Alligator (34 page)

"There ain't no trail, I told you."

Rye turned on Lee and said, insinuatingly, "What you mean is, you can't see his trail."

"It's kind of late to start questioning me as a guide."

Rye began to wonder if he hadn't made a mistake by not questioning Lee a long time ago. Perhaps the problem with the whole hunt was that Rye had trusted Lee's judgment too much. Lee was always so cocksure that Rye had followed along blindly. But Lee could be wrong. Even worse, if he was, he'd never admit it. Perhaps if he had, they'd have gotten the alligator by now, and Rye'd be back in his air-conditioned office drinking Wild Turkey and taking care of business. The fact that they hadn't even come close to getting the alligator showed what kind of a guide he'd taken on. Something even more disturbing occurred to Rye. Lee had never wanted to get the alligator from the first, so it was possible that he was throwing them off the trail. After all, the whole object of this hunt for Lee had been to get at Rye and wear him down until he was a blubbering dependent kid, then shoot the alligator and show him who was boss. It all seemed to fit together very neatly. When Rye turned back to Lee, his voice was full of fury. "Where'd ya lose the trail?" he asked.

Lee pointed off into the grass just north of them. Rye turned away and, without saying a word, looked in the direction Lee was pointing, fixing its position firmly in his mind. Still keeping his silence, he threw down his pole and headed into the grass.

Lee watched him go, shaking his head. "Where the hell do you think you're going?" he called to Rye.

Rye didn't answer. Within a minute, he was swallowed up by the high grass, and Lee could no longer see him. "The fool," muttered Lee bitterly, "the goddamned fool."

It took Rye ten minutes to reach the alligator trail. When he bent down to inspect it, he saw what Lee was talking about. The four-foot-wide path of matted grass ended abruptly; there were no rocks, no deepening of the water, nothing that could be obscuring the trail. It simply stopped.

Using the end of the trail as a focal point, he began walking in a circle, scouring the ground for a bent blade of grass or a mark in the mud, some sign that the alligator passed through. He came back on himself and, fixing the direction of the trail in his mind, began a wider circle.

Rye had been circling for some time when he realized the sawgrass was becoming thicker and taller. It was close to six feet high. He couldn't see more than two feet ahead of himself, nor could he see much of the sky above him, even his feet disappeared into the dense growth. The grass was closing in on him, shrinking his world; Rye could see it would be very easy to get lost out there with no signposts, no way to tell one place from the next. Even his own footprints disappeared in the soft, watery ground.

It occurred to Rye that the alligator had made use of the soft slime to obscure his tracks, just leaving the first part of the trail visible, but he decided that required too much intelligence, more than he was willing to grant any animal.

He checked the sun. There was only another hour of daylight at the most. He knew he'd better head back before it got dark, but he balked at the thought of going back to camp and facing Lee without having found the trail, so he continued circling.

The farther he went, the more difficult it became. The sawgrass was becoming higher and thicker. He kept reassuring himself it would soon thin out, but after walking for another five minutes, he could fool himself no longer. The grass was well over eight feet high, and the top of it bent into a tunnel over his head, blocking out the light and even the air. He was having trouble breathing. It wasn't a matter for debate any longer: He'd have to turn back.

The light that reached him through the thick grass had changed completely in the past few minutes. It was softer, pinker, no longer a buttery yellow, and patches of the brown grass glowed with streaks of red. A chill passed through Rye, more from the thought that night was quickly falling than from any cooling breeze.

As Rye started back, the loss of light made the trail even more confusing. What appeared to be water on closer inspection was only a shadow; what he thought were traces of his own tracks turned out to be reflected light. The sawgrass was so high he couldn't see over it at all; he couldn't see more than a few inches in front of him. He knew that the grass should be getting thinner if he was going in the right direction, and with a shudder, he realized he was lost.

Rye began to run. He wasn't sure if he was heading back toward camp or if he was getting himself more lost; all he knew was that he had to run. He could hear his breath in his ears, strained, wheezing breath, the sound of his body being choked off. Without even knowing what he was doing, he called out Lee's name. But even his words were choked off, ricocheting in the grass, coming back on him from everywhere.

The realization that he was now totally alone crushed his chest, and he cried out Lee's name even louder. He listened for an answer, but it was only his own voice that returned to him. He called out again. Answers came from behind, then suddenly from the right, and more softly from the left, until he was as walled in by sound as he was by grass.

Over a mile away, Lee sat by the campfire, plucking the feathers of a turkey buzzard which had made the fatal mistake of lighting near enough for him to throw his knife. He chuckled to himself several times as he imagined the look on Rye's face when he returned, repentant, and saw the dinner Lee had provided. As a shadow fell across Lee, he suddenly realized it was evening and Rye hadn't returned.

He stood up to look for Rye. There was nothing; all he could see was miles and miles of sawgrass, tinted pink by the setting sun. He looked out at the grass for close to a minute, hoping to spot a movement that would mean Rye was on his way back There was no movement; only the wind disturbed the vast ocean around him. With panic and fury, he realized Rye was lost.

He called out Rye's name. When he listened for Rye's answer, all he heard was his own voice bouncing off the high grass, returning back to him from all sides. Again he called out, but it was still his own voice that answered him, spinning around in ever-widening circles.

All the fury he'd been feeling instantly disappeared. Rye was lost somewhere in the sawgrass, alone at nightfall, with no one to help him find his way back. He could feel Rye's terror, and with it he discovered a terror of his own. If Rye was lost, then he too was now alone.

Panic seized Lee, and he rushed into the sawgrass, calling Rye's name over and over, a terrible emptiness eating at his center.

For a moment, Lee thought he heard something, and stopped, straining to hear it again. Once more the sound came, faint and airy, like the rustle of the wind. It seemed to be a voice, but Lee knew it could be his own. He stood, motionless, waiting for the sound. This time when he heard it, he recognized his name.

Lee rushed in the direction from which it came, but when he heard the sound again, it seemed to be coming from behind him. Suddenly it returned from the side, then from in front, and he realized he hadn't been hearing Rye at all, only the echo of Rye.

He called out to Rye again, hoping that he could isolate the first sound of Rye's answer from the echoes. He listened carefully, and when he heard Rye call back, he headed toward it.

Lee began to run, though he knew he was crazy to do it and he was probably only getting himself lost. Still he ran. He no longer cared about anything but finding Rye; the horror of his loneliness seemed far worse than any consequences. The sawgrass tore at his skin and choked off his air, but he hardly noticed it; all he heard was his voice calling Rye's name.

Lee ran for several minutes before the futility of it hit him. When he stopped and sank down on his knees, darkness was almost complete, and the shadowy swampland closed in on him, shutting him off completely from Rye. It was then that he spotted a patch of some broken grass near his feet. He touched the edges where it had been broken and, with a thrill of hope, felt that the sap was still wet.

Lee screamed out for Rye to stay where he was. When another sound returned, it was Rye's answer: "Yes. Yes."

Moving fast, trying to outrun the sun, Lee followed the trail of broken grass, urging himself to run even faster, pushing himself forward through the slashing grass, too desperate to be surprised at how much he cared.

All at once he saw a faint streak of color ahead, where the grass seemed to be moving. He stopped, not sure whether to trust what he saw. Then he heard a cry. It was a cry of relief and joy; it was his name.

Lee pushed himself forward as the flash of color resolved itself into Rye. He too was running forward. The two men raced toward each other until suddenly they touched. Lee threw his arms around Rye and felt Rye take hold of him. They clutched at each other, winding their arms around each other's bodies, neither of them feeling ashamed. There was no room for embarrassment, only a great relief and gratitude, a closeness more potent than friendship and much closer to love.

They embraced for several minutes, neither of them pulling away from it. The millions of barriers that existed between them had dropped away, and they stood before each other as they really were. A lightness came over them both, and suddenly Lee began to snicker. Rye picked it up and chuckled. The laughter grew and grew, until, chortling and cackling, guffawing like two crazy men, Rye and Lee watched the sun slope over the edge of the earth, leaving only a few bloody streaks in the black sky.

Rye woke to the white-hot sun and felt the hunger stretching before him like the barren earth itself. Lee was already up, walking the area with the vague hope of finding something to eat. Rye washed his face, then called to Lee that he was ready to continue on.

The two men moved off, straight into the barrenness, both of them knowing the chances of finding the alligator trail again were very slim. Rye was even beginning to doubt that they'd be able to make it back to civilization. Still he moved on; there was nothing else to do; to stay where they were, exposed and alone, the only living things for miles, was unthinkable.

The muscle aches that Rye had felt yesterday were just about gone, but that was little comfort. His sturdy clothes had begun to give all over. His right sleeve hung in shreds about his arm, and there was a huge rip across the back. The sharp, barbed grass which had been slicing at his face and hands now had new areas to torture. His skin was on fire. The combination of heat and dampness had infected his wounds, and a slow trickle of pus was beginning to flow from them. Even his feet were giving him a great deal of pain. Battered by the walking, swollen and softened by the dampness, they swelled and blistered into huge, raw sores.

Rye moved forward numbly. The fact that they had lost the trail and probably were wandering aimlessly was the worst wound of all. At least before, it had been a hunt. Whether they were the hunters, or, as Lee had said, the hunted, at least they were headed toward something. Now there wasn't anything ahead of them, and the whole past two weeks of fear and deprivation, fatigue and pain, meant nothing. They hadn't won the battle, nor had they lost it; it had never even taken place. They were stumbling forward, fighting an indifferent and dispassionate country, for no reason.

Every rattle in the dry sawgrass put Rye on the alert, making him hopeful, then crushing him low when he discovered it was only a palmetto bug scurrying across the ground or a moccasin slipping into the water.

A change was coming over Rye. It was a change which must have started earlier, but only now was he beginning to be aware of it. He couldn't pinpoint when it had begun; perhaps it had been there before he came out into the swamps, and was only waiting for this moment to appear. Something was shaking him loose from his moorings. He was being tossed between a craving that verged on madness and an extreme lucidity, the likes of which he had never before known. So far he'd been able to keep the madness under control, though he felt it in himself always, especially at night.

At first he had just thought it was part of his hardening against the swamp. He was no longer a stranger to the land. His senses were sharpening so that he could hear a palmetto bug shifting on a blade of grass and the scratching of spider crabs as they scurried along the mud and burrowed into their holes. Listening to the earth sounds, the need to talk vanished. It wasn't that there was less to say, it was just that there was less need to say it. Understanding between the men now came in huge blocks. One word stood for a whole string of ideas and notions that might have taken Rye an hour to describe in Miami. But there was another reason for Rye's silence. Most of the ideas which before were so compelling, so full of nuances, now became unimportant. Under the vast sky, the flat plains stretching endlessly outward, they seemed to have no more significance than the scratching of a sand crab or the scurrying of a beetle. Rye couldn't speak the words, for fear of discovering that they meant nothing.

The one thing Rye hadn't become used to was the extreme indifference of a land that treated him as it treated everything else, uncaringly. Lee said he could accept the land's judgment as probably a fair one, but everything in Rye rebelled against it as dangerous and inhuman. If it were true, there was no difference between him and the sand crab, and whether he lived or died, cried or laughed, killed or was killed was all the same.

Later, as Rye crouched by the water and cut open a turtle, he received something of an answer to his unspoken thoughts. As he held the bloody mass of entrails in his hand its warmth astounded him. He felt a flutter in his palm, and when he opened his hand, he found among the gray gravel and slime a perfect little heart. It was still beating. He watched it with wonder, then dipped his hand into the water and let it wash away.

Rye saw his reflection in the calm surface and moved closer to it, dumbfounded. His pretty-boy face was ravaged and torn, his cheekbones stuck out like two ledges, and his chin was sharper, more defiant. His skin was the dark brown of mahogany, chiseled with so many deep wrinkles that it looked like dried mud. If it weren't for his light blue eyes, it could have been the face of a savage.