Black Water (39 page)

Two hours later, Hub was still sloggin’ through the stormy swamp. The water was only up to his nuts, but the silty bottom was like walkin’ in wet cement. He alternated holding the satchel over his head, on his right shoulder, or snugged to his chest. He woulda given a thousand dollars for a ten-cent hacksaw blade. Suddenly, he stopped and cocked his ear. Was it just part the storm or, no…a motor! Comin’ his way. He quickly waded to a large cypress.

Slicing slowly but deliberately through the storm-agitated water was a dented aluminum skiff with two big black men, Bob McDonald, in his low sixties, and Phillipe LaRue, in his low fifties. Cowering under a yellow slicker, Phillipe was at the tiller while Bob sat in the bow, on the look-out for flotsam that might damage the hull. In the skiff’s belly lay the carcasses of half a dozen three- and four-foot gators.

Hub watched from around the tree when they passed not more than fifty yards from him. He assumed they were poachers and, therefore, wouldn’t wanna have any more to do with him than he did with them. It woulda been difficult for them to see him with the storm, but with their bein’ hunkered down under their slickers, it was almost impossible.

When the skiff motored out o’ sight, Hub started off in the same direction. He was unfamiliar with this part o’ the swamps and figured the boat’s inhabitants might be headed for some semblance of civilization. If not, he’d still find his way, eventually.

No more than thirty minutes later, a grin spread across his face as he neared the edge o’ the swamp where the trees started to thin out. He looked at the raging, boiling, bruise-hued clouds and shook his fist. “You lose, you fuckin’ bitch. You’re good at sneakin’ up on abody with snakes ‘n hogs, but how’d ya do agoin’ toe t’toe with me! Come on, you ol’ whore! You ain’t gonna give up on me now, are ya? I wish ya had ‘nother idyit son I’cd throttle th’life out of!”

Lightning flashed and thunder crashed as if in reply. He looked all around the sky, searching for her ugly face. “’At th’best ya got? Noise? Quit hidin’! Come on, just once, show yerself!”

Instantly, the screeching wail ceased. Right along with his smartassey attitude. The silence was deafening. The black clouds still boiled, which should make some kind o’ sound.

But it didn’t.

The wind blew, which shoulda made some kind o’ sound.

But it didn’t.

The small storm-tossed waves lapped at him, which shoulda made some kind a sound.

But they didn’t.

The branches in the trees rocked with the wind, which shoulda made some kind o’ sound.

But they didn’t.

It was like somebody’d turned a glass bowl over him, upside down, and inside, the lack of sound was all there was. Then…he did hear somethin’. A grumblin’, rumblin’ that he felt more than heard. Then, in his head…

“I’m here.”

Slowly, he turned to find he was face to face with the biggest alligator he’d ever seen. In truth, he didn’t know gators got that big. It was as if it’d materialized out o’ thin air. Thin water. All that was stickin’ out o’ the water was a little o’ the snout, the eyes, and some o’ the dinosaur-like knobblies. It looked like a God Damn log with eyes. Hub coulda parked his ass between that snout and the eyes and not touched either one. He could only imagine how much more there was under the water. It didn’t move, but just looked at him. It coulda been a log for all the life it displayed. Except for the eye. Hub’s blood ran cold as he recognized the discoloration that ran from the middle of its upper jaw, up through the blue-blind left eye to the middle of its monstrous skull. The other eye was jet black and depthless.

She hadn’t snuck up on him at the last second with a herd of swine. She hadn’t snuck up on him with a pool of wriggly cottonmouths.

Like he’d challenged, she was gonna go toe t’toe. The sound of the raging storm rolled back at full volume, and the alligator’s glassy black eye filmed over. Then the monstrous body tightened spring-tight, and the dinosaur flicked its enormous tail, one time, hard, catapulting itself clean out o’ the water. Its cavernous mouth flew open, it twisted to the right, grabbed Hub around the middle, and snapped shut. As with Raeleen’s throat, somethin’ popped. A bunch o’ somethin’s.

The gator squished all the air out of Hub’s lungs. It also squished up his gullet what little was still in his stomach from the meager meal consumed the night before. What’d already been digested was squished out the other end. It felt like his eyes were gonna pop out of his head. Then the beast went into its death roll, and Hub’s body and the satchel flailed, slappin’ in the water with each pass. The beast spun like a rubber band on a kid’s balsawood windup airplane, but each time it rolled Hub out o’ the water, it was like time had stopped and he had all the time in the world to see the bright red blood flingin’ through the air like somebody flickin’ thinner from a paint brush. Then he was back under the water. He didn’t have time to pick and choose when he sucked in badly needed air, and half the time it was green, brackish water.

Finally, he was jerked to the surface one last time, and tried to pull air into lungs that were squeezed almost flat. The way the thing had him, he was layin’ on his back. He and the monster managed one last look. Hub watched its eye roll back and the eyelid close, then it slowly slid under the water, while Hub, blood slobberin’ from his mouth, valiantly but worthlessly pounded on the gator’s rocky face, fightin’ to the last. Bloody bubbles rose to the surface and burst, flickin’ the prettiest little flumes of pinkish water.

…you all die.

The wind subsided, thunder and screeches faded into the distance. Buried deep in the screeches was somethin’ that sounded like a cackly laugh.

Finally, Lootie Komes could go to Hell in peace.

The dented, scuffed aluminum tub with the tiny outboard motor was pulled up high on the bank and tied off with a clothesline rope to a dead tree stump. A scruffy, slap-em-up, lean-to campsite’d been hurriedly constructed, and Bob and Phillipe had their skinny black butts planted on two upturned galvanized buckets, their coat collars turned up, warming their arthritic hands with their coffee cups. A cast-iron skillet lay on a grate in the middle o’ the fire with half a dozen thick slices o’ fatty bacon sizzlin’ and spittin’ grease. Bacon, beans, and coffee—the breakfast of poachers the world over. During working hours, the buckets served as fish-gut containers. Smelly fish guts was catnip to gators. Gatornip.

It was a beautiful morning…a bright blue sky, and not a sign of clouds. A damn sight better than the day before. Normally, they woulda felt a storm coming and prepared for it, but that son of a bitch yesterday had come up so quick it caught ’em unawares and nearly blew the camp away.

Two huge, near-feral, slat-sided mongrels lay off to the side, chained up, their slobbery jowls resting on criss-crossed front paws, concentrating on the skillet. The smell of all that bacon fryin’ would’ve aroused most dogs, but those two knew that whimperin’ and carryin’ on wouldn’t do any good. The best they could look for’ard to’d be gator or fish innards.

The reason there hadn’t been much put into the campsite was ‘cause they had no intention o’ stayin’ in one place for more than a day or two. A permanent, traceable residence was an unrealistic luxury in the life of gator poachers. In fact, they were waitin’ for another pair, Coozie and Gerard, so they could break camp and move on. They shoulda been there the day b’fore. Probly got caught in the storm. They hoped Coozie and Gerard’s luck was better than theirs. There were seven skins, stretched tight on boards at the edge o’ the camp, dryin’ in the sun. It was a pitiful lot. They’d pulled in almost enough to pay for the gasoline and supplies it took to survive that week. Profit wouldn’t make an appearance.

Bob set his cup down, leaned in, and helt his tin plate next to the skillet with his left hand, grease spitting on it, and with the knife in his right, poked two bacon strips, pulled ‘em on to the plate, and sat back to wait for ‘em to cool. The knife’s handle was longer than the blade. It was old and had been honed so many times, it was worn down to a nub, but it was one sharp son of a bitch. No tellin’ how many times the rough leather wrapped around the handle had been replaced.

He never used it that he wasn’t reminded of where it’d come from. It was the same blade the ol’ witch, Lootie Komes, had jammed into her chest bones the day Hub Lusaw was sentenced to forty years in Angola Penitentiary for killin’ her sons, George and Matthew. God, what a day that’d been. He and Phillipe had been paid two bucks apiece to pick up her body, put it in back of the cop’s truck, and unload it at the morgue. It’d creeped him out how little she’d weighed—nothin’ but skin and bone. How somethin’ so evil could weigh so little, still stumped him. That day, on the way to takin’ her body to the morgue, he’d looked around to make sure nobody was lookin’, reached over, and pulled the blade from ‘tween her ribs. When they got to the morgue, he and Phillipe lifted her out and lugged her inside. All the cops wanted to do then was get away, so they never looked at the body, and the people at the morgue never asked anything about where the tool was she’d used to kill herself. They probably figured the cops had it.

At the time, he thought it might be good luck. He’d asked hisself no tellin’ how many times since then, though, how in the world the knife that had put the finishing touches on one o’ the nastiest witches he’d ever heard of could bring anybody good luck, but when he was in the back o’ the truck, something told him to pull it out. Even when he was doin’ it, it was like he was watchin’ from a distance. In the three decades since, it’d poked many a slice o’ bacon and gutted many a gator belly, but that was about as far as good luck’d gone. It hadn’t brought him riches, that was for sure.

He stuck the blade in the end of a bacon slice, helt it up and let the fatty end drop in his mouth. It burned his tongue and he sucked in air to cool it off.

“Hot?” Phillipe chuckled.

Suddenly, the dogs jumped up, hackle-backed, growlin’ real low and lookin’ into the swamp. Bob and Phillipe looked in the same direction. Then they heard the motor. Movin’ as quickly as only skittery gator poachers could, they set their cups and plates on the buckets, snatched up their rifles—.22 single shots that wouldn’t do much more than make a little noise—and scanned the swamp ‘til they saw the familiar pair approaching in another skiff. They waved and re-stowed their implements of minor destruction.

Coozie LeGrange, thirtyish, and Gerard Boot, in his early twenties, waved back. Laid out in the bottom o’ their boat was the same pitiful take Bob and Phillipe’d garnered the day before—half a dozen three-to-five-footers. Gerard tossed a rope tied to the front o’ the boat to Phillipe, standin’ on the bank. He caught it, and after he and Bob pulled it as far up the bank as possible, Gerard and Coozie jumped out and helped beach it higher.

“What took ya s’long?” Phillipe asked. “We ‘spected ya las’ night.”

“Had t’wait out th’stoam,” Gerard replied.

Bob looked over their catch and shook his head. “Watah dogs.”

Gerard looked at the catch stretched out on the boards. “You oughta know.”

Gerard and Coozie waded back into the water. “Gimme a hand ovah heah,” Coozie said. He reached in the water for a rope trailin’ from the back o’ their skiff.

“Whatchu got dere?” Phillipe asked.

Gerard said nothin’ as he untied the rope, slung it over his shoulder like he was about to haul a barge upriver, and started for the bank, but there was somethin’ in the little smirk. Bob and Phillipe met him and took aholt o’ the rope.

Phillipe felt the weight when they started haulin’ it in. “Watchu got tied up ‘ere?”

Slowly, the carcass of an eighteen-footer surfaced. Bob’s and Phillipe’s eyes popped open.

“Oh, my God,” Bob said, “where you get a subm’rine?”

“Yestadee, we seen ‘im on the bank, gettin’ a tan, layin’ in a sun,” Coozie said, beaming. “He slud in a watah ‘n it took us all day t’fine ‘im agin. When we do, he dead.” He shrugged. “Dunno why. We look ‘im ovah but din see nothin’ ‘at kill ‘im. But, ‘at’s fine wi’me, as big’s he is, I wudn wanna hafa fight ‘im nohow.”

Gerard wrapped the rope in his hand. “Les get ‘im up b’foe a big one come ‘long ‘n wanna eat ‘im.”

They all pulled what they could to shore, but quite a bit still remained in the water. Phillipe looked it over. “I ain’t nevah seed a beast ‘at big my ho’life.”

“You gotta go waaayyy out t’get ’em like dis,” Coozie said, “but dis ol’ man only ‘bout foah mile back.” He affectionately ran his hand over the carcass. “Jus look a’dat! ‘Cept f’da scahs on ‘is head, he damn neah pufec. Nobody gonna wanta head nohow.”

They all admired the hide, then Gerard rubbed his hands in anticipation of the work ahead. “Well, les get ‘is clothes off!”

They put their backs into it and with the use of leg, back, and ropes, rolled it over, belly up.

“Mm mm mm,” Phillipe said, tappin his boot toe on the fat tail, “some good eatin’ ‘ere.”

“Gimme yer knife,” Gerard told Bob.

Bob walked to the fire, picked up the short-bladed knife, brought it back, and handed it to Gerard. Gerard got down on his knees, stuck the blade in the anus, and started sawin’ up. “Dis gonna make a lot o’ hanbags,” he laughed.

“How ol’ you tink he is?” Phillipe asked.

“Ohhhhhh, my,” Gerard said, givin a learned observation, “I dunno, t’irty, mebbe more. Watchu tink, Cooz?”

“Yeah, mebbe eben fohty.”

Phillipe, Bob and Coozie were still lookin’ the beast over when Gerard exclaimed, “Wat d’….” He used the point of the knife to lift one side o’ the incision, then jerked his arms up like he’d been shocked. “Oh, Lawd….” He sat there lookin’ at the incision.

“Wat?” Coozie asked, big eyed.

Gerard used the blade to lift the flap again. He tilted his face to look underneath. “Wat d’Hell...”

He lifted the flap enough that he could stick the fingertips of his other hand just inside the incision and pull out a bundle of blood-stained hundred-dollar bills, still bound in a wrapper. The others eyes popped open in conjunction with their mouths. Again, using the blade to open the incision, he leaned to the side and peeked inside the bloody cavity. He slipped his hand in again, and, one at a time, pulled out three more bundles, and it was Coozie’s turn to voice the required and appropriate, “Wat d’Hell….”