Terror at Bottle Creek

by Watt Key

  “You got a better idea?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t. And I was desperate to try anything.

  “I’m gonna drag him up to the boat and tie him off to this bow cleat.”

  I looked at Rusty again, staring as if he dared us to try anything. Dad straightened with the lasso formed in his hands.

  “Go on,” he said. “Get me closer.”

  “He’s gonna come into the boat.”

  “Don’t get me that close.”

  I bumped the boat into gear and pulled it back again. Just enough to give us a small thrust toward the mound. I kept my hand on the throttle, ready to reverse. Rusty wheezed and took a challenging step toward us.

  “You just stay where you are, big nasty,” Dad muttered.

  The boat drifted closer until there was only fifteen feet between us and the hog.

  “Bump it again,” Dad said quietly.

  I gave the engine another nudge and felt my heart beating in my chest.

  “Get ready to reverse,” he said.

  When we were about ten feet from the hog Dad tossed the loop at him. The rope hit Rusty in the face, and he snorted and wheeled to the right, leaving the line slack on the ground.

  “Reverse!” Dad said.

  But I was already backing off.

  “This isn’t gonna work!” I said, frustrated.

  Dad gathered the rope again and studied Rusty as he re-formed the lasso.

  “Get me in there again,” he said. “Closer this time.”

  I sighed with hopelessness but started us forward again.

  “Stand still, big boy,” Dad said.

  This time Dad didn’t throw right away. We came within six feet of the hog and I saw the beast’s muscles tensing. He wanted nothing more than to get into the boat with us. To tear us to pieces.

  “Dad!”

  He tossed the loop just as Rusty charged. The hog slammed into the bow and slipped and fell away. But the loop had gone around his head and one foreleg. Dad fell back and pulled on the rope with everything he had.

  “Reverse!” he yelled.

  I slammed the boat into reverse as Rusty squealed and swung his head and battered the side of the boat like someone beating a metal barrel with butcher knives. The hog had his feet on the ground and he was pulling against us. The boat swung around and the propeller locked on a tree limb and the engine went dead.

  “Get us out of here!” Dad yelled.

  I fumbled with the key and started the engine, but as soon as I put it in gear, it shut off again.

  “It’s hung!” I shouted.

  I saw Dad’s arms bucking and knocking against the struggle, his biceps bulging from the strain.

  “Crap!” he cursed.

  “Tie it!” I said.

  Dad managed to sit up and rolled to the bow cleat and began wrapping the line.

  “Go!” he yelled. “Go get the girls!”

  40

  I leaped out of the boat and clawed my way up the mound while behind me Rusty hammered against the boat in a fit of rage.

  “Hurry!” Dad shouted. “I don’t know how long this’ll hold.”

  I passed one of the smaller hogs, lying in the palmetto, gored in the stomach and barely breathing.

  “Liza!” I yelled.

  I dreaded what I was about to see. I tried to shut out the gruesome images from my mind as I slipped and crawled steadily upward, not even looking for snakes.

  When I reached the juniper my eyes went up into the branches. I saw the girls, hanging limply against the jacket straps.

  “Liza!”

  The girls weren’t moving. Then I saw Liza open her eyes.

  I felt my heart cave in my chest. I felt like crying, but I coughed and swallowed the feeling away.

  “Hang on,” I said. “Just hang on.”

  Even though Dad was still below, straining against Rusty, it seemed like it was all over. Like nothing else could go wrong. I climbed into the tree, and my feet found familiar footing on the crude platform where I’d spent the worst part of the worst night of my life.

  “Hang on,” I said again.

  I balanced before them and fumbled with the strap buckles around Francie. She began to weep and whimper while my shaking fingers worked as fast as they could.

  “We’re getting out of here, Francie,” I said.

  I got her loose and put her under my arm and carried her to the ground. I placed her against the base of the juniper.

  “I’ll be back,” I said.

  Francie fell over and curled up in the leaves and pulled her knees up to her chest.

  “Come on, Cort!” Dad yelled from below.

  I stood and looked downhill. “I’ve got them! They’re okay!”

  “Hurry!”

  I pulled myself into the tree again and began untying Liza. She gave me a weak smile.

  “I knew you’d make it,” she said.

  “Don’t talk,” I said.

  The strap came undone and she fell toward me. Perched precariously on the tree branch, I wasn’t prepared for this. I clutched her against me with one arm and locked my fingers onto a limb overhead with every bit of strength I had. Slowly, my grip was overcome by her limp weight, and my fingers slipped. Both of us fell backward and crashed through limbs the full ten feet to the ground. I hit on my back with Liza landing heavily on top of me. I felt the wind knocked out of me and I lay there and stared dizzily at the treetops.

  But it was nothing. After all we’d been through, it was nothing. Even though I was struggling to get my breath back, I felt like smiling.

  Then I heard a metallic snap from below followed by a hollow pounding against the boat. Rusty squealed horrifically. I rolled away from Liza and lay on my stomach, trying to regain my senses through a fog of confusion.

  “Cort!” Dad yelled. “Get off the ground!”

  By the strain in his voice I knew Rusty was loose. In that same instant I heard the beast smashing through the underbrush, charging uphill.

  I pushed myself up and grabbed the girls. I barely had time to shove them against the juniper before Francie screamed. I felt fear race electric up my spine and expected the hog to pitchfork me in the back at any moment. When I spun around I saw his bloody, torn face inches from my own.

  41

  I breathed in the stench of Rusty, dried blood and fetid river mud and sickness. As if making a final display of rage before taking our lives, he plunged his snout into the leaves and tore at the dirt with his tusks. I pressed back against the girls, shoving them closer to the trunk of the tree. In the distance I thought I heard Dad fighting his way uphill. This time my mind didn’t search for options. It was locked with terror. I thought of nothing but the hog face.

  “Cort!” Dad yelled from below.

  Francie whimpered softly from behind my back. Rusty continued to squeal and grunt and rake his yellow tusks through the dirt. Images of the night before began to flip through my head like stills from a movie. Like it was time to put it all together one last time and try to make sense of it all. I remembered the houseboat, bobbing down the storm-thrashed river. The crash and the slog through the vast swamp. The terrifying sound and vision of the mound when we first came upon it. The look on Liza’s face after I knocked the cottonmouth off her heel. Death constantly around us, coming for us … There was no sense in it.

  A black blur appeared from nowhere and bowled into the hog. At first I didn’t know what was happening. Then I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  “Elmo,” I heard Francie say.

  Bear and hog rolled in a tangled blur of snarling and squealing frenzy. Teeth and claws and tusks and hooves gleamed and slashed beside us like a whirlwind of knives. The fight was so fast and violent and unpredictable that I was too shocked to move.

  “Cort!” Dad yelled again.

  I looked downhill, but I couldn’t see him. Then Elmo came rolling in front of us and in an instant the hog was on top of him, burying and slashing with his cutter teeth on the bear�
��s chest. I turned to Liza and Francie. I realized immediately there was no way I could get them back into the juniper. I shoved them sideways.

  “Around the tree!” I said.

  Francie began to crawl while Liza stared at me, dazed and disoriented. I stood and grabbed her and dragged her after Francie. We didn’t get far before the bear got to his feet and spun and bowled the hog over again. This time the two beasts came so close I felt one of them hit my leg. I waited for the pain to come. Then I drew the courage to look at my shin and saw that it was unwounded.

  “Stay still!” Dad yelled.

  I looked to my left and saw him standing not ten yards away, holding a useless stick. His face was stricken with horror. I sat against the girls and turned my eyes back to the battle. The bear was on top now, clamping the hog’s throat with his teeth and swatting at him with his claws. The hog bucked and squirmed and squealed, its feet kicking clumps of muddy leaves over our laps.

  “Cort!”

  I glanced at Dad again. There was nothing he could do. We were pinned between the tree and the two beasts fighting to the death.

  The hog managed to get on top again and I thought I detected the bear weakening. The wounds in his chest were deep, and his fur was wet and matted and gleaming a purplish color from all the blood. While the hog had gaping wounds about his body from the tearing claws, he didn’t seem slowed. I was certain he’d outlast our big friend.

  The bear grabbed the hog by the throat and there was something different about his hold this time. Rusty’s body tensed like an electric shock had passed through him. The hog’s legs straightened and twitched. The squealing stopped, and all I heard was the growling of the bear through clenched teeth and a strained gurgling sound from the hog. The bear sensed he had crushed something vital. He rolled on top again, shook his head, clamped down, and snarled viciously. Rusty’s crazed eyes grew wide and white as quail eggs, flooded with a suffocating look of desperation.

  My optimism flared. “Come on, Elmo,” I said anxiously.

  It suddenly occurred to me how foolish it was to take sides. The bear was just as sick and crazed as Rusty. Our imagined friendship with the beast was something born out of desperation. He wasn’t three feet from us, and there was no reason he wouldn’t turn and do to us just what he was doing to the hog.

  I saw Dad edging around the fight, trying to reach us. There was no way I could get both of the girls down the hill alone.

  “I’m comin’, Cort,” he said.

  The bear kept his lock on the hog, his snarls sounding more like weak sighs. Rusty gurgled and kicked occasionally, the life slowly leaving him.

  “Francie,” I whispered, “can you crawl over to me?”

  She didn’t answer and I turned and looked at her.

  “Elmo saved us,” she said.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Now it’s time to go home.”

  I reached out for her and pulled her into my lap. At the same time Dad was rushing around the back side of the juniper. He grabbed Liza and pulled her to him.

  “Get up, Cort,” he said. “Go.”

  I studied the bear again. I saw his eyes watching me, as if wondering what I was waiting for.

  “I got Francie,” I said.

  Dad hurried away through the underbrush with Liza over his shoulder. I slowly stood with Francie and sidestepped from out between Elmo and the tree. The bear continued to clamp the hog’s throat even though Rusty was clearly dead.

  “Is Elmo going to die?” Francie said.

  “Shhh,” I said.

  I backed across the clearing of torn dirt and bloody leaves, watching the bear. As if he sensed I was safely away, he released his hold and laid his chin across our dead enemy. His big chest heaved and his breathing came out rough and bubbly. His eyes closed and opened and looked at us.

  “We need to help him, Cort,” Francie said.

  The thought had crossed my mind. Even though I knew the bear was going to die, it seemed the right thing to do. But it wasn’t. It was foolish to think I had any control over the natural way of life and death out here in the swamp. Like Dad had told me, we’d pulled back the curtain and I’d found what he had warned me about. I’d seen it now. And it was time to close the curtain again and leave it as it was. And never take it for granted again.

  I turned away and shifted Francie higher.

  “He’s going to be okay,” I told her.

  She rested her chin on my shoulder and I stepped downhill into the palmetto.

  42

  Curly radioed that two ambulances were waiting for us at a bridge three miles south of the landing. Here the highway crossed a wide drainage basin far enough off the river that we’d avoid working against the turbulent current of the Tensaw. We had the girls on the floor of the jon with a towel around them. Liza’s leg was gruesomely swollen and she was slipping in and out of consciousness.

  When we arrived at the bridge we found the floodwater almost over the highway. The ambulance lights strobed red and white through the drizzling rain like they were floating in the middle of it. We pulled up against the roadway level with the medics, and they stepped over the guardrail and loaded the girls onto two stretchers. One of the medics asked me what type of snake it was. I told them, and they gave Liza a shot of something.

  “Go with ’em,” Dad told me. “Get your leg taken care of.”

  I didn’t answer him. Suddenly I couldn’t make sense of anything. I couldn’t believe there was nothing left for me to do. But my mind already realized it, and I collapsed in the boat. Everything went black.

  * * *

  I kept my eyes closed for what seemed like hours, listening to the steady beeping of hospital equipment. When I opened them I found myself alone within a partition, facing a curtain. I heard people talking softly around me. I saw feet pass the base of the curtain. I closed my eyes again.

  Some time later I felt a hand on my shoulder. I saw Dad standing over me.

  “Hey, bud,” he said.

  “Hey.”

  “How you feelin’?”

  I cocked my eyes about the room and didn’t answer him.

  “You’ve been out for nearly twenty-four hours. It’s Wednesday mornin’.”

  My head was groggy and it took a moment to make sense of where I was and how I’d gotten there. Then the memory of everything that happened flooded over me.

  I looked at him. “Are they okay?”

  “They’re fine,” he said.

  “What about Liza’s leg?”

  “She’s gonna be fine.”

  “Will she lose it?”

  “They don’t think so.”

  I struggled to recall everything I should be concerned about.

  The girls were safe. Dad was standing over me.

  I slowly realized it was really over. It was all over. For the first time in a week I felt free in my head.

  “They’ve still got some heat blankets on you,” Dad said. “Doc told me all of you are lucky you didn’t die from hypothermia.”

  I smirked. Dad knew what I was thinking.

  “Well, they stitched up the gash on your leg and the cut on your hand. You should be good as new in no time.”

  The curtain parted and Mrs. Stovall walked in. She moved to the other side of my bed and put her hand on my cheek.

  “Thank you, Cort,” she said.

  I was glad they were with me, but I didn’t want to talk to them or anybody else. I just wanted to lie there and not think about it all. And sleep again.

  43

  Just after noon on Wednesday Dad brought me a change of clothes and set them next to my bed.

  “You about ready?” he asked. “The doctor says you’re good to go.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m ready.”

  Shortly after that a nurse arrived and detached the IV from my arm and made notes on a chart. After she left, Dad helped me up and I got dressed.

  “Will they let me see Liza?”

  “Prob’ly not a good time,” he
said. “We better stay out of their way.”

  * * *

  The day after a hurricane is always strange for me. The sky is deep blue and the air is crisp and dry. It seems the storm sucked away everything, leaving a bluebird day to proudly showcase the destruction left in its wake.

  Dad drove us slowly up the highway, stopping for utility trucks and easing past piles of storm debris stacked along the ditch. We had to take a back road and wind around to the north end of the county and come south again.

  “I’ve been wondering,” I said. “How’d you know we were in trouble?”

  “I had a feeling somethin’ was wrong,” he said. “I just knew it. I left the truck here and walked in. I saw the garage door open and the generator run out. Nobody inside the house. Then I found the boat trailer smashed up at the bottom of the ramp and the houseboat gone.”

  “Francie got her wrist caught in Catfish’s leash. He drug her out into the storm, and she got onto the houseboat before it broke loose … That started it all. We got on the river and caught up with it, but everything got worse after that.”

  “Glad you got off.”

  I looked at him. “I hated you, Dad. I hated you for leaving me like that.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder and I felt myself starting to tear up at the memory of it all.

  “It won’t happen again,” he said. “You’re the most important thing in the world to me.”

  I sniffled and wiped my nose with the back of my hand.

  “You got every right to be mad.”

  I nodded. “I’m okay now,” I said. “Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

  Dad pulled his hand away and nodded considerately.

  * * *

  After nearly an hour Dad got us back to Nelson Morton’s cow pasture, where he parked near the fence.

  “Think you can walk to the house with those stitches?”

  “I can make it,” I said.

  We left the truck and crossed the pasture. From there we walked an old logging road to the back side of the Stovalls’ property. When we arrived at the landing I saw the river had receded somewhat. The bait shop and the boat slip docks were gone. Lumber and storm debris were tangled in the trees and scattered through the clearing. The launch ramp was coated with mud and trash. The sight of it was overwhelming.