The place was surprisingly close to Savannah to be considered the boonies, but it was on a strip of road that ran farther than the pavement. There were a string of houses that reminded me of Howard Fenster’s place, then for a stretch the road was swallowed up by the surrounding flora of the swamp.
It was still daylight, so the passage through this tunnel of moss and ivy was more beautiful than ominous.
“I love driving through this tunnel at night,” one of them declared. “It’s like something out of a horror movie.”
Bear in mind any hyperbole I offer to suggest an element of danger in this expedition is done so in the spirit of fun. Despite the singular trappings of the place, we were just going to a barbeque.
We unloaded a casket-sized cooler of Busch from the back of my friend’s truck and bore it toward the house. There were gun shots coming from somewhere in the woods.
“Oh yeah,” he told me, probably meaning to put my mind at ease, “there’s a gun range near here too.”
“I should have brought my gun,” I joked, then wondered: Should I have brought my gun?
The house itself was actually a hunting lodge. The interior of it sort of looked like the grampa’s house from Lost Boys and a little like the Warriors’ hangout too. A wooden table ran the length of the room like in a Norseman’s dining hall (and regarded in this fashion by its patrons, I think). There was a pool table on the other side of the room with couches and chairs filling the space between. It was also filled with people and that comforting air of camaraderie you come to expect from gatherings of this kind.
The walls were adorned with trophies from various kills, mostly deer heads and skulls or just sets of antlers that looked like they’d make a handy weapon in a pinch (not that I contemplated arming myself; the mood was very friendly and relaxed). One of the wooden support posts sported an alligator head with the skinned pelt of it hanging beneath, still intact. This was a portent of things to come.
In the fashion of Norsemen and Vikings, the table had been laid out with a feast of barbequed ribs, corn still wrapped in the husk and an assortment of equally appetizing selections. We served ourselves and ate meat with our hands, which I think honored the general motif.
When we finished eating, there was a sudden stir outside the lodge, slowly working its way in. The only piece of it left when it reached us was the single word “alligators”. Being in the swamp it was not unlikely to me that there had been a sighting in the water. Alligators are pretty common in that area. But the skin on the wall reminded me of a story my friends had told about a previous barbeque in this lodge. On that occasion the alligator hunters had returned with a fresh catch. Upon securing its mouth shut with duct tape (if you don’t know, you can hold an alligator’s mouth shut with one hand - all the power of their jaws is in closing them, not opening them), they proceeded to release it into the lodge for the remainder of the party. This is the kind of party I usually get invited to, because this is just the type of thing that catches my interest. And the promise of this particular barbeque would not fail to deliver.
Someone had brought a baby to the party and she was sleeping in her car seat on the floor. One of my friends sighed casually, looking down at the baby.
“We should probably get the baby off the floor if there’s going to be an alligator in here,” she decided casually. I will always respect her pragmatism in these matters.
As we walked out of the lodge to the workshop garage the hunters used to clean their kills (does this have a specific name, like meat shack or slaughterhouse or something?), we could see there was a crowd gathered around its entrance.
Just so you understand, I am not a hunter and have never really been around hunters, so if my conveyance of this story bears a sanguine or horrific pretension, I’ll ask that you forgive that. I’m Southern enough for most things and certainly not soft (in my own estimation), but the only place I’ve ever seen stuff like this was in horror movies, so it puts a spin on my perception of it.
There was a stench in the air as pungent as a landfill. The soaked in discarded detritus of past kills had remineralized into the soil, where it was then dredged up by several days of rain, and the smell was as overpowering as it was off-putting. I tied my shoelaces tighter to make sure they couldn’t touch the ground; I didn’t want to drag any of it home with me.
When we squeezed past the crowd close enough to see what was happening, we could see that they had two six foot gators duct-tape-muzzled and hog-tied on the concrete floor. Everyone was snapping pictures. If you’ve never seen a hog-tied alligator, it’s quite a thing to see.
It’s also a bit sad. There’s something sacred about great reptiles like alligators and crocodiles because they have survived the test of evolution. They bear the same characteristics of their prehistoric prototypes for one very important reason: perfection of design. The world adapted to the alligator, not the other way around. So seeing them hog-tied and helpless for the sake of our amusement felt undignified.
But the indignity would not last long. Finally one of the hunters brought out a pistol - small caliber, maybe a .22 or .25 - and presented it to the crowd.
“Who wants the honor?”
“Holy shit,” I whispered. Those of us who were not amused simply watched in awe.
TO BE CONTINUED!
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