by Bill Crider
"How many do you eat?" she said.
"Two, I guess." I didn't want to overdo it.
There was bacon on a white plate by the stove, and in a few minutes she was scraping the scrambled eggs out of the skillet onto the plate as well. Fred and I sat at a big oval table made out of some dark wood, and Mary put the plate in front of me.
"You want some toast?" she said.
"No, thanks," I said. "This is fine."
"How about a little picante sauce for those eggs?"
"That sounds great," I said, and it did. I was beginning to think I might like this job after all.
I spooned some picante onto the eggs and started eating. Mary brought me a glass of milk. I needed it. The picante was a little hotter than I was used to.
Fred sat and watched me eat. When I finished, he said, "Now we need to talk about alligators."
Mary took my plate and rinsed it under the faucet, leaving it to sit in the sink. She wasn't going to stay around for the talk, obviously.
I pushed my chair back from the table. "OK," I said.
"I like gators," he said. "Told you that yesterday. I don't hold much with killin' 'em even if it's legal, but I can understand why the state's opened up the season on 'em again. That's all right with me. I don't--"
"Wait a minute," I said, interrupting. "I don't understand why the season's been opened again. I'm not even sure why it closed."
"Well, it did. Back in '69. Reopened in '84. People were about to kill all the gators off at one time, and by outlawin' all killin' the state gave 'em a chance to come back. It didn't take long. Now there's too many of 'em for some folks. They say they kill dogs and goats and no tellin' what else. Still, you got to have a license to take one, and you got to skin 'em a certain way with a certain kind of a cut, or the hides can't be sold. Legally, anyway. And they just allow a certain number to be killed ever' year. It's all controlled pretty well."
"So whoever killed that gator of yours probably didn't have a license?"
"Hell, son, I wouldn't let 'em on my land even if they did have a license."
"What about the skin?"
"It won't be sold legally. This is a case of poachin', and murder."
"And the game warden doesn't see it that way?"
"Jack Burlingame. It's not that he don't see it that way. It's just that he's lazy. Sorry as owl shit. And prob'ly scared of whoever did it."
"You think he knows?"
"I bet he has an idea or two. I know I do."
That was what I'd been waiting to hear. I had known last night that Fred had some ideas on the subject, and he'd just wanted to wait till morning to let me hear them.
"Well, give me the names, then," I said.
"Zach Holt, for one," he said.
"Who's he?"
"He's an outlaw, that's who he is. He lives down in the river bottoms in an old run-down shack with that wife of his, and Lord knows what it is that he does to get by. Nobody can prove anything on him, but we're nearly all sure he poaches--gators, mostly."
"So if he makes his living that way, why would he insult you by leaving a carcass on your land?"
"We've had a run-in or two," Fred said.
"What does that mean?"
"Means I've seen him in town and given him a piece of my mind, that's what it means. Means I've told him I think he's a low-down skunk that lives off other people's property."
"If you don't like him, you can come right out and tell me," I said. "No need to mince your words."
"What're you talkin' about? I--oh. I get it. You're kiddin' me, right?"
"Maybe a little bit," I said.
"Well, I got to say that when I don't like a fella, especially if I think he's been doing something wrong to me or my friends, I don't mind lettin' him know about it."
"But all you've ever done is tell him. You haven't gotten into any fights or anything?"
"'Course not. I'm too old for gettin' into fights. Now if I was a few years younger . . . . "
"It's just as well that you aren't," I said.
"Prob'ly is. That Zach is big as a bear. He'd prob'ly pull my head right off."
"Who else do you suspect?"
"I don't exactly suspect anybody. I'm just sayin' that these are ideas about who might've done it."
"All right. I understand. What about another idea?"
"Hurley Eckles," he said.
"Is he another poacher?" I said.
"I didn't say Holt was a poacher. I didn't say that."
"You said--"
"I said ever'body was sure he poaches. But we can't prove it."
"OK. I see the difference. What about this Hurley Eckles?"
"He runs a little fillin' station and grocery store down at the Crossroads." Fred made a gesture in the general direction with his right hand. I didn't have any idea where he was pointing, but I could find that out later. "He runs with a bunch of fellas that get into all kinds of meanness. I don't guess they're bad, exactly, but they do things."
"What kinds of things?"
"Things like killin' gators. Not that they've been caught at it, but you know what I mean. Maybe a little rustlin', too."
"Rustling? I thought that went out with Roy Rogers and Gene Autry."
"Well, you were wrong if you thought that. It still goes on all the time. It's just that nobody gets up on a horse and runs the cattle from one range to the next these days. They load 'em in trailers."
"In the movies they always ran them over the rocky ground so no one could follow them," I said. It was a trick that had impressed me when I was a kid, and it must have impressed the writers, too. They all used it.
Fred laughed. "There's not a lot of rocky ground around here to run 'em on, in the first place. But anyway, Hurley and the boys are into stuff like that."
"But nobody's caught them in the act?"
"That's about the size of it."
I didn't like it. Here were Fred's two main suspects, and neither one of them, as far as he knew, had ever really been caught at anything illegal. They were both suspected of doing things, or if suspected was the wrong word, they were rumored to have done things. But exactly what things no one could say for sure.
It sounded as if Hurley Eckles was guilty of running with a bad crowd--if anybody had any evidence against the crowd, which I doubted--and Zach Holt was guilty of living in a run-down shack. As far as I could see, especially considering my own residence of the moment, that wasn't a crime, and it didn't lead naturally to killing alligators.
"You got any more ideas?" I said.
"That's about it," Fred said. "It's one of them two, you can bet on it."
It wasn't anything I'd want to lay my life's savings on, but it was a place to start. That's about all it was.
"Is that carcass still there?" I said. "Where you found it?"
"Yeah. I left it. Just as a reminder."
"Let's go look at it," I said.
~ * ~
The Jeep carried us down into the bottom land again, but to a different area from the one we'd visited last night. I didn't know how much land Fred owned, so I asked him.
"Little over three thousand acres," he said. "Ever' bit of it just as wild as this."
We were passing through a thick stand of trees with just about room for the Jeep to get through them. It was a trail that Fred had obviously used before. Suddenly he braked the Jeep to a halt.
"Look over there," he said.
I looked in the direction he indicated, but I didn't know what to look for and therefore didn't see anything except more trees and deeper shadows.
"Deer," he said.
I saw them then, two does standing absolutely still and watching us from the cool shade of the farther trees.
"I got a lot of deer in here," Fred said. "I don't allow any huntin' of them, either."
"I thought you had to keep them thinned out, keep the herd from getting too big and starving."
He shifted the Jeep into gear and we trundled off. "That might be true in most
cases," he said. "But not here. I plant feed for 'em in the winter, and they got plenty. I don't notice any of 'em dyin' off."
We came out of the trees and into the bright sun, and before us was a marshy lake like the one we'd put the boat into last night. The water was choked with cat-tails and rushes, and hundreds of birds flew up out of them with a loud beating of wings when we drove up. The Jeep's engine must have scared them. It looked like something from an old Tarzan movie, or maybe something from a Louisiana swamp epic.
Fred drove down a very slight incline and then turned right onto the heavy earthen dam that held the water in check. "It's down on the end of the dam," he said.
A few days in the sun and heat hadn't made the carcass very pleasant. I could smell the unforgettable sweetish smell of rot as soon as Fred stopped the Jeep.
Not only was the carcass beginning to rot, it looked as if hunks of it had been torn away by other gators or by something that I didn't even want to know about.
"Back in the old days, over in East Texas, there used to be old boys'd go out into the marshes for months at a time," Fred said. "They'd kill gators and skin 'em and leave the carcasses right there in their camp. I've heard about how the buffalo hunters used to smell, but I bet they didn't have a thing on the gator skinners."
I wouldn't have bet with him. My nose told me that there wasn't much doubt that he was right.
"I don't suppose there were any tracks around here?" I said.
"Not a one. Hadn't rained in about a week, and this old ground gets hard as a rock in that length of time, at least where it drains. Otherwise, it stays sticky as gumbo."
We got out of the Jeep and walked over to the decaying gator. I tried to breathe through my mouth.
"How do you think whoever did this got in here?" I said.
"Just like we did. Drove in. Or, hell, they could've walked."
"Wouldn't they have to pass by your house?"
"Nope. There's plenty of ways in and out of here if you know your way around. I didn't find any cut fences, if that's on your mind, but I don't think that matters, either. They could get keys to the gate locks if they really tried."
I looked out over the marshy water. I didn't see any alligators. "So it could've been anyone at all."
"Sure it could. But I'd lay my money on Zach Holt or Hurley Eckles."
"I guess I'd better talk to them, then," I said, just as the first rifle bullets smacked into the darkening body of the dead gator.
4
A dark cloud of flies spewed up from the rotting body, humming like an amplified dial tone. Fetid meat splattered away from the bones as the bullet smacked into the carcass. The sharp crack of the rifle followed the splatting noise almost immediately, and more birds flew up out of the cat-tails, cawing and squawking.
I didn't blame them. I felt a little like squawking and cawing myself. A piece of the stinking body meat had struck my shirt, and it clung there as I batted at it with my hand, trying to brush the smell of death off me while at the same time running in a low crouch back toward the Jeep.
Fred was a little bit ahead of me, having been standing behind me when the shot was fired. He stopped suddenly when a bullet plowed up the dirt in front of him, but for an old man he was pretty shifty. Almost without hesitation, he turned to his right and plunged down the low-lying dam and into the water below.
I was right behind him all the way. I wasn't thinking of alligators or snakes or anything else that might be in there. I just wanted away from those bullets.
We splashed into the water, our feet releasing bubbles of gas that had been trapped on the bottom by decaying vegetation. The bubbles rose and popped, releasing their chemical-plant odor into the air. I hardly noticed. I was busy falling down and getting my head below the level of the dam, which seemed even lower when you were trying to use it as a barricade against rifle shots.
A couple more bullets whistled by over our heads. I don't suppose that I actually heard them whistling, but it seemed that way. I know for sure that I heard them ripping through the cat-tails behind me.
The water was unpleasantly warm and slimy with algae, and a swarm of gnats hummed in front of my eyes and flew in my face. Rifle bullets didn't bother them.
My clothes were soaked and clinging to my body. I found myself wishing illogically that I had brought my pistol, though I knew that it would be no good at all against a rifle. At least I would be able to shoot back and make noise with it. As it was, all I could do was lie there hoping an alligator didn't bite my ass off.
I turned my head to look at Fred, who was no more comfortable than I was. "I've got a nasty little feeling there's something going on here that you didn't tell me about, Fred," I said.
He opened his mouth to answer, but the rifle cracked twice more. The birds were flying in circles now, making a raucous noise that reminded me of a certain Hitchcock movie. Occasionally something would plop into the water nearby. That’s all I needed, for a bird to shit on me. Thinking that, I began to laugh at myself. Bird shit was a whole hell of a lot better than getting shot or eaten by a gator.
But not by much.
We lay there for what seemed like a long time, not saying anything more. I looked at my black plastic runner's watch, determined that I wasn't going to move for thirty minutes after the last shot. The time passed very slowly, but at least I wasn't shit on. It was close a time or two, but that was all.
The birds were more impatient than I was. After about fifteen minutes, they began to settle back down into the reeds and the rushes, and after twenty or so minutes they were quiet again.
After twenty-five minutes, Fred poked me in the arm with his finger. I looked at him and he pointed beyond and behind me to a group of large green lily pads that lay smoothly on the water. In front of them were the eyes and the snout of a gator.
I decided that thirty minutes was the arbitrary and artificial limit, the twenty-five or twenty-six minutes that had already passed were certainly enough. I got rapidly out of the water and sprinted for the Jeep, sliding to a stop behind it, but there were no more shots.
Fred followed more slowly, and I realized that he wasn't afraid of the gator and had been pointing it out only as a form of silent conversation. That was all right with me, but all the same I felt better out of the water, though I still wasn't especially eager to stick my head up over the top of the Jeep.
So I sat with my back braced against the front wheel and let some of the water from my clothes drip off onto the ground. Sitting out of the water in soaking jeans and a sweatshirt is even more uncomfortable than sitting in the water, but at least there weren't any alligators up there.
Not yet, anyway. I looked over to the lily pads, but the snout was gone.
Fred crawled around me and leaned against the back wheel. "That's more excitement than an old man needs," he said.
"It's more than any man needs," I said. "So let's get back to what I started to say earlier."
"What's that?" Fred said.
"Come on, Fred. Don't give me that senile bit. You know damn well what I mean."
He pulled a hang-dog look. "I guess I do," he said.
"Well, what about it?"
"You may be right."
"May be? Some guy starts shooting real bullets at us, I get rotten alligator meat on my shirt, I spend a half hour in stinking, slimy water waiting for a live gator to eat me, birds shit on me--"
"Didn't no birds shit on you. I was watchin', and didn't no birds shit on you."
"You're right," I said. "I'm sorry. I was getting a little bit carried away, which I sometimes tend to do when people start shooting at me for no reason at all that I know about but which I suspect someone else knows about and should've told me about."
I had to stop to catch my breath. Obviously I was still a little bit carried away. I leaned back against the tire and tried to breathe normally and calmly.
"I don't blame you for bein' upset," Fred said. "It's more to the story than meanness and poachin'. I hoped that's all t
here was to it, and so that's why I told you that."
It was about as close to an apology as I was likely to get from Fred Benton. He was an independent old cuss, and he wasn't used to saying that he was sorry to anyone. Maybe he really had hoped to avoid telling me all that was involved. That was true in a lot of cases. People never want to tell the whole truth until it's absolutely forced on them. Sometimes not even then. Ask Richard Nixon. Ask Ronald Reagan.
"OK," I said. "I understand. But now there's a brand-new ball game going on, and somebody's not playing by the rules. At least not by the polite rules. So maybe you better tell me the whole thing."
"I will," he said. "You don't reckon that whoever took those shots is sneakin' around tryin' to get closer to us, do you?"
I took a quick look to my right and my left and didn't see anything suspicious. Of course I hadn't seen anything before the first shots, either.
"You wouldn't be trying to stall me, would you, Fred?"
"I guess I would. Not on purpose, though."
That was a new one on me, and I said so.
"I mean that I want to tell you, but I don't know how. I don't even know what," he said.
I took a deep breath. "Just try starting at the beginning and working through it to the end."
"I don't know if I can do that," he said. Then he saw the look on my face. "I'm not tryin' to be dumb about it, and that's the truth. Let's put it this way. The dead gator's not the first thing that's happened."
"Not the first," I said. "Well, that's a start. Now tell me what you mean."
"I don't know. I told you that."
The conversation was going nowhere, so I tried to take control of it. "Other things have happened, like the alligator thing, but you don't know why, and you don't know who's doing them. Is that it?"
He shook his head. "That's it. That's it exactly."
I thought things over for a minute. Whoever had been doing that shooting could probably have killed us as easily as not. Thinking back, it seemed that maybe someone was shooting more to scare us than to kill us.
If that was the case, it had worked very well, at least as far as I was concerned.
