Read Online Low Country by Anne Rivers Siddons - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Anne Rivers Siddons
Tags: Fiction, General, Islands, Domestic Fiction, Large Type Books, Real estate developers, Married Women, South Carolina, Low Country (S.C.), ISBN-13: 9780061093326, Large Print Books, HarperTorch
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have,
by now, started to sting from the paddling. In the ca-
noe, you sit very low in the dark water. The landscape
is completely bounded by the rough, looming sunblas-
ted creekbanks.
Low Country / 65
I waited.
To me, it is always like those drawings you used to
see as a child, the one where you are supposed to find
the animals in the intricately drawn mass of a forest.
At first you see nothing, and then they begin to appear:
a lion here, a leopard there, the ruffle of a bird’s wing
in a tree, the smirking face of a lamb in the tall grass.
That is how the alligators come. At first you see noth-
ing but reeds and grass and broken stumps, and then
you see, as if by magic, the great, terrible, knobbed
head of a gator, and then the whole gator, and then
another, and then another. Afterward, you can never
understand why you did not see them at once.
So the alligators of Alligator Alley came. I heard
Clay’s breath draw in slightly as the first gator ap-
peared on the bank above us, as if in a developing
photograph. After that he was silent, but his head
tracked them as they materialized, one after another.
Eventually, there were eighteen or twenty of them in
sight. I can never be sure I have counted them correctly.
I have seen them every summer now since I was
seven or eight, and they never fail to stop my breath
and chill my heart. I know all the comforting folk
wisdom about them: that they cannot bite under water,
that they seldom attack humans except in self-defense,
that they do not go after things larger than themselves.
Certainly not a
66 / Anne Rivers Siddons
boat. I know that if you sit quietly in your craft, or
stand quietly, they will disregard you, and that they
have poor peripheral vision, so that if you stay to their
sides you are presumably safe. Still they make the hair
on my nape and arms rise and something deep within
me goes into an ancient and feral crouch. They are
simply such sinister, implacable things, knobbed and
armored like dragons out of nightmares, seemingly
formed of mud and stone and obsidian and malachite,
the color of stagnant water, the color of muddy death.
And as for their reputed harmlessness, every Lowcoun-
try native has a story about the cat, the dog, the small
child snatched from the bank by those incredible scal-
loped jaws. I have seen myself, on the island, the nubs
of an occasional hand or foot said to have been taken
by a gator. And down on Hilton Head, in the big, de-
veloped resort plantations, the shelf life of poodles and
shih tzus is not long at all, not in the prized lagoon
homesites.
My grandfather taught me early to be absolutely si-
lent when we passed the alligators, and so I always
am. They are not always in precisely the same place,
but they do seem always to be in a cluster, and so it
does not take long to pass them. These today did not
move much, except to lift their huge heads lazily as we
drifted past, and once or twice I heard the dry swish
as a thick tail stirred in the reeds. They are usually on
the bank
Low Country / 67
this time of day, in the summer, taking the sun now
that some of the heat has gone out of it; earlier, they
would have been in the water, only their knobbed
yellow-rimmed eyes showing, so that they seemed to
be submerged logs, or the knots of limbs and roots.
Then you cannot see their size, but when they are on
the bank, of course, you can. These were big ones,
mostly. I’d say they ran from about ten feet to thirteen
or fourteen. One or two smaller ones, adolescent chil-
dren, lay curled close to their mothers, blending into
the grayish mud. If there were very small ones they
would be out of sight near the nests. Even with their
fearsome bulk, they are misleadingly innocent when
they bask lazily like this. They look as if they could not
move except ponderously, dragging that scaled huge-
ness on short, bent legs. But they can move like light-
ning, can be down a
by now, started to sting from the paddling. In the ca-
noe, you sit very low in the dark water. The landscape
is completely bounded by the rough, looming sunblas-
ted creekbanks.
Low Country / 65
I waited.
To me, it is always like those drawings you used to
see as a child, the one where you are supposed to find
the animals in the intricately drawn mass of a forest.
At first you see nothing, and then they begin to appear:
a lion here, a leopard there, the ruffle of a bird’s wing
in a tree, the smirking face of a lamb in the tall grass.
That is how the alligators come. At first you see noth-
ing but reeds and grass and broken stumps, and then
you see, as if by magic, the great, terrible, knobbed
head of a gator, and then the whole gator, and then
another, and then another. Afterward, you can never
understand why you did not see them at once.
So the alligators of Alligator Alley came. I heard
Clay’s breath draw in slightly as the first gator ap-
peared on the bank above us, as if in a developing
photograph. After that he was silent, but his head
tracked them as they materialized, one after another.
Eventually, there were eighteen or twenty of them in
sight. I can never be sure I have counted them correctly.
I have seen them every summer now since I was
seven or eight, and they never fail to stop my breath
and chill my heart. I know all the comforting folk
wisdom about them: that they cannot bite under water,
that they seldom attack humans except in self-defense,
that they do not go after things larger than themselves.
Certainly not a
66 / Anne Rivers Siddons
boat. I know that if you sit quietly in your craft, or
stand quietly, they will disregard you, and that they
have poor peripheral vision, so that if you stay to their
sides you are presumably safe. Still they make the hair
on my nape and arms rise and something deep within
me goes into an ancient and feral crouch. They are
simply such sinister, implacable things, knobbed and
armored like dragons out of nightmares, seemingly
formed of mud and stone and obsidian and malachite,
the color of stagnant water, the color of muddy death.
And as for their reputed harmlessness, every Lowcoun-
try native has a story about the cat, the dog, the small
child snatched from the bank by those incredible scal-
loped jaws. I have seen myself, on the island, the nubs
of an occasional hand or foot said to have been taken
by a gator. And down on Hilton Head, in the big, de-
veloped resort plantations, the shelf life of poodles and
shih tzus is not long at all, not in the prized lagoon
homesites.
My grandfather taught me early to be absolutely si-
lent when we passed the alligators, and so I always
am. They are not always in precisely the same place,
but they do seem always to be in a cluster, and so it
does not take long to pass them. These today did not
move much, except to lift their huge heads lazily as we
drifted past, and once or twice I heard the dry swish
as a thick tail stirred in the reeds. They are usually on
the bank
Low Country / 67
this time of day, in the summer, taking the sun now
that some of the heat has gone out of it; earlier, they
would have been in the water, only their knobbed
yellow-rimmed eyes showing, so that they seemed to
be submerged logs, or the knots of limbs and roots.
Then you cannot see their size, but when they are on
the bank, of course, you can. These were big ones,
mostly. I’d say they ran from about ten feet to thirteen
or fourteen. One or two smaller ones, adolescent chil-
dren, lay curled close to their mothers, blending into
the grayish mud. If there were very small ones they
would be out of sight near the nests. Even with their
fearsome bulk, they are misleadingly innocent when
they bask lazily like this. They look as if they could not
move except ponderously, dragging that scaled huge-
ness on short, bent legs. But they can move like light-
ning, can be down a
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