he entered the swamp and Joe jumped out of the scout.
It was like jumping out onto the moon if the moon was green. The bald cypress rose like great eggs from the milky green water, and prehistoric banyan trees with a dozen or more trunks stood watch like palace guards. Esteban drove to his right just as Joe saw Graciela dart between two of the bald cypress trees to his left. Something uncomfortably heavy crawled over his feet just as he heard a rifle report, the shot much closer now. The bullet tore a chunk from the cypress tree where Graciela was hiding.
The young seaman stepped out from behind a cypress ten feet away. He was about Joe's height and build, his hair quite red, his face very lean. His Springfield was raised to his shoulder, the sight raised to his eye, the barrel pointed at the cypress. Joe extended his .32 automatic and exhaled a long breath as he shot the man from ten feet. The rifle jerked and spun in the air so erratically Joe assumed it was all he'd hit. But as it fell to the tea-colored water, the young man fell with it, and the blood spilled from under his left armpit and darkened the water as he landed with a splash.
"Graciela," he called, "it's Joe. Are you okay?"
She peeked out from behind the tree and Joe nodded. Esteban came around behind her in the scout car and she climbed in it and they drove over to Joe.
He picked up the rifle and looked down at the sailor. He sat in the water with his arms draped over his knees and his head down, like a man trying to catch his breath.
Graciela climbed out of the scout. Actually, she half fell out, half reeled into Joe. He put his arm around her to right her and felt the adrenaline racking her body as if she'd been hit with a cattle prod.
Behind the sailor, something moved through the mangroves. Something long and so dark green it was almost black.
The sailor looked up at Joe, his mouth open as he drew shallow breaths. "You're white."
"Yeah," Joe said.
"Fuck you shoot me for then?"
Joe looked at Esteban and then at Graciela. "If we leave him here, something's gonna eat him within a couple minutes. So we either take him with us or . . ."
He could hear more of them out there as the sailor's blood continued to spill into the green swamp.
Joe said, "So we either take him with us . . ."
Esteban said, "He's gotten too good a look at her."
"I know it," Joe said.
Graciela said, "He turned it into a game."
"What?"
"Hunting me. He kept laughing like a girl."
Joe looked at the sailor and the kid looked back at him. The fear lived far back in the young man's eyes, but the rest of him was pure defiance and backwoods grit.
"You want me to beg, you barking up the wrong - "
Joe shot him in the face and the exit hole splattered pink all over the ferns, and the alligators thrashed in anticipation.
Graciela let out a small involuntary cry and Joe might have as well. Esteban caught his eye and nodded, thanks, Joe realized, for doing what they all knew had to be done but which none had been willing to do. Hell, Joe - standing in the sound of the gunshot, the cordite smell of it, a wisp of smoke trailing from the barrel of the .32 no more substantial than the smoke from one of his cigarettes - couldn't believe he'd actually done it.
A man lay dead at his feet. Dead, on some fundamental level, only because Joe had been born.
They climbed into the scout without another word. As if they'd been waiting for permission, two alligators came at the body at once - one walking out of the mangroves with the steady waddle of an overweight dog and the other gliding up through the water and the lily pads beside the scout's tires.
Esteban drove away as both reptiles reached the body at the same time. One took an arm, the other went for a leg.
Back in the pines, Esteban drove southeast along the edge of the swamp, running parallel to the road, but not turning toward it yet.
Joe and Graciela sat in the backseat. Alligators and humans weren't the only predators in the swamp that day: a panther stood at the edge of the waterline, lapping up the copper water. It was the same tan