The Tank

by Rick Chesler

  Kane’s physical appearance had changed right along with his mindset. Gone was the shaggy hair, replaced with a buzz cut. He never used to have tattoos, but now he sported several prominent ones—images he had done here in South Florida that fit in with his new life. A snake. An alligator. An outline of the state itself. His clothes had undergone a transition from semi-trendy surf sportswear with sandals to dirty jeans, T-shirts, and work boots. He still wore sunglasses, but so did everyone, and he chose a different brand than he used to wear. By all outward appearances, he was Lyle Johnson, a homegrown Florida boy-turned-man.

  Except he wasn’t. He was Kane Brooks, escaped convict, former professional surfer. Even though Florida was not a big surfing state, he made it a point to stay away from the east coast beaches where there was a small scene. His face had been in the magazines and on the websites for a few years. Because of that, he had chosen to live in Homestead, which was inland, nestled in between the metropolis of Miami to the east and the vast Everglades to the west, with the island chain of the Florida Keys trailing off to the southwest. He was near a lot of water, but not right on it.

  He wasn’t an indoors person, he knew that. No desk job was waiting for him. He liked to work outside. Upon arrival in Homestead, he’d answered a Craigslist ad from a woman looking to rent out a small “guest house” in her backyard. Kane knew he wouldn’t be able to pass muster with any kind of corporate background check that would be run on him at the larger apartment or condo type places, so he made sure to find a private individual to deal with directly.

  One day, he heard her screaming and found an alligator basking in the small pond in her yard. She was getting ready to call someone to have it removed, when Kane asked her about it. “You pay people to take them away for you?” She looked at him as if we were from Mars and told him of course she did before resuming dialing.

  “I’ll get it for you.” Kane had no idea what he was doing, but the animal was only four feet long. Sharp teeth or not, he wasn’t afraid of it. He dove on top of it, rolled around with it while she bellowed for him to be careful. Five minutes later, he had it in the back of his battered old maroon-colored pickup, under the camper shell. A couple of scratches on his arms, no big deal.

  She told him there was a wildlife place not far away that would take them for relocation, and then she surprised him by handing him forty dollars in cash. “Less than I would have had to pay those guys.”

  Kane had stared at the money in disbelief. Easiest money he ever made. Beats having a twenty-foot wave slam you into a coral reef, or getting hit by someone’s board or being attacked by a shark. He’d experienced all of those events, some more than once, during his pro surf career. So he thanked her and drove the alligator to the Everglades Wildlife Center, where they took it with hardly any questions asked. He even stayed the day there, fascinated by the animals they had on display. Alligators, crocodiles, huge snakes, large snapping turtles… So this was Florida.

  He also found it to be hot, muggy, and full of mosquitos, but it sure beat prison. Even better, he knew right then and there what he was going to do for money. Shortly after that encounter, Kane had found another place to live—not because he had to, but he disliked living with an old woman, and he knew that older people were wiser and eventually would take to snooping around his business, so he continued scouring the Craigslist ads until he found a room for rent in a four-bedroom house shared by three other men about his age. Perfect.

  What’s more, the place was actually bordered by a large irrigation canal with an old airboat—made for running the shallows of the swamps—pulled up to the yard. He met the guys and found them to be very casual; nobody wanted a reference check or anything—just cash. Two were professional painters for the same local business and one was a mechanic in town. When they asked him what kind of work he did, Kane just blurted out, “Gator removal.”

  “Cool,” they’d said. And Kane got right to work. Put a Craigslist ad up. Drove around town, stopping in doorways of businesses, offering his services. Printed up flyers, put them in mailboxes. Soon, his pay-as-you-go cellphone was ringing pretty regularly. Within the first month, he even had his first repeat client: a miniature golf course. Turns out, alligators loved water hazards of any kind, even those with fake pirate ships in the middle of them.

  Before long, Kane found that he could even recruit part-time help from his new roommates who didn’t mind riding along now and then to wrestle a gator or two for a few extra bucks.

  Gator Boyz was formed, and Kane Brooks—now known as Lyle Johnson—was in business.

  Now, Kane left his elderly client and jogged to his pickup truck, from which he pulled a roll of duct tape and a black bag that sort of resembled a body bag. He had additional tools at his disposal, but he doubted he’d need anything more than that. While his client watched, Kane crouched next to the porch and peered beneath it. He removed his sunglasses and produced a small flashlight from a pocket in is jeans.

  He flicked it on and scanned the area left to right, from the edge of the porch in toward the house. He spotted the ‘gator off to his right, near where the porch connected to the house. It lay there, still, the eye shine from the flashlight giving it away.

  “I see it,” he called out to the homeowner, who stood a few feet back, curious and concerned.

  “You can handle it by yourself, or you need to call in some more guys?”

  “No problem, I got this.”

  Kane crawled beneath the porch before the guy got too worried about liability and asked him to get someone to help. He kept both eyes on the animal as he crawled slowly toward it.

  “You have any pets, Mr. Wilson?”

  “Two cats, yes.”

  “You know where they are?” Kane continued to belly-crawl toward the alligator.

  The client started to say something and then cut himself off, as if changing his mind. “Be right back, I’ll check.”

  Kane smiled to himself as he heard the man’s footsteps above his head on the porch boards on his way into his house. Then he turned his full attention to his quarry. He sucked his breath in as he played his light beam over the creature’s full length.

  The beast was about seven feet long. Not massive as alligators go, but definitely good sized—nothing to mess with or take too casually. In fact, given the confined location, it bordered on a something Kane would prefer to have help with. He could call one of his housemates and see if any of them could stop by. But he preferred not to bug them too much. They already had full-time jobs, and he didn’t want to burn them out for when he truly needed them.

  He needed to get the thing out of here, into the open. Kane judged the distance from the gator’s head to the row of support posts for the porch to the left. It didn’t look like the animal would be able to turn all the way around in here, with the posts on its left and the wall of the house on the right.

  Kane crept up on the lizard. He grabbed it by the tail and began to pull. As expected, the beast attempted to whirl around, but its head swung into one of the porch posts, keeping it from doing so. Kane doubled down on his efforts, dragging the gator from his awkward stopping position. He needed to get it on open ground to be able to pounce on it so he could limit its movement.

  The reptile hissed, the sound echoing off the concrete foundation. The sound had shocked Kane the first time he had heard a gator make it, but by now, he was used to it. He had also heard them make a guttural barking vocalization. He pulled the animal until he and it were out from under the porch. As he rose, the gator, now free to move, swung around, jaws agape as it sought the pesky intruder grasping its tail. But Kane was quick. He pounded on the alligator’s back, high up near the head.

  He immediately reached under the lower jaw and pulled it up, pressing it against the upper, which was braced with his other hand, to hold it shut. Kane had learned that, although alligators could snap their jaws shut with tons of force per square inch, when it came to the opposite direction—opening them—they were quite
weak. This is what allowed the alligator trainers he’d seen at the rescue place to keep the jaws shut with only the fingertips of one hand in order to impress an audience.

  As usual in his line of work, though, things didn’t go as planned. The gator exploded with power into a “death roll,” attempting to shake the human from its back. Kane held on, but the sudden chaotic movement caused his right hand—the one gripping the upper jaw—to slip off. This allowed the gator to bring its upper jaw down onto the lower one.

  Kane removed his fingers from harm’s way with microseconds to spare. But the momentum of the gator’s head continued and two of the upper jaw teeth raked across Kane’s bicep, striping it with twin red streaks. He didn’t give up, though. He threw his arms around the animal’s head once more. He scooted up a little higher, practically sitting on the base of the gator’s head. This was why wearing jeans or some kind of long pants was essential.

  Kane pulled a roll of duct tape from the back pocket of his jeans. With a practiced motion, he let go of the gator’s jaws long enough to unravel the tape. The gator was still pinned beneath him, tossing its head side to side in angry motions, its teeth now bared. He was quick with the tape, passing one hand beneath the lower jaw and using the other to wrap the first strand of duct tape around the beast’s mouth. He wrapped it around a few times and then dismounted the animal.

  Aware it could now run away again, which would be a disaster should it get loose with its mouth taped since it wouldn’t be able to eat—Kane wished the animals he relocated no harm—the gator wrangler moved rapidly to grab the creature by the tail again. This time, he reached over and grabbed the bag he’d gotten from his truck. Large enough to contain a twelve-foot alligator, he slipped the bag over the animal’s head, then worked it over the rest of the body, rolling it aver a couple of times in the process.

  Once it was in the bag, the alligator went still, and Kane was able to drag it to his truck. He loaded it into the bed and had just shut the gate when he heard footsteps on the porch. He turned to see Mr. Wilson emerge from his house, holding a house cat in one arm, moving down the steps to the yard. “Hey, you got him?”

  “Got him, Mr. Wilson. He won’t trouble you no more.”

  “I found Furball, but Hairball’s missing.”

  TWO

  Kane frowned as he reached the wildlife center, the wheels of his truck crunching over the parking lot pea rock. It was late in the day, and he’d never seen so few vehicles in the lot. Damn. Place was closed.

  He tipped his head back against the headrest while he thought about what to do with the seven-foot alligator riding in the back of his truck. He was half-tempted to simply dump it over the fence and let them find it in the morning, but he also wanted the credit for turning it in. The more connected he was to the local wildlife establishments, the better off he would be with his animal removal business.

  He could also bring it back to his place and let it go in the irrigation ditch behind their house, but releasing the gators he “removed” from people’s yards into a place where they could easily access other yards wasn’t exactly good for business. People might think he was doing it in order to create more business for him, which was not even necessary here in South Florida, where wild animals seemed to lurk everywhere.

  He glanced at the HOURS OF OPERATION sign on the front door to the main entrance and noted the time the place opened: 8am. He put his truck into reverse and began backing out of the lot. He’d think of something. If he could keep this gator alive and contained until morning, he’d bring it back here then. He made the short drive home, still not exactly sure what he was going to do with the oversized lizard when he pulled into his driveway.

  He could tell by the absence of his roommates’ trucks that he was the first one home for the day. He was pulling into the spot against the irrigation ditch where he normally parked when he spotted a large blue object to his left.

  An above-ground circular pool. Pretty cheap, and currently in disuse. Kane walked over to it and eyed it to see if it would hold water. The sides were high enough that if he put the gator inside, it wouldn’t be able to climb out. He gripped the edge of the pool and moved it back and forth. Pretty flimsy; the alligator could probably bash right through it if it really went crazy and decided it wanted out, but he doubted it would get like that being held there for just one night. It was far better than its current situation, tied up in a bag in the back of the truck.

  Kane got the hose and dragged it over to the pool and started running fresh water into it. It would take a long time to fill this pool, but he didn’t need to fill it all the way, as if for normal use. There only needed to be a foot or so of water at the bottom. While the pool was filling, he opened the tailgate on his truck and drove it over to the pool, positioning it so that he’d be able to drag it out of the truck and directly into the pool. He jumped into the back of the truck and grabbed the gator through the bag by its tail.

  “Sorry, tough guy.” He knew the animal would not really be hurt by the short drop but couldn’t help but talk to the animals in his charge, to humanize them a little, he supposed. He managed to drag the gator, which remained mostly still, up and over the lip of the pool. Then Kane himself jumped down into the pool, where he dragged the animal the rest of the way in. Instinctively, he backed away from it, not sure how it would react to being moved.

  But it remained still, no doubt confused as to where it was or what was happening. Kane eyeballed the water flooding out from the hose. The entire bottom of the pool was not yet wet, but he knew that when the gator felt the water, it might become excited. He unzipped its bag and pulled it off of the beast. He tossed the bag out of the pool and then looked at the tape holding the gator’s jaws shut.

  He usually taped them only for capture and transport. He would feel bad about leaving it taped overnight. Tomorrow, he’d put fresh tape on it for the drive to the wildlife center, which was probably for the best. It might be able to break it loose if the tape was left on all night, soaking. Kane took a small pocketknife from his jeans and approached the animal. He again sat high on its back, at the base of the head, straddling it. Rather than unwrap the tape, requiring him to pass his hand over and under the jaws multiple times, he sliced the tape without cutting into the thick hide, ripped it free, and threw it out of the pool.

  Then Kane lifted himself off of the alligator and moved quickly away from it, to the side of the pool. With almost no water in it, he wasn’t sure how to get out of it without damaging the sides. He made a mental not to put a stepladder in here if he ever did this again. For now, he’d just have to deal with it. He leaned over and put his hands on the tailgate of his truck, testing his reach. Then, as the gator started to move a bit, testing its newfound freedom, Kane jumped over the edge of the pool onto his truck bed.

  He drove the truck away from the pool so that the gator wouldn’t be tempted to do the same thing, then returned to the pool. Now the bottom was covered entirely with water. He watched the water level rise in the pool until it was about a foot high, then shut off the hose. This would do for a night. The alligator was already much happier, Kane could see, walking around the plastic surface, raising its head to look up. He had just taken the hose out of the pool and reeled it back onto the hose reel when he heard the sound of tires crunching on the driveway’s crushed coral.

  Felix White, one of Kane’s three roommates, was back from work as a mechanic. He parked next to Kane’s vehicle and walked over to Kane, grinning.

  “What’s up, Kane? Pool party?”

  Kane laughed. “Not with that guy in there.”

  Curious, Felix approached the pool and peered into it. His eyes bugged out and he bobbed his head once, his gesture of disbelief. “Say what? Where’d you get this thing? It crawled up here?” He nodded to the bank of the irrigation ditch.

  Kane shook his head. He explained what had happened, hoping his roommate wouldn’t be annoyed he was using their yard for his work-related business.

 
“Cool! I’m gonna go in and change outta this greasy outfit and grab a couple brews, be right back.”

  Kane breathed a sigh of relief. At least one of this three roomies had no problem with it, not that he thought they would. By the time Felix emerged from the house in shorts and a tank top, carrying a cooler of ice loaded with cans of beer, another vehicle barreled into the driveway.

  A man also in his mid-twenties exited the vehicle. He wore painter’s coveralls, had the sides of his head shaved but with top longer, and had large tribal piercings in his ears. He saw Kane and Felix looking into the pool and joined them there.

  “What’s going on? Somebody inviting some women over, because I hope you don’t think I want to float around in there with you two…” He looked into the pool. “What the hell? Damn!”

  Felix turned to him. “Huge, ain’t it, Cody?”

  The painter, Cody Wilhelm nodded. “Goddamn. Where’d it come from?”

  Kane told the story again, and by the time he was done, their third and final roommate drove up to the house.

  “Matt! Check this out!” Another twenty-something man, this one with long hair tied back in a ponytail, got out of yet another work truck. A scruffy beard added to his hairy look as he ambled over to the other three men, all of whom peered into the pool. Matt walked up and looked over the edge.

  “Wow! That’s a big one. What’s it doing in there?”