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Did she not see the blood, Lloyd wondered, or did she not want to see it? “There’s been an accident.”
“What kind of accident? Did someone run into the goddam drawbridge again?”
“Go inside,” he said.
He went inside himself without waiting to see if she did so. He got Laurie a fresh bowl of water, and she lapped at it eagerly. While she did that, Lloyd called 911.
9
The police must have gone to the Pitchers’ house immediately after retrieving Don’s body, because Lloyd heard Evelyn screaming. Those screams probably didn’t go on for long, but it seemed long. He wondered if he should go over there, maybe try to comfort her, but he didn’t feel that he could. He was more tired than he could ever remember, even after high school football practice on hot August afternoons. All he wanted to do was sit in his easy chair with Laurie in his lap. She had gone to sleep, nose to tail.
The police came and interviewed him. After listening to his story, they told him he had been extremely lucky.
“Luck aside, you did some damn quick thinking,” one of the cops said, “using Mr. Pitcher’s cane like that.”
“It still would have gotten me if the outside part of the boardwalk hadn’t collapsed under its weight,” Lloyd said. It probably would have gotten Laurie, as well. Because Laurie hadn’t gone home. Laurie had waited.
That night he took her to bed with him. She slept on Marian’s side. Lloyd himself slept little. Each time he started to drift off, he thought of how the alligator had looked splayed on Don’s body, with such possessiveness. Its black eyes. How it had seemed to grin. The unexpected speed when it had come at him. Then he would stroke the dog sleeping beside him.
Beth came from Boca the next day. She scolded him, but not until she had hugged him and kissed him repeatedly, making Lloyd think of how frantically Laurie had licked his face when he emerged from the palmetto tangle.
“I love you, you stupid,” Beth said. “Thank God you’re alive.”
Then she picked up Laurie and hugged her. Laurie bore this patiently, but as soon as Beth put her down, she went off to find her rubber rabbit. She took it into the corner, where she made it squeak repeatedly. Lloyd wondered if she was having a fantasy where she tore the alligator to pieces, and told himself he was being stupid. You didn’t make animals into something they were not. He hadn’t read that in So You Have a New Puppy! It was one of those things you found out on your own.
10
The day after Beth’s visit, a game warden from Florida Fish and Wildlife came to see Lloyd. They sat in the kitchen, and the warden, whose name was Gibson, accepted a glass of iced tea. Laurie enjoyed smelling his boots and pants cuffs for awhile, then curled up under the table.
“We caught the gator,” Gibson said. “You’re lucky to be alive, Mr. Sunderland. It was a damn big one.”
“I know that. Has it been euthanized?”
“Not yet, and there’s some discussion about whether or not it should be. When it attacked Mr. Pitcher, it was protecting a clutch of eggs.”
“A nest?”
“That’s right.”
Lloyd called Laurie. Laurie came. He picked her up and began to stroke her. “How long was that thing there? I walked that damn boardwalk down to the Fish House with my dog almost every day.”
“The normal incubation period is sixty-five days.”
“That thing was there all that time?”
Gibson nodded. “Much of it, yes. Deep in the weeds and sawgrass.”
“Watching us go by.”
“You and everyone else who used that boardwalk. Mr. Pitcher must have done something, quite by accident, that roused her… well…” Gibson shrugged. “Not maternal instincts, I don’t think you could say that, but they’re programmed to protect the nest.”
“He probably swung the cane in its direction,” Lloyd said. “He was always swinging that cane. Might even have hit her. Or hit the nest.”
Gibson finished his iced tea and stood up. “I just thought you’d like to know.”
“Thank you.”
“Sure. That’s a nice little dog you’ve got there. Border Collie and what else?”
