section of woods where there was water. Soon as we hit it, we had to slow down. It came up to our knees pretty fast. We hadn’t even known it was like that back there.
Tony and Jane were ahead of me. I looked back. Gasper had fallen behind. Big Bill stood at the edge of the water. We were moving between the trees, but were still within gunshot range.
The shotgun roared and I could hear pellets slapping trees and sprinkling in the water, and I saw Gasper twist and go down. I admit, for a moment I thought about charging onward, leaving Gasper. I admit that, because Jane and Tony were ahead of me, and I feared losing them. But it was only for a moment. Gasper was one of us, and I couldn’t leave him behind. I turned and splashed back toward him, going fast as the water would allow.
The shotgun was a double-barrel, and that had been two shots, both triggers pulled at once. I saw Big Bill snap it open and I glimpsed the empty casings popping out of it and then I saw him pull fresh shells from his pants pocket. I grabbed Gasper and got him up and we kind of stumbled together toward a tree that was twisted with moss and vines. I got us behind that, and as we went onward, I tried to stay in line with it.
Behind us, Big Bill had entered the water and was coming after us, cussing and sloshing along.
“Can you run?” I said.
“If I could run,” Gasper said, “I’d be running.”
“You got to try.”
“I’m trying. You think I don’t want to run? You think I’m not trying? I’m hit pretty good.”
I took us out into the darker part of the woods, and when I looked back, Big Bill was coming right for us. I was glad the hound wasn’t with him.
As we sloshed along, I found that though the water looked shallow, it was pretty deep. It wasn’t long before it was over our knees again. One of Gasper’s legs wasn’t working, and I was holding him up as best as I could.
There was splashing behind me. I looked back. Big Bill was gaining on us, but I kept weaving us in between trees so he couldn’t get off a good shot. I saw him raise the gun to his shoulder once, but we got behind a tree and he didn’t fire.
I looked around for Jane and Tony but didn’t see them. Good, they had gotten away.
“Let me go,” Gasper said. “Doing like this, he’s just going to get us both. You can get away.”
“I’m sticking,” I said.
We went between some trees, and then there was a large patch of moonlight on the water, and we could see the image of the moon there. It was like it was floating in the swamp. I heard a splash and saw the wet darkness ripple.
I stopped moving. Something swam right by us, mostly under the water, but not completely. It wasn’t something small. It wasn’t a fish. And it wasn’t a snake.
Turning, I saw Big Bill wading into the water, pointing the shotgun at us.
“Looks like you’re about to end your employment,” he said.
I flinched, halfclosed my eyes, waiting for the shot.
And it came.
But I didn’t fall.
I looked at Gasper. I still had my arm around his shoulder. He was still standing.
Big Bill wasn’t, however. He was being knocked backwards by something in the water. The shotgun had gone off and scattered pellets in front of him and all across the moonlit water, but not at us.
He dropped the gun and screamed. It was the kind of scream that crawled up my back and went along my neck and settled at the top of my head. He went backwards swiftly, and when he did his hat went flying. Something rose up between his legs and bit him there.
It was an alligator.
The next instant the alligator went under with him and the water churned. Once, the body of Big Bill broke the water, still in the alligator’s jaws, and then he went down again and didn’t come back up. The water was churning, and I thought in the moonlight it looked a little darker, like something was leaking up from the bottom to the top.
“Come on,” I said. “We got to move.”
We waded across the water, and it got deep. I wasn’t a swimmer, so Gasper helped me, using one leg and one arm to swim. He said, “You got to move one of your arms and both your legs.”
“I’m holding on to you,” I said.
“That’s why I said one arm. I can’t use my right leg, so you got to help. Kick, for heaven’s sake.”
We halfway argued all the way across the water, to where the trees grew thick and the water was shallow once more. After slipping down a few times, we managed to finally get up, and with my arm around Gasper, we moved deeper into the woods, where the moon didn’t shine. Finally we came to a low tree covered in moss. It had some good limbs, so I climbed up in it, held my hand down, and helped Gasper up.
There wasn’t enough light to really see. We mostly did all this by feel. We weren’t far above the water, but at least we were out of it. A bullfrog bleated and crickets sawed at their legs, and somewhere a night bird called.
“You saved my life, Jack,” Gasper said.
“You ain’t taking good notes, Gasper—that was you who helped me swim across that sinkhole. I haven’t never really swam before, just paddled.”
“Trust me, Jack, what you did, I don’t call that swimming.”
39
When morning came we were both awake. We had been too uncomfortable and scared to sleep. The sunlight slipped in through the trees and warmed us up a bit and allowed us to see, even though there was some shade from the trees and the moss. I thought about Jane and Tony but had no idea which direction they had gone, or how to even look for them.
We hadn’t gone that far from the farm, but we were hid up good in the swamp trees. We couldn’t go back the way we had come because of Big Bill’s men. I didn’t know for sure they were back there, but they could be. Going forward seemed the only choice, and it wasn’t a good one. The swamp stretched out for a great distance. And it was full of all manner of bad things, from snakes and alligators to thorns and deep water. Not to mention all the diseases you could get.
During the night, we had been bitten by mosquitoes. I had welts on the back of my neck and on my shoulders. They had bit me right through my clothes. There were still mosquitoes this morning, and Gasper claimed they were big enough to straddle a turkey flat-footed.
I also discovered that two leeches had nestled into my private parts, and I had to reach down in my pants and pull them loose and toss them away. When I did, my hands came away bloody.
Gasper had to do the same. He had one on his foot, right above his shoe top. He didn’t have socks, so it was dug in good.
When he finished tossing them, his hands were bloody too.
“I feel kind of sick,” he said.
“Not feeling too spry myself,” I said.
I looked out through the trees, and now with the sunlight there, I could see the sinkhole, the deep part we had swam across, but I didn’t see any gators. I did see Big Bill’s hat, however. It was floating in some moss on the far side.
“What now?” Gasper said.
“How’s your leg?”
“Not so good.”
“Let me see.”
He pulled up his pants leg. His calf was red and had pocks and pimples from the shotgun pellets. I figured the blast had skimmed and skipped across the water, slowing them down.
“You’re hit, but not bad,” I said. He just caught you a little.”
“It feels like a lot on this end.”
I could see that the buckshot hadn’t done a lot of damage. But the wound was starting to be infected. It wouldn’t take long before that became a problem, especially with us being in the dirty swamp.
We climbed down out of the tree, went back into the water. I helped him along. The water stayed shallow as
