Night Vision

by Randy Wayne White

  Their little organization was becoming so well known, and their products so trusted, that gym rats in South Florida had come up with a nickname for the stuff. They called it Gator Juice. As in, “You tried the Gator Juice Tren? Or the Gator Juice A-bombs? Gator Juice is goddamn grade-A shit. Good to go, man. As in G-two-G.”

  Squires’s eyes kept swinging from Ford’s billfold to the drama taking place out there on the lake. A couple of chilies had come through the crowd carrying a big military-type light called a Golight, so Squires pocketed the scientist’s cash, then handed both billfolds to one of the chilies, saying to him, “Hang on to these, will ya, amigo? Now, give me that goddamn light.”

  With the Golight, Squires could see that it was getting interesting out there on the water where Ford was doing something that would’ve been hard to believe if it wasn’t actually happening. Ford had his left arm slung over the gator’s back while Fifi struggled to swim, still carrying Carlson sideways in her mouth. What Ford was trying to do, Squires realized, was climb onto the gator’s back.

  Un-by-God-believable!

  Into Squires’s mind came the image of the big Australian, the crocodile hunter guy who he used to like to watch on TV, which made what was happening easier to comprehend. But once the scientist got onto the gator’s back, then what?

  Squires placed the big spotlight on his shoulder to steady the thing, then leaned to focus the beam on something the scientist had in his hand.

  What the hell was the dude carrying?

  A hammer, maybe, that’s what it looked like. No ... not a hammer. It looked like Ford was trying to steady an itty-bitty pocket pistol behind one of Fifi’s eyes—which was a stupid goddamn thing to try. At least, Squires hoped it was a stupid goddamn thing to try.

  Suddenly, he could feel that sickening feeling in his stomach again, worried the crazy do-gooder was going to find a way to free Carlson and screw up the only good luck Squires had had in a week. But it was pointless, what the guy was trying to do ... wasn’t it?

  Squires hoped it was true. There was no pussy pistol in the world with enough stopping power to . . .

  WHAP-WHAP!

  Squires jumped when he heard the gunshots. Then he stood straight, realizing that the man had managed to get a couple of rounds off.

  Behind him, the crowd made a collective Ooohing noise as they watched the alligator’s tail slam sideways, then tilt upward like a crane. The tail stood there for an instant, before the big animal rolled and then sank from sight.

  Shit! Where was Carlson?

  Squires fanned the light back and forth, searching. Maybe the nosy old turd had gone down with the gator. No . . . no such luck. Carlson was still out there, floundering to stay on the surface while the hippie swam toward him.

  Sons a bitches!

  Squires felt an acidic surge move from his abdomen toward his head, the signal that he was becoming seriously pissed off. It was a steroid charge that he had experienced many times but seldom as strong as tonight—which would have made sense, if he’d stopped to think about it. Tuesdays and Saturdays were Squires’s pin days—“pinning” being bodybuilder talk for steroid injections.

  That morning, he had flooded two syringes with testosterone, equipoise, trenbolone and decanoate—all oil-based, veterinarian-strength gear—and injected it into his thighs, but only after heating the oil under a hot spigot to make the sticks faster and less painful.

  As a special treat—because it had been such a shitty two days—he had also eaten five tabs of dianabol, a hundred milligrams.

  D-bombs, man—nothing else hit Squires quite as hard as dianabol, although he preferred the injectable version. Juice was easier on the liver than pills. But he was out of D-bomb oil until he made his next trip to the hunting camp.

  Squires lived for that full-on testosterone buzz. He loved the evening of a pin day, when his blood levels were so hormone drunk that he could track the oil moving through his veins like heat. It caused his muscles to twitch and swell beneath his skin, the fibers feeding so furiously on hormone soup that Squires could feel the mass of his body changing.

  “You got your monster face on tonight,” Frankie would sometimes say to him as they elbowed for space before their weight-room mirror, Frankie usually posing naked, but Squires wearing a thong because steroid gear shrunk his nuts so small it was embarrassing.

  “I love it,” the woman would tell him, “when you got your monster face on.”

  Because of the D-bombs, and because of what was happening, Harris Squires had his monster face on now.

  He paused long enough to kick one of the cell phones toward the water, hoping it belonged to the guy named Ford—the damn do-gooder dude who’d just shot his alligator, Fifi. Then Squires batted a couple of chilies out of his way, as he began to pace, still carrying the spotlight, waiting for the bastard to make it to shore—if he ever did.

  As Harris Squires knew from years of hunting the Glades, big alligators died hard.

  FIVE

  WHEN I HEARD THE FAMILIAR VOICE YELL, “DOC! HELP ME GET this guy in!” I spun around to see Tomlinson’s silhouette only a few yards away, but that’s all I could see because someone onshore was blinding me with a powerful spotlight.

  I waved my hand and yelled in Spanish, “Get that thing out of my eyes!”

  But nothing happened. So I yelled louder, in English, adding, “You dumbass!” for emphasis.

  For an instant, the light swung skyward, and I could see that Tomlinson had the injured man in a cross-chest carry, trying to swim him to shore. He was having trouble, though, because the guy was fighting him, swinging his fists, trying to get a solid elbow into my friend’s face. The man apparently thought the alligator still had him.

  There was no telling how badly the guy was hurt, but he was obviously in shock. I swam closer, my head up, got a hand under the man’s arm and pulled his ear close to my lips, yelling in Spanish, “You’re safe! Stop fighting!”

  I repeated it several times before his head rolled toward me, eyes wide, and he whispered, in English, “Am I dreaming this? Am I dead? This is a terrible dream if I’m not dead.”

  Yes, he was in shock ... a small man with a gaunt drunkard’s face that was a saprophytic gray in the glow of security lights. His voice was incongruous—he spoke with the rounded vowels of a Virginia gentleman.

  I asked him, “What’s your name?”

  He continued babbling, telling me, “I don’t know what happened! I walked down to look at something floating in the water. Next thing I know, something was dragging me in ... like it was trying to squeeze the guts out of me. I heard something snap ... something way inside my body.”

  The man looked at me, eyes blinking, and I heard what he must have sounded like as a child when he asked, “Am I badly hurt? I don’t want to die, I really don’t.”

  I replied, “Lay back. Get some air in your lungs. We’re taking you to shore.” I could see there was an open slash on the man’s forearm, and his legs looked as dead as wood, the way they floated on the surface.

  As Tomlinson positioned himself to support the man’s other arm, he asked me, “Did you kill it?” meaning the alligator, and I could tell he hoped I hadn’t hurt the thing.

  “Let’s get out of here before we catch a damn disease,” I told him. “Start swimming, I’ll keep his head up.”

  Truth was, I still didn’t know if the gator was dead. Judging from the way the animal’s tail had periscoped to the surface, at least one of the bullets had done damage to the neuro system.

  Either way, a wounded gator was the least of my worries. The most dangerous animals in Florida’s backwaters aren’t reptiles. They aren’t amphibians or fish. I was more concerned about microscopic animals that, as I knew too well, thrived in stagnant lakes like the one we were in.

  The injured man might survive the wounds the gator had inflicted only to die from bacteria that lived in the animal’s mouth. Or from a single-celled protozoan that all the commotion had kicked free from th
e muck below.

  The injured man wasn’t the only one at risk—Tomlinson and I were in danger, too. There are varieties of single-celled animals that don’t need an open wound to slip through a primate’s skin armor. The amoeba Naegleria can travel through a man’s nostrils, into the brain and cause an encephalitis that is deadly. It’s rare, but I knew from my professional journals that this same microscopic animal had killed at least four healthy young men in the last few years.

  The water temperature of the pond felt warmer than the injured man’s flesh. It stunk of sulfur and garbage, and as Tomlinson and I began sidestroking toward shore my fingers noted the water’s protoplasmic density. The density was created by microbes and muck held in suspension.

  It was a brackish water mangrove lake, not much larger than a baseball field, surrounded by a trailer population that probably used the place to dump all kinds of refuse—natural, man-made and chemical. It caused me to wonder why a quarter-ton alligator would choose such a stagnant, public place to live.

  The probability was, the animal didn’t live here. More likely, the gator had been traveling cross-country—they often do during the spring mating season. My guess was, the thing had only recently arrived, stopping for a few nights to feed. If a gator that size had been a permanent resident, someone at the trailer park would have reported it to Florida Wildlife cops and demanded that the thing be removed.

  Or would they?

  I thought about it as we swam sidestroke, Tomlinson on one side of the injured man, me on the other.

  Maybe not, I decided. I remembered Tomlinson telling me that the only thing park residents feared more than law enforcement was their own landlord.

  That made sense, combined with what I knew about the people who lived in places like Red Citrus. I had spent enough time in Central America, and had lived long enough in Florida, to learn not to underestimate the tenacity of the descendants of the Maya and Aztec. They could endure just about anything with a stoic calm that was all but impossible to read, and just as impossible not to respect.

  People like this could live their lives, day by day, next door to an aggressive gator, or next door to a crazed neighbor, and never say a word in protest. Living under the radar meant surviving quietly no matter what.

  We were drawing close to shore. The injured man had stopped fighting, but the muscles of his arms remained contracted, his breathing was rapid. To Tomlinson I said, “When we get to the bank, don’t try to stand. The bottom’s like quicksand.”

  He asked me, “Do you have shoes on?”

  I said, “I was just thinking the same thing. There’s probably broken bottles and all kinds of crap on the bottom. We’re going to need some help.”

  To the injured man I said, “What’s your name? Can you talk?”

  The man groaned, and said again, “Please tell me I’m dreaming this. What happened to my legs? I can’t feel my legs.”

  I thought, Uh-oh, and squeezed his arm to reassure him as I looked toward shore. I could see shapes and shadows of several dozen people watching us. But I couldn’t see clearly because my glasses were hanging around my neck on fishing line, and also because the spotlight was blinding me again.

  In Spanish I yelled, “Take the light away from that person, I can’t see! Shine it on the ground. We need some help. Four or five people, hold hands and make a chain so we can pull this man out. But don’t come in the water. Stay out of the water!”

  I could see people moving toward the bank, including the man who was carrying the spotlight, a huge silhouette capped by blond curls and shoulders in a muscle T-shirt.

  It was the landlord. Had to be.

  I called to him in English, “Get that goddamn light out of my eyes! I’m not going to tell you again.”

  In reply, I heard a surly Southern twang shout, “What’d you just say to me, asshole?”

  The drawl was unmistakably redneck Florida.

  Trying to keep it reasonable, I told him, “You’re blinding me. We’ve got an injured man here!”

  I saw the man quicken his pace and heard him bellow, “You don’t give the orders around here, you do-gooder son of a bitch! I give the orders! Now, get your ass out of my goddamn lake. You’re trespassing! What the hell you doin’, trespassing in my lake?”

  I glanced at Tomlinson. His face was orchid white in the harsh light, and he rolled his eyes. “The landlord,” he replied. “He’s the jerk I told you about. Something Squires. He’s a mama’s boy. She’s the one with all the property.”

  Tomlinson had described the guy as all grits and redneck bullshit, plus a full helping of steroids. It matched with what I was hearing.

  The water was so shallow now that I was using my left hand to crab us over the bottom, the muck gelatinous between my fingers. It was frustrating. I had no idea how badly that man was hurt, but I knew we couldn’t waste time getting him out of the water and treating his wounds. It was impossible to hurry, though. Try to stand, we’d sink to our waists in slime.

  “Did you call nine-one-one?” I asked Tomlinson. I couldn’t look directly into the spotlight, the thing was too bright, so I was using peripheral vision to keep track of Squires as he descended on us, pushing people out of the way. I noticed that the men who had been attempting to form a human chain scattered from his path.

  “We should be hearing sirens by now,” Tomlinson replied, “or maybe not. It was only about five minutes ago that I called. But they’ll be here.” Then he surprised me by calling out in a cheery voice, “Hey! Hey, Tulo, it’s me! Tell some of the men we need help getting out of here. We need about five people!”

  Tomlinson used the masculine form of the name, but I realized he was yelling to the teenage girl he had mentioned, the girl we had come to help. Tula Choimha.

  I saw a slim, luminous figure appear, backlit by the spotlight. The girl had a flashlight, which was pointed at her sandals, and something else in her hand. A bottle, it looked like.

  To Tomlinson I said, “Watch the guy’s head—he might have a spinal injury.”

  My pal replied, “Then maybe I should stay in the water with him until the paramedics arrive.”

  I was thinking about the killer microbes, not the alligator, when I replied, “No, we’ve got to get him out of here. You, too.”

  “Dude,” Tomlinson muttered, “I don’t even want to ask what that tone of yours means.” He glanced over his shoulder. “You think the gator might come back?”

  I said, “I’ll climb up the bank, and we’ll try to pull him out without moving his head. These people aren’t going to help, they’re afraid. Oh ... and for God’s sake, don’t even try talking to that landlord. You’ll just make him madder. Let me do the talking.”

  Tomlinson’s attention remained on the girl, mine on Squires, who was still shouting threats at us and not slowing as he lumbered toward the water. I knew we had to hurry, but it would be worse to misjudge the situation. Steroid drunks, like pit bulls, are an unpredictable demographic. If the guy was as furious as he sounded, anything could happen.

  I laced my fingers into the knee-high weeds that grew along the bank and pulled myself out of the water, hand over hand, trying to time it right. Friends sometimes chide me about my obsessive attention to detail and my hyperawareness of my surroundings—particularly if the environment is populated with strangers.

  Sometimes, I am tempted to reply, “I’m still alive, aren’t I?” but never do.

  Fortunately, my hyperwariness paid off. Again.

  Just as I was getting to my feet, blue jeans muddy, a slimy mess, Squires appeared. He took a quick jump step, grabbed me by the left arm and stabbed the huge light into my face as I stood. He was screaming, “Can you see any better now, you son of a bitch! Who do you think you are, coming ’round here, giving orders!”

  I pushed the light—a military Golight, I realized—out of my eyes and tried to back away, but the man’s hand was like a vise. In an easy voice, I said to him, “Calm down, Squires. We have a guy who needs medical atte
ntion.”

  It didn’t help. “Screw you!” the man yelled, his breath hot in my face. “Who the hell died and made you boss, you goddamn do-gooder prick? You’re giving me orders?”

  I kept my voice even. “When the police arrive, what are they going to think when I tell them you tried to stop us from saving this man’s life?”

  Squires was trembling, he was so mad. He roared, “You’re not telling the cops nothin’, asshole! How you gonna talk to anybody after I snap your damn head off and use it to feed my gator?”

  His gator? It was an unexpected thing to hear, but it told me something.

  I was gauging the man’s size and his balance. He was about sixfive, six-six, probably two-eighty, but weight-room muscle is among the most common cloaks of male insecurity. To test his balance, I rolled my left arm free of his grip. At the same time, I gave him a push with the fingers of my right hand. It wasn’t an obvious push. It was more of a blocking gesture, but he didn’t handle it well.

  Clumsy people have a difficult time with simultaneous hand movements, and this guy was clumsy. The little push turned his entire body a few wobbly degrees to the left. It was all the opening I needed, but I didn’t take it.

  Now was not the time for a brawl. Besides, Tomlinson and I needed this guy’s cooperation if we were going to save the injured man. The illegals who lived in the park weren’t going to risk helping us—not if their blustering bully of a landlord disapproved. And I couldn’t blame them. They had to live here. I didn’t.

  I squared my body to Squires’s, and said, “This is my last try to be reasonable. We’ve got an injured man and we intend to help him. Get out of our way and behave like an adult.”

  That’s all it took. Squires screamed at me, “Or you’ll do what?” and he jammed the light toward my face again.

  I had no choice, I ducked under the light and then drop-stepped beneath the landlord’s extended right arm. From the sound of surprise he made, the move was the equivalent of a disappearing act. Where had I gone?