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The Python and
the Alligator By Tom Meek (2005) |
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One day when mowing the lawn in the hot Florida
sun, Judd Edwards Bennet found a small snake thrashing about by the base of a
palm tree. He shut off the mower and watched as the copper and black marbled
coil rose and fell in angry knots. The snake seemed unaware, or unconcerned
by the boy’s presence. Then, as he moved closer, Judd noticed the fleshy,
bright red stub where the tail had been lopped off. Fueled
by a sense of responsibility, he rushed off to the tool shed to fetch a
bucket big enough to contain the foot long reptile. When he returned,
Alberto, the next-door neighbor’s cat, was pawing at the distressed snake.
Judd disliked the feline and took no guilt in the solid thud the pebble
produced as it struck the cat’s abdomen. Alfonso bounded across the half cut
lawn and Judd set about to the task of trying to coax the snake into the
bucket. Not wanting to make direct contact with the creature, he was
apprehensive in his efforts. In the end it was his Marlin’s baseball cap that
served perfectly as a scoop. The snake slithered around the metal void
frantically, rearing and flicking its tongue at the never-ending wall with
each turn. Touched by the snake’s
sense of loneliness and dislocation, Judd sprinkling in some moist grass
clippings from the mower’s hopper, hoping it would bring comfort and
familiarity to the creature. As he placed the cap back on his head, he
noticed a pungent, musty smell. He assumed it was a result of the cap’s
contact with the snake’s oily skin and wondered if such a sheen was a normal
occurrence or a secretion released only in times of trauma. “Take it
down to the swamp and be done with it,” his mother said when he
showed her. “But I
hurt it Ma.” “I don’t
care, for all we know it’s poisonous.” Judd
did not know how to respond. He had seen a lot of snakes, mostly small grass
or garter snakes. He even knew what a cottonmouth looked like, but had never
seen a snake like this before. It was exotic and would surly be a better
after school draw than his mother’s billow of prematurely white of hair,
which was Green Glades’s third most infamous oddity behind Dick Carson’s peg
leg and Ali, the obnoxious spider money who screeched at customers down at
the Big H bodega. No one from
school ever really came out to Green Glades anyway. There was no need. All
the residents were either elderly or if they were of child rearing age, they
were childless. It was summer break and as it had always been since the
Bennets moved to Green Glades, when Judd was eleven, he spent it on his own,
doing chores, exploring the periphery of the sprawling development and
wondering if his father would come home from work or call during super to
tell them he was staying overnight at the park. “It can’t
get out,” Judd finally protested. “It could live in the tool
shed until it gets better.” “You put
a lid on that thing and well see when your father gets home.” The
Bennets were one of the few families who bought into Green Glades before the
massive landfill project began. Mr. Bennet took one look at the glass encased
model of adobe roofed ranches and meticulous green lawns and declared it his
dream home. He had just landed his dream job as the assistant clubhouse
operations manager for the Florida Marlins and was anxious to get on with his
life. A car accident had ruined
his promising career as a baseball prospect and for thirteen years he worked
part time in Major League Baseball’s spring training ballparks while managing
a gas station during the off-season. Then lightening struck when Major League
Baseball awarded Florida two expansion teams. Judd
didn’t much care for baseball or sports for that matter and this was a source
of discontent for his father and made him an outsider at school where
succeeding in sport was a far greater measure of one’s prowess than academic
standing. Judd’s father stopped with autographed baseball mitts and
Louisville sluggers for Christmas and birthday and tried to be supportive of
his son’s peculiar interests in wildlife and car engines. When he got home
that evening, he went against his wife’s wishes and agreed to let his son
keep the snake. “You’re
going to need to get it some proper housing and figure out what to feed it,” he
said over a meal of chicken steak and broccoli, which he hated. “I think
Jorge is a baby Burmese python,” Judd said excitedly. “I looked it up on the web.” “You’ve
named it already?” his mother asked. “Yeah,
he’s an immigrant, so I gave him an immigrant name.” “You
should ask Dick Carson about the thing,” his father said, “he’s
seen it all around here. Besides he’s probably lonely out there and could use
a visit.” “Do you
think that’s right?” Mrs. Bennet asked. “Sure
why not?” “Well,
because of his leg and his dog.” “That’s
all ancient history. What’s a snake got to do with his leg he lost a decade
ago?” “They’re
both evil things.” “You
think too much about these things, it’s just nature.” The
next morning Mrs. Bennet drove Judd to PetCo to get a tank, a screen and a
lamp. The assistant at the store showed Judd a similar snake and confirmed
that what Judd had captured was indeed a Burmese python and that he would
have to feed it live or freshly killed mice, and warned that when he fed the
animal to not be within reach of it. “They
kill by constriction,” the assistant said, a point Judd already knew, “and
when they acquire prey or start to feed, they become very unpredictable. They’re
normally quite docile, but where they’re hungry, watch out!” The
assistant gave Judd and his mother a demonstration, feeding a boa, which he
said was similar to the python, but that the python would grow to be much
bigger. Judd watched transfixed as the reptile wrapped around a dead rodent
and unhinged its jaws. Judd’s
mother stood there aghast; hand on thorax and mouth open sucking for air. “Do you
really want to do this?” she stammered. Judd
didn’t answer. “How
could such a creature from across the world end up on our lawn?” she
wondered to no one. “Got out
of a cage,” the store assistant replied, “ or
someone dumped it, who knows. I doubt they’re breeding out there.” Later
that night, Judd stabbed one of the mice in the smaller tank with an ice pick
and used tongs to place it in Jorge’s tank. He had read that pythons liked to
feed at night and since he was about to eat super, figured that the latest
member of the Bennet family should eat too. He watched as the snake dropped
down from the cross of hard wood branches he had placed in the tank and
circled its entire body around the tuft of brown fur. Judd couldn’t see the snake’s
head or the mouse until the coil became so tight that the mouse’s head, with
its mouth agape as if yawning or showing of its impressive gnawing equipment,
slowly protruded up through the coil’s center. Then, the snake’s head came
over the top, and like the boa at PetCo, its mouth unhinged to an
unfathomable width and started to slowly suck the mouse up and into its thin
body. Eventually the rodent’s mass disappeared, evident only as a protruding
bulge worked slowly ever closer to the serpent’s digestive unit. The whole
time Judd didn’t blink, his face close enough to the glass so that he could
see the fog from his breath spread across the glass and then disappear. The
snake too seemed to be watching Judd, its black empty eyes drinking in the
surroundings, occasionally sealing with a cloudy translucent covering as
another contraction pulled the mouse deeper. From
the house Judd could hear his mother calling. He rose and was about to turn
off the overhead light when he heard a faint whisper. “Thank you,” it
said. Judd
froze, his hand still on the switch. “Thank
you,”
came another low raspy hiss that he thought he mistook for the rustle of the
wind in the palms outside. Another
call came from the house. Judd, shook his head, turned off the light and
headed in for dinner. Judd
earned a small income mowing his parent’s lawn and the Williams’s lawn,
safely next door, so his mother didn’t have to fret about him riding the
mower in the street that had hardly any traffic anyway. He also ran
deliveries on his bike from the Big H bodega to Dick Carson. Dick Carson had
lived in a hut out in the everglades and laid claim to the land that would
later become Green Glades. He was well know to the community as an
outdoorsman, an eccentric and a loner who used to ride a swamp boat or a
bouncy wheeled ATV back to civilization for supplies with his Australian
sheep dog Max, always at his side. How he lost his leg has never been
confirmed. Some say it was a nasty alligator that pulled his dog from the
boat and then took his leg when he jumped in after it. Another version said
it was a bull shark that had muscled its way up brackish waters and surprised
him as he was checking his catfish traps. Whenever asked about it Carson
would tap his leg with his walking stick, flash a wide-eyed grin and tell his
inquisitor it was his wife who took it and every penny he had. That’s why he
sold the soggy islet to a developer and being a big baseball fan, only
interacted with Green Glades’s first official residents. Other than that he
kept to himself and the flies that buzzed around his shack out on the muddy
point that had no paved access or address on Mapquest. At
the Big H, Ali the monkey was wearing a small red fez with a tassel. Hadi,
the storeowner, thought it made the animal look more authentic and drew
customers. The monkey occupied its time flying around the cage on the
storefront porch, nattering at customers, hoping his antic would inspire a
knickknack from something purchased inside. “Young
Bennet,” Hadi said to Judd as he picked up Dick Carson’s
satchel, “your father tells me you have found a rare snake,
a very special kind of snake, is this so?” “It’s a
python, “ Judd replied, never caring to engage Hadi in
prolonged conversation because he didn’t trust his whimsical attitude or
strange manner of speaking. When
Judd left the store Ali was shrieking, but not holding his hands through the
cage for a hand out as Judd expected, but grabbing at the red protrusion
between his legs. Before Judd could get an understanding as to what Ali was
doing, a man in a John Deere cap who had been filling up his pickup at the
pumps stepped on to the porch and remarked, “That’s just fucking uncivil,” and
spat a wad of chewing tobacco in the simian’s face. There
was no answer at Dick Carson’s when Judd knocked on the door. The flies were
thick and he didn’t want to linger, so as he always did, he placed the
satchel in the trunk next to the old rocking chair on the ramshackle porch
and headed back down the mud rut, to the settled end of Green Glades. In
the tank, Judd could not find Jorge. He opened the lid and with paint stirrer
and poked around in the loose rock and leaves. As he leaned in further he
felt an unfamiliar presence gliding across his arm. He jumped back, dropping
the screen lid and the stirrer. The snake had been nestled up in the corner
of the tank on the crisscross of branches and was now making its way out.
Judd seized the lid from the floor and quickly flipped the snake back into
its artificial environment. “You don’t
have to fear,” the snake hissed. “Are you
talking to me?” Judd asked, in disbelief that he was actually
answering. “Yes,
you have nothing to fear. I am your brother and you are my keeper.” “You can
talk?” The
snake said nothing. “Say
something else,” Judd implored. The
snake said nothing else and slid under the leaves and rocks and out of sight. Jorge
grew fast. By the time school started the snake was five feet long. Judd
would let the snake coil around his neck and ride his bike down to the Big H
and show it off. Hadi enjoyed this as it bolstered business, but Ali the
monkey went berserk every time he saw Jorge. One time the simian grabbed the
serpent’s scarred tail and bit it. It took all of Judd’s strength to restrain
the hissing reptile and an elderly resident of Green Glades fainted during
the fracas and broke her hip. Calls were made to the Bennets and Judd was
barred from bringing the snake to the Big H anymore. His mother was already
incensed about the creature and wanted it destroyed. His father’s support too
was waning after finding the reptile one morning curled up in bed next to his
son. The only one who seemed to understand Judd’s affection for the snake was
Dick Carson. “At
least the snake’s honest,” Carson said as he drew up a plan for a lean-to to
be built along side the tool shed, “can’t say that about most people these days.” Judd
now feed Jorge chickens live, but the snake had not spoken too him since that
day when it proclaimed itself his brother. When he came home after school and
his mother was out shopping, he would load Jorge into the basket of his bike
and ride off down to Dick Carson’s. There they would sit on the porch and
talk about the everglades as they were before retires and Cubans dirtied the
landscape and occasionally the snake would slither off and return with a
bulge in its midsection. A
strange thing too started to happen as the man with one leg, the boy and the
serpent sat on the porch those days. Each time they gathered, there were less
flies and a greater number of birds flocking to the enclave surrounded by
swampy mud. Specific birds too. On the roof of the shack roosted large turkey
vultures, on the rusted out pickup, up on cinderblocks, crows, while high up
in the palms, fluttered nervous doves.
Jorge would often slither up a post of the porch and angle his head
from cadre to the next as if he was talking or listening to one collective
group and then the next. “If only
they could talk,” Carson joked as he light up a cigar, “they’d
probably have something a lot more intelligent to say than those yahoos in
Washington or New York. All they care about is oil and money, how corrupt.
Most of them don’t even believe in God any more. It’s all about the all
mighty dollar. The day retribution comes, there’s going to be a lot of
surprised people up in those fancy penthouses and high rises. I’m telling
you, it’s going to be the people with faith and fiber that are going to save
this world.” One
day Judd dropped a chicken into the lean-to cage, but Jorge did not drop from
his perch and assault the fowl as he normally did. Judd stood there puzzled. “What’s
the matter Jorge, not hungry?” “Bring
me the cat,” the serpent hissed. “The
cat?” “The
Williams’s cat, it’s time.” “Time?
Time for what?” “It was
the cat that mauled my tail not you. It is time. Do your brother the honor.” Allfonso
was not hard to find. Because of the mice and the chickens, the cat was
always around, but leery of Judd who was constantly chasing it off with water
or a pebble. It took much cooing to entreat the cat into his arms, but when
it was there, the cat relaxed, purring confidently as if the world would be
his tomorrow. Its assured moment was brief, ruined by the sudden lack of
support and then the shock of finding itself in a cage with the large reptile
and a chicken. The cat put up a good fight, biting the snake’s skull and
making several rips in the glistening marbled coat, but in the end, it too
became a grotesque lump. The
next day Judd awoke to a chorus of crows. After eating his breakfast and
packing his books for school he went down to the lean-to to check on Jorge,
but the snake was gone. It had burrowed into the soft earth and escaped
underneath. Down the roadway to Dick Carson’s shack and the everglade a
gathering of crows and doves lined each side of the street, perched on
telephone lines and palms. Occasionally the two sides would call out to each
other, but it was not a chaotic interchange, but something oddly controlled
like a quiz game show or a school debate. The
news seemed to bring a smile to his mother’s face. “It probably went back to
where it came,” she said and denied his requests to stay at home
and look for the animal. At
school, Judd faced a sickness, relieved that his mother was not at home to
answer the call and rode his bike out to Dick Carson’s place. “That’s
a real shame,” the old man said. “I was starting to get
attached to that critter too.” There
were no turkey vultures or crows or doves gathering in mass and when Judd
returned home, he released the chickens and mice into the wild. “What
are you doing?” Mrs. Williams called across the lawn. “Aren’t
you supposed to be in school?” Judd
stood there, unsure of what to say. The woman was still in her bathroom and
approached him. “Have
you seen Alfonso?” she demanded, pulling the sash on her robe
tighter. “No ma’am,
I haven’t.” “He didn’t
come in last night, if you see him let me know. You better get those chickens
back in the pen, the last thing we want is your snake crawling around loose
in this neighborhood.” For
two weeks Judd scoured the neighborhood, but there was no sign of Jorge. Then
one day as he was biking home from school, he spied what he thought was an
unusual pile of dried leaves and cellophane wrapping perched upon a pile of
discarded rock next to a foundation for a new house that had been started the
previous year but never finished. Upon closer inspection he discovered it was
the shed skin of a Burmese python about six feet in length. Judd called Jorge’s name and looked
around the area frantically, but there was no sign of his friend. Two
seasons passed. Judd was now a junior in high school. He still had no friends
and kept to himself, but got straight As, often doing extra credit projects
that involved chemistry, forestry and of course ophiology. Things were quite
normal at the Bennet home, though his parents fretted that he spent too much
time studying. His only social interactions came down at the Big H and out at
Dick Cason’s shack. The man had been increasing frail and often e implored
Judd to find a nice girl. Still as they sat out on his porch drinking lime
rickeys and talking about the ecology of Florida’s intercoastal waterways,
occasionally there would come the massive gathering of turkey vultures, doves
and crows. “Must be the local bird lounge,” Carson
would joke. “They’re good company but I hate all the guano they
leave. Smells like a tar baby’s ass for days after.” “Did you
hear about Hadi’s brother?” Judd asked. “I didn’t
know he had a brother.” “He was
visiting, I guess he lives in Spain and Morocco. It was all in the papers and
on the TV.” “You
know you’re my only ears and eyes. What did the crazy kook do?” “Got
drunk and drove his car into gas station and blew it up. Burnt down a half
block just outside of Miami. Killed and old woman and a firefighter.” “And he
lived?” Judd
shook his head. “Well at
least there’s some sweet justice in that. You open your borders and look at
the mess. Worse than the Cubans I tell you.” The
funny thing was,” Judd said, “ some of the witnesses said
it looked like he intentionally rammed the car into a car that was filling
up.” “Sweet
Jesus. How’s Hadi taking it?” “He
closed the store for a few days. People threw rocks through the windows and
now a cop has to sit there.” “This
isn’t the world I grew up in,” Dick Carson muttered as he light up a cigar. As
the smoke rose up, so too did the three pods of birds, each going their
separate ways. Two
days later after Hadi reopened the store Judd went down to the Big H to pick
up a delivery for Dick Carson. His mother and Mrs. Williams having tea that
morning, told him that it was important to be mindful and to not hold Hadi
accountable for what his brother had done, that Hadi was a member of Green
Glades as they all were and the best way to support him was their continued
business. It was an obvious statement as the next nearest sundry was ten
miles over on native soil. Mrs.
Williams had come by that morning to show Mrs. Bennet her new Jack Russell
Terrier, which she had named JK after the author Jack Kerouac. “Young
Bennet, “ Hadi said excitedly. “Good Young Bennet. The
Bennet family be very kind to me. This is a sad day I must tell you. Too much
loss, too much loss.” He gave Judd Dick Carson’s satchel and threw in a
box of Slim Jims. “You take, I want every one to know how sorry I am
and want things to be right.” Besides
the boarded up windows and police cruiser, the Big H was the same. Ali was
still in his cage on the porch and wearing the red fez. Judd stopped and gave
the monkey one of the Slim Jims. One
his way out to Dick Carson’s place, there was a thrashing in the underbrush,
Judd dismounted and listened, watching the weeds and sumac wave back an
forth. He squatted to get a better look and then, a gator came flying out at
him. It wasn’t a big gator, but big enough to maim or kill a human Judd’s
size. He was able to shove the satchel in the beast’s mouth, but the leathery
reptile, had him pinned. Judd wanted to scream out but he was exerting all
his energy to hold the creature off of him. As suddenly as the gator had
sprung forth, it released the satchel and retreated backwards into the
underbrush, something Judd was not aware an alligator could do. “Are you
alright?“ a hiss poured over his shoulder and into his ear. Judd
turned and there was a massive Burmese python, reared up and over ten feet in
length. He gazed down the serpent’s length to its mangled tail and knew
unquestionably that it was Jorge. “Where
have you been?” Judd asked scrambling to his feet. “I’ve
been putting things in order. We have some business to take care of down at
the Big H, so drop the satchel off with Dick and meet me back here.” “But?” The
snake said nothing and slithered back into the tall grass. Judd
quickly recounted the attack to Dick Carson, but left out Jorge, saying that
he kicked the alligator in the snout and it scurried off. “We’re
getting too close to them,” the old man said. “Every now and then I have to
take out my shotgun and blow a head off. It saddens me to do it, but
sometimes it’s them or me. They can be damn right ornery, they can” When
Judd returned to the spot, the throng of turkey vultures, crows and doves
were squawking away in discordance. The sound was almost deafening, and then
as the serpent emerged from the grass, they fell silent. The plan was simple;
they would meet later that night behind the Big H after sundown when the
crowds had thinned. Judd
biked down to the Big H before sundown. The cop was not in his cruiser. Judd
peered inside the store window. The cop was drinking coffee and making
conversation with Hadi and his wife. No one else was in the store. Ali was
quiet and Judd ensured his silence by feeding him a Slim Jim. He was
impressed by the animal’s human-like dexterity in removing the wrapper. Trying
to be quiet Judd snipped the lock on the cage with a pair of bolt cutters he
had brought from the tool shed. Three was a loud clank and metal hitting the
porch floor. The monkey became agitated but Judd ensured his silence by
giving it another stick of beef jerky. A quick look inside and all the
principals were in their same positions. Judd opened the door and lured the
monkey down and off the porch with the promise of more jerky. Around the
corner of the Big H the monkey became distracted, perhaps even nervous. Judd
rattled the box of Slim Jims, but the simian ignored him, rising up on its
hind haunches and sniffing the air wildly. The headlights of a passing car
startled the beast and it scampered around to the back of the Big H, which
was precisely where Judd wanted it to go. When
Judd came around back, Ali was standing atop the green industrial trash bin,
pawing at the air. As planned one side of the dumpster was open and folder
over. Judd offered Ali another
cellophane encased treat, but the creature slapped it away. Judd peered into
the bin. It was dark. He could not make out in the pile of refuse if Jorge
was there. Then the simian began to shriek wildly. “Shhhh,
here, have some of these,” Judd said placing the box of jerky on the
dumpster. The beast seized the box and threw it at Judd and just as it seemed
it might dash off into the gloaming night, Jorge dropped from the roof of the
Big H, clamping down on the monkey with his teeth and driving it into the
bowels of the dumpster. Judd flipped the lid, slowing its decent before
closing to prevent a big bang. From inside he could hear the violent struggle
as bodies banged against the wall and snarls and wails escaped into the
night. Judd felt for sure that Hadi, his wife and the police officer would
hear, but then after a few moments, the silence of the night settled in
again. There was no sign of sound from out front. Judd reached forward to
open the dumpster lid. “Go
home,”
Jorge hissed in a tinny echo. “Go home.” Judd
heard a door slam followed by Hadi’s shriek, “Ali is gone! Ali is gone!” Judd
sprinted down the swamp path, his sneakers filling with the moisture from the
mud. He came to the path that took his out to the main road and where his
bike was stashed behind a fallen palm and home. Judd
did not see Jorge again until summer break when he was busy filling out
college applications. He had gotten his driver’s license and his father
promised to buy him a pickup truck if he got into Florida Institute of
Technology, which was his first choice because they had a renowned
ophiologist on staff. Dick Carson had become increasingly frail and often
told Judd that he had seen a large snake taking down small alligators in the
swamp pool behind his house. Judd didn’t know whether to believe the old man
or not. Green Glades had its own problems too. The turkey vultures, crows and
doves had descended on the development in droves, promoting some residents to
buy rifles and beebe guns. A measure further reinforced when Mrs. William’s
Jack Russell Terrier went missing after and exploratory jaunt into the tall
grasses. One
day when Judd was out talking with Dick Carson, he asked Dick if he had ever
communicated with animals. “What
like Doctor Doolittle?” the old man laughed. “Never
mind,”
Judd said looking down at his shoes. The
old man opened the dilapidated trunk and pulled out a grubby old bottle of
whiskey, He took a hit and passed it over to Judd. The sun was hot and the
flies more than their usual nuisance. Judd had never drank before. He had a
sip of wine once that his dad gave him, but it nearly made him sick. The
whisky was different, it was harsh, but refreshing and the prickly fire that
hit the back of his throat was soon relieved by a warm, tranquil sensation. “I used
to talk to this gator many years ago,” Carson said. “I
thought it was the whiskey that made me crazy. I used to stand out back and
talk to the swamp at night. And every time I talked to it, this was this big
old mother gator out there, her eyes gleaming from the cabin lights. It was
also this time mind you that I had found my wife was making off with my
trapping partner and they were stealing from me, so I didn’t know which way
was up.” The
bottle went back and forth again. “Was
this real or were you just drunk and crazy.” “Back
then I was always drunk and crazy, but not now. Anyway, I tell the swamp all
this and how I’d like to see my wife pay for it and that I wouldn’t mind
seeing her dead, and you know what happens?” “Un uh,” Judd
said, taking another swig. “The big
momma gator comes out of the swamp, right up to my feet and tells me, that
she’ll take care of it, as long as I take care of her and her brood. Now I
thought I was dreaming, but when I wake up from a stopper on the cot and I
hear my wife’s footsteps on the porch, I hear something else there too,
something big. At first I think it’s my partner Jim, and I think I’m going to
go right out there and punch him in the face and tell them I know what’s
going on, but when I open the door, there’s my wife in the jaws of that big
gator, being pulled off the porch and into the glade grass. Now mind you, I
didn’t much care for my wife back then, and while I said I wished her dead, I
didn’t really want her dead. So I grab my shotgun and I run out blazing at
the gator, trying to shoot it in the side so I didn’t hit my wife, but it was
too late the gator had claimed her and made off into the water.” Judd
sat their listening and drinking. “So I
wait for day light and I load Max and the gun in the swamp boat and we go
out. When I killed the motor, the gator comes up from behind and tells me I
reneged on the deal. That’s the last thing it says to me, and I was clean
sober, then, well perhaps a tad hung over, but that’s what it said to me
before going down. The next time it came up it got Max, I went in after it
with a buck knife. It got my leg, but I got it, right between the eyes. That’s
probably what came at you the other day, one of its offspring, looking for
some payback, pissed that I sold the islet.” Judd
slugs down some more, feeling languid and sleepy, and nods off. When he wakes
it’s night and the old man is shaking him. “Shhhh,” Carson
warns and points to a dark skinned gator sitting on the stairs of the porch. “Don’t
move.” It
looks to be the same gator that assaulted Judd earlier, but he can’t tell. It’s
bigger now if it was. “My gun’s
inside,” the old man whispers. “Not good.” They
sit there for a longtime. Judd can feel his heart beginning to race.
Occasionally the gator nods his flat arrowed head from side to side—the
over bitten dagger a menacing image. “I can
get the gun,” Judd whispers. “No, don’t
move,”
the old man says. “Yes,
don’t move,” another voice says. There
is a sudden flash of action. Something big has fallen from the sky and the
gator begins to thrash about wildly on the base of the steps. Then it becomes
clear the gator and Jorge as locked in a death struggle. They tumble out into
the darkness. Into the weeds and swampland. Roosted birds are disturbed and
launched skyward, dark silhouettes against the moon light sky. The commotion
moves away. The distant splash of water can be heard. “What do
we do?”
Judd asked. “We do
nothing,” the old man replies. A
phone inside rings. “Answer
it,”
the old man implores. Stuck
between the cushions of a musty couch littered with hunting and fishing
magazines, Judd locates the phone and answers it. It’s his father. The faint
noise of the struggle and the uneasiness in his stomach distract him, but he
manages to tell his father that the old man is not well and that he should
stay a while longer perhaps the night. His father asks if he should call an
ambulance. He tells him it’s not that dire, not yet anyhow. Judd
and the old man stay up all night long, listening for distant roars or
splashes. By sunrise there is only hazy heat and silence. Judd searches the
periphery of the lush green glade scampering back and forth. “You’re
not going to find them there,” the old man calls after him. “take
the canoe and go out into the back glade. That’s where I heard them last.
Take the gun too.” Judd
paddles furiously through water covered in green lilies and purple wild
grass. He navigates out into the open water, gator country—an area
he is not familiar with. In the sky above turkey vultures and crows dive bomb
each other while the dove float above the fray. He comes to a narrowing and
then a channel and then another opening, directly below the birds. In the
water ahead there is something big floating. He paddles forth but makes sure
the gun is near. As he registers what is before him, his eyes burn and well
up with tears. There in the water is Jorge, his belly exploded open with the
head of the alligator popping out. Out of his mouth dangle the gator’s feet
and tail, supported by the buoyancy of the water. The mass jerks forward and
bobs. It’s another gator come to feed. Judd steadies the shotgun and squeezes
the trigger, but there’s nothing but a pop. The alligator rolls its eyes
knowingly, flashed what Judd takes to be a taunting smile and goes back to
its fortuitous meal. Judd
got into Florida Institute of Technology and met a nice girl there by the
name of Bonnie. She didn’t much care for snakes, but was interested in being
an oceanic biologist with a focus on cephalopods. Dick Carson passed away and
left a portion of small fortune to Judd and the rest to an everglade
restoration foundation. The Bennets sold their house and moved closer to the
Marlins ballpark. The Big H, shut down for lack of business and Hadi went to
work managing a dry cleaning franchise in Miami. In fact most of the residents
of Green Glades sold their homes and moved to more inhabited suburban areas.
With each passing day the glade creep closer, reclaiming what was once its. |
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