Lost in the River of Grass (13 page)

 

…

We haven't gone a hundred yards when I smell pumpkin bread frying. The smell is so strong, my mouth waters and my stomach growls. “Do you smell that?”

“Smell what?”

“Never mind.” No sense making his stomach hurt too by mentioning what I'm only imagining.

For the first couple of hours, I feel light-headed. My stomach aches and my mouth feels stuffed with cotton. “Could I have just a tiny sip of the Gatorade?”

“Not yet.”

“What are we waiting for?”

He doesn't answer.

The walk itself is like it was yesterday, except that I'm hungrier and each step hurts my feet and my leg muscles are cramping. A moaning little aaahhhh comes out with each step I take.

I know from swimming that the strain of this much exercise is depleting the oxygen in my muscles. For a while, I try blowing through pursed lips, like I've seen women who are having babies do on TV, but that just gives me another thing to have to remember: puff air, look out for snakes, and watch where I'm stepping.

Before we left the hammock, Andy broke off two pretty sturdy limbs for us to use as walking sticks, but it only helps a little. A couple of times my legs stop moving. I just stand quietly and watch Andy walk on. I can't wrap my mind around taking the next step. If he goes, or if he stays, is meaningless to me.

But he does stay. “What's wrong?” he turns and asks.

“Nothing.” Then I put a foot forward and start moving again.

Things in our path slither away in startling bursts of speed. If what flees is a gator, it leaves a trail of tiny bubbles on the surface. Turtles dive beneath the mats of algae. Frogs swim to the bottom, then float back to the surface. Fish—mostly gar—zip away with a departing splash from their tails. Water snakes, once they sense the vibration of our approach, swim away along the surface and disappear into the saw grass.

By the height of the sun, I guess it's about noon when we come to a hammock straight out of the slide show of two nights ago. It has palmettos and sable palms and beautiful gumbo limbo trees, “tourist trees,” Mr. Vickers called them because the red trunks look sunburned and bits the bark peel off in pale, thin strips. It's a long island, and too dense just to barrel through. We stand side by side and look left, then right.

“How wide do you think it is?” I ask.

“I don't know, but I can't see daylight through it.”

“Me either.”

Andy looks at me. “We need to keep going east.”

“I know, but I don't think we should try to go through it.” I let Teapot out for a swim and to feed. “What if we try and it's really thick and wide? We could end up going in circles.”

Andy doesn't say anything.

I want no part of bushwhacking through the dense growth. Moccasins are one thing. At least we can see them coming in the water. Rattlesnakes are another. Unless we come across one that is feeling generous enough to sound a warning, it would be hidden right up until the moment it bit one of us.

“It will take a lot longer, too. We'll have to cut our way through with nothing but that butcher knife,” I add.

Andy just stands there like he's in a trance or something.

I touch his arm. “The trail is south, so by walking south aren't we going the same direction we'd be walking on the levee?”

“I guess,” he says.

“As soon as we get around the south end we can turn east again.” There's something in Andy's expression that worries me. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing. I just have a massive headache.”

“You're hungry. Where's your stockpile of Spam?”

“I ate it this morning.”

“Well, drink some Gatorade.”

Andy's eyes don't meet mine.

A shock runs through me. “Did you drink it all?”

“I'm sorry.”

13

“How could you?” My voice comes out raw and croaky. Now that there is nothing to drink, I feel my throat close with incredible thirst.

“I'm bigger than you are.”

“That's bull!” I shout, even though I do remember the extra gulp I took yesterday. I didn't drink it all.

“I'm sorry. I only meant to take a sip, but when I did I couldn't stop.”

“You said when we got to a tree island you'd dig a scratch well. Here we are.”

Andy looks at his feet. “I'm not really sure what it is. My dad once told me it was a way to get clean water, but I've never needed any.”

“Well, we need it now, don't we?” I can't cover how mad I am. If I'd been in charge of the diluted Gatorade, I'm pretty damn sure I wouldn't have drunk it all. I'm scared and hungry, thirsty, and in pain, too, but the worse I feel, the more determined I am not to sink to some depraved level where my needs take priority over Andy's. I trusted him to feel the same.

Andy stands staring at the tree island in a kind of stupor. “I guess you just dig a hole in the ground and let it fill with water,” he finally says.

“The only dry ground around here is in that hammock, so let's try it.” I pat my thigh for Teapot, put her in the backpack, and start for the trees.

Like the hammock we came from, this one too is protected by dense saw grass, then a line of willows. Andy goes first, with his hands up to protect his face. I follow, but when we get ashore the plants are growing so densely there's no bare ground. We wade back out and parallel the shore for a dozen or so yards until we see a real trail to the island.

I start up it, but Andy stops.

“What?”

“Want to guess what made this?”

It's wide, and all the long grasses have been flattened just like the trail to the gator's nest. “Oh.” I come back and stand beside him. “Another mother gator?”

Andy shrugs, but slips the butcher knife out of his belt and starts up, splashing noisily. Teapot's head pokes out of the backpack and rotates like a periscope. In spite of myself, I giggle. Andy—great white hunter and his faithful duck scout.

“Teapot's got your back,” I tell him.

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

The trail is about twenty yards long and curves to the left before it opens up flat and wide like a spatula. It's not until we make the turn that we see the gator lying on the bank in the sun. Its mouth is closed and its eyes are on us. It's small compared to the one at the cabin, but still seven or eight feet long.

“Let's go,” I whisper, and began to back away.

Andy doesn't move. “Go right,” he says after a moment, jerking his head toward the edge of the island farthest from the gator.

“I don't think this is a good idea,” I say. “What if it charges us like that mother did after the hogs? Mr. Vickers said they can run thirty-five miles an hour.”

“They can, but only for a short distance.”

“Exactly how far is a short distance?”

Andy shrugs, then, still facing the gator, catches my hand and steps sideways, pulling me with him.

Walking across the flattened grasses was pretty easy, but to get to dry ground we have to wade through soupy black muck. Even wearing Andy's socks I have to curl my toes to keep my boots on. Had the socks been clean and dry, they probably would have reached my knees. Instead, they form bulky, muddy clumps around my ankles. After a yard or two I drop Andy's hand, lean and pull a foot free, take a step, reach and pull the other one free to move a single pace. I keep this up until we reach the shore, where I drop to my knees, crumple to the ground, and roll on my back. My breathing comes in short gasps.

“There must have been a camp here once.” Andy sinks to his knees beside me.

“Why do you think that?” My breathing slows.

“This is St. Augustine grass—like for a lawn,” he says. “Someone had to have brought it here.”

I raise my head to look at the gator, estimating the distance between us to be only about ten yards. It has closed its eyes, but there is something else moving through the grasses near the trail.

I sit up and shade my eyes against the sunlight. Whatever it is slides slowly along beneath the flattened grasses, creating a hump like a mole's trail. “There's another . . . Andy!” I grab his arm. My cry startles the gator, but it's too late. Like a flash of lightning, a giant snake strikes the side of the gator's face.

“Holy Christ.” Andy jumps up and jerks me to my feet.

I bite my fist to keep from screaming. Blood whooshes in my ears. Minutes ago, Andy and I walked right past that snake.

The gator tries to pull free by whipping its tail from side to side. The snake is massive, as long as twenty feet, and must weigh close to two hundred pounds. It has brown patches outlined in yellow, which make it look like an ugly, rolled-up quilt.

Each time the gator moves the snake arches its neck, trying to roll it over on its back. They thrash for a few minutes, then lie still.

I'm shaking so hard Andy puts his arms around me to hold me in place. “What kind of snake is that?”

“A Burmese python. I've heard they're out here, but I've never seen one.” His voice trembles, too.

“How . . . how did they get here from Burma?” I stutter.

“People buy little twenty-inch babies as pets. When they grow big enough to start eating members of the family, they get dumped out here.”

“You mean there are more of them? How many more?”

“Who knows. Dozens. Hundreds. It's anybody's guess.”

“Good God, Andy. That could be one of us.”

The python and the alligator are locked together, neither moving. Mr. Vickers talked about how easy it is to hold the jaws of an alligator closed. “With one hand,” he'd said. “They have strong muscles to snap shut on prey, but weak muscles to open their mouths.” The snake got the gator mid-jaw so it couldn't bite back.

My legs tremble. I can't hold them still, and I can't take my eyes off the pair of reptiles. The snake is trying to work the tip of its tail under the alligator's stomach. A ten or more foot section of the snake lies in a loop across the grass for balance against the gator's attempts to pull free. “Shouldn't we get out of here while we can?”

“It could take 'em hours to end this,” Andy says. “We need water.” He gets on his hands and knees and begins to dig.

I glance down at him as he claws the ground. “You kept the bottle, didn't you?”

“Of course.”

I squat down, unzip the top of the backpack to free Teapot, then take out the empty plastic bottle and put it beside Andy.

His fingers blacken. “I'm really sorry, Sarah,” he says without looking at me. “I just lost it this morning. I was so hungry and thirsty I couldn't think straight.”

“Let it go, okay? It doesn't matter anymore.”

It's nearly impossible to take my eyes off the life-anddeath struggle going on just yards away, but when I glance to check Andy's progress, I realize drinking all the Gatorade does matter. Death for that alligator, assuming the snake wins, will have come without warning. Andy and I are in a life-or-death situation of our own, but up 'til now I've blindly put all my trust in him. He groans with the effort he's putting into digging, and I understand if this doesn't work, we'll have to drink the swamp water. If it makes us so sick we can't go on, or only I get sick, but something happens and Andy doesn't make the levee, we're goners. The Gatorade matters because it was never fair to expect him to carry responsibility for himself and for me.

He straightens and pushes his hair off his forehead, smearing it with mud. Sweat stains the back of his T-shirt like it did my dad's when we were side by side on our knees digging up turtle nests. Pain spreads through my chest at the thought there's a real chance I'll never see either of my parents again. A picture of them in the bleachers watching my first swimming practice comes to mind. They sit close together, holding hands, but apart from the few other parents who are there. I was embarrassed because they were beaming at me like a pair of Cheshire cats. All I could think of was how I'd never wanted to go to Glades Academy in the first place. I understood why it was so important to them that I got in, but my friends and my brother were at Tucker. I look at the empty Gatorade container, then at the two reptiles. All Mom and Dad want is for me to have a better life than theirs. Whether I succeed or fail at that is up to me. I put my hand on Andy's shoulder. “Move over.”

The soil feels moist and lumpy, like cookie dough. I dig harder as water seeps into the cavity. I glance at the snake and the gator, then sit back on my haunches to watch as muddy water oozes into the hole.

“The water's filthy,” Andy says.

“We need something to dig deeper with.” I look around.

“Why? What good will it do? We can't drink that.”

“Find something to dig with. A stick or something.”

Andy studies the woods, and I see a light go on in his mind. He roots in my pack for the knife and opens blades until he finds the saw. He crosses the narrow clearing to a palmetto and pulls off one of the fronds. He uses the saw to cut the leaf-head off. When he comes back, he's shaped the end that had been attached to the trunk of the palmetto into a pretty serviceable shovel.

“How's this?”

I straighten and rotate my aching shoulders. “Perfect.”

“I've got a little present for you.” He brings the leaf-head from behind his back. He's cut and shaped a handle, then trimmed the fan-shaped leaf down until it is just the right size. “Maybe this will help with the mosquitoes.” He hands the fan to me.

“Thanks.”

“I really am sorry.”

I pat his dirty, sweaty arm. “It's okay, really. I never much liked Gatorade anyway, and it tasted worse diluted.”

While he digs, I fan us, scattering the mosquitoes. The python and the gator are motionless, just their sides heave. I lie back on the grass and stare up through the branches of a gumbo limbo tree. A breeze moves the tops, but where we are, the vegetation is too thick to feel any wind. The sunlight flickers across Andy's back.