The Murk

by Robert Lettrick

  “I give up,” Tad muttered, then plunked down on the bench.

  Macey put her hand on Perch’s shoulder. “You okay, son?”

  “I’m good, Mace. Sorry if I scared you.”

  “That you did.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Perch said.

  They took their positions in the boat, and Macey fired up the motor. The Mud Cat was on the move again.

  After just two minutes of travel, Tad jumped up and crawled to the back. He leaned over Macey, tracking something with his eyes. “Stop the boat!” he ordered.

  Macey thumped him in the gut with her elbow. “Go sit, dummy.”

  “No! Stop the boat!” Tad was insistent.

  “Mace, stop the boat,” Perch ordered. “Let’s see what his problem is now.”

  She throttled down. “Whadja see, boy?”

  “Right over there,” Tad pointed. “Look at those two big cypress trees.”

  “What about them?” asked Piper.

  “See how they’re fused together at the middle of their trunks? Like a squished letter H.”

  “So?”

  “So? Look at Cole’s map!” Tad said. “He drew those exact two trees.”

  Piper unrolled the vellum and held it up to compare. Tad was right; they were a match. Cole had been right here, in this very spot, sitting in a canoe, some two hundred years before. Examining the map, Piper realized something else. “Guys…” She could feel her heart thrumming in her chest. The boys saw it too.

  “How dumb could we be?” Tad said, shaking his head.

  The H trees, they saw, were inside the circle Cole had drawn on the map.

  “We’re inside the circle.” Piper was breathless. “We’ve been inside it for a while.”

  With the aid of a dead botanist, a long shot had just become a real chance. Almost there, Grace, thought Piper. Almost there. She took a photograph of the trees for posterity.

  Click!

  On the bottom of the swamp, directly below the boat, something massive and ancient was prodded aware. A faint current had poked at its mouth, and the thing opened wide. The current meandered across its fleshy pink tongue, carrying with it an unusual taste. One that pleased it very much. The ancient thing had lived in the swamp for more than two hundred years, and in that time it had devoured thousands of living creatures. But this flavor was unique. The ancient thing liked this taste very much. It shivered, sending plumes of silt rolling across the swamp floor. Frightened fish scattered in all directions; they’d been feeding in the ridges of its back and sensed that the buffet was closed.

  The ancient thing craned its broad head toward the surface and saw the black silhouette of the Mud Cat’s belly.

  The creature began to rise.

  The Field Notes of Botanist Dr. Brisbane Cole

  August 28, 1823

  After much cajoling, Nokosi agreed to expand our search to the western part of the swamp. It is clear that this decision does not sit well with either of my companions, and for a few tense moments, I feared they contemplated mutiny. Yesterday I came to the final page of my journal while chronicling the kidnapping of a baby alligator that was carried aloft in the clutch of osprey talons and devoured by the bird’s newly hatched offspring. Fortunately, I thought to bring a new journal, and this is the opening entry in what I suspect will be a fascinating story when read as a whole. I left the completed journal with my belongings at camp, and we set out in a westward line. Several hours later, we crossed an invisible marker—I cannot tell you exactly when—and found ourselves in a section of the Okefenokee quite different from any we’d seen thus far: a self-contained oasis of such monochromatic green that at times it feels as though we are plying through chlorophyll instead of water. Even the low-hanging clouds appear the color of mint, due to the light reflected from the lush vegetation. These primordial wetlands teem with life. The breezes come and go with such tidal consistency that it feels as though the swamp itself is breathing.

  My companions seem agitated. Nokosi fears this place. It is evident in his eyes and his murmuring. Prayers stream from his lips, but to which gods I cannot tell. The Creeks have many. Bolek doesn’t pray to anyone or anything. At times I catch him staring at me. Sneering. At others I see his eyes lingering on the satchel nestled between my feet in the canoe. His obsession with my vasculum is evident. The great bard Shakespeare wrote in Othello: “Beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.”

  Even here, it would seem that the green of envy is the most vivid green of all.

  “That’s crazy, Perch,” Tad argued. “Plants simply aren’t capable of doing what you’re claiming. It’s physically impossible.”

  Perch sat on his bench, swamp water dripping from his pant legs and pooling at his feet in the bottom of the Mud Cat. The happy-go-lucky kid they’d first met was gone. “I’m telling y’all, what happened down there wasn’t normal. The more I think about it…yes, I’m certain. Those vines were trying to kill me.”

  Tad turned to Piper for her eyewitness account. “You were down there too. What did you see?”

  “I didn’t see anything, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”

  Creeper was still sitting next to her, but he’d scooched across the bench a few inches to give her breathing room. At least he wasn’t being an insufferable grouch anymore. They’d stayed on a steady course bearing northwest, confident in their heading. While Perch composed himself, Macey was pulling double duty as sternman and navigator.

  “Piper, you must have seen it too!” Perch insisted. “How could you not?”

  “I saw you tangled up in the vines,” she told him, “but I never got the impression that they were deliberately trying to drown you. If they were tightening, it was probably because you were flailing around in them.”

  Tad leaned back, confident that Piper’s input had proven his take on events to be the more rational of the two. “Perch, it was dark down there. One minute you were freeing the boat and the next you were drowning. You panicked. No one could blame you for assuming you were under attack.”

  “Maybe.” Perch flicked a piece of clingy algae off his forearm. “I can’t deny it was confusing.”

  “Vines aren’t boa constrictors,” Tad said. “They don’t deliberately strangle people.”

  Piper remembered the mimosa plant in Tad’s greenhouse. “Are you sure? You said some plants can move quickly, right? What did you call it? Rapid plant movement?”

  “Some plants can move quickly, yes,” Tad admitted. “But not vines. And they definitely don’t go after prey like Perch is suggesting.”

  “None?” she asked.

  “No.” But then Tad remembered an exception to the rule. “Well…unless you count Cuscuta pentagona. The dodder vine.”

  “The daughter vine?” Creeper misunderstood.

  “No, dodder. Rhymes with odder. The dodder vine isn’t capable of moving quickly, but it does hunt.”

  “It hunts?” Perch said. “What do you mean?”

  “Plants get their energy from the sun,” said Tad. “They absorb sunlight through the pigment chlorophyll contained in their cells, the same pigment that gives plants their green coloring. The dodder vine lacks chlorophyll. Without it, the dodder can’t absorb sunlight and convert it into energy through the process of photo-synthesis. This means that unlike most plants, the dodder can’t make its own food. So it adapted the ability to ‘smell’ prey and literally hunt it down.”

  “What kind of prey, Big Brain?” asked Perch. “You mean animals? People?”

  Great, Tad thought. A nickname. He shook his head. “No, the dodder vine is too small for that. It only grows to about three feet long. It preys on other plants. Its favorite is the tomato. When a dodder sprouts up from the ground, it has to find a host to feed on quickly, or it’ll die. The vine starts moving its tip in little circles, like a blind snake sniffing for rats.” Tad held up his index finger to mimic the dodder sprout. He whirled it in the sign for
whoop-de-do. “It’s searching for something yummy with its unique smell receptors. If the vine smells a scent it likes, it grows through the air toward it. When it reaches the other plant, it wraps itself around its victim’s stalk, burrows its tip inside, and starts sucking down the plant’s nutrients, like a vampire. The dodder feasts until the other plant dies, and then it has to start the hunt all over again.”

  “So you don’t think the vines that trapped the Mud Cat and almost killed me could be related to the dodder?” Perch asked. He was having real trouble accepting that the whole thing had been an accident, and probably his fault.

  Tad set him straight. “The dodder doesn’t lunge at prey. It grows at it. Through the air. It can take days for the vine to reach a plant that’s only a few feet away. Since the tomato can’t uproot and run away, the dodder can take its sweet time. It doesn’t strike quickly, like snakes.”

  Perch sagged. “I suppose you’re right, then. I guess I was just careless. I feel as dumb as a box of rocks.”

  Piper rubbed his knee. “Don’t be hard on yourself. You got us moving again. You were great.”

  “Thanks,” he said, brightening a bit.

  Macey brought them back to the present. “Y’all need to start payin’ attention to the view. If Cole’s map is accurate, we’ll be on top of that flower of yours soon. I only got two eyes, so y’all better start looking.”

  The kids spread out in the boat. Creeper and Piper took lookout on the starboard side of the swamp, Tad the port side. Perch searched ahead, and Macey sat with her legs straddled over the back bench, making sure to catch the flower if it slipped past the others. For the next half hour, there was little chatter.

  Although nature in this unexplored region of the swamp was wildly robust, the water looked putrid and stagnant. It wasn’t brown like the tannin-rich waters of the Oke’s lakes and canoe trails. Here, it was a vile shade of yellow-green, the color of cartoon acid. Of course it wasn’t corrosive; the menagerie of animals darting around in it was proof that it was livable, but those very same animals made it no less dangerous than acid. This wasn’t the Oke that Cole had been so enamored of. This place was something else, a primeval soup teeming with skulking life-forms. Some of them, like the alligator, had outlived the dinosaurs.

  Macey unexpectedly powered down the Mud Cat, and it came to a stop.

  “Gad night a living,” she muttered. She was sitting up as straight as a post, staring back in the direction they’d come from.

  “Macey, what are you—?”

  She flapped her hand, and Perch shushed instantly. “Just look,” she said.

  Piper didn’t see anything at first, save for a solitary sandhill crane gliding low above the water thirty yards off. But then, suddenly and in a powerful fit of violence, an enormous adult alligator burst upward from the lily pads, leaped ten feet out of the water, and snatched the bird in its powerful jaws. In that instant when gravity latched hold to pull the beast back down, it hung in the air, allowing Piper a good look at the rubbery white tile of its underbelly. Then the beast dropped like a stone below the surface, taking the doomed crane with it.

  “Cool!” Creeper cheered.

  “Why, Macey?” Piper wailed. “Why would you want us to see that?”

  “Hush up, girl,” Macey snapped. “Keep looking.”

  “I see them too,” said Perch. “My God.”

  It took longer for the others to see it. They weren’t used to spotting animals so expertly designed to blend in with their environment. But eventually they saw. A dozen or more alligators—big ones, judging by the width of the space between their raised eyes—were hanging back, lined up in a row, staring in their direction.

  Piper gasped. “What are they doing over there? Are they following us?”

  “No,” Tad said. “They’re stalking us.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” said Macey. “Gators ain’t like that. They don’t stalk boats, and they don’t hunt in packs.”

  “Macey’s right,” said Perch.

  “Sure looks like a pack to me,” Tad agreed.

  The alligator that had caught the crane surfaced in the center of the line. Soggy feathers stuck out sideways through the gaps between its yellow teeth. It almost seemed to be smiling.

  “At least they’re staying put,” said Perch. “Keeping a reasonable distance. I don’t think we have to worry about them.”

  “Can we go?” Piper asked, trembling. “Please? Can we just go?”

  “I think that’d be smart,” Macey agreed. She got them moving again.

  But as the Mud Cat puttered northwest, the alligators followed. They didn’t rush forward to close the gap. Instead, they hung back, leaving a thirty-yard span of water between their toothy line and the boat.

  “They are stalking us!” said Tad. “Why are they stalking us?”

  “I honestly don’t know” was all Perch could say. “This is a first. I have to admit, they’re giving me heebie-jeebies. This place…it’s not natural.”

  Where the Mud Cat went, the alligators went with it. When it slowed, they slowed. When the boat sped up, they used their powerful tails as rudders, propelling themselves faster through the water to keep up. Perch asked Macey to throttle down so they could discuss a new plan.

  “What do you think, Mace?” he asked.

  “We’re not gonna be able to shake them, that’s for sure,” she replied. “If I push the motor, the boat will reach twenty miles per hour, but we might plane out. Gators can swim faster than the Mud Cat’s top speed, especially those big bruisers. Some of them’re at least fifteen feet long, judging by the width of their skulls.”

  “This doesn’t feel right,” said Perch. “I think…I think it’s time to leave. Maybe we can find a detour. Or a strip of land, lead them around it, and—”

  “No!” Piper couldn’t believe her ears. “We can’t go home now! We’re so close. We have to be. We’ll go back when we find the flower. Macey, tell him!”

  This time, however, Macey sided with her partner. “I know what this means to y’all,” she said. “Believe me, I do. But these gators, they’re just not right in the head. Perch and I…we’re responsible for you kids. I understand how you feel, but—”

  “No you don’t!” Piper shot to her feet and yelled in Macey’s face. “How could you possibly know how I feel?”

  Piper waited, fists clenched at her sides, chest heaving, for Macey to answer. The others were too stunned to speak.

  There was a long, heavy pause as Macey sat on the bench, silent, a wounded look on her face. The deep folds in the weathered skin of her forehead squinched tight. She started to roll up her right sleeve. For a moment, Piper was afraid Macey might hit her, but the Mud Cat’s sternman was just uncovering the tattoo on her forearm. The one that read Georgia.

  “Mace.” Perch sighed. “It’s none of her business.”

  “Yes, it is,” Macey said. “I’m making it so.”

  “So what?” said Piper. “You have a tattoo that says ‘Georgia.’ What does that have to do with diddly?”

  “It has everything to do with everything,” said Macey. “Georgia was my daughter’s name.”

  “Your daughter?” It never occurred to Piper that Macey might have a family—unless you counted Perch, which the woman obviously did.

  Macey rubbed her arm, smoothing out the wrinkled and slightly sagging canvas of the tattoo. She eyed it sadly. “My Georgia…she liked to play with dolls. She was real good at it. Took them everywhere she went. Gave them their babas three times a day. You could set a clock by their feeding schedule. Georgia would have turned thirty-eight last month. Probably would’ve had two or three kids of her own by now. She would have been a terrific mother, that’s for sure.”

  “What happened to her, Macey?” Tad asked respectfully.

  “Georgia was only six. Her Jack Russell terrier Whipper got free from the yard. It was my fault. I’d forgotten to latch the gate. Georgia chased that pooch down the sidewalk. Whipper darted out betw
een two parked cars into traffic. The dog made it across fine, but Georgia…” Macey faltered. She patted the top pocket of her overalls flat. “Lord, my kingdom for a cigarette. That’ll teach me to pack light.”

  “I’m really sorry, Macey.” Piper’s eyes brimmed with tears. She’d been wrong. Nobody understood what she was going through better than Macey. “I’m so sorry for what I said.” She felt a desperate need to hug the woman, but Macey seemed to shake off her melancholy, and the opportunity passed.

  “It’s okay, darlin’. It was a long time ago. A hitch in the navy seemed like a good way to get out of my head about it. One thing you’ll learn in the service is that people have it rough all over. It helps to know we’re not alone in our suffering. And I’ll tell you one more thing I learned in my travels: hanging on to regret won’t help anyone. Not me, not you, and not that baby sister of yours back home. What’s happening to her is no more your fault than it is hers. You spend enough time in the Oke and you’ll learn that lightning strikes wherever it dang well pleases, and there’s nothin’ we can do about it but fight the fires as best we can. And sometimes we lose. No matter what happens, you will go on, and you’ll find a way to be happy.”

  Macey’s words made Piper feel a little better and a little sadder at the same time. She wondered how different the woman would look if her daughter hadn’t been killed all those years ago. Still big and burly, but instead of overalls she might have on a pretty blouse or a WORLD’S BEST GRANDMA T-shirt. And instead of a tattoo of a battleship, maybe there’d be a stylish scarf wrapped around her neck. Or possibly adoring grandchildren.

  “I understand what you’re saying.” Piper reached out and took Macey’s hand. “But, Macey, what if you could go back in time and latch the gate to your yard? Wouldn’t you do anything for that chance? I believe the silver flower is my last chance to lock the gate on Grace’s illness while I still can. I have to try. Please help me.”

  Macey gave Piper’s hand a gentle squeeze. “You’re a persuasive girl—I’ll give you that. Not many people can get this old mule to change her mind. I’ll leave it up to our captain.”