“I don’t know. I’ll worry about that later. First thing I gotta do is get Devil home. He’s hurt bad, and he won’t know where he is. I gotta bring him in.”

She looked down at her eye-shell. She knew that if she put it on she’d feel that pain again. But she had to. She couldn’t leave Devil hangin’. Had to bring him back to his gator hole where he could wallow and heal up.

How’d that skinny old hag do it? How’d she hurt Devil whose hide was like armor plate?

Semelee didn’t know but she was gonna find out. And when she did, that old lady was gonna pay for what she’d done to Devil. That bitch was gonna hurt like Devil. Maybe even worse.

13

“Dad? Are you okay?”

Tom looked up from his chair and found Jack staring at him, a worried look on his face.

I must look like hell, he thought. He tried to respond but all he could do was shake his head and sweat.

“Is it your heart?”

“No.” Finally he could speak. “Not my heart. It’s my head. I remember what happened Monday night.”

“You mean, Tuesday morning?”

“Whenever I had the accident. That…that alligator was there.”

“That same one?” Jack said.

“You think I could forget those horns and those extra legs?”

Anya was watching him from her recliner. “Don’t go out at night like you do—how many times did I tell you that?”

“Countless times.” He shook his head. “I should have listened.”

Jack dropped into his own chair, opposite. “But how does that alligator figure into your accident? Or doesn’t it?”

“Oh, it does. I remember it now. I was driving south along Pemberton, taking my time…”

No hurry, no place to go, no timetable to hew to on that warm yet unseasonably cool night. Cool enough to drive with the windows open, not worrying about the mosquitoes because even that easy pace was too fast for them. He remembered the hum of his tires on the pavement, the soft feel of the wind swirling through the car and the mix of fragrances riding it: the sour smell of the saw grass yearning for water, the sweetness of the flowering roadside bushes.

“…and as I came to the stop sign on South Road, I slowed to a stop—well, maybe not a complete stop, but a sort of rolling stop. I was taking my foot off the brake as the car eased into the intersection, but before I could give it gas again I saw something crawl onto the road ahead of me. I hit the brakes hard and came to a dead stop maybe three-quarters of the way through the intersection.”

“An alligator?” Jack said. “The one we just saw?”