Hello! Welcome to June in Florida, where the heat settles like a haze over everything and fuzzes the mind a bit simply by causing dehydration. While other parts of the country are eager to get outside in summer, this is when I like to retreat indoors to wait out the swaths of mosquitoes and sudden thunderstorms. The beach is one of the few real acceptable outdoor activities in this heat.
Every summer we like to go to the west coast of Florida to visit the calmer beaches there along the Gulf of Mexico. To get there, we drive through an aptly named stretch of road called Alligator Alley. There’s nothing much along this road but nature preserves and Everglades.
I was thinking about who would be crazy enough to venture out into these glades, let alone in the summer. Then the below story happened. Happy reading.
Alligator Alley
Never feed the wildlife.
Don’t walk too close to the water at dusk.
Don’t wander alone in the Everglades.
I knew these rules, and every park had signs posted in the event that I forgot myself. But it was grief and not forgetfulness that drove me to the swamp.
It was barely a rumor. Really more like an old wives tale from someone at Gatorlandia. Are roadside attractions known for their infallible research? Hardly. But in my twisted mind, the crazier things sounded truer.
So I drove. I drove for miles until the landscape looked wild enough that people didn’t belong. I pulled into a rest stop on Alligator Alley, and hopped over the railing into damp grasses that gave way to swamp in Big Cypress, buzzing with bugs and other clicks and sloshes. The air was so sticky and heavy with humidity, I might as well have been walking through warm maple syrup. I swatted through curtains of mosquitoes. Little bitches bit through my shirt (it’s only the females that need blood), but I couldn’t react or care. In this place, miles from anywhere, there was only one creature I cared about. It was lot bigger than any mosquito.
Gators hunt like ghosts the way they hide. Not that they need to with the strongest bite force ever measured in a living animal – more than 2,000 pounds per square inch. Strong enough to crack a turtle shell or a human skull. (Gatorlandia had shared some interesting facts.) So much power and yet they often go unnoticed. But this one was different.
I felt it. The buzzing of bugs around me stopped. I must have drawn it to me. It found me in less than an hour of wading through water I sincerely hoped was free of leeches. A gurgled growl bubbled up to the surface to greet me. I recognized the hunger I was in the presence of, an ache as eager to consume as I was to purge.
Devour it. Devour it before it devours me, I thought. A faint shiny trail trickled out of me – a ghost of what was.
The splash of a long, thick tail, ridged with scales, and the spell was broken. The stillness and quiet was so complete now, I couldn’t even be sure I hadn’t imagined that light. I rushed back to the rest stop and climbed back in my car, heavy with sodden clothes and covered in mosquito bites but somehow lighter. The heaviness in me was my dead tired limbs for once. I thought I might even sleep well. Sweet relief.
But all good things must come to an end. Didn’t I know it. Within months I had to return. Each time I went back, I left emptier and emptier but no longer tortured. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve gone. Grief reappears unexpectedly and without pity. A song. A smell. A story. A smile. All innocent triggers of a terrible truth that never stays where I left it – buried. I get over it again and again. The wound breaks open, bleeds, scabs over and then breaks again.
It could happen anywhere, like in the café. It was only a melody, but it permeated my skin and settled in my chest, tightening its hold. I stopped breathing.
A waitress waddled over like a duck coming on land from the water.
“That’s a pretty tune, isn’t it?” she asked, poking at my wounds like she was looking for a snack. She picked up the empty coffee mug from the table as the arabesque from the overhead speakers crescendoed.
I sucked in a shaky breath and replied, “Yes.”
I didn’t tell her the name of the song, or how I felt the first time I heard it, or how a few notes could make me want to simultaneously rid myself of those feelings and slow time to savor what was left of them – that last connection.
But connections lost didn’t belong on the surface. They belonged to the ancient dark. I sat frozen in my seat until the last gentle piano notes finished from the café speakers. I rushed to pay for the coffee and left. The sooner I emptied myself of these intruders of my peace, the better.
I passed miles of open marshes and swampland, host to a thriving gator population. The larger alligators can hold their breath for 24 hours, slowing their heart rate to just two or three beats per minute. It made me think of them as reptilian vampires, barely alive. The ancient was massive. I bet it could hold its breath for a lot longer. Maybe it had other abilities because it fed on emotions and memories. Did its heart beat at all? Perhaps it needed what made our hearts beat to sustain its own. I was helping it in a way. I told myself that.
The last time I saw the ancient, I reached the rest stop late, as intended. Instead of darkness, a riot of red and blue lights flashed from dozens of police cars and state patrollers. It was the animal control cars that gave me pause, though. I pulled into the parking lot, and one of the highway patrolmen walked over to my window.
“Ma’m, we’ve got a situation with a dangerous animal just beyond this rest stop, and you’ll have to get back on the road tonight rather than stop here.”
“What kind of dangerous animal?” I asked. I knew, of course. I just hoped otherwise.
“Gator. Biggest one ever seen. Thing’s like a dinosaur,” he said.
“A gator,” I repeated, numbly. The ancient. The only thing that kept me going.
“Road’s actually getting closed off to through traffic now. So you better move along to get on the other side of it.” He rapped on the roof on the car and turned away.
“Wait!” I called. “What are you going to do with the gator?”
He called over his shoulder, “Take appropriate action,” and moved away.
He didn’t say ‘kill it,’ but that was probably the appropriate thing in their eyes. Something that size could alter the entire ecosystem out here and heaven forbid it wander to a populated area. I’d never seen more than its tail, but that was enough to hint at the size of the rest of it. I shuddered.
How had they seen it? Why had it come so close to the rest stop? My mind kept racing through questions because I didn’t want to admit the answers. I had been feeding it regularly. When fed, alligators lose their natural wariness of people and associate them with food. The ancient was a gator after all, it must have had those same tendencies even if it had a different diet.
I pulled out of the parking lot and got back on Alligator Alley. I don’t remember pulling over and stopping the car again further down and pulling off the road again. I drifted, almost as if in a dream, and doubled back on foot deeper into the grasses and back toward the rest stop. I kept low to the ground. If it came to me, then I could warn the ancient.
Tell it to go back to the far reaches of the Everglades, to go back to sleep. That I had nothing more to give it. The grief that had consumed me was all but gone and all that remained was a void. I crept deeper into the grasses until I felt water rise up. Something writhed against my leg and then disappeared. Probably a snake. Great. I moved away fast from that spot in case it was a water moccasin. The lights still blared in the distance and search lights had been brought into the rest stop to scan the surrounding area. I distantly heard a chopper. I moved deeper until the water was at my waist.
A growl had me whip my head around to locate the source. Just as before, the ancient came to me. It rose from the water in front of me and its eyes glowed orange. Eyes as big as bread plates and a snout that stretched several feet out in front of them.
A flash in those eyes and I saw him. Like a projector ghost reliving my memories. The one I’d tried so hard to forget. Tears I had not cried in months pricked my eyes.
If they destroyed the ancient, my memories would go with it. I felt that as certainly as I felt relief when handing them over. I couldn’t handle the memories but I wasn’t sure if I could live with their permanent destruction, either.
“They’re going to kill you if you stay,” I said. “You have to go hide.”
The thrum of the once distant helicopter was getting louder. The ancient didn’t move. Another scene flashed in its eyes. Running in the summer rain and splashing in puddles, laughing until I thought my lungs would burst. It trickled in trail of light toward me. I cried as I took the memory back, but I didn’t crumble. I didn’t break watching a joy that felt like it couldn’t belong to me. That me was part of me, and if I let her go, what would I be? How had I so willingly given this piece of myself up?
A searchlight passed nearby. I spared a glance at it before I turned back to the ancient. It was further away now by a few yards. I moved closer. No, not further away. Smaller. It’s eyes were more like tea cup saucers. Then I understood. It would hurt, but we’d both be better for it.
“I’m ready,” I said. “Show me the rest.”
One by one, I took back all the memories that I had handed over so thoughtlessly. I clutched my chest. The loss so fresh again. But I knew that I could see it differently if I wanted to. That choosing to keep these memories alive and well would take tending.
The helicopter zoomed overhead. The searchlight blinded me. It circled back around and hovered. When my eyes were finally able to see anything in the dazzling white, I realized I was alone. The ancient was gone or.
“Ma’am are you hurt?” a male voice called from a megaphone.
I was still clutching my chest.
Yes, I was hurt. But I’d be okay.