Too Far Gone

79

In the morning breeze, naked but for a pair of tattered cotton shorts, Leland Ticholet flipped the last of the nutria onto its back on the dock, lodged its spine between two thick planks. Opening its belly with his skinning knife, he scooped out the entrails with his gore-caked hand and tossed them off into the water for the crabs. He began to skin the four-pound animal expertly, using the wide blade with the precision of a scalpel. Few things felt as right to Leland as skinning swamp rats.

That morning before sunrise he had gone out to check his catfish lines. The gator hooks he’d baited the day before hadn’t attracted anything, but he knew they would when the meat turned. He’d checked his nutria traps and found four of them caught up. He’d popped the nutria between the eyes with his. 22 before removing their limp bodies from the traps. Once upon a time he had just clubbed them to death, but he’d been bitten by one and almost lost a finger to the snapping rascal. Bullets were cheap when you measured them against fingers.

He was glad his business with Doc was all over. His only problem now was getting up enough gator skins for Moody to keep gas in his boat and buy the supplies he needed to get by. He looked into the boat and frowned at the thick brown bloodstain on the rear seat and on the floor just in front of the seat, where Doc had leaked out. He’d clean it up later.

He was enjoying the steady breeze and the overcast when he heard the unmistakable sound of a boat, a good distance off yet, but definitely coming in his direction. It wouldn’t be a fisherman or trapper passing by, because the only channel into the area ended not far from Leland’s cut-through, and most everybody knew to stay out of his territory.

As the boat drew closer, the sound of the motors grew louder. A flock of disturbed blackbirds rose into the sky approximately where the channel formed a Y, the left fork heading for the mouth of his inlet. Any boat coming in would effectively block him in. Leland went into his cabin in order to prepare a proper welcome if that boat happened to contain trespassers.