*
Nick shivered as dawn leaked over the eastern horizon. He had spent the night in a cottonwood tree with black flood waters rushing beneath him.
The levees must have broken, he thought. There were eight or ten feet of water under him, and the water was moving fast. Every so often the tree would shudder to the impact of floating debris.
He thought about Viondi’s body floating in the darkness, past the broken Mobil station, heading south toward his Aunt Loretta in Mississippi.
He thought about the Asian man trapped in his broken storefront, pinned down by a beam, the waters rising past his outstretched chin.
His left arm ached in the triceps region, and when he put his right hand there it came away sticky. He’d been shot. That crazy cop had shot him.
There didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it. He didn’t even have his stupid pale Band-Aids with dinosaurs on them.
Nick straddled a limb, leaned back against the bole of the tree, and tried to sleep. The wound throbbed all night long, and there were insistent biting insects, a truly amazing number of them, that kept him busy slapping them away. Occasional aftershocks rocked the tree, causing him to clutch at his bough and hope that the shock wouldn’t loosen the tree’s roots and topple it into the water.
He must have finally fallen asleep, though, because when he opened his eyes he found it was light, just past dawn. Birdsong rang through the trees. Nick blinked gum from his eyes and peered out at the drowned world.
He was in a grove, an old stand of cottonwood. His tree bore so many leafy branches that it was difficult to see through them. The area was brushy, and the tops of bushes waved from the murky water below. Far off to his right— southeast, to judge by the sun— there was a wide open area covered with water. He couldn’t tell if it was a flooded field, a lake, or a river.
There was a rustling out on the big limb that Nick was straddling. He looked out and gazed into a pair of brown eyes. He started and banged the back of his head on the bole of the tree.
Opossum, he recognized. With little pink-nosed babies clinging to its fur.
“Damn,” Nick said, and rubbed the back of his head where he’d knocked it on the tree. The opossum gave a disappointed murmur and climbed higher into the tree, out of sight.
“Possum,” Nick told it, “you don’t want to get down now, anyway.”
Loud bird calls barked from the next tree over. Nick hitched himself out on his limb to get a better view, peered between branches and saw a flock of guinea fowl, survivors from someone’s farm. In another tree, he saw a pair of squirrels leaping from one branch to another, just above the sullen, bedraggled form of a hen turkey. He could hear the cawing of a whole flock of crows, but he couldn’t see them.
All nature had gone aloft when the water began to rise.
No, he discovered, not all nature.
The corpse of a drowned deer, already stiff, floated half-submerged in the current.
Nick gave a shudder. At least the body wasn’t that of a human being.
It occurred to him that there might be someone within hailing distance. Even someone else stranded in a cotton-wood would be company. He cupped his hands to his mouth, turned his head in the direction he suspected was inland, then hesitated.
What does a person say under these circumstances? he wondered. ‘Help’? ‘Get me down!’? ‘I’m stuck in a tree’?
He settled on “Hello.”
He called out his hello, waited for an answer, called again. Called in all directions.
Only the guinea fowl in the next tree answered.
He sagged on the bough, discouragement rising in him like the rising flood. He was very thirsty, very hungry. His wounded arm ached. He tried to get a look at it in the morning light, but it was on a part of his arm that he couldn’t see, no matter how much he tried.
He decided to check his pockets, make an inventory. Billfold with credit cards and ID. Money clip with a hundred and sixty in cash, more or less. Thirty-seven cents in loose change. House keys. These, and the Timex on his wrist, seemed to be the sum total of his resources.
He felt something in his shirt pocket, and fished it out. Opened the box. Saw the lily-shaped pendant on the necklace, saw dawn light winking off diamonds and rubies.
For Arlette. He looked at the golden lily in his palm. He would have to survive for Arlette.
Nick felt a stinging bite on the back of his right arm and slapped at it with the left. Felt another bite, made another slap. Then he felt a bite on his back, and after slapping it away looked behind him to see what was the matter.
His heart gave a leap. Down the bole of the tree behind him poured a red river of insects. There were so many that the tree seemed to shimmer with the reflection of their glittering eyes.
He spasmed forward along the tree limb, slapping furiously at his back and behind. There were red ants all over his body. He moved forward along the limb, feeling it dip under his weight, leaves trailing in the water. The mother opossum, from somewhere in the clump of leaves, gave a cry of warning.
Nick threw one leg over the limb, turned to face the tree, swung the other leg over. An implacable swarm of ants marched along the bark toward him. He beat at them with his palms, then slapped at his body where other ants were still biting.
He wondered where the ants were coming from and looked up: a huge glistening ball of ants pulsed on the bole of the tree, only a few feet above where he’d laid his head all night. The ants must have evacuated their nest when the river rose, carrying with them their eggs, pupae, and queen; and now their nest was composed principally of their bodies, a ravenous scarlet sphere boiling with angry life, now wakened by the dawn and gone in quest of food.
There was a squawk above him, a flurry of beating wings, and a pair of grackles, cawing furiously, burst free of the foliage and thundered madly into the air. Apparently the ants had just invaded their perch.
For a moment he considered abandoning the tree in favor of another. But there was no guarantee that a new tree would be any more hospitable, or that he would be able to climb it as easily as he climbed this one.
Besides, something in him resisted dropping into the cold water below. He could all too easily get caught in brush or debris, and drown.
He reached behind him to one of the cottonwood’s many small branches, and wrestled it back and forth until he succeeded in snapping it off. Then he used the leafy branch as a broom to sweep the tide of ants off the limb.
Another large bird squawked and flapped out of the tree. Nick didn’t see what kind, he only heard it. The ants were hungry, or angry, or both.
There was more thrashing in the tree, and Nick saw a raccoon, big as a dog, bound out of one branch and to another, clawing madly to get a firm grip. Once safe on the new limb, the raccoon began a frenzy of frantic scratching.
“Be thankful, man,” Nick said, sweeping with his branch. “It could be worse. They could be fire ants.” The raccoon gave him a resentful look and kept scratching.
Nick looked up at the ant nest, the ball of glittering angry insects, and he considered attacking it directly. Maybe with his branch he could knock them into the river by the thousands.
On the other hand, maybe he’d just piss them off.
He decided it was worth a try. He edged along the limb until the knot of ants was within easy sweeping distance of his branch, and then he cocked the branch back and slapped it against the ball of ants.
He was surprised at how easily it worked— the seeming solidity of the ball of ants had made him think they would be harder to dislodge. A large chunk of the ant nest was knocked off the tree and fell in the water. He was surprised that the knot did not disintegrate: the ants clung to each other, forming a nearly solid raft as the current swept them away.
When they hit another tree, Nick thought, they’d all climb it.
A catbird gave its mewling cry of alarm and fluttered to safety. Another bird burst from the higher branches, dropped low across the water before gaining altitude. Some kind of owl, he saw, a big one, with horns. Didn’t like the ants, either.
He cocked his arm back, swept again. More ants spilled into the water.
He swept a third time. And then something flashed white and green in the tree, and glittering fangs clamped on the leafy twigs. Cold primordial fear shot up Nick’s spine.
Cottonmouth, he thought.
His father had taken him all over the world when Nick was growing up. Nick had grown up on Army bases in Europe, in Korea, and in Thailand. But he had spent much of his youth on bases in the American South. And, like every Southern child who shares his swimming hole with nature, he had learned terror of the cottonmouth moccasin.
Snake! some boy would cry, and there would be a flurry of arms and legs and white water, and the boys would stand panting on the shore while a cottonmouth, long and thick as a grown man’s arm, prowled the water in search of something to kill.
Coral snakes and rattlers were shy, avoided humans when they could, and never bit unless threatened. A cottonmouth moccasin was afraid of nothing, would aggressively invade territory occupied by others, and would bite without hesitation. Their venom, unlike that of the copperhead, was deadly.
“A cottonmouth will bite you just to watch you die.” That’s what the old folks told their children. And when the children grew older, fear and hatred of all snakes was buried so deep that it might as well have been seared on their bones. A lot of the children with whom Nick had shared his boyhood swimming holes grew up to kill every snake they saw, whether they were poisonous or not.
That was what the fear of the cottonmouth could do.
Nick had never been as afraid of anything in his life as he’d been of the cottonmouths he’d seen when he was young. And that deep-buried fear had never gone away.
The distinctive white mouth tissue flashed again and again as the snake struck repeatedly at Nick’s branch. The snake was a big one, too, four feet long.
Its thick body was covered with furious biting ants. It was in agony. And it was angry enough to kill.
Fear clawed at Nick’s brain with fingers of fire. Nick kept thrashing at the snake with the branch. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. His branch was too small and light to knock the snake off the tree, but at least the flailing leaves distracted it, kept it from biting at him. He found himself retreating along his limb, backing up until his butt came up against a nest of branches and he could back up no farther.
Brilliant emerald scales flashed as the cottonmouth advanced, half-falling down the tree as it writhed in pain. It gathered itself on Nick’s limb, raised its head, hissed. Furious ants swarmed over it. Nick thrust the branch at it again, and it struck.
The raccoon gave a warning yelp and made a hasty jump for the water. It was as scared of the cottonmouth as Nick was.
For a half-second Nick considered following the raccoon’s example. But the cottonmouth was an aquatic snake, it could swim better than Nick could. If it was angry enough to follow Nick into the water, then it could kill him easily, while he tried to thrash his way through the waterlogged brush below.
The cottonmouth writhed closer. Nick batted at the snake with the branch, but the leafy broom was too light to budge it from its perch. He could see his reflection in the snake’s unblinking eyes, and felt his blood run cold. Grab it behind the head, he thought, that was the safe way to handle a snake, but he couldn’t think of a way to grab its head without letting the cottonmouth strike at him first.
Nick reversed the branch, thinking perhaps that he could use the sharp broken-off butt end as a dagger. He held it like an icepick in his right hand, eight inches or so from the end, and gave a huff of breath as he stabbed at the snake. The sharp wood skiddered on bark, blunted itself. Leaves waved. The snake reared, hissed. Nick stabbed again, a cry of anger and fear breaking from his lips. The snake struck. There was an instant of terror as Nick realized that the snake was striking too fast for Nick to snatch back his hand.
And then the snake’s jaw clamped down on the branch, an inch below Nick’s little finger. He saw the two poison fangs digging into the smooth bark, saw beads of venom swell up. His heart gave a leap. Now! he thought.
He pulled the branch toward him, dragging the snake toward him by its fangs. The resistance was formidable: it was like pulling on a thick rubber band. But the cottonmouth was unwilling to let go of the branch, and Nick managed to stretch out the snake’s neck until he could pounce with his left hand, grabbing the cottonmouth just behind the head, where it couldn’t turn to bite him.
Nick dropped the branch, grabbed the snake halfway down its body with his right hand. The cottonmouth’s glassy reptile eyes gazed into his, expressionless, as Nick tried to lift it so that he could fling it into the water below. But the tail was anchored around the tree limb, and muscles pulsed in Nick’s hands, sinew flexing, testing his strength. The body was so thick that Nick couldn’t quite close his right hand around it; he could feel the muscles working against his grip, trying to pry the fingers apart, and he clamped down, digging fingertips into the scaly skin, tugging at the snake as he tried to pull it from the limb.
Furious ants swarmed over the snake and Nick’s hands, bit them both without mercy.
The snake dropped the branch and opened its mouth wide, the mouth tissues blossoming like a deadly white flower. It tried to turn its head to bite Nick in the wrist, but Nick held it fast by the neck and wouldn’t let it double back on itself. Drops of venom welled at the tips of the fangs. Its muscles pulsed, flexed, strained beneath Nick’s fingers. And then its muscles surged, and its tail left the tree limb and tried to coil itself around Nick’s right wrist.
Nick gave a yell of alarm as the snake’s fat body writhed in his hands. He thumped his hand onto the tree limb, scraped the cottonmouth’s tail off his wrist against the bark, then raised the snake in both hands over his head and flung it through the air.
“Yaaaaaahl” he roared, a scream of rage and triumph.
The cottonmouth curled in air, almost turning itself into a knot, and then hit the water.
There was a splash, a twist, and suddenly the aquatic snake was swimming, in its element. Its body surged effortlessly in the water, its head carried high, eyes focused ...
Eyes focused on Nick.
Nick felt his triumph turn to disbelief and horror. The snake was coming back to the tree. The cottonmouth was coming to kill him.
“Stay out of my tree!” Nick shouted. Heat flushed his skin. “My tree!” He waved a fist. The snake kept coming.
Nick turned, snatched at the branches behind him. He grabbed one of the strongest and seized it, bending it back, fighting it. There was a crack as he tore it free. He stripped twigs and leaves from it, turned it into a club.
The cottonmouth pulsed its way to the tree, its head winding a path through the smaller branches so that the thick surging body could follow.
The first, leafy branch that Nick had dropped was still lying in his lap. He took that branch in his left hand and the new club in the right. He hit the club against the bole of the tree a few times, trying to get a feel for the weapon. He tasted bitter despair on his tongue: the club was far too light to smash the head of the snake.
The hopelessness brought defiance to his lips. “You want a piece of me?” he demanded of the snake. He snarled. “You come and get it!”
The cottonmouth’s weaving head slid around the bole of the tree, its cold, inhuman eyes intent on Nick. The forked tongue flickered from the soft white mouth. Nick smashed at the snake with the club, hit it in the neck. The snake reared back, then dropped its head and surged forward.
Nick smashed with left and right, trying to confuse the snake with the leafy branch and then hammer it with the stick. The cottonmouth coiled protectively when it was struck, but then extended itself again and continued its motion along the tree limb. Nick hammered and hammered. The cottonmouth struck at the club and missed. Nick hammered at it, the hot blood bringing strength to his arm.
“You want a piece of me?” he shouted. “You want this tree?”
He smashed the club down on the snake’s neck, pinning it to the tree limb. He snatched out with his left hand and grabbed the cottonmouth by the neck, just behind the head. The snake’s tail whipped around, coiled around his wrist.
“You think I care if you grab me?” Nick demanded. The snake tightened on his arm. Nick held the snake’s head with his left hand while he smashed at it with the club in his right. The cottonmouth’s head darted left and right to the limits that Nick would permit, seeking escape from the blows. Then Nick lunged forward and smashed the snake’s head into the bole of the tree with all of his strength. The snake’s body spasmed on his arm. He smashed again and again.
“You want a piece of me, cottonmouth?” he demanded. “You come and take it!”
He smashed the snake’s head against the tree until the snake hung in loose coils from his arm, until Nick’s hand was scraped and bloody and the snake’s forked tongue hung limply from its mouth. Then he wearily uncoiled the snake from his arm, held it over the water, and let it fall.
The Mississippi received it with barely a splash.
“My tree!” Nick shouted. “My damn tree!”
His cries echoed in the empty grove. Birds shrieked in answer.
He slapped ants from his hands, from his legs. Snapped off another leafy branch, began to sweep the ants from his limb, from what remained of their nest.
The tree was his, and he was going to keep it.
He touched his shirt pocket, felt Arlette’s necklace.
He would give it to her, see the sparkle in her eyes. He knew that now.
Hours passed. The day grew hot, and the ants grew torpid. Perhaps they’d found something to eat, or lost interest after the destruction of their nest. The insects that drove him crazy now were mosquitos, dancing around him in swarms.