The Second Talmage Powell Crime MEGAPACK™: 20 More Classic Mystery Stories

Gator Bait

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, March 1971.

Crouched on the prow of the drifting water sled under a brazen Louisiana sky, Chat felt the old dread pouring through him in sickening waves. It was an icy prickling in his clammy, sun-leathered skin. It blurred his vision so that Fornier’s Bayou seemed to swirl about him, the canebrakes, the hummocks of greasy green palmetto and saw grass, the towering fingers of heat-blasted gray cypress with their festoons of Spanish moss.

A thin, stringy-muscled, undersized thirteen, Chat clutched the scabrous, weathered gunwales and wallowed his tongue inside his mouth, wishing he could spit out the dry, cottony feeling.

He shivered, listening to the watery whisper as Lefevre, his stepfather, stood in the stern, poling the craft. They had inched into the bayou under power fifteen minutes ago. Lefevre had cut the throttle, kicking the air propeller to a stop in its wire-mesh cage. The slow, careful search for an alligator den had begun.

Within five minutes, Chat had spotted the wet hump, the protrusion of tangled twigs that meant ’gator. As if in supplication, a nearly naked young figure clad in tattered jeans and dingy sneakers, he’d crouched with his lips forming a silent plea for Lefevre to miss the ’gator sign. More than anything, he’d wanted to go home today empty-handed, without a wetting.

The sled lurched from a hard jab of the pole. Chat slipped a glance over his shoulder. A big, strapping, Cajun figure in the stern, bending his dark, hairy weight against the pole, Lefevre split his tangle of black, wiry beard with a snag-toothed grin.

“We got us a skin, boy! Get ready. That ’gator is going to shed his hide!”

Lefevre’s words seemed to hang in the muggy, primeval stillness.

Chat closed his eyes, the dread in him sharpening until it felt like fishhooks in his stomach.

“Boy,” Lefevre rumbled, “what’s the matter with you? Get a move on! We got to wake that old ’gator up and get him mad enough to come roaring out of his den.”

“I don’t feel so good, Pa.”

“Belly hurting again?”

“Yeah, Pa.”

“Now, boy,” Lefevre growled, “you just cut that sissy stuff out. Hear me? Ain’t you ashamed? What’s the matter with you, anyhow? Ain’t you normal? Toutain’s boy, and those twins of De Vaux, they take to ’gator baiting like it was candy. You going to be the only yellow-belly boy in the swamp?”

Chat clutched his stomach. “I can’t help it, Pa.”

Lefevre cleared his throat, making it a heavy sound of disgust and disparagement “Boy, you lived on your ma’s apron strings too long, just you and a woman. It’s time you quit acting like a girl. Why, when I was your age, I couldn’t wait to go ’gator baiting. I used to beg my pa. I used to prod them out for the pure hell fun of it. You need to change your attitude, boy. It’s the greatest excitement in the world. Running a fox or treeing a coon don’t hold a candle to it!”

“Yes, Pa.” Somehow Chat managed to rise. His knees were weak with an inner trembling, but they supported him. Sparks of panic misted behind his eyes as he saw how close the sled had moved in.

“That’s better,” Lefevre said. He steadied the peeled-sapling pole with his left hand, bent down and pitched the coil of slender hemp rope that had lain at his feet Chat caught the line instinctively. He felt his hands forming the noose, slipping it about his shoulders, securing it under his armpits. Then he was powerless to move further. “Pa, I swear I can’t—”

“Enough!” Lefevre’s voice was a cruel, muted roar, thick with contempt for cowardice. “I’ve heard all the mealy-mouthing I’m going to! Now you get the hell in the water and roust that ’gator out or I’ll whale the tar out of you.”

Shivering, Chat slipped into the water. It was about shoulder deep, a turgid swath hampering his movements. He slipped the long wooden rod from its homemade wire brackets on the port side of the sled. He forced himself to move, taking slow steps on the soft bottom while Lefevre played out the hemp line and steadied the sled, elbow crooked about the pole.

The first rancid mustiness of the alligator’s den came to Chat, choking his thin nostrils. Hesitantly, he lifted the hard wooden rod and poked in the direction of the den.

“In closer, boy!” Lefevre snarled. “You ain’t playing pat-a-cake!”

The merciless sun seemed to hide as Chat edged forward. Holding the long rod with both hands just below water level, he snaked the tip into the barely visible mouth of the den. His heart was a motionless lump of ice as the rod searched and probed. He felt it strike scaly hide. Then a piece of it snapped as saw-toothed jaws clicked.

The water suddenly thrashed and boiled.

“Pa!” Chat screamed. He leaped backward. He felt the noose under his armpits pinch tight as Lefevre hauled in the line, hand over hand. Chat lost his footing, gagging on water pouring across his sun-bleached thatch and into his nose as Lefevre retrieved him like a wriggling minnow.

The man’s strength swooped him into the air, dumped him onto the deck. Supporting himself half-prone and blowing water from his lungs, Chat saw Lefevre out of the corner of his eyes. The towering figure was leveling a thirty-aught-six rifle at the charging alligator. The brute came like a half-submerged log fired from a catapult, leaving an angry wake.

Grinning broadly, Lefevre squeezed the trigger. The rifle-crack jolted through Chat. He turned his face away from the sight of the rolling convulsions, the sudden redness in the black-surfaced swamp water, as the ’gator died.

Lefevre slapped his thigh and his happy guffaw rang like a delayed echo of the rifle shot. “Boy, I got me a skin! It’ll fetch some fine black-market dollars so’s a citified gent can wear hisself a hundred-buck pair of alligator shoes!”

Lefevre usually drank to success, and this night was no exception. In his small room, Chat lay sleepless on his pallet, watching the reflections of a kerosene lamp dance about the doorway as Lefevre sat alone, drinking at the rough plank table in the next room. The man was already talking to himself and singing snatches of old Cajun songs in a broken French patois. Chat could predict the next hours accurately. His stepfather would drink himself into a stupor and brief peace would come to the unpainted, clapboard shanty set high on its stilts beneath a hoary old willow tree.

Chat wanted to sleep, but each time he closed his eyes that moment returned, that harrowing instant when he was sure the ’gator would get him. He’d never heard of a ’gator-baiting kid being eaten up. Their daddies, or uncles, or whoever they were poaching with always snaked them out, but the knowledge didn’t stop Chat’s imagination from working. He could see the unwinking ’gator eyes, the cotton-like interior of the jaws, the cruel teeth.

He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. “I swear,” he sobbed to himself, “I can’t do it again.”

If Ma were still here, he wouldn’t have to; or Pa. His real pa had died so long ago from cottonmouth bite that Chat could hardly remember him, but he could recall his father’s contempt for the poachers, the black marketeers, the easy-dollar men who were killing off the alligators. Pa had been content to fish and hunt and go off for a few days at a time to work in the distant sawmill when he needed a hard dollar for sugar or gingham or coffee.

After Pa’s death, there’d just been Chat and Ma. Life had been very hard. There were few people so far back up in Big Shandy Swamp, and little a boy and his mother could do for a hard dollar. Ma’s sister, Aunt Mavis, had sent them a little money now and then, and they’d made out.

Then Lefevre had come courting in his secondhand suit and wrinkled necktie in the collar of his blue denim shirt. Chat suspected that Ma had married him because she felt her boy needed a father, a man about the place.

That hadn’t worked out very well, either. Ma had got a terrible pain in her side and before they could pack her out to the half-dozen sunbaked, slab-and-tin buildings of Rickel’s Crossing, much less a hospital, Ma had died from a ruptured appendix.

Aunt Mavis had come to the funeral, hugging Chat long and hard after it was over. She’d told Chat about the strange world far off yonder beyond the swamp, about Houston, Texas, where she made good money working as a waitress in a nice, clean restaurant, where she figured on marrying a fellow named Jim who drove a big trailer truck.

“He would’ve come,” Aunt Mavis had said, “but he was on a cross-country haul when word reached me about Sis. You’d like Jim, little Chat, and he would think the world of you. So you try and get your stepdaddy to let you come and stay with us a while. Even live with us. You’ve always got a home with us, Chat.”

Lefevre had squelched the idea before it could take root. “No dice, boy. I need you here, helping on the trap lines and fish nets and running of the house. You forget it, boy, quick and for good. This is your home. This is where you stay.”

A short time after that, Lefevre had taken to poaching, an activity that made Chat far more valuable than a prime, blooded, redbone hound dog.

The day after his drinking bout, Lefevre stayed in bed, sick, calling out to Chat now and then to bring him endless quantities of drinking water. He was red-eyed and gray-faced beneath his wild bush of black beard. It was no time to cross him, and Chat spent the hours weeding the garden patch where yams, corn, squash, and gourds grew.

The next morning, Lefevre was up and away early. Chat went fishing, content to be by himself, thankful he didn’t run into the Toutain or De Vaux boys. They were always up to something, and when their paths crossed Chat’s he was always in for some rough teasing.

He much preferred to think about Aunt Mavis, how kind and sweet she’d been, how nice she smelled when she’d hugged his neck. He wondered what her Jim looked like. He must be a fine fellow to rate a woman like Aunt Mavis. Chat suspected that they’d written him, perhaps even sent him a little money, but he had no way of knowing for sure. It was always Lefevre who went into Rickel’s Crossing, end of the line for mail.

The following morning, Chat was awakened by the grip of Lefevre’s heavy hand on his shoulder. The instant he opened his eyes, Lefevre’s face, glowing with greed and excitement, filled his vision.

“Get a move on, boy! We got us a big one today.” On one knee beside the pallet, Lefevre rubbed his palms and grinned in high glee. The morning light seemed to make every jet-black, curling hair about his ears, thick neck and heavy-boned face stand out individually. “Cut his sign working the trap lines yesterday. Almost under our noses, boy. Right over there in Berdine’s Lagoon. Claw marks and belly drag say he’s a whopper, twenty-five feet if he’s an inch!”

“Pa, I don’t feel so good,” Chat managed.

Lefevre’s grin faded. His face darkened. “Boy, how come you want to kill the real fine feeling of the day?”

“I can’t help the way I feel, Pa.”

“The devil you can’t!” He grabbed Chat by the shoulder and flung him to his feet. “I’ve heard the last of this I’m going to, boy! It’s time you got over it. You got a job of ’gator baiting to do, and you’re going to do it! I’m going to bust the yellow streak — or break you. You understand that?”

“Yes, Pa.” Teeth chattering. Chat snubbed the cord that belted his jeans.

“And don’t you forget it,” Lefevre warned. “Now you get in there and get ready. I’ve already cooked side meat and grits while you pampered your lazy head. You got exactly five minutes to eat your breakfast.”

With pasty grits and greasy sow-belly wadded in his throat, Chat moved through a morning that didn’t seem quite real. Details all stood out with a strangely sharp clarity as the sled moved through the trackless, watery wastes. Low-hanging vines swayed, threatening. A curtain of gray Spanish moss clutched like cobwebs as Chat reached out to part them for the sled’s passage. Cypress snags reared from the swirling water like sharp, hungry teeth. A five-foot cottonmouth slithered from a mangrove tangle and eeled beneath and past the water sled, a fearsome omen.

Flocks of birds and a long-legged white heron fluttered from jungle growth as the whirring air propeller shoved the sled along over grassy marsh, drawing no more draft than a surfboard.

The early sun was a torment, a glare filling the whole of the cloudless sky and stepping up the tempo of the mallets beating inside Chat’s skull.

The lagoon opened before his gritty-eyed gaze, a long stretch of water with a surface like black glass, hemmed by palmetto, wild cabbage palms, high grass, and a few gnarled pines.

Lefevre cut the engine and the sled slipped forward silently as he began poling.

Crouched in the prow, Chat thought desperately: Maybe we’ll miss the den this time. Maybe the big bull won’t be in it, but he knew he was wrong. From the way Lefevre was tracking the water sled, Chat knew that his stepfather had located the den yesterday, when he’d cut the ’gator’s sign, and he knew the bull would be here. He was emptily certain of it.

“All right, boy, over the side.” Lefevre kept his voice down, but it quivered with eagerness.

Chat stood up, facing the man slowly. Lefevre had picked up the line, was tossing it to him.

Chat caught the thin rope. “Pa, are you sure this is the way it’s got to be?”

Lefevre’s mustache and beard shifted with the angry twisting of his mouth. “Don’t start that again, boy! Fair warning, for the last time!”

“All right, Pa.” Chat wriggled the lasso under his armpits, picked up his long prodding pole, and slipped into the water. It was deeper than he’d thought, claiming him to his chin. Pole upraised like a long, thin spear, he worked his way forward, buoyancy pulling the mucky bottom away from him at each step.

The den was straight ahead, just a few yards now. He could see the mouth of the huge nest just under the surface.

He stopped moving, settled his sneakered feet firmly on the bottom. Glancing behind, he saw Lefevre, solid and spread-legged, playing out the line until it dipped into the water.

“Come on, boy!” Lefevre bit out “Get moving. Take up the slack. You’re just about there.”

“I can’t, Pa.” Chat spoke with head lifted, keeping his chin clear.

Lefevre worked the line in his hands. “Boy,” he said in a low, deadly tone, “if you ain’t moving before I can count to three...”

“You big overgrown fool,” Chat said with a heat he’d never before displayed. “There’s snags in here. You blind? Can’t you see them sticking up here and yonder?”

“Snags in every swamp,” Lefevre said. “You just get your foot loose and be quick about it.”

Chat ducked, then reappeared with water spilling from his head. He twisted his face once more in Lefevre’s direction. “Can’t make it. You want your ’gator, you come in and free my ankle.”

Lefevre measured the distance to the den with a glance. He hesitated. He cursed the delay. He threw the line down savagely. Then he slipped over the side and labored with slogging steps toward Chat, his eyes despising the boy for his awkwardness. He came to rest beside Chat. Again his small, black eyes flicked in the direction of the den.

“Just free my foot,” Chat said, water lapping to his lips, “and then get back and take hold of the line. Please, Pa. Please hurry!”

With a final glower at Chat, Lefevre lowered his bulk beneath the surface. Chat saw his sinking shadow, felt the touch of Lefevre’s hands on his leg.

Then, with a release of his hard, stringy muscles. Chat fired himself off the bottom. He stepped on Lefevre, bearing him down, the surprise of the action addling the man for a moment. The long prod in Chat’s hands shot into the den. It lashed the water. He felt it strike the lurking ’gator — once, twice, three times — with all the strength Chat could put behind it.

Lefevre spluttered up to the surface in the same instant the maddened bull charged from his lair with a bellow that jarred trees at the far end of the lagoon.

“Now, big man,” Chat screamed, “let’s see who’s the best man in the swamp...” He gurgled the final word, surface diving with the agility of a young otter.

Lefevre stared into the enormity of cotton-lined jaws. He endured a fear-paralysis for one second before he broke and thrashed toward the water sled. He was one second too late.

Early the following Monday morning. Chat walked into Rickel’s Crossing. His jeans and red flannel shirt were washed clean. His freckled, snub-nosed face was scrubbed. His sun-bleached thatch was combed.

The village hunkered in its usual air of desertion, a couple of muddy pickup trucks parked on the narrow, dusty road that petered out here on the swamp’s edge.

Chat spotted Mr. Fargo sitting in a cane-bottomed chair on the porch of his weathered general store. Mr. Fargo was dozing in the heat, a big, fat, bald-headed fellow whose short-sleeved shirt looked like an extra skin pasted on with sweat.

Chat halted at the porch rail, where whittlers had carved initials, notches, and little primitive resemblances to human faces.

Chat cleared his throat and Mr. Fargo opened his big, bulbous, blue eyes. “Well, hello there, Chat.”

“How are you, Mr. Fargo?” Chat said politely, looking up from his stance in the dust.

“I’m just fine, boy, but I hear you been in a terrible experience. By the time you run and fetched the Toutains, wasn’t much of your step-daddy left to bury.”

“No, sir.” Chat cleared his throat. “But we give him a right fitten funeral. Now I reckon to go to Houston, Texas, and see my Aunt Mavis.”

“That’s a far piece, boy. You got any money for bus fare, grub, and such like?”

“I figure I can make it.” With plenty to spare, Chat added to himself, feeling the three hundred dollars of poacher’s money pinned beneath his shirt. Lefevre had kept his treasure trove in a fruit jar buried beneath the old willow tree.

“If you can’t hitch a ride, boy,” Mr. Fargo said, “you got a ten-mile walk down our back road to the highway where you can flag a bus. And it’s a mighty hot day for walking.”

“Not to me,” Chat said. “I figure it’s a real fine day for walking. Good-bye, Mr. Fargo.”

“Good-bye, boy, and luck to you.”

Chat nodded, turned, and set off down the road. He began whistling as he rounded the first bend in the road, and it was the note of a bird set free.