East is East

What had begun as a little story, a six-line thing on page 28 of the Savannah Star, something to fill the odd space left over after they printed up the specials on boneless chicken and toilet paper, was now a big story, a TV story. He should have seen it coming. This was a real potboiler, after all, full of sex, violence, miscegenation, hair-raising escapes, swamps teeming with snakes and alligators, rumors of official incompetence and collusion on the part of a bunch of suspect writers and artists. Christ, it could be a soap opera, a miniseries. As the Swamp Turns. From Here to Okefenokee. Jap Hunter.

The woman with the plastic face wanted to know why it had taken the INS better than six weeks to capture this fugitive—and what about allegations of incompetence? She furrowed her brow in an investigatory frown, as if it hurt her to put such hard questions. Before Abercorn could frame an answer, a fiftyish man with a savage nose and forearms bristling with white hair poked a microphone at him and asked what the problem was with the security at the Tupelo Island prison facility—was somebody napping on the job? And if so, who?

And then the voices rose in a clamor: How did he feel about working with the local authorities? What was the suspect eating out there? Did they expect to catch him soon? Was he dangerous? What about quicksand? Snakes? Alligators? What about Ruth Dershowitz?

Abercorn found himself backed up against the car, feeling two feet taller than he already was, feeling naked and conspicuous, his face reddening like bratwurst on a rotisserie. There were too many of them and they were all jabbing at him at once. He’d never had to deal with the public before, never been asked a single question about a case, not even by telephone, not even the time the Hmong microwaved the chihuahua and the AKC compared them to Nazis at Auschwitz. His tongue thickened in his throat. He didn’t know what to say. And he might have stood there eternally, looking stupid in living color for N. Carteret Bluestone and half the rest of the world, if it hadn’t been for Turco. “No comment,” Turco snarled, slashing through the thicket of microphones with a homicidal leer and jerking him by the arm. And then they were moving, briskly, heading for the cover of the police cordon and the clutch of cleanshaven men in uniform gathered beyond it.

Abercorn recognized the man at the center of the clutch: Sheriff Bull Tibbets of the Ciceroville Police Department. If Theron Peagler had been something of a surprise—college-educated, soft-spoken, intelligible—Sheriff Tibbets was just what he’d expected. He was a grim-looking fat man with a wad of tobacco bloating his cheek, a big-brimmed trooper’s hat shoved back on his head and a pair of mirror sunglasses masking eyes that were too small and dull to be fully human. He’d given Abercorn a look of undisguised contempt at the Ciceroville station the preceding night, and now he didn’t so much as turn his head as he and Turco joined the group. There seemed to be a debate going on, but Abercorn couldn’t catch much of what they were saying—the accent was pure hell down here, sounded like they were chewing on sweatsocks or something.

“Gawl rawl, rabid rib,” the sheriff said.

The man beside him—he was like a toy compared to the sheriff and as slippery, low-browed and loose-jointed as a Snopes—pressed the point. When he spoke, he sounded as if he were in great pain.

There was a moment’s silence, and then the sheriff rolled his massive head back on his neck, exposing a spatter of angry red pustules just beneath his chin and flashing the heavens with the light reflecting off his sunglasses. “Gawl rawl,” he repeated himself, “rabid rib.”

Turco folded his arms. He looked bored, looked impatient. In the distance, yet another bird, all legs and wings, swooped across the cremated sky. “What’s the deal?” Abercorn asked.

Turco lowered his voice. “The squirrely guy wants to bring the dogs in, sheriff says no.” He gazed out over the landing, the weeds and muck and the mad growth of trees, narrowing his eyes as if he expected to spot the suspect sculling across the horizon. “Dogs are prohibited here,” he added by way of clarification. “Park regulations. Alligators go crazy for them, overturn canoes, jump right up out of the water to snatch them off the dock. It’s like catnip to a cat.”

Abercorn was dumbfounded. Alligators! Jesus. The more he learned about this place, the more he longed for Hollywood Boulevard.