Duma Key

We made our way slowly along the side of the house, Jack in the lead and carrying the red picnic basket. His shirt was dark with sweat, but he no longer showed the slightest sign of nausea. He should have; probably we all should have. The stench from the pool was nearly overpowering. Thigh-high grass whickered against our pants; stiff fiddlewood stems poked at our ankles. There were windows, but unless Jack wanted to try standing on Wireman's shoulders, they were all too high.

"What time is it?" Jack puffed.

"Time for you to move a little faster, mi amigo, " Wireman said. "You want me to spell you on that basket?"

"Sure," Jack said, sounding really out of temper for the first time since I'd met him. "Then you can have a heart attack and me and the boss can try out our CPR technique."

"Are you suggesting I'm not in shape?"

"In shape, but I still put you fifty pounds into the cardiac danger zone."

"Quit it," I said. "Both of you."

"Put it down, son," Wireman said. "Put that cesto de puta madre down and I'll carry it the rest of the way."

"No. Forget it."

Something black moved in the corner of my eye. I almost didn't look. I thought it was the lawn jockey again, this time darting alongside the pool. Or skimming its buggy, smelly surface. Thank God I decided to make sure.

Wireman, meanwhile, was glowering at Jack. His manhood had been impugned. "I want to spell you."

A piece of the pool's turgid nastiness had come alive. It detached itself from the blackness and flopped onto the cracked, weed-sprouting concrete lip, splattering muck about itself in a dirty starburst.

"No, Wireman, I got it."

A piece of nastiness with eyes.

"Jack, I'm telling you for the last time."

Then I saw the tail, and realized what I was looking at.

"And I'm telling you -"

"Wireman," I said, and grabbed his shoulder.

" No, Edgar, I can do this."

I can do this. How those words clanged in my head. I forced myself to speak slowly, loudly, and emphatically.

"Wireman, shut up. There's an alligator. It just came out of the pool."

Wireman was afraid of snakes, Jack was afraid of bats. I had no idea I was afraid of alligators until I saw that chunk of prehistoric darkness separate itself from the decaying stew in the old pool and come for us, first across the overgrown concrete (brushing aside the last surviving, tipped-over lawn chair as it did) and then sliding into the weeds and vines trailing down from the nearest Brazilian Peppers. I caught one glimpse of its snout wrinkling back, one black eye squeezing shut in what could have been a wink, and then there was only its dripping back protruding here and there through the shivering greenery, like a submarine that's three-quarters under. It was coming for us, and after telling Wireman, I could do no more. Grayness came over my sight. I leaned back against the old warped boards of Heron's Roost. They were warm. I leaned there and waited to be eaten by the twelve-foot-long horror that lived in John Eastlake's old swimming pool.

Wireman never hesitated. He stripped the red basket from Jack's hands, dropped it on the ground, and knelt beside it, flipping back one end as he did so. He reached in and produced the largest handgun I had ever seen outside of a motion picture. Kneeling there in the high grass with the open picnic basket in front of him, Wireman gripped it in both hands. I had a good angle on his face, and I thought then and still think now that he looked perfectly serene... especially for a man facing what could be seen as a snake writ large. He waited.

"Shoot it!" Jack screamed.

Wireman waited. And beyond him, I saw the heron. It was floating in the air above the long, overgrown utility building behind the tennis court. It was floating upside down.

"Wireman?" I said. "Safety catch?"

"Caray," he murmured, and flicked something with his thumb. A red spot high on the pistol's handgrip winked out of view. He never took his eyes from the high grass, which had now begun to shake. Then it parted, and the alligator came at him. I had seen them on the Discovery Channel and National Geographic specials, but nothing prepared me for how fast that thing could move on those stub-legs. The grass had brushed most of the mud from its rudiment of a face, and I could see its enormous smile.

"Now!" Jack screamed.

Wireman shot. The report was tremendous - it went rolling away like something solid, something made of stone - and the result was tremendous, as well. The top half of the alligator's head came off in a cloud of mud, blood, and flesh. It didn't slow down; to the contrary, those stubby legs seemed to speed up as it ran off the last thirty feet or so. I could hear the grass whickering harshly along its plated sides.