Gator Aide (34 page)

“Miss Porta, you gotta come wit me now. Charlie, he cursing you out somet’ing good for not being here yet. He and Trentone, dey gone out into de swamp. But you come wit’ Gonzales. I got us anot’er boat and we find dem.”

Gonzales didn’t wait for an answer. He maneuvered his broken-down truck around and took off, so that I was left scurrying to catch up with the trail of dust he left in his wake. Making a sharp turn onto the blacktop, he didn’t go far before veering off onto another dirt road. That road forked onto an even smaller and more rutted path. My VW vibrated with an intensity that left me wondering if it could go much farther, when I caught sight of the swamp up ahead.

Making his way over to a small aluminum boat, Gonzales waited for me as I peered into the foreboding swamp that lay quiet as the dead. I hesitated for a moment before stepping into the bobbing silver can, then we pushed off into the murky water, where we were swallowed up by the darkness of night. Gonzales silently paddled under the skeletons of forlorn cypress trees that closed in around us. A nearby choir of green frogs sang a down-home version of country Muzak. Water hyacinths floated on top of the liquid swamp, their blossoms closed to protect them from the evil roaming through the night like a desperado in flight from the light of the moon.

“The devil lives in the swamp, Bronx. That’s why the trees grow so crooked.” Hickok loved to tell me that, feeling almost Cajun himself after having lived in the bayou so long.

The cypress trees were twisted, their trunks frozen in serpentine splendor as I searched for the devil now. The hum of cicadas swelled from a small chant to a roaring crescendo, as we glided past a log with bright eyes that locked onto mine. Taking a closer look, I saw a bony head with walnut-sized ridges leading to a larger series of bumpy profusions resembling a spine. A gator lay patiently in wait for his dinner. Hearing the swish of wings overhead, I lifted my face and was gently caressed by dry strands of moss, their lacy skirts hanging down from a row of cypress trees.

The night hung heavy as a beaded cloak as Gonzales paddled down one ribbon of water after another, its pathway an ancient memory. I thought I heard the grinding churn of a motor off in the distance, but the sound was soon swallowed up as each stroke of Gonzales’s paddle took us deeper into the labyrinth. Turning toward the man who was a creature of the swamp himself, I dared to break the silence.

“Do you know where Trenton and Charlie are?”

Gonzales blended perfectly into the night, adorned in black tee shirt and jeans. Gaunt and gnarled like the trees, the trunk of his body remained motionless as he glided the boat on a shimmering mirror of ebony. Rays of moonlight played on the slick strands of his hair that hung listless as moss.

“Where dey are, is where dey is. Dey out here somewhere layin’ in wait for de huntin’ to begin.”

“Are we going hunting, too?”

Gonzales grinned, his black teeth jagged as broken bottles.

“Yes, miss. Don’t you worry none. We goin’ huntin’, too.”

I drew my knees tight against my body. The swamp began to play games with me, blowing up my childhood fears. Holding my breath, I could almost hear the bogeyman sneak up from behind, his fingers running down the length of my back. Every tree was a ghost, the white moonlight its transparent shroud. Every ripple in the water was a hand reaching up to pull me into a black underworld. Gonzales began to mimic each sound we heard. I twisted around until I sat facing him in the boat, and leaned forward to whisper, afraid to intrude upon the silence.

“What is it about the swamp that you love so much, Gonzales?”

Looking around, his eyes sparkled like those of the gator who lay in wait for his prey.

“De swamp is like my mama’s arms around me, an’ I just a li’l bitty baby. Dis here is my home. It’s where I always feel safe. I got everytin’ I be needin’ an I don’t wanna be nowheres else.”

A black stick came to life, wriggling close to the boat. Propelling itself away, one more creature disappeared, swallowed up by the swamp.

“If I couldn’t be in de swamp, I just as soon be dead.”

“You still do any outlawing, Gonzales?”

Gonzales grinned at me through broken teeth, grabbing the limb of a tree and placing the splintered end in his mouth. “Just a li’l bit, Miss Porta. A li’l bit a gator, a li’l bit a gro’bek. Not enough to hurt, mind you.”

We continued on in silence. I listened to every twig break, every leaf rustle, until I could hear my own heart. A splash of water off to the left drew Gonzales’s attention. Flicking on his flashlight, he shined its rays onto a cluster of snouts snapping at a meal that bobbed up and down like a giant cork in the water. Gonzales rowed closer to see what all the commotion was about, raising his oar and jabbing it in the reptiles’ direction until the covey of gators broke up.

The smell was enough to tell me that what lay facedown like a hunk of floating garbage was a human body, as we moved in for a better view. A ring of blood glowed phosphorescent in the yellow beam of the light. Gonzales tucked his paddle under the balloon of clothing, straining his muscles against the deadweight, until the body slowly rolled over. The face was partially gone, along with an arm and a leg. But enough was left to be able to tell that the man bobbing like a half-eaten apple was Louisiana State Wildlife Agent Clyde Bolles, dressed in the same clothes I had seen him in last night at Pasta Nostra. Moving to the opposite end of the boat, I leaned over, intent on throwing up, until I saw reptilian eyes staring back at me through a bed of algae, patiently waiting for me to bend a little lower. I pulled back up like a shot with the gator following, determined to snag his retreating dinner. Grabbing my .357, Gonzales pushed me aside and took aim, shooting the gator straight through the eye. It fell back into the water with a thud, and Gonzales kicked its body away from the boat with the heel of his boot.

“Dat will keep dem ot’ers busy, Miss Porta. Dey don’t be bot’ering us no more.”

Gonzales handed me back my .357 and turned his attention to what remained of Clyde Bolles. Looping a piece of rope, he slipped it around the waterlogged body to tow Bolles behind us. We paddled on until a small slip of land covered with palmetto came into sight. Jumping out of the boat, Gonzales dragged the mutilated corpse onto the island, where he tied him upright to the trunk of a tupelo tree. Then we pushed back into the foreboding darkness, and I glanced around to see Bolles, a tattered and bedraggled rag doll, looking like one more bayou ghost.

Gonzales clucked to himself as his paddle fractured slivers of moonlight with each stroke.

“Dat was one bad man, miss. He kill more critters dan anyone else around. You pay him off, he leave you alone. Ot’erwise, he haul you in an’ you can’t feed your family none. De swamp take care of its own, don’ you worry.”

Petty corruption had always been an unspoken fact at State Fish and Game. And in the local system where one hand washed the other, all poachers worked hard to fix the law. Being from a city where payoffs are a highly respected art form, I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was. I pressed my hand against the butt of the .357 where it lay tucked inside my waistband, and was grateful to have Gonzales with me.

The swamp changed character as we turned down a narrow channel. The silence was heavier, the darkness impenetrable, and the chorus of frogs no longer sang. Hiding behind a bank of black clouds, the moon had vanished. Gonzales touched my shoulder, and I followed his finger to a cluster of fireflies through a labyrinth of dead cypress trees. As we glided closer, the fireflies became flickering lanterns, their reflections bobbing like miniature moons. Just ahead sat a wooden lodge on giant stilts, an enormous bug with its legs sunk deep into the muck of the swamp. The silhouettes of boats swayed in the water, looking like restless horses hitched up to the cabin’s dilapidated pier. The loud din of voices drifted toward us, an underlying buzz of anger filling the air.

Gonzales maneuvered around back, secured our boat, and then pulled himself up onto the platform. Reaching down, his hands locked tightly around my upraised wrists and lifted me up onto the wooden planks, where I landed with a soft thud. Placing a finger to his lips, Gonzales motioned for me to follow as we crept over to a window, staying well below the line of sight. The glow of lamps spilled out in patchwork squares, forcing me against the weathered boards so that I had to crane my neck to see what was going on inside.

At one end of the room stood Buddy Budwell, his thin blond hair slicked flat to his scalp, with skin as bright red as a freshly boiled crawfish. The armpits of his dirty white shirt were stained with yellow half-moons of perspiration, and his belly jutted out like a ripe watermelon about to burst. The only difference in his appearance from the last time I’d seen him was the black armband he now wore, along with the rest of the men in the room. Snippets of conversation floated out the open window as a hayseed dressed in denim coveralls stood up to speak.

“We don’t go begging to no Krauts to support us over here, so why the hell should we be giving them our hard-earned money? If they’re having trouble, shit. That’s their problem. I say it’s time Schuess got his ass back to Germany and out of our wallets. I’m sick of this Brotherhood crap. It don’t hold no water with me. It’s time we took care of our own.”

Aryan Brotherhood, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, or Klansmen—whatever totem the group was rallying under, it all added up to the same thing. Buddy leaned into the lectern like a preacher preparing to work up his flock.

“Y’all know that since Schuess has been here tapping into our funds, we’ve had to go behind some backs and stick our fingers into the cookie jar just to keep ourselves going. Well, that’s all gonna end. Hillard’s given me his word that once he’s mayor, Schuess is out of the deal. Louisiana’s just gonna be for Americans again. We’re gonna make N’Awlins our own, send faggots and the rest of the scum packing to Miami, and take back what’s rightfully ours.”

I glanced around behind me, but Gonzales was no longer in sight. Reassuring as it was to see our boat still tied to the piling, I knew that without his help I’d be a goner. I would never make it through the swamp on my own. The voices rose into an angry clamor over Schuess’s demand for more money, when a movement in the water caught my eye. Crawling to the edge of the platform, I spotted Gonzales’s outline swimming from boat to boat, a hunting knife clenched between his teeth, to cut the ropes that held each skiff in place. One after another, a ragtag navy of pirogues and small motorboats floated quietly off on the water, as Gonzales gave each a shove away from the lodge. The crafts drifted slowly, transformed into a queue of bobbing ducks among the cypress trees. He caught my eye and waved as he swam on to the next piling to finish the job.

Relieved that I hadn’t been deserted, I sneaked back toward the open window. The conversation had veered to Hillard’s opponent, Sam Jeffers, and his appearance at an upcoming rally. I scanned each face in the room, drawn to the man who now held the floor. Tall and gaunt, his Adam’s apple bounced in nervous anticipation as he began to speak.

“Y’all know what they’re trying to do to Hillard, what with dragging his poor wife into jail on some low-down, trumped-up charge of killing a whore. Well, I hear it was Jeffers’s lackeys and some of those gays that set her up. They even poisoned that poor woman’s dog. So I think it’s only right we get Jeffers in return.”

Buddy surveyed the room as he bellowed out, “Y’all in agreement with that? Cause I got a game plan guaranteed to land that man’s ass on the front page of the
Times-Picayune
with one hell of a headline.”

A beer keg of a man in a hunting cap and camouflage vest slapped at a mosquito as he heaved himself up from his chair. Waddling out the front door of the lodge, he scratched at the seat of his pants and reached for his zipper, taking his time to rummage inside. I pressed my back against the outer wall and scanned the water, hoping he wouldn’t catch sight of Gonzales. Pulling his penis out with a sigh of relief, the man urinated over the side of the deck, the stream hitting the water full force below as he raised his head from his chest to stare straight out at the night. The moon slid from behind its cloud cover so that the swamp glittered, a pool of silver coins with the small flotilla of boats floating in among the duckweed and carpets of plants. But the man didn’t seem to take any notice until his hand fell away from his penis and a few remaining dribbles hit the tops of his shoes.

“Holy shit! We got trouble out here!”

I pulled back from the corner, searching frantically for Gonzales, expecting to hear the immediate pounding of feet on the deck. The low whistle of a night bird drew my attention to our boat where Gonzales sat crouched, his knife out and ready to cut loose from the piling.

Perching myself on the edge, I pushed off just as Budwell rounded the corner. My legs buckled as the soles of my boots hit the metal bottom of the boat, the sound echoing through the swamp like a shot. But I had little time to worry about the pain in my shins and knees as I caught Budwell’s eye, his smile telling me everything I needed to know. We were as good as alligator bait if he and his men caught us alive. Gonzales’s hand pushed down the top of my head, and my rubbery legs folded into the boat like a jack-in-the-box.

“Dose coon dogs are after us now, Miss Porta. Stay outta sight while I make us some fried chicken.”

A high-pitched howl escaped his throat as he turned from man to wolf, baying at the moon above. I felt as if I’d been whacked on the head with a two-by-four, my senses reeling from fear—and the smell of gasoline. As my eyes watered and my lungs filled up with its fumes, Gonzales lit a match. With his mouth split wide open in a maniacal grin, he leaned down to ignite the slick pool floating on top of the water. Ribboning out in a stream, the gasoline wound around to the front of the lodge. Then Gonzales revved up the boat’s engine until it roared above the confusion breaking loose around us.

As we pulled away, a chorus line of blue flames flared up into a blazing funeral pyre, and I saw the contorted figures of men, silhouetted against the searing night sky, diving into a steaming stream of moonlight. Budwell still stood on the dock, his body planted firmly as he took careful aim with a sawed-off shotgun through the curtain of flames. I shouted to Gonzales—too late, as his body jerked forward and his hand momentarily left the motor’s rudder. A stream of blood flowed down his right arm, pinpointing the spot where he had been hit. He took hold of the rudder with his left hand, and we continued to tear through the night.