Alligator (11 page)

"Which means?" Rye asked impatiently.

Laslow was taken aback. He was used to brandishing his medical terms like a bared weapon and bludgeoning the uninitiated into awed silence, but Rye was a man who didn't bludgeon easily, and Laslow's arsenal fizzled like a dud. Mentally, he consulted past
Dr. Kildare
shows, but found no precedents, so he resorted to bluntness. "Well, to put it in layman's language, due to a lack of nourishing food and an excess of bad liquor, your father's guts resemble cornmeal mush, only they smell worse."

"In other words, he isn't going to make it?" asked Rye.

"Good Lord, man, from what I can see from the X-rays, your father's been legally dead for ten years."

Laslow paused to allow the facts to sink in, but Rye merely stared back at him, unmoved. Finally Laslow sighed the world-weary sigh for which he was so famous and walked away to a hernia case, where the odds were better and the audience more appreciative.

Nurse Standish, a large woman with false teeth and monumental breasts, padded down the hall. She always wore terrycloth slippers during the night so as not to awaken the patients, most of whom were so heavily sedated that they wouldn't have noticed Hiroshima. She motioned for Rye to follow, and he obediently kept a few paces behind, watching the cheeks of her buttocks as they struggled and punched each other under the tight white uniform. She stopped at the only lighted room on the floor and whispered, "He's been looking forward to your visit all day."

"I'll bet," Rye muttered, as he pushed open the heavy wood door and entered the room.

Virgil Whitman, object of the good doctor's concern and recipient of the best care Rye's money could buy, lay in the high criblike hospital bed, hooked into a panel of dials and charts and television screens that would have made Mission Control seem amateurish. On each of his arms was a series of tubes carrying different-colored liquids to and from his body, while complex wiring connected him to the panels that monitored his various responses.

Virgil coughed violently, sending twenty needles flying and rattling what was left of his insides. He screwed up his nut-brown face like a rusty corkscrew. Rye was surprised not so much by how bad he looked as by how clean he was. It seemed testament to the fact that once you start dying, they pretty much do what they want with you.

Virgil looked at Rye's massive body hulking in the doorway, and felt there was something almost obscene about being so alive. He watched him warily, out of the corner of one bloodshot eye, then spat out, "So, ya finally got the advantage over me."

Rye shrugged his shoulders and threw himself down into the only chair in the room. He figured he owed Virgil the visit, though he wasn't sure why. Virgil had always figured he owed Rye nothing, which was pretty much what he had given him.

"Jesus Christ," whined Virgil, "I'm hooked up to a bunch of machines like a dry battery. Ain't bad enough they don't let you live like a man no more, they don't even let you die like one."

"Now what the hell you talkin' about dyin' for? The doctor ain't said nothing about that," said Rye.

"He didn't have to. I could see it in them fishy eyes of his. They was bored, boy. Like he'd already canceled me out and was just waitin' on the next case."

Rye watched Virgil impassively for a while. He thought how strange it was: He had expected to feel anger or pity or something for his father, but he hadn't expected to feel nothing. He shoved the magazines over to Virgil. "I brought you some girlie magazines," he said.

"You know I can't read."

"So look at the pictures."

"What difference will they make? In a day or so, I'll be dead."

"For Christ's sake," snapped Rye, "you're actin' like you're the only person in the world that ever died."

"I am." Virgil turned his eyes on Rye and stared sullenly at his enormous frame. "I been doin' some thinkin', boy. I been thinkin' about all the things I done, and all the things I ain't had a chance to do, and I come to one conclusion."

"What's that?"

"It don't mean shit. And that's the truth. Don't matter where you come from or where you been, the outcome is the same."

"You had some good times."

"What difference does it make?"

"You can think about them."

"Not when I'm dead."

"Jesus Christ, I'm not goin' to sit around listening to you whine about what's going to happen to everyone else."

Virgil's tight little face was knotted with self-pity; the beginnings of tears were in his eyes. He looked down at the tube carrying yellow away. "I can't even take a leak by myself. What kind of man can't even take his own wee?" Then, as quickly as the tears had appeared, they were gone. Virgil smiled. "You seen that nurse outside, the one with the fat ass? She don't wear nothin' under her uniform, and that's the truth. I took me a peek. Them cheeks was so dimpled they looked like grits. Reminded me of your ma." He fell silent for close to a minute, then wheezed out, "Son, your ma was a great piece of ass. Shame she didn't stick around longer. She had a real talent."

Rye didn't say anything. He watched a large ball of fluff skim across the floor. He thought hospitals were supposed to be clean. It occurred to him that in his father's case, it probably didn't matter.

"I ain't done right by ya, have I?" said Virgil. "Well, if it's any consolation, I ain't done right by anyone, least of all myself."

"I wasn't askin' for no apologies."

"I wasn't givin' you none. You got the best of me when I shot off in your ma. That's somethin' I give ya, free of charge. No obligation. But as for the rest... Did I ever tell you I saw old matt Watson killed?"

"No." Rye walked over to the window and looked out at the blackness. It held him together and helped him contain the pity and fear he was starting to feel.

"Picture this," said Virgil. "The year was 1910, and I weren't no more'n a kid. I'd just walked over to the fish house, hopin' to stir up somethin' of interest, when I sees down the way a whole bunch of men, just talkin' and whisperin' to one another. Well, sir, I knew somethin' was up, and I figured right off it had to do with Watson. It weren't hard to figure that out—just about everythin' in town had somethin' to do with him. Did you know he was the one killed Belle Starr? Well, he was. Killed close to twenty people, they figured.

"Guy was crazy. He'd hire on this big crew to work his plantation, then if he couldn't make the payroll, he'd just kill 'em off. You ever thought of doin' that in your business? Hell, guess you can't get away with that kind of thing no more. But back then, the law was careful not to see too much.

"Anyway, one day Watson, he went too far and killed Bessie Simpson, Seth Simpson's wife. Jesus Christ, that woman weighed three hundred pounds if she weighed an ounce. They had to lower her into the grave with farm equipment. Anyway, that was the straw that broke the camel's back as far as the town was concerned. You just can't have men running round killin' who they please. It had everyone so jumpy they couldn't take a leak without lookin' over their shoulder.

"So they decided to kill him. Problem was, there wasn't one of them willin' to do it. Ya see, Watson was too powerful round there for his death to go unnoticed, and no one fancied swingin' from a rope 'cause of him. But they come up with a plan. You can't hang a whole town, so if they all did it at once, the law couldn't fix the blame on any of them.

"They knew Watson was comin' into town that day, so they all come to the fish house to finish him off.

"Well, you should have seen 'em. Hell, it was like market day. They were all dressed up and shaved and smellin' nice. Laughin' and shoutin', Jesus what a lark. Then one of 'em strains his eyes and sees this here little dot on the water. It was Watson's boat way off in the distance.

"Boy, I tell ya, they quieted down all of a sudden and started lookin' at one another sidewise and scared. You could smell the panic comin' off them. Like the devil hisself was puttin' in a personal appearance, instead of a fat, baldin' man 'bout fifty years old, who weren't even a good shot. Ya see, that's the trick in life, boy, ain't what you really are, it's what they think you are that counts. Anyway, they was scared. Another minute and they'd have run away. But young Dinks's grandpa, he was the smartest of the group, which weren't sayin' a hell of a lot, but anyway, he knows somethin' about crowds. Now he can see there ain't one of them, includin' himself, that was gonna fire first. However, should one of 'em take just one shot, the whole bunch'd be failin' all over each other to get their licks in. So he grabs hold of this black and says to him, 'Percy, if you kill Watson, I'll give you twenty bucks.'

"Now Percy, he thinks to hisself, here's this crazy white man who's been makin' life a misery for me and all of my people for centuries and he's beggin' me to do for money what it would be my pleasure to do for free. This here is a lark a black man just don't get a chance at every day, and I'm gonna enjoy it good. So old Percy, he starts hammin' it up. Shakin' his wiry-haired head and backin' away, sayin', 'No, suh, not me, no, suh!'

"Dinks, Senior, he gets angry for a moment, but then he looks back out at the water and there's old Watson comin' closer and closer.

"Well, he ups the ante to fifty dollars, then a hundred. Good Lord, he was talkin' so fast, it weren't a minute before he was promisin' that darky twenty-five acres of land and a cow. Still Percy, he holds off, being careful to look somewhat interested, so's Dinks'll keep tryin' but like he needs more convincin'.

"Meanwhile, Watson is getting closer to shore. He can see there's trouble, but the old bastard, he figures he's invincible. He don't turn that boat around or nothin', he just keeps steadily aiming toward shore.

"Well, sir, this makes the men even more panicky. I tell you, if Percy hadn't been black, he could have had Dinks's wife thrown into the bargain.

"It don't take long for Watson's boat to draw up to the docks. And he's smilin' and cocky. 'What you got there behind your back?' he yells to Dinks, Senior.

"Dinks is holdin' his twenty-two, of course, but he yells back, 'Ain't nothin' but a package. You know, just takin' it to the post office and such.'

"'That so?' Watson says, as he climbs out of his boat and hits the dock like a tub of lard. 'Well, let's just see who it's addressed to.'

"Son, ya shoulda seen it. That whole crowd, Jesus, there must have been thirty or forty of 'em, starts backin' away from Watson, you just can't imagine. I don't know what they thought he could do. He was just one man, old, fat, out of shape, and there they was, most of 'em in their prime, but they was scared shitless. Old Dinks, he keeps bargaining with Percy, throwin' in a scythe and a mower and I don't know what else. And Percy, he just keeps backin' away with the rest.

"Well, Watson's laughin' to beat the band by now. He reaches into his waistband, pulls out his Remington, and lifts it up real slow, till he got a good view of Dinks's pecker in his sight. 'I'm waitin', Dinks,' he shouts.

"Dinks is red-faced and scared and just about screamin' for help, when suddenly there is this loud crack. I tell ya, boy, I ain't never seen such a look of surprise in my whole life. It lasted only a second, though, 'cause Percy, he lets off another beauty and knocks Watson back a good ten feet. After that, everybody starts shootin' and shootin', till Watson has so many holes in him, he looks like cheesecloth. And that's how he died. They could hardly find enough of him to bury."

Suddenly Virgil's voice cracked, and he sounded very tired and old. "I been doin' a lot of thinkin' about Watson, son. He was a fool and a braggart. He was probably the worst man Florida ever spawned, and he died a horrible death." Virgil looked around at the tubes and the dials that surrounded him and sighed. "But I'll tell ya one thing for certain," he said, "however bad he died, he done it better than me."

It took Rye several minutes to realize that his father was silent. He turned from the window and saw him lying over the side of the bed, his yellow, toothless mouth gaping and his eyes staring up at the ceiling as if it were heaven. Above his head, the dials and charts and television screens registered zero.

Suddenly it hit him between the eyes like a .20-.20; it smashed through his brain and left fragments that remained forever and came up every night anew. He looked at that shriveled bag of dead bones and realized, then and there, that he too was going to die. It wasn't just some vague rumor; death was something very real. It was lying not ten feet away, and he could touch it.

Rye stood there for a while. Pain swirled up, burning his arm and spreading to his chest. Giddiness whirled him around. He felt he was hanging from a tall building by his fingers and looking down into the blackness below.

He bolted. He ran through the quiet, deathly white corridors, with their smell of antiseptic and floor wax. He ran down the stairs, pushed through the doors and out into the night, and he didn't stop there. He kept running, racing through the darkness like Hyde. He had a hard-on that crashed through his pants and throbbed so hot and painful between his legs that he felt it was going to take off like a Nike.

Rye fell on the first female he found, and he had hardly shot off his load when the urge was on him again.

He didn't stop for four days straight. After that Rye could never take a woman again.

Rye shook off the past and moved away from the window. The clock said five A.M., but he still didn't feel that he could sleep. The panic was starting to build. He picked up the bottle of Scotch and poured himself another drink, then walked over to a portable cassette TV he had brought with him. He shoved in a tape.

The screen lit up, and Honnicut Jones, six feet of milky-white flesh, with breasts as big as balloons and hair like candy floss, rolled her hips and licked her lips seductively. "Hi there, Rye honey, watch this." She shook her pendulous breasts into an avalanche of shimmering flesh. Rye roared with laughter.

"That's right," she simpered, "getting it on, lover?"

"Almost, sweet thing," said Rye. "Almost."

Maurice Gainor had had a great deal of trouble getting to sleep, and even more trouble staying there, so when John Patterson awakened him early to go gun shopping, he didn't protest. He dressed quickly while John was in the bathroom shaving. Maurice hated sharing a room with another man. He hadn't undressed in front of anyone but his wife in fifteen years, and he was surprisingly uncomfortable doing it now. He could hear John whistling in the bathroom; he was more excited about getting this gun than he would be about forty acres of waterfront.