Alligator Bayou - Donna Jo Napoli [22]
“Let’s eat now, so we can use my satchel.” Ben’s already handing out biscuits.
This biscuit sits in my hand, a heavy lump. Cirone’s gobbling his down. I take a bite. Good! There’s turkey inside.
We finish and Ben passes around a bottle. It’s coffee—nice and strong.
Ben hands out a second biscuit each. I take a bite. Meat again, but richer and darker and sweeter. I look at Rock with a question on my face.
Ben laughs. “Mr. Calo-whatever never ate loggerhead before.”
Charles tilts his head. “Someday, with luck, y’all’ll taste Tricia’s turtle soup.”
Turtle? Some people back in Sicily eat turtle. I wash it down with coffee.
Now it’s our turn. Cirone is handing out the pizza. I want to kick him. I should be the one to make the offer—and get the credit. It was my idea to bring pizza.
Ben takes a bite. “Raisins?” he croaks, as though he’s just eaten rabbit droppings. “Who ever heard of raisins in something salty?”
“I like it.” Rock licks olive oil off his thumb and takes a big bite. “Different.”
No one else says anything. But they finish the pizza.
We load soft, leathery eggs into Ben’s empty satchel.
“What’ll we do with them?” I ask.
Charles looks at me as though I’m daft. “Eat ’em, course.”
“But what if there’s a baby inside? Bones and teeth and bumpy skin and all?”
“There ain’t. This is egg-laying week. All the ’gators all over Louisiana, they laying their eggs this week. Perfect time to gather them.”
And now we’re looking up into the trees again. Back to the mysterious searching we were doing before.
“There.” Rock points. From a crook about eight feet up hangs a boat, roped in place. “Good old skiff.”
Charles and Ben climb the tree, untie the skiff, and lower it down.
It’s flat bottomed, lightweight, and big enough to hold all of us and then some. Tied inside are three sturdy poles. A small trunk is attached to the bottom and filled with rope. Charles yanks on the rope, section by section, testing it.
We carry the skiff through mud that sucks at my shoes like a live thing. Only Cirone and I have shoes on; we stumble while the other boys walk on, steady. Finally, the skiff slides onto water. We get in and the skiff sinks into the mud. We have to dig the poles in deep to push us off and free.
Charles stands and poles at the rear.
I reach my hand over and cup the water and bring it to my lips.
Rock slaps my hand away. “Swamp water make you so sick, by the time you stop rolling you be late for Christmas.”
It’s dusk already, and the treetops look like skeletons, stabbing the gray sky. We pass through a cavern of cypress decorated with moss.
Rock points at a cypress with a cavelike opening in its trunk just above the water level. “After the rains the entrance to that holler will be underwater. A ’gator will claim it for his den.”
An owl hoots. Another answers from across the swamp.
I swat at a fly. It takes off with a little chunk of my flesh.
“Think that’s bad?” Ben points at the blood on my arm. “Ha! In a couple of months, this air’ll be so black with flies, y’all’ll think it’s night at noontime.” He stands up. “My turn.” He takes the pole from Charles.
We move slowly through the swamp and everywhere I look, the shadows hold vines that could as easily be snakes. And everything looks the same. There are no landmarks. Or nothing I can make out. I want to ask: how will we know the way back?
The pole sinks in lower now. This water must be deep enough to hold ’gators. What if they’re under us? What if they come up from underneath and turn us over? I’m sitting in a tight ball in the center of the skiff. I can’t bring my arms in any closer.
It’s dark now. Ben pulls in his pole and sits down. He strikes a match. The smell of kerosene stings as the lantern glows bright. Instantly the swamp disappears. All that exists is the circle of lantern light.
“Here.” Ben digs into his pocket and holds out a cigarette butt.
“That dirty thing?” says Rock.
“It ain’t dirty.”
“I saw you pick it up with a lump of horse manure the other night.”
“I cleaned it off good.”
“Listen to them,” Charles says to me. “Two cats in