Alligator

by Shelley Katz

  "I ain't done right by ya, have I?" said Virgil. "Well, if it's any consolation, I ain't done right by anyone, least of all myself."

  "I wasn't askin' for no apologies."

  "I wasn't givin' you none. You got the best of me when I shot off in your ma. That's somethin' I give ya, free of charge. No obligation. But as for the rest... Did I ever tell you I saw old matt Watson killed?"

  "No." Rye walked over to the window and looked out at the blackness. It held him together and helped him contain the pity and fear he was starting to feel.

  "Picture this," said Virgil. "The year was 1910, and I weren't no more'n a kid. I'd just walked over to the fish house, hopin' to stir up somethin' of interest, when I sees down the way a whole bunch of men, just talkin' and whisperin' to one another. Well, sir, I knew somethin' was up, and I figured right off it had to do with Watson. It weren't hard to figure that out—just about everythin' in town had somethin' to do with him. Did you know he was the one killed Belle Starr? Well, he was. Killed close to twenty people, they figured.

  "Guy was crazy. He'd hire on this big crew to work his plantation, then if he couldn't make the payroll, he'd just kill 'em off. You ever thought of doin' that in your business? Hell, guess you can't get away with that kind of thing no more. But back then, the law was careful not to see too much.

  "Anyway, one day Watson, he went too far and killed Bessie Simpson, Seth Simpson's wife. Jesus Christ, that woman weighed three hundred pounds if she weighed an ounce. They had to lower her into the grave with farm equipment. Anyway, that was the straw that broke the camel's back as far as the town was concerned. You just can't have men running round killin' who they please. It had everyone so jumpy they couldn't take a leak without lookin' over their shoulder.

  "So they decided to kill him. Problem was, there wasn't one of them willin' to do it. Ya see, Watson was too powerful round there for his death to go unnoticed, and no one fancied swingin' from a rope 'cause of him. But they come up with a plan. You can't hang a whole town, so if they all did it at once, the law couldn't fix the blame on any of them.

  "They knew Watson was comin' into town that day, so they all come to the fish house to finish him off.

  "Well, you should have seen 'em. Hell, it was like market day. They were all dressed up and shaved and smellin' nice. Laughin' and shoutin', Jesus what a lark. Then one of 'em strains his eyes and sees this here little dot on the water. It was Watson's boat way off in the distance.

  "Boy, I tell ya, they quieted down all of a sudden and started lookin' at one another sidewise and scared. You could smell the panic comin' off them. Like the devil hisself was puttin' in a personal appearance, instead of a fat, baldin' man 'bout fifty years old, who weren't even a good shot. Ya see, that's the trick in life, boy, ain't what you really are, it's what they think you are that counts. Anyway, they was scared. Another minute and they'd have run away. But young Dinks's grandpa, he was the smartest of the group, which weren't sayin' a hell of a lot, but anyway, he knows somethin' about crowds. Now he can see there ain't one of them, includin' himself, that was gonna fire first. However, should one of 'em take just one shot, the whole bunch'd be failin' all over each other to get their licks in. So he grabs hold of this black and says to him, 'Percy, if you kill Watson, I'll give you twenty bucks.'

  "Now Percy, he thinks to hisself, here's this crazy white man who's been makin' life a misery for me and all of my people for centuries and he's beggin' me to do for money what it would be my pleasure to do for free. This here is a lark a black man just don't get a chance at every day, and I'm gonna enjoy it good. So old Percy, he starts hammin' it up. Shakin' his wiry-haired head and backin' away, sayin', 'No, suh, not me, no, suh!'

  "Dinks, Senior, he gets angry for a moment, but then he looks back out at the water and there's old Watson comin' closer and closer.

  "Well, he ups the ante to fifty dollars, then a hundred. Good Lord, he was talkin' so fast, it weren't a minute before he was promisin' that darky twenty-five acres of land and a cow. Still Percy, he holds off, being careful to look somewhat interested, so's Dinks'll keep tryin' but like he needs more convincin'.

  "Meanwhile, Watson is getting closer to shore. He can see there's trouble, but the old bastard, he figures he's invincible. He don't turn that boat around or nothin', he just keeps steadily aiming toward shore.

  "Well, sir, this makes the men even more panicky. I tell you, if Percy hadn't been black, he could have had Dinks's wife thrown into the bargain.

  "It don't take long for Watson's boat to draw up to the docks. And he's smilin' and cocky. 'What you got there behind your back?' he yells to Dinks, Senior.

  "Dinks is holdin' his twenty-two, of course, but he yells back, 'Ain't nothin' but a package. You know, just takin' it to the post office and such.'

  "'That so?' Watson says, as he climbs out of his boat and hits the dock like a tub of lard. 'Well, let's just see who it's addressed to.'

  "Son, ya shoulda seen it. That whole crowd, Jesus, there must have been thirty or forty of 'em, starts backin' away from Watson, you just can't imagine. I don't know what they thought he could do. He was just one man, old, fat, out of shape, and there they was, most of 'em in their prime, but they was scared shitless. Old Dinks, he keeps bargaining with Percy, throwin' in a scythe and a mower and I don't know what else. And Percy, he just keeps backin' away with the rest.

  "Well, Watson's laughin' to beat the band by now. He reaches into his waistband, pulls out his Remington, and lifts it up real slow, till he got a good view of Dinks's pecker in his sight. 'I'm waitin', Dinks,' he shouts.

  "Dinks is red-faced and scared and just about screamin' for help, when suddenly there is this loud crack. I tell ya, boy, I ain't never seen such a look of surprise in my whole life. It lasted only a second, though, 'cause Percy, he lets off another beauty and knocks Watson back a good ten feet. After that, everybody starts shootin' and shootin', till Watson has so many holes in him, he looks like cheesecloth. And that's how he died. They could hardly find enough of him to bury."

  Suddenly Virgil's voice cracked, and he sounded very tired and old. "I been doin' a lot of thinkin' about Watson, son. He was a fool and a braggart. He was probably the worst man Florida ever spawned, and he died a horrible death." Virgil looked around at the tubes and the dials that surrounded him and sighed. "But I'll tell ya one thing for certain," he said, "however bad he died, he done it better than me."

  It took Rye several minutes to realize that his father was silent. He turned from the window and saw him lying over the side of the bed, his yellow, toothless mouth gaping and his eyes staring up at the ceiling as if it were heaven. Above his head, the dials and charts and television screens registered zero.

  Suddenly it hit him between the eyes like a .20-.20; it smashed through his brain and left fragments that remained forever and came up every night anew. He looked at that shriveled bag of dead bones and realized, then and there, that he too was going to die. It wasn't just some vague rumor; death was something very real. It was lying not ten feet away, and he could touch it.

  Rye stood there for a while. Pain swirled up, burning his arm and spreading to his chest. Giddiness whirled him around. He felt he was hanging from a tall building by his fingers and looking down into the blackness below.

  He bolted. He ran through the quiet, deathly white corridors, with their smell of antiseptic and floor wax. He ran down the stairs, pushed through the doors and out into the night, and he didn't stop there. He kept running, racing through the darkness like Hyde. He had a hard-on that crashed through his pants and throbbed so hot and painful between his legs that he felt it was going to take off like a Nike.

  Rye fell on the first female he found, and he had hardly shot off his load when the urge was on him again.

  He didn't stop for four days straight. After that Rye could never take a woman again.

  Rye shook off the past and moved away from the window. The clock said five A.M., but he still didn't feel that he could sleep. T
he panic was starting to build. He picked up the bottle of Scotch and poured himself another drink, then walked over to a portable cassette TV he had brought with him. He shoved in a tape.

  The screen lit up, and Honnicut Jones, six feet of milky-white flesh, with breasts as big as balloons and hair like candy floss, rolled her hips and licked her lips seductively. "Hi there, Rye honey, watch this." She shook her pendulous breasts into an avalanche of shimmering flesh. Rye roared with laughter.

  "That's right," she simpered, "getting it on, lover?"

  "Almost, sweet thing," said Rye. "Almost."

  Maurice Gainor had had a great deal of trouble getting to sleep, and even more trouble staying there, so when John Patterson awakened him early to go gun shopping, he didn't protest. He dressed quickly while John was in the bathroom shaving. Maurice hated sharing a room with another man. He hadn't undressed in front of anyone but his wife in fifteen years, and he was surprisingly uncomfortable doing it now. He could hear John whistling in the bathroom; he was more excited about getting this gun than he would be about forty acres of waterfront.

  By nine o'clock, the two men were walking down Homestead Street. Levi's Dry Goods Store was located in a mud-rotted two-story clapboard building across from Everglades National Bank and just down a bit from the Four Oaks Package Liquor Store. Just about everything needed for hunting—booze, money, and guns—was close at hand.

  The rotting-minnows, wax, and gunpowder smell of Levi's burned the nostrils of Maurice and John as they walked up to the counter.

  "I don't know why you're bothering," said Maurice. "If anyone gets the alligator, it'll be Rye."

  "I wouldn't be so sure," answered John.

  "I would, if you value your job." Maurice laughed good-naturedly. Even if by some fluke he managed to get the alligator, he wouldn't know what to do with it.

  "Things are changing, my friend. They almost got him at the proxy fight. He slipped through this time, but someday, someone is going to bring him to his knees."

  "Don't tell me you're planning on being that someone?"

  The look on John's face told Maurice that John didn't consider the idea quite as ridiculous as he did.

  Maurice watched John, surprised. Though they both held equivalent positions in life and in Whitman Enterprises, Maurice and John were two very different kinds of men. Strictly speaking, they both belonged to the species Corporate killerata. But while Maurice was a flunky in the true sense of the word, killing on command, like the falcon for the falconer, John killed for the sheer joy of the sport. Maurice was not the kind of man who believed in vague feelings or intuitions, but there was something about John that scared him. He had felt it the first day he met him, ten years ago, and he felt it more than ever today.

  John grabbed a Baby Ruth bar and wasted it in two bites. "No, of course I'm not thinking of trying," he said; then, leaning over the counter, he yelled, "Hey, isn't anyone gonna help us?"

  An enormous man with a dime-store toupee perched on top of his bullet head lumbered out of the back room. He gave the men a look as if they had interrupted him in the process of creating the universe. "Can I help ya?" Charlie O'Neill grunted.

  "I'm looking for a gun," said John.

  "Well, you certainly came to the right place." Charlie O'Neill wheezed out his words as if even speech was a tiring exercise. "What do you have in mind, a two forty-three, a three o eight, a thirty-ought-six?"

  "Which would you suggest?" said John, hoping to cover his ignorance.

  "They're all good." O'Neill flipped open the counter copy of Gun Digest.

  John glanced down and seized at a name. "What about a Weatherby?"

  "Sure, Weatherby? Hell, you just can't get a much better caliber. Maybe a Franchi. I don't know; it's a tossup."

  John ran his thin, artistic fingers over the intricate scrollwork of the Weatherby that O'Neill handed him. He grimaced seriously and inspected the rifle as if he knew what to look for.

  O'Neill winked and opened the locked glass case behind the counter. He pulled out a rifle and beamed at John. "Here's the queen, though." He stripped it from its case with the pomp worthy of the unveiling of Venus de Milo. "Awesome, isn't she?" He stroked the barrel of the pump action .742 Woodmaster, Weatherby Magnum, caliber 30-06, 280 Remington, 308 Winchester, 243 Winchester, and 6mm Remington. Twenty-two-inch round tapered barrel, 7 1/2 pounds, 42-inch length, walnut (13 1/4 inches X 1 5/8 inches X 2 1/4 inches) deluxe checkered p.g. and fore end, premier with gold inlays. "Takes a lot to handle her. But if you know what you're doing, she'll show you a real good time. Takes a big hunk of lead. Nothing like it—a good slug'll rip right into the cerebrum, adrenal cortex, and maybe the frontal lobe before it come out the other side."

  Maurice shuddered and walked away, but everywhere he looked were guns or knives or hooks.

  "You see," wheezed O'Neill, warming to the subject, "that's the beauty of them magnum, they always make you look good. Even if you muff a heart shot, chances are it'll shatter some vertebrae and drive right through one vital organ or another."

  While O'Neill continued to list the kind of destruction a man who was wise enough to invest in a Woodmaster could look forward to, John caught sight of a poster on the wall. On it a young man with a shaved head was frowning and generally looking unhappy. Underneath was the saying: KEEP AMERICA CLEAN, DIP A HIPPIE. John looked back at O'Neill. Lucky man, he thought. Charlie O'Neill was not the type of man to be plagued by indecision and doubt. He knew what to believe. He wouldn't worry about what to do with a smartass kid, heavy into reds or greens or purples or whatever the fuck they called them, or a fifteen-year-old daughter who was passing it out to the whole neighborhood like it was lemonade. He'd slug them good and be done with it. There'd be none of this fancy talk about psychiatrists and military schools. He'd make short work of them with his belt. Jesus, life could be simple.

  "Any chance of bear?" asked John.

  "Always a chance. Should I wrap up the Weatherby?"

  "Let me think about it," John said cautiously. He wasn't going to be talked into another mistake like the elephant gun.

  "Take your time. Listen, you interested in this?" O'Neill groaned mightily as he reached under the counter and pulled out a Ruger H&H magnum.

  "You think I'll need it?"

  "Well, sir, that depends. Only reason to carry a pistol is to finish off what you ain't killed clean, that or to kill a man. So it depends if you're a bleedin' heart or you want to bleed a heart." He let out a sharp laugh that disintegrated into a coughing fit.

  "I look like one or the other to you?"

  "All men is one or the other. Yep, there's the ones that bleed and the ones that make 'em bleed. You ask me, I'd say you was the latter." O'Neill looked John up and down and nodded. "Yes, sir, that's what you are. You surely are."

  Rye was still in his pajamas, reading the Wall Street Journal over his breakfast, when Maurice got back to the hotel. Rye tore off the front page and slammed it on the table in front of Maurice. "Read it," he said.

  Maurice picked up the page. Globs of egg yolk and smears of butter obliterated part of the article, but he could make out most of it.

  Miami, June 1: When viewed in proportion to the growth of the Gross National Product, Whitman Enterprises, under the stewardship of Rye Whitman, President and Chief Operating Officer, is alive and well. However, vague rumblings of discontent filtered out of the annual stockholders' meeting yesterday, and it is rumored that an incipient proxy fight was nipped in the bud by Mr. Whitman. The man, or men, behind this revolt were able to keep themselves anonymous, and there has been no major change in the executive lineup. Mr. Whitman was quick to say, when interviewed, that he reassured all investors as to the health of Whitman, Inc., and that this general airing of their views was salubrious for all involved.

  "I'll have the balls of the fuckin' cocksucker," muttered Rye. He piled half an egg and a strip of bacon on his fork and slurped it down. "Just wait till I get back to Miami."

  Mauri
ce paused, unsure whether to tell Rye what he was thinking. He decided he'd better. "I think it was John," he said.

  "Ha! That robot ain't got enough brains to fit on a toothpick, let alone try and take over my company."

  "Are you sure?"

  Rye abruptly stood up and knocked over his chair. He started pacing the room. Hell, no, of course he wasn't sure. He was starting to believe there were quite a few things he couldn't be sure of. He'd gone over and over his long list of enemies in his mind, but he hadn't considered that it could be a friend. He'd known John Patterson for ten years; he'd seen him every day; yet, now that he thought of it, he really didn't know him at all, and the little he did know led him to believe John could indeed be the Judas.

  "So that half-baked All-American tackle thinks he can become quarterback, eh? Looks like this gator hunt might be even more interestin' than I thought."

  Maurice stood by the table and watched Rye pace. His hand still clutched the egg-stained news clipping. "I don't know, Rye. John's a tough one. Men like him are the kind who win fights."

  "Hell they do. Men like him don't even join in, they just feed off the carrion."

  "What are you going to do?"

  Rye stopped pacing and rolled the thought around in his brain like a connoisseur rolling wine in his mouth. "I don't know, but somethin'll come to hand; it always does." Rye smiled impishly at Maurice. He noted with irritation that Maurice still looked concerned. "Hey, don't tell me you're gettin' worried 'bout your ole buddy Rye?"

  "Of course not. You can take care of yourself," Maurice answered, with a bit too much enthusiasm.

  "So what's eatin' you? Don't tell me nothin', 'cause I can see it written all over that greasy face of yours."

  "I don't know," said Maurice, unable to put into words the ominous feeling he'd had at the gun shop. "Maybe I'm just worried about myself."

  Rye loved Maurice as much as he loved anyone, but he didn't respect him. Maurice wasn't a survivor, and recently it had scared Rye just being near him, as if it would rub off on him. "You? Shit, no need to worry about you," he said, "you're a scrapper like me."