Swamp Sister

by Robert Edmond Alter

  Facing him across the log, Jort swung the loop at his snout, but the old bull whipped his head back and shoved his horny body to the right.

  "I'll be damned!" Jort bellowed. He let the rope go and vaulted over the log after the gator.

  Shad started reeling in the line, watching Jort and the gator thrashing through a welter of white and brown water. A Jort arm and leg, a gator paw and end of tail swung out of the water, flashed, and then it all went under again. Instantly Jort's head, soused and wild with water, shoved up and he shouted at Shad. "_The rope!_ Goddam-" And he ducked under again and Shad saw the white-plated belly of the gator glint in the sun as it broke through the surface.

  Sam was having a dancing fit on the bank.

  "The rope, Shad! _Git in there with the rope!_"

  Shad blinked. "Yeah -" he breathed. He heaved himself over the log and sank to his thighs in the churning water. And right then he was in the middle of the damn thing. Something cut his legs out from under him and he crashed, face and shoulder against the log and felt himself slipping down- and couldn't get footing anywhere.

  His brain went all to pieces screaming, "Hell no! Don't let that big son-o-bitch" – and somehow he was on his feet again and a good yard away from the log, and that great armored tail lashed up, and he ducked, and the tail came down like a cannon shot, and then Jort's burly shoulder slammed against his hip, and one of the gator's paws clawed his denims, and that damn Sam yelling, "Jort! Jorty – hold'em, boy! Git in there with the rope, Shad! Ain't you never -"

  When that gator wasn't trying to smash Jort and Shad to mush with his tail, or trying to clamp his jaws on one of them, he was trying to get to the deep water. And the only thing that was stopping him was Jort Camp. He got the bull around the chest, lifted him with an agonized gasp, and threw him over backwards and into the shallows. The gator flipped right side up while in midair, saw Shad slipping and falling in the water and slammed his jaws at him.

  Jort went after the gator in a wild piledive, landed fullbodied on its back and wrapped himself around and hung on. "_The rope!_ Goddam you, Shad! _Git his goddam snout with the rope!_"

  The gator rolled, its tail spanking along the broken surface. Shad stepped back quickly, pawed water from his face, and looked down at the hopeless tangle of rope in his hands.

  "Sam!" he shouted. "For God's sake _come help us!_ I don't know what to do with hit -"

  "God a jaybirds, Shad! His snout! _His snout_, boy!"

  "Come in here and help me, you son-o-bitch! Don't just stand there like a goddam fool! I'm all end over rope!"

  Sam made a helplessly frustrated gesture with his right hand, his face all a-squint and mouth-twitching, and came wading into the pool, holding the 12-gauge high.

  "Git the loop shook out there – the loop -" Sam wagged his hand in the air. "Wait'll Jorty swings the snout up again – Jort! _Jorty! Look out, man!_ You near to damn put my leg in his mouth!"

  Shad step-sloshed backwards in the water hurriedly, getting himself a pace behind the frantically screeching Sam. He looked down at the man-and-gator battle. Jort had a tiger by the tail – Shad winced and rammed a flat hand blow into Sam's narrow back. The woods colt shot into an all arms and legs bellyflop, dragging a scream of terror after him. Shad turned and went high-stepping it for shore. When he looked back he saw pieces of Jort, gator and Sam all hurlyburly in the pool.

  He ran all the way to where the skiffs were beached, heaved Jort's gator boat free of the mud and shoved it out into the creek, then got his own off the bank and piled over the bow. He stobbed out of the cane and pickereiweed, prodding Jort's skiff with the pole now and then to keep it ahead of him until he had it in mainstream. There a sluggish current gave it a quarter-turn and started herding it down the creek.

  Shad dropped on the thwart, breathing fast and thick, and grinned after the big skiff.

  Something was coming God-awful fast through the palmettos and laurel bays. He looked back and saw a great chunk of glistening flesh ploughing the brush. For just a moment – because of the muscular bare chest, the swinging thigh-thick arms, the wild-on-end hair, and the eyes that should have belonged to someone in a madhouse – Shad thought he was seeing vividly Holly's last minutes in the swamp; and something, maybe only the sense of a cold loss, maybe the apprehension of premonition, touched him and he shivered.

  Jort came through the last of the palmettos and planted himself spread-legged in the mud. He wiped at his face and stared out at Shad. Then both of them heard Sam's wild passage through the marsh. He was making more noise than a bull moose going to a cow.

  Jort's head snapped around and he bellowed at Sam. "Go find that goddam scatter-gun!"

  "But – but, Jorty, _it's underwater_."

  "Good God, I _know hit's underwater!_ Git it!"

  Jort looked back at Shad, then at his skiff that was drifting lackadaisically dowstream.

  Shad grinned. "I wouldn't count much on using that shotgun, Jort," he called, "Them shells'll be swoll up like a dead doe's bladder."

  Jort nodded. He was rubbing his right fist in his left palm.

  "Reckon you're right Shad. Reckon you put it over'n me this time."

  Shad had to laugh. "Say, Jort, did you git a chance to see old Sam when I shoved him right down the gator's mouth? He looked about as happy as man being flung down a privy."

  Jort chuckled, his great naked belly jerking up and down. "That Sam," he said appreciatively.

  Shad looked over his shoulder. "Reckon you'n Sam will have some foot rambling to do afore you come up with your skiff. Mind the cottonmouths now."

  Jort nodded again. "I'll keep'em in mind."

  "See you," Shad called.

  17

  "Yeah," Jort murmured. He watched Shad stob his skiff on round a bend and start north on the main artery of Lost Yank. Then he was gone and Jort looked down at his hands. "Yeah – I'll see you."

  He didn't do anything for five minutes. He stood there in the warm mud and stared at the water until Sam came slogging back with the 12-gauge. Sam dropped right where he stopped. He felt like yesterday's newspaper left out in the rain. He gasped and moaned a little and looked around at the cane and palmettos.

  "What we goan do now, Jorty?"

  Jort blinked and looked down at him. "Do? We got us a lot a things to do. Got my skiff to go git first off."

  Sam's alarm perked up. "Where is hit? Did that Shad go and -"

  "Shet up. Hit won't go far. They's no end a log litter below here. Mebbe we might have to spend the night out here but that's all."

  "Well, I ain't taking me back in no slough water again, Jorty," Sam said with conviction. "I tell you that right out." He stalled for a moment, his eyes slipping sideways to a hurrah blossom, but not really seeing it. "Did you see that gator's mouth, Jorty?" he whispered. "Did you see them stobpole teeth?"

  Jort's pouchy hips jerked sardonically. "I shore God must a. Eight times I had my head down his throat. And that Shad said he was wore out. Some wore out."

  "Yeah," Sam muttered. Then he trembled. "Why did you have to go to mention Dorry in front of Shad?"

  "It don't matter. He don't know nothing about her."

  "Well, I don't like talking about her is what. I keep hearing the noise that sinkhole made when we dropped -" His voice shut off and he trembled again.

  Jort grunted and said, "Never mind about that now. If we cain't find that skiff, then we got to find us an islet. I ain't fixing to spend the night in no marsh."

  Sam nodded and sighed. "Guess we just ain't never goan see that Money Plane now."

  "You gone coo-coo?" Jort wanted to know. "We just made our last mistake when we went to stop Shad down at Breakneck. From now on we got us a plank and we're going to be God-busy nailing hit down. First off we're goan find my skiff; then we'll hustle back to Sutt's Landing and git us some more shotgun shells and pick up Shad's carbine from my place, and stock up the skiff with some eats."

  Sam cocked his head curiously. "Why we doing all that,
Jorty?"

  Jort looked exasperated. "Why? Well, I'll tell you why. Because Shad is right now on his way to pick up his money, is why. And when he gits hit, he's going to come lam-tailing down to the Landing to git Dorry Mears – _he thinks_.

  "Only you'n me is going to be waiting in Breakneck fer him, Sam. And this time they ain't going to be no hanky pankying er passing the time a day with Mr. Shadrack Hark. We goan blow holes in him, Sam. And we goan take care of him like we done with that girl. And then you'n me is goan take off to some cee-ment city with our cash and see how do other folks live."

  Sam's head nodded slowly, absently.

  "Yeah," he murmured. "Yeah. That's what we goan do."

  Jort put his fist in his palm and rubbed it. He looked around at the wild splendor of unrestrained and endless growth.

  "Hell of a place, ain't it?" he commented matter-of-factly.

  In the stillness of swamp hush Shad went up Lost Yank until he saw an opening on his starboard. The breach was between two pine islands and it was a water-lettuce prairie. He grunted with satisfaction. It was what he wanted – a cut-through to the Money Plane creek. He stobbed the skiff to the edge of the thick green carpet and started in. Within twenty feet he knew it wasn't going to work.

  He shipped his pole and went over the side. The water and lettuce rushed up to his lower chest and stopped. He grabbed the painter and started hauling.

  An hour later he was still hauling.

  By six in the evening he had crossed three creeks, had climbed back into the skiff and explored each one of them for a mile down, looking for his markers. He hadn't found anything he could say he recognized. Each time he would return to the broad belt of water lettuce and start hauling the skiff east.

  "Well," he said to himself, "I'll find it in a minute here."

  But the sound of his voice was incongruous with the vast stillness and he looked up with a start. The sun was sitting on top of the trees like a red hot disk. He knew he wasn't going any farther that day.

  He hauled the skiff, bow first, onto a pine island and made a fire on the beach with lightwood. He was Godawful hungry but his stomach had to wait until he'd gathered enough firewood to see him through the night. He wasn't about to go looking for wood in the dark. It was a warm, miasmic night and the cottonmouths would be out frog hunting.

  He made a broad circle around the crown of the island, gathering lightwood, and then took a swing along the shore on his way back. It was there in the muck that he saw the water-fified depression that looked like a track.

  It was-a timber wolf's track. He made a sharp little sound between his teeth and shook his head.

  He hurried back to his camp. And after that he didn't make a move without first picking up the old Springfield.

  The night folded in like a navy-blue blanket being drawn over the chin of a weary, golden-whiskered old man, and an osprey's shrill cry sent spine-tingling echoes against faroff cypresses. Shad finished his beans and counted his taior-mades. Six left. He went tsk with his teeth and wished he'd brought his makings along. But he rolled up in his blanket and treated himself to a smoke anyhow. What the hell; tomorrow morning he'd find the Money Plane, and that evening he'd be a back at Sutt's Landing. Yeah.

  He dropped fast into deep sleep and foundered there for a few hours, and then slowly started drifting upwards again and into the flickering imagery of dreams -.

  The swamp was smoking. A sort of ghastly whitish jelly had crept in covering everything like a sickening spread of grave clothes. It was like a disease, as if leprosy were secretly digesting the mud and water underneath. He hated to put his foot down in it, and yet had to, or else how could he go on. And he had to go on – but he didn't know why.

  When his first foot went down it disappeared as though swallowed by mush, and it felt like that too, and he wanted to draw back but couldn't – could only go forward. He waded.

  If there was a sky it was a dull lead grey, but it wasn't like a sky; it was the dome of an endless room. And then he realized he was lost in a nether land. There was no beginning, no end, only a profound sense of emptiness.

  Yet there was no end to the swamp. As he waded he sensed the passing of the years, and when he looked down at his rifle – it was only a slender bar of scaling rust, the stock half-rotted away and busy with wood-worms. He tried to throw it down, but it wouldn't throw. Then he saw his rust-scaling hand. It had solidified to the gun.

  He was in the very center of a great shallow-water prairie. The grey walls of the nether room were so far off it would take him eternity to reach them. And he asked, "Why am I here? What has brought me to this place?" Then a hummock rose out of the smoke like a monstrous black bear, and he waded to it.

  Something was sprawled spread-eagle on the black tattered crown of the hummock. He struggled up to it with great revulsion at every step and looked. It was the pulpy ash of a man's bones, except for the skull. The skull still wore its skin and hair in death. He looked at the dead face of his brother, and Holly stared back at him with stark blank eyes.

  Shad sat straight up. He thought he'd screamed – but it was a wildcat sharing the island with him. He started to reach for the Springfield, and then noticed his fire was dwindling to embers. He heaped on more wood, got things going merrily again and felt a little better.

  He curled up in the blanket again and thought about having another cigarette. But he decided to save it. Tomorrow this would all be over with, he thought. He closed his eyes and wondered what he was supposed to make of the dream he'd had of Holly. A warning?

  In the morning the bull gators down the line began slaughtering the morning hush with a ferocious earthtrembling vigour. Shad kicked out of his blanket and stiffly stood up. He didn't do anything for a full minute but rub at the back of his neck, stirring up his circulation. His head felt as though it were riding sidesaddle to his body.

  He ate some jerky and biscuit, found a little guzzle that wasn't too silty and had a drink, and then made some coffee and smoked a tailor-made with it. He was in the skiff and on his way before six-thirty

  The swamp was very gaudy, spread-out, dressed in vivid tatters of leaves, in a great hush of green and turquoise, where the cabbage palms mutely met the sky in a ragged line of enchanted silence.

  Too silent. It gave him the willies, somehow.

  He came to another cross creek and turned south to search the east bank for blazings, and after a mile of it, leaned on the pole and said, "Well, fer God sake. What the hell's going on here?"

  But standing there mumbling wasn't getting any wood chopped. He stobbed back to the channel.

  And it went on like that. Brooks, creeks, guzzles, leading into prairies, savannas, lakes, back to the channel -.

  And the goddam no-see-'ems zig-zagging about his head, in the corners of his eyes, up nostrils, zip into his mouth; and in the palm bogs there wasn't any air, only a thick heavy substitute of rank odour; and a gator in the water hissed at him instead of running when he jabbed him with the pole; and limpkins, bitterns, and ibises, and largemouthed bass, gars, and fat pan fish, and monster cottonmouths, timber rattlers, and coachwhippers, and titi and paintbrushes and hurrah blossoms and catclaws and log litter – and by two in the afternoon he'd plumb had it.

  He snatched the pole inboard and set it athwart, placed his fists akimbo and glared at the swamp. "You goddam bitch, you!" he shouted. And the cry ran somewhere, maybe across the flat prairie on his starboard, and echoed faintly – _Bitch you_.

  Shad sat down and rubbed the back of his neck. He'd been stubbornly evading the truth for the past hour, but now the fight had gone out of him and he felt like an old hat someone had kicked to the side of the road. So faced up to it and said it right out.

  "I've pure-out lost myself. That's what I've gone and done."

  Then he sighed heavily, sat up and said, "Goddam," and reached for the pole. There was only one thing to do and that was to try to find his way back to Breakneck, pick up his markers and start all over again. And he
hated the thought of it. Not only because of the time it was going to cost, but because he felt certain that Jort and Sam would be hanging around there waiting.

  He didn't pay any attention to the gator at first. It was fifty feet off with just its eyes and tip of snout showing above the water, and one gator more-or-less didn't mean much to him. Besides, he was busy right then ramming the skiff over and through a dense bed of golden-heart. The gator's corrugated back broke the surface and it opened its jaws and hissed.

  He noted that the gator had been in some kind of brawl. One of its starboard scuts was missing and he could see the gleaming stratum of reddish-black scar tissue. But he didn't think anything of it.

  The gator sank hurriedly as the skiff cleared the lily bed and bow came at him. Shad gave a shove ahead and the bow went tchuunk!, upset his equilibrium and reared upward crazily.

  Shad swung around, clutching the stobpole giddily, as the skiff settled with a splamp! He thought it was a submerged log, until he saw the gator scurrying away underwater. The slough was so-so clear and he could see the magnified back and the laterally-compressed tail hitching. Then the gator entered that realm of the creek where the sky mirrored itself on the surface. Shad couldn't see him after that.

  What was wrong with that fool gator? He'd never seen one act that way before. "What's he think I got in here – a goddam dog?"

  He eased the pole from the water, letting the skiff drift. He crouched and felt for the Springfield. If the big scutbusted bastard thought he was going to have a Shad dinner, then he had another think coming.

  He came up, slipping off the safety. But the rifle was only half up when the gator made a mad rush through the reed for the deep water. Shad swung the gun into position, panning fast in the general direction of blurred moving colour, and jerked – ca-blam! and saw the reed whip and the water spurt silver, and knew it was a clean miss, and saw the gator's thick tail slash across the water.

  The gun crash caromed off the slough, rolled into the sharp protests of the bitterns and squawk hurons and echoed somewhere in the south woods. After that there was the quick _flut -a-fl utter_ of many wings.