Alligator

by Shelley Katz

  Albert, not liking the direction the conversation was threatening to take but unwilling to anger the man who was paying, scuttled over and seated Rye, handing him the only clean menu in the place.

  Matty leaned over Rye's back as if helping him to read the menu. He could feel one of her large breasts pressing against his back, while the other swelled into his right ear. He smiled.

  "How long it been since you had some nice juicy frog legs?" asked Matty.

  "Longer'n I care to say, I'll tell you." Rye grinned. "Maybe I'll have 'em. As I remember, you was always good in the frog-leg department."

  "Still am. Some things you don't forget, once'n you get the hang of 'em."

  "Like ridin' a bicycle."

  "That's right, honey, just like ridin'." Matty let out a deep, throaty laugh.

  Albert's face turned black and twisted with jealousy. He quickly walked over to Matty and gave her a slap on her ample rear, making sure to give it a little body English. "Get your fat ass in the kitchen, woman."

  Matty laughed jovially. Albert's jealousy always made her feel significant. She winked at Rye and headed back to the boiling oil and frying fish.

  "No harm done," said Rye. He slapped Albert on the back. "Come on, have a drink."

  "Well..." said Albert, as he sat down next to Rye. "It'd be rude not to have a drink to you."

  "Not to me," said Rye. He raised the jug of com liquor. "Let's drink to the alligator."

  "When they brought in the bodies," said Ben Ferguson ominously, "I was just cuttin' some pork chops for Mrs. Swycover."

  It was mid-afternoon, and a group of ten men sat around Albert's, drinking with Rye. They leaned forward and spoke softly, as if they were hatching a conspiracy. It was always like that when they talked about the alligator.

  Ben Ferguson shifted in his chair and looked around to make sure he had everyone's attention. He was a man built on the grand scale, tall and thick, with a large face that was almost as red as the meat he sold. He hesitated a moment, then continued in his low-pitched, booming voice.

  "Well, sir, I heard all this shoutin' and figured somethin' was up, but Mrs. S., she was in a hurry and said, 'Keep cuttin', Ben.' I damned near took off a finger, I was leanin' over so far out the back door to see what was up. Finally her kid comes rushin' in and tells us about the bodies. Well, I left them chops half cut. I'll tell you, I didn't even have time to wash my hands. They were all covered with blood, so's it looked like I'd done the job on Dinks 'n' Orrin, not the gator."

  "I ain't never seen nothin' like it in all my life, Rye," said Matty Johnston. "Poor things were so chewed up, there was hardly enough to bury. Dinks's mother pushed her way through the crowd and took him in her arms and started rockin' him and crying. It damned near broke my heart to see her."

  "Awesome," said Marris, "awesome. That gator'd have to be the size of an elephant to do that kind of damage."

  A slender, bespectacled man who smelled of swamp rot and beer sat up and looked around the table. "What are you all talking about?" he said. "I was the one who found the bodies."

  "It's a fact," said Marris, "it was Simon over here who came upon them."

  Simon Long fought to keep back the smile from his face. It detracted from his story, and even though he had told it many times, he still enjoyed telling it again. He felt it was perhaps the most important thing he'd ever have to say.

  He leaned his thin, muscular body forward and ran a hand over his perennial two-days' growth of graying beard before he spoke.

  "I was workin' on my traps down by the icehouse, about seven o'clock. It must have been seven, 'cause I'd only just gotten started. When all of a sudden, I looked at the water lapping up along the pier. I don't know why I looked over there, it wasn't planned or nothin', but I just sort of glanced, and I seen something blue-white and kind of stringy. I figured it was one of them jellyfish. Jesus Christ, all of a sudden this past year, we been gettin' this plague of 'em. Anyways, I goes over to it, and, my God, I see it's an eye. With all them veins and blubbery stuff wiggling behind it. At first I figure it must belong to a deer or something, so I turn away. Then it hits me. Jesus Christ, that eye was blue. I started to shake all over, and I couldn't move. It took me a full minute to get up the nerve to go back and check. Finally my blood started movin' again, and I took another look. Sure enough, it was blue. Oh, God, I said to myself, someone's gone and killed someone. I was just about to go for Sheriff Thompson when I noticed somethin' green-white a little farther out. I should have left right then, damn me, but I didn't. Instead, I watched while the thing come closer and closer, until it was just about at the pier and I could tell what it was, all right. It was a body. Dinks's body. Only it didn't have no head. His hand was gone, too, and you could see the bone of his arm, all polished white and broken off into splinters where the gator must have set his teeth. A huge hunk of meat was hangin' off, but most of the blood from it had gone into the water, and it was more gray than red.

  "By this time, I couldn't move no more. It was like I was in a trance. I was standin' there rooted to the ground, when I see the water churn a bit, and all of a sudden his head comes bobbin' up to the surface. It had most likely been caught in some weeds and just worked its way loose. I remember I screamed, or at least tried to scream, but no sound come out of my mouth, and I still couldn't move. Jesus, I just couldn't move. All I could do was stare. His head seemed twice the size of a normal one, puffy and blue, like the underside of a mullet. I've seen dead men before, but nothin' like that. There was something about the mouth. It looked like it was grinnin' at me. I guess it wasn't really, but that's the way it looked, like it was grinning. You could tell just by lookin', somethin' worse than murder had happened to Dinks. You could see it weren't no man who done that. It was somethin' else entirely, somethin' not human."

  An awed silence came over the men when Simon Long was finished. Ben Ferguson and Marris stared at their drinks but didn't move. Even Sam Pruett, the town lawyer, refrained from tapping out his pipe and relighting it.

  Rye could feel the electricity of their terror and fascination. "Somethin' tells me you boys been listenin' to too many tales," he said with a laugh.

  "Don't underestimate him, Rye," said Sam Pruett, "this isn't any ordinary alligator."

  "Damned right he isn't ordinary," said Orville Levi. "That alligator's a gold mine. I put up one thousand dollars in reward money and made three times that much in my ammo shop to date." Levi had been right about the panic. It hadn't lasted long. At first the thought of some huge prehistoric monster hiding out in the water that lay right outside their doors was terrifying. But as the curious from nearby towns started coming for a look, a few of the men began mentioning the possibility of forming a hunting party. Rye's arrival that morning had cracked the town wide open like a walnut.

  Rye gave Orville a wink; it was the greeting of one businessman to another. Then he turned to Sam and said, "Well, if you boys are right, I'll be needin' a guide."

  "Best is Lee Ferris," said Sam.

  "Ferris? Aaron's boy?"

  "Aaron and Lizbeth," answered Sam.

  "Aaron and Lizbeth, that is some combination." Rye smirked at the thought.

  Ben smirked back and gave Rye a friendly poke. "Yeah, well, there's always been some question about Aaron's part in it, if ya know what I mean."

  "That right?" said Rye. His voice showed little interest. In fact, he was interested, but he wasn't about to let Ben see that.

  "You ask me, I'd stay away from the Ferris kid. He's a real wise-ass," said Marris.

  "That's the truth," said Ben. "Boy went off to Viet Nam and come back with a chip on his shoulder bigger'n a hummock. Keeps to himself, mostly. In fact, for all we seen in here, he might not be able to talk at all."

  "God Almighty's overcoat wouldn't make a vest for that one," said Simon.

  "He ain't so bad," volunteered Orville Levi with a sharp little ferret smile, "owes me five hundred dollars and pays real prompt. 'Course, he knows he better
."

  "Maybe I'll take him on," grunted Rye.

  Sam smiled. "You don't take him on, he takes you on, if you know what I mean."

  "I believe I do," said Rye. He didn't even bother to hide his increasing interest. "Yes, sir, I surely do. Any idea where I can find Superboy?"

  "He parks his skiff over by the icehouse," answered Sam. "It's the one with all the junk in it. You're really going to try to hire him?"

  "You said he was the best, didn't you?"

  "That's right," answered Sam.

  "Well, then, he'll be workin' for me. Let me tell you boys somethin'. Be it one thousand acres of prime Miami waterfront or a piece of sweet young ass, Rye Whitman's a man who always gets the best."

  Chapter 4

  When Lee Ferris carried a man, he acted like he was doing him a favor. He was. No one who ever went out with him came back empty-handed.

  It seemed like he had a special line in to the gods. He knew where the fish were biting, or if a hurricane was blowing up. He knew when a man was within a mile of him.

  It was almost a mystical experience to see him, that perpetual smirk smeared across his face, that squashed leather hat with a feather in it smashed down on his head, poling into the dock, up to his ass in fish.

  Most people would try to figure out the location of a bass by complicated reckonings of wind velocity, water depth, temperature, season of the year, and past history; Lee used pure instinct. He didn't use logic, he just thought himself into the part; for a moment, he was the goddamned bass.

  All of which, along with certain other personality traits, won him something of a reputation in the Everglades, though not necessarily a good one.

  There were those who felt he was stuck up. Another faction voted for him being crazy. Almost all of them said he was a bastard, though they didn't say it to his face, since another of the things they said about him was that he was a hothead. However, most were in agreement that, as an object of dislike, Lee fit the bill fairly well.

  As far as guiding was concerned though, they had to hand it to him. It was almost as if he could hear the animals calling to one another, as if he could feel the earth moving under his feet. People said swamp water must have run in his veins. But he knew all too well it was only blood.

  Having come to town in the morning to pick up supplies, Lee was finishing off the rest of the day by lying in his skiff getting up a good drunk. He was doing it alone. Lee liked to do most things alone, not so much because he found his own company so superior, but because he found everyone else's inferior. He lay with his lean, tanned body sprawled comfortably in the stern and his hawk-nosed, bony face, with its halo of soft, curly brown hair that seemed too angelic for the rest of him, hanging off the bow. He looked the image of a man complete in himself, a philosophical man who was thinking about the meaning of life.

  Actually, he was thinking about the Evinrude 115 that August Swycover was trying to pawn off on him. He could probably get it for a song and fix it up pretty good—or, and this just about started his head reeling, he could buy the Johnson 125 he had seen yesterday. Reality interceded and suggested that the motor he had would do for another year.

  Lee tried to shake it off. He decided to buy the Johnson that he knew he couldn't afford; then he turned his thoughts to an early and tranquil retirement, which likewise he knew wouldn't happen. Finally, he decided to take another drink, which just might be enough to send him into the land where everything was possible, even Johnson 125s.

  Unfortunately, all it did was clear his head. The problem was of his own making, he decided. If he stopped turning down so many clients, maybe in fifty years or so he could scrape up enough money to start thinking about new motors. He considered being less choosy, but quickly rejected the thought. The clients he took out were bad enough as it was. They were all just a pack of big-mouthed, rich, fat bastards, going after deer, muskrat, red fish, anything that bled; they didn't know the difference.

  It galled Lee to help those cretins get antlers to hang on their rec-room walls like coat hangers, and swordfish they could send out to be painted up like tarts. To Lee, animals were more than trophies to be bragged about; they deserved respect. It didn't seem fair. They gave you a fight, usually a pretty good one, and on your terms; then you hung them on your knotty-pine walls.

  Just as Lee was coming up with a long sentence of expletives about those kind of people, the granddaddy of them all, Rye Whitman, made his way toward him.

  All it took was one glance at the big, handsome, middle-aged fat cat who was bearing down on him for Lee to wish he were a lot drunker. He sank farther down into his skiff and regarded Rye with the fascination and disgust of a man watching a cockroach.

  "Hey, Dan'l Boone," shouted Rye, climbing onto the wooden pier.

  Lee greeted this obvious reference to his worn-out old buckskin clothes with silence, under the mistaken impression that Rye could be ignored.

  "Hey, Dan'l Boone!"

  Lee looked up with a cocky grin. "You talkin' to me?"

  "Don't see no other Dan'l Boones around."

  Lee made something of a display of looking around and seeing that this was true.

  "My name is Whitman, Rye Whitman, from Miami. You up to carryin' me and my friends tomorrow?"

  "Sorry, I already got customers the whole week," answered Lee.

  "Cancel them and come with me." To Rye, a prior obligation was something your secretary got you out of.

  "Like I said, sorry." Lee pushed his hat over his eyes and pretended he was going to sleep.

  Rye sat down on the pier, stripped the cap off a bottle of Wild Turkey, and handed it to Lee. Lee opened up one eye and looked at it. He could tell that bottle wasn't a gift—it was a contract. Let it be known that I, Lee Ferris, in return for one bottle of Wild Turkey, do sign over all rights, claims, and ownership over my private parts to Rye Whitman, in perpetuity, till death us do part, amen. The way men like Rye Whitman saw it, contracts were negotiated one way: I win, you lose.

  On the other hand, Wild Turkey did not walk into Lee's life every day. He opted to show Rye his stuff at a later date and reached for the bottle.

  "Good, eh?" said Rye with a smile, watching Lee drink. "I always take along a case of the good stuff when I go out. Got any idea what time we can get started?"

  "I told you, I'm booked."

  Rye shifted uneasily. He realized he hadn't bought anything with his money except a bottle of booze.

  "I'll make it worth your while. How much they payin' you? Fifty? A hundred? Two hundred?"

  "Enough."

  "Listen, boy," said Rye, his patience becoming perilously thin, "I'm makin' you a business proposition."

  "It ain't got nothin' to do with business. I give my word to a client and I keep it."

  "How much do you want?" Rye growled.

  "Like I told you," answered Lee, "I ain't for sale."

  "Who's talking about buyin'?"

  "You are, Mr. Whitman, you are."

  Rye and Lee stared at each other like two bears sizing each other up before a mating war. Finally Rye got up from the pier, brushed off his pants, and snarled, "Well, if you should happen to change your mind, you'll find me at the Rod and Gun."

  As he walked off the pier, he could hear Lee call after him, "I won't be changin' my mind."

  "We'll see," Rye murmured to himself, "we'll see."

  Dawn broke with faceted morning light, glancing over sweet bay and custard apple, spilling through spindly mangrove roots that ankled the brown swamp water. Streaks of red morning light reflected off the rotted-out shell of an old school bus that Lee used as his home and made the bus glow an even ghastlier yellow than usual.

  Inside, on a broken-down bed that was wedged between the emergency door and the back seat, Lee lay tossing and turning, fighting an insistent dream. He had had the same dream often enough to sense it wasn't real, yet it was close enough to reality to carry a lot of power. Lee managed to block out all memories of Viet Nam during the day, but
he couldn't control his nights.

  Lee fought himself into wakefulness and squinted at the clock. It was only five fifteen. He fell back with a low sigh and closed his eyes. The thought of a repeat performance of the dream made him open his eyes again. Next to him, Cindy Clarke was all curled up in a ball, far down on the bed. He could feel the warmth of her body spreading across the sheets to him. He slid his hand along the bed to her body. He couldn't be exactly sure what he was touching at first, but the damp warmth of her was pleasing to him. Slowly he moved his hand down until he recognized the gentle slope of her belly. She moved slightly under his touch but didn't wake.

  Lee smiled. It was always a discovery to touch Cindy. After three years, he should have known her like a map. But Cindy was only eighteen, and her figure was still changing. In the past year, he had seen her small breasts ripen and swell, and her belly, once flat, become rounded. He had liked her body before; its angular, sharp boyishness had promised romping and playfulness. But now a new silken layer of flesh covered her, changing her body and making it slower, subtler, more voluptuous. It had deepened his pleasure.

  Cindy suited Lee more than any other woman he had ever known. He had sensed it the first time he met her at the Rod and Gun, where she waitressed, and he had never been disappointed. Cindy always reminded him of a cat, not just because of her smooth, liquid movements, but because of the way she acted. She was fiercely independent. Cindy made no demands, and she made no promises. He never knew when he'd come home and find her waiting for him. He'd just find her there, sitting cross-legged on the bed, her red-brown hair tied in braids and her smiling face all rosy from the sun. The next day she'd be gone.

  Lee looked for nothing more from her; he knew what she offered him was better than most men ever had, and he knew that he could offer no more of himself.

  Lee looked at Cindy's touchingly childish face, the wisps of auburn hair clinging to her sleep-dampened cheeks, and suddenly felt a deep sadness. Cindy was becoming a woman, and soon she'd want more from a man than he would be able to give her. One morning, she would leave and never come back. He would never know when that morning would be, until it happened, and he would mourn but understand. Lee cursed himself for not being able to give completely like everybody else.