Lost in the River of Grass (10 page)

The mother alligator is returning. She lumbers out of the water and gently, with a front foot, scrapes away dirt and rotting cattails to expose a yellow-and-black striped baby. Another one wiggles out of the mound on its own. When there are four or five barking babies, she begins to eat them.

I grab Andy's arm. “Why is she doing that?”

“Shhh. Wait. She's moving them to a safer place.”

The mother gator, with her jaws slightly open so her teeth form a cage, turns, trudges down her path, and slides into the water. She's gone only a minute or two when a great blue heron flies in, lands on the mound, spears a baby that has just emerged, bashes it to the ground a few times, then swallows it whole and flies away.

Andy whispers, “As my mother loves to say, what goes around comes around.”

“Mine says the same thing,” I say, but chill bumps rise on my arms. It's so life-and-death out here. Plain and simple. One minute you're fine, and the next you could be dead.

I'm still watching the nest when Andy starts to climb down. “Whoa,” he says and steps back up beside me.

“What?” I look where he's looking. About ten yards away, at the break in the cattails, are two pigs—wild pigs, and one has tusks that arc up to form almost a complete circle. It's sniffing the air.

My own breathing turns to trembling gasps.

Andy puts his hand over my mouth. “Don't make a sound.” He speaks against my ear. “They've got great hearing and a terrific sense of smell, but they can't see too good.”

The boar is headed straight for our tree, sniffing, snuffling, and grunting. We can't climb higher, and his tusks look like they could cut us to ribbons.

From the nest, a baby gator calls. The boar stops. He listens for a moment, then turns left and sniffs the air again.

“This should be good,” Andy whispers.

10

Since the hogs are too low to the ground to see the nest, which is beyond a barrier of cattails, they follow the sound, splashing toward it. We can see the mother gator coming back up her trail. She must hear them, because she stops, settles down on her stomach and waits.

Andy pries my hand off his arm again. “You've got quite a grip.”

“Sorry.”

The boar is in the lead when the pigs reach the mound. First he, then the female, put their heads down and start pushing into it with their noses. I nearly jump out of my skin when the mother gator hisses, rises up on all fours and charges. It takes just seconds for her to barrel the length of the trail, and only that long for the hogs to see her coming. The male grunts an alarm, and the two pigs run in different directions. The mother gator rips after the female. Her mouth opens and snaps closed. The pig squeals in pain, but escapes with just a gash in the flesh of a back leg.

We wait until the splashing and squealing stops, then climb down and start out again. The water is shallow and the view unobstructed, which gives my mind time to focus on all the reminders of how quickly a life can end.

 

…

“What time do you think it is?” I ask some time later.

“Six or six-thirty.”

The trees we're headed for look more spindly the closer we get. “How far have we come?”

“Not far enough. A couple miles, maybe.”

“Two miles! You're kidding?”

“Look back.”

I turn and look where he's pointing. I can see the tops of some tall trees above the line of cattails we've just come through. “Those trees look sturdier, why don't we go there for the night?”

Andy laughs, then stares at me for a second. “You're joking, right?”

“I am not. That looks like a better place than where we're headed.”

“Those are the trees around the cabin.”

I'm leaning one way, then the other, trying to work out the ache in my shoulders. “You're lying.”

“Why would I lie?”

“I don't know,” I whisper. “I'm so tired. I thought we'd come much farther.”

Andy walks over and puts an arm around me.

“I don't think I can go much further.”

“You've got no choice, Sarah.” His voice is soft. “You're doing great, you know? I'm proud of you.”

“Are you?” I think about my dad and how he used to hug me when I was little. I feel that small and needy again, and the pressure of Andy's arms around me makes me cry all the harder.

“Hey. Come on.” He kisses the top of my head. “A couple of miles are a good start. Think about it. At this rate, we'll do four or five miles tomorrow. Maybe the levee is closer than I think. Don't get bummed and start talking about giving up, okay?”

I nod against his chest.

He lets me go. “The bad news is, these trees ain't gonna work.” His hands are on his hips as he looks at the thin, wispy branches of the cypresses.

“What can we do?”

He shrugs. “Keep walking.”

“Andy, I can't take another step.”

“You have to. We can't stay here.”

“Once it's dark, how will we know that we're going the right way?”

“I'll worry about that then. Right now we've still got thirty minutes of dusk so we need to keep . . .” He stops and squints at the horizon. “Look.”

“What?”

“Right there. See that light?”

My heart starts to race. “Is that a house or something?”

“No, it's the moon.”

My heart sinks. Just breaking the horizon is an arc of golden light. Maybe I could manage another thirty minutes, but if the moon is up, he may want to keep going for hours. “We aren't going to try to walk by moonlight, are we?”

“Sure. It's full, or nearly so. We'll walk toward it until we reach the heron rookery. It can't be that much farther. I've been watching them flying in for a while now. See?” He points. Off to our right, a string of herons fly past— six, I count, then four more close behind.

“What's a rookery?”

“It's an island of trees where they come to roost for the night. Safety in numbers, you know. The roost is pretty near here.”

“How far is pretty near?” I'm too tired even to slap mosquitoes.

In the dimming light, Andy shrugs. “It doesn't matter. We can't stay here, so the sooner we get started, the sooner we'll get there.”

My legs have stiffened to boards. I struggle to lift a foot over a branch, trip and fall, cutting my knee on the sharp limestone. Andy doesn't stop, just calls, “You okay?” over his shoulder.

I'm too exhausted to answer. I get up and splash a little water on the cut on my knee to wash away the blood, then start after him.

My guess, from the position of the sun, is that we've been in the water for about five hours. All the energy I have left goes into putting one foot in front of the other.

 

…

Andy was right. Once the moon is up, it's bright enough to see our way, but a hundred times scarier. I keep his shirttail knotted in my fist.

During the day, the sounds were mostly startled birds and our own splashing, or the telltale
whoosh
of a gator rippling through the water. At night, all the sounds are strange. I'm less nervous when the frogs are croaking, but every once in a while something gets one. Its dying scream sounds like a woman's, and everything else hushes for a few minutes.

For the first hour or so after dark, we move through relatively open water with sparse, short stalks of saw grass. Animals run at our approach, then turn to look at us, red eyes glowing. With each new sound or pair of eyes, I cry, “What's that?” I'm not even aware that I'm doing it until Andy says, “Jesus, Sarah, give it a break.”

For a while after that, when I ask, I try to sound calmer, and Andy obliges by naming the animal. He could be lying for all I know, but it helps to think he knows and isn't worried—or is at least pretending not to be.

We come to an area where nothing seems to be growing. Just a wide sheet of water dotted with a dozen small, round lights floating on the surface. Some are moving, rippling the water.

“What makes those little lights?” I try to sound relaxed.

“Gators. Their eyes glow when light hits them. That's why poachers look for them at night with flashlights.”

“Why are they all together? What are they doing?”

“I don't know. Hunting, maybe. They're small.”

“How can you tell?”

“By the distance between their eyes.”

I'm not convinced and tighten my grip on his shirttail. I keep looking over my shoulder until it's clear they aren't coming after us. Still, every time my foot hits something in the water, my heart leaps and a little, lopped-off scream escapes.

It's easier to keep moving if I think of something besides how hard it is take each step. I begin to identify the sounds back to Andy. Knowing what things are doesn't stop them from scaring me nearly out of my skin. The easiest are the snorting, snuffling, and splashing of wild boar, then the throaty bellows and vibration of water made by male gators trying to attract a female. The sudden splashes of a deer leaping away with a flash of white tail in the moonlight is like having someone jump out at you from behind a door. Raccoons argue and screech at each other. Birds squawk and lift into the moonlit sky; then there's the occasional scream of a panther that makes the hair on my neck stand up. I've started to believe the gators
are
more afraid of us than we are of them, but I know a panther is different, and given a choice between me and Andy, it will pick me—the smaller, weaker one of the two.

There are moments, usually after the final cry of something dying, when the glades fall silent and there is only the sound of our labored breathing, soft moans when our feet hit something we have to step over, and the enduring sound of pushing through the weed-choked water. But when we stand still and rest, I can see that it's kind of pretty. The moon's reflection on the open patches of water is like a silver road to follow, and tree islands float like dark ships at sea. Off to the south a barred owl—the one bird I know by its call—hoots, and from the other direction another answers. I wonder if Mr. Vickers has ever seen it like this.

We've been walking long enough for the moon to shrink from an enormous orange ball on the horizon to its high-in-the-sky size when Andy stops suddenly, causing me to run into his back. “Smell that?” he says, sniffing the air.

I do. The breeze—which has kept the mosquitoes thinned—is out of the east and it carries the odor of bird poop—lots of bird poop.

“That's it,” Andy whispers. “The rookery.” He turns and puts a finger to his lips.

We move as quietly as we can, but the birds can see us coming. The moon is that bright, and it makes them more and more edgy. The closer we get to the stand of cypress and willows, the more restless they become. There's lots of wing-flapping, squawking, and pecking at each other. Some take off and circle, trying to find a better branch to settle on.

Andy's promise we would eat some of the dreaded Spam when we get to the roost makes my stomach start to rumble, and my legs get heavier in anticipation of stopping. Before swim meets, especially now that I'm on a scholarship, I sometimes have dreams like this where the more desperate I am to touch the wall, the heavier my arms and legs become, until it feels like I'm trying to swim through molasses.

I stop for a second to catch my breath and lean over with my hands on my knees. Teapot dangles in the sling around my neck. She's asleep, with her brown, yellow-cheeked head turned and tucked between her wings. I wonder for the millionth time today how I'd gotten myself into this mess.

Andy has stopped to wait for me. I cushion Teapot so she doesn't bounce against my chest, then straighten and start up again. I've taken two steps when my leg bumps a submerged tree trunk. I try to step over it but can't lift my foot high enough. I pitch forward, facedown with my arms out to break my fall. I feel Teapot struggling to get out from beneath me, but my arms are tangled in the branches of the tree and I can't get leverage to roll over. My head is underwater, so when I scream, the bubble of air breaks across my face.

I know better, but it's all I can do to keep from gasping for air beneath the surface. I fight and twist, trying to pull my arms free. Even underwater, I hear Andy crashing toward me then feel his hands in my armpits. He draws me, tree trunk and all, backwards so that I end up on my knees in the water with my arms still tangled in the dripping, slimy limbs. Teapot wiggles out of my bandana, drops into the water, and swims out of sight into some willows.

“Teapot,” I cry. Then start to choke.

11

Andy snaps branches off until my arms are free, then pulls me to my feet. Blood seeps from a dozen cuts.

“Teapot!” I pat my thigh.

“You're welcome,” Andy says.

“I'm sorry. Thank you. Just help me find her first.” I look at him. “And don't say a word.”

“Why would I waste my breath?” Andy puts a fist to his lips and makes a sound that is remarkably duck-like.

“Peep, peep,” comes the answer from the weeds.

“Do it again.” I stare at the black outline of the willows for movement.

Andy calls again, and Teapot swims out and straight into my cupped hands. I scoop her up and kiss her wet head. “That sound was cool.” I smile at Andy. “Where'd you learn to do that?”

“From my dad. We hunt ducks, you know. We can't run to the supermarket for every little thing. Our meat comes on the hoof, not bloodless and wrapped in plastic.”

“I get it already, okay. Why are you mad at me?”

“I'm not.”

“You sound mad.”

“Dragging that duckling along is making this harder that it needs to be.”

“I thought we'd settled that. And besides, she hasn't bothered you all day, so don't start or I'll mention a few more times how we
got
in this nightmare in the first place.” By the time I get to the end of the sentence, I'm shouting at him.