Gone South (44 page)

Something brushed against the boat’s hull and made the craft lazily turn around its anchor chain. Flint lifted his head to watch a five-foot-long alligator drift past, its snout pushing through the foul brown water. A second alligator, this one maybe three feet in length, cruised past the first. The cat-green eyes and ridged skull of a third had surfaced less than six feet from the rowboat. Two more, each four-footers, lay motionless side by side just beyond the silent watcher. Flint had counted nine alligators at any one time, but there might be others asleep on the bottom. He couldn’t tell one from the other, except for their obvious size differences, so he really didn’t know how many lurked in the sludgy pond. Still, they were quiet monsters. Occasionally two or three would bump together in their back-and-forth loglike driftings and there might be an instant’s outburst of thrashing anger, but then everything would calm down again but for the rocking of the boat and the thudding hearts of the men in it. Flint figured the alligators were prisoners here just as he and Pelvis were.

The pond looked to be sixty-five feet across, from one side of a half-submerged, rusty barbed-wire fence to the other. Beyond the alligator corral’s heavily bolted gate was a pier where two cigarette speedboats — both of them painted dark, nonreflective green — were secured, along with the larger workboat Flint had seen unloading the reptiles at the Vermilion marina. Eight feet of the pier was built out over the corral, and at its end stood a bolted-down electric winch Flint figured was used to hoist the alligators up onto the workboat’s deck. During the thirty-minute journey to this place in one of the speedboats, Monty had gleefully ripped the jacket and shirt off Flint’s back and taken the derringer’s holster. Then, when they’d reached their destination, Doc and the others had debated for a few minutes what to do with them until “he” — whoever “he” was — woke up. Their current situation had been dreamed up by Doc, who got Mitch to row them in the aluminum skiff through the corral’s gate while Monty had followed in a second rowboat. There had been much hilarity from a group of men watching on the pier as Mitch had thrown a concrete brick anchor over the side and then got into the boat with Monty, leaving Flint and Pelvis at the end of their chain.

The party had gone on for a while —” Hey, freak! Why don’t you and Elvis get out of that boat and cool yourselves off?” — but the men had drifted away as the sun had come up. Flint understood why; the novelty had faded, and they’d known how hot it was going to get out here. Every so often Mitch, Monty, or some other bastard would stroll out to the pier’s end to take a look and throw a remark at them that included the words “freak” or “motherfuckers,” then they would go away again. Since Pelvis had been smashed in the mouth, he’d not spoken a single word. Flint realized he must be in shock. Monty had taken Mama with him, and the last time the bearded sonofabitch had come out to check on them, the little bulldog wasn’t in his arms.

Flint could smell meat cooking.

Being burned was more like it.

The pier continued on past the boats to a bizarre sight: a large suburban ranch house with cream-colored walls, perched on wooden pilings over the water, the place looked as if it had been lifted up off the mowed green lawn of the perfect American town, helicoptered in, and set down to be the envy of the neighborhood. There was a circular swimming pool with its own redwood deck, one of those “above-ground” pools sold in kits; here the pool was not above ground, but on a platform above swamp. On the pool’s deck was a rack of barbells, a weight bench, and a stationary bicycle. Next to it was another large deck shaded by a blue-and-white-striped canvas awning, and on the far side of the house the platform supported a television satellite dish.

Other walkways went off from the main platform, connecting the house to three other smaller wooden structures. Cables snaked from one of them to the house and the satellite dish, so Flint reasoned it stored the power generator. Though the alligator corral, the pier, and the swimming pool were out under the full sun, most of the house was shaded by moss-draped trees. Around the house and the corral and everything else the swamp still held green dominion. Flint could see a bayou winding into the swamp beyond the farthermost of the three outbuildings, and there were red buoys floating in it to mark deeper passage for the workboat’s hull.

His survey of the area had also found a wooden watchtower, about forty feet high, all but hidden amid the trees at the bayou’s entrance. Up top, under a green-painted cupola, a man sat in a lawn chair reading a magazine, a rifle propped against the railing beside him. Every few minutes he would stand up and scan all directions through a pair of binoculars, then he would sit down again and return to his reading.

“We,” Flint said hoarsely, “are in deep shit.”

Pelvis didn’t speak; he just sat there and kept sweating, his eyes unfocused.

“Eisley? Snap out of it, hear me?”

There was no answer. A little thread of saliva had spooled down over his wounded lip.

“How about sayin’ somethin?” Flint asked.

Pelvis lowered his head and stared at the boat’s bottom.

Flint sniffed the air, catching the smell of burned meat. It struck him that that bastard Monty might be hungry again, and he realized Pelvis was probably thinking the same thing he was: Mama was on the breakfast grill.

“Hey, we’re gonna get out of this,” Flint tried again. He thought it was the most idiotic thing he’d ever said in his life. “You can’t go off and leave me now, hear?”

Pelvis shook his head, and he swallowed with a little dry, clicking noise.

Flint watched another alligator gliding past, so close he could have reached out and poked it in the eye if he cared to lose a hand. Well, that’d be all right; he’d still have two. Hold on, he told himself. Hold on, now. Control yourself. It’s not over yet, they haven’t shoveled the dirt over you. Hold on. “I’ll bet this is all a big mistake,” he said. “I’ll bet when that fella wakes up, he’ll come see us and we’ll tell him the story and he’ll shoot us on out of here.” His throat clenched up. “I mean,
scoot
us out of here.” Eisley’s silence was scaring the bejesus out of him, making him start to lose his own grip. He’d gotten so used to the man’s prattling, the silence was driving him crazy. “Eisley, listen. We’re not givin’ up. Pelvis? Come on, talk to me.”

No response.

Flint leaned forward, the sun beginning to scorch his back and sweat clinging to his eyebrows. “Cecil,” he said, “I’m gonna slap the crap out of you if you don’t look me in the face and say somethin’.”

But it was no use. Flint closed his eyes and pressed his un-cuffed hand against his forehead. At his chest Clint’s arm suddenly twitched and the hand fluttered, then it fell motionless again.

“What’d you call me?”

Flint opened his eyes and looked into the other man’s face.

“Did you call me Cecil?” Pelvis had lifted his head. His split lip had broken open again, a little bloody fluid oozing.

“Yeah, I guess I did.” A rush of relief surged through him. “Well, thank God you’re back! Now’s not the time to crack up, lemme tell you! We’ve got to hang tough! Like I said, when that fella wakes up and we tell him what a big mistake all this is —”

“Cecil,”
Pelvis whispered, and a wan smile played across his crusty mouth. Then it passed. His eyes were very dark. “I think … they’re cookin’ Mama,” he said.

“No, they’re not!” Hold on to him! Flint thought in desperation. Don’t let him slide away again! “That fella was just pullin’ your chain! Listen now, get your mind off that. We’ve got other things to think about.”

“Like what? Which one of us they’re gonna kill first?” He squinted up at the sun. “I don’t care. We ain’t gettin’ out of this.”

“See? That’s why you never would’ve made a good bounty hunter.
Never.
Because you’re a quitter. By God,
I’m
not a quitter!” Flint felt the blood pounding in his face. He had to calm down before he had a heatstroke. “I said I was gonna get Lambert, and I got him, didn’t I?”

“Yes sir, you did. I don’t think neither one of us is gonna be spendin’ much of that reward money, though.”

“You just watch,” Flint said. “You’ll find out.” He was aware of his own wheels starting to slip. Control! he thought. Control was the most important thing. He had to settle himself down before the pressure of this situation broke him. He enfolded Clint’s clammy hand in his own, and he could feel their common pulse. “Self-discipline is what a bounty hunter needs. I’ve always had it. Ever since I was a little boy. I had to have it to keep Clint from jumpin’ around when I didn’t want him to. Jumpin’ around and makin’ everybody look at me like I was a freak. Self-discipline is what you need, and a whole lot of it.”

“Mr. Murtaugh?” Pelvis said in a soft and agonized voice that had very little of Elvis in it. “We’re gonna die today. Would you please shut up?”

Flint’s brain was smoking. He was burning up. His pallid skin cringed from the raw sunlight, and there was water, water everywhere, but not enough to cool himself in. He licked his lips and tasted sweat. An alligator nudged alongside the boat, a long, scraping noise that made the flesh of Flint’s spine ripple. He needed to get his mind fixed on something else — anything else. “You’d be worth a damn,” he said, “if you had a manager.” Pelvis stared at him, and slowly blinked.
“What?”
“A manager. Like that fella said. You need a manager. Somebody to teach you self-discipline, get you off that damn junk food. Get you to stop tryin’ to play Elvis and be Cecil. I heard what he said, I was standin’ right there.”

“Are you … sayin’ what I
think
you’re sayin?” “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not.” Flint reached up, his fingers trembling, and wiped the beads of sweat from his eyebrows. “I’m just sayin’ you’ve got a little talent to beat the piano, and a good manager could help you. A good
businessman.
Somebody to make sure you got paid when you were supposed to. You wouldn’t have to be a headliner, you could be in somebody else’s band, or play backup on records or whatever. There’s money to be made in that line of work, isn’t there?”

“Are you crazy, Mr. Murtaugh?” Pelvis asked. “Or am I?” “Hell, we
both
are!” Flint had almost shouted it. Control, he thought. Control. God, the sun was getting fierce. A pungent, acidic reek — the smell of swamp mud and ’gator droppings — was steaming up off the water. “When we get out of here — which we
will,
after we talk to whoever’s in charge around here — there’s gonna be tomorrow to think about. You’re not cut out to be a bounty hunter … and I’ve been lookin’ for a way to quit it for a long time. I’m sick of the ugliness of it, and I was never gettin’ anywhere. I was just goin’ around and around, like … like a three-armed monkey in a cage,” he said. “Now, it might not work. Probably won’t. But it would be a new start, wouldn’t —”

“Gettin’ awful hot out here, ain’t it?”

The voice caused both of them to jump. Monty was walking along the pier, splotches of sweat on his shirt. He was holding a plate of food, and he was chewing on some stringy meat attached to a small bone. “Ya’ll ain’t gone swimmin’ yet?”

Neither Flint nor Pelvis spoke. They watched the big, brown-bearded man chewing on the bone in his greasy fingers.

“Don’t feel much like talkin’, do you?” Monty glanced quickly up at the sun. Then he threw the bone into the water beside their boat. The splash drew the attention of the alligators, and three or four of them quickly converged on the spot like scaly torpedoes. Water swirled, a tail rose up and smacked the surface, and suddenly an underwater disagreement boiled up, two reptilian bodies thrashing and the rowboat rocking back and forth on the muddy foam of combat.

“Them boys are hungry this mornin’.” Monty started sucking the meat from another bone. “They’ll eat anydamnthing, y’know. Got cast-iron stomachs. Bet they’d like to get their teeth in you, freak. Bet you’d be a real taste sensation.”

The alligators, finding no food on their table, had stopped squabbling. Still, they crisscrossed the pond on all sides of the boat. “Don’t you men think this has gone far enough?” Flint asked. “We’ve learned our lesson, we’re not comin’ back in here anymore.”

Monty chewed and laughed. “Well, that’s right. ’Course, you ain’t leavin’, either.” He flung the second bone in, and again the reptiles darted for it. “Hey, Elvis! You want some breakfast?”

Pelvis didn’t answer, and Flint saw his eyes glazing over again.

“It’s realllll good. Lotta meat on them bones, I was surprised. Want to try a bite or two?” He held up a hunk of white meat, and he grinned through his beard. “Woof! Woof!” he said.

Pelvis shivered. A pulse had started beating hard at his temple.

“Hang on.” Flint grasped Pelvis’s arm. “Steady, now.”

“I think he wants the rest of it, Mr. Freak. Here you go, Elvis! Arrrruuuuuu!” And as he howled like a dog, Monty tossed the rest of the plate’s meat and bones up into the air over the corral.

Before the first piece of meat or bone splashed the surface, Pelvis went crazy.

He lunged over the rowboat’s side. The chain of the handcuffs connecting their wrists jerked tight, and with a shout of terror Flint was pulled into the water with him.

For the last mile and a half Train had cut the Swift’s husky double-diesels to one-fourth speed — about seven knots — to keep the noise down. Now he switched off the engines and let the Swift coast along the narrow bayou. “Gettin’ close,” he said behind the spoked wheel in the pilothouse. Dan stood at his side, and Arden had found a benchseat to park herself on toward the stern. “She gonna run minute or two, then we doin’ some wadin’.”

Dan nodded. The rifles, pistol, and the ammunition backpack had been stowed away in a locker at the rear of the pilothouse. After leaving the cove Train had brought them along a series of channels at speeds approaching twenty-eight knots, the Swift’s upper limit. Before them, birds had flown and alligators had dived for safety. Train had told Dan his real name was Alain Chappelle, that he’d been born on a train between Mobile and New Orleans, but that he was raised in Grand Isle, where his father had been a charter fisherman. During his tour of duty in Vietnam his parents had moved to New Orleans, and his father had accepted a consulting job with a company that built fishing boats. Train had the swamp in his blood, he’d said. He had to live there, in all that beautiful wilderness, or he would perish. He’d known that the Swift boats — based on the design of tough little utility craft used to ferry supplies out to oil derricks in the Gulf of Mexico — were built by a contractor in the town of Berwick, which Dan and Arden had passed through forty miles north of Houma. In 1976 he’d bought the armor-plated hulk of a surplus Swift and started the three-year labor of restoring it to a worthy condition. Baby could be sweet as sugar one day and a raging foul-tempered bitch the next, he’d told Dan, but she was fast and nimble and her shallow draft was ideal for the bayous. Anyway, he loved her.