Alligator (21 page)

"There's one other possibility I haven't mentioned," Lee said finally. "He may want us to find him."

Rye let out a huge horse laugh, and Maurice could see Rye expected him to join in. Maurice didn't feel like laughing, though. He was aware that he was a coward. Sometimes even simple things, like making a phone call, scared him. He had tried to fight it most of his life, but he knew he would always be like that. Lee wasn't a coward, though, and the fact that he looked concerned worried Maurice doubly.

Finally Maurice said softly, "I think we should hear what he has to say, Rye." He didn't look at Rye when he said it: What he'd said constituted a rebellion, and he knew Rye would take it as such.

Lee looked down the shoreline. The men were putting out campfires and washing lunch dishes, getting ready to go out for the afternoon. He had to have his say. Maybe he could stop them.

Lee turned back to Rye and Maurice. "Something struck me as peculiar this morning, but I didn't really put it together till now. A gator's hearing is good, better than most other animals."

"So?" said Rye impatiently.

"So, he must have been able to hear you splashin' around there. You made enough noise. Why didn't he just leave when he heard you comin'? He could have slipped away without any of us seeing him."

"Boone, you're amazing." Rye's voice was full of ridicule. "Are you tryin' to tell me that gator wanted us to see him?"

"I don't know," answered Lee.

It was the first time Maurice had ever heard Lee express any doubt about his own opinion. It made Maurice believe him even more. "Let's say you're right," he said to Lee. "What do you suggest we do?"

"I think we should turn back now, before we get into trouble. You saw what happened this morning. The gator is a wounded animal, and, like all wounded animals, he's dangerous. Add in his size and you've got real trouble. Except me and maybe Simon, no one knows anything about gettin' along in the swamps. It's close to suicide to go any deeper."

"I ain't worried. I got you to protect me." Rye got up and brushed off the seat of his pants. So far as he was concerned, the discussion was finished.

Lee didn't stand up. "And what about the others?"

"I ain't stoppin' them from goin' back."

"But they won't unless you do," said Lee.

"I can't do nothin' about that!" Rye turned to Maurice. "Come on, let's get going."

"Can't, or won't, Mr. Whitman?"

Lee's voice was molten. Maurice felt captured between the two men and their incredible wills.

"Listen here, boy," Rye said icily. "I hired you to go gator huntin', not give me advice. You hear me? So get the damn boat ready and let's get out of here."

"Not till I tell the others what I think." Lee stood up and began walking toward the men on the shoreline.

Rye let him get halfway there; then he yelled after him, "You can tell them what you want. They'll just think you're as big a fool as I do!"

Lee continued to walk toward Thompson and Marris, but he knew Rye was right. Warning the men was an obligation. He didn't expect anyone would listen.

Incandescent afternoon was spread out before the boats like the land itself. Around noon the cypress-shaded sloughs began to widen. Trees became smaller and more like scrub brush. The patches of shadow they cast across the water brought little comfort. Finally the scrub, too, disappeared, and all that was left was a vast expanse of grassy water, without contour, without relief, spreading relentlessly outward to the horizon.

The unshaded sun beat down white hot on the water, glazing it silver. Ben had said he was beginning to feel like a baked potato in Reynolds Wrap.

There had been no sign of the alligator since they had found his den. The men continued on in the direction they'd been going, more on blind faith than by any kind of plan.

The boats were no longer bunched together. Now that the men were using poles, differences in their strength were beginning to show, and several times the party had to stop to wait for stragglers to catch up.

At first many of the men had tried to find relief by stopping to take a swim, but the water, too, was hot. Ben, Marris and Thompson splashed around for a while until they realized they felt worse than before.

Albert Johnston hadn't even gone in. He didn't like to admit it, but he was scared that the alligator might be around. Everyone had laughed at Lee when he warned them to go back. Orville Levi said he sounded like crazy Luke when they left. Albert knew nothing about swamps and alligators; all he knew was his bar. If it had been up to him, he would have turned back. He wondered if anyone else felt the same as he did. If they did, they were doing a good job of hiding it.

Ace kept pretending to himself that he felt bad because of his sunburn, though it hardly accounted for the fact that he'd been thinking about his brother, Dinks, all day. Before he went out, he hadn't thought all that much about him. Dinks's death had seemed unreal. Even when he saw what was left of his body, Ace hadn't been able to associate that with his brother. But all day he had been thinking about him. Once he even thought he saw him floating in the water, among the weeds. Maybe it was because of what Lee said. D. W. figured Lee was just trying to scare the men so he could get the alligator for himself. Ace wasn't so sure of that, but he had agreed because he was ashamed not to.

At three thirty, the Saurian was a quarter of a mile ahead of the other boats. Lee dropped anchor, grateful for the chance to rest while John and Rye went in for a swim.

Maurice remained on deck. He tried to shield himself from the sun with an old newspaper, but the searing rays spilled over the sides. His shirt and pants were wet with sweat, and they stuck to him with a vengeance. Insects circled around his head in thick clouds, attracted by the damp man smell.

Even worse than the heat was the under-current of hatred on board the Saurian. The tension between the men was so great, Maurice felt as if they were balanced on the edge of a cliff and the slightest breeze would send them all over the edge.

Maurice squinted out at the mirror water, but the reflected light burned into his retinas and made his eyes tear. He squeezed them shut, trying to block the light, the heat, the dampness from his consciousness, but the air was so thick and heavy with moisture that every breath he took was like drinking hot water.

"From now on, it's all like this," said Lee.

When Maurice opened his eyes, he found Lee standing over him. He detected a superior, mocking smirk on Lee's face, and regretted that he had stood up for him against Rye. "I'll get used to it," he answered irritably.

"No one gets used to it," said Lee.

Maurice wasn't in the mood to hide his annoyance. "Not even you?"

"That's right," said Lee, ignoring Maurice's sarcasm, "not even me." He dipped his handkerchief into the water and wiped the sweat from his face. "Oh, you can get used to the heat. You can even get used to the insects, but out here there's something more. Maybe it's the flatness, or the fact that there's no trees, but there's something out here that drives a man crazy. Your boss, for example."

Maurice saw Lee's purpose clearly. He was trying to drive a wedge between him and Rye in hopes of splitting the party up so much that they had to return. Maurice wasn't sure he wasn't right about going back, but he wanted no part of it himself. He had already let Rye down once, and he wasn't going to do it again.

Maurice looked out at Rye floating in the water, smiling up at the sky, and laughed at the idea of Rye going crazy. "It'd take a lot more than swamp to beat Rye," he said. "Rye could come down here with his bulldozers and build a whole community complete with concert hall and Elks' Club in six months."

"Oh, no, not here," answered Lee. "Not this land." Lee gazed at the great sunbaked flats stretching out relentlessly to the horizon. He had heard about this part of the swamps since he was a boy, and he feared it. "Men have tried to settle this land for three hundred years," he continued, "but no one stays. They tried to farm it, but the weeds came up faster than they could pull them. So they brought in their cattle, figurin' they could feed off the weeds. The insects settled on them in dark, heavy clouds. The cattle tried to beat them away with their tails, till their bodies were covered with welts. The blood only attracted more insects. Finally it drove them crazy, and they jumped into the water and drowned. After that, most of the men went home, figurin' they got off cheap with their lives."

"But some of them stayed," said Maurice. What Lee had said was scaring him. He too could feel the threat of the land, but he could also feel the pull of Rye, floating in the middle of the water, smiling up at the sky as if he owned it.

"Yeah, some of them, stayed," answered Lee. "Of course, by that time they were as crazy as their cattle. No, you can't beat this land, and the ones who think they can are the ones who do the worst. You take a man like Mr. Whitman. He's used to a fight, but that's the problem. This land doesn't fight you—it just doesn't give a shit. You can't win against it, because it doesn't care whether you live or die. All you can do is roll with it." He turned to Maurice and tried to capture his eyes. For a moment, he was successful.

"And that's how you lick it?" asked Maurice. He could hear the fear in his voice, and was ashamed of it.

"No, you can't lick it," said Lee. "It'll get you just the same."

Maurice turned back out to the water. If he could just keep his eyes on Rye, then the heat, the insects, even the fear would seem bearable.

"You're wasting your breath," said Maurice with assurance. "I'm not afraid."

"This is the five-P.M. weather forecast from Miami. The National Hurricane Center is issuing the following warning for Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and the Everglades. Tropical Storm Bertha, centered at twenty-four degrees north, eighty degrees west, moving north, northwest at six knots, maximum speed a hundred knots at the center, with winds of gale force in a two-hundred-mile radius, is due to strike the Florida coast at eight A.M. tomorrow... Repeat..."

Rye shut off the shortwave radio and looked around to see if anyone had heard it. Lee and John were wading in the water a hundred feet off, checking for signs of the alligator, and the rest of the boats were much too far away. Maurice was sitting next to him on the deck of the Saurian, but Maurice could be controlled. Rye pulled his knife and severed one of the wires connecting the radio.

"Rye, you can't do that!" Maurice thought of grabbing the knife away from Rye, but it was too late to do any good, and he was too shocked to move anyway.

"Wrong," said Rye. "Not only can I, but did I. No storm's gonna interfere with me. I got plans."

It crossed Maurice's mind that perhaps Lee was right about Rye being crazy. "You can't just will a storm away," he said, hoping to bring Rye back to reality.

"We'll ride it out," answered Rye. He pocketed his knife and hid the severed radio wire from sight.

"Ride it out? That boat wouldn't last ten minutes."

"Then we'll sit it out somewhere." Rye was whispering, but there was so much intensity in his voice that it had the same affect on Maurice as a shout. Rye paused to make sure no one heard him; then he continued, "I ain't interruptin' this hunt on account of a little blow."

"It sounded like more than a little blow to me."

"They always exaggerate," Rye snapped.

Maurice was stunned into silence. There was a desperation, a hungriness in Rye's voice that Maurice had never heard before. It was the sound of a man who was out of a job, or going to the hospital for an operation. It was the way he too must have sounded ten years ago, when Rye hired him.

Maurice touched Rye's arm as if calling him back. "Rye, it's just an alligator."

"It's more than that," Rye answered, and again Maurice heard the desperation.

"I think we'd better tell Lee," Maurice said firmly.

"So you've turned on me too!" Rye said; then his voice softened. "I'm askin' you as a friend."

Suddenly Rye broke into a radiant smile. He looked so relaxed, so full of confidence, that Maurice wondered if he had really heard fear in Rye's voice or if it hadn't just been a reflection of his own feelings. "Sometimes you go too far," he said, knowing he would go along with Rye on this, as he had on everything else.

"But that's what you like about me."

"One day you're going to go too far."

"That could be," said Rye. "But don't you worry, that day is a long way off."

Lee felt like he was going to explode. So far he'd been able to keep under control by staying busy. It was only at night, when there was nothing to do, that the pressure mounted and he felt that if he didn't at least talk to someone, he'd do something he would regret. But Lee couldn't talk to anyone. He'd never whined on anybody's shoulder before, and he wouldn't now. Besides, he knew,that no one could really understand.

Even in the late-aftemoon light, Sam could read what Lee was feeling in his eyes, and it scared him. When men like Lee exploded, they spread around a lot of broken glass. He resolved to talk to Lee, no matter what, but he wasn't able to get him alone until after dinner, when most of the others were playing cards or fishing off the shore.

Lee was sitting on a log at the side of his tent, flicking his knife into the earth.

"Haven't played that since I was a kid," said Sam, as he sat down. "Mind if I try?"

Lee shrugged and handed the knife to Sam. Sam had thrown badly as a kid, and age hadn't improved him any. The knife hit a stone and ricocheted back at his feet.

Sam handed the knife back to Lee and looked out at the setting sun.

"Sun's stayin' out later and later," he said. "Before we know it, kids'll be out of school and it'll be the Fourth of July. Too bad we didn't plan this hunt earlier on. Should be just about time for Thompson to make his annual threat to quit unless we air-condition the jail-house. When I was a kid, I used to look forward to summer. It meant church barbecues and fishing for crabs with pieces of bread and mooching around outside till late. But I guess I'm just getting old, because all summer means to me now is heat. Jesus, I wish to hell we'd planned this hunt earlier on!"