Alligator Park (10 page)

I was bursting to tell them
the real story, about how Damon followed me into the ladies room, and how he had
tried to rape me. I wanted them to know in no uncertain terms what a menace he
is to society and that he should be locked up. But Will was right. The last
thing we need right now is to be the subject of a police interrogation which
could lead to a deposition and result in an overnight stay. We would be once
again in Damon’s back yard, and he would have the home turf advantage, and that
made me very nervous. If he tracked us to a local hotel, who knows what sinister
games he would play while we were helplessly asleep. We would be isolated and alone
in an unknown town with no one to come to our defense. It was clear; we had to
get away from here as soon as possible.

“Well, I’m glad everything’s okay,”
I say. “He could have blacked out while driving and injured someone.”

“Yeah, exactly what we were
thinking. Sorry to inconvenience you. Have a nice evening.”

The trooper shuts off the
flashlight and strolls back to the police cruiser. I roll up my window in relief.
Will starts the engine but waits until the police cruiser darts into traffic
and disappears. Will turns on the headlights and eases onto the highway. Within
minutes we’re humming along at seventy. I wish I could forget all this and just
go to sleep, but something is really bugging me. I turn to Will.

“How did they know it was
us?” I ask.

“Well, maybe a security
camera gave them our license plate number. Or perhaps the police car was there
all the time, parked in the other lot, hidden in the dark, and we never noticed
it. Remember, we didn’t waste any time getting out of there. I certainly wasn’t
looking around. It’s also possible Damon told them. He knew what our car looked
like.”

“But why would Damon do that?
Wouldn’t he be glad to get rid of us, so we couldn’t tell the police?”

“Never underestimate your
enemy, that’s what my commander used to say. We’re dealing with a psycho here. Maybe
Damon had some convoluted plan for revenge. Draw us back into his web of
influence then trap us. Remember, he might be well connected, with powerful
people. They’re going to believe him, not us.”

“If he wanted us back, then why
not just say we forced him into the ladies room at gunpoint? Then we look like
the bad guys and he’s the hero.”

“Because a gun makes it a
felony,” he says. “That means detectives get involved... and the press. And if
he is the son of a judge or politician, the press can be bad news. They’ll dig and
dig and dig until they uncover something in his past he doesn’t want to reveal.
He’s not dumb. He’s got it all figured out.”

I was so happy to have Will
with me. As a homeless person, Will had developed a keen sense of survival,
learning from his experiences on the streets. He knew what to do and which
places to avoid and it was paying off right now. I wish there was something I
could do to repay him, but knowing Will, he wouldn’t take it anyway.

As the miles fly by, I settle
back, close my eyes, and try to get some sleep. But my body is saturated with
adrenalin and I begin thinking about what lies ahead. In three days, I would
have to convince Dr. Jessica Parker to hire me for a non-paying intern position
at Florida University. If working for low pay sucks, working for free sucks
even more, even if it is in the exciting field of microbiology. But I had no
choice. I needed access to a world-class laboratory to complete my research and
provide the evidence Dean Haas said I lacked. Without funding there was no
other way. And who would fund me after being black-listed both by an ivy-league
university and a multi-national corporation?

My plan was to operate under
the radar, secretly gathering samples, making measurements, forming a hypothesis,
testing the hypothesis, proposing a theory, confirming the theory through
experiments and observation, and then, with all the evidence in place, publishing
a scientific paper. Then my paper would be subjected to peer review, as is the
normal practice. At this point, unless someone can find compelling evidence to
counter my claims, my conclusions would stand as presented. My research would
be recognized among my peers as scientific fact, and no one could do anything
to discredit it. More importantly, my paper would officially become part of the
body of scientific knowledge that other researchers could draw upon and cite in
their references. For a scientist, this is the highest level of accomplishment.
And then, with all that behind me, I could file an appeal to have my
dissertation reconsidered. With the entire scientific community in agreement
with my conclusions, the university would have no choice but to take my
application seriously. It would be a huge undertaking, but I had the necessary training
and with the backing of Dr. Parker, someone who shares my sentiments and
concerns about the environment, I felt confident I could pull it off.

But then there
was the money issue. I had managed to save a little over the years, enough to
pay a couple months’ rent and put up a security deposit. But it wouldn’t last a
whole year. Fortunately, I have never been inclined to charge anything I
couldn’t pay off immediately so my finances are in good shape. Running a
balance on my credit card always made me feel like a slave to the bank so it
wasn’t going to be an option this time either. The solution was clear; I needed
to find a reliable source of income.

My extensive training in math
and science allowed for the possibility of tutoring. It paid pretty well, when
I could find work, but it wasn’t steady income. It came in spurts with little
to no work the rest of the time. Students tended to operate in denial, failing
to acknowledge they needed help until a couple weeks before finals. Then you
would be bombarded with more requests than you could handle. Nonetheless,
tutoring was definitely on the table.

My fallback would be a
restaurant job, a waitress or cook. It wasn’t a matter of doing the work, it
was finding the time. My schedule was filling up fast. If everything went
according to plan, I would be working at the university during the day, doing a
restaurant job in the evening, tutoring in the library whenever needed, and documenting
my own research into the early hours of the morning. I was getting a headache
just thinking about it.

I open my eyes, focus on the myriad
billboards as they fly by. Hotel billboards, restaurant billboards, truck-stop
billboards. There are billboards for gift shops, billboards for firecrackers,
billboards for museums, billboards for radio stations, billboards for jeans,
billboards for perfume, billboards for wine-tasting, billboards for historic
districts, and billboards for places I’d be embarrassed to be seen in.

I look over at Will. He is unmoving,
staring out the windshield as if hypnotized by the road.

“How’s it going?” I ask.

“We need gas.”

“Let’s pull off at the next
exit.”

Will slows the Cruiser, eases
it down the exit ramp, and then pulls into a gas station. He waits by the gas
pump while I jog over to pay the attendant.

As he fills the Cruiser, I slip
into the driver’s seat, re-adjust it to fit my frame. Will replaces the gas cap
and then approaches the driver’s door; I roll down the window.

“I’ll take over,” I say.

“Fine,” he says, and then saunters
over to the passenger side and gets in. I start the engine, place the shifter
into DRIVE, and within minutes we’re back on the interstate.

I gaze at Will and he’s fast
asleep. He deserves the rest; he’s been driving for over eight hours, more than
his fair share. I settle back behind a U.S. Mail truck doing seventy and set
the cruise control. I turn on the radio and find a local station playing some upbeat
Latin music. It takes my mind off my problems; I’ve had enough thinking for tonight.
I’ll deal with that tomorrow.

At 9:00 PM we cross into South Carolina. The
interstate has become an endless convoy of trucks and the incessant congestion is
wearing me down. Sunday night is always a busy time for trucking because the
stores want them there in the early hours of the morning so they have time to
unpack the goods and put them on display before opening for business on Monday.
It’s not unusual for these drivers to travel over a thousand miles in one
sitting, without any rest. Some are behind schedule and trying to make up time.
Finding myself trapped on all sides by these eighteen wheel behemoths traveling
in excess of seventy miles per hour gives me visions of those horrendous
accidents at the Daytona 500 where cars smash into tiny fragments and fly all
over the track. But what can I do about it except give them all the space they
need and try to stay out of their way?

As the night progresses, my
exhaustion is taking its toll and it’s getting harder and harder to maneuver
around these big rigs. The thought of colliding with one of them through a
mistake in judgment plays on my mind and terrifies me.

 “I can’t go on,” I say. “We
need to stop.”

“What about dinner?” he asks.

“I’m not really hungry. But
I’ll stop if you want me to.”

“No, don’t bother. I’ve been filling
up on snacks.”

Actually both of us had been
snacking all afternoon. The Cruiser was well stocked with food, and with little
else to do, snacking was too great a temptation. It was pointless to resist the
assortment of apples, bananas, sodas, yogurt cups, and cake, all stored in a
cooler filled with ice. And next to the cooler were bags of potato chips,
pretzels, and breakfast fruit bars, almost anything one could want. Carrying
our own food proved to be a wise choice; it saved us a lot of money and shaved
hours off the trip. Even a brief stop at a fast food restaurant could delay us
thirty to forty-five minutes. And time was not something we had an abundance
of.

“Why don’t we stop for the
night,” I say.

“Fine with me. If we get on
the road by eight tomorrow, we can still be there before dinnertime.”

“Where’s the nearest hotel?”
I ask.

Will searches through one of
those hotel coupon books they give out freely at the rest stops. These booklets
offer the absolute lowest price you can get anywhere, but the hotels don’t
always have rooms at that price. It depends on the time of year and, of course,
the time of day. The hotels only offer discounts on a limited number of rooms,
so if you delay, you lose. But this was a Sunday night, not exactly a hotels
busiest time, so I wasn’t too worried about it.

“There’s a decent place in
Florence,” he says. “Only forty-nine bucks.”

“What exit?”

“Next one.”

I guide the Cruiser off the
interstate and on to a local highway. I’m dazzled by a plethora of signs, red
signs, green signs, blue signs, yellow signs, illuminating the night air like a
fairground. There are signs for restaurants, signs for hotels, signs for gas
stations, signs for convenience stores, one after another, signs-signs-signs,
all vying for my business. And then, there it is; the sign for the hotel. I
pull into the lot and park the car near the office. Will hands me the coupon
book.

“Good luck,” he says.

I exit the Cruiser and walk
towards the dimly lit hotel office. A red neon sign in the window flashes,
“VACANCY... VACANCY... VACANCY.” I enter the office, push a bell to signal the
clerk, and wait. On the back wall I notice a sign, “Rajesh Patel, Proprietor”. A
man, about fortyish, with a little grey mixed in to his jet black hair and an
unmistakable Indian accent enters the office.

“You want a room?” he asks,
in a stern voice.

“Do you accept coupons?”

I point to a coupon in the discount
book. He glances at it then shuffles over to the window. He places his hand up
against the glass shielding his eyes from the glare then peers outside. Will is
completely oblivious standing by the Cruiser holding a soda.

“Just you and your husband?”
he asks.

“Yes,” I say, not wanting to go
into a lengthy explanation of why Will’s not my husband.

“You’re an exterminator?”

For a moment I’m taken aback
by the question.

“Oh, you mean the sign on the
Cruiser. No, actually we’re not exterminators. The vehicle came that way.”

He stares at me with a look
of bewilderment.

“The dealer wanted a thousand
to repaint it.”

He continues to stare.

“We decided it wasn’t worth
it.”

Still no expression from him.

“We took it as-is.”

“I see,” he says, then
wanders back behind the counter.

“Any dogs or cats?”

“No.”

The man reaches under the
counter, places a pair of scissors next to me, and then points to the coupon. I
cut it out and place it in front of him. He picks up the coupon and the
scissors and places them under the counter.

“Credit card and driver’s license
please.”

I hand him what he asks then
watch him type the information into the computer. A few minutes later he hands
me a key.

“Room 114.”

“Thanks,” I say, and then, grip
the key between my thumb and forefinger. But he doesn’t let go!

“If you like room, you give
me good review on Trip-Advisor, okay?”

“Sure, of course,” I say, with
trepidation.

He smiles, and then releases
the key. Relieved, I gather my things and approach the door.

“Complimentary breakfast from
six to nine,” he says.

I turn, nod, and then exit
the office. Will is already in the passenger seat so I get back in the Cruiser
and drive over to room 114. Fortunately there’s a parking spot right in front. Will
grabs his backpack and I get my overnight bag, specially packed for stops like
this. I open the door and go inside. Will follows me in. We detect a slight
musty odor but everything is clean and that’s the most important thing.

“Not bad,” he says, looking
around.

The furniture is old and the
carpet a bit worn, but no worse than the furniture in my apartment. I pull back
the sheets on the king-size bed looking for bugs, but everything is as it
should be.

“It’ll be fine for one
night,” I say.

I open my overnight bag and empty
the contents into the top drawer of the dresser.

“Do you need to use the
bathroom?” I ask.

“No.”

I grab a toothbrush and a
change of clothes.

“I won’t be long. Then it’s
all yours.”

“Take your time.”

I lock myself in the bathroom
and treat myself to a hot shower. Afterwards, I dry my hair and put on a
sweatshirt and sweatpants. I feel refreshed, a new woman. I gather my things,
unlock the door, and then, exit. Will is lying on the floor on his sleeping bag,
propped up on one elbow, reading his little black book.

“What are you doing?” I ask.

“Reading my Bible.”

“No, I mean, why are you on
the floor?”

“What’s wrong with the floor?”

“I’m totally okay with you
sharing the bed,” I say, “as long as you stay on your side.”

“No, I’m fine right here.”

“There’s tons of room on the
bed.”

“Well, actually I prefer the
floor.”

I gaze at Will, perplexed by
his answer.

“It’s like this,” he says, “I’ve
hardly ever slept in a proper bed... so I’m not missing anything.”

Will notices his brief attempt
at explanation has done little to ease my confusion. He continues:

“I don’t remember much before
I was five or six. But after that we moved around a lot. And when you have to
depend on other folks for a place to stay, you take whatever they offer. If I
got lucky, I got to sleep on the couch. But most of the time it was on the
floor.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say.

“Don’t be. After I joined the
military and we were out in the field, which was most of the time, the other
guys would complain about sleeping on the ground. But I was okay with it
because it was no different than what I had done my whole life.”

It’s funny how Will could
always turn a negative into a positive. I think about my own life, and how I
had to struggle after my parents died. My grandparents did everything possible
to give me a normal upbringing, but they didn’t have a lot either. I think
about the times my friends would come over and show off their new clothes and
all I had were clothes picked up from the local thrift store. There was never
enough money for new clothes. Sometimes, late at night, I would lay in bed
feeling sorry for myself, crying about the loss of my parents and how life had
cheated me. I didn’t think anyone could be worse off than me.

It wasn’t until years later
when I turned thirteen and transferred to a new school that my perception began
to change. On my daily walk to school, I would have to pass by the projects,
dilapidated homes paid for by the government. Out in front, in the poorly kept
grass, would be young unsupervised children playing with broken toys or
whatever else they could retrieve from the trash. These kids had dirty unkempt
hair, wore tattered clothes, and from their emaciated looks, were perhaps even
hungry. They would stop playing for a moment and gaze at me as I passed by. Over
time it began to sink in that they were envying me, wishing for what little I
had. Even though they were only five or six, they were old enough to perceive a
difference between us. They could not conceive that I was far less affluent
than their perceptions allowed. From their perspective I came from a nice
neighborhood, had clean clothes to wear, and was not lacking in anything. And
that’s all that mattered to them. It taught me that Einstein was right; in life
and nature, everything is relative.

Will puts his book away then slides
into his makeshift bed turning onto his side. I turn off the light, get into
bed, and then pull up the covers. I lay there restlessly, staring at the
darkened ceiling. Occasionally, lights from a passing car flash across the room
through the semi-open blinds. I try to sleep, but my mind keeps reliving the
day’s bizarre events.

“Hey Will, you were going to
tell me how you learned to fight like that,” I say.

“Fight like what?”

“Like the way you decked that
guy today.”

“Basic training.”

“They teach martial arts in
basic training?” I ask.

“They do if you’re a SEAL.”

“You were a SEAL, a Navy SEAL?”

“Is there another type?”

“You never told me that.”

“Didn’t think it was
important,” he grunts.

“What made you want to be a SEAL?”
I ask.

“I’ll tell you tomorrow.”

“Tell me now. I can’t sleep.”

“You know, for someone who’s
been through all you have, I would think you’d be sleeping like a baby by now.”

“I can’t. I’m too pumped up
with adrenalin.”

“All right, it happened like
this. When I was sixteen, high school was not agreeing with me too well so I
decides to join the Navy. I was always a tall kid for my age so I figures I can
pass for older. We was living in Georgia so I takes the Greyhound to Savannah
and go right to the Navy recruiter. There was about ten other guys in there;
they looked to be about eighteen or nineteen. I was the youngest. So the guy at
the desk takes us all into the back room. Then there’s this guy in a white coat
with a... whatever it is, hanging around his neck.”

“Stethoscope?”

“Yeah, stethoscope. He tells
us to strip to our shorts which we all do. Then he listens to our heart and
tells us to cough and do stuff like that. Then all of a sudden the guy from the
desk tells me to drop to the floor and do thirty pushups which I do with ease
on account of me loading the fruit.”

“Loading the fruit?” I ask.

“Yeah. There was this farm, a
real big one, about two mile down the road from where I grew up, near a town
called Butler. It was mostly family farms ‘round there so there wasn’t a lot of
jobs to be had. But this farm shipped a lot of fruit to supermarkets up north
and they always needed help. I would jog down there each day—I was about ten at
the time—and they would pay us a dollar an hour to put peaches in these wooden
boxes and load them into trucks. They didn’t care who you were or how old you
were because they paid you every day and in cash. Fifty dollars a week buys a
lot of neat stuff when you’re ten.”

“Or drugs,” I say.

“I was never into that scene.
But some of the boys were. I never hung around with them. Anyway the desk guy now
tells me to do ten pushups with just one hand which I also do with ease. Lifting
those heavy boxes all day long put a bit a muscle on a fella so it was no
problem for me. Then the two guys at the recruiter walk over to the corner and
start talking in a low voice, so no one could hear them. The doctor guy comes
over to me and start poking at my neck and back and feeling this and that.”