chapter XVII

The massive alligator bent her body into a curl which brought her head near to her tail. She was trying to force the muscles of her great wide sides to clench her stomach which was rumbling with hunger and demanding her attention. Her vigil was near at an end. The eggs that she'd buried in the mound of rotting leaves, sticks and mud in a cove on the Bayou Cocodrie had only hours until they would hatch. This mother was an American alligator, one of that reptile species which dominated the waters of Cocodrie. The hunting for their once valuable hides in the pre-war years had brought their numbers low, but the European trade was stilled now, the lucrative market inactive during the Great War. The mother herself was now six years old and had reached her full potential length of just over eight feet, having been undisturbed these last few years by those who would seek her skin for fashionable apparel.

The sun was burning the haze from the water this morning as she fought her growing hunger. The clear cloudless day promised to bring temperatures to mid-August highs. As the heat of this day would increase her eggs might receive their final warming. She'd been in this shallow cove for 12 weeks. First building the four foot round mound of leaves and limbs pounded down with mud and earth into which she laid her three dozen eggs. As she then ferociously guarded her nest she had been confined to this limited bit of shoot from the main bayou. The small amount of living creatures who had been here upon her arrival had too soon been ingested and were now gone.

Her last meal had been an unexpected boon a week and some days prior. A good sized coyote had carelessly treaded upon a deadly poisonous water moccasin. The bitten animal had flailed his way to the bayou in intense pain from the fatal bite, snapping and snarling at his swelling paw while dancing about at the water's edge in her cove. What the snake had started, the alligator had finished. She erupted from the water in a mighty lunge with her jaws open wide. She clamped the startled animal's midsection and silently dragged him back below the water until she reached a depth to begin the death roll which would end her victim's struggles in an act of drowning. She then fed on most of the unfortunate coyote and stuffed the remainder of the carcass into one of many carved sections of deep embankment, jamming it tightly under heavy debris so it would stay weighted down until her next feeding. Some churning water and a few large bubbles that erupted from the disturbed bottom of the bayou were all the trace of the coyote's end that there would ever be.

But that had been long ago and since then she'd not had any unfortunate visitors to her cove and she could no longer ignore the intense hunger which bore down upon her. So she reluctantly left her nest and floated out of her cove. She made her way back into the bayou, gliding down the center of the still water with only the topmost protrusions of her head above the surface. Two large rounded eyes and two wide nostrils were all that was visible above the water's surface. Her powerful tail with any easy sway beneath the water propelled her so that her passing caused just the slightest ripple. The bayou was fairly narrow at this point and medium deep, maybe six feet, a couple feet lower in this summertime than its winter depth. The mighty reptile's keen eyes could easily scan the eight foot distance to the banks on either side of her. The water ran smoothly over her and she was alert for any vibrations of prey that might be near, in the water or at its' edge. She probably would still not travel far from her nest regardless of her need for nourishment and had this victim been just another 20 feet down the bayou she probably would not have been within the hunger crazed gator's range, but the child carelessly splashing in the water was close enough.

In previous chapters the story was told of a disturbed young soldier who murders his sargeant in dice game while the troops are riding a railcar back to WWI. He flees the scene by leaping from the train and landing in Cocodrie Swamp. He is delusional for 2 days and walks deep into the swamps where he becomes lost and motally terrified before coming upon the camp of a swamp family who are scouting trap lines, here the story of the soldier continues.

Lisee' was only six years old. Everyone said that she was a wonder, for one so young she was very self possessed, pert and always busy. She had a bossy, headstrong way about her and her brothers had long since quit trying to keep her from doing just exactly as she pleased. Even her father who commanded a deep respect and more than a little wariness from his neighbors wouldn’t attempt to cross Lisee', usually leaving her upbringing to her mother, Janerette, who obviously adored the child. Only Janerette, who utilized quiet reasoning and appeals to Lisee's tender nature ever had any success in making her do as she was told. Luckily for her mother, Lisee' was adept at reasoning and even more fortunately, had a heart as big as they come. Her kindnesses to the people of their little settlement and any unfortunate creatures of the swamp who came to her in need were well known in Cocodrie. She nursed orphan creatures and tended to the welfare of any helpless thing.

The child was valued by all, the darling of the little community and her family. But she was stubborn and her brothers could see she was intent on washing out her muscle shells when they left to join their father scouting the winter trap lines. They didn't warn her not to go into the bayou; they just didn't want to waste their voices.

Lisee' had her shells in the piece of torn net that Old Louis had found for her and laced with line to form a bag that was handy for all the things that Lisee' was always collecting. She had rambled through the dangerous and alien swamp since she could walk it seemed, first in the company of her father and older brothers and lately with Old' Louis or anyone who would take her. Already she was venturing through some close areas by herself. All things of nature fascinated Lisee'. She collected odd shaped pieces of wood, deserted bird's nests, skins and bones of animals… and shells, like the ones she'd gathered on this trip. She was removing them from the bag and inspecting them when the lost soldier stumbled out of the end of the swamp that met the Cocodrie Bayou near where Lisee' was standing.

Even in his dazed, half-blinded condition he spotted the other wonder of Lisee'. Her bright white blonde hair was catching the morning sun. And even with his vision blurred by the swelling around his eyes and his exhaustion, he could see the luminous, glowing halo of bright, white gold, waist length curls. He blinked first, wondering whether he could be hallucinating, thinking that the child could be an angelic image his tortured brain had concocted, with that beautiful ethereal hair.

Of course, the stranger wouldn't appreciate the full depth of that wonder, not knowing that Lisee's father, Jack Arceneaux was a dark, swarthy man with black hair, the only concession to his fairer Bourdeaux ancestors being the numerous gold flecks in his dark brown eyes. Nor that Janerette, his wife, was petite like Lisee', but she was a raven haired beauty, with lustrous dark red brown hair and large almond colored eyes. The firstborn of Jack & Janerette were twin boys, Joseph and James, who were eight years older than their sister and maturing into full bodied, muscular young men. But they also were dark haired with rich olive complexions. Lisee' was the most unlikely of offspring from this family of dark haired, dark complexioned people, having shining white gold tresses and clear blue eyes set in a fair, milky toned face.

In truth, if it had not been for the isolated life they led, and if all were not certain of his wife's seclusion at the time Lisee' was conceived, no one could have faulted Jack for questioning the paternity of his unique child. But even if he couldn't explain her distinctiveness, Jack could certainly rule out any possibility that she was anyone's but his own. For she had the mark, her left shoulder carried the same red half moon shaped birthmark as his own. And this was a wonder, too, for the mark usually skipped a generation and had been known to appear on only one other woman, his great, great grandmother, the countess of Bullgeniese.

The soldier was more than just awed by Lisee', he was elated beyond belief once he noted her ragged dress and muddy feet and ruled out the possibility that she was anything but the first human that he had seen since he'd entered the nightmare of this place. Tears streamed out of his tortured eyes as he rushed just a few yards along the bank of the bayou until he stood in front of her. He was laughing and rasping as he sobbed his enormous relief at having found civilization once more, even it did come in the form of one very small little girl. He knew she'd have family around here somewhere, in a town, near a city ...somewhere he'd be safe....

Lisee' moved back and sucked in her breath at his approach. He was a fearsome sight, his tattered uniform bedraggled and mud-caked, his neck and lips swollen, his eyes mere slits in a reddened welty face. A common child would have screamed and ran but Lisee' in her knowing manner, merely stepped back and stared. Then her compassion was aroused as she saw what a pitiful condition he was in.

She took his hand and led him up the embankment to the rough canvas lean-to structure that was giving her father, herself and her brothers shelter on their trip to the swamp this day, their gear and few supplies stowed under the shade of the oilskin tarpaulin. The old tent top smelled musty and was frayed enough to let small sharp slivers of light pierce through, but overall it was cool and very welcome to the beyond exhausted man.

The soldier sank down onto a layer of canvas that evidently sufficed for a sleeping bag and took deep breaths trying to force his mind to function despite his physical condition. But even with his efforts everything was fading into a dreamlike state again.

His mind was not caught up to the events yet, again and he thought - she was French? Where in the Hell was he? Maybe he'd died and been sent back to France or lived and sent back...what a hoot - he'd gone to France dead or alive!! The little French girl, the pitiful army tent, he was so confused… But she offered a canteen and he forced gulps of apparently clean water into his parched mouth. Sanity returned with the painful exercise of swallowing. As the water cooled his mouth and throat he gave in to his weariness. He stretched out on the meager padding of the worn sleeping roll under him and fought exhaustion. He was trying to hold on to consciousness at least until he was certain that he was truly found and on his way out of the horrible place he had been in for the last two days.

Lisee' sat with him for a little while, he seemed to be all right in most ways, just looked very bad. His breathing was normal, she didn't hear any rattles or gurgled sounds that meant animals were bad off and probably dying and he didn't feel hot to her touch. Maman warned about fevers all the time and if you got flushed from runnin' too hard or sittin' in the sun too long, she'd put her hand to your cheek and dose you for sure with some foul smelling concoction. But he seemed cool enough - he was just beat up, worst Lisee'd ever seen. But the swamp could do that she thought...if you really knew nothing about it.

It was an hour later when she eased down the path on the bank, grabbing hand holds from the overhanging brush to make her way into the shallows to start cleaning her shells in the bayou waters again. She waded out in the still water just a few feet from the bank until the water reached her bare knees. She'd pulled the hem of her simple shift up and knotted it above the waterline to keep it out of her way as she bent to swish the shells back and forth in the water. Small minnows darted away from the shallows and a large turtle watched passively from his perch on a log some feet away, the grasses that rose from the surface of the water swayed with a gentle breeze that came and went with its whimsy.

The soldier had slept away little of his exhaustion after an hour or so, but he awoke clear-headed and thirsty once more. He sat up and reached for the canteen that the child had drawn from earlier, taking full swallows with much more ease now. Then he glanced down to where she was now, below his level, out from the bank in the shallows....and he saw the approaching horror.

It didn't seem real; the sun was shining on a beautiful child standing knee deep in almost clear water that was reflecting the bright glow and the blue sky from overhead. Her voice was light and lilting as she sung parts of an old hymn and dipped some shells in the water to scrub at them, causing gentle ripples to flow out from her in increasing circles. The pattern of blue and gold on the water undulated with the ripples and set her in the center of a kaleidoscope of changing color. It was a scene of incredible peace.... and indescribable horror. For mere yards away, approaching stealthily in the water was a monster!

The soldier had never seen an alligator before and he was certain that the pictures that he'd occasionally seen were very slight representations of the prehistoric predator that was before him now in such tremendous proportions. The creature had to be at least eight feet long and was so thick bodied in its center that the mass it carried must have been hundreds of pounds. Its total length and breadth was a clearly defined black shadow just beneath the water's surface. The soldier watched the huge tail swaying purposefully beneath the waters surface, moving the creature closer and closer to the little girl. The alligator's path was so direct to the unsuspecting child that the soldier could have no doubt of its intent. The monster's mouth parted slightly and the soldier saw deadly sharp teeth across its spans. Bolting to his feet, the soldier tried to cry out a warning but his tortured dry throat refused to give him volume and a hoarse croak that failed to get the child's attention was all that came forth.

Sometimes in situations of extreme stress the mind will speed events up until they are a blur that makes it difficult to remember even the most vivid of details, like the killing of the sergeant that the soldier couldn't recall in depth. He had no details to explain the sequence of that time. The knife was in his hand without him knowing how it had gotten there; he didn't remember getting to his feet or the actual thrust that had killed the man. But at other moments we are granted such a degree of consciousness as to make move time slowly while every movement can be well synchronized for ultimate effect. And as he bolted from the shelter and down the embankment the soldier was granted such moments, allowing him to place his feet on just the right surface, adding spring to his leap to allow him to reach her in time. He plunged two wide steps into the water and grabbed the child about the waist, swinging her up and flinging her away from him to the bank. Simultaneously he felt the bone crushing blow to his legs that flattened him and sent him sprawling facedown into the bayou water