Alligator Bayou (5 page)

nine

M
onday night the boys are waiting for us at the end of South Street.

“What’d you tell him?” asks Charles. “The tall one. Frank.”

He means Francesco. But I like it that he’s made the name sound American. I wish he’d do that to mine and not call me “Mr. Calo-whatever.” “I asked if we could go exploring.”

“Didn’t tell him it was a ’gator hunt?”

I shake my head.

Charles smiles in approval.

“That hairy bear?” says Rock. “He let you go that easy?”

“He belong in Alligator Bayou with them other bears,” says Ben.

The skin on my scalp tightens. “The bayou has bears?”

“You scared?” Charles slaps my shoulder lightly. “Don’t waste your energy. Bears hide. You need a bloodhound to hunt them down, like what the sheriff have for tracking criminals. We ain’t hardly never lucky enough to see them.”

“What y’all want to worry about…well.” Ben turns his back for a second and takes something from his pocket. Then he swirls around and goes, “Ahhh!” His mouth is open wide and full of cotton.

I stare.

Ben takes the cotton out of his mouth and laughs as though he’s the most hilarious person in the world.

“Cottonmouth snakes,” says Charles. “In the swamps. By the time you see them, you already bit. So you might as well not even look.”

“Snakes?” I say weakly.

“Can’t swing a cat without hitting one,” says Charles.

Rock gives a little shake of his shoulders. “I ain’t hardly afeared of nothing ’cept snakes.”

“But they better than snapping turtles,” says Ben. “A snake will at least kill you fast. But a giant turtle’ll take your foot off with a snap, then leave you to get eaten alive by whatever come along next.”

Cirone presses up beside me. “Are they pulling our leg?” he asks in Sicilian.

“They must be,” I say back in Sicilian. “Only crazy people would go into the swamps if it was that dangerous.” But my heart’s beating double time.

We walk. The boys keep joking, and I refuse to listen.

We pass a plantation. Rock points. “Them log cabins over there, see them? Slaves lived there before the War Between the States. Colored tenants live there now.” He bounces his finger in the air beyond them. “Kitchen house, barn, smokehouse, gristmill, ’nother barn, cotton house, cotton gin, overseer’s house, owner’s house, blacksmith’s shop. And the chapel.”

“Just about a complete village,” says Ben.

A few tenants of the rich owner are hoeing among the bushy green cotton plants. Right now those plants look like nothing special. When I first got here last October, though, it was the very end of the harvest season and I saw a field with cream white bolls all burst open. It was so pretty.

We pass a rice paddy and more small houses and outbuildings. Then nothing. No buildings. No noise. Just our joking around and the birds and the insects.

We fall silent.

I’m thinking ahead to giant jaws with giant teeth. The bears and the cottonmouths and the snapping turtles, they might all be a joke. But the ’gator’s for real.

Ben’s carrying an unlit lantern with one hand and a food satchel slung over his shoulder with the other. The lantern makes a slight squeak when it swings. Soon we’re all walking in time to that squeak. Walking and walking. I want to ask how much farther it is, but I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining.

“No one lives out here,” I say.

“Floods just about every year.” Charles waves his arm. “Sometimes two or three times in a season. Who can live in that?”

Slowly we walk through thorns and bushes and trees. I stop. “What are those?”

“Canebrakes,” says Charles.

Plants taller than a house stand close together, choking out everything else. Their tops ruffle like feathers in the breeze. They rise thick as a wall and run in both directions, blocking passage for miles.

Rock and Charles pull long, wide knives out of leather sheaths on their backs. Ben sneers at me. “No bush knife?” I don’t know what I’ve done to make him dislike me. “Here. This way y’all can be useful, at least.” He hands me the lantern and Cirone the food satchel.

Cirone and I each already carry a bag of food. Pizza. Thick crusts with cheese, bitter greens, raisins, and garlic. Carlo learned how to make it when he lived in New Orleans, right near a man from Naples. I can’t wait to see their faces when they taste it. That will teach them not to call our food “dago food.”

So now both our hands are full as we follow the boys, who whack a path through the canes. You can’t see more than ten steps ahead. The cut-off canes slap back at us, and their sharp ends poke hard.

And then the canes end, and it’s like we’ve passed through a door into a magic world of gauze-covered, graceful shapes. The air is hazy and heavy with water. I feel like I’ve entered someone’s dream.

“Swamp.” Rock moves close. “Cypress.”

He points out the red gums, white oaks, glossy palmettos. But it’s the cypress my eyes go back to. They rise from the black ooze like giants with big lumpy knees.

“Anyone see it?” Charles looks up.

My eyes follow his. “See what?”

“The bear,” says Ben, and he laughs, but everyone keeps looking up.

We walk along this side of the canebrakes through the vines and creepers that hang from the trees, trailing all the way to the water. A bark comes from the top of a tree up ahead. A black squirrel races down the trunk and jumps on something white—old antlers. He sharpens his teeth on them, and gives another harsh bark as we pass.

Something leaps from the brush, plops into the water, and disappears. “Swamp rabbit,” says Charles. “Good eating.”

A fat, furry creature with a striped tail goes by. “’Coon,” says Rock.

Well, I knew that. I’ve seen raccoon coats and hats in Tallulah.

“Follow him?” asks Charles.

“Yeah,” says Ben.

We follow that waddling raccoon through the undergrowth to a muddy flat. The raccoon climbs onto a heap of mashed grasses and sets to digging. We stand completely still. The afternoon has passed, and as the sunlight fades, I strain to see.

The raccoon reaches down through the grasses and pulls up a white oval. An egg? He holds it in both paws. It’s bigger than a chicken egg. He bites and rips. Thick yellow gook runs down his paws. He wipes his snout with his tongue and buries it in the egg. He eats another, and another. Then he waddles off.

We walk to the pile of grasses and Ben pulls them aside. “Good one. Must have been a big ’gator.”

The nest is a shallow hole brimming with eggs. Maybe a hundred. Is the mother coming back? I look around.

“Anybody bring a empty sack?” asks Charles.

“Let’s eat now, so we can use my satchel.” Ben’s already handing out biscuits.

This biscuit sits in my hand, a heavy lump. Cirone’s gobbling his down. I take a bite. Good! There’s turkey inside.

We finish and Ben passes around a bottle. It’s coffee—nice and strong.

Ben hands out a second biscuit each. I take a bite. Meat again, but richer and darker and sweeter. I look at Rock with a question on my face.

Ben laughs. “Mr. Calo-whatever never ate loggerhead before.”

Charles tilts his head. “Someday, with luck, y’all’ll taste Tricia’s turtle soup.”

Turtle? Some people back in Sicily eat turtle. I wash it down with coffee.

Now it’s our turn. Cirone is handing out the pizza. I want to kick him. I should be the one to make the offer—and get the credit. It was my idea to bring pizza.

Ben takes a bite. “Raisins?” he croaks, as though he’s just eaten rabbit droppings. “Who ever heard of raisins in something salty?”

“I like it.” Rock licks olive oil off his thumb and takes a big bite. “Different.”

No one else says anything. But they finish the pizza.

We load soft, leathery eggs into Ben’s empty satchel.

“What’ll we do with them?” I ask.

Charles looks at me as though I’m daft. “Eat ’em, course.”

“But what if there’s a baby inside? Bones and teeth and bumpy skin and all?”

“There ain’t. This is egg-laying week. All the ’gators all over Louisiana, they laying their eggs this week. Perfect time to gather them.”

And now we’re looking up into the trees again. Back to the mysterious searching we were doing before.

“There.” Rock points. From a crook about eight feet up hangs a boat, roped in place. “Good old skiff.”

Charles and Ben climb the tree, untie the skiff, and lower it down.

It’s flat bottomed, lightweight, and big enough to hold all of us and then some. Tied inside are three sturdy poles. A small trunk is attached to the bottom and filled with rope. Charles yanks on the rope, section by section, testing it.

We carry the skiff through mud that sucks at my shoes like a live thing. Only Cirone and I have shoes on; we stumble while the other boys walk on, steady. Finally, the skiff slides onto water. We get in and the skiff sinks into the mud. We have to dig the poles in deep to push us off and free.

Charles stands and poles at the rear.

I reach my hand over and cup the water and bring it to my lips.

Rock slaps my hand away. “Swamp water make you so sick, by the time you stop rolling you be late for Christmas.”

It’s dusk already, and the treetops look like skeletons, stabbing the gray sky. We pass through a cavern of cypress decorated with moss.

Rock points at a cypress with a cavelike opening in its trunk just above the water level. “After the rains the entrance to that holler will be underwater. A ’gator will claim it for his den.”

An owl hoots. Another answers from across the swamp.

I swat at a fly. It takes off with a little chunk of my flesh.

“Think that’s bad?” Ben points at the blood on my arm. “Ha! In a couple of months, this air’ll be so black with flies, y’all’ll think it’s night at noontime.” He stands up. “My turn.” He takes the pole from Charles.

We move slowly through the swamp and everywhere I look, the shadows hold vines that could as easily be snakes. And everything looks the same. There are no landmarks. Or nothing I can make out. I want to ask: how will we know the way back?

The pole sinks in lower now. This water must be deep enough to hold ’gators. What if they’re under us? What if they come up from underneath and turn us over? I’m sitting in a tight ball in the center of the skiff. I can’t bring my arms in any closer.

It’s dark now. Ben pulls in his pole and sits down. He strikes a match. The smell of kerosene stings as the lantern glows bright. Instantly the swamp disappears. All that exists is the circle of lantern light.

“Here.” Ben digs into his pocket and holds out a cigarette butt.

“That dirty thing?” says Rock.

“It ain’t dirty.”

“I saw you pick it up with a lump of horse manure the other night.”

“I cleaned it off good.”

“Listen to them,” Charles says to me. “Two cats in a bag.”

Ben shrugs. “All right, Rock, don’t smoke it, if you that particular.” He lights it with the lantern flame, takes a puff, and passes it.

We all puff and pass, including Rock, till the butt is too short to hold.

Ben throws it in the water.
Fsst
, it’s gone.

Rock points. “There.”

Ben stands and holds the lantern high.

I can see it now. A single, small, shining yellow ball.

Charles poles us closer.

The yellow ball has a black vertical slit down the center. An eye.

Rock moves to the far end of the skiff and waves his arms.

Don’t! I want to shout. I huddle tighter.

The yellow ball stays fixed on the lantern light.

“Good,” says Charles. “This one mine.”

“It ought to be mine,” says Ben. “By rights and all.”

“My family got rights, too,” says Charles. “’Cause of Tricia.”

I don’t know what they’re talking about.

Charles steps to the center and Ben takes his place at the head, still holding the lantern. The yellow ball follows that lantern as we close in. Charles leans toward me and Cirone. “Be ready to move quick to steady the skiff. It’ll trick you how fast it can flip.”

I grip the rim of the side hard. Steadying skiffs?

Charles holds on to the side nearest the ’gator as Rock poles us up beside him.

That ’gator is still looking at the light. He doesn’t seem to see us at all.

Charles punches the ’gator in the back of the head.

I gasp.

The ’gator bobs a little, but still looks at the light.

“Pretty small,” says Charles appraisingly. “Mind if we catch only a small one, Mr. Calo-whatever?”

“No,” I whisper.

“What you say? Speak up.”

“I don’t mind.”

Rock makes a lasso out of the rope and throws it in a big circle onto the surface of the water, with that ’gator eye at the center.

“Ready?” Charles takes a spear out of his sack. It’s short, and sharp at both ends. He holds it over his head and jumps out of the skiff. Jumps right into the swamp, right onto the ’gator’s back! I can’t believe it! The skiff slaps side to side in the water and I’m clinging to the rim and screaming inside my head. Charles is dead. We’re all dead.

When I can see him again, he’s got one arm around the ’gator’s neck and Rock’s pulling the lasso tight. The animal finally seems to come awake, opens his huge jaws in a roar, and throws his head side to side. Charles jams the spear in his mouth.

The ’gator snaps his jaws shut. The whole spear disappears inside, his head is that big. He throws his entire body side to side now. Rock and Ben pull together on the rope, tightening it around the ’gator’s throat. But then they stop and let the rope run through their hands, and I don’t know why they’re stopping, because the ’gator is still alive. It hurls itself now. It rolls. And Charles clings to its back, arms locked around its neck.

Ben stands with the lantern, moving it, trying to keep Charles in sight. But we don’t pole the boat. We don’t move to help. We just watch. I can’t stand this. I don’t want to look, but I have to look.

That fight between Charles and the ’gator goes on forever. They roll, struggle, go under, come up. Every time I catch a glimpse of Charles, he looks worse. A tangle of moss covers him. His eyes are closed, and the side of his head is pressed against the top of the ’gator’s head. Then he’s gone again, as the animal twists away. Sometimes it seems they must both be drowned, they’re underwater so long. But when that ’gator comes up again, there’s Charles, stuck like a leech.