Too Far Gone

20

Betty Crocker felt like an idiot as she followed Parnell’s wide backside through the weeds and around the stunted trees and bushes. She had to fight laughing out loud, because the fool kept waving his hand around in the air, gesturing commands. The trouble was Parnell hadn’t told her what his signals meant. As far as she could tell, he could have been saying anything from “Follow me” to “Gal, I’ve got me some itchy-ass hemorrhoids.”

She was carrying the video camera and was tempted to film him from behind, but she was afraid she’d erase the hulk toting up into his private dwelling that sheet-wrapped object Parnell said was probably a gator with its tail chopped off.

Wildlife and Fisheries Officer-in-Training Betty Crocker followed the wide-ass fool Elliot Parnell onto the blistered-wood dock that anchored the floating-on-rusting-oil-drums, crooked little shack. Betty was careful to avoid the pool of crusted blood that looked like a pizza-sized scab that had flies scrambling over it and buzzing in the warm still air. On the dock, just underneath the tin porch roof, bowls of rusted fishing hooks and all manner of spring-loaded traps and empty-halfway-up scum-coated milk jugs were stacked helter-skelter on chicken-wire crab traps. The shack’s windows were covered inside with burlap sheets.

Parnell was sweating, so his shirt looked like he’d been juicing oranges using his armpits. The gun, a Smith amp; Wesson. 38, in his hand was rock-steady. He reached out and slowly turned the shack’s doorknob.

“It’s not locked.” Officer Parnell’s voice creaked just like the hinges on the door.

Pushing it open, Parnell looked inside. He took a step into the shack and his right foot crashed through rotten boards to his left knee. His right leg folded, causing him to bang his knee.

“Sheee-IT!” he bellowed.

Betty stared at him, trying not to laugh at what felt like a pratfall, but wasn’t.

“My damn leg’s caught in something. Shit! What was that!?”

Betty set the camera down and grabbed his left arm and pulled him up while he used his bent leg for additional leverage. When his leg came out of the hole, there was a large band of something wrapped around his boot. To Betty’s horror, it flopped and writhed hideously, then fell back into the hole. “Moccasin! It was a cottonmouth!” he screamed.

“You git bit?” she asked.

“Can’t bite through my boots. It was sliding all over my foot. If I hadn’t been wearing my snake-proofs, I’d be good as dead.” Parnell sat back in the doorway, pulling off his boot. Using his fingers as well as his eyes, he explored his naked fish-belly-white ankle with veins in it looking like blue lightning strikes.

“It was a damned booby trap!” He leaned forward and looked down. “Two of the biggest cottonmouth bastards I ever saw! Christ almighty.” He laughed nervously as he stood and, holding on to the doorjamb, tested the floor beyond the rotten spot. When he found solid flooring, he moved into the room. “Careful, Betty. Wait a second.”

“I don’t want none of them snakes,” she said, watching him lift a hinged plywood panel that he flipped over to cover the trap. She walked in and let her eyes grow accustomed to the dim interior and her nose to the remarkable stench comprised of God knew what all. The room was as cluttered as a junkyard storeroom and she knew she would have to be careful in case there were more booby traps, or snakes.

“Smells like a crack house,” she muttered.

“You been in a crack house?” Parnell smarted off.

Her eyes found a cot with a sheet covering something that appeared to be hiding a more human than alligator form beneath.

“Careful,” Parnell warned as she approached the cot. He was aiming his revolver at the still form.

“Your alligator’s breathing,” Betty said. She leaned out, reached down, and threw back the sheet.

“Good God!” she said as air rushed from her lungs. “It’s a man. He’s been beat to shit.”

“You sure he’s alive?” Parnell said.

“Put that gun away,” Betty said after noticing Parnell was still aiming his gun at the poor man. She felt the guy’s neck. “He’s got a pulse.”

“We need to call this in to the sheriff.” Parnell was looking around, probably hoping to find a fresh alligator skin or two in the mess, because that was the kind of prick Parnell was. A half-dead man and he’s still looking for some evidence on Leland Ticholet, Betty thought. Just itching to write a damn citation, like he was paid by the piece.

“I need something to wash off his face,” she said. “Call for help.”

As she started looking for some water, she noticed Parnell slapping at his belt. “My radio,” he said.

“You must have left it on the boat.”

“No, I think I set it down when I was looking at the video out there. Go get it.”

“What?”

“I’m in charge, Officer Crocker. Go get the radio.”

“You going to help this man while I’m gone, or search for alligator skins? He’s your responsibility. He got to be cleaned up-top to bottom.”

“Okay,” Parnell said, “I’ll go.”

“And bring the first-aid kit,” she said. She would have bet that Parnell had never changed a baby diaper, much less cleaned up a grown man.

Betty found a mason jar and filled it with questionable water from the faucet-rainwater that came from the cistern beside the cabin. For several minutes, she worked to clean the man’s head wound and soften the dried blood so she could wipe it off. He was in his thirties, she figured. His long blond hair was matted with blood. He opened his mouth and said something that sounded to Betty like “Ca…zah?”

“I’m here to help you, sir.” She lifted his head, put the jar to his lips, and poured some water in, which he managed to swallow. He opened his eyes and she saw that the right pupil was a tight pinpoint set in a bright blue iris; the other was fully dilated. Her mother was a nurse’s aide and she had told Betty what different-sized eyes meant. “You going to be just good as new. Betty gone get you to the hospital, and they’ll fix your concussion.”

Finally she heard the door open and Parnell’s lazy ass coming back. He stopped just behind her.

“He’s going to be all right, I think. He’s breathing, and took some water. He got himself a concussion. Did you bring the first-aid kit?”

When Parnell didn’t say anything, she turned and looked up. Betty’s eyes went first to the face-the features covered with tiny red droplets, the forehead filled with crisscrossed scars. She let her gaze shift downward to take in the gore-streaked length of pipe clenched tightly in Leland Ticholet’s large hand, inches from her face. Betty felt her bladder give and the warm wetness as it flowed between her legs and pooled around her knees.

She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.