I knew as the boat pulled in to the dock there were no alligators out there. I got up and stuck my foot against the piling so that it wouldn’t scrape the boat, then got out and secured the bowline to the nearest cleat. Mr. Reed was standing on the dock now, helping my mother up out of the boat. Her brown legs came up off the edge weakly, so that Mr. Reed had to lift her to keep her from falling back. The water by the pier was blue black and stank of oil and gas, not like out on the ocean, or in the channel, where we had been that day.
Mr. Reed had told me to watch for the alligators. The best spot to do it from, he said, was up on the bow. So I crawled up through the trapdoor on the bow and watched for the alligators. The river water was clear and green.
“Look around the rocks,” Mr. Reed shouted over the engine noise, “the gators like the rocks.” So I kept my eye on the rocks, but there were no alligators.
“I don’t see any,” I shouted. “Maybe we’re going too fast and the noise scares them away.”
After that Mr. Reed went slower but still there were no alligators. We were out for nearly three hours and I didn’t see one.
“It was just a bad day for seeing alligators, son,” said Mr. Reed. “Probably because of the rain. They don’t like to come up when it’s raining.”
For some reason I didn’t like it when Mr. Reed called me “son.” I wasn’t his son. Mr. Reed, my mother told me, was a friend of my father’s. My dad was not in Florida with us, he was in Chicago doing business while my mother and I rode around in boats and visited alligator farms.
Mr. Reed had one arm around me and one arm around my mother.
“Can we go back tomorrow?” I asked.
My mother laughed. “That’s up to Mr. Reed,” she said. “We don’t want to impose on him too much.”
“Sure kid,” said Mr. Reed. Then he laughed, too.
I looked up at Mr. Reed, then out at the water. I could see the drops disappearing into their holes on the surface.