Yep,
it was a damn shame seeing her go to hell like this. She’d
lost that tight little chassis right after he busted her axle
and plugged her motor full of high-octane baby juice, and now
she looked like a trip to the junkyard. Goddamn, he was ready
for a trade-in!
The midday sun bounced off the circlet of brown waves created
by each oar, sending golden ripples of light dancing over the
husks of Lindy Beth’s brittle red hair. Gator squinted and
looked down at his watch again.
“Ain’t much further,” he said. His tanned arms
churned the oars in their rusted iron rings, the paddle blades
breaking the still brown water of Lafourche Bayou. This was home,
the smells of percolating mud, mosses and lichens, decaying driftwood.
The rowboat glided silently between magnificent cypress trees
with their knobby, knee-like roots jutting out of the murky soup.
Startled frogs leapt from lily pads, turtles slid off floating
logs, and chattering chickadees flicked from branch to branch--the
serenity of the swamp broken by their intrusion.
Lindy Beth pointed at the shore. “The trails are all overgrown
with buckbrush. I haven’t been this far upriver since I
was a little girl. Remember the clubhouse we built? Remember chewing
sweetgum leaves and throwing the prickly gum balls at the other
kids?”
Gator didn’t answer. He craned his neck toward the shore
and steered the boat toward a cove with a grassy bank. “This
be a good spot,” he said. “Deep pool of water out
in the middle of this little inlet. Grab the fishing poles, will
ya?”
Lindy Beth collapsed the umbrella and struggled to stand up. Her
baby-swollen abdomen weighed her down like a sack of lead shot.
Yep, gut shot--that was exactly how Gator felt the moment Lindy
Beth spilled the beans about shitty diapers on the way. Her pregnancy
was a festering wound in Gator’s own belly, and like gangrene,
the wound wouldn’t heal by itself. He didn’t care
if the breakup resulted in eighteen years of child support. Today
he would dump Lindy Beth on her ass.
Clutching the two fishing poles in one hand, Lindy Beth grabbed
an oar ring and steadied herself while Gator hopped out of the
boat and dragged it onto the bank. When Lindy Beth stepped onto
the soft shoreline, she slipped in the mud and landed on her butt
with a splat. Gator laughed at her.
She frowned. “It’s not funny, Gator!” Her yellow
sundress looked like a wedge of lemon cake slathered with chocolate
frosting. She crawled across the mud and wiped her hands on the
verdant tufts of goose grass.
It was hard to feel sorry for her. Not just because she was clumsy
ignorant about fishing and such, but because of what she’d
done years ago. She’d killed the two most important people
in Gator’s world. He would never forgive her for that.
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