“The desk clerk at the Glades Inn knows you left with me,” Carver said. “He’s probably already called Chief Gordon.”
“He knows ever’thin’,” I.C. said. “So’s Chief Gordon know, though he don’t like to let on, even to his own self.”
Both men backed away from Carver, leaving him standing alone and unable to move more than a foot or so in any direction.
“You wanna pass the time fishin’,” I.C. said, “you go right ahead. Now us, we gotta drive back into town and do some minor mischief, establish an alibi. Magruder’ll stay here an’ keep you company till you don’t need no company. He ain’t afraid of the dark, and he likes to watch.”
“Watch what?”
“This here’s a special part of the swamp, Carver. It ain’t at all far from where that Terry Frist fella got hisself tore all to hell by a ’gator. This here area is crawlin’ with ’gators. They figured out some way in their mean little brains that there’s plenty to eat here from time to time.”
I.C. and Peevy sloshed through the dark water and onto damp but solid ground. “We gonna be back to pick up Magruder later,”
I.C. said without bothering to look at Carver. He and Peevy climbed into the cab of the battered black pickup and the engine kicked over.
When the old truck had rattled its way out of sight, Magruder sat himself down on a stump about fifty feet away from Carver and settled his shotgun across his knees.
“Now then,” he said, “you go ahead and fish if you want. You an’ me’s jus’ gonna wait a while an’ see who catches who.”
Carver stood leaning against the post driven into the earth beneath the water. He knew it was firm, driven deep or maybe even set in concrete, and the locks and chain were unbreakable. He stared into the dark swamp around him, listening to the drone of insects, the gentle deadly sounds of things stirring in the night. Though he told himself to be calm, his heart was hammering. He glanced over at Magruder, who had a lighted cigarette stuck in his mouth now, and smiled at him.
When Magruder was on his third cigarette, there was a low, guttural grunt from the dark, and off to the side water sloshed as something ponderous moved. Carver looked down and saw the water around his knees rippling. He tried swallowing his terror, tried desperately to think, but fear was like sand in the machinery of his mind.
The tall black grass stirred, and something low and long emerged. Carver knew immediately what it was.
The huge ’gator slithered out into plain view in the moonlight, sloshed around until it was at a slight angle to him, and regarded him with a bright, primitive eye.
“Sure is a big ’un!” Magruder said, obviously amused.
The ’gator switched its tail, churning the water. Carver’s heart went cold. He wielded the casting rod like a weapon, as if that might help him.
And it might.
He made himself stop trembling, turned his body, and leaned hard against the post, setting his good leg tight to it.
The ’gator gave its fearsome, guttural grunt again.
“Hungry!” Magruder commented, looking from Carver to the ’gator with a sadist’s keen anticipation.
Carver raised the casting rod, whipping it backward then forward. The line whirred out and fell across Magruder’s shoulder. Carver reeled fast as Magruder reached for the thin but strong line.
It simply played through his fingers, cutting them. He yanked his hand away and Carver gave the rod a sharp backward tug, feeling the ‘Oh Buggie!’ with its many barbed hooks set deep in the side of Magruder’s neck.
Magruder yelped and jumped up in surprise, the shotgun dropping to the ground. He reached down for the shotgun but Carver yanked hard on the rod, pulling him off balance and making him yelp again in pain. He’d stumbled a few steps toward Carver, and now he couldn’t get back to the gun.
Carver began reeling him in.
Magruder didn’t want to come. He tried to work the lure loose from where it clung like a large insect to the side of his neck, but each time Carver would yank the rod and pain would jolt through him. The alligator was still and watching with what seemed mild interest.
Carver had Magruder stumbling steadily toward him now, led by excruciating pain. Magruder raised his right hand and tried frantically to loosen the barbed hooks, but found he couldn’t withdraw the hand. It was hooked now too, held fast to the side of his neck. Blood ran in a black trickle down his wrist. With his free hand he removed the cigarette stuck to his lower lip and tried to hold the ember to the fishing line to burn through it. Carver yanked harder on the rod, and the cigarette dropped to the water. Magruder was splashing around now, falling, struggling to his feet, fighting to pull away.
And something else was splashing.
Carver looked over and saw the massive low form of the alligator gliding toward him.
Magruder was still fifty feet away.
The alligator was about the same distance away but closing fast, cutting a wake with its ugly blunt snout, its impassive gaze trained on Carver.
Carver began screaming as he worked frantically with the reel. In the back of his mind was the idea that noise might discourage the alligator. And Magruder was screaming now, thrashing panic-stricken in the shallow water.
The alligator hissed and slapped the water with its tail, sending spray high enough to drum down for a few seconds like rain.
Carver and Magruder screamed louder.
The dented black pickup truck approached slowly and parked in the moonlight beside the still water.
I.C. and Peevy climbed down from the cab and slammed the doors shut behind them almost in unison. They stood carrying their shotguns slung beneath their right arms.
“Been paid a visit here,” Peevy said, motioning with his head toward the two lower legs and boots jutting up from the bloody water. It was obvious from the shallow depth of the water and the angle of the legs that they were attached to nothing. Other than the right leg, with the padlock and chain around its booted ankle.
“Magruder!” Peevy called.
“Will you look at that!” I.C. said. He pointed with his shotgun toward the huge alligator near the water’s edge, its jaws gaping.
Neither man said anything for at least a minute, standing and staring at the alligator, their shotguns trained on it.
“Ain’t movin’,” Peevy said after a while.
I.C. dragged the back of his forearm across his mouth. “C’mon.”
“Don’t like it,” Peevy said, advancing a few steps behind I.C. toward the motionless alligator.
“Nothin’ here to like,” I.C. said.
When they were ten feet away from the alligator they saw the black glistening holes in the side of its head, from the lead slugs Magruder used in his shotgun rounds.
Then they saw something else. The alligator’s jaws were gaping because they were propped open with something — a stick or branch?
No, a cane! A broken half of a cane!
I.C. whirled and looked again at the booted legs jutting from the bloody surface of the barely stirred water.
“Them boots got laces!” he said. “Crippled man didn’t have no laces in his boots! He musta somehow got Magruder’s keys off’n him, then his gun!”
He and Peevy turned in the direction of a slight metallic click in the blackness near the edge of the pond, a sound not natural to the swamp. Together they raised their shotguns toward their shoulders to aim them at the source of the sound.
But Carver already had them in his sights. He squeezed the trigger over and over until the shotgun’s magazine was empty.
In the vibrating silence after the explosion of gunshots, he heard only the beating of wings as startled, nested birds took flight into the black sky. They might have been the departing souls of I.C. and Peevy, only they were going in the wrong direction.