by Tom Poland
“Keep that gun ready in case she makes another run at us.”
“I only have two rounds left. It’s not a six-shooter, just five.”
“Let her hold it in the eyes if you can. Blind the bastard.”
Using cypress knees as handles, we hauled the canoe into an area where the water braided through a profusion of trees. Like pickets, they made it difficult for her to come after us again. She was too wide to swim through them, at least I hoped so.
I had stumbled onto dead dogs by the roadside, but the gator’s meat locker was like a steam bath where open coffins held bodies bereft of embalming such that putrefaction ruled and green slime could cover anything resembling flesh.
My stomach kept rolling. We said nothing but both of us stared back toward the gator’s lair, and so did Voodoo. Then we made it to a resting place and did nothing but sweat. Here, we rested pondering how best we might get to the elusive village when a strange sound from some distant place began to build.
“Listen, do you hear that?”
Tyler turned her head left and right, then slowly held it to the right where rising above the birds and swamp sounds a treetop flyer, an airplane, seemed to be heading toward us. The craft was moving fast and the noise gained strength. It was almost on us, but it couldn’t be an airplane for now the sound came at us through the trees. It could be nothing but trouble.
“Let’s get the canoe into the rushes,” I said.
We paddled into the rushes until a curtain of canes hid us. Then, peering through the reeds, we saw an airboat glide over the water, pushed by a large yellow fan. It skimmed through the maze of trees as if it had been there a hundred times and three black men sat together joking, and a fourth, the driver, sat above them, working the control stick. Two grim white men were aboard: our friend, Garrett the game warden, and a redneck wearing a red bandanna with riotous hair that looked as if he’d combed it with a firecracker.
The airboat glided toward the gator’s meat locker. The big rotor slowed, chopping the air with a thwacking sound before stopping, quieting the swamp. Thirty yards, if that, separated us.
One black man clutched a black leather bag with prominent handles; another held what looked like an aluminum camera case between his legs. The third held a long tube, which he kept turning in his hands.
Just then, Voodoo stood, hackles erect, to bark. I clamped my hands around his muzzle as fresh sweat popped out all over me. Tyler ran her hand down the dog’s back and forced him down in the canoe.
Two black men stood up, a native and a man in safari clothing who addressed the native in a thick African accent, tinged with British influence.
“Now precisely where is the big gator? Show me. We want to sedate it with the blowgun and then measure it. We want to take photographs so that we can compare it to the crocodiles and alligators back in the Rokel River. Then we will, of course, release it, unharmed, I might add.”
The native, dressed in shorts, nothing more, possessed the body of a heavyweight, narrow at the waist, muscled, and broad shouldered with chiseled biceps. He faced the lagoon we had just left, oblivious to the lesser men around him and peered across the blackwater where his reflection lay like an apparition. His voice had that same lilting quality the boys had had.
“She would be down there in that opening,” he said pointing. “Her den be there. It is a bad place, a place of bones. Long before you get to it you will smell the death and then the gator—”
There was no finishing the sentence. The man holding the long tube blew a dart into the native’s right shoulder, crumpling him into the airboat. The man with the camera case then rolled the native over and pulled out the dart, handing it to the blowgunner who admired its bloody point.
“The drug Ketamine, she works fast,” he said, wiping the dart point clean with a white cloth as the doctor donned rubber gloves. “The poor devil thinks he’s floating above the earth. Yes, this ‘Kat Valium’ makes people feel as if they’re leaving their body. Perhaps he’s having a near-death experience,” and he laughed, “he is close to death all right.”
The doctor replied with sarcasm, pointing to the gator den.
“You are closer to the truth than you know. His kidneys are leaving his body and his death will be over there. Isn’t that so, Officer Garrett?” And he laughed. Everyone laughed, even Garrett, but not the redneck.
Garrett nudged the stricken native with his foot, who lay where he had been rolled onto his stomach. He was as good as dead. The third black man began swabbing the native’s back with a bright orange substance.
The doctor opened his bag, removed a shiny scalpel, and with deft movements sliced two openings into the man’s back, unleashing dark purple spurts of blood.
Making precise incisions, the doctor cut deep into the lower back and prying back flesh, removed two dark-red kidneys that looked similar to computer mouses. Jubilant, he held them up—the color of rubies, dripping blood and shiny—for the others to see. They all smiled and nodded. It was as if a miner had pulled gold nuggets from brown earth and a great party was to follow. Everyone rejoiced except Garrett and his silent companion.
The other black man popped open his case, and billowing plumes of silver vapors rose as the surgeon, in elation, juggled the kidneys and hummed a ditty before dropping them into the cooler where their warmth caused fog to rise. Garrett fumed, touching his gun, then shaking a finger in the good doctor’s face.
“God damn it, you ruin those kidneys, and we got a big problem. Those kidneys fetch more money than I can make in two years.”
“It’s all right,” said the physician in his African accent, looking into the cooler. “Look. See for yourself. They are fine. See. They sleep on a clean layer of gauze. They are beautiful and they are ours, and soon we’ll put them to good use in someone who matters. The important thing now is to get back to the hospital ship right away.”
The doctor shut the cooler. Garrett was all business, resting his right hand on his service revolver while his pal looked around the swamp, bored.
Tyler whispered through rushes.
“If I hadn’t been for the gator, I could shoot all five of them before they would know what hit them.”
“Garrett’s got a gun.” I whispered.
“I’d shoot him first,” and I knew she meant it.
“We’re not moving until long after they leave. To move is to die,” I whispered, placing my hand upon hers. Just then, a cry rose into the swamp. An anguished wail resounded through the cypress trees, a haunting sound that couldn’t have come from a human but did—the native. The airboat’s giant fan roared to life and Garrett jerked the drugged man to his feet, more dead than live. Blood poured from slanting incisions, staining his shorts and running down his legs.
The men wrapped their noses and mouths with bandannas and handkerchiefs, and the airboat glided toward the gator den as Spanish moss fluttered in its draft, and voices from behind the handkerchiefs rode the clammy air.
“Here’s the gator,” said the driver, throttling the engine down and staring at the doomed native. “The ravenous gator. Nice of you to introduce us.”
“Yes, you’re going over for dinner,” said Garrett, laughing, “over board” and he and the dartsman—holding the dazed man by an arm and a leg apiece—heaved him into the water. From the lagoon of rot, the gator slipped through the water and headed for the native. Incredibly, one of the Africans held a digital camera to photo the attack. The gator took the native by the waist full into her jaws and as the camera flashed, thrashed the black man against the water before taking the stunned soul beneath the swamp into eternity. The water roiled as the gator rolled the man’s body.
The pilot pulled hard on the stick and the airboat spun on its axis until it faced the open creek, blowing the stench back against the rotten den, and the men removed their handkerchiefs. Then the boat flew by us at a pace more furious than it had appeared. In seconds, it was gone, leaving nothing but a dead man, fading noise, and death’s stench,
which stirred and renewed, reached us in the rushes.
We turned toward the water where the gator had vanished with the black man. Unearthly stillness held the swamp. Even the frogs remained silent, and the airboat and its horror seemed an illusion. No evidence remained, no noise, nor any ripples. The water had smoothed again to a mirror-like polish and the swamp was as it had been: green, beautiful, reflective, but oppressive. Silence ruled except for burbling water where the creek swelled and pushed over a log in a quavering dome of water.
Then the gator surfaced.
The smell of death and the sight of the gator emerging from the murky water with an arm in her jaws erased any doubt as to what we’d seen. Tyler wept as the abhorrent gator went about her business. The sound of cracking bones ricocheted through the swamp as the gator thrashed the arm about until she had it right. Then she swallowed it whole, the hand waving as it slid down the jaws of hell.
“God, what a nightmare,” said Tyler. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
‘Yes, nothing but a nightmare. But, no, we stay put until twilight. If we leave too soon and they spot us, they’ll kill us. We can’t outrun them, so we just have to outlast them. Garrett would never let us make it back to the mainland.”
“The surgeon, that mutilator, said they had to get back to the ship.”
“Yes. He called it a hospital ship, though I doubt that’s true. We can’t be sure they’ve left. What if they stopped just out of hearing in the next lagoon?”
“What if the gator comes for us again? What about that?” she asked.
“She’s not interested in a meal right now. The smart thing, the only thing, is to wait.”
We waited and as dusk descended, we could see a cloud of mosquitoes floating over the gator’s den—a mound of rotting vegetation lined with mud.
“What is Garrett doing with those black men?” she asked.
“I’ve been sitting here thinking about that. No wonder he told us not to come here. It looks as if he’s in business with human poachers. I’m glad Jackson’s coming for you now. You need to leave the island.”
“Aren’t you afraid to stay here?”
“I’m staying.”
We waited until dark, fanning away mosquitoes and talking of a day so eventful as to defy belief. Then we slipped back to the old plantation after dusk, paddling as fast and as close to the marsh grass as possible beneath a dome of stars on an island where lawmen abetted the lawless.
***
We spent much of the next week avoiding the northern half of the island, exploring the south side seeking Rikard’s hideout. The narrow escape with the alligator and human butchery set us back on our heels. We were afraid to venture north, though I was very curious about the hospital ship. We couldn’t chance bumping into Garrett or the evil black murderers. They could have taken one kidney from the native, but they took both and fed him to the gator. They would do the same to us and as the burnt journal pages foretold, nothing would remain save our organs, which would carry on without us.
So far, we had shared a memorable but monstrous time on Forbidden Island. We had gotten the canoe, which almost cost me my life, and Rikard had found us as Jackson and Cameron predicted. Tyler and I had grown close and we had witnessed the miracle of the porpoises, which never strayed far from my mind, and we had witnessed a reprehensible crime.
Black Magic paled compared to the ravaging of organs on a wild island where animal magic and organ thievery were sisters to voodoo. The story of my life—of any writer’s life—surrounded me.
***
August arrived, the month when seaturtles lumber ashore under darkness to lay eggs in the dunes. We stayed busy. When we weren’t searching the island, Tyler made floral arrangements from sea oats, drift wood, flowers, and shells … beautiful works of art. Our campsite relinquished its character as a wild outpost and took on a domesticated air.
We crabbed and cast for shrimp to supplement our rations, prepared meals, did chores, and took care of ourselves. We had clothes to rinse in the brine and dry in the wind and sun, which left them stiff and starchy. Shaving with cold water had become a chore and I gave some thought to growing a beard, though I hated facial hair and its barbaric look.
Soon, Jackson would come for Tyler and she had nothing to show for coming to the island. She had failed to discover her basket’s maker and she had failed to get any leads on Lorie other than Jackson’s comment about a young woman followed by a pelican. I shared her disappointment but thought it best she leave the island for safety’s sake. We had made a vow to keep up with each other, and I knew we would … if I survived the summer.
MAROONED
With Tyler’s time running out, I thought we should make one concerted effort to find Rikard for he was the key to salvaging her trip. She had two more nights and that was it. We would paddle into the island’s southern interior and pursue the one creek penetrating the island the deepest—a baffling tributary we had paddled up twice before only to encounter a dead end. On the map, it appeared to penetrate the heart of the island but we always dead-ended well short of the creek’s reach.
We tried again but this time went all the way in to its end where a wall of grass blocked our progress. The closer we got the more hopeless it looked.
“Let’s go into the grass.”
“You’re not getting out are you?” she asked. “You know better by now.”
“I know better than to slip into the muck,” I said. “The grass will hold me.”
I got into the grass and climbed a hummock that let me see the creek going deeper into the island.
“Come look at this.”
Tyler got out and tiptoeing past some scurrying fiddler crabs reached for my hand.
“The creek keeps flowing, right through the grass,” I said, pulling her up beside me.
“How can that be?”
“I don’t know.”
We climbed into the canoe and paddled over to the wall of grass. I bent a stalk over and cut some dead, dry tips and dropped them into the water. They flowed seaward.
“The tide is flowing through here somehow.”
“So, there must be a break in the muck beneath the grass,” she said.
“Something like that.”
I pulled the canoe against the grass and probed it with my hands, feeling my way down around the roots until I felt something unnatural—nursery pots sitting in wire mesh in a steel frame. Behind the Spartina, camouflaged netting completed the deception. The ingenious contraption—a swinging gate of Spartina—looked like a dead end from afar but easily let the water ebb and flow. The frame connected to steel poles, painted like marsh grass. One pole allowed it to swing open by way of two ball joints. The other pole served as a latch, and a heavy-duty chromed brass padlock had it secured.
“I’d say we’ve found the secret passage to Rikard’s retreat. ”
“Let’s go inland,” Tyler said, her eyes afire.
“We’d have an hour at most before the outgoing tide strands us and we have no idea how deep inland we need to go. We’ll come back tomorrow,” I said and I meant it. Tomorrow night was Tyler’s last night, and it saddened me to see her return empty-handed to a town where some people viewed her as a murderess. I had known all along her time was limited. Once she left, the solitude I thought so important would become loneliness.
***
That night over boiling blue crabs and instant potatoes, we discussed what might be up the barricaded creek. Tyler speculated that drug runners had a stash there, but I knew it had to be the passageway to Rikard’s hideout. There was one way to find out: portage the canoe around the barricade and paddle inland the next afternoon, and if it led to something big, would Tyler stay?
“Do you have to go back to Apex?” I asked Tyler.
“I gave the lady at the florist my word I’d only be gone three weeks and I keep my promises.”
“I just didn’t know if you had some leeway,” I said.
“I could quit but that wo
uldn’t be fair to her. Mrs. Roberts is old and needs help. She has arthritis in her hands bad.”
“Well, it’s just a matter of getting your pickup out of the barn. I’ll go back to check on my Land Rover and make sure you get back okay.”
“Thanks. I sure don’t want to be alone with Jackson. He’s filthy.”
“It’s the least I can do. You’ve had no luck here.”
“I’ll be back. Count on it. You said you’d be here for the summer, maybe autumn too. I can come back in September. Maybe you’ll have that story written by then and maybe you’ll find my Lorie.”
“Now that would be something,” I said.
“If you tell me who to call, I’ll see how your daughter is doing. Wouldn’t it be something if I came back with good news and you really had found Lorie.”
“It could get no better,” I said.
“What about the poachers? Aren’t you afraid?”
“I am, but maybe Rikard will turn out to be a friend. A man who knows voodoo and commands porpoises would make a great ally.”
We finished dinner and headed to the beach, joking about the caveat not to swim after a meal. We’d been doing this for weeks now and the sea had been wonderful. For me the sea meant cleansing, a ritual taking the place of a solar shower, which Tyler loved because she reveled in the idea of shampooing with rainwater. She said it made her hair glisten. Something did for it shone beneath the Southern sun with brilliance.
I went out in the same old swimsuit and Tyler went out in cut-off jeans and an old khaki shirt. The water felt wonderful. It was green, refreshing, and chilling. We lost ourselves in the waves and for a long time nothing but the crash of surf sounded. Then it was time for Tyler’s nightly lesson of late: teaching me to float in shallow water, a lesson I always flunked. I was too muscular and my body always sank.