him goodbye more than arguing with him. The floodwater was going to be over his head and he’d have nowhere to get out of it. I already had Francie to carry, and whatever lay ahead was going to be hard enough for Liza without the burden of a frantic, wet dog.
“We’ve got to go, friend,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Another tree bumped and rocked the boat. There was no more time for goodbyes.
“Come on!” I yelled to the girls. “Let’s go!”
Liza picked Francie up and hurried onto the deck. Catfish whined and trembled at the sight of us leaving.
“Catfish!” Francie yelled.
“He won’t come,” I said. “We have to leave him.”
“Cort,” Liza said.
“He’ll die out there, Liza. His best chance is to stay afloat as long as he can.”
“No, Cort!” Francie cried.
Liza gave me a horrified look, but she knew I was right. “It’s okay, Francie,” she said. “He’ll be able to swim back. He’ll be waiting for us when we get home.”
“Francie,” I said. “Do you have your flashlight?”
She didn’t answer me. I took her from Liza and ran my hands over her wet jeans. Her tiny jeans with the red hearts sewn into them. It gave me some relief to feel the small light still in her pocket.
I held Francie under one arm. “I’ve got you,” I said to her.
I used my free arm to pull my way to the up-side of the boat. Then I climbed over the railing with her and leaped into darkness. I fell into the marshy shallows and pulled Francie to my chest. If she made a sound at all I couldn’t hear her over the wind and rain and swirling of the river. I staggered to my feet just as Liza landed beside us. The water was up to my waist and threatening to pull my legs from under me, but there was solid ground underfoot.
“You okay?” I said back to Liza.
“Yes,” she said.
I shifted Francie under my arm and plunged forward into a tangle of vines and palmetto.
“Stay right behind me,” I said.
“I’m good,” she said. “Go.”
21
We waded about fifty yards into the swamp before I stopped. The thin canopy of hackberry whipped and thrashed overhead, but the noise was less and the rain no longer stung our faces. Floodwater still pulled at our legs, but among the trees we at least had something to cling to. For the first time in an hour I felt like I had a moment to think.
I can get us out of this.
I gave Francie back to Liza. She held her while I dug the flashlight from her jeans and hoped that it worked. It did. I got the compass from my pocket and held it under the light.
“Cort?” Liza said.
“I’m working on it,” I said. “We’re gonna be okay now—just let me think.”
Think.
I studied the compass, turning and shaking it to make sure it gave a true reading. I didn’t believe what it was telling me, but I knew better than to doubt it. We were on the west side of the Tensaw. We had three choices: swim the river, stay where we were, or head west into the swamp. Never in my life had I wished more that Dad was with me. He would know what to do. He would know how to get us to safety.
Finally I said, “We can’t swim that river. And the water’s still coming up, so we can’t stay where we are. We’ve got to head west into the swamp and get to high ground.”
“Where?”
I brought up a mental image of the delta and the river systems that ran veinlike through it. Now that I had a compass reading, I could roughly estimate our location.
Where, Dad? I said to myself. Of course he wasn’t there, but it helped a little to pretend he was. And it got me imagining
his answers.
“Where, Cort?” Liza said again. “Come on, you know this place.”
In my mind I saw nothing but miles of empty marsh. I saw the Mobile River at the edge of that, more swollen and dangerous than the Tensaw. But there was one place.
“Bottle Creek,” I said. “We’ll get up on the Indian mounds.”
“How far is that?”
“Prob’ly about a mile, maybe a mile and a half, west of here.”
“We can’t make that, Cort.”
“There’s nothing else,” I said. “You’ll have to carry Francie. I need to watch the compass.”
Suddenly, Francie wailed sharply and I turned the flashlight on her. She began to squirm and thrash against Liza.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
Liza dropped her into the water, jerked off her life vest, and beat it against a tree. Then I saw what was left of the velvety raft of ants floating past us. I grabbed Francie’s arm and pulled her to me. I peeled her shirt over her head and brushed my hands over her chest, back, and face. As I did this I felt ants crawling up my ribs and biting me. I lifted Francie from the water and draped her over my shoulder while I brushed at myself.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “I got ’em off.”
She stopped sobbing and lay over my shoulder. I held the light on her shirt while Liza took it from me and turned it inside out and beat the last of the ants from it. Then she took Francie from me again.
“You think it’s better on or off?” I asked Liza.
“On,” she said. “It’s wet, but it’s something against the cold. We’re gonna get cold.”
“I know,” I said. “I’m already cold.”
She slipped the shirt over Francie’s head and snapped her back into the vest.
“Keep her out of the water as much as you can,” I said.
Liza didn’t answer. I studied the compass. I located west, looked at the canopy, and found the farthest visible treetop in that general direction. I memorized the pattern of the branches against the sky and set out for it.
The swamp was a tangled mass of wet vines and palmetto and briars, whipped and rain-slashed beneath tall cypress and water oak. It took all my concentration to fight my way forward, keep checking on our direction, and make sure Liza and Francie were behind me. In addition to our struggles against the thick underbrush, the swamp had changed into a place I was no longer familiar with. Everything typically hidden in the damp leaves was climbing into the trees. There were eyes watching us from everywhere. I had a bad feeling that we were going to be up against more than just rising water.
22
“Cort,” Liza said.
I stopped and turned to her. The water was two inches higher on her waist than I remembered.
“Is she okay?” I asked.
I ran the light over Francie. She had her eyes open, but she stared back at me in a blank way. Then I put the light on Liza and saw her slumping with exhaustion.
“Let me take her,” I said.
I reached out and got Francie in my arms. I patted her on the back and rubbed her shoulders. “I’m gonna take us to my tree fort, Francie. We’re gonna wait out the storm in it.”
She didn’t answer me.
“Let’s keep going,” Liza said anxiously.
I heard something sigh heavily to my right. I swung the light to find a two-hundred-pound hog standing up to its chin in the floodwater. It was turned sideways to us, its eyes dark and blank. Two tusks protruded from its mouth the color of smokers’ yellowed teeth. Wild hogs were good swimmers. I wondered why it was just standing there, letting the water rise over it.
Maybe it’s tired, I thought. Maybe it has given up.
As if in answer, the hog turned and moved ahead of us into the darkness.
“What was it?” Liza asked.
I moved the light away and gave it to her. “A pig,” I said. “It’s gone. Can you work the compass?”
She nodded.
“Keep the needle on west.”
She put the light on the hog again. I passed her the compass, and she moved ahead of me and stopped and got her bearings.
“Make sure the needle’s not stuck,” I said.
In a moment she brushed a vine from her face and started forward.
* * *
Deep into the swamp the current was gone. There was just flat, endless, rising water. I carried Francie before me, cradled in my arms. She was limp and quiet, but I felt her stomach rising and falling against my own.
I didn’t have a watch. I’d kicked my shoes off earlier in the struggle with the houseboat. I wasn’t wearing anything now except the old cut-off khakis. The girls didn’t have shoes either, but at least their shirts would be a little protection against the cold hard rain. Liza also had a watch, but I didn’t see the point in asking what time it was. That would just slow us down.
An explosion of water to the left caused Liza to divert the light, and we caught glimpses of deer leaping and crashing away with their tails standing like white handkerchiefs in the silvery rain. Then I saw her light go down to the compass again, and we pressed on.
I guessed it was close to midnight when she stopped once more. I came up behind her and saw the opening in the trees and the windswept lake beyond. It all looked different, but I knew what we were seeing. For the first time since leaving the boat I had a real landmark. We weren’t where I wanted to be, but it could have been much worse.
“Jug Lake,” I said. “We’ve got to head south, then west again.”
“How far off are we?”
“It’s not bad,” I said. “We’re close. Bayou Jessamine is in front of us. We don’t need to cross that.”
“South,” she confirmed.
“Yes. What time is it?”
She looked at her wrist. “Twelve-thirty.”
“Okay,” I said. “Keep going.”
Both of us were calmer now, even though the water was another six inches up my stomach. We’d made progress, and that was encouraging. As she moved the light to the compass, it passed over the reflective eyes of something small and furry in a tree. She didn’t see it or didn’t care. I guessed it was a rat. Something out of place, perched as high as it had to be. I imagined if we took time to study our surroundings we’d see that the trees were stacked with eyes.
Liza led us south. Twice we came against Bayou Jessamine, stopping at the edge of the tree gap and backing away to adjust our course. Sometimes I said Francie’s name hoping just to hear her reply. She never answered, but she shifted in my arms and that was enough. Eventually Liza angled west again and I thought about the next obstacle we approached. The bayou we’d been skirting was only twenty feet wide. It would eventually intersect Bottle Creek, and we’d face nearly a hundred feet of water to get across. Normally we could swim it, but if the current was bad, getting to the other side was going to be a big problem.
I didn’t say anything to Liza about my concerns. I wouldn’t have to. She’d see for herself soon enough. I looked up into the trees, studying their trunks as best I could in the darkness. It was all hackberry and cypress, any limbs that would support us high above the floor. Getting into them would be like climbing a telephone pole, little to cling to even if we managed to get high enough. And there was no telling what was up there. Everything in the swamp wanted to get into those trees.
But it was the animals that couldn’t get into the trees that worried me. There was a limited amount of high ground that would remain above the floodwater, and I’d likely be fighting them for it. I wasn’t concerned with the deer. It was the hogs I was scared of.
23
Guiding wild-hog hunts was a large part of Dad’s business. Like the alligators, there are too many hogs, and they’ve become a problem. Herds of them, with boars as big as three hundred pounds, roam the marsh, destructive, violent, and unpredictable.
Dad told me the wild hogs were the descendants of pigs Hernando de Soto brought into Florida nearly four hundred years ago. They weren’t much
of a problem until the 1980s, when people trucked them across state lines and released them for hunting. Hogs can live just about anywhere because they aren’t picky about what they eat. They mostly browse on grass, roots, and stems, but they also feed on any kind of meat. I’ve seen them eat armadillos, small deer, snakes, and other hogs. In most places their only natural predators are panthers and alligators. There are few panthers left, and gators won’t stray far from the water. Add to this a female hog with as many as twelve piglets a year, and it’s easy to see how they spread all over the South.
There was no closed season on hogs. Hunters can kill as many as they want, any time of year, day or night. But the permanently open season still isn’t enough. Wild hogs aren’t just good survivalists—they’re smart. It doesn’t take long for them to figure out where and how they’re being hunted and avoid those places and tactics. That’s what makes the delta such a popular destination for hunters. There are thousands of wild pigs in the remote areas of the swamp, and most of them have never seen a man before.
Even though hog hunting is steady business, it’s a sport Dad and I don’t enjoy being part of. It draws men who are more into cruelty than challenges. They typically use at least two dogs, one to trail the prey and one to “catch” it. The trailing dog, or “chase” dog, can be a redbone or other common baying hound. The catch dog is the thug of the two, a scarred, callous killer. Typically a pit bull, known for its locking bite and instincts to clamp, hold, and shake its prey.
Initially the bay dogs find the pack, single out a big boar, and chase it until it’s tired and cornered. The catch dog will then rush the pig until it can get its jaws clamped on the pig’s ear and twist it to the ground. It will try to hold the pig in this way until the hunter catches up to the fight.
Most people assume it’s a hog’s curling yellow tusks on the top jaw that are dangerous. But the tusks are thick and dull from constant digging into the soil. The cutter teeth on the bottom jaw are what they use to tear flesh. These are two smaller teeth, protruding above and behind each tusk. The hog grinds its tusks against them so they stay sharp enough to shave a fingernail.