Randy White - Night Vision

But then he told her, “Never mind,” as a man approached, billfolds in hand.

Tomlinson thanked the man, saying, “Muchas gracias, compadre,” but I could tell that something was wrong as he opened his billfold, then mine.

Tula stared at him for a moment before saying, “Your money is gone. I can see it in your face.”

The girl turned toward the water, where Squires was struggling to reach a rope some men were trying to throw him. “He has your money. The propietario. No one but him would have robbed you.”

In the peripheral glow of the Golight, I looked at the girl closely for the first time. She had a cereal-bowl haircut, and a lean angularity that didn’t mesh with the compact body type I associate with Mayan women. Yet there was nothing masculine about her. She was boyish enough to pass for a boy, but her demeanor, while commanding, was asexual. In the truck, Tomlinson had said something that sounded strange at the time but now made sense. He had said, “She’s an adolescent girl, not a female,” which described her perfectly.

Thirteen-year-old Tula Choimha, I decided, was a child who handled herself like an adult. It was unusual, but probably less uncommon in girls than boys. Besides, the girl had spent the last few years living on her own, without family, which had no doubt contributed to her maturity.

“They’re coming to help you,” Tula whispered into Carlson’s ear as she gauged the direction of distant sirens. She took the bottle of tequila from Tomlinson, soaked the towel with liquor, then dropped to her knees and began to wash the puncture wounds on Carlson’s arm and then his buttocks, unconcerned that I had pulled the man’s pants down to access his injuries.

“I can’t feel my legs,” the man told her again. He had said it several times in the last minutes, his reaction ping-ponging between horror and shock.

“Your legs are healing,” I heard the girl tell him, her right hand gripping a necklace she wore. “Your wounds are healing now. You must have faith.”

I watched her pause, head tilted, and the rhythm of her voice changed. She told him, “Our strength comes from faith. But our faith is sometimes eaten away by little things that God hates. If we lack faith, though there be a million of us, we will be beaten back and die.”

I exchanged looks with Tomlinson, wondering if he, too, suspected her singsong syntax suggested that the girl was reciting something she had memorized.

My friend was nodding his approval. Personally, I felt a chill. To me, the robotic passion of the devoutly religious is disturbing. Too often it is a flag of surrender to fear and the exigencies of life. Maybe my assessment is unfair, but I associate religious fervor with pathology. Tomlinson, of course, does not.

“Squeeze my hand and put your faith in God,” Tula whispered to the man, as she scrubbed at the puncture wounds on his buttocks. “Remember the godliness that you possessed as a child? It will return to you. God will make your body whole again.”

Someone had brought a Coleman lantern, so I switched off the Golight and placed it on the ground. I was looking through my billfold, seeing that someone had rearranged my IDs and credit cards, seeing that all my cash had been taken, as I also watched the girl pour more tequila on Carlson’s wounds, then scrub harder with the bloody towel.

“Do you feel this, patron?” she asked him. “Can your legs feel the heat of God, trying to enter?”

Once again, Tomlinson and I exchanged looks, as Carlson’s eyes widened, and he said, “Maybe… maybe I can… I’m not sure.. . but something’s happening. Wait… yes! I do feel it. Yes, my skin is burning! I can feel your hands, Tula!”

“They are not my hands, patron,” Tula told him, not surprised. “It’s the warmth of God’s love you feel. He is in your body now. He has traveled from my body into your legs.”

The man’s face contorted into tears, and I watched him move one pale foot, then the other.

Carlson was crying, “Tula, you’re right! I can feel my legs!”

I was pleased to know that I had been wrong about the man’s broken spine. Shock, or a damaged nerve, might explain the temporary loss of feeling in Carlson’s legs. But my interest in an explanation was short-lived because nearby I heard a man yell in Spanish, “It is back. The alligator is back. Someone shine the light!”

I swung the Golight toward the lake, where I saw a reptilian wake, and two bright red eyes riding low in the water.

The huge gator, still alive, still determined to feed, was gliding toward the bodybuilder, who was already screaming for help.

Sirens descending on Red Citrus RV Park was bad enough, but when Harris Squires saw red eyes breach the water’s surface, glowing twenty yards behind him, he felt a charge of panic beyond anything he had ever experienced, aware that he was about to lose one of his legs, maybe worse.

Squires understood what those eyes meant because of all the nights he’d spent hunting in the Everglades or getting stoned and plinking away at gators in ponds that dotted his four hundred acres.

Fifi was back. The biggest damn gator Squires had ever seen in his life was still alive, watching him, her eyes glowing in the light of a lantern that someone had brought so the two white guys could give first aid to that nosy old drunk, Carlson.

Squires tried to scream, but his voice managed only a high-pitched yelp, as his legs and arms went into hyperflight, trying to free himself from the muck. It was like one of those sweaty damn nightmares he sometimes had when he stacked testosterone and Tren. Nightmares in which he’d try to run, or call for help, but his body was dead, unable to respond.

Mired up to his thighs in mud produced the same sickening terror. He was desperate to run and he was trying… he even managed to get his right leg free. But then Squires felt a tearing pain in the back of his leg and realized he’d pulled a hamstring muscle.

The pain brought his voice back, and he yelled to the cluster of men, only a few yards away on the bank, “The gator! The gator’s after me! Throw me that goddamn rope again!”

Suddenly, someone on shore turned on the Golight. The dazzling beam confirmed that the gator was swimming toward him, and Squires felt like vomiting, he was so scared.

Four times, the Mexicans had lobbed coils of clothesline to him. But each time the rope wasn’t strong enough, or the men weren’t strong enough, and the rope had broken or pulled free.

This time, though, a Mexican with some brains had produced commercial-grade nylon with a weight taped to the end. When he lobbed it, the coil went sailing over Squires’s head but landed close enough for him to grab the rope before it sank.

As Squires looped the rope around his chest, he risked another glance over his shoulder, and there was Fifi, gliding closer. Her eyes were a ruby pendulum, swinging with every stroke of her tail.

Squires whirled toward the bank and hollered, “Pull, you dumbasses! Don’t you see that goddamn gator? For God’s sake, pull!” He began to thrash with his arms, trying to help the men tractor him the few yards to safety.

At first, there must have been a dozen Mexicans on the bank willing to help him after the Bible-freak girl had ordered them to do it. When the sirens became audible, however, half of the little cowards had gone scrambling. Now there were only four little men onshore, in jeans and ball caps, all hitched to the rope, and they leaned against Squires’s weight.

“Pull! Get your asses moving!” Squires screamed. “Jesus Christ, she’s coming faster!”

The first heave of the rope yanked Squires forward. Another heave flipped him onto his back so that his eyes were fixated on the alligator when his left shoe finally popped free of the mud and he began to float toward the bank.