“OH MY GOD,” I hear Vicks say. “You have got to be kidding me.” Her voice carries through the open window to where I’m standing, which is ten feet from the car in a desolate patch of nothing. To my left is the road, unlit and utterly deserted, and to the right is a short dip in the dirt and then a swamp, which is swampy and full of swamp creatures. If Vicks was standing beside it, I’d push her in, I swear I would. I am done with that girl. I’m done trying and I’m done curbing my tongue and I am just plain done!
“Don’t you use the Lord’s name in vain!” I yell into the nothingness. I swat at a mosquito that has landed on my leg.
“God God God!” Vicks yells back.
“Saying His name means you believe in Him!” I retort. And maybe that doesn’t make sense, but it’s what MeeMaw taught me to say when someone uses “God” or “Jesus” as a curse.
I thought me and Vicks were good. I thought we’d worked things out. But me and Vicks aren’t good, and this is the end of the road.
“Go talk to her,” Mel says. “She’s upset.”
“Gee, you think?” Vicks says. Her tone says she’s let go of her friendly feelings toward me just as quick. “She’s been upset the whole freakin’ trip. She’s been a pain in the ass the whole freakin’ trip.” She raises her voice. “She’s been a pain in God’s ass! And Mary’s ass! And Jesus’s sweet white ass!”
Ohhh, she makes me mad. I stalk farther into the night and wish I could just—poof! Disappear. And end up in Canada, and eat that cheese curd gravy thing that Mel talked about, and Mama would be there too, and everything would be fine. Better than fine. Clean and pure and new, like a child rising from the baptismal trough, water raining down her pretty white dress.
A sound chokes from my throat. I don’t mean for it to, but it does what it wants.
“Go,” I hear Mel say to Vicks.
“No way,” Vicks replies. “You taught her the whole stomp-out-of-the-car-and-throw-a-hissy routine. You go.”
“Hissy? I didn’t throw a hissy!”
“Excuse me?” Vicks makes her tone thin and reedy. “Let me out this instant. Stop the car or I’ll…I’ll…throw a mango at you! I will!!”
She is so ugly. She is so ugly to everyone. No wonder Brady let her go.
“No wonder Brady let you go,” I say out loud.
Mel sucks in her breath. I hear the sound from two yards away. I also hear another sound, coming from the swamp. A splash, followed by a quack.
“Did you hear that?” Mel says.
“What do you think?” Vicks says, pissed.
“No, I meant—”
“Fuck it,” Vicks says.
The car door opens and then slams. I don’t turn around. From the swamp comes another quack, only it’s more of a squawk. It’s abruptly cut off, and not as if the squawker had any say about it.
There’s something out there. I know it at the base of my spine.
“You’re a pain in the ass,” Vicks says when she reaches me. “My ass. But okay, I’m here. You want to tell me what I did this time?”
I burst into tears.
“Jesse…,” Vicks says, suddenly uncertain.
The noises I’m making are ugly. They rip out of me. They howl.
“Oh, Jesse, Jesse…” Vicks flails her arms. She doesn’t know what to do, and it scares her and me, both. “Jesse?”
“My mom won first prize in a wet T-shirt contest.” My body heaves. “She squeezed into her tightest T-shirt and stuck her chest out and let some stupid, drunk rednecks spray her with a hose!”
“What are you talking about?”
There’s a swamp sound again—something snapping—and Mel calls, “You guys? I’m hearing creepy noises, and I wish you would come back to the car. I really do!”
“I called her a whore,” I say. “What kind of daughter am I? What kind of daughter is so ugly? And what if God…what if He…”
“This is what you’ve been so freaked out about?” Vicks asks. “A wet T-shirt contest?”
“What if it’s me He’s punishing, and not her?”
Vicks pulls me into a hug. It’s that same big bear hug from Epcot, and she doesn’t get it, she still doesn’t get it, but I let her rock me back and forth.
“Jesse, you are a piece of work,” she says. “Punishing you how? By making me be such a bitch?”
“By giving her cancer,” I say, my voice breaking. But dang, it’s good to say it out loud. Good and terrible and glorious and wrong. I feel Vicks stiffen, and I press hard against her.
“Your mom has cancer?” she says.
I nod into her shoulder.
“Your mom has cancer?”
I nod again.
“Uh-huh,” she says, almost like she’s pissed. “And all this time, while we’ve been worrying about boys and hot tubs and tattletale pirate waiters…?”
I sniff in a glob of mucus.
“Oh, sweetie,” she says, and I realize that if she is pissed, it isn’t at me. “No wonder you’ve been such a tightbottom.”
I laugh, and then I sob, and then all kinds of slop is released from inside me, bubbling up and out, ’cause sure enough, this is what I needed: to tell my best friend, Vicks, that my mama’s real sick. It’s crazy how much of a relief it is, even though Mama’s cancer is still there.
I’m vaguely aware that Mel has joined us, that above my head, Vicks is explaining the situation. Mother. Cancer.
Mel is asking, “Is it stage one? Stage two? Because there’s so much that can be done. Has she started chemo?” The sound of her voice is teeny-tiny.
“Shhh,” Vicks says, stroking my hair. Her voice is a river. I’m a baby in her arms. “Shhh.”
The air is punctured by another squawky peep. It’s coming from the swamp, only it’s closer now. Much closer.
“Oh, crap,” Mel says in a peed-her-pants kind of way.
Vicks goes rigid. I can feel the alarm in her body, the way her muscles change. “Jesse, don’t look.”
I twist from her grasp and turn around. There’s a bird—no, a duck, a baby duck—fluttering up the bank, and behind it, not ten yards away, is an alligator. An enormous alligator that’s alive and not stuffed and surely ten feet long, shuffling toward us in the light of the Opel’s headlights.
“Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap,” Mel says.
“Walk,” Vicks commands. “Don’t run. Just get to the car.”
The baby duck flaps its tiny baby wing-nubs—I crane to see, even as Vicks pushes me forward—and I think, Where is its mother? Where is its mother?
“Move, Jesse,” Vicks says.
“We have to save it!”
“Are you insane?” Her sweat stinks of fear.
The gator reaches the top of the bank, and the duckling squawks and patters in a frantic zigzag. Mel is almost to the car; she runs the last few feet and yanks open the door. The gator swivels its massive head.
“Holy fuck,” Vicks whispers.
“Hurry!” Mel whimpers.
Vicks jerks my arm, but I wrench free and fast-walk toward the duck. The gator lashes its tail. His pupils are slits.
“Jesse!” Mel shrieks.
Gators can run thirty miles an hour. I am a Florida girl, and I know this. So when the gator lifts its body onto its stumpy legs and starts trotting, I know I better grab this duck now, or say good-bye to it and the world.
I don’t want to watch the duck die.
I sure don’t want Vicks and Mel to watch me die.
These thoughts flash in my head, and my heart is galloping so fast I can hardly see straight. Then I’m lunging forward, tripping and going down hard, but my fingers find feathers, and I do not let go. Rot fills my nostrils, and I make the mistake of looking behind me. Snout. Teeth. Bumps the size of peas lining the flesh of its mouth.
“Jesse, get up!” Mel screams.
My legs scrabble. My elbow drives into a rock. The duckling struggles against me, but I’m not letting it go, Oh no, I’m not letting you go.
A hand grips my arm. “You are an idiot,” Vicks pants as she hauls me to my feet.
The gator hisses, and Vicks is thrusting me forward, making me run. We reach the car, and Vicks shoves me into the backseat on top of Mel. Then Vicks is on me, our limbs tangling as she yanks shut the door.
“Go!” Mel yells from the bottom of the heap.
The gator slams against the Opel.
“It’s metal, you moron!” Vicks shouts. “Give it up!”
Cradling the duck to my chest, I scramble into the front seat. I twist the key, and the Opel jolts forward and dies. I try again, only this time I crank it too hard and the motor revs crazy-loud before sputtering out again. Crap, crap, crap.
The gator goes for the Opel a second time, launching its body up through the actual air, and I don’t have to speak gator to know what’s running through its cold reptile brain: Give me back my snack, and in return I’ll rip out your guts. Its snout whams Mel’s window, and there’s a fearsome clicking of teeth on glass. Mel screams. The gator batters the durn door—the whole car’s rocking—and Mel won’t shut up.
Please-oh-please, I pray. I turn the key a third time. The engine catches, and I hear Vicks squeeze out, “Thank you, God.” Vicks says this! Vicks! Mel just whimpers. Gravel pops under the tires as we gain purchase, and the duck flutters its wings for balance.
“Sweet dung on a Popsicle stick,” Vicks says from the back.
“You got that right,” I say. I’m light-headed and can’t really feel my body.
“Is it chasing us?” Mel asks. “Please tell me it’s not chasing us. Is it chasing us?”
The Opel may not be fast, but it can hit sixty miles an hour. I punch the gas pedal to the floor.
“It’s not chasing us,” I say. “That gator is one long-gone daddy.”
Vicks is breathing hard. A glance in the mirror shows me she’s squeezing Mel tight and patting her over and over, while Mel sits frozen like a lump. Mel’s face is pure white.
“Don’t you ever,” Vicks says to me. “Don’t you ever pull a stunt like that again, do you understand?”
I’m chastened by her tone. I could have killed us all…and for what? A duckling that right this second is squirting green poop on my bare thigh?
But then I’m filled with euphoria, ’cause we aren’t dead. We’re alive, and so is the duck. My duck.
“Okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly the smartest thing I ever did,” I say. “But I sure did learn a valuable lesson.” I realize I sound exactly like Faith Waters, and a giggle burbles up. Me and the Gator and the Jaws of Death, that’s what I’d call this heart-stopping episode. “Don’t you wanna know what the lesson is? Huh?”
“What?” Mel asks faintly. She’s still shaking.
“Well…that life is life until you’re dead.”
“That’s your valuable lesson?” Vicks says. “That’s your valuable lesson?! Of course life is life until you’re dead. What else would it be?”
“Now, Vicks—,” I say.
“Nooooo,” she says. “The lesson is don’t get out of your car on a deserted road by a swamp, especially if it’s nesting season and the mama gators are all crazy to feed their babies. And if it comes down to you or a duck?” She leans forward and thwacks my head. “Let the gator have the duck.”
“Except I didn’t,” I say. “And now she’s safe, and isn’t that good?”
“She’s a she?” Mel says, though this talking thing is obviously still a struggle for her. She is just paler than pale back there in the moonlight. “How do you know?”
“Well, she’s not a mallard. So probably.”
Vicks thwacks me even harder. “Oh, put a lid on it. You don’t know crap about birds.”
“Ow!” I say. My duck quacks in protest.
“And you, you pitiful feathery thing,” Vicks says. “Shut. The hell. Up.”