Palindrome

CHAPTER 35

Liz sat in the cottage's living room and drank bourbon. It had gotten dark, and she hadn't bothered to turn on a light. The silence was broken by the scuff of a bare foot on the kitchen linoleum, and she knew Keir was back. She no longer jumped when she heard such a noise; he came and went that way so often that she had begun to think of it as normal. "Hi," she said, when he had time to reach the living room.

"It's not like you to sit alone in the dark," he said, sliding onto the sofa next to her.

"It's not like me to sit alone in the dark, drunk, you mean."

"How come you're drunk?"

"Because I found Jimmy Weathers's arm this afternoon-that alligator did something with the rest of him-and I can't forget it. I thought bourbon might help." She rested a hand on his bare thigh. "Why do you wear that loincloth?" she asked. "I always meant to ask you."

He laughed softly. "When I was a kid, I went naked a lot. Somewhere around puberty, I became a little self-conscious about it-I think I thought something was going to grab my crotch, and it had recently become terribly important. The loincloth was as close as I could get to naked and still protect my little cock."

"Not so little."

"It was, then."

"You're not surprised about Jimmy?"

"Buck Moses told me."

"I didn't think an alligator would do that. I mean, even when he came after me, I didn't really think he was a man-eater."

"Goliath is something special, you know. He's had precious little experience with man, and I think he must regard us as just larger-than-usual animals to hunt."

"Buck said he wouldn't come out of the water to attack a man; is that true?"

"I don't think anybody knows, anybody who's alive to tell us, anyway."

"Do you think he's really twenty feet long?"

"Yes, I do. I read somewhere once that the largest gator ever found in the United States was in Louisiana, in the last century. He was nineteen feet, two inches long, and the reason they found him was he was so old, he had crawled out of the water to die. I don't think they get that big anymore, because men kill them before they're old enough. But Goliath has been sitting out there in that lake for God knows how long-a hundred years?-with nobody to hunt him and plenty to eat. I wouldn't be surprised if he were the largest alligator alive."

"How do you know he's a 'he'? Have you checked?"

"Females don't get that big."

"Why do you think he went after Jimmy?"

"Maybe Jimmy got near his young. I what I did trying to photograph the little ones when he came at me."

"Just before he attacked, do you remember a noise like this?" Keir made high-pitched grunting noise in his throat.

"Yes! Exactly like that! How did you know?"

"That's the distress signal of the little ones. They make that noise, and mama and papa come running. I'll bet that was the last sound ol' Jimmy heard, except for his own screams. I just hope poor old Goliath doesn't come down sick from eating such a poisonous meal." Keir chuckled to himself.

"How can you talk like that about him?" she demanded drunkenly. "He was a human being, and he's dead! He was your cousin, for God's sake!"

"So what?" Keir said with some feeling. "If he'd had his way-and he very likely would have-he'd have raped this island from one end to the other; he'd have built on most of it and paved over the rest, believe me. It would look like Hilton Head and all the other barrier islands that the developers got their hands on."

"But he couldn't have done it," she protested.

"Sure, he could. Grandpapa won't make a will, and he was playing right into Jimmy's hands."

"But he has made a will!"

"You don't know what you're talking about. He has a thing about it; every time somebody brings it up, he throws a tantrum, threatens to disinherit us all."

"He's made a will. I know because I witnessed it." There was a stunned silence. "Keir, I saw the document; he told me what it was; I signed my name as a witness. And he told me he'd done it in such a way as to keep any part of the island out of Jimmy's hands." Keir leaned forward and put his face in his hands.

"Christ, I don't believe it," he said, and then he began to laugh. "So, poor old Jimmy died for nothing; just a good dinner for a passing alligator and his brood. Christ, what a joke on him! What a joke on me!"

"On you? What do you mean?" Keir went on laughing. It was a haunted, despairing sound, and Liz hated it.

"Stop it!" she shouted, slapping him across the back of the head. "Shut up!" She hit him again. He sat up and took a deep breath.

"Oh, Jesus," he said pitifully. He turned and slipped his arms around her, put his head in her lap, and hugged her body. "The man who loves you is a pathetic creature." He sighed. "He can't love anything without destroying something else. Love and destruction, that's all he's capable of."

She leaned over and rested her cheek on his shoulder. "Shhh," she said.

"You don't know what you're saying." She didn't want him to say any more; there were some things she just didn't want to know. She stretched out on the sofa and pulled his head to her breast. "Shhhh," she breathed softly. "You don't have to tell me. I love you, whatever you are, whatever you've done." She stroked his hair until the bourbon and her day overcame her, and she fell asleep in his arms.