Alligator (5 page)

"Marris!" yelled Rye with delight. "Son of a bitch, if it ain't Archie Marris!" He jumped out of the car and clapped Marris in a big bear hug. The stunned Marris submitted meekly. It took close to a minute before he was able to put two and two together and come up with Rye Whitman. It wasn't that Rye looked all that different, though of course he had aged. It was the clothes, the car. The only place Marris had ever seen people like that was in
Life
magazine. It seemed impossible he might know one of them.

"Jesus Christ," he drawled with awe. "Jesus Christ, will ya look at him."

"Not bad for a boy from the boonies, huh?" Rye was delighted at the effect he was making. He had thought about coming home rich many times when things were bad. He couldn't imagine why it had taken him so long to do it.

"I'd heard you done good, all right, but..." Marris choked as he remembered the poor kid with only one pair of pants who had left Everglades almost thirty years ago.

Rye clamped his big pawlike arm around Marris's shoulder and guided him over to the car. "Maurice Gainor, John Patterson, this here is Archie Marris, the one I told you about." He winked at Maurice. "How d'ya make out on that mule I sold ya?" he said to Marris.

"You remember that?" asked Marris, surprised that a man like Rye should remember anything about him.

"'Course I do."

"Died six weeks after ya sold it to me, you thievin' bastard," said Marris, delighted to be associated with Rye, even if only in the role of fall guy. "Mangy rotten mule weren't good for nothin', 'cept maybe fertilizer."

"Now there's where you're wrong." Rye laughed. "It was good for gettin' you, wasn't it?"

Marris grinned like a shark. His enormous belly shook as he laughed. "See what I mean." He winked at Maurice and John. "A real bastard."

"As mean as a gator," Rye said proudly.

Marris suddenly grew serious. "Not as mean as this one."

"Horseshit. He ain't nothin' but an oversized suitcase."

"You weren't there when they brought in the bodies. One of them was missing his head. He's an angry one, Rye."

"You're talkin' like that swimmin' log's got feelin's."

"I don't know about feelin's," said Marris soberly. "I just know he's big and mean. Now Luke, he says it's the hand of God on Sodom and Gomorrah."

Marris caught Rye looking at him as if he were crazy and quickly added, "'Course, we all know Luke is dealin' from a short deck."

"Well, that gator won't be around much longer to speculate on," said Rye.

"A lot of people been driftin' into town with the same idea," said Marris. "You figure to be the one to get it?"

"I don't figure, I'm sure to get it."

"Well, you got everythin' else you gone after, that's for sure."

"A hundred fifty million on paper, New York Stock Exchange, and a fleet of bulldozers looks like the American Army. How about you?"

"I ain't done as good as you, but I can't complain." Marris looked away, embarrassed. "I night-clerk during the week and dabble in a little land, but, like I said, I didn't do as well as you. Would have done better but luck kept runnin' against me an' ... you know."

The conversation quickly wound down, and the two men stood on the street awkwardly, neither having much to say to the other, their futures being too dissimilar and their pasts too distant.

"Bones died," said Marris finally.

"Aw, shit no. You was always fond of him."

"Yeah." Marris sighed. "He died last year. So did George Jenkins."

"The one who run with the Maynard kid?"

"That was Jesse," said Marris.

"I can't remember George Jenkins."

"He had blond curly hair and a long nose."

"Can't picture him," said Rye. "Can't picture him."

The men stood in silence for a moment; then Rye clapped Marris on his broad back and boomed, "What are we just standin' here for? Sooner I get a room, sooner we can get started drinkin' at Albert's." Rye turned and began to walk up the stairs of the hotel.

"Need some help with the luggage?" asked Marris, looking at the overloaded Mercedes.

"Don't worry about a thing. My boys'll take care of it." Rye pushed through the creaky old doors and disappeared into the hotel in a spray of peeling paint.

"What did you expect, the Plaza?" Rye muttered to himself as he changed into a comfortable pair of blue cotton slacks and matching shirt that would have been more appropriate on the links than in the swamp. He looked around the hotel room with disgust. It was a broken-down room that was furnished in a jumble of dime-store modern and crumbling antique. Most of the furniture had been painted a glossy black to hide the nicks and chips of time. But even the new paint had begun to peel, in some places showing four or five different colors below. The bed was high and lumpy and covered with a graying, threadbare bedspread that had probably seen more action than a whorehouse madam. The bed was partially hooked up for Magic Fingers, the bright idea of one of a long string of owners who had tried to make a go of the hotel. There was a bible on the dresser, and an old twelve-inch television that had been around since the days of Milton Berle. There was the distinct smell of dust and dead flies.

When Rye was a boy and Everglades was just beginning its long fatal journey downward, he used to peer through the windows at the rich sportsmen who had come down for the weekend. The hotel had always represented the unobtainable to him.

"Shit!" Rye sat down on the bed and opened a bottle of Wild Turkey. He rejected the smeared bathroom glass and took a swig from the bottle. "Welcome home," he sneered.

He got up and paced the room. "Too early to go drinkin', too late to be sober." He walked over to the bathroom and wrenched a leaky faucet closed. The rusty handle broke off in his hand, and he threw it across the room in fury. Rye took another swig of Wild Turkey and walked over to the dirty window.

At the end of the street, an old man in a bathing suit was filling a portable pool with water from a garden hose. Propped against the side of the pool was a hand-painted sign: MAN AGAINST BEAST. SEE THE GREAT KING KONG.

"Well, I'll be damned," said Rye out loud. "If it ain't gator wrestling." Not since Pete Osceola and his shocking-pink alligator had Rye seen alligator wrestling. As a kid, he had always dreamed of jumping in there and showing that Indian what he could do.

Rye chuckled to himself. He raced out of his room and down the stairs, whooping with delight.

By the time Rye reached the sideshow, a small crowd had gathered around Lonny, the thin, wispy old man Rye had seen from the window. He held a megaphone to his lips. "Get ready for the big wrestlin' match!" he screamed in his thin, reedy voice. "King Kong, beast of the Amazon, ferocious man-eater. Killer of thirty blacks, ten whites. Eats pigs whole."

The old man dipped into a sand pail and threw a scrap of rotten meat into the pool. King Kong bellowed loudly, then, grabbing hold of his ration, took it under the water.

Rye drew closer to the pool and looked in. King Kong, man-eating alligator of the Everglades, was less than impressive close up. One of his eyes was out, most of his teeth were gone, and his back was chopped and uneven from the scars of past battles and the rigors of age.

Lonny, King Kong's manager and trainer, was as old and edentulous as his partner. He struck a Mr. America pose, rippling his brittle old chest muscles so the alligator tattooed over his right breast wiggled.

"Here he is, folks," he yelled, "the most fearsome gator the world has ever seen."

Pete Osceola, the gator wrestler Rye remembered from his youth, had been a little man with a huge hawk nose, long black hair tied back with a red bandana, and tight muscles that stood out from his thin body like twisted rope. Every time he stepped into the ring, he'd make the sign of the cross. He meant it. Pete's alligator was close to thirteen feet long; the jaws alone had measured three feet, and each tooth was the size of a fist.

Rye took another swig of Wild Turkey and let it burn down his throat and warm his stomach. The liquor made King Kong look bigger and more ferocious.

Lonny threw another scrap of meat into the pool. King Kong attempted to roar in response, but all he managed was a sound that resembled a dog barking.

"Hey, he ain't got no teeth," yelled a kid in the front row.

The crowd began to laugh. Lonny, turning red and angry, screamed back, "You can't judge a gator's toughness by his teeth!" It was as though he had been personally insulted. The crowd began to laugh even harder at the funny old man and his relic of an alligator.

Lonny looked around desperately, then whispered, "Go git 'em, King Kong." It was more a plea than a command.

The broken old alligator understood and lumbered over to the crowd, roaring and hissing, straining for authenticity. The children fell back behind their parents, screaming with delighted fear.

"Atta boy," said Lonny, "atta boy." He smiled with relief. "Okay, folks, who wants to go first?" He looked around the crowd quickly. No one ever challenged a gator any more, and he was glad. It used to cost him half of the take to plant someone in the audience.

"I do!" Rye's voice boomed from the back of the crowd.

He took another long pull at the bottle; then, throwing off his Gucci shoes and expensive suit, he raced toward the pool, hollering like a rodeo star. Before Lonny could stop him, Rye did a belly flop into the water and lunged for King Kong's throat.

The pathetic old alligator let out an astonished bellow. Lonny could hear the panic in it. King Kong had fought with Lonny for years, but never with a madman like this. The alligator had been taught certain moves: Pressure on the stomach was his cue to make a bloodcurdling roar; a pull on the leg meant he should flip over backward, prelude to the final death struggle. But this man wasn't following the rules—he was biting and kicking like a maniac—and King Kong's old yellow eyes were wide with confusion and fear.

King Kong howled in pain as Rye grabbed his right leg, almost pulling it out of its socket. The alligator managed to pull loose, but was immediately stymied when Rye grabbed him around the middle and flipped him. A tidal wave of water spilled over the side of the kiddie pool as Rye turned him over. Finally the old alligator began to slow up. Rye jumped onto his back. He grabbed the toothless old jaws and held them together like a sandwich.

The crowd, which had been astonished into silence, went wild with laughter, while Rye, with a big smirk plastered on his face, held King Kong's jaws shut with one hand and waved to the spectators with the other. The alligator tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but Rye just tightened his hold. Finally King Kong just gave up and let his scarred old body float on the surface of the water like a burned log.

Lonny could no longer stand the sight of King Kong lying helpless in the pool with a group of people crowding around and laughing at him. He leaped into the pool and tried to pull Rye off. "Please, please stop," he pleaded. "Please, he's all I got. He's all I got."

Rye looked over at Lonny's pathetic, pleading face, then down at the wreck of an alligator that lay beneath him. For a moment, he saw himself as ridiculous, but he didn't allow the moment to last long. Rye let out a hearty laugh and, holding up his arms in victory, jumped out of the pool.

Lonny leaned over King Kong and touched his leathery old hide. Then he wheeled on Rye and screamed, "You had no right! You had no goddamned right!"

Rye walked over to his trousers and fished for his wallet. He pulled out a fifty and handed it to Lonny. "Sorry," he said, "it was just a joke. I didn't realize he was so old."

"He ain't old."

"I said I'm sorry!" Rye threw his clothes over his shoulder and, putting his arm around Marris, he did a little two-step, clowning for the audience as he walked away.

Lonny watched after him and said, "He ain't old." But no one was listening.

Albert Johnston's Bar and Grill, a run-down clapboard affair with a burned-out neon sign, sat at the edge of town in a sea of trailers. To the people of Everglades, it was a restaurant, bar, social club, dance hall, gambling hall, and sports palace. They might complain bitterly every time Albert's prices went up, but it was a lot better than tying one on at home.

Rye went over to Albert's at one o'clock. He knew that by that time most of the town would have heard he was back, and he was looking forward to their response to him. He'd seen how people had gaped at his car, though they'd pretended not to notice it. It was an unwritten rule among swamp people not to stare. In the old days, there were so many runaway convicts down there, just asking a man's name could get you killed. But Rye had seen them sneaking looks, and it made him feel good.

Rye was hardly in the door before a gnarled little man with skin the color of ashes came running up to him, wiping his hands on a dirty towel that was tucked into his waist. Albert Johnston beamed at Rye, meanwhile computing the price of every item of clothing that Rye was wearing.

"Well, I'll be damned," said Albert. He realized it was not a very inventive greeting, but felt it was one that indicated a certain respect. Already he had heard that Rye was spending money like water.

"It's good to be back," said Rye, looking around Albert's with approval. The place was empty, but he knew that before long there wouldn't be a vacant seat. Albert's Bar and Grill had been built in 1941, when space was cheap and materials expensive. There were two rooms. The front room was big and well-lighted, with two regulation-size pool tables in the center and a long, heavy wood bar along the back. The room which adjoined it was darker and smaller and served as the restaurant. Fifteen tables of varying sizes were crammed into the room, and a neon-lit jukebox flashed in the corner.

Nothing had changed very much since Rye last saw Albert's. Maybe the wood had been replaced by plastic and the tables were covered with oilcloth, but the fingerprint-smeared bar was the same, and there was still the big jar of pickled pigs' feet that he used to dip into when Albert wasn't looking. Of course, everything was a bit older, but hell, so was he. Even Albert hadn't changed that much. He was a little thinner, a little grayer, but he still had that tilted head and sidewise gait that made him look like the crabs he sold out back. It was reassuring to find everything the same. Rye could almost believe that the space between the boy who left and the man who returned wasn't lost forever.