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The Old Man And The Alligator Boy 8.3.97
The killing slowed down quite a bit this week. Some corrections: last week I said three children had been wounded in the crossfire in the past month. That wasn't true last week (only two had been shot), but is true now. Also I said most of the killing was happening in the projects and in Eastern New Orleans but ten of the sixteen recent murders were in the Seventh Ward, a neighborhood of homes which begins about six blocks from here.
Shoot out of the week award goes to the four young men hiding behind a wall in the Seventh Ward who sprayed a passing car (and were sprayed upon) with automatic weapons. One dead, one wounded, one AK-47 left behind. Several homes were pierced. Police recovered fifty shell casings.
Monk buried his wife Friday and seems to be on the upswing.
Sunday: today I took four boys to Fontainbleau State Park on the North Shore near Mandeville. There is a swimming pool and the lakefront for swimming. The boys run for the pool with diving board and I walk to the lake. No one in sight, how nice. The water is calm, with barely a ripple to disturb it reflective quality. Puffy whites up above and a small cypress tree out in the lake to my left with wrist thin root tendrils running above and parallel to the surface before dipping back into the water closer to shore. Old support pilings spaced haphazardly rise a few feet above the water in more or less a straight line and then break into complete random order farther out. I walk into the shallow lake and aim myself for a log floating a hundred yards out. I look to the clouds and see no horses, crabs, or satanic symbols. I look back to the log and see alligator. Floating logs always look like alligators to me, especially since my East Texas oil exploration days where one day I shared a small pond with what I thought was two but turned out to be five or six young alligators. I stop walking and look harder at the log. Really amazing how the various forces of nature have conspired to carve this one living tree into the semblance of a living reptile. The way the back end looks like any old log but the front has that little raised ridge for the "eyebrows" followed by 12-14 inches of nothing then the upturned snout. I dip myself and float on my back for a minute before walking back to the shore. I sit and stare at the log for awhile trying to convince myself there might be a valid reason for a log to move across the current instead of with it. I've almost convinced myself when the log changes directions 180 degrees. And then the boys run up and want me to join them in a rollicking good time of water madness. Sure, but before we go in, see the alligator, and know where it is at all times, and don't go out as far as we did last week. The alligator snaps at a fish and Glynn says, no thank you, goodbye, and returns to the swimming pool. Fermin gets wet but comes out in a few minutes and goes back to the pool. Shelton is still at the pool. More people have arrived and are getting in the lake, we give them fair warning, the alligator has disappeared, the people think we're nuts, I float in, and Jacque thrashes, the water.
"You going back to the pool, Jacque."
"No, Mr. Jim."
"Why not?"
"Because…I am Alligator Boy."
"He was a fine young lad from New Orleans who went missing on the North Shore. Presumed dead by all who loved him. But little did they know he had chosen a new life, wandering the stagnated, mosquito infested waters thought to be his burial ground. He was Alligator Boy."
"Yesss…I am Alligator Boy…and you are…The Old Man."
(Ah kids, you really don't have to love them). "Yes, the old man he found living on the edge of the swamp in a shack made of alligator bones tied together with rat tails. The old man who fed him and soon demanded to be fed himself." I look over at a group of children playing off to our left. "Alligator Boy, I need food, bring me a white child."
"Say no more Old Man," and Jacque thrashes through the waist high water to confront the first white child he sees. "Give me your hat."
"What?" the boy says.
"I want your hat," Jacque says in a high pitched raspy voice.
The boy begins moving faster towards the shore while explaining that it is not really a hat he is carrying and also it does not belong to him…but Jacque quickly bores of this banter and moves off to confront the group of children I had originally been looking at. One from this group had earlier thrown a clam at me. Pay back time.
"I am Alligator Boy," Jacque roars.
No one from this group seems too disturbed by this admission except the teenage girl who jumps and says, "oh!"
"Did I scare you?" Jacque says.
"No, I just didn't know you were there," the girl replies. "Did you really see an alligator? How big was it? What did you do when you saw it? Did you run back to shore?"
"It was big," Jacque says. "And I won't lie to you, I ran from it."
"What did he do?" the girl says, pointing over at me.
OK Jacque, this is a test question. This is just a little girl and I have no need to impress her, but someday a similar scenario may be replayed before a more suitable damsel. Make me look good Jacque, make me look…heroic.
"Well…," Jacque begins real slow, and then he starts twirling his index finger and pointing to the side of his head. "He's a little…you know…in the head, and he has spent much of his time living in the water with alligators…"
So Jacque fails the test but makes me laugh, and goes to the head of the class.