Alligator Bayou

by Donna Jo Napoli

  ALSO BY DONNA JO NAPOLI

  For Young Adults

  Beast

  Bound

  The Bravest Thing

  Breath

  Changing Tunes

  Crazy Jack

  Daughter of Venice

  Fire in the Hills

  For the Love of Venice

  Gracie, the Pixie of the Puddle

  The Great God Pan

  Hush: An Irish Princess’ Tale

  Jimmy, the Pickpocket of the Palace

  The King of Mulberry Street

  The Magic Circle

  Mogo, the Third Warthog

  North

  On Guard

  The Prince of the Pond: Otherwise Known as De Fawg Pin

  Shark Shock

  Shelley Shock

  Sirena

  The Smile

  Soccer Shock

  Song of the Magdalene

  Spinners (with Richard Tchen)

  Stones in Water

  Three Days

  Trouble on the Tracks

  Ugly

  When the Water Closes Over My Head

  Zel

  For Younger Readers

  The Hero of Barletta

  Angelwings (a series of sixteen books)

  The Wishing Club: A Story About Fractions

  Sly the Sleuth Mysteries (with Robert Furrow)

  For Maurice Eldridge

  one

  The night is so dark, I can barely see my hands. It’s eerie. As if Cirone and I are made of nothing but air.

  That’s how I used to feel back in Sicily when I’d walk in the caves near Cefalù. I was nothing, till the bats sensed me and came flapping out in a leathery clutter—thwhoosh—then my arms would wake and wave all crazy as they passed by and away into the sea breeze.

  But this flat meadow couldn’t be more different from those hillside caves; this sleepy Louisiana town couldn’t be more different from busy Cefalù; and I feel like a whole new person. I was a scaredy-cat boy when they pushed me onto the ship last autumn to come here. But now I work like a man. And I’m important at work, because I can speak English with the customers.

  Still, some of the old me remains. Right now I’m jittery at being out late without permission from my uncles. It was my cousin Cirone’s idea. It’s always his idea. We all go to bed early every night except Saturday, but he’s got energy to spare. He begs me to sneak out.

  The grass is high here behind the lettuce field, but soft. It crushes underfoot, silent.

  I follow close behind Cirone. He knows lots about this place. He’s been in America longer than me. He came with his big brother, Rosario, when he was only four. He’s thirteen; I’m fourteen; I edge in front of him now.

  The slaughterhouse sits on the outskirts of town, at the edge of the woods. The place is lit up and we can smell the rot and hear the men inside singing as they work. Cirone heads that way.

  “Shhh,” Cirone says, even though we weren’t talking. “They hear Sicilian and they’ll chase us off.”

  I don’t get why people here don’t like Sicilian. Our family supplies this town, Tallulah, with the best fruits and vegetables. You’d think the sound of Sicilian would make their mouths water. Instead, we hold our tongues–or speak English if we can–in the presence of town people.

  But not everyone minds hearing Sicilian.

  That’s how I met Patricia. I smile. She overheard Cirone and me as we unloaded crates, and she asked what we were speaking. She said Sicilian was pretty, like music. And she walked off singing. We’ve talked a half-dozen times since then. Always at the vegetable stand. I hear her voice in my head all the time. I’ll be working, and there she is, in my mind, looking over my shoulder, saying something sweet.

  I miss hearing Sicilian in the streets—jokes, arguments, announcements, everything that makes up life. Here the six of us are like mice on a raft in the middle of the sea. Oh, there are two more Sicilians in Milliken’s Bend, five miles away—Beppe and his son, Salvatore. To find more, though, you have to travel down south to New Orleans, over 250 miles. Thousands live there.

  I watch Cirone’s shadow move farther ahead of me, out of whisper range. But here in the dark it’s better to hush anyway.

  In the woods now, we wind through pines. These trees are gigantic compared to the trees back home. They crowd out the sky so I can hardly see the stars.

  In an instant Cirone is running, and I am, too. We dash for the open grass. No one’s chasing us, but it feels like they are.

  “Calo, stop!” Cirone grabs me by the arm and pulls me to a halt.

  A giant cat comes out of the woods. Tawny brown sleeks his back and white flecks his head and shoulders. He glances at us and pauses as his eyes catch the light: yellow-green. He flicks the tip of his long tail and I think I might wet myself. That cat weighs more than me.

  The cat hisses low. Then he walks on toward the stench of the slaughterhouse.

  Cirone’s fingers dig into my arm. “A panther,” he breathes. “They stay in the forests, away from people. It’s special to see one so close to town.”

  “Special?” I’m shaking. In Sicily mountain wildcats don’t even come up to your knees. “I can do without special. I can go the whole rest of my life without special.”

  “We did good. We did really good, Calo. You’re never supposed to run from them. You just stare. A panther won’t attack unless you look away. If you stare right at them, they think you’re going to eat them.”

  I yank his arm, and we run. We don’t slow down till we see our house.

  Out front we hear a man arguing with Francesco in English. Shouting. The man stomps off into the night, throwing curses over his shoulder. Cirone and I crouch off to the side. It’s so dark, all we can see is the tip of Francesco’s cigar, glowing red when he sucks on it. And he’s sucking fast. Red, red, red, red. He’s mad, all right.

  Cirone and I sneak to the back and climb in through a window. We quick move the sacks of pinecones in our bed that were doubling for us and stash them. We dive under the sheet fully clothed.

  My heart still bangs against my rib cage. A panther. This place is full of surprises. Nasty ones.

  I have to push Cirone’s feet away from my chin. Mine reach past his nose. Feet stink, especially when you don’t dip them in the wash pan before sleeping. But lying head to toe is the only way we both still fit in this bed.

  I turn my head to the right and listen to the noisy breathing of Rosario, Cirone’s brother, in the next bed. He’s thirty-seven, old enough to be Cirone’s father. Rosario has a big beak of a nose and long sideburns. Cirone’s nose is small like mine.

  Beyond Rosario there’s Carlo, in his fifties. And in the next bed, Giuseppe, who’s thirty-six. Carlo and Giuseppe are Francesco’s brothers. Francesco, the youngest, is only thirty, but he’s the leader. It’s his nature. He sleeps in the bed closest to the door—the first to face trouble, if any comes.

  These two sets of brothers are cousins to each other. And then there’s me. We’re all from Cefalù, in Sicily. The men call me nephew, and Cirone calls me cousin, even though my father was just good friends with them.

  Back in Cefalù I have a younger brother, Rocco. The spitting image of me. The one person alive in the world I know for sure I’m related to. When Mamma died last summer, there we were, Rocco and me, with nobody but each other. Our father disappeared years ago. The Buzzi family next door took in Rocco, but they couldn’t afford me; I eat too much. They put me on a ship to Louisiana. They said Francesco would take me in. My father paid his passage to America years before–it was time for Francesco to repay the favor.

  I miss Cefalù, with its stone and stucco buildings; I miss the glowing colors of the cathedral mosaics. I miss the sense of how small I be
come when I kneel in the pews. The music in the public squares. The sharp-and-sweet spongy cassata on holidays, lemony, creamy with ricotta. The purple artichoke flowers in fields that go on forever. The smell of the sea night and day, wherever you go. How close the sky is.

  I miss Rocco.

  And most of all I miss Mamma. My cheeks heat up. My father left so long ago, I hardly think about him anymore. Lots of fathers went to America and never showed up again. But Mamma, she’s different. The fact that she’s gone still feels unreal. I hardly believe I won’t see her till I join her in Paradise.

  So it’s better that I’m in America. I have a chance to make something of myself. That’s what Signora Buzzi said when she packed my things and walked me to the boat.

  The door to the bedroom creaks, and I hear Francesco undress and lower himself onto the bed.

  Inside my head I see the glowing tip of his cigar as that man went off into the darkness. Red, red, red, red.

  two

  The next morning I’m slow because I took so long to fall asleep. I sit at the table with my chin propped in my palms.

  Francesco picks up the shotgun.

  Town people call Francesco crazy because he’s quick to shout. They snicker behind his back in the grocery. I’ve never seen him act crazy, though. But when I see that gun in his hand, I think of the argument last night and that man cursing.

  The others have gone on ahead to work; only Carlo’s here in the front room, straining goat milk for cheese. He doesn’t see the gun.

  I nudge Carlo and jerk my chin toward Francesco.

  Carlo’s eyes widen. He puts down the milk bucket. “You shoot at Willy Rogers and the whole town will come after us.”

  Shooting anyone would be terrible, but Willy Rogers? Tallulah has over four hundred people, but only a few run the show. And Willy Rogers’ father is one of them.

  Francesco jabs his finger at Carlo. “Not if he shoots at me first.”

  “Francesco! Remember five years ago?” Carlo wipes his hands on his apron. “They lynched seven Negroes right on Depot Street. A white man started it, but no one asked who shot first. Don’t do anything stupid!”

  Lynched? Francesco winced when Carlo said that. What’s it mean? But Francesco’s already talking again, louder and faster.

  “No one tells us how to run our business. Not Willy Rogers, not anyone.”

  “He’s a boy,” says Carlo.

  “You’re so old, you think everyone’s a boy. Willy’s got to be twenty.”

  Carlo shrugs. “What he said didn’t bother me.”

  “Of course not. You went inside and slept through most of it. Besides, he said it in English and all you speak is Sicilian. But if you had understood…”

  “I didn’t. That’s my point. I didn’t understand. Neither did Giuseppe or Rosario. So we weren’t insulted. We went to bed peaceful. Give it another day and you’ll feel peaceful, too.”

  “I don’t want to give it another day.” Francesco’s face goes purple. “If I let Willy Rogers get away with insulting us here, at our home, the next thing you know, he’ll do it in public. We’ll lose customers.”

  Carlo turns to me. “What do people say about our fruits and vegetables?”

  “They’re the b-b-best,” I stammer.

  “See? No one’s going to shop elsewhere because of what Willy Rogers says.”

  “Oh, yeah? He said we’re criminals. Like all Sicilians–that’s what he said—all Sicilians are Mafia. It’s the same rotten lies all over again.”

  I jerk back at the word Mafia. Back in Italy the Mafia men used to offer boys money to knock over a fish cart or break a window. Little jobs—warnings before the Mafia men did something more drastic to ruin anybody who didn’t do things their way. Mamma said that’s how boys got corrupted into joining them—she told me to run when they came near. We’re nothing like Mafia. How could anyone say that about us?

  Carlo stiffens. “We run a legitimate business. Everybody knows. Words don’t change the facts.”

  “Words like that give them the excuse they want. He said there’s more Sicilians in Louisiana than in all the other states put together, so many we’re running honest men out of business. He said we’re an epidemic; we should be wiped out.”

  Carlo’s shaking his head. “We haven’t given anyone cause to complain.”

  “He says I gave him cause. Yesterday.”

  Carlo’s eyes narrow. “What did you do?”

  “He came into the store—first time ever. A Negro walked in and Willy stamped out. Then he comes here last night and says our store is dirty because we serve Negroes. He says all Negroes are filthy except for the servants of the whites. He wants them standing out by the back door. And waiting till all the whites are served first.”

  Willy Rogers must be crazy. Negroes aren’t dirty. Besides, half our customers are Negroes. You can’t make half your customers wait for the other half.

  Carlo’s cheek twitches. “Telling us how to run our business.”

  “That’s what I said. You see? You see why I have to stand firm? They have the whole town to run their way—we have our store. We decide how we run it.”

  Carlo’s shoulders slump. “Are you sure we’re not breaking any law?”

  “The Jim Crow laws say you can’t serve food to whites and Negroes in the same room at the same time. They don’t say anything about selling it. We’re just a grocery.”

  “They could twist the law.”

  “You know what the Negroes would think of us if we told them to stand out back? Never! We do business with everyone. Good business. It’s bad business to treat any customer without respect.” Francesco’s holding that shotgun high as he talks. “That Willy Rogers isn’t our boss. We stop his mouth right now. If he calls us criminals in front of people, he’ll dishonor us. Even people like Dr. Hodge will think bad of us. Then I’ll have to shoot for real.”

  Carlo steps toward Francesco, shaking his head. “A foolish boy could take a warning shot the wrong way. He could shoot back—and aim.”

  “Bah!” Francesco opens the door.

  “I’m still your big brother!” Carlo stamps his foot so hard the floor jumps. “Don’t you turn your back on me!”

  Francesco faces him. “I’d rather have my head shot off than have to hang it in shame.”

  “Have you ever known a fool to hold his tongue? You can just bet everyone knows all about your fight last night.” Carlo sighs loudly. “Walk into town with that gun and you won’t make it halfway to the Rogers house.”

  “I’m not going there. I’m going to wait by the railroad tracks outside town, where he always passes. If he apologizes…”

  “When have you seen a white man apologize to a Sicilian?”

  “I’m just saying, if he does, then one thing happens. If he doesn’t…It’s his choice.”

  Carlo twists his kitchen towel so hard, I think it will rip. “We’re strong, Francesco. We’re strong inside. Let this pass. We need you running the grocery store, not out by the tracks.”

  “Don’t worry about the grocery. It’s all taken care of.” Francesco leaves. He doesn’t slam the door; he closes it quietly. That feels more ominous.

  Carlo grabs my arm. “Go find that tutor of yours, that boy Frank Raymond.”

  Frank Raymond is eighteen. He’s no more a boy than Willy Rogers is. “What’s Frank Raymond got to do with this?”

  “Nothing. But he’s the only white person who seems to like us.”

  “Dr. Hodge likes us. He treated Rosario’s cut a few months back.”

  “Bah. We paid him. It was a job. You go to Frank Raymond.”

  A quick shiver runs up my neck. “Do I bring him here?”

  “No, tell him to get word to Willy Rogers not to go near the train tracks today. Anything—anything but crossing the train tracks. Hurry.”

  I snatch my hat.

  “Tell Frank Raymond not to let anyone know the message came from us.” Carlo drops heavily onto a bench. “And don’t s
ay a word about any of this to your uncles. Especially not Giuseppe, that hothead.”

  “I’ll be late to work at the stand. Rosario will ask where I’ve been.”

  “What’s the point of you getting all that tutoring?” Carlo shakes his head in disgust. “A fourteen-year-old who can’t come up with a good lie in an emergency is a sorry sight.”

  I touch my lips. “I’ve got a whole pack of lies.”

  “Thank the Lord.” Carlo closes his eyes. He makes the sign of the cross and ends with prayer hands shaking toward the ceiling. When he opens his eyes again, they’re wet and bright. “I’m counting on you. Understand?”

  “I understand.” I walk backward fast through the door and fall over Giada, the baby goat. We both go flying.

  Francesco’s still in sight, halfway across the field. I take off running.

  I pass the Rogers house, the second biggest in town. Francesco has picked a fight with their son!

  Frank Raymond lives above Blander’s barbershop on Depot Street. As I dash past the open barbershop door, Blander calls to me, “Hey you, boy! Where y’all going so fast? Looking for Mr. Raymond?”

  I stop and catch my breath. I’m in a hurry; still, it’s important to show respect. Blander knows I speak English. Besides, he’s always nice to me. “Yes, sir.”

  He leans against the door frame. “You don’t show your face hereabouts except on Sundays. You’re acting like someone done something to you. That the case?”

  “No, sir.”

  “My mamma didn’t raise no idiots. What’s wrong, boy?”

  “Nothing’s wrong, sir.”

  One side of his mouth turns down. “State your business, then.”

  “I just need to talk to Frank Raymond, sir. Quick, sir.”

  “Quick, huh? Mr. Raymond’s done disappeared.”

  My cheeks go slack.

  Blander smiles and claps a hand on my shoulder. “Just pulling your leg, boy. He’s in that there saloon across the road. Stay here and mind the shop while I fetch him. Right here. Not inside—just in the doorway. If people come, say you reckon I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”