Alligator

by Shelley Katz

  Panic seized Lee, and he rushed into the sawgrass, calling Rye's name over and over, a terrible emptiness eating at his center.

  For a moment, Lee thought he heard something, and stopped, straining to hear it again. Once more the sound came, faint and airy, like the rustle of the wind. It seemed to be a voice, but Lee knew it could be his own. He stood, motionless, waiting for the sound. This time when he heard it, he recognized his name.

  Lee rushed in the direction from which it came, but when he heard the sound again, it seemed to be coming from behind him. Suddenly it returned from the side, then from in front, and he realized he hadn't been hearing Rye at all, only the echo of Rye.

  He called out to Rye again, hoping that he could isolate the first sound of Rye's answer from the echoes. He listened carefully, and when he heard Rye call back, he headed toward it.

  Lee began to run, though he knew he was crazy to do it and he was probably only getting himself lost. Still he ran. He no longer cared about anything but finding Rye; the horror of his loneliness seemed far worse than any consequences. The sawgrass tore at his skin and choked off his air, but he hardly noticed it; all he heard was his voice calling Rye's name.

  Lee ran for several minutes before the futility of it hit him. When he stopped and sank down on his knees, darkness was almost complete, and the shadowy swampland closed in on him, shutting him off completely from Rye. It was then that he spotted a patch of some broken grass near his feet. He touched the edges where it had been broken and, with a thrill of hope, felt that the sap was still wet.

  Lee screamed out for Rye to stay where he was. When another sound returned, it was Rye's answer: "Yes. Yes."

  Moving fast, trying to outrun the sun, Lee followed the trail of broken grass, urging himself to run even faster, pushing himself forward through the slashing grass, too desperate to be surprised at how much he cared.

  All at once he saw a faint streak of color ahead, where the grass seemed to be moving. He stopped, not sure whether to trust what he saw. Then he heard a cry. It was a cry of relief and joy; it was his name.

  Lee pushed himself forward as the flash of color resolved itself into Rye. He too was running forward. The two men raced toward each other until suddenly they touched. Lee threw his arms around Rye and felt Rye take hold of him. They clutched at each other, winding their arms around each other's bodies, neither of them feeling ashamed. There was no room for embarrassment, only a great relief and gratitude, a closeness more potent than friendship and much closer to love.

  They embraced for several minutes, neither of them pulling away from it. The millions of barriers that existed between them had dropped away, and they stood before each other as they really were. A lightness came over them both, and suddenly Lee began to snicker. Rye picked it up and chuckled. The laughter grew and grew, until, chortling and cackling, guffawing like two crazy men, Rye and Lee watched the sun slope over the edge of the earth, leaving only a few bloody streaks in the black sky.

  Chapter 12

  Rye woke to the white-hot sun and felt the hunger stretching before him like the barren earth itself. Lee was already up, walking the area with the vague hope of finding something to eat. Rye washed his face, then called to Lee that he was ready to continue on.

  The two men moved off, straight into the barrenness, both of them knowing the chances of finding the alligator trail again were very slim. Rye was even beginning to doubt that they'd be able to make it back to civilization. Still he moved on; there was nothing else to do; to stay where they were, exposed and alone, the only living things for miles, was unthinkable.

  The muscle aches that Rye had felt yesterday were just about gone, but that was little comfort. His sturdy clothes had begun to give all over. His right sleeve hung in shreds about his arm, and there was a huge rip across the back. The sharp, barbed grass which had been slicing at his face and hands now had new areas to torture. His skin was on fire. The combination of heat and dampness had infected his wounds, and a slow trickle of pus was beginning to flow from them. Even his feet were giving him a great deal of pain. Battered by the walking, swollen and softened by the dampness, they swelled and blistered into huge, raw sores.

  Rye moved forward numbly. The fact that they had lost the trail and probably were wandering aimlessly was the worst wound of all. At least before, it had been a hunt. Whether they were the hunters, or, as Lee had said, the hunted, at least they were headed toward something. Now there wasn't anything ahead of them, and the whole past two weeks of fear and deprivation, fatigue and pain, meant nothing. They hadn't won the battle, nor had they lost it; it had never even taken place. They were stumbling forward, fighting an indifferent and dispassionate country, for no reason.

  Every rattle in the dry sawgrass put Rye on the alert, making him hopeful, then crushing him low when he discovered it was only a palmetto bug scurrying across the ground or a moccasin slipping into the water.

  A change was coming over Rye. It was a change which must have started earlier, but only now was he beginning to be aware of it. He couldn't pinpoint when it had begun; perhaps it had been there before he came out into the swamps, and was only waiting for this moment to appear. Something was shaking him loose from his moorings. He was being tossed between a craving that verged on madness and an extreme lucidity, the likes of which he had never before known. So far he'd been able to keep the madness under control, though he felt it in himself always, especially at night.

  At first he had just thought it was part of his hardening against the swamp. He was no longer a stranger to the land. His senses were sharpening so that he could hear a palmetto bug shifting on a blade of grass and the scratching of spider crabs as they scurried along the mud and burrowed into their holes. Listening to the earth sounds, the need to talk vanished. It wasn't that there was less to say, it was just that there was less need to say it. Understanding between the men now came in huge blocks. One word stood for a whole string of ideas and notions that might have taken Rye an hour to describe in Miami. But there was another reason for Rye's silence. Most of the ideas which before were so compelling, so full of nuances, now became unimportant. Under the vast sky, the flat plains stretching endlessly outward, they seemed to have no more significance than the scratching of a sand crab or the scurrying of a beetle. Rye couldn't speak the words, for fear of discovering that they meant nothing.

  The one thing Rye hadn't become used to was the extreme indifference of a land that treated him as it treated everything else, uncaringly. Lee said he could accept the land's judgment as probably a fair one, but everything in Rye rebelled against it as dangerous and inhuman. If it were true, there was no difference between him and the sand crab, and whether he lived or died, cried or laughed, killed or was killed was all the same.

  Later, as Rye crouched by the water and cut open a turtle, he received something of an answer to his unspoken thoughts. As he held the bloody mass of entrails in his hand its warmth astounded him. He felt a flutter in his palm, and when he opened his hand, he found among the gray gravel and slime a perfect little heart. It was still beating. He watched it with wonder, then dipped his hand into the water and let it wash away.

  Rye saw his reflection in the calm surface and moved closer to it, dumbfounded. His pretty-boy face was ravaged and torn, his cheekbones stuck out like two ledges, and his chin was sharper, more defiant. His skin was the dark brown of mahogany, chiseled with so many deep wrinkles that it looked like dried mud. If it weren't for his light blue eyes, it could have been the face of a savage.

  Rye wasn't sure whether to cry or to laugh. He had aged at least ten years in the past two weeks, yet he found it funny. He leaned closer, searching the face of the primitive who stared back at him for traces of Rye Whitman, Chairman of the Board of Whitman Industries, member of the Elks, the Rotary, the Masons, the White Oaks Country Club, friend of the Museum of Modern Art, the Symphony, the Boy Scouts of America, the Board of Realtors, large contributor to the campaigns of the Democrats, the Repu
blicans, and even the Socialists, just in case, backer of Little League baseball, Junior Football, the City of Hope, Muscular Dystrophy, the United Fund, the Red Cross, and various other institutions.

  He laughed when he thought about the other Rye Whitman; he felt no connection to him at all.

  Lee walked over to Rye, surprised by the laughter, but when he looked down into the water, he too discovered a savage. His tall, lean body had taken on substance and muscle; there was something almost animal-like about his movements. His face was so burned and weathered that he too looked ten years older. His curly hair stood out from his head in huge, matted ringlets, and his beard had grown long enough for him to see that it was red. Perhaps it was the crow's-feet that were etched into his skin, or his deep tan, but his eyes seemed softer than before, and the hook of his nose less sharp and cruel.

  They stared at themselves in wonder for several minutes, each man sensing that the sun and the sawgrass which had torn the clothes from his body had stripped away everything else, too, leaving only the essence. Both of them felt that, no matter what else happened, they would never be again what they were before.

  Lee was still asleep when Rye awakened early the next morning. It took Rye a long time to move. His belly ached terribly, as if a burning acid were eating up his insides. The occasional frog or fish that he found only accentuated the empty ache in his stomach. He knew he'd be better off if he didn't eat at all. If he completely starved himself, as Lee was able to do, eventually the hunger would subside.

  He was losing strength quickly; every movement took more and more effort. He was sleeping better than he ever had before, yet when he awakened he felt more drained than when he had lain down. This morning, just standing up seemed to be a momentous task. He wished he could just lie where he was and give in to the fatigue, the hunger, the desolation which drained him of everything but his one burning purpose.

  Still he pulled himself from the ground and stared out into the flat, featureless land, looking for a bent blade of grass, listening for the slightest movement, something that would tell him that the alligator was still there.

  For days he had tried to understand why this fight meant so much to him; now he no longer cared. Understanding the reasons behind things didn't seem nearly as important as before. He had to get the alligator; that was all he knew, that was all he cared to know. Nothing had relevance for him except the alligator, not even the land, not even the gnawing hunger.

  As he dragged his weakened body to the water's edge, he knew he wouldn't be able to make it beyond another day, two at the most. Lee was young enough to take the deprivation and the hardship, but Rye was old, much older than he had ever before realized. In the city, he'd been able to keep the truth from himself, but out here, there were no lies. He was old. and this land was making him older, probably even killing him. Yes, he decided, if the land continued as it was, he would die in a few more days.

  Rye dipped his hand into the brown water and scooped it to his mouth, allowing the algae to slip down his throat as at least some kind of nourishment. Suddenly Rye was surprised by sound. When he looked up, he saw a heron swooping into the water. It emerged with the flashing silver of a fish. He watched greedily; he hadn't seen a heron in three days, and the sight of another life was stirringly beautiful. Near his feet he discovered several grasshoppers, and in the next moment two dragonflies sped past him, copulating on the wing, linked together in their insect passion. Straining his eyes, he thought he could make out a break in the flatness at the edge of the horizon.

  Rye was stunned. The possibility of a tree astounded him; the thought of diversity, differentiation, noise, color, food, shade, and sharing the earth with other living creatures delighted and baffled him. The notion of marsh rats, gator bugs, loony birds, water moccasins, custard apple, cypresses, angel-hair moss, pond lilies, poison ivy, morning glories, and mangroves overwhelmed him. He ran to wake Lee with the news.

  By midday, the world was once again green. Height, depth, shape, and definition returned. The men began to see animals again. The mosquitoes were among the first to return, and even their bite seemed a blessing. Scrub began to appear, then an occasional fragile tree, and finally tall trees with sweeping branches, tunneling over their heads, splashing shade across the face of the earth.

  Lee stopped to make a trap, and was rewarded with two otters. Unable to wait until it cooled, they burned their fingers on the greasy flesh. Their stomachs, unused to such bounty, ached, but still they ate more, washing it down with handfuls of water that was cooled from the shade. At last their stomachs were so distended that all they could do was fall back on the soft earth, close their eyes, and allow blankness to take them over. They drifted between sleep and wakefulness for several hours, never certain which side they were on, and not particularly caring.

  At three o'clock, Lee had slept himself out. Propping himself on his elbow, he gazed out at the swamps, feeling more contented than he'd ever felt in his whole life. When Lee noticed something bright red in the trees about fifty yards away, he was surprised. Red wasn't a usual color in the swamps. He got up to investigate.

  Even as he came close enough to distinguish what it was, it didn't bring him closer to understanding. Above him, tilting almost jauntily from one of the upper branches of a tree, was a bright red turban with ostrich feathers, and a calico vest. It was Osceola's hat—of that Lee was sure. There wasn't another like it anywhere in the swamps. He picked up a rock, and was about to try to knock it down when he saw what hung below. Pinned to one of the lower branches, almost hidden by the leaves, was the body of a man, fluttering in the wind like a scarecrow.

  Lee moved closer. The body was pale and water-bloated; the blood-drained face glistened blue-white like mother-of-pearl. Millions of ants crawled across the face, busying themselves on the lips and eyeballs, touring the ears, taking home minute pieces of flesh to be stored away for future meals. The man's clothes fell in shreds from his stiffened body; a huge hunk of flesh had been torn from his side, exposing bones, arteries, and veins to the hungry multitudes. Pus oozed from the gaping wound, falling to the water in heavy droplets.

  The body must have been hanging like that for several days, but the face was clearly recognizable. It was Aaron.

  Lee felt the ground slipping from under him. He didn't know if he was screaming, but it felt as if he were. It was impossible, of course: Aaron was back in Everglades City, most probably drunk, undoubtedly trying to cadge some money to gamble away on the horses or cards. Lee tried to remember if he'd seen him the day he left. It didn't matter. There was no possible explanation for his being here, or rather there could only be one, and that was impossible. Aaron was a drunk and a coward, but at least he had enough sense to know it. It was a coincidence that this man resembled Aaron, perhaps even a hallucination. He moved closer to the body, and was about to touch it when he felt Rye's hand on his shoulder.

  "Oh, Jesus," murmured Rye. "Oh, Jesus God." He put his arm around Lee.

  "The fool," Lee said with a lifetime of bitterness in his voice. "What made him think he could come out here after the gator."

  "You think you're the only one who's got that right?" asked Rye. "A lot of us came out here tryin' to prove one thing or another. It's the ones who stayed back who were the fools." Rye tried to keep his eyes away from the blue-white skin and the ants. "At least he tried," he said.

  "And look what tryin' got him."

  "It got him this far and that's got to count for somethin'. Boone, you're one of the most unforgiving men I ever met; you got your standards up so high, ain't no one who can meet their mark, includin' yourself. Let me show you somethin'." Rye held Lee firmly by the shoulder; he could feel him shivering under his grip. "Squint up your eyes and look at him," he said.

  Lee pulled away. "Have you gone crazy?"

  "Yeah," answered Rye, "haven't you noticed? But do it anyway. See, when you squint up your eyes and look at him just right, he almost looks like one of them Indian totems."


  Rye was humoring him, and Lee felt more fond of him for doing that. Rye took Lee's chin and guided his face up to Aaron. With a shock, Lee realized there was something to what Rye was saying. Skewered by the tree limb, surrounded by the green foliage, Aaron didn't look like a shrunken little man, but like a statue carved out of wood. There was a dignity, almost a magnificence about him, a stature in death that he never was able to achieve in life. For the first time, Lee could believe he was a descendant of Osceola. Maybe the fact that he'd come this far did count for something; maybe he did deserve Lee's respect. Lee continued to look at Aaron for a few minutes, then turned to leave.

  Rye was surprised. "Aren't ya gonna bury him?" he asked.

  Lee shook his head. He knew that if he took him down from the tree, he'd just be Aaron again. To leave him as he was would be something Lee could do for him; it would be an act of respect.

  Rye and Lee slowly walked away. Neither of them said a word for several minutes, each knowing the question in the other's mind, each terrified of the answer.

  Finally Rye gave it words. "He's back, isn't he?" he asked.

  "What else could've done that?" answered Lee.

  Chapter 13

  That night, lying on their sleeping platform, the pale moonlight making leafy patterns on their faces, Rye and Lee stared out at the black night, each encased in his own thoughts. A tremor of nervous energy passed through Rye; every muscle was alert, on edge, prepared for flight. Trying to repress it was impossible, so he slipped off the leafy bed quietly, hoping not to disturb Lee.

  Lee watched as Rye walked over to the shoreline and gazed out at the moonlit water. Lit red by the glow of the dwindling campfire, with the night owls shrieking like harpies and the plaintive cry of an occasional bird all around him, Lee saw Rye more clearly than ever before. The wild craving was in his eyes; there was a power imprisoned in his body that, turned inward, had become frantic. He looked more like a caged beast than a man. Lee watched Rye as he paced back and forth along the shore, his eyes riveted to the water with an incredible intensity. He knew that fear of failure was heavy on Rye; for all his talk about Aaron getting so far, the thought of not succeeding was plaguing him, driving him beyond what his aging body could endure, and pushing him into a madness from which he would not return.