the sound of wind in the tree branches. Off to the west I thought I could even hear the rush of acres of open sawgrass being pushed and folded by the breeze, the long stiff blades softly clattering. Twice the trail became enclosed in a tunnel of overhang and melding branches. If there had been a chirrup of frog or cicadas before my arrival, they were quiet now. I had learned from my late canoeing that the animals of the swamp were highly sensitive to any unnatural stirrings of water and air. The night dwellers would have sensed me long ago. They also would have marked Morrison’s presence each time he came here. Nothing goes unwitnessed in this world.
After twenty minutes the trail opened up into a clearing and the track curved to a stop. To the east the hammock fell away and went flat, melting into the sawgrass. To the west the black mangroves grew thicker, almost like a wall. I was studying the tire track, tracing it with the light. It formed a three point turn in the opening and I thought of Morrison’s move at the DUI stop. I was sweeping the light beam on the ground, looking for trash or some sign of carelessness and bent to examine what might have been the impression of a foot heel in the earth when I heard the grunt.
The sound caused a breath to catch in my throat and I turned to it. I cupped my hand over the lens of the flashlight and froze. Thirty seconds of silence, then it came again, low, like a cough into the emptiness of a big wooden barrel. It was a living sound. I stared in its direction, searched the darkness inside the wall of mangroves for movement, imagined whatever it was doing the same to me.
I looked down at my hands; the ring of light from the flashlight lens was glowing red against my palm and I snicked it off.
The next sound was a snort, and a rustling of vegetation that was deep into the trees. A big male gator makes such sounds during mating season. It is a call to the females meant to impress them by indicating size and power. I had heard them many times on my river. If it was a gator he would not be frightened away by my skimpy noises. If it was something else I still couldn’t just sit here in the open. I moved to the edge of the tree wall as quietly as I could. Again I wished I had my gun.
I knelt and strained to hear, trying to raise my senses, and I felt the wind change. It had been rotating during the walk in, clearing the sky and stirring the leaves as it swung to come out of the west and now it had gained strength. I heard the snort and heavy rustle again and then on the breeze came an odor that washed over me and made me involuntarily twist my nose and squeeze my eyes shut. It was the stench of death, rotted in earth and water, never dried to dust by the sun but left putrid on the moist ground.
Now I knew the snorting noise and I stood and snapped on the light and searched for an opening in the tree wall and stepped in. The terrain went down at an angle, covered in the soft detritus of fallen leaves and loose soil that in the flashlight beam appeared to have been disturbed already. I had to crouch to get through and under the limbs and found a footprint, big enough for a man, pointing back up in the direction I had come. I was thirty feet in and flicked the light beam back up and there was a pair of luminous eyes staring at me. It was a wild boar, its ugly face frozen in the sudden circle of light, its massive body looming black and glistening behind. Strings of gristle and dirt hung from its mouth and I yelled, half in fear, half in disgust and anger. The beast startled and I yelled again and crashed through the trees and my upright and aggressive assault caused the damn thing to scream from its throat and flee the other way.
I stayed still and listened until I could no longer hear the sounds of the animal splashing and snapping twigs in retreat. Then I waited until I couldn’t hear my own heart banging in my chest. But