Originally published 2020, in Orca, Issue 5. Edited by Joe Ponepinto, Zachary Kellian, & Renee Jackson.
Me and Dewey Stokes sat reading in the shade on the porch of Flem’s General Store drinking Coca-Cola and eating cheese and crackers. I was just about halfway through The Once & Future King when Vernon Parker rode up the street like the Devil was nipping at his heels.
“Anse!” he called, slick with sweat, knees pumping up and down like pistons. “Dewey!”
“Quit that hollering,” I said.
Vernon hopped off his bicycle at the corner of the store and let it crash in the dirt next to our bikes. “Y’all never guess what I seen!”
“Flem shoo us off, you keep howling like that,” Dewey said, closing his Swamp Thing comic and adjusting his glasses. His curly red hair looked like that bush that talked to Moses in the desert. “You know he only let us sit here long as we don’t cause no ruckus.”
“Awright, awright,” Vernon said at a more acceptable volume, huffing like a bellows as he thundered up the steps to the porch. He was fourteen, just like me and Dewey, but he was bigger than both of us, built like a hibernating bear. “Can I get a drink?”
“Here,” Dewey said.
Vernon downed the rest of Dewey’s Coke, slumping his butt on the porch in between the rocking chairs we were sitting in. He leaned his shaggy brown head back against the wood siding of the store until his nose pointed skyward, then he closed his eyes and focused on catching his breath.
“Well?” Dewey asked.
“Well, what?”
I sighed and closed my book. “What the hell you hollering for?”
Vernon’s eyes popped open. “I just said.”
“You ain’t said nothing.”
“Didn’t I?”
“Naw,” Dewey said. “You ain’t said nothing.”
“Oh.” Vernon’s hazel eyes brightened. “There a gator down in the river.”
“Ain’t no gator in the Yocona,” Dewey said. “You just seen a log or something.”
“Naw. Was a gator, swear to God. Big ol’ gator, too. Seen it from the bridge.”
Dewey glanced over at me, blue eyes pleading for help. I shrugged and took a swig of soda. Beads of condensation flowed down the glass and through my fingers to splotch the gray wood between my black Converse high-tops.
“Got a knife stuck tween its eyes, too,” Vernon said.
I arched an eyebrow, emptying my drink and chucking it into the trash can in the corner. Clank. “It what?”
“Gator got a knife in its face.”
Dewey watched me, waiting.
I shrugged again. “Got nothing better to do.”
***
It took us less than ten minutes to ride from Flem’s down to the bridge. The July sun blazed in a bright blue sky, drenching us in sweat as soon as we’d left the coolness of the porch.
The bridge, where Lafayette County’s main road crossed the Yocona River, was a neglected concrete line between a pair of hills covered in brown, sun-dead grass. The river itself was nothing but a winding scribble of muddy water.
We took a dirt path worn into the hill at the edge of the bridge and followed it down--right into someone pulling a johnboat out of the water.
“Whoa!”
I swerved right, nearly launching myself over my handle-bars.
“God’s sakes!”
Dewey veered left, barely missing Vernon.
“Watchit!”
Vernon slammed on his brakes, his bike bucking like a stallion as he skidded around Dewey and came to a stop at water’s edge.
We sat coughing on the cloud of dirt our last-minute maneuvers had kicked up.
“Y’all okay?”
The hairs on the back of my neck danced.
That voice.
It was crystalline--like cool, clear water. Almost sing-song.
“Gwendoline Falk,” Dewey whispered, like he was praying the name of Jesus.
She stood shimmering in glimmers of sunlight glinting off the river, dressed in a purple bikini top and muddied jean shorts. Golden hair dripped down freckled shoulders, framing a star-bright smile and gem-green eyes.
The day instantly felt hotter.
“Heya, boys,” Gwendoline said, dropping her aluminum johnboat in the dirt. She placed both hands on her hips. “Haven’t seen y’all since school let out.”
“Uh, h-hiya,” Dewey said, his voice catching in his throat. He pushed his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose.
Vernon looked everywhere but Gwendoline, his cheeks as red as apples.
I cleared my throat. “Hi, Gwendoline.”
“Hi, Anse,” she said, winking at me.
I felt my neck and face start burning with a heat that put the sun to shame.
Gwendoline Falk was fifteen, and as far as the three of us were concerned, she was the most beautiful girl in the whole wide world. She was one-in-a-million, so unlike any of the other girls we knew, never afraid to tear or dirty her clothes hunting and fishing and hiking and boating. I always wondered if Gwendoline’s wild nature had something to do with her mammy dying when she was little and her daddy raising her all on his own, or if it was just who she was. Maybe it was a bit of both.
“What y’all down here for?” Gwendoline asked. “Fishing ain’t worth a damn today.”
“Gator in the river,” Vernon said.
“Knife tween its eyes,” Dewey added.
“That so?” Gwendoline said.
We nodded.
“What y’all fixing to do with it? Catch it and pull the knife out?”
Me and Dewey and Vernon looked at each other with wild eyes. It was the greatest idea we’d ever heard.
“Yup,” I said, surprising myself with the certainty I heard in my own voice. “That’s the plan.”
Dewey nodded. “Uh-huh. First one to pull the knife out, he, uh--”
“He be King of Lafayette County for the summer,” I said, spitting out the first thing that came to mind.
Gwendoline laughed, and I wondered if stars sounded like that when they twinkled in the night. “Like King Arthur? Pulling Excalibur from stone?”
“Just like.”
“Never figured you for much of a reader,” she said, giving me another wink.
My neck and face burned red again and I looked down at my shoes. Of course she knew I liked reading--everyone did. Always had my nose in a book, like some kind of geek.
“How y’all fixing to catch a gator without no boat?”
My heart sank. I hadn’t thought of that.
Dewey pulled off his glasses and wiped them clean with his shirt. They weren’t dirty.
Vernon ran a hand through his hair.
“Hows bout I give y’all a ride in mine?” Gwendoline said.
I looked up at her. “Would you?”
Gwendoline beamed. “Sure! One condition, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Y’all let me in on your little game.”
“Huh?” Dewey asked, pushing his glasses back on.
“I want in on your game,” Gwendoline said. “I wanna be King of Lafayette County for the summer, if I can.”
“But you’re a girl,” Vernon said.
I cringed.
“Oh, so a girl can’t be king?”
“I reckon you’d make a great king,” I said, immediately wishing I hadn’t when her eyes sparkled back at me.
“Well, now,” Gwendoline said. “Ain’t you a sweetheart, Anselm Caruthers.”
I gulped.
Gwendoline wafted toward me, smelling like freshly-squeezed lemonade.
It took everything in me not to ride away.
“Hows bout we make this more fun, huh?”
“H-how so?”
“Well, I figure a king need a queen, right? Say one of y’all strapping young men here pull that knife from the gator, be king for the summer. I’ll be their queen. Their best girl. Give them their first kiss.”
I couldn’t breathe.
“But,” Gwendoline said, holding up a finger. “I pull the knife out the gator, y’all be my menservants for summer. Y’all do my chores, do anything I want, anything I say. Treat me like a king.”
We all swallowed.
And one by one, we nodded.
Gwendoline clapped. “Good! Let’s go get my knife!”
“Your knife?” I asked.
“You stuck the gator tween the eyes?” Vernon said.
“Yup! Was out this morning pulling up jug lines me and Paw set last night. Big black thing slide up to my boat when I’s pulling one in, ripped a big cat right off the hook, too. Did the only thing I could think of.”
“Jab at its face,” I said.
Gwendoline nodded. “Was my Mammy’s knife, too. Thought I had to make peace with losing it, fore I ran into y’all.”
She flashed me such a sad, puppy-dog look that I swore to myself right then and there that I’d do anything she ever asked of me.
“Holy hell,” Dewey said, pointing toward the river.
Me and Vernon and Gwendoline followed his finger.
There, in the water, gliding like a long black log, tail swishing lazily back and forth, a black-handled fishing knife jutting out from between the two yellow eyes sliding along just above the water line, moved the biggest gator any of us had ever seen.
“Good God Almighty,” I said.
“Bigger than I thought,” Vernon said.
“Holy hell,” Dewey said again.
Gwendoline jumped back to her johnboat and shoved it into the water. She turned, smiling like a cat that caught a mouse.
“Y’all coming or what?”
***
I was mesmerized watching Gwendoline navigate down the Yocona. She sat back at the engine, so cool and calm that I wondered if she’d been born on the water.
I imagined myself pulling the knife from the gator and holding it aloft like Excalibur; imagined Gwendoline wrapped around me and covering me with kisses, the sun setting orange and pink on the horizon; Dewey and Vernon kneeling in adoration.
It was glorious.
And then Gwendoline caught me staring like a fool, and I shot my eyes forward like they were bottle rockets, hoping I’d not let my gaze linger too long and wondering if I’d only imagined that hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth.
The gator flowed downriver letting the current do most of the work, seemingly oblivious to us trailing along in our sputtering little skiff.
“It’s heading to the swamp,” Dewey said over the buzz of the engine, his fiery hair licked and whipped by the wind of our passage.
Gwendoline nodded.
Dewey and Vernon shared a look. I knew what they were thinking: I’d been thinking it myself.
Swamp is gator country.
I’d much rather take the beast out on the open river, but judging from the set of her sinuous jaw, Gwendoline had no intention of stopping and waiting for it to come back upstream.
So I pretended I wasn’t scared.
***
If riding out on the open river felt like being cooked in an oven, then riding through the swamp felt like being boiled. Even the shade did nothing to lessen the wet heat blanketing the swamp like a heavy, suffocating cloud that smelled of moldy foliage and bad eggs.
Gwendoline eased off the engine and grabbed the single oar lying lengthways in the boat, then paddled along in the gator’s wake. The buzzing of insects grew loud in the absence of the engine’s hum, and a chorus of croaking frogs and warbling birds surrounded us.
The swamp looked like a muddied mess of greens and browns; a living graveyard of trees and vines, logs and Spanish moss. Monster-sized skeeters soared through the air, dive-bombing our sweaty skin. Clouds of midges swarmed our faces, needling into eyes and barreling up noses. The water turned dark and thick in places, almost like molasses; water-bugs danced and swirled around floating leaves as they dodged the snapping mouths of hungry fish.
Gwendoline followed the gator around a bend where the river shallowed on our right, beneath the shadow of an ancient magnolia tree.
Here, the gator turned itself around and went still.
Gwendoline thrust the oar to the bottom of the river, slowing the boat to a stop a few feet from the monster.
Its yellow eyes glared up at us, as if to say:
Come and get me.
“So,” Gwendoline said, “who goes first?”
I looked at my friends and swallowed. My mouth felt full of cotton.
Dewey cleared his throat and fiddled with his glasses. “Uh, shouldn’t we, uh, figure how we gonna do this before, you know...we do it?”
“What’s to figure out? Everybody take a turn grabbing at the knife. First one to pull it out, wins.”
“Naw,” I said, scratching at a skeeter bite on my arm. “Dewey’s right. Can’t just jump in. We need a strategy, or something.”
“Okay. So what’s our strategy?”
“Well,” Dewey said, “first I reckon we, uh, best pull the boat up to the bank there, maybe attack from land?”
I nodded. “That’s good thinking. Don’t want to be in water with a gator, no how.”
Gwendoline huffed as the boat rocked back and forth. “Y’all taking the fun out, sitting--"
“Excalibur!” Vernon bellowed, launching himself off the boat and over the gator, raising a log above his head like a bludgeon. Where the hell had he picked that up? And when?
“What in the hell?” Gwendoline said.
Vernon brought the log down on the gator with a heavy whump seconds before landing on top of it with a magnificent splash. Brackish water erupted like a geyser, showering all of us.
The water frothed white like a waterfall, and me and Dewey screamed and swore ourselves purple, eyes wide and gleaming, veins straining in our throats and foreheads.
Vernon’s arm shot out of the water swinging the bog-log up and down in wild, violent arcs. The gator’s black-scaled tail writhed up and out like a sea-serpent, cracking down over Vernon’s skull and disappearing underwater.
The battle grew strangely distant, and I turned to find Gwendoline guiding the boat backwards into the opposite riverbank with quick, panicked strokes.
“What the hell you doing? Vernon need us!”
“I know! But we gotta do it from solid ground, like you’s said!”
“Hell, naw!” Dewey roared, and then he threw himself over the bow.
“Dewey!” I shouted.
I turned to look at Gwendoline again, felt the boat run aground.
And then I jumped overboard.
***
Everything was warm and murky and my heart thrummed like an engine in my chest as I surfaced.
“Anse!”
Gwendoline was screaming, but I hardly heard her over the roar of Vernon and Dewey and the gator.
I tried standing on the river bottom, but the swamp muck gave beneath me and I was sucked back under.
My lungs burned.
I panicked. I flailed my arms and legs, willing myself in the direction I hoped was up. I couldn’t be sure, though: my bearings were completely bungled.
When I breached the surface, I sucked in a lungful of air, then doggie-paddled to the wild splashes directly ahead of me.
Someone’s leg hit the side of my face, dunking me again. Arms and legs collided with me from a thousand different directions.
Something large and scaly thumped against my back. Claws or teeth sliced along my arm, scratched across my chest. The wounds stung, instantly reminding me of that one summer I’d been all pricked apart by hornets after Vernon had bombarded their hive with rocks.
All I heard was the pounding, percussive booms of my heart and the frantic splashes of my friends as they surely died, shred apart by razor-sharp teeth.
Something smooth passed through my hands and I grabbed it and then I was above water. I sucked in air, choking on a mouthful of river.
Gwendoline’s screams floated like half-remembered ghosts along the edges of my consciousness, but I had no time to figure out what she was saying.
I pushed forward, wrapped my arms around something human and then tugged it backwards in the direction of the johnboat.
Something snapped at my shoes, but I kicked hard and kept swimming.
I swore I felt the gator’s breath on my heels as I made my way back to Gwendoline as fast I could.
***
I pushed the body out of the river and into the boat, knocking Gwendoline onto her back; then I climbed in and stumbled over both of them.
There was a splash behind us and the boat heaved and suddenly Dewey was there, too.
The boat rocked back and forth as we pulled this way and that in a cussing mad effort to separate into whole, individual beings.
“My glasses!” Dewey cried as I pulled Gwendoline up from under Vernon. “Can’t barely see a damn thing!”
“Vernon?” Gwendoline asked.
He wasn’t moving.
“No, no, no,” I said, flipping Vernon over. I smacked his cheeks, then hit his chest when that didn’t wake him. “C’mon, Vernon! Wake up! Wake up!”
“Move,” Gwendoline said, pushing me aside.
She straddled Vernon, pinching his nose, placing her mouth over his. She breathed, then pumped his chest with her hands.
Pinch, mouth, breathe, pump.
Pinch, mouth, breathe, pump.
Pinch, mouth, breathe, pump.
Pinch, mouth--
Vernon startled back to life, vomiting up swamp water and knocking Gwendoline back onto Dewey.
“Vernon!” I cried, and then me and Dewey tackled him to the bottom of the boat.
“Get offa me!” Vernon said. “Hurt like hell enough without y’all help, dammit!”
“Oh my God,” Gwendoline said, falling onto a bench, wrapping her arms around her knees and hugging them to herself. “Oh my God.”
Me and Dewey helped Vernon to his feet. Our arms and legs were covered in a dozen red scratches, but Vernon’s clothes were absolutely shredded.
“You okay?” Dewey asked, squinting at Vernon.
“Reckon so,” Vernon said, checking himself. “Ain’t cut deep.”
“Good,” Dewey said, then socked him hard in the shoulder. “What the hell you thinking, jackass?”
“Ow! God, Dewey, I was just thinking what we all was thinking!” He looked sheepishly at Gwendoline and turned redder than a tomato.
Gwendoline looked away, and I thought I might’ve seen tears trickling down the curves of her cheeks.
“Anybody get the knife?” Dewey asked.
Vernon picked wet moss and dead leaves from his hair. “Naw. Think I had it for a moment, maybe. Musta dropped it. Sorry, Gwendoline.”
“Oh,” Gwendoline said, avoiding Vernon’s eyes. “Th-that’s okay, Vernon. Honest. Just glad you okay.”
As I fingered the hilt of the knife where I’d slipped it under my shirt in the band of my shorts before coming back aboard, Gwendoline’s screams coalesced in a surge of clarity:
“It’s not my mammy’s knife! It’s not even mine! I was just playing with y’all! I didn’t think y’all go this far, not for some stupid kiss!”
I hesitated; glanced at Gwendoline and then Dewey and Vernon.
And decided I’d had enough adventure for one day.