swamp knew it, and so did the lizardman. Maybe the Old Pope was on the prowl, mean and hungry. Maybe. Laney Allen had seen Old Pope here, in this channel a year ago. The big gators cruised it like submarines, placid in the depths, angry on the surface. Laney Allen---God rest his soul---said the biggest gator paled beside the Old Pope. Said the Old Pope had eyes that shone like Cadillac headlamps in the dark, and his ebony-green hide was so thick cypress roots grew out of it. The Old Pope's wake could drown an airboat, Laney had said, and from grinning snout to wedge-shaped tail the Old Pope looked like an island moving through the channel.
Laney and T-Bird Stokes had come out here, in late April, armed with shotguns, rifles, and a few sticks of dynamite, to root Old Pope out of his secret pocket. In May, a Seminole had found what was left of their airboat: the rotor and part of the splintered stern.
The bell dinged. The lizardman felt the boat shudder as a gator took the bait.
Teeth clenched around the cigar's butt, he picked up a high-intensity flashlight from its holder beside his seat and flicked it on. The gator was thrashing water now, turning itself over and over on the end of the chain. The lizardman's light found it, there in the rushes. It was a young gator, maybe four feet long, not very heavy but it was madder than hell-cast Lucifer and ready to fight. The lizardman got down off his perch, put on a pair of cowhide gloves, and watched the gator battle against the prongs jabbed in its jaws. Foamy water and dark mud splattered him, as the beast's tail smacked back and forth. The lizardman couldn't help it; though he and the gators were always on opposite ends of the chain, he found a savage beauty in the saw-toothed grin, the red-filmed eyes, the heaving, slime-draped body. But money was more beautiful, and the hides kept him alive. So be it. The lizardman waited until the gator lifted its head to try to shake the prongs loose, then he let fly with the lasso.
His aim, born of much practice, was perfect. He snared the gator's throat, drew the beast in closer, the muscles standing out in his arms and the boat rocking underneath him. Then he picked up the gaffhook and speared the white belly as the gator began to turn over and over again in the frothy gray water. Blood bloomed like a red flower, the heart pierced. But the gator still fought with stubborn determination until the lizardman conked it a few times on the skull with the nail-studded billyclub. The gator, its brain impaled, expired with a last thrash that popped water ten feet into the air, then its eyes rolled back into the prehistoric head and the lizardman hauled the carcass over the side. He gave the skull another hard knock with the billyclub, knowing that gators sometimes played possum until they could get hold of an arm or leg. This one, however, had given up the ghost. The lizardman slipped the chain out of the prongs. which were deeply imbedded and would have to be pulled out with pliers at a later date. He had a cardboard box full of prongs, so he attached another one to the chain, baited it with horseflesh, and threw it over the side.
He freed his lasso from around the bleeding, swamp-smelling carcass, turned off his flashlight, and climbed again onto his perch.
This was what his life was all about.
An hour passed before the bait was taken again. This gator was larger than the first, heavy but sluggish. It had one claw missing, evidence of a fight. The lizardman hauled it in some, rested, hauled it in the last distance with the lasso and the gaffhook. Finally, the gator lay in the bottom of the airboat with the first, its lungs making a noise like a steam engine slowly losing power.
The lizardman, slime on his arms and his face glistening with sweat, waited.
It was amazing to him that these creatures had never changed. The world had turned around the sun a million times, a hundred times a million, and the gators stayed the same. Down in the mud they dwelled, in their secret swamp caverns, their bodies hard and perfect for their purpose. They slept and fed, fed and bred, slept and fed, and that was the circle of their existence. It was weird, the lizardman thought, that jet airplanes flew over the swamp and fast cars sped on the interstate only a few miles from here while down in the mud dinosaurs stirred and crept. That's what they were, for sure. Dinosaurs, the last of their breed.
The lizardman watched shooting stars, the dead cigar clamped in his teeth. The hair prickled on his arms. There was a power in the night. What was it? Something about to happen, something different from all the other nights. The swamp knew it too, and wondered in its language of birdcalls, gator grunts, frog croaks, and whistles. What was it?
The Old Pope, the lizardman thought. The Old Pope, on the move.
The moon tracked across the sky. The lizardman brought in his bait---found a water moccasin clinging to it--- then he pulled up anchor and guided the boat through the weeds with a gaffhook. The water was about five feet deep, but nearer the channel the bottom sloped to twelve or more. He found what he thought might be a good place next to a clump of cypress, a fallen tree angled down into the depths and speckled with yellow crabs. He let the anchor down again, threw out the bait chain, got up on his perch, and sat there, thinking and listening.
The swamp was speaking to him. What was it trying to say?
Ten minutes or so later, the bell dinged.
Water foamed and boiled. A big one! the lizardman thought. 'Dance a little dance!' he said, and turned on the flashlight.
It was a big gator, true, but it wasn't Old Pope. This beast was seven feet long, weighed maybe four hundred pounds. It was going to be a ballbreaker to get in the boat. Its eyes flared like comets in the light, its jaws snapping as it tried to spit out the prongs. The lizardman waited for the right moment, then flung his rope. It noosed the gator's muzzle, sealing the jaws shut. The lizardman pulled, but the gator was a powerful bastard and didn't want to come. Careful, careful, he thought. If he lost his footing and went overboard. God help him. He got the gaffhook ready, the muscles straining in his shoulders and back, though he already knew he'd have to use the shotgun on this one.
He started to pick up the shotgun when he felt the airboat rise on a pressure wave.
He lost his balance, came perilously close to slipping over, but the rubber grips of his boots gripped to the wet deck. He was surprised more than anything else, at the suddenness of it. And then he saw the gator on the end of the chain thrash up and almost leap out of the foaming water. If a gator's eyes could register terror, then that was what the lizardman saw.
The gator shivered. There was a ripping noise, like an axed tree falling. Bloody water splashed up around the reptile's body. Not only bloody water, the lizardman saw in another second, but also ropy coils of dark green intestines, billowing out of the gator's belly. The beast was jerked downward with a force that made the rope and the chain crack taut, the bell dinging madly. The lizardman had dropped his light. He fumbled for it, amid the gator carcasses, the rope scorching his cowhide glove. The airboat lifted up again, crashed down with a mighty splash, and the lizardman went to his knees. He heard terrible, crunching noises: the sounds of bones being broken.
And just that fast, it was all over.
He stood up, shaking. The airboat rocked, rocked, rocked, a cradle on the deep. He found the light and turned it on the beast at the chain's end.
The lizardman gave a soft gasp, his mouth dry as Sahara dust.
The gator had been diminished. More than half of it had been torn away, guts and gore floating in the water around the ragged wound.
Bitten in two, the lizardman thought. A surge of pure horror coursed through him. Bitten by something from underneath . . .
'Good God A'mighty,' he whispered, and he let go of the rope.
The severed gator floated on the end of the chain, its insides still streaming out in sluggish tides. On the fallen tree trunk, the crabs were scrambling over each other, smelling a feast.
The lizardman realized that he was a long way from home.
Something was coming. He heard it pushing the reeds aside on the edge of the deep channel. Heard the swirl of water around its body, and the suction of mud on its claws. Old Pope. Old Pope, risen from the heart of the swamp. Old Pope, mean and hungry. Coming back for the rest of the gator, caught on the chain's end.
The lizardman had often heard of people bleating with fear. He'd never known what that would've sounded like, until that moment. It was, indeed, a bleat, like a stunned sheep about to get its head smashed with a mallet.
He turned toward the airboat's engine, hit the starter switch, and reached for the throttle beside his seat. As soon as he gave the engine some gas, the rotor crashed against the frame, bent by the force of Old Pope on the chain, and it threw a pinwheel of sparks and crumpled like wet cardboard. The airboat spun around in a tight circle before the engine blew, the flashlight flying out of the lizardman's grip as he fell onto the rough hides of the dead gators. He looked up, slime dripping from his chin, as something large and dark rose up against the night.
