Alligator

by Shelley Katz

  On the hummock he could see Maurice digging a grave for Sam. When Maurice had asked the rest of the men for help, they had laughed. Instead, they had begun circling the island, searching for what was left of their supplies. They moved slowly and painfully through the wreckage, like old men picking through garbage. Even worse than the huge welts and bruises that covered their bodies were the scars Lee had read in their eyes. They were glazed, zombielike eyes that no longer cared. Lee felt sick at the sight of the men revolving around the hummock, and turned away to continue his search of the Saurian.

  Rye was at the shore, looking for his rifle, when he thought he saw something flash in the water. He ran closer, but it was only part of a skiff. Ever since dawn, he had been watching the water, looking for a shadow under the surface, a flickering in the weeds, something that would tell him that the alligator was nearby. He knew he was there; he could feel his presence. He'd laughed at Lee when he said the alligator was waiting for them, but now he was beginning to believe that might be true. All night long, while the storm raged around him, Rye had thought about the alligator, the intricacy of his den, and the way it was hidden in the canal. An animal that could do that had to be damn cagey. By morning, he was sure of it.

  Rye began walking along the shoreline. He hadn't been walking more than a minute when he saw a huge swath cut through the sawgrass. He bent down and inspected it. Perhaps it was the wind that had cut into the grass; perhaps water had rushed across it during the storm. Almost anything could have done that, but he knew it was the alligator.

  Rye shouted to the rest of the men, "I found a trail! He's been here!"

  Nobody answered. Nobody even looked up. The men continued revolving around the island, sifting through the wreckage. For a moment, Maurice looked up from Sam's grave, but he returned to digging. It was more important.

  Rye ran back toward the men. "What's the matter with you all!" he yelled. "Didn't you hear me? I said he was here!"

  Finally Marris looked up. "He ain't worth it, Rye," he said. His voice was flat and expressionless.

  Ben nodded in agreement. "Two men gone. God knows how many more if we go on."

  "What the hell do you know about what's worth it." Rye cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled out to Lee, "Get that damn boat ready and let's go! I found the trail!"

  Lee climbed off the Saurian and waded back to shore. Rye was waiting for him; his legs were slightly apart and his jaw was tense. He knew he was about to get an argument.

  "We ain't goin' nowhere in that," Lee said, just barely keeping his anger under control.

  "Then we'll take one of the skiffs," answered Rye.

  "Only place we're takin' a skiff is back to Everglades City." Even the smell of Rye was making Lee's stomach convulse with anger.

  All along the hummock the men were beginning to look up. It was the first interest they had shown in anything all morning. Even Marris drew closer so he could hear.

  "I ain't goin' back," Rye said loudly.

  "Suit yourself." Lee shrugged and began to walk away, though he knew they were far from being finished with each other. Rye called after him. "And neither are you."

  Lee stopped. The need to confront Rye was even greater than his need to get away. "I wouldn't put no money on that," he said. He could feel his control starting to crack. He tried to hold on to it. When he and Rye had it out, it wouldn't be like this; the two of them would be alone.

  Lee drew very close to Rye and hissed, "You can stay out here and die for all I care. Only sorry I won't be there to see it. Look around. That's your work. I'm goin' back with the rest. You killed enough people for today."

  The men closed in around Rye and Lee as if they were spectators at a boxing match. The only difference was they were silent and their eyes were still glazed over with indifference. It made Lee want to get sick; he had seen people who looked like that before, in Viet Nam.

  "You're not going anywhere," snarled Rye. "You're stickin' here with me." He knew if he could bait Lee, he could get him to stay. He couldn't bind a man like Lee to him by money, but he could by anger. "You promised to carry me and bring me back alive, not like that other client of yours. If you leave me out here, you'll be killin' me sure as you put a gun to my head. Let all these others be a witness to it."

  Lee began to laugh, and when he saw the confusion on Rye's face, it made him laugh even harder. He wanted to unsettle Rye, to prod him toward understanding who was really in control. He wanted to watch as Rye slowly began to feel fear. Finally, he said, "You don't understand it at all, Mr. Whitman. You don't understand it at all. If I stay out here, it'll be for another reason entirely."

  "And that's that?" Rye watched Lee closely, wondering how much he knew, and for the first time not sure how much there was to know.

  "Well now," said Lee, "I'll just let you think on it yourself for a while. See what you come up with. Yes, sir, that's what I'll do. As for goin' out on the hunt, be ready to leave in an hour." Lee paused for a moment. Rye was off balance, and Lee enjoyed watching it more than he had enjoyed anything in the past three days. "There's one thing you are right about," he said, as he turned and began to walk through the circle of men. "That trail, it was the alligator."

  Only six skiffs could be salvaged out of the ten, and less than half the supplies. Thompson had taken over and organized the men. They had quickly divided the supplies and boats; fifteen minutes later, they were gone.

  Rye could still see the last two skiffs disappearing into the horizon as he sat on the shore. Lee was only fifty feet away, patching up a skiff as best he could. Rye couldn't see Maurice, but he was somewhere farther in on the hummock, making one last check for undamaged supplies.

  Ever since Rye had talked to Lee, a disturbing thought had been eating at him. He was surprised it had never occurred to him before.

  The implications of his having "known" Lizbeth hadn't really penetrated into his consciousness. It had not been a particularly significant event at the time, and he hadn't thought much about it afterward. She'd been rich and therefore something of a victory; she'd been pretty, which made it pleasant; but beyond that she was only one of a long list.

  Thinking back from the distance of almost thirty years, he could remember very little about the whole thing. He remembered she told him she was a virgin, as if she were bestowing some great gift on him, and also an obligation. He remembered not believing her at the time, and not particularly caring much either way.

  Shortly thereafter, he had left town. He vaguely recollected hearing she had to get married and that she was still carrying a torch for him. He remembered thinking at the time how strange it was that a person could make a lasting impression on someone else while hardly knowing they existed.

  Rye hadn't thought about Lizbeth again until the day he came to Everglades and someone said Lee was her son. It certainly hadn't occurred to Rye that he might be the father, though all the clues had been there. Rye didn't think of the act of sex as having consequences; it seemed complete in itself.

  But what if it were true? Or if Lee believed it were true? All along he'd felt that Lee had some special grievance against him, and it never made sense that this was simply because he'd screwed Lizbeth. After all, the kid didn't come from outer space; he probably did some good fucking around himself.

  But the other thing. Yes, sir, he knew about being a bastard himself; it could mean a great deal to a man. There was something so demeaning about starting out in the back seat of a Ford. The world could treat you like a fool and a beggar and you could take that, but you had to believe that your conception at least wasn't just an accident. Your beginnings needed to have significance, even if the rest of your life didn't.

  Rye watched Lee packing up the skiff and tried to see if he felt any differently toward him. He decided that he didn't. Even if he were Lee's father, it was merely a trick of nature. He felt no responsibility toward him. Of course, a man like Lee wouldn't see it that way. He would figure that it linked them and put them unde
r an obligation to each other. And to Lee, that thought would be repellent.

  It suddenly occurred to Rye that Lee might have brought him out in the swamps to kill him. Now that there would only be Maurice around, he wouldn't have to worry about witnesses. Well, if that was the way Lee wanted to play it, he'd play it that way too. He'd just keep his eyes open. He knew a lot about handling a gun, and while he'd never shot a man yet, he could if he had to.

  Chapter 9

  Maurice felt edgy. The three men had left the hummock at midday, and since then none of them had said a word that wasn't entirely necessary. As he looked out at the setting sun and the alligator trail that stretched toward it like a huge runway, he could feel potential disaster hanging over the skiff as thick as the air. The swamp seemed to echo it, with its vast emptiness spreading out all around them. Maurice could see Rye and Lee wading through the water along the trail, checking to make sure the alligator hadn't doubled back on himself. They walked several feet from each other, with their eyes ahead, but they both had rifles, and they held them with a deliberate casualness.

  When they had been a large hunting party, the desolateness of the swamps had had less of an impact. The group had, by its very numbers, brought civilization with them. There was always the roar of the motors, the jokes, the drinking, the card playing, the two-way radios, and the stories of home. But now, with only three men, and the silence of hatred on two of them, any joy in the adventure was gone. It had been smashed by the storm as surely as the bottles of liquor and the tanks of gasoline.

  Yet, at the same time, Maurice felt good. He knew he had saved Lee's life, and he'd risked his own to do it.

  Maurice had never felt so divided in his feelings before. He'd seen two men die, one of whom he'd known for ten years. He'd probably spent more time with John than he had with his wife. He may not have liked John, but he knew him well, and his death left a large gap.

  It seemed impossible to Maurice that he had survived. He'd never thought of himself as a survivor before. If he'd gotten through some rough scrapes, it was always due to the intervention of others. All his life he'd avoided things with any degree of risk, knowing that when put to the test he'd be sure to fall short. Ever since he could remember, he'd been told he was a loser, and he'd accepted the assessment as a fair one. He'd closed himself off from his wife, knowing that if she hadn't come to that judgment yet, she would soon enough.

  Only one man, Maurice's Uncle Stan, had shown any belief in him at all. It was many years ago, and it lasted for only a week.

  Lying back in the skiff, the cooling shadows of dusk falling all around him, Maurice began to think about his Uncle Stan.

  Maurice remembered him as a burly, red-faced man with a fat, puttylike nose with pores the size of potholes. Though he had a perfectly respectable job as a typesetter in the outskirts of Chicago, Uncle Stan was considered the black sheep of the family. For one thing, he was a bachelor, and he combed his hair over his bald spot. He always drank a bit too much and laughed a little too loud, serious infractions of the rules according to Maurice's family.

  When Maurice was ten, his uncle made one of his rare visits. He must have quickly assessed the situation, because the next morning, in a last-ditch attempt to save the boy, he proposed taking him on a two-week fishing trip to Canada.

  Maurice had lasted only one week. From the moment the train pulled out of the station, over the hills of Virginia, across the plains of Illinois, through the forests of Minnesota and the grain fields of Manitoba, Maurice cried for his parents. Neither the pine trees, nor the Indians, nor the freshly caught walleyes deep-fried in lard, could console him.

  Stan tried everything he knew, but the cold, empty house and stony, disinterested parents called to Maurice more strongly than anything Stan could devise. The desperate fear that perhaps he might be missing something—a touch of warmth, a word of concern—plagued Maurice all the time he was gone and chilled him more thoroughly than his constant disappointment at home.

  Maurice could picture his Uncle Stan kneeling by the fire, pulling out potatoes burned coal-black and smoking. He felt that in some way he'd repaid a debt he owed today.

  Just then he noticed a red day-glo hat with sharpshooter badges floating near the skiff. He reached over the side and picked it up. He wrung it out, and was about to put it on his head when he suddenly remembered where he had seen a hat like it before. It looked just like Clete's hat, though Maurice knew that was impossible. They'd left Clete and his father back at the Rod and Gun Hotel with five hundred dollars in their pockets. Maurice thought it was just a coincidence; then he saw the hand-sewn camp label in the hat band. It read: CLETE HUTCHINS. In the excitement of the hunt, he'd forgotten all about the trick. It was a stupid thing to do; he'd felt that when they did it, and now that he knew Lee, he felt it even more.

  He looked out at Rye and Lee, who were heading back to the boat. For a moment he was tempted to tell Lee about the trick, but, seeing Rye wading through the water, his chin thrust forward, his face red from the sun and exertion, he knew he could never betray him. Maurice wadded up the hat and stuffed it into his pocket just as the men reached the boat.

  It was only nine o'clock when Rye turned in, which was much earlier than he'd ever dared to try for sleep before. He crawled into his tent with high hopes. He was so exhausted that the skin around his eyes was the color of raw meat. When he got to that point, he was usually able to sleep.

  Maurice and Lee remained by the campfire, sipping scalding-hot coffee and listening to the night. Maurice shifted his position; there was something in his pocket that was bothering him. With a pang of regret, he remembered that Clete's hat was there; he'd forgotten to get rid of it.

  Lee pretended to stoke the fire, but actually he was watching Maurice out of the corner of his eye. He didn't know what to make of the man. Maurice was one of those fat cats from Miami, and a sellout to Rye Whitman, but there was something sympathetic about him. In many ways, he was a coward, yet he'd saved Lee's life. Lee liked to pigeonhole a man as either black or white; he always found the shadings very unsettling.

  "I owe you one," he said finally. "Matter of fact, I owe you several. Most people wouldn't figure I was worth the savin'."

  Maurice could feel Clete's hat pressing hard against his thigh. "You have nothing to thank me for," he said. "I knew about that storm too."

  Lee angrily stoked at the dull gray ashes until they split into vermilion sparks.

  It killed Maurice to think he didn't deserve Lee's thanks. He respected Lee, and it would have meant something if a man like that respected him too. "I'm sorry," he said sadly.

  "Two men are dead because of that storm. Why the hell did you do it?"

  "I had no choice," Maurice answered.

  "There's always a choice," Lee's voice was bitter. "Well, I hope Whitman's enjoyed his fun and games. If you ask me, the price of admission was awful high."

  "Look," said Maurice, "I don't know what's between you two..."

  "As much space as possible."

  Maurice glanced back at the tent where Rye lay trying to sleep, fighting his night horrors. He didn't know why, but he wanted to explain Rye to Lee. Perhaps he felt that if he explained Rye, he'd be making an explanation for himself. "You don't know Rye like I do," Maurice said.

  Lee erupted. "Know him? Oh, I know him all right. I've met a million like him. I saw him in Viet Nam doing things no man should have to see, things it'll take a whole life to forget. Don't tell me I don't know him. I know him better than you think."

  "No," said Maurice. "You've got him wrong. I've worked for Rye Whitman for ten years, and I've gotten to know him better than I know myself. Sure, I've seen Rye do a lot of bad things in my time. I've seen him screw the pants off of more people than you've probably met in your whole life. I've seen him take land and crush it under his bulldozers and throw up his tacky homes and condos in a few weeks, but there's more to Rye than that." Maurice could see that Lee was sneering, yet still he continued. "Th
e thing is," said Maurice, "he believes in what he does. He thinks it's progress. Rye could be the only man left who still believes in the American Dream. He's swallowed it whole. I've seen him stand at his office window for hours looking out at Miami. It's like a father looking at his kid. He thinks all those bricks and stones and telephone poles, all those men going off to work and those women standing in their kitchens frying red snapper, are there because of him. What Rye does isn't strictly for money. He doesn't want people's money, he wants their gratitude, he wants their love."

  "Touching," said Lee caustically. "You really think Rye Whitman's the kind of man who understands gratitude?"

  "He understands mine," answered Maurice.

  It seemed impossible to Lee that Maurice really believed that. Didn't he know he was just a tool of Rye's? "I wouldn't bet on it," Lee said fiercely. "Rye doesn't care about anybody but himself. People ain't nothin' but property to him. There are those he owns and those he's fixin' to own. There isn't anything in this world that man respects, except maybe the gator. Yes, I think he's beginning to respect the gator."

  "And you," said Maurice. "Rye may not know it, but he respects you."

  "Maybe. But that's only because he can't buy me. It makes me more valuable. Man sells himself for short money, even the man who's buyin' figures he's gotten a bad deal."

  Maurice understood immediately. "You mean me, don't you?"

  "What's between you two is none of my business."

  Lee stood up. He knew he had gotten to Maurice; he'd wanted to. What he'd said had the cruelty that only the truth could have, and now he felt sorry. "It's getting late," he said softly; the bitterness was gone from his voice. "You coming?"

  "No," answered Maurice; he tried to sound undisturbed. "I think I'll stay out here a while longer." He watched Lee leave, then turned back and stared into the fire. What Lee had said disturbed Maurice. He'd always known Rye didn't respect him. Up until now it hadn't bothered him, because he could see no reason why he should. Now, after all the years, he wondered if if wasn't too late to try to change Rye's mind.