Alligator Park (17 page)

At five o’clock the beep from my alarm
clock rattles me out of a dream. I hit the snooze button and sit up in bed. I
have two hours to get ready, more than I need, but I didn’t want to be blamed
for holding everyone up. I open the door a crack and peek down the hall attempting
to slip into the shower un-noticed. Fargo is already in the kitchen, but he appears
occupied and doesn’t see me. I quietly slip into the bathroom before he’s even
aware I’m up.

After my shower, dripping
wet, and with a towel wrapped around me, I peek into the hallway then dash back
into my bedroom. I dry off, then slip into shorts and a tee-shirt.

Ready for whatever excitement
awaits me, I saunter into the kitchen. Fargo is at the table checking his
backpack. He’s dressed in his usual khaki pants and shirt, unbuttoned in the
front. His long black hair cascades over his shoulders and down his back.

“You’re up early,” I say.

“I’m always up at this time,”
he snaps back.

“Want some scrambled eggs?” I
ask.

“Already ate. But help
yourself.”

I look in the refrigerator
and see there are no eggs. I’m glad he declined so I don’t have to explain
myself out of this one. I take out a half-empty container of milk and pour
myself a bowl of cereal.

The phone rings, an old black
wall phone like my grandparents used to have. I didn’t know these things still
worked now that everyone, almost everyone, has a cell phone. Fargo answers the
phone. I hear a lot of “uh-huhs” and “rights” and he ends with, “I’ll be right
over”.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“I’ve got to run over to the
State Police for a couple of hours.”

“Something wrong?”

“They want my opinion on some
alligator attacks, routine stuff. Happens a couple of times a year.”

“So the outing is off?” I ask.

“We’ll do it later.”

Then I take a bold gamble.

“I want to go.”

Fargo gazes at me for a
moment, surprised at my request.

“I don’t mind taking you. But
sometimes these things are not pretty. Do you think you could stand it?”

“I’m ready for anything,” I
say, totally unsure of what I had just agreed to.

“Okay then. Let’s go.”

Fargo ties his hair into a
ponytail then picks up a jacket and his backpack.

“What about Will?” I say.

“Let him sleep. He needs it.”

He unlocks the front door and
goes outside. Instinctively, I grab my backpack and the insulated lunch bag packed
with the specimen jars. I slip the backpack over my left shoulder and the lunch
bag over the other. The backpack is a remnant of my life back at the university,
never went anywhere without it. Once it had carried books and sometimes my
laptop. But now it was stuffed with a jacket, an umbrella, a tube of sunblock,
a swimsuit, and of course, my camera. I have no idea if I’ll need any of that
stuff, but I’m in a strange land, under strange circumstances, and I want to be
prepared for anything.

When I get outside, Fargo
notices the lunch bag.

“We’ll be back before lunch,”
he says.

“They’re specimen jars, in
case I see something.”

Fargo looks perplexed for a
moment, scratches his head, and then turns to leave, leading me along the
porch, down the stairs, and over to the parking lot. There’s a faint glow on
the horizon, but the parking lot is still dark, illuminated only by a low
wattage bulb hanging unprotected from a ten-foot wooden pole.

We pass the PT Cruiser and
Fargo pauses to look at it.

“What’s with the bugs?” he asks.

“It came that way.”

“Is it supposed to be a joke?”

I proceed to tell him the
whole story about how we got a discount to purchase the car as-is, bugs and all.

“I suppose for two grand it’s
worth it,” he says.

We approach a ten year old olive-green
Jeep Cherokee splattered with mud all over the side. He unlocks it with the
remote, then gets in the driver’s side. I open the passenger door, climb in, and
then close the door behind me. The interior is in pretty decent shape with
brown leather seats and a nice stereo.

Fargo starts the engine and slips
the transmission into drive. We race down a gravel road leaving a cloud of dust
in our wake, kicked up by the tires. I now understand why he never washes it; even
if he did, it wouldn’t stay clean for more than an hour.

Fifteen minutes
go by without a word said so I make a lame attempt to break the ice.

“Nice car.”

“Thanks.”

“Had it long?”

“Five years.”

“Get it from a dealer?”

“No, an ex-sem.”

“What’s an ex-sem?”

“An ex-Seminole. It
was a graduation gift for his daughter.”

“She didn’t like
it?”

“Only had it two
weeks, then runs off with this ranch hand.”

“Without the car?”

“Yeah. Her father
puts it in storage, figures she’ll snap out of it and come back. But five years
goes by and still no daughter so he puts it up for Blue-Book.”

“And you bought
it.”

“How could I not? A five year
old Jeep with only eight hundred miles, that’s a steal.”

I sit in silence for a couple
of minutes, but something is gnawing at my curiosity.

“Can I ask you something?” I
say.

“Sure.”

“How does one become an
ex-Seminole?”   

“Oh that. Well, it’s not like
we shun him or anything. He left the rez at eighteen seeking his fortune. Goes
to college, then marries this white woman. She disapproved of the Indian ways
and convinced him to do the same. He lives like a white man so we treat him
like one. No hard feelings. But he did manage to acquire ten-thousand acres and
a thousand Crackers.”

“What are ‘Crackers’?” I ask.

“They’re the Florida version
of the Texas Longhorn. Smaller, but they take the heat better.”

“Why are they called
Crackers?”

“Because early cowboys
cracked whips instead of using lassos to move the herds, or at least that’s the
way it was told to me.”

“Sounds like he did quite
well for himself.”

“Some might think so, if you
measure success in white man’s terms. He hasn’t seen his daughter in a decade
and his wife spends weeks at a time at the Orlando resorts without him. Not my
idea of success. But he still tells anyone who will listen our traditions are
nothing more than ancient superstitions and science is the only thing worth believing
in.”

“What do you believe?” I ask.

“I believe in the oral
tradition as it was told to me.”

“To each his own, I suppose.”

“My elders lived by it and I
intend to do the same,” he snaps.

I sense that our conversation
is venturing into dangerous territory so I remain silent for the next twenty
minutes. We approach the State Police station and then Fargo pulls into the
parking lot. We exit the Jeep and I follow him into the building.

A State Trooper approaches
us. He’s wearing a name tag with “Detective John Bolt” engraved upon it.

“Thanks for coming,” he says,
and shakes Fargo’s hand. His eyes turn to me and I notice him staring at my
blue hair.

“And this is?”

“Indigo. Indigo Wells,” Fargo
says.

I see the detective’s eyes
flit from my hair to my legs as he gives me a quick full-body scan. It’s something
men do, I’m told, by instinct, sometimes without even realizing it. I guess I
passed the test because he redirects his gaze to my eyes and holds out his hand
in friendship. I engage it and he shakes my hand heartily.

“How long have you been...
you know... going out?” he says, turning to Fargo.

“She’s actually a friend of
my brother. They drove down from Philadelphia, a couple of days ago.”

“A vacation... or permanent?”
the detective asks, looking back at me.

“I guess you could call it an
extended vacation. I’m planning to stay a year.”

“She’s doing research... for her
PhD,” Fargo says.

“I see. Well, hang close to this
man,” Bolt says, tapping Fargo on the shoulder. “As far as Nature Guides, he’s
the best there is. Taught me everything I know.”

“Are you from around here?” I
ask.

“No, I’m a transplant, like
most of the folks in Florida.”

“What brought you here?”

“I was a detective in Chicago;
needed a change from those horrific winters. In my vocation, you tend to spend
a lot of time outdoors. Just couldn’t deal with those sub-zero days anymore.”

“Been here long?”

“Seventeen years. I mentioned
the idea to my wife one particularly cold winter not expecting much encouragement
from her. The next thing you know we’re driving south, with the kids in the
back seat. It was supposed to be a vacation, but we never went back.”

Fargo glances at the wall
clock, then cuts in.

“So what’s up?”

“This is a strange one,” the
detective says, and then leads us to a darkened room with one-way glass. “This
is completely confidential. Okay?”

“Sure,” Fargo says.

The detective looks at me in
anticipation.

“Sure,” I say, mimicking
Fargo.

On the other side of the
glass, in a brightly lit room, is a girl sitting at a table. She looks to be
about eighteen. She stares at the wall with a blank look on her face, as if she
was in shock. A man in a white lab coat, a doctor I presume, takes her blood
pressure and another man, dressed in a suit, types on a laptop.

“A Park Ranger found her early
this morning at the Wildlife State Park. It’s that place where the kids go for
some, shall I say, intimate activity. We’re still trying to get a positive ID
on her.”

“What’s the problem?” Fargo
asks.

“It was dark, before daybreak,
when he found her. And she was up in a tree... alone.”

“Up in a tree?”

“Yeah, took the fire department
an hour to get her down.”

“Why was she up in a tree?”

“That’s the strange part. She
claims she and her boyfriend were attacked by alligators, hundreds of them. You
know wild gators better than anyone around here. What do you think?”

“What does the boyfriend
say?”

“We haven’t located him yet. At
this point we don’t even know if there really was a boyfriend.”

“Was she drinking?”

“We did find a bottle of
Southern Comfort in the car.”

“Drugs?”

“A small amount of Marijuana,
but nothing to get excited about.”

“Can I go out to the site?”

“Sure, I’ll go with you,” Bolt
says.

We load into Fargo’s Jeep and
he drives out onto the highway. About twenty minutes later we turn onto a dirt
road which takes us through some gates and then past a faded green sign which
reads: “Wildlife State Park.”

The park is remote and largely
undeveloped and appears to be rarely used. The road ends at a sandy clearing
which fronts up to a medium sized inlet leading out to a much larger lake. It’s
heavily wooded with Pine, Cypress, and Oak. In the clearing I see a blue Camaro
parked under a tree with Florida tags. Around it are eight or nine police
cruisers with their lights flashing. There are troopers everywhere scouring the
grounds for evidence.

Fargo parks the Jeep and then
he and Detective Bolt get out. I grab the lunch bag with the sample jars, slip
the strap over my shoulder, and then tag along behind as the two of them
saunter over to the abandoned Camaro.

“The girl says that
last night, the Camaro was closer to the water. About here,” he says, framing
out the location with his arms. “Then the boyfriend gets out of the car and
urinates against that tree,” pointing to a tree about a hundred feet away. “She
says she looked away for maybe three or four
minutes, and when she looked back, there were a dozen gators
around him. Having nowhere to go, he scrambles up the tree.”

“So where is the boyfriend
now?” Fargo asks.

“This is where it gets
interesting. She claims the gators circle the tree so he gets this idea to hang
from a branch and drop through the sunroof. He asks her to drive the Camaro
under the tree, which she does, and then he drops into the car just like he
planned. But by now the car is completely surrounded with gators. He slams the
car repeatedly into drive and then reverse, but there are too many.”

“Couldn’t he just run over
them?” I ask.

“She claims he tried, but the
alligators were too big and there were too many. The car would get stuck so he
would have to reverse direction. Now the gators are everywhere, surrounding the
car and trying to get onto the hood, so he decides to abandon the vehicle. The
two of them crawl out onto the roof and she stands on his shoulders. She was a
cheerleader so it was easy for her. She manages to pull herself up onto a large
branch and into the tree. Then it’s his turn. He can’t quite reach the branch
so he stacks a cooler and some boxes on the roof. He grabs the branch and
starts to pull himself up. Then the branch breaks. He falls and in seconds he’s
covered in alligators. Then she blacks out and that’s the last thing she
remembers. What do you think? Is that possible?”