The daily digest of Twin Cities culture | Secrets of the City

He came for the cool, lazy running of the water and the fog drifting over it, for the loamy shoreline and the iridescence of spring mangrove.  The serenade of a lone mockingbird to an unseen mate - that was a bonus.  The others had come for a little R&R before redeploying, simple as that, but he had come for something more.  He sat alone on the foot bridge, legs dangling, listening to the morning stillness and breathing in the forest air, but in this most peaceful of settings, his jaw clenched and his chest was tight as ever.

 

The others were slow to stir from their hangovers and that was fine with him.  He was tired of their noise and bravado.  At least this would be a short day, just a few miles downstream where they'd put out, load their canoes and report back to Fort Benning.

 

A flap flipped open on one of the tents and out crawled the captain.

 

"Doc.  Hey, Doc?  I'm goin' for wood.  You get the fire goin', OK?  And Doc.  You hear me screamin', one o' them wild pigs's got me, so you be in charge.  All right?"

 

"Right." 

 

Technically, he already was in charge.  As a lieutenant colonel, he outranked all seven of them, but as a physician and not a field soldier, he usually deferred to the captain.

 

He got to his feet, picked up some kindling, then sat down at the fire pit where he made a little teepee of pine needles and twigs that he lit with his Zippo.  The old lighter was heavy and purposeful in his hand, a tool you could depend on, like the men who had given it to him when he first made medic and started chasing the death - across the Mekong, into the jungles and over the deserts to the far corners of the earth.

 

Wiley was next to emerge, slipped his sidearm into its holster, then stood at the perimeter taking a leak.  A few minutes later, Jensen and Mick, then Redpath and Fizzy staggered forth with Martinez bringing up the rear.  One by one, they zipped up and walked over to the pit.

 

"Sleep OK, Doc?" Wiley asked, but he didn't respond.  He was still angry at Wiley for messing up Mick's face last night, even though he probably deserved it.  Soldiers.  Hell bent on finding an enemy.  In a pinch, they'd even go after each other.

 

The captain returned with an armful of wood.

 

"You ain't got coffee goin' yet?"

 

"Sir.  WILCO, sir!" Doc said with a smile.

 

Fizzy sat down, took a bottle of Wild Turkey out of his flak jacket and offered it to Mick.

 

"Jesus, Fizz."

 

"Hair o' the dog."

 

"Don't mind if I do," said Wiley grabbing the bottle out of his hand, taking a swig, then holding it out to Jensen, taunting him.

 

"What the fuck.  Give me the bottle."

 

"Not till you answer me something."

 

"What?"

 

"How does a boa as black as you get a Swede name.  Huh?"

 

"Wiley."

 

"Just talkin' to the bo-a, cap'n."

 

"Shut up."

 

"Sir," he sneered.  "Yes, Sir."

 

Jensen took a swallow, then passed it on to Mick.

 

"Want any, Doc?"

 

Silence.

 

"You don't say much, do you, Doc?  Ain't said but ten words these last two days.  Nah, you're one a them strong, silent types.  Probably blow your stack at home, kick the dog, slap the wife around."

 

"No wife."

 

"What?"

 

"She passed away," Redpath said.  "Last year."

 

"What'd'ya mean?"

 

"She died, dumb shit.  Get it?"

 

"Hey, fuck you, Indian Joe," and he flipped the bottle at Redpath, catching him just above the eye.  In an instant, Redpath was on him.

 

"All right.  All right, for christsake!  What the hell is the matter with you assholes?" but the captain, more than anyone, knew what they were going through.  You couldn't just leave the war behind, especially at times like this when you were only back for a couple of months and counting the days.  Stop-Loss.  Worst idea the Army ever had.  Better to just leave us there till the job's done, but then the whole thing was snake-bit from the start.  "Assholes.  This was supposed to be a camping trip, not a three day brawl.  Fizzy, put that bottle away."

 

"C'mon, cap'n -"

 

"No drinkin' today.  You guys, start breakin' down the camp.  Martinez, Redpath, get this place ship-shape.  Jensen, Mick, get breakfast goin'.  Come on, start cuttin' up potatos or something.  Wiley, give 'em a hand."

 

"Where're you going?"

 

"To take a shit, not that it's any of your business," and the captain walked off, over the foot bridge, into the woods.

 

The men fell into their chores with an ease that amused the Doc.  Had he been the one to give the order, they would have just snickered or sat there blankly.  He'd have to raise his voice, but even then, they'd be slow to their feet.  He stoked the fire, added a log, positioned the grill and stared into the flames.  After a few minutes, he glanced up and saw the captain standing at the far end of the bridge, motionless, the look of mortal fear on his face.

 

Doc raised his hand to the others.

 

"Shut up," he whispered loudly.

 

"What?"

 

He crossed his lips with a finger, then fell to his hands and knees and started crawling toward the edge of the river bank.  Wiley drew his handgun and fell in behind.  Redpath took left flank.  The captain looked at Doc and lowered his eyes to the shoreline below - but only his eyes.  The rest of him remained frozen.

 

"Jesus," Wiley murmured.  "That's a twelve footer."

 

"Fourteen," said Redpath.

 

Doc glared them both down, then signaled to the captain to crouch and step back.  One by one, the others crawled up, fanned out, then peeked over the bank, eyes wide, hearts racing.  Just now, it lifted its head and hissed.  The captain took a quick jump back, then signaled to Wiley.

 

"Engage."

 

"No!" Redpath warned.  "You can't risk it.  I seen bullets bounce right off 'em."

 

"Bullshit."

 

"I have.  Then he'll go after one of us.  Damn things can run 30 miles an hour."

 

"That's true," Fizzy put in.

 

"Best thing is just pull back, real slow."

 

"Wiley," the captain yelled.  "Aim and shoot," but before he could, Doc took hold of the gun and trained the barrel into the ground.

 

"Nobody's killing anything."

 

"What?"

 

"He's got just as much right to be here as any of us.  More even."

 

"What're you talking about?"

 

"Life, Wiley.  We're gonna let him live.  Now let's pull back like Redpath says."

 

"Wiley!" the captain shouted.

 

"Yes, sir, I'm tryin' -"

 

"Sargeant, I am ordering you to kill the goddamn thing."

 

"Overruled," the Doc answered, tearing the gun out of Wiley's hand. "Nobody's killing anything.  Not today."

 

They all looked at him, dumbfounded. 

 

"Doc -"

 

"No.  Not this time.  Now come on back over here.  I'll stand guard.  If he starts to threaten, I'll be the one to shoot."

 

The captain took a step forward.  The gator hissed, lifted its head, then thrashed its huge tail to one side.  The captain jumped back.

 

"I am giving you all a direct order.  Get your guns, knives, anything you got and kill this motherfucking thing right now!"

 

"Stay put," the Doc said, pointing the pistol.

 

"Doc, I'm warning you.  Don't go against me on this."

 

"I told you, nobody's killing anything.  Understand?"

 

"You understand this: I'm not dying for a goddamn alligator."

 

"That doesn't mean we have to kill it.  Death's not always the answer, you know."

 

Wiley looked sideways at Mick and Martinez. 

 

"You gone crazy, Doc?  Is that it?  Fuck him, I'm gettin' our guns."

 

"Move another inch, I'll shoot."

 

"You gonna murder me, Doc?  Ya gonna murder us all?  What then?" he said, lifting up.

 

The shot echoed into the piney woods as a little puff of dust rose near Wiley's left hand.

 

"Whoa."

 

"What'ya doin', Doc?"

 

"He's fuckin' crazy."

 

"Got that right."

 

"Shut up!" and he fired a second shot into the sky.

 

He let his conviction sink in, then motioned Wiley back to the group.

 

"Try coming over again," he called in a whisper.

 

"Cap'n," Redpath warned.  "Once you start movin', ya gotta go real quick-like or he might snatch ya.  They can stand on their tails six feet high - so don't stop whatever you do."

 

"Thank you for that, Redpath," but as he leaned forward to take the first step, the gator reared up in a burst of water and mud, thrusting itself onto the bridge, onto the railing, the cables turning and twisting as the captain went down, screaming, black claws scratching up the railing, huge gray teeth snapping at the air, searching for a limb.

 

"You're lettin' me die here, Doc?  Is that it?" but as the Doc took aim, it was clear that the gator couldn't hold a grip.  In an instant, it slid back down the bank and into the shallows.

 

The captain dragged himself back to the far side, his arms and legs twitching as though he had just been through a firefight.  When he composed himself, he stood up and looked sadly at Doc.  "I'm putting you in for a psych eval when we get back.  You hear me?  All of you, Wiley, Martinez, Fizzy - if I don't make it out of this, you make sure it happens, understand?"

 

"Sir.  It would be my pleasure, Sir," Wiley replied.

 

"You'd better figure this thing out, Doc, because I didn't go through 'Nam and Bosnia and Fallujah to get eaten by an over-sized lizard.  You better have a plan in mind and it better be good."

 

"All right.  Here's the plan.  No plan.  We're all gonna get up and go over to the fire."

 

"What then, Sir?"

 

"We're gonna sit still until our friend gets bored and swims away."

 

"That could be all day."

 

"I don't care.  Now get over there.  Redpath?"

 

"Sir?"

 

"I want to know everything you know about alligators.  How they swim and hunt, what they like and don't like.  Everything, starting with how long you think it might be before this one moves on."

 

"Hard to say, Sir."

 

"Well, guess."

 

"I don't know.  I seen some of 'em lay like that all day, takin' in the sun."

 

"But you still think it's best to just leave him be?"

 

"Yes, sir.  Unless other ones come, too."

 

"They do that?"

 

"Sure."

 

"Then what?"

 

"Well, then they all lay around together."

 

"I mean, do they go into attack mode or something?"

 

"I don't know.  Could be."

 

"Jesus, corporal, what do you know?  I thought your people settled this land."

 

"Well, we did, Sir, but that don't mean we mess with gators.  You see one, you move on, hope he doesn't come after you."

 

"But isn't there something we can do to get him to move on sooner?"

 

"Maybe.  Once when I was a little kid, we had one come up from the lake and lay in our back yard.  You know, basking.  Like this one.  They like doin' that."

 

"So?  What did you do?"

 

"Well, we stayed in the house."

 

"Jesus, Redpath."

 

"Well you asked me and I told you."

 

"Did he go away?"

 

"Eventually."

 

"But did you do anything to get him to go?"

 

"I don't remember."

 

"Shit," the Doc laughed in frustration. 

 

"But then there was this other time when we was out hunting and we come up on one that looked like he was fixin' to get us, you know, raisin' his head up like they do, hissin' and that."

 

"Yeah?"

 

"So my dad started feeding him."

 

"You mean with food?"

 

"Yeah, they'll eat anything.  He just kept tossing all this shit at him, sandwiches, hunks of Spam, apples, cookies, anything we had."

 

"What did he do?"

 

"I guess he got full, 'cause after a while he turned tail and walked away.  But I wouldn't try that with this one."

 

"Why not?"

 

"Too big.  It'd take forever.  Besides, there's no telling what he'll do.  I mean we start feeding him food and maybe he decides he'd rather taste an arm."

 

"Go back over and get some bread and stuff.  Have Fizzy help you."

 

"But Doc -"

 

"Do it."

 

The Doc got down on his hands and knees and crawled back to the edge of the bank.  The gator lay still, not even seeming to breathe, his grey, glassy eyes staring up at the Doc with only an occasional filmy blink to suggest he was still alive.  Doc took a deep breath, then held out the gun, combat ready.  He figured he had about half an hour.  If feeding the gator didn't work, the others would rush him and he knew as well as they did that he wouldn't actually shoot one of his own.  Not on purpose anyway.

 

Fizzy tossed the first piece of bread.  It sailed in an arc, then landed a few feet from the gator.  He slid sideways and grabbed it with a click of his jaws.  He then opened wide to receive the next morsel, a candy bar that Redpath didn't even bother unwrapping.  Again, the gator snapped it up and again opened his mouth for more.

 

"Hey, I think he likes this.  Jensen, bring me that box of Cheerios."

 

"All right, Doc?"

 

"Go ahead."

 

Jensen walked to the edge of the bank and fed him the entire box.  The feeding seemed to calm him down, at least that's what they all started to believe.  Soon they were all standing around throwing stuff down to him.  Wiley even took up post on the bridge directly above him, dropping all sorts of things into the gaping mouth - bags of potato chips, cookies, cheap cigars, anything that remotely resembled food, with the captain all the while waiting it out on the opposite bank.

 

"I think he's getting used to it," Fizzy said, pitching a package of bacon.  "Looky that."

 

The gator chewed it for a few seconds before gulping it down, but mostly, he just opened wide and swallowed, opened wide and swallowed - oranges, packs of licorice, coffee grinds, chicken bones, a carton of cottage cheese that got waterlogged and had gone bad, pancake mix, maraschino cherries.

 

"How do you like your eggs, gator?" Mick said tossing one over his shoulder in a hook shot.  It splattered on the gators' snout, although he didn't seem to mind.

 

"Over easy," Jensen said, lobbing one down.

 

"How about hard-boiled," Martinez said, firing one right down his throat.  No matter.  The gator didn't care so long as something was being tossed into its mouth.  Within fifteen minutes, a food fight of sorts had developed, the men jeering and laughing as pretty much anything qualified as food - squirts of toothpaste, sticks of deodorant, Fizzy's girly magazine, cigarettes, then lit cigarettes.

 

"All right, cut it out," the Doc ordered.  "If it isn't food - hey, I said, 'Stop it!'"

 

Mick was now holding the bottle of Wild Turkey over the gator, dripping down little tilts at a time, getting' him shit-faced, he said, but it was Wiley as usual who won the prize for biggest asshole.  When he whipped it out and started pissing into the gator's mouth, Doc cocked the revolver.

 

"Enough!" but no one listened.  Before long, they were all pissing into the gator's mouth.  "Stop it!", but no one could hear him for their giddiness.

 

A shot into the air did nothing to deter them and he understood once again that he was on the periphery.  By now, the captain had come across the bridge and had joined the others in the golden shower, a sight the Doc could barely believe.

 

But then why so shocking?  Had he not seen all this before?  Soldiers demoralizing prisoners, taking target practice on pigs and livestock, setting house pets afire.  No way anyone back home could fathom what went on.  Not until Abu Ghraib.  But even that didn't slow the brutality.  Hell, just a few weeks ago, a young marine on patrol found a lost puppy, cute little thing, patches of black and white like a tiny Holstein.

 

The guy held it up for his buddy to film with a cell phone.  Such a cute little puppy, he cooed into the lens, then arching back, hurled it over a steep cliff into a valley of rock and dust.  The puppy squealed and flailed through the air as the guy and his buddy laughed, Wooo-eee, as it hit the ground so far below it just couldn't still be alive.  But then it whimpered, cried up the valley, screamed actually, for the longest time, the guys laughing and patting each other on the back.  'Caution: Disturbing Footage' did little to discourage the two thousand hits it was getting each week on YouTube.

 

He let go the gun, stood looking on like always, never participating, yet never doing anything to stop it - but worse, patching them all up so they could go out and do it again.

 

He felt his back straightening, his frame lifting up and carrying him to the fire pit where he reached down to pick up a shovel.  He wasn't sure what his next move would be, but then the shovel seemed to operate itself, wedging under one of the stones at the fire's edge, embers falling as he raised it up, balancing it for the short walk over and on to the bridge.

 

"Jesus, Doc, what're you doin'?"

 

The stone steamed in the open air, slipped off the shovel with a scratchy clang, then dropped into the gator's mouth.  The reptile recoiled, groaned, thrashed back and forth in a frenzy.  Reared up.  Fell down.  Hunched its back.  Lurched forward.  Died.

 

"Holy Shit!" someone said, but mostly they just stared, down at the gator, up at the Doc, then back again.  The captain punched a finger into the Doc's chest.

 

"You're gonna lose your commission over this.  You know that."

 

But the Doc didn't hear a word.  He just stood there quietly looking down on this marvel of evolution as the sun streamed through the pines onto the cool, lazy running of the water.