“I wish you wouldn’t go into that filthy swamp by yourself, Jerry.”
Mom scowled when she said those words to me. Sometimes she would look me in the eye when she criticized me, sometimes not. I think she knew I’d only listen when she agreed with me. It happened less and less these days. I told her there was nothing to be afraid of. “Look . . . Mom, if you know what you’re doing then you’re as safe as in your own bed.”
Well, that was the lie I told her and never about the snakes and gators and everything else in the swamp. Actually, the only thing I’m really afraid of are snapping turtles, I mean BIG snapping turtles that are all over the place out there. I swear some are the size of garbage can lids, and some are even bigger…they always give me the creeps. A turtle can take your hand off SNAP!
She had a disgusted look on her face. “I just don’t see why you can’t be like other boys. Play ball or something. Good God, Jerry, what’s the attraction?” she said as she ran her fingers through my long hair. She didn’t like my hair, either. Just no pleasing some people. Especially parents. Especially her.
Who the hell cares anymore.
I brushed her hand aside. “You wouldn’t understand,” I said as I glared at her, shaking my head knowing she never would. “I’ll be okay.” I told her, “I’ll be fine. I’ll see you later, okay?” I’d been going into the swamp by myself since I was a kid and rode there on my bike, even though I never volunteered that information, either. There’s only so much a kid can tell his mom. Especially her.
She was still grossed out from the time I came back cut up from saw grass and she found a leech on me that I couldn’t see because I couldn’t turn around and see my butt. How it got so far up under my jeans is beyond me, but, there it was, latched onto my right cheek for all to see when I stripped in the backyard to hose off ‘cause she wouldn’t let me in the house until I had. She about lost it, too. Thought she was gonna puke right there in the yard. Serves her right, making me strip outside like I was a dog or something.
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The Big Cypress Swamp, it’s way out in the Everglades about an hour west of where we live in Miami; “Where men go in and never come out,” or so that story goes. I think it’s just to keep Yankees out of there, anyway. Something else she didn’t need to hear. It’s where I go. It’s mine. To do as I please. I park off the side of the levee road that runs through the swamp, I guess it’s where logging trucks used to run but they don’t now, so I park there in the trees so no one can see the car from the air or the road—no sense in inviting trouble by having somebody rip off my Malibu while I’m out for a hike. I walk a couple hundred yards to a place I found a few weeks ago and sit down by the water’s edge to see what I can see and recognize it for when I come back out. Before I step into the water I slap it a few times to see if there’s any gators around.
Slap, Slap, Slap….
The slapping brings them like a dinner bell and I do it to see if there’s any big ones prowling. The little ones, you know—the ones under about six feet—ain’t much bother. Once they start growing up, though, they get an attitude and a can be hard to control. And a ten-footer can kill a man if you let him.
I slap the water a few times and only a five-footer comes to see what’s up. I pop him in the nose with the cypress staff I carry and he slips away and disappears into the murk. Now, some folks would expect me to carry a gun or something out here, but I don’t see a need for it. I just have my stick and an old Barlow I got for my birthday when I was little. I love that knife. The staff’s cool, too. It was a deadfall sapling I found and I carved a head into the root end and I wrapped copper telephone wire around the bottom end so it wouldn’t split. It’s really cool.
I step into the water once the gator’s gone. It’s dark and warm and feels real good. This place is so cool. The bottom is soft and I sink into the mud up to the tops of my Army surplus boots. These are the kind of boots the guys in Viet Nam are wearing and I figure if it’s good enough for them it sure is for me. They’re real tough boots and have this layer of nylon in the soles so punji sticks won’t poke through the bottom and into a guy’s foot.
The water gets deeper as I move farther into the cypress. Now, a lot of this is only about chest-deep and sometimes I find a deep spot, but it’s not too hard to walk in. Anyway, I can swim across the deep spots, even in boots. I move along between the cypress trees and watch raccoons watch me as I slip by.
Spanish moss hangs from tree limbs and gives the whole place an eerie feel. Man, I just love this stuff. It’s so beautiful and I bet I’m the only person to see it since the Seminoles moved onto the Reservation. The water is clear but brown and looks like real dark tea. I can hardly see the sky, either, ‘cause the cypress trees form a canopy over the swamp and in places it’s dark as night. Really cool.
A water moccasin swims towards me and I pick him up with the staff and flip him into a tree. I saw a rattlesnake swimming once and he was too big to lift so I just whacked him on the head so he’d go away. Imagine that, a swimming rattler…too cool.
Sometimes gators come up to check me out, too. They always get whacked in the nose. It never hurts them, just let’s ‘em know I’m not what they want. I had a big one make me shinny up a tree once and I stayed there most of the day ‘cause he settled down under me, like he was waiting for a meal…maybe he was. Too funny. Didn’t tell Mom that, either. She’d have a cow.
After I go in about a mile or so, something snaps shut on my right boot. Oh, no, this could be a big snapping turtle’s mouth I just stuck my foot into. It hurts like hell but a snapper would have cut through by now, and he’d shake his head, too. This ain’t shakin’ and don’t hurt that bad. What the hell? I pull my foot back to see what happens. I can move it some and I step back and move it some more, and then it stops. I can’t pull it any more. It’s like, it’s like…no…it can’t be. It’s like whatever is holding me is tied down to something else. I can move my foot around with this thing on it. This is really starting to hurt. I can even lift it up…but it’s still tied to something. I lift it up so I can feel what’s clamped on my foot.
Oh. No. I can’t really see it ‘cause the water’s so dark, but I can feel it with my hands. And “it” is a trap. Like the kind used for catching beavers, or bear. And it’s clamped onto my foot. What the hell is it doing here and so deep? I can feel the trap pressing into the boot leather crushing my right foot on top and bottom and it’s clamped on about where the laces begin on the boot and the damn thing is really starting to hurt. I start to lose my balance and put my foot back down. This ain’t good. Okay, don’t panic. Just calm down and think. Think! You can get out if you give it enough thought. You’ll be okay.
Okay, a trap has to have some way to open it so it can work, right? So, all I have to do is figure out how to do that and I’m free. I raise my foot up again. God, this hurts. It’s starting to throb. I really gotta get this thing off me. I feel the trap to see what makes it work. Some traps have flat springs that make them close, others, the real good ones, have coil springs and can only be opened with a thing that looks like a C-clamp. If I’m lucky—Well, it’s too late for luck already, isn’t it?—it’s the flat-spring kind.
Oh, just great. I can feel not one, but two coil springs. Just great. God damn it. I put my foot back down. There’s no getting this trap off me. I’ve got to get it loose from the bottom then walk all the way out, what is it—a mile?—with this thing on me. Then I gotta drive out of here. Well that’s the easy part. Mom’s gonna have a cow, I just know it. What a pain in the ass.
A snake’s in the water and coming at me. It’s a water moccasin and I really whack it hard ‘cause I’m really mad and don’t wanna be messin’ with no damn snake right now—‘specially a poisonous one. He just breaks behind the neck and I flip him away with the stick.
Okay, I can do this. I’ll just sink down under the water and grab the trap and find where the end of its chain is attached. Then I’ll come back up and rest. Then I’ll just go back down and pull it loose. No sweat.
I sink below the surface and blow air out of my lungs to make me sink better. I can’t really dive because I’ve got one foot tied to the bottom. Oh, God this thing is really starting to hurt. I grab the trap and feel for its chain. I wish the water was clear, this is like swimming in tea and I can’t see a damn thing more than a foot or two away. Hell, in three or four feet of this kind of water no light gets through at all and it’s like diving at night. I pull myself along the chain to where it’s anchored then stand up to catch my breath.
I go down again and feel where the chain is anchored. Oh, crap, it’s wrapped around a root and locked. Locked? Who the hell would lock a trap? Dammit.
I come back up.
What can I do now? I go back down and see if I can saw through the root with the chain. I feel the root, it’s about as thick as my wrist and hard. It’s cypress and about as tough as iron.
I come up for air.
Okay, I can try cutting my boot with my knife and then I can pull my foot out. I go back down and begin to cut the boot. This takes three trips to do and by the time I get it done I’m winded and my foot is really hurting. The trap is pressing into the top of my foot and pinching it into the bottom of my boot. I go down again and feel my foot where it’s caught. The trap has worked its way deeper. I think I can feel the bone breaking, it feels like a chicken bone slowly cracking as you bend it in your fingers, but this is my chicken bone and it really hurts. My foot is beginning to swell up, too. Oh, God, it’s really hurting bad.
My whole leg is starting to ache.
I’m really screwed. I saw on the news once where this guy was caught in an earthquake in California or Mexico or someplace like that and his leg was trapped under a building and a doctor had to chop it off so they could get him out. Okay, that’s what I’ve got to do, but it took three tries just to cut my boot. Can I chop off my foot with this knife? Hell, it barely made it through the boot leather, how’s it gonna go through my foot? And it’ll never go through the bones. Anyway, I’d probably drown while trying.
That sucks.
So, here I am. Standing chest-deep in a swamp “Where men go in and never come out,” in the middle of the damn Everglades and now I’m gonna be one of those men and I’m only a kid and my Mom’s gonna kill me if I don’t come home.
So, I just stand here waiting for something to happen and my foot and my leg’s really hurting and I’m really getting scared and I don’t want to just stay here and rot tied to some damn tree and all I want to do right now is go home! “Help! HELP!” I yell as loud as I can. “Oh, somebody…please…help! Please get me out of here, please. . . please . . . ” Somebody please help me….I can’t believe I’m crying. I never cry anymore….
The sun’s going down. I’ll stand here tonight and maybe something will happen in the morning and I can get out of this.
…………………………………
It’s morning and I’m still here. Oh, like I’ve got a choice in the matter. I thought it was a dream and I’d wake up and find out that I’m home in bed and I’ve decided to go to college like my Mom wants me to and I’ll be a doctor or a lawyer or something and I won’t go into the swamp anymore but it’s not a dream and I’m still here. DAMMIT!
The mosquitoes really kicked my ass last night. I thought I could sleep standing up but they found me and I’m all bitten up. One point they were so thick it was like wiping mud off my face but it was just bloody mosquitoes. My face is swollen and my lips and eyelids are swollen and I itch like hell now.
I feel hot.
I think I’ve got a fever.
Great.
How long could I survive like this? I won’t get dehydration, I’m chest-deep in water. And to makes things worse I’m a Burger King for damn mosquitoes now. How long would it take to starve to death? Oh, that could take weeks, maybe months. What else could kill me? Gangrene. I’ll get an infection in a few days and gangrene will set in and my foot will rot off and then I can pull it free but by then it’ll be in my bloodstream and I’ll die before my foot rots off, chained here to this damn tree root.
Maybe I’ll get snake bit. I saw a dog get bit once and he ran around and yelled and howled like he was, well, snake-bit. But it didn’t kill him. No, snake-bit ain’t the way to go, it’ll just hurt like hell and it won’t kill me anyway.
I’m out of options. I just want to go home and see my Mom. If only…damn…I’m not getting out of this. I might as well face the facts. I’m screwed. No, I have to try. Keep trying! Don’t give up!
I sink back down to the chain again and if I pull hard enough and long enough on this damn chain the root has to break and….
I come up to breathe. Oh, it hurts just to move my foot. God, it hurts so bad. I go down again and pull and pull on the chain but the water makes me float and I push against the root with my good foot and puuuuullllll so hard something has break and….
I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe.
I try to float on the surface on my back and just try to catch my breath so I can try again. An egret flies above the trees…I wish I was a bird right now…I’d fly right on home….
I try all day to break the root with the chain but it won’t work and I know it but I have to try. Night’s coming again. I can hear bugs and frogs starting to make all their night sounds. I’ve been here what, two days? Three? Four? I don’t know anymore. Then the first mosquito of the night bites me. You know they give out a smell or something so when one finds food they all find food? And tonight—I’m the food. I can’t spend another night fighting off mosquitoes. But I can’t get under cover, either. I’ll try and put mud on my face to see if that’ll keep ‘em off me. I go back down and bring up handfuls of muck and rub it all over my face and ears and neck and in my hair before they get me again. If I just kinda stoop in the water so it comes up to my neck the bugs won’t get me. But I can’t sleep like this.
All I can do is wait for tomorrow to come. Tomorrow….
There’s a snake! Dammit it’s right by me and I didn’t see it! I whack the hell out of it and break my stick. Ha! Oh! It was just a harmless water snake. Sorry, snake. Damn, the stick broke…my favorite stick…. Damn. Damn. Just settle down…it’ll be okay…it’ll be okay…it’ll be ooooo—kayyyy…. I liked that stick…it had a head carved in it and everything. Maybe Mom will bring me another one.
…………………………………
Last night was okay but I’m really tired and my legs and back and my shoulders hurt and my right foot and leg really hurt now and I can feel my heart beating in my foot and oh, God this HAS TO STOP! Damn it!
What can I do? No one’s around. Nobody ever comes through here except me. And the son-of-a-bitch poacher who set this trap. Damn it! Damn him. Damn swamp. And I’m not gonna be seeing him anytime soon, am I?
My foot’s getting infected; I can feel it. I know it’s rotting, I can almost smell it. But that’s the swamp; it smells like rot. Rotten plants, rotten water and rotten damn animals and now ME! I have a fever. I hurt all over. I’ve been out here for I don’t know how long now and nobody can find me because nobody knows where I am and this just isn’t going to fix itself! Damn it! I look up and see another egret flying east, east where home is….
Night’s falling again and I can hear the bugs and frogs and all the other damn vermin out here. I don’t know how much longer I can take this crap, night after night . . . I’ve got it. How I can end this my way. Okay, that’s it, I’ve got to do it. I just can’t stand the biting and the pain and the stink of this place and I’m too far in and no one will ever find me. I can’t get loose and I’m already getting sick. It’s just no use. “Mom, I love you and I’m sorry I didn’t come home,” I cry out loud, hoping that in some way she’ll hear me. “I really did want to go to college, Mom. I really did. I love you, Mom.” I love you.
I start slapping the water, hoping to call a big one. A ten- or twelve-footer should do.
Slap, Slap, Slap….
