Alligator (10 page)

Aaron took back his jug and guzzled as he watched Lee suspiciously. "What the hell you doin' here, anyway?" he said, wiping his mouth with his arm.

"I need back the money I gave you."

Aaron was taken aback. It took him a moment to recover. Finally he waved Lee's request aside with his hand. "It's all tied up."

"What do you mean it's all tied up!" A cold sweat was coming over Lee. He had a good idea what Aaron meant.

Clutching tightly to his jug as if it were a shield, Aaron started backpedaling. "It's ours!" he screamed. "You give it to us. 'Fraid you'll have to go elsewhere."

Lee moved toward Aaron threateningly. That money had been his last hope, and he wasn't prepared to abandon it easily.

Aaron backed up even faster. "The money's for the mortgage," he sputtered. "It'd kill your ma if this house went. I just can't let nothin' like that happen, not while I'm still alive to defend her."

"Hah!" screeched Lizbeth.

Neither of the men paid any attention to her. Lee continued to close in threateningly, while Aaron tried to keep the space between them as large as possible. He was in trouble, and he knew it.

Aaron backed into the side of the house with a thud. He looked around desperately like a cornered animal, then, seeing an axe leaning against the wall, grabbed at it, yelling, "Don't move or I'll shoot."

Lee didn't even crack a smile. Aaron threw the axe down and collapsed on the porch in a heap of remorse. "I ain't got the money no more."

Lee grabbed Aaron by the shirt collar. He couldn't remember ever wanting to kill him so much, not that it would help things. He let go of the shriveled little man and sat down next to him.

"What was it, horses?"

"Hell, no!" said Aaron, as if he were amazed that the thought should even occur to Lee. "Actually, they been playin' this new game called Liars' Poker—ever heard of it?"

"Sounds to me like it should be your game."

"Did to me, too." Even through his alcoholic haze, Aaron could see Lee was very upset. Why was it he was always doing things wrong? "That bad?" he asked.

"Yeah. That bad."

"Well, you give it to me. I mean, how the hell was I to know you'd be comin' here wantin' it back? Look, I'm sorry, not that it helps much."

"That's right, it don't help none. Ain't nothin' else." Lee got up from the porch decisively.

"What're you fixin' to do, Lee?"

"Guess I'll have to sell my soul to Rye Whitman."

Aaron recoiled. "Rye Whitman! Now, listen here, don't you go takin' no job with him."

"I'm afraid I ain't got no choice."

"Stay away from that man, you hear? He ain't been nothin' but trouble to your ma and me."

"What's Rye Whitman got to do with us?" Lee was startled by the fear he could hear in Aaron's voice.

"Now, don't you go askin' no questions about things that don't have nothin' to do with you. Just listen to me and stay away from him."

Suddenly a loud crash came from the house, and Lizbeth, gray and frail from her years of self-banishment in the attic, wearing a faded white lace dress that had fed the moths for thirty years, came rushing to the door. She stood in the doorway, squinting out at the bright day. Shafts of sunlight illuminated her like a Hollywood starlet standing in the footlights, and for a second Lee saw her as she must have been.

"Rye? Rye? Have you come for me? Oh, Rye, Fm—" Her face crumbled. She looked around desperately, then melted to the ground.

There was a stunned silence. Lizbeth lay, making a thin wailing sound from the back of her throat. Aaron walked over to her and knelt down to touch her hair.

Lee watched as if he were seeing a play in a foreign language. He felt no connection to the words, no connection to the people. Then the rage hit him. He felt it growing so strong inside his body that it threatened to break loose and engulf him. Anger tightened his stomach and closed off his throat until he could hardly breathe. At first he wanted to kill Lizbeth, then Aaron, then finally Rye Whitman. Yes, he decided, that was where his anger belonged.

Lee started to walk away. He sang to himself in order to short-circuit the emotion he was feeling. It was an old song he had heard his mother playing the scratchy record of all through his childhood. "My Man Done Quit Me." Lee suspected that wasn't all he did to her.

Lee kept walking and didn't look back at Aaron and Lizbeth. But he could still see them in his mind, caught where they were, neither of them moving, prisoners of something that had happened thirty years ago.

Cindy was one of those rare people who knew when to keep quiet. She knew that Lee would talk when he was ready. Besides, the energy and anger in his body spoke more eloquently than anything he could say. When he wore himself down, then he would find the words.

It wasn't that Cindy was frightened of Lee. It was just that she respected his strangeness, in the same way she expected him to respect hers. It would never occur to her to wish he were different. What he offered her she either put up with or she left, depending on her mood. She treated his strangeness as a given, like the roll of a hill or the dampness of water, and Cindy, like an animal, didn't try to change what was.

She had always been like that, slow to make judgments, accepting others as she accepted herself, without love or hate, but just as they were.

Recently, though, a strange impatience was growing in her. The other day the idea of going to secretarial school in Naples had taken her by surprise. It hadn't occurred to her that after graduation she would do anything but continue to live with her father and waitress at the Rod and Gun, just as she had before. She had meant to talk to Lee about it, but then didn't. Sometimes she felt he regarded her as too young to have thoughts and ideas. But she knew Lee didn't see anyone straight. They were all black and white, mostly black. She hadn't brought up going to Naples, but it bothered her. She had never kept back anything from him before.

Cindy sat on Lee's bed and looked around his improvised home. At first, when Lee had told her he had bought an old school bus, she had thought he was crazy, but she had been wrong. Lee built bookshelves, and a table that folded back when he wasn't using it. He bought a wood-burning stove and an old icebox, and made a kitchen where the driver's seat used to be. Cindy sewed some curtains for the windows, and together they found an old braided rug in someone's garage. So now it was cozier than most homes.

Still, there was something about Lee's home that bothered Cindy. Maybe it was because it was on wheels. It made her feel that one day she would come to the clearing and it would be gone.

Cindy had been waiting only fifteen minutes when Lee came in. He didn't look surprised to see her. He had expected her. He was sure that she had heard; by now probably the whole town was talking about Clete Hutchins.

Lee walked over to the bookshelves and picked up a snapshot. It was old and yellow, but he could still make out the image on it. Besides, he had looked at it so many times that he knew it as clearly as anything in his life. It was a picture of Osceola, one-time great chief of the Seminole nation, standing in front of his palmetto-thatched chickee. Osceola was a tall, angular man with skin the color of polished cherrywood. He had the rigid dignity of a leader, a man who could convince his people to do anything. His face betrayed no emotion—he neither smiled nor frowned, but from the picture Lee could see he had the ability to do both, and a good deal more. His arms hung idly at his sides, but they too promised latent power and energy. Lee smiled to himself. Primitive people believed a picture stole a man's soul, but this picture had stolen nothing from the Indian. What he had in his soul was well hidden and reserved for himself. Osceola remained safe.

He looked uncomfortable in the picture. He must have been, caught as he was between two worlds. He knew the whites and had dealt with them for years. He knew their strength, yet he dared to tear up a treaty in front of them and ride off to make battle. Lee had often wondered what he was thinking when they took this picture of him. Had he foreseen that his people would be driven from the Everglades like a herd of cattle by the very people who held the camera? Did he know that his few descendants would be reduced to running alligator-wrestling shows for the Miami tourists and cleaning motel bathrooms? He looked like he did. Why did he go into battle? He must have known his small band of starving Indians had no chance of winning, yet still he did it. Why?

He put the picture back on the bookshelf and looked over at Cindy. She sat cross-legged on the bed, watching Lee like a cat, alert to the meaning of his every move. He forced a smile, but she didn't smile back. She could read him too well, he thought.

"You always take things inside till they get to eatin' you up," she said finally.

"I know."

"Lee, it wasn't your fault."

"I was carryin' them, that makes it my fault."

"You really believe that?"

"Everyone else does."

Lee fell silent, but Cindy could sense it was only temporary. He wanted to talk, wanted to explain something to her that he himself only partially understood. Lee trusted her more than anyone else in the world, yet he didn't trust her completely. She would have felt hurt, but she knew Lee was a man who didn't even trust himself.

Lee picked up the rope he had used to tie Rab with and began winding it tightly around his hand. It seemed like an idle gesture, but Cindy could see the rope biting into the flesh. Finally, Lee began to speak, slowly, deliberately, with very little passion.

"I saw the alligator today, Cindy," he said, winding the rope tightly around his hand. "Just before I shot the bear, I saw this shadow in the water, and there he was."

"You're sure it was the alligator?" Cindy knew Lee was doing more than talking about the day's events, though she wasn't sure what.

"Oh, yeah, I'm sure. I got a good enough look to know that. He was big, bigger than anything I ever laid eyes on. He must be old, maybe fifty, sixty years old. He'd have to be damned smart to have lasted that long. Fifty years of hiding out, keeping away from people, and each year the towns kept coming closer, driving him farther back. But every year he got through made him bigger and smarter than the last. Then he made a mistake and got too close."

"You sound like you feel sorry for him. That gator's a killer, Lee."

"If he is, it's because we made him one. You ain't never felt a bullet in you, but I have. At first you don't feel nothing, then just a pounding ache that starts swelling and swelling, till you're on fire. It's like you're being burned alive, and it doesn't stop. Pretty soon all you want out of life is death. That gator must have felt it. After he got shot, he must have gone deep into the swamps and suffered his own agony for hours, too weak to eat and in too much pain to even want to. But in the morning, when the pain was less, he was able to feel his empty stomach, and he had to go back out after food."

"So he killed?"

"People mean danger to him now."

"A lot of men in town are talkin' about going after him. Do you think they'll get him?"

Lee threw Rab's rope on the floor and walked over to the picture of Osceola. He hesitated, then said grimly, "They always do."

Cindy felt the pull of her love for Lee so strongly it made her want to cry out. She walked over to Lee and touched his arm. "It don't have to be that way, you know."

Lee turned away from Cindy. Her eyes were like X-rays sometimes. He felt her looking into his soul and it scared him to think of anyone's coming that close, even himself.

Cindy felt the muscles in his body tense, and instinctively backed off. "Do you want me to leave you alone?" she asked.

Lee turned back to her and smiled. The thought of Cindy's not being there brought him back to her.

Cindy smiled. Her smile was slow and subtle and very sexy, but caught in it was the child Lee had never known but could guess at. "No, baby," he said as he took her in his arms. "Your leaving is the last thing I want."

It was four o'clock in the morning when Rye finally gave up on getting any sleep. He climbed out of bed and went for the bottle. He knew by now that drinking wasn't going to help his insomnia, but it did make it less painful.

Of all the various afflictions known to man, including bunions and cancer, Rye respected insomnia the most. He'd tried every harebrained, crackpot cure in existence. He'd drunk himself into stupors that took days to wear off; he'd tried muscle relaxers and downers, herb teas, night masks, earplugs, eating, fasting, hypnosis, masturbation, and abstention. He'd even tried, to his profound embarrassment, counting sheep.

But always the insomnia was there, staring over his shoulder with a big toothy grin, making ghosts out of the furniture, exploding anxiety into mortal fear. While the rest of the world slept soundly, Rye was alone in his tower, rattling around silent rooms, staring out blackened windows. It separated him from life.

As a weapon against the night silence, Rye set up a television in every room in his Miami apartment: sixteen solid-states, volume turned up as high as it would go, putting out test patterns.

Through the years, Rye had put up a valiant fight against the night horrors, but so far the score was twenty to zip, Rye being on the downside.

Rye tipped his glass and drank to insomnia, the only thing besides death he wasn't able to conquer.

He refilled his glass, walked over to the window, and looked out at the black swamps, just inches from his room. He thought of another night, and another window he had stood at long ago.

Dr. Laslow, who was fond of billing himself as the only living example of the benevolent family physician, was a tall, stoop-shouldered man, with piercing blue eyes and a piglike nose that was much too small for his face. His smell of Zizanie and antiseptic had made Rye want to puke as he stood in the night-dimmed hospital corridor, clutching some glossy magazines and a package of Old Mules.

Dr. Laslow shook his head lugubriously. "Your father is a very ill man. I find the typical Laennec's cirrhosis, ascites, and spider telangectasia associated with this kind of case."