Terror at Bottle Creek Read online

  It wasn’t until Francie mentioned stars that I noticed the rain no longer pelted me and the wind was no longer howling through the treetops. I lifted my head and saw the canopy was still and the swamp wasn’t as dark.

  “She’s right,” Liza said. “Stars.”

  I looked up through the limbs and saw the night speckled with pinpoints of light, as cloudless as the clearest sky I’d ever seen.

  “The storm’s gone,” Liza said.

  “For now,” I said. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to give Francie hope or if she didn’t really know what was happening. “We’re in the eye of the hurricane. Right in the middle.”

  “So—” Liza didn’t finish her sentence.

  “That’s right,” I said. I reached out and brushed Francie’s hair from her face and pressed my palm against her cheek. The skin was cold. Her lips were starting to get a bluish color to them.

  “Can we get down now, Cort?” Francie whispered.

  “Not yet, Francie,” I said. “Y’all need to drink water.”

  I leaned forward and bit into Liza’s flotation vest and tore the fabric. Once the tear was started I ripped around the foam panel until I had a rectangular piece of watertight cloth. I held it against the tree and caught water as it drained down the trunk. When I had a small bowlful I cupped it and made a spout and held it to her face.

  “Open your mouth,” I said.

  She did. Water trickled down the cup and she swallowed as it ran over her tongue. I waited until she closed her lips and it rolled off her chin. Then I bent down and tilted Francie’s head and did the same for her.

  When they’d both had enough, I drank a little myself. Then I pressed the fabric into Liza’s hands and told her to hold on to it.

  I could think of nothing else to do for us. The bear moaned and I put my light on him and saw him clutching the tree, trembling. I couldn’t tell if he was cold, tired, or sick.

  The hogs grunted below. I didn’t want the girls thinking about any of it. I wanted them to keep talking. To keep their minds on something else. Liza must have been thinking the same thing.

  “I’ll bet Mr. Bear has a name,” she said.

  “I’ll bet he does,” I said. “What do you think his name is, Francie?”

  “Elmo,” she mumbled.

  Liza and I laughed.

  “Elmo,” Liza repeated. “I think you’re right. Another Elmo.”

  “Elmo needs water, too,” Francie mumbled.

  “I don’t know how we can get water to him,” Liza said, “but Elmo’s used to getting water out here in the swamp. I think he knows what to do.”

  “What about the snakes?” Francie said.

  “I don’t see any snakes over there,” I said.

  “You have to look,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll look. I’ll make sure Elmo doesn’t have any snakes in the tree with him.”

  I stood with my spear. The bear was about ten feet away and my stick was only six feet long. I knew there would be snakes in that tree, and I didn’t know what I could do about it. But I wanted to convince Francie I’d done something.

  I put the light in my mouth and grabbed a branch overhead. I used it for balance as I slowly made my way out on one of the limbs supporting our platform. The bear turned its head and watched me.

  The limb bowed under my weight. “Coming toward you, Elmo,” I said nervously.

  When I’d gone as far as I could, I moved my head about, shining the bear’s tree. I saw two snakes coiled directly below him, the pearl black of their eyes blinkless and cruel. I held the stick out toward him, and he grunted and shifted.

  “Easy, Elmo,” I said.

  I used the tip of the spear to flick the two snakes off the limb. As I was doing so, I saw another just out of reach. I’d done what I could, so I backed up until I was on firmer footing again. The bear kept his eyes on me. Closer now, I saw something yellow dripping from the edge of his mouth. He was sick. I guessed he’d already been snakebit.

  “Hang in there, Elmo,” I said.

  While I was out on the limb with a different viewpoint, I made a quick scan of our own tree. I saw a larger snake above us and out of reach. But I didn’t say anything. Maybe it was best if the girls didn’t suspect what I was starting to realize. There were snakes everywhere. And they were going to keep coming.

  29

  When I returned to the girls I saw their skin was covered with thin smears of chewed juniper berries. Liza had been applying more of the paste while I was out on the limb. The wind and rain was starting up again and the swamp was growing darker.

  “The stars are gone,” Liza said.

  I didn’t need to look up to see that the eye of the hurricane had passed and the storm clouds were moving back over us. And I knew the second act of Igor, the messy trailing end of him, was going to be even wetter than the first.

  “How much longer before daylight?” I said.

  She pulled her hand from her lap and looked at her watch. “It’s four o’clock,” she said.

  “Two hours,” I said.

  She looked back at me, as if waiting for some solution I’d thought of.

  “Two more hours, and Dad’ll come home and start searching for us.”

  She continued to look at me. She didn’t say anything, but her eyes told me what she was thinking. I didn’t need to make up anything with her. She knew better.

  “Will the storm get worse?”

  “The wind’ll change directions. It should start blowing some of this water out of here.”

  Liza shifted and drew up her knee. Suddenly she yelped and kicked outward. I waved the light over her leg and saw a cottonmouth hanging and whipping from her heel. Francie screamed and twisted against her. I leaned against the trunk and swiped at it with the spear. Liza was kicking wildly and I missed twice before I was able to connect with enough of the snake’s body to tear it loose. She pulled her leg back under her and gripped her heel tightly, her chest rising and falling in deep breaths of panic. Francie was hysterical again, and Liza instinctively pulled her to her.

  “Dammit,” I said, trying to hold myself together. “Dammit. Hold on.” I knelt and fumbled for the glass shard. “Hold on,” I said again.

  I brushed my hand over it and felt the glass slice into my palm. I winced and found it again and pulled it from the split. I sat and hung my legs on the outside of the platform and reached for her foot.

  “Let go of it,” I said.

  “I’m in trouble now,” she said.

  She rocked and moaned and held it and didn’t seem to hear me.

  “Liza!”

  She let go and I put the light on her heel and saw the two fang marks, oozing something milky and bloody. I held her ankle tight and sliced quickly from one puncture to the other. She yelped and jerked, and I pulled the heel back to me. Then I leaned over and sucked and spit the poison.

  Liza managed to calm herself for Francie. “Shhh,” she said to her. “It’s gonna be okay. Look, Cort’s fixing it.”

  But I felt her leg trembling and I knew she didn’t believe what she was saying. I didn’t want to think about whether I believed it or not.

  Francie stopped wailing and hugged her tightly.

  “Did you get it all?” Liza said. She asked me in a way that didn’t sound like she really cared about the answer.

  There was no way to get it all, but she didn’t need the truth. “I tasted it,” I said. “I got a lot of it.”

  “What’s gonna happen to me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do, Cort. You know about this.”

  She was right. I did. But I wished I didn’t.

  30

  I’d seen a man snakebit before. A pasty-skinned bird-watcher from Minnesota, a retired attorney we took on a day trip. He was chasing a blue heron we’d seen flap and croak away. Dad was always impatient with bird-watchers, but more so with this man than usual. He’d ignored everything we’d said that day regarding his safe
ty. Dad told him there would be other herons and not to get out of the boat. But he didn’t listen. He held his eyeglasses with one hand and clutched his camera with the other and left the boat sweating and thrashing into a steamy thicket.

  We stayed behind and drank some water and waited. A moment later we heard him deep in the underbrush, screaming like a girl.

  “He’s prob’ly up to his waist in mud,” Dad said to me. “Got a big banana spider on his face.”

  I smiled. Dad and I often joked about banana spiders. They were an evil black-and-yellow color and grew as big as my hand. They always seemed to string their webs right where a person wanted to walk, sometimes two or more clinging to the same web. Although they weren’t poisonous, that didn’t help matters when you passed through a sticky mess of them and felt them crawling over your neck and face.

  “You want me to go help him?” I asked.

  Dad frowned and started to stand. He sighed. “Naw, I’ll check on him.”

  Dad took his time capping the thermos and replacing it in the cooler. Before he was done we heard the attorney crashing toward us through the palmetto. He reappeared at the water’s edge, his glasses gone, bright red streaks of briar tears across his face. He held his arm and stared at us with a look of horror.

  “I’ve been bitten by a viper,” he said in disbelief.

  I looked at Dad. He didn’t seem immediately alarmed. The man had been overreacting to things all day. We helped him into the boat and he showed us the two fang marks on the muscle of his forearm.

  “What did the snake look like?” Dad asked him.

  “It was black and thick.”

  “Are you sure it was venomous?”

  “What?” the birder said. “I don’t know anything about vipers!”

  “Was its head thick and triangular?”

  “I didn’t study its head, you idiot! Let’s go! I need medical attention!”

  I was already starting our old tiller-steer jon. Snakebite or not, I knew Dad was ready to get the birder back to the landing.

  “Calm down,” Dad told him. “If it was venomous, then you need to keep your heart rate slow.”

  “Go, kid!” the birder screamed.

  The boat was backing off the bank. I couldn’t have gone any faster. Dad got the snakebite kit out of a dry box under his seat. He pulled it open and dumped the contents into his lap. Meanwhile I gunned the boat up the bayou.

  “What’s that?” the birder asked.

  “Snakebite kit. There’s a razor blade in here. We’ll need to cut your arm and start sucking out the venom.”

  “Cut me! What if it’s not poisonous?”

  “It probably was,” Dad said to him.

  He studied us for a moment as if there were a possibility Dad was joking. I held the tiller of the boat as we raced up the bayou. We had a twenty-minute ride ahead of us to the landing. If he’d been bitten by a cottonmouth, then it was more important to get him to a hospital than it was to suck the venom. There were even some people we knew who discouraged using a snakebite kit at all if there was a chance of proper medical attention. But I knew what Dad was thinking. Maybe just keeping the guy occupied would calm him down.

  “Hold out your arm,” Dad said.

  “Do you have any experience with this?” the birder said.

  “No.”

  “I want certified medical attention!”

  “Suit yourself,” Dad said.

  Dad put away the snakebite kit and got our two-way radio from a dry bag at my feet and called Curly Stanson, the sheriff.

  “Curly, I’ve got a client that may have been bitten by a cottonmouth. You think you could get somebody to meet me? I’m about fifteen minutes out.”

  “Ten-four,” Curly said. “I’ll get ’em on the way.”

  “Who was that?” the lawyer said.

  “The sheriff.”

  “Call an ambulance or something! I don’t know where the hospital is! What do you expect him to do?”

  “There’s no cell phone coverage here. He’ll have somebody drive you to the hospital.”

  “What kind of jackleg outfit is this?”

  Dad looked him straight in the eyes. “Do you want to die?”

  “What the hell kind of question is that?”

  “There’s snake venom in your bloodstream. Possibly enough to kill you. The more you move, the more you talk, the faster your heart pumps it through your entire body. It’s already eatin’ at the muscle tissue in your arm. If you’re lucky, they won’t have to amputate it.”

  The birder swallowed and didn’t answer.

  “So turn around, face forward, and shut up.”

  The birder nodded like a child and slowly turned in his seat. I didn’t hear him speak again. We got him to the landing, where Curly himself was waiting to take him away. After they left Dad told me he’d probably try to sue us. He never did, but the doctor had to cut off the birder’s arm at the elbow.

  31

  I wiped the rainwater from my face and spat.

  “It won’t kill you,” I told Liza. “But it’s gonna get swollen. You’ll feel sick.”

  “Check the tree, Cort. Make sure there aren’t more.”

  Of course there were more. But I pulled myself up again and passed the light along the limb beneath my feet. I saw a smaller one, but the immature ones were the worst. They typically overinjected venom. I used the end of my spear to gently dislodge it so that it fell onto the backs of the pigs below.

  “It’s just a little one,” I said.

  She didn’t answer me. I continued the search, contorting myself into every possible position to see around the trunk and beneath the platform. I found another and flicked it into the air. I studied every inch of the bark until I saw the black reflections of their eyes. I removed five in just the areas I was able to search with the weak light. I knew there were more. I knew more were coming.

  Liza and Francie suffered quietly beside me, balled up, shivering, water running down their faces. I didn’t want to see Liza’s foot in the darkness. I tried not to think about any of it. The most I could do was try to keep things from getting worse. If Francie took one bite like that, it would kill her. If Liza took another, she didn’t stand a chance either.

  I tried to act brave for the girls, tried to make them believe I knew what I was doing, but inside my head I was a mess.

  Dad, I thought. What do I do, Dad?

  I tried not to be angry at him. In a strange way, I thought if I was angry then he wouldn’t help me. I spent the final two hours of darkness on my stomach, watching the trunk below, occasionally glimpsing Rusty or one of the smaller hogs. The juniper rocked slowly against the storm. I looked over at the bear. He was trying to climb higher, but he was making a weak effort of it. I felt a connection to the beast in his own private battle. I looked away and thought again about the difference between mammals and reptiles.

  Pigs can make gentle pets when raised in captivity. And, of course, so can dogs. I’ve even seen pet bears on television. With mammals, if you take away their need to constantly search for food, it seems to make room in their heads for love and loyalty and companionship. But make them fend for themselves, and they turn into killers. A dog turns into a wolf. A pig grows coarse hair and tusks and slims down into a lethal thug.

  I studied the bear again, still struggling to climb. I wondered if friendly feelings were buried deep in his thick head. Feelings that hadn’t been completely extinguished by the daily struggle of survival.

  I worried that there were snakes above us. I didn’t know why there wouldn’t be. The bear could be climbing toward them.

  Stay still. Don’t move like that. Daylight will be here soon.

  Any snakes above us would most likely stay where they were or go higher. It was certain death for them to leave the trees. The best I could do was stop the flow of them up into our space. Keep them off the girls. I gripped the spear tightly and resumed my watch.

  * * *

  The swamp slowly reveal
ed itself in dull, diluted light. Through the rain I made out not just the backs of the hogs but their eyes and their tusks as well. Two deer standing in the brush. The green of leaves and yellow of cane stems. Everything wet and pressed. There were no birdcalls, no squirrel chatter. Only the soft grunting of the pigs and an occasional thrashing in the water downhill. With the onset of morning a relative calmness had settled over the mound.

  I worked my way into a sitting position and turned to the girls. My eyes went straight to Liza’s foot. It was swollen to twice its size, purple and black with streaks of red running up her ankle. Both of them were shivering with cold and sickness, their heads buried into each other, Francie balled tightly into her lap.

  “Liza,” I said.

  She didn’t answer me.

  “It’s morning.”

  She shifted slightly and grew still again. I wanted her to talk to me.

  “Liza, do you remember when we used catch the bullfrogs in the creek? We brought them to Dad, and he cleaned them and fried the legs for us. We had fried frog legs. Remember that?”

  She didn’t move.

  “They were so small it was like eating crab claws. But we thought it was the best thing in the world.”

  The wind gusted and a wet leaf slapped against her cheek. I reached out and pulled it away.

  “Liza? Remember? We were gonna go into business together and make a lot of money selling frog legs.”

  Nothing.

  “Liza? Just say something to me.”

  “I feel sick,” she muttered.

  “Okay,” I said. “Don’t say anything, then. Just stay still.”

  I studied her foot again. I thought about cutting slices in it to relieve the pressure. Then I thought about the open wounds getting infected. As with the rest of our situation, there seemed to be no clear choices. Then I felt my own wound throbbing on my leg and looked down to see the nasty tear, rain-washed and hanging open like a cut of raw steak. The same red streaks of infection ran up my thigh.

  Just how many ways can there be to die in this place? I wondered.