Read Online Alligator Bayou by Donna Jo Napoli - Free Book Online

not even look.”
    “Snakes?” I say weakly.
    “Can’t swing a cat without hitting one,” says Charles.
    Rock gives a little shake of his shoulders. “I ain’t hardly afeared of nothing ’cept snakes.”
    “But they better than snapping turtles,” says Ben. “A snake will at least kill you fast. But a giant turtle’ll take your foot off with a snap, then leave you to get eaten alive by whatever come along next.”
    Cirone presses up beside me. “Are they pulling our leg?” he asks in Sicilian.
    “They must be,” I say back in Sicilian. “Only crazy people would go into the swamps if it was that dangerous.” But my heart’s beating double time.
    We walk. The boys keep joking, and I refuse to listen.
    We pass a plantation. Rock points. “Them log cabins over there, see them? Slaves lived there before the War Between the States. Colored tenants live there now.” He bounces his finger in the air beyond them. “Kitchen house, barn, smokehouse, gristmill, ’nother barn, cotton house, cotton gin, overseer’s house, owner’s house, blacksmith’s shop. And the chapel.”
    “Just about a complete village,” says Ben.
    A few tenants of the rich owner are hoeing among the bushy green cotton plants. Right now those plants look like nothing special. When I first got here last October, though, it was the very end of the harvest season and I saw a field with cream white bolls all burst open. It was so pretty.
    We pass a rice paddy and more small houses and outbuildings. Then nothing. No buildings. No noise. Just our joking around and the birds and the insects.
    We fall silent.
    I’m thinking ahead to giant jaws with giant teeth. The bears and the cottonmouths and the snapping turtles, they might all be a joke. But the ’gator’s for real.
    Ben’s carrying an unlit lantern with one hand and a food satchel slung over his shoulder with the other. The lantern makes a slight squeak when it swings. Soon we’re all walking in time to that squeak. Walking and walking. I want to ask how much farther it is, but I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining.
    “No one lives out here,” I say.
    “Floods just about every year.” Charles waves his arm. “Sometimes two or three times in a season. Who can live in that?”
    Slowly we walk through thorns and bushes and trees. I stop. “What are those?”
    “Canebrakes,” says Charles.
    Plants taller than a house stand close together, choking out everything else. Their tops ruffle like feathers in the breeze. They rise thick as a wall and run in both directions, blocking passage for miles.
    Rock and Charles pull long, wide knives out of leather sheaths on their backs. Ben sneers at me. “No bush knife?” I don’t know what I’ve done to make him dislike me. “Here. This way y’all can be useful, at least.” He hands me the lantern and Cirone the food satchel.
    Cirone and I each already carry a bag of food. Pizza. Thick crusts with cheese, bitter greens, raisins, and garlic. Carlo learned how to make it when he lived in New Orleans, right near a man from Naples. I can’t wait to see their faces when they taste it. That will teach them not to call our food “dago food.”
    So now both our hands are full as we follow the boys, who whack a path through the canes. You can’t see more than ten steps ahead. The cut-off canes slap back at us, and their sharp ends poke hard.
    And then the canes end, and it’s like we’ve passed through a door into a magic world of gauze-covered, graceful shapes. The air is hazy and heavy with water. I feel like I’ve entered someone’s dream.
    “Swamp.” Rock moves close. “Cypress.”
    He points out the red gums, white oaks, glossy palmettos. But it’s the cypress my eyes go back to. They rise from the black ooze like giants with big lumpy knees.
    “Anyone see it?” Charles looks up.
    My eyes follow his. “See what?”
    “The bear,” says Ben, and he laughs, but everyone keeps looking up.
    We walk along this side of the