Stumbling often, he finally reached the creek flowing out from Lake Nokobee. The glossy dark foliage of the waterside shrubs welcomed him back to the world of the living. He knelt to its clear water, splashing some on his face, and drank heavily from his cupped hands.
He then headed upstream through familiar terrain. In the waning sunlight, a zebra swallowtail flew in front of him, black-striped wings flashing, its long tails streaming behind. To his surprise he saw it with perfect clarity, every detail of its body and wings growing in size and intensifying in pattern. They forced their way into his consciousness, like the images of a twilight dream, just before merciful sleep descends.
He walked on, and as he did, he could think only about butterflies. He began to search for more individuals, more species. Everything else was pushed from his mind. Butterflies were all that remained in the Nokobee woodland. Their beauty shut out the horror. Butterflies were the only thing that mattered to him now.
Obsessed with the beautiful insects, he walked the Nokobee trail and passed from a descent toward death back into life. He saw a dogface sulphur settle on a twig. He stopped and watched two little blues fluttering around each other over flowers in a clearing. He went on, and soon came to the woodland dome that had saved his life. A wood nymph flew with jerky wing flaps into the deepening shade. He stood there awhile, his head beginning to clear.
He noticed Sunky's cowboy hat still sitting atop the bush where it had fallen. He picked it off and carried it with him. He would dispose of it later, and wipe out the trail of his would-be killers. He had to protect Frogman.
Close to the trailhead a giant swallowtail soared overhead in brown and yellow magnificence and on down the path, then turned into a grove of trees at the lake's edge. It was going home to spend the night on some high arboreal perch. Hey, hello, Papilio cresphontes, he murmured, addressing it by its scientific name to show proper respect. Hey, hello, hello, he continued, growing light-headed and feeling a tickle of silliness. I'm going home too. We're both alive, we're well and safe. He settled into his car, took a deep breath, and turned the key. He drove out and onto the road toward Clayville.
He arrived at his parents' house as the last light was fading, stopping short at the near corner of the front yard, and sat quietly for a while. He asked himself, Why have I come here? Then he remembered. He had to see them with his own eyes, to be sure they were safe.
Raff stayed rooted to the car seat, and his mind began to clear some more. He looked about him as the darkness closed in. A bat skittered over the top of the house and out of sight among the tree canopies beyond. A lantern fly, flashing its mating call in points of light, flew across the backyard: dot-dot-dot-dash-dot-dot...He focused on its semaphore code and asked himself, Did I get that right, dot-dot-dot-dash-dot-dot-dash? How comforting it would be to return this way to the safe and predictable world of nature. He recognized the coming of delusion again, and with effort he pulled himself together.
He could just go up to the front door, walk into the living room, and embrace his parents. He felt an intense desire to do that. But he could not chance it. He knew that he looked like someone who had just crawled away from an automobile accident. That would demand an explanation, and he dared not give it. There was no need to burden Ainesley and Marcia with the horror he had just experienced. And worse: he feared that Frogman might somehow learn he had told someone and come raging out of the swamp to commit another mass murder. Raff would be an evil spirit spreading a fatal curse.
So he sat there quietly, trying to catch a glimpse of his parents through the front windshield. After a few more minutes a light began to flicker in the living room window. It meant that his father had settled in his favorite chair to watch the early evening news. Ainesley, he reflected, wasn't running around much these days. He'd suffered a mild heart attack the previous winter and was now on medication for hypertension and angina. He still went in mornings to run the hardware store, but hunting and fishing trips and evenings in the usual honky-tonk saloons had been severely curtailed. So had his consumption of cigarettes. Marcia had tried everything short of divorce proceedings to stop him from smoking altogether, but so far without success.
Raff especially yearned to see his mother now, alive and healthy. Ever since Cyrus had bestowed his gift of a college education on Raff a decade earlier, Marcia had become more content with her own existence. She had joined social activities at the local First Methodist Church, and she looked forward more than ever, with growing self-confidence, to family gatherings at Marybelle. The identity she had craved had been granted. She was more than Mrs. Cody now. She was also the Mobile Semmes who lived up in Clayville to be with her husband.
Tonight the light was on in the kitchen. She could be fixing supper about now. And once, then a second time, Raff caught a glimpse of her head in the window as she came up to the sink.
Then he turned the key and drove on through Clayville, down the main street, which was already emptied of traffic for the evening, and took the alternate, less-traveled two-lane highway to Mobile. Even on the road he wanted to be alone and hidden. Frogman and the LeBowites must not know where he was. Stopping at a liquor store just south of Atmore, he bought a quart of Johnnie Walker Gold Label, the most expensive whiskey on the shelves. Down the road he pulled into the Southern Hospitality Motel, which he remembered having passed on earlier trips. It looked quiet and cheap this evening, and its orange neon sign flashed VACANCY.
Clutching his bottle of Johnnie Walker, Raff signed in for a room. The clerk thought, He's drunk and lucky to get off the road. In his room Raff double-locked the door, stripped off his clothes, showered, and threw himself naked onto the queen-sized bed. He turned on the television and adjusted the sound to barely audible. He paid no attention to it. He just wanted the feel of normal people around him. The first thing that came on was news of suicide bombers in Pakistan. Medics were carrying broken bodies through the streets of Islamabad. He winced, and surfed through other channels until he picked up a talk show with people smiling and laughing. He uncapped the whiskey and began to drink from the bottle. He stared at the wall, trying to think about nothing at all. His physical exhaustion made that easy. Soon he was sinking into a stupor. He managed to screw the cap back on the bottle and drop it on the bed before he fell asleep.
Raff awoke the next morning just after eleven. He had a cannonading headache, nausea, and a desperate thirst. He rubbed water on his face, downed a glass of water, dressed, and walked over to the motel office. He got aspirin from the morning clerk, walked across the room to a machine advertising FREE COFFEE, and washed the aspirin down.
Three cups later, still hurting, Raff checked out of the Southern Hospitality and drove on to Mobile. Arriving there, fear-stricken to near paralysis, he didn't go to his apartment. Instead, he parked his car at the Bledsoe Street lot. From there he walked to the Sunderland Office Building and took the elevator to the company headquarters. He went straight to his office, waving away Sarah Beth as she tried to ask him a question, ignoring nearby employees staring at his disheveled appearance.
Raff shut the door and sat at his desk with his eyes closed, listening to the beat of his heart as it was translated into thumps of pain in his head. He focused on the phenomenon. Thump, thump, thump...Alive, alive, alive...He wondered why he was there in his office. Then he remembered it was to have people around him. Frogman and the LeBowites would have to go through all of them first if either came here to get him.
At last anger came to him, forcing aside some of his fear and despair, and he began to think more rationally. What about his nemesis at Sunderland Associates, Rick Sturtevant? He had said the same thing as Wayne LeBow: Jesus came to save people, not bugs and snakes. Was Sturtevant in collusion with the LeBowites, and would he betray Raff? Probably not. More likely the remark was just a common piece of evangelical bombast.
Raff struggled for release from the unpleasant emotions. Finally, he took an oath. I'm twenty-eight now. And I say, let it happen,
whatever comes. I'm going to find somebody and get married, stop catting around. Have a family. Be normal. Let somebody else go to war. I just don't fucking care anymore.
Just then the phone rang. It was Bill Robbins.
"How you doing, buddy?"
"Well, I'm alive," Raff croaked.
"Where you been? I tried to reach you all day yesterday. I just wanted to congratulate you on the good news that the Nokobee plan is now finalized. It's thanks to you, of course, that Sunderland came through all the way. We're going to run another special on it this Sunday. I'm not exaggerating, Raff. There are a lot of people grateful for all you've done."
"Thank you," Raff said. The effort triggered another bombardment in his head, and his nausea began to return. He didn't want to talk anymore, but he couldn't just hang up on his best friend. "I really appreciate it. We'll talk about it all later."
"Raff?" Robbins said. "You okay? You sound half dead. I know it's been hard. You've been through a lot. Maybe you ought to take a good long rest. You deserve it."
"It's been rough, all right, Bill, very rough. Rougher than you'll ever know."
Raff in fact would never tell Bill Robbins what had happened. That, he felt keenly, would be a terrible thing to do to his best friend. The dilemma would be an especially painful burden for a journalist and public figure. If Robbins had the story but remained silent, he would be more than just holding on to a story. He would be denying justice and likely risking prosecution if the truth finally came out. But if he shared the information with anyone else, he would risk the lives of Raff and his family. Frogman or the vengeful LeBowites were out there waiting. Who would come looking first? It didn't matter. Bill Robbins would never know.
In time, however, he knew he would tell his Uncle Fred Norville, his lifelong companion at Nokobee and adviser at college. In so many ways the two shared the same pleasures and dreams. Uncle Fred was closer to the inner thoughts of Raphael Semmes Cody than were his parents. He needed such a confidant, and in a few months, perhaps years, he would tell the story. Who could say when?
38
ON A FALL morning at Dead Owl Cove six months later, rays of the sun first touched the longleaf pine canopy, then climbed silently down the branches and trunks until, filtered by the understory, they cast a kaleidoscope of light and shadow, of warmth and chill, onto the forest floor. A breeze lifted off the water and worked its way across the bluff forming the lake margin. It passed over the anthills and into the surrounding woods, where it raised a fresh, life-affirming scent of fallen pine needles accented by holly and clethra.
In the forest, beads of dew still clung to drooping webs spun by orb-weaving spiders the night before. Wolf spiders, deadly hunters of nocturnal insects but tasty prey for ground-foraging birds in the day, retreated into their silk-lined burrows to await another night. Midges danced in a mating flight above a nearby stream. Their tiny bodies formed a ghostly cloud that dissipated and reformed and dissipated again, then vanished for good. Their brief performance was instinctively timed for safety--the little flies came and left too late for hungry bats and too early for dragonflies.
A biological clock also turned on in the anthill nearby, once the home of the Trailhead Colony, now owned by its lineal descendant, the Woodland Colony. A wave of activity spread down the vertical nest channels to deep nursery chambers filled with pupae and hungry grublike larvae.
Life was at its best this day, following a summer's growth, for the Woodlanders and their many allies and predators. All around the nest, caterpillar prey still fell to the ground from the pine canopy like ripened fruit, and mealybug herds grew thick on succulent vegetation in the understory. The skies had cleared during the night after a brief shower. Workers old enough to forage were poised to take the field.
As the sun warmed the upper chambers of the nest mound, some of the clustered workers made their way through them and out of the central exit. A few stayed close to rearrange bits of straw and charcoal, the heat-retaining debris used to thatch the mound surface. Others drifted farther away and began to patrol the nest perimeter, then pressed on into the surrounding terrain to search for bounty accumulated during the night--new prey, fresh arthropod corpses, and the sugary excrement dropped by mealybugs and other sap-sucking insects.
Within an hour human visitors arrived at Dead Owl Cove. They were the Panther and Hawk Patrols of Troop 43 of the Boy Scouts of America out of Mobile, prepared for a day-long nature hike around Lake Nokobee. They were led by their scoutmaster, Raphael Semmes Cody. They could not know how desperately he wanted to return to Nokobee, yet was unable to come alone. He had to have a crowd of people around him. The boys, turning to him often, served the purpose splendidly.
Shouting back and forth in the distinctive too-loud and honking voices of adolescent boys, they spilled out of the vans that brought them. They passed the anthill without notice and walked on to the trailhead. In their backpacks they carried waterproof notebooks to record their observations. Around their necks were slung cameras ready to capture all things visual. Their discoveries at Lake Nokobee would be gathered together later as a dispatch to Troop 43 headquarters.
As the day unfolded, Raff and the scouts saw a great blue heron spear a catfish. Found the shed skin of a diamondback rattlesnake wrapped partly around the stump of a longleaf pine. Watched a large cottonmouth moccasin slide off the bank into the water and undulate with insolent slow deliberation toward the shelter of a cattail thicket. Recorded mud turtles in the lake shallows, desmognath salamanders under wet mats of vegetation at the shoreline, bronze frogs calling, three kinds of lizards scurrying for cover, dozens of species of flowering plants, legions of flying and crawling insects none could identify. They saw twenty-three species of birds, including the main goal of the trip, the rare red-cockaded woodpecker.
The high point of the expedition was not, however, the endangered woodpecker. It was the discovery of a snake, eighteen inches in length, brilliantly colored from its nose to the tip of its tail with red, black, and yellow rings. This beautiful prize was uncovered by a scout when he turned over a dead tree limb lying at the edge of the trail.
"Coral snake!" shouted Raff. "Stay away from that. It's deadly poisonous!"
The boys, of course, moved close to get a look at the snake. But at least they kept well out of range, and one said, "Yeah, you get bit by that sucker and you die in an hour."
The colorful serpent started to push its way into the duff beneath the tree limb. Raff leaned over and looked more closely. "Wait a minute. Hold everything. That's not a coral snake. It's a scarlet king snake! It just looks like a coral snake. Hey, it's not poisonous at all! It fools everybody and nobody messes with it because they're fooled. Look at the bands: red, black, yellow, black, red, black, yellow, black, and so on. Coral snakes have red, yellow, black. Y'all know how to tell a king snake and a coral snake apart? Just remember the little ditty: Red next to black, you're all right, Jack; Red next to yellow can kill a fellow."
No one stepped forward to touch the reputedly harmless king snake. The protective mimicry used by the species for countless millennia worked its magic once again, and the scarlet king snake left the scene unharmed.
In late afternoon the sixteen members of the Panther and Hawk Patrols arrived back with Raff at the clearing between the trailhead and the road leading from Dead Owl Cove. They sat and sprawled on the ground to await the vans that would take them home, chattering about snake folklore they had heard and some half believed--of giant snakes, snakes that spit poison, snakes that roll in hoops, snakes that chase you on sight. And the Chicobee Serpent. Then they turned to football at Nokobee County Regional High School, the next big nature hike, and, for the few who could boast of it, travel to other states and abroad. Because an adult was within earshot, girls and sex, among the usual favorite topics, were not mentioned.
"Jesus, look at that!" a scout interrupted, standing up. He pointed to hundreds of large ants dragging a small lizard in the direction of the Woodlander an
thill. A few yards away, a stream of their formicid nestmates passed in and out of the nest entrance, running in a ragged line to the forager group. Some turned around soon after reaching the lizard and sped homeward, apparently to report news of the bonanza to the rest of the colony. The lizard was mangled, its tail gone and its head nearly severed from the body.
Most likely caught and then dropped by a sparrow hawk or loggerhead shrike, thought Raff.
"Hey, there must be a million of them in that nest." The scouts now began to talk about ants.
Ten thousand, actually, Raff said to himself. He had settled apart from the scouts, on a knoll clothed in bunchgrass and low herbaceous plants in bloom. He could just make out a sliver of Lake Nokobee through the longleaf pines that fringed its shore. The late afternoon sunlight, having fled the ground around him, still lit the canopy of the pines and open water of the lake.
A faint roll of thunder came from the south beyond the wall of trees behind him, although the sky directly above and as far as he could see remained cloudless. Here, on the Gulf Coastal Plain, at the fringe of the North American subtropics, the weather was always changing. In the far distance, a thousand feet up, Raff watched a kettle of hawks and vultures leisurely tracing circles in the air. They rose on the last thermal drafts of the day, gliding stiff-winged in a spiral to gain height, then down and out to gain distance. Then they caught another current, rode it up and down and forward yet again. Together they resembled leaves in a boiling kettle of water. They were headed south, in their fall migration. They flew together, but were otherwise indifferent to one another. They were neither friends nor enemies.
The birds seldom flapped their wings. The moving air that carried them up and down like magic could not be seen. Watching the kettle had a hypnotic effect on Raff. He thought how powerfully liberating it would be to travel on tireless wings south with them, across the tranquil Gulf waters into some unimagined new land, and stay for a while.
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