Issue Six

 

The August heat stuck heavy to the alligator hunter’s skin. The air stunk of Louisiana swamp but that’s the way she liked it. Her dog and her partner perched on the edge of the flat-bottomed boat, squinting into the murky water. The sun beat down on the back of the hunter’s neck, crisping it up nice and red. She drummed her fingers on the thick metal steering wheel.

“Think there’ll be a bite at the next line, Minnie?” her partner, still green and wide-eyed, asked. This would be their third line today with no bites.

“Hope so,” Minnie replied.

“Hope it’s a big’un. A big ol’ gator, all fat and pretty.”

“When’s s’last time you saw a fat gator?” Minnie shielded her eyes from the harsh glare of the sun and peered into the distance. The partner fell silent, staring at the water with a frown and placing a hand on the dog’s back.

“I seen plenty of fat gators.”

“You ain’t.” Minnie grunts.

“I have! Farther east, near Belle Chasse, there’s gators the size of horses!” The partner snapped, defensive, fist clenched on the dog’s back. He yelped and skittered to the front of the boat.

“That’s a dirty lie, Addie, I been to Belle Chasse.”

“You ain’t hunted there,” Addie snapped, glaring at the water now. “You ain’t hunted there.”

“S’all the same. Ain’t no gators nowhere – Not here, not Belle Chasse.”

“Y’all’s just bitter ‘cause you can’t get a bite,” Addie said, accusatory. She slapped a mosquito off her arm. Minnie looked past her, eyes forward.

“Then why’re you here if you know I ain’t got a bite?”

“’Cause I ain’t got any either,”

“Nobody’s got any,” Minnie stared in the distance. She could see the tall rise of cypress trees out of the water like bones floating up in an old cemetery. One of them had a heavy line weighted down with waterlogged chicken, hopefully with a fat gator hooked on the end. She wasn’t close enough yet to see, but the gnawing in her gut told her that she wasn’t going to be so lucky.

Addie shut her mouth as they neared the third line so that the only noise was the thrum of the boat’s engine, the cicadas’ cries, and Addie’s own stomach. The dog—a good dog, with a smart nose and no pedigree—perked his pointy ears up and licked his chops, barking sharply. He’s probably smelling the chicken.

“Wouldja look at that!” Addie pointed to the base of a cypress tree, among the tangled roots.

“Well, damn,” Minnie wiped her brow and pulled out her shotgun from where it had been tucked against the boat’s side. She cocked it once, standing up. “Get over here, bring us in,”

Addie clambered to take the wheel, revving the engine and sidling them as close to the cypress as they could get. The gator heard them and snapped his jaws. A glittering metal hook had embedded itself in the back of the beast’s throat, thick wire sprouting from it and tethering him to the thick tree trunk. He swung his tail uselessly, sending stinking droplets of water into the air.

“Shoot him!” Addie said, scrambling to grab the line and hold the gator still. “Get him!”

Minnie ignored her. She waited till the gator had closed his jaws and started a roll, thrashing in the water to break free. She fired once. The dog barked when the bullet hit the water. She cursed and aimed again at the fleshy triangle at the base of the gator’s skull. A quarter-sized chink in the armor, she knew it too well. She shot again, and the gator let out a scream. It stopped thrashing in the water.

“Ha ha, yes! Nice shot!” Addie said, moving over to help haul it into the boat. The dog wagged his tail. Minnie patted him on the head and reached down, gripping the gator with thick, calloused fingers.

Once they got it on the boat, they could get a good look at him. He was scrawny and old and missing a claw. He wasn’t going to fetch a good price, not enough to cover the two of them. Minnie cursed and kicked him halfheartedly with her boot.

“Hey, don’t be like that,” Addie said, wiping her sweat-sticky brow.

“Shut up.”

“No, I mean it—” Addie tried again, arms wide, pleading.

“So help me God, if you don’t shut up I’ll throw you over. See if that brings ‘em out. Jesus Christ.” Minnie’s words had thorns, but there wasn’t anything behind them. She was too tired to put any fire in her threats.

“…Yes, ma’am.”

They spent the ride to the next line in empty silence, the sun creeping inch-by-inch overhead. Minnie took her place at the wheel again, gripping it tightly, jaw clenched.

“Aw, shoot,” Addie said.

“What?” Minnie craned her neck to look.

“Bait’s gone.”

“And no gator?”

“No gator.”

Minnie and Addie glared down at the water together, the sun beating down on them. Addie’s stomach growled again, but the cicadas drowned it out.

 

 

Cecil Starr lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and has been recently featured in Pulp literary magazine.

 

 

It was a sun-strained, shallow-breathing day in the ides of August – that treacherous month, with its cornflowers and ice-cream trucks – that my sister Barbara got sucked back into the sun. I’m not just saying that. I’m not crackers or anything. I’m just telling you what she told me, because it’s been bringing me comfort these past few weeks, and the time will come when it’ll bring you comfort too.

As I said before, it was August, the August of the overgrown roads, that time of year the air starts to get cool but still feels dry and sandpapery on the back of your throat. Barbara had cut Sunday school and gone out into the cornfield. The other kids had been teasing her. She was seven and I was five, which is probably why I didn’t notice her leaving at the time. But she left all the same. She waded through the blackberry bushes – where the gremlins live, as everybody knows – and climbed over the stone wall to the field. She went right to the middle and stood in the grass in her purple Sunday dress, motionless except for her enormous stuck-out ears. These were flapping softly in the breeze, skin so thin you could see the sun through it. Barbara stood out there for a while, blinking, and then began to run. She ran faster than any human being had ever run before, so fast that she could feel her heartbeat in her tongue, and then, all of a sudden, the wind caught her ears like a sail and she was lifted clear off the ground. She flailed around for a moment, half-surprised, before getting her bearings. Then she started flying around above the field in loops and dives and figure-eights, and all the while her ears were flapping up and down, up and down.

She circled around like that for a while, laughing in glee, until her ears got to feeling sore. She hovered in midair, then began to fall upwards into the sun. At first she was frightened, but her fear quickly subsided when she discovered that she could still somehow breathe. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again she was in a large room, with high ceilings and marble floors. All around her was a throng of people – not real people, though; as soon as you looked at one straight on it would disintegrate, the way a bubble does under its own weight. There was no god. Just the last Dalai Lama at the front desk, checking everybody in. Barbara went to him. He gave her a key and told her she could leave her skin in the blue hamper, and that she could look out the window one last time before going into the waiting room. He told her she could wait there as long as she liked.

She peeled her face off first. It didn’t hurt. Then she shimmied out of her arms and torso and stepped carefully out of her legs. For a few minutes she held on to the sound of her name, listening as it was repeated to her in many voices, over and over, last of all her mother’s. Then she smiled and nodded and set it aside.

The window was hardly a window at all, just a little porthole of turquoise glass carved into the far wall. She went and pressed her nose to it. Far below was the great blue expanse of the world she’d left behind, roiling with dust and storms and people milling around the cities like ants. At first she was watching a civil war – then she got distracted by a baby being born, cute little thing, with a harelip and astigmatism. She stood, and she watched, and she thought about the day she caught mama smoking menthols in the guest-room shower. She was desperately happy; she was indescribably sad.

The waiting room wasn’t a room – it was the soccer field by our elementary school, the one with the faded lines and the old bleachers that screamed when you sat on them. She stumbled down the little hill and went to lie down on the center line. She felt fine, just fine, a little overwhelmed but nothing that wouldn’t dissipate with time. Everything was warm and sunny; there was nobody else around. And as far as I know she’s still there, lying face-to-the-sky in the scratchy August grass, thinking about things.

 

 

 

Selena is a college sophomore originally hailing from Block Island, Rhode Island, where she spent the better part of her childhood catching hermit crabs and messing around in boats. She reads everything she can get her hands on, but her favorites in particular are Isabel Allende, Milan Kundera, and Louise Glück. She also spends a lot of time painting, going for runs, and thinking about aliens.