Alligator (33 page)

Lee felt embarrassed for Rye. He knew how much that apology cost him. He made no sign of acknowledgment and continued talking. "Another thing, we can't try for the gator too late in the day. He can see better in the dark than we can."

Rye couldn't let Lee continue. It would be his responsibility if anything happened.

"Look," he said, "this ain't your fight. It's mine. You can turn back now."

Lee looked at Rye, surprised that he didn't know. "Of course I can turn back now. I always could have."

It wasn't until a little while later, as Lee walked the hummock looking for uncharred wood with which to make a bed, that he thought about what he'd said to Rye.

He could have turned back at any point since he left, though he hadn't realized it until recently. At the time, there had seemed to be something of a lack of options open to him, but, looking back, he could see that was just another of his unconscious decisions.

At first he had told himself he was staying to get back at Rye. That hadn't been the reason then, just as any softening toward Rye wasn't the reason for his staying now. He was staying because, for close to eight years, he'd never stayed anywhere. He'd slid from everything and everybody, until there was nothing to hold him to the earth any more, except killing the alligator. Poor dumb beast, Lee thought, he'd come to take on a meaning he couldn't possibly understand.

As Lee walked the charred hummock, he felt intensely alive. As a young boy, he'd been fascinated by adventure stories of men who were caught in the wilderness and survived. Even as an adult, he'd been tempted to go off with just a knife and some matches. Getting along out in the swamps, unaided, unarmed, was a challenge. What struck him as even more important than beating that challenge was his having accepted it. He felt good about himself.

Lee stopped walking and drew the damp swamp air deep into his lungs. One thing he didn't feel good about, however, was that the sun had almost completely disappeared and darkness was falling. Moving quickly, he gathered together the best wood he could find and covered it with sawgrass. Tomorrow they would do better. The hollow feeling in his stomach told him there were more important things to be done tonight.

Leaving Rye behind to make a fire, Lee lit a torch and walked to the shore in search of something to cook on it. All along the water's edge, hundreds of frogs' eyes glittered brightly like highway reflectors. Lee smiled to himself. There were places in Miami where you paid a fortune for what nature was providing them free.

Lee doused the torch and slipped behind a boulder. Within a minute, a fat frog leaped onto the rock, blissfully unaware of the danger that lurked just inches away. Lee quickly relit the torch and held it up. The frog froze, hypnotized by the warm, glowing light. Lee made a grab at it. For a second, he held the frog. There was a cold, slimy, wiggling feeling in the palm of his hand; he tried to tighten his grasp, but the frog practically squirted into the air, and landed in the water with a loud splash.

Lee shook his fist at the water. Then, dousing his torch, he slipped behind the rock to wait for another frog.

It took two hours for Lee to admit defeat, or at least a temporary setback, and head back. He was so exhausted that, hungry as he was, bed sounded even better than frogs' legs.

Rye was asleep when Lee got back to camp. He was snoring so loudly that Lee had been able to hear him from a good distance away. Up close, the noise was awesome. Lee was too tired to even care. Shoving Rye over with a poke in the ribs, he lowered his aching body down next to him.

At first, when the charred wood began to creak, Lee thought it was only settling under the added weight. It didn't take him long to realize he was wrong. There was a terribly crunching sound as suddenly the improvised bed crumped into a pile of ashes, taking Lee and Rye with it.

The upheaval hardly interrupted Rye. He might not have slept often, but he did a bang-up job of it when he did. Lee looked over at Rye, hogging the bed of ashes, snoring loudly, and resented him greatly.

Morning was a definite improvement. Lee was up early, and by nine o'clock there was a roast coon with crackling skin on the spit and tender palm shoots wrapped in dampened leaves steaming on the coals. Not far from camp, Lee found a buttonwood untouched by the fire from which he whittled two bed poles. To make things even better, just inches from the tree he found the alligator trail.

At eleven o'clock, when Lee and Rye broke camp and headed off into the thick sawgrass, Lee's mind was racing with plans to fashion a spear for fishing and palm-leaf hats to protect them from the sun. Only a few days ago, Lee would have laughed at himself for his need to prove that he could do what any deer or bear or grub did from the day it was born: survive in the woods. He knew there was a difference now.

By mid-afternoon, the landscape had changed. Before, while there had been few trees, there were the occasional buttonwood or cypress; now there was nothing. Only the sawgrass remained, sharp, brittle, stretching outward to the horizon like a vast and ancient ocean, a wilderness of sharpened swords growing six feet high in some places.

Cutting through the flats were hundreds of watery passageways that twisted and turned in on themselves, undulating to nowhere. Color was gone. The gray-brown sawgrass blended into the brown water, making everything look very old, very used up.

The sun beat down, unattenuated by shade or wind, reflecting off the water in shimmering waves of light. A thin haze of steam rose from the surface. It was a land that existed fifty million years ago.

Even worse than the barrenness was the deathly stillness. There was none of the usual calling of birds or croaking of frogs. Even the insects seemed to shun this country. The only sound was the rattling of the sawgrass and the occasional flapping of wings as a turkey buzzard circled lazily in the sky.

Rye and Lee stood at the edge of the barren flats, overpowered by the desolation. It was a land that offered nothing, neither shelter, food, nor beauty, and, in exchange, it threatened to take everything.

Lee saw the alligator tracks cutting through the flats, heading into the heart of the barrenness, and cursed to himself. He should have known the alligator would lead them there. He nodded to Rye, trying to keep the anxiety from his face; then the two men headed off into the grass.

In less than an hour, all sign of the jungle they had left had disappeared, and they were completely surrounded by grass. The barrenness was unnerving. It made them feel exposed, vulnerable, as if there was nothing left on earth except the two of them and the alligator.

Rye had become withdrawn. He plodded forward, his chin jutting out, his eyes straight ahead, trying to fight the gnawing fear with anger.

At six o'clock, when Rye and Lee stopped to set up camp, the sun was slanting toward the horizon, and the shadows it cast brought some relief. Rye bent to the water and drank from his cupped hand. The water was hot, almost as hot as the air. The green sludge of algae had made Rye avoid drinking all day. The water felt slippery in his mouth, and for a moment he thought he was going to vomit.

Anger had been burning deep in his gut all afternoon. He'd been able to keep it in check so far, but now, with the prospect of another day of plodding through damp, steaming marsh under the gaseous sun, it threatened to overflow. Rye realized his anger was fear, but he didn't want to think about it. Fear was a weakness. It was bad enough that he felt it; to admit it would be unforgivable.

Rye threw some water over his blistering skin and stood up to look for Lee. Though he was only a few feet away, Rye couldn't see him in the high sawgrass, and Lee's voice startled him.

"I couldn't find any wood," Lee said as he came up to Rye. "We'll have to burn grass."

"What difference does it make?" Rye asked peevishly. "We ain't got nothin' to cook anyway."

Lee tried to make light of it. "Yeah, well, I ain't givin' up so easy. There's a few animals around."

"Snakes."

"So we'll eat snake," answered Lee.

"You'll eat snake."

"And so will you. You don't get much choice. The menu out here is somewhat limited."

"Seems everything is," Rye said, trying not to vent his anger on Lee.

"I know." Lee sighed as he looked out at the flats stretching all around them.

"You worried?" Rye asked, though he knew the answer.

"Aren't you? He's heading right through the middle of this. By tomorrow, we'll be so far in, it won't make sense to do nothin' but push on."

"Maybe you made a mistake," said Rye. "Maybe he ain't headed this way at all."

"It's no mistake," answered Lee. "This is the way he went."

"It doesn't make sense. There's nothin' out here."

"Yeah, well, nothin' suits him better'n it does us. He can live out here longer than we can."

Rye flared, turning his anger on Lee for lack of anywhere else to put it. "You still got that crazy idea he's trying to wear us down?" he sneered.

"You still got that crazy idea he isn't?" snapped Lee, feeling an anger of his own churning in his belly, threatening to erupt.

Rye moved closer to the campfire and looked out at the moon-silvered stretches of sawgrass. It was well past mignight, but he hadn't even attempted to sleep yet. He knew it would be a lost cause. He shivered and drew his arms around himself in an attempt to keep out the chilly night air. The damn land, he thought, it couldn't even hold its own heat. He took off his boots and held them up to the fire. Beads of moisture sizzled on the cracked, mud-caked leather. The steam that rose from them smelled like decaying leaves. He didn't know why he was bothering to dry his boots. They'd get wet again the minute he put them back on.

He was hungry, hungrier than he had ever been before. There was nothing on the land except the dry, sharp sawgrass. They had looked for over two hours, but found only more grass.

Rye wished he could sleep. His body was limp and shaky from all the walking; his feet were so swollen that he felt like he was walking on pads, yet still he couldn't sleep. It made him angry. Everything was making him angry: the lack of food and sleep, the complete absence of anything living. Rye wanted to strike out at something, but there was nothing to hit, except the grass.

His mind was racing. He feared he was going to die without ever having a chance at getting the alligator. Perhaps they'd misunderstood all along; perhaps the alligator wasn't sucking them in after all; perhaps everything was happening purely by chance. The thought chilled him more than the damp night air. He wanted to believe that something, no matter how primitive, was in control. Otherwise, everything would be the same as the land, where there was no beauty or ugliness, love or hate, only the ultimate brutality of indifference.

Rye recoiled from the thought, but it crept back on him and ate into his soul.

The fiery sun surprised the men. Within minutes of its rising, it glowed so hot and glaring that the chill of the night before seemed very far away. Lee considered building a campfire, then decided against it, since the chance of finding anything to cook over it was remote. With childish petulance, he killed a couple of palmetto bugs that were scurrying through the mud near his feet. He nodded to Rye and, without waiting to make sure he'd been understood, headed back into the grass.

Lee hadn't spoken a word since yesterday, nor did he feel any desire to. He'd withdrawn deep into himself. The bitter need to pin the blame on someone, to scream out in outrage against the land, the desolation, and the terrible heat, made him fear words. He could sense that Rye felt it too.

Lee's skin was raw and bleeding from the sawgrass. As he started into the grass, he could feel yesterday's wounds being reopened by the sharp-edged blades. It occurred to him that they should stop and bathe themselves often. Bacteria grew quickly in the damp heat of the swamps; already he could feel the insistent pulling and gathering of pus. Lee knew they should stop soon to wash off their skin, though the water itself was so full of organisms that it would probably do more harm than good. He decided they could stop later. Just telling Rye why they were stopping seemed to be an incredible chore, and he couldn't bring himself to break the silence that was growing between them, even though he knew it was only feeding the fury that separated them from each other and from all life.

"He's gone," said Lee. It was late afternoon, and these were the first words he'd said for hours.

Rye was also surprised at hearing them. It took him a while to understand what Lee had said; then he flared up. "What do you mean, he's gone?"

"The trail just ends, is all," answered Lee. "I figured it would start up again, but it doesn't."

"That's impossible!"

Lee made no answer, but stared at Rye impassively, looking down his long hooked nose in that sarcastic way he had which he knew was infuriating.

"Aren't you going to answer me?" Rye said, knowing Lee was baiting him with that look, yet unable to hide his anger. "I said that's impossible."

"Maybe. But it is." Lee stopped walking. He threw himself down to the ground and bent into the water for a drink. He tried to scoop the thick green algae away, but it kept edging back. After drinking several handfuls, he splashed the slimy water on his face and arms. It clung to his skin like an oil slick. He looked around for a place to camp, then laughed at himself. Any place was as good as the next—or, more accurately, as bad as the next.

Rye too was looking around, though not for a camping place. Finally, he said, "You ain't looked right. Let's circle around some."

"That's what we been doing the past two hours," Lee said.

"Then we'll do it again," Rye answered impatiently. He wasn't looking at Lee; only the vast expanse of sawgrass and the possibility of finding the alligator trail could hold his attention.

"It won't do us any good to circle again," said Lee. "He's disappeared. Besides, it's too late. Sun'll go down in an hour or so. We'd better stop here."

"And take a chance on a wind coming up and covering his trail?"