Elmore Leonard - Maximum Bob

One time Leanne happened to mention that psychic power was at its highest level between the hours of two and four a.m., and thought she would never hear the end of it.

Big jumped on that, asking why she didn’t go outside to meditate then . Was she afraid of the dark? She told him, “No, I’m not afraid of the dark. I don’t get up in the middle of the night ‘cause I don’t have to. I can raise my cosmic consciousness anytime I want.” She could, too.

He’d act innocent and ask her, oh, then why did she go outside every morning six o’clock on the dot if she could do it anytime? Her answer to that was “Because I love the morning. The world glistens and is clean.”

He’d become crude in his anger saying, bullshit, it was because she was afraid of the dark, not letting go of that idea, until she would turn it around and remind him of what he actually was afraid of.

“You’re scared to death of dying.”

She knew he didn’t like her saying that, but it was true. He could send people to death in the electric chair without giving it a second thought. But mention his own passing, like saying to him, “Big, you’re gonna have a terrible time on the other side if you don’t open your heart before you go.” He’d become furious trying to think of something smart to say, something hurtful. She’d say to him, “Oh, my God,” before he thought of a remark to pass, “you should see your aura,” and that would usually end it.

He hated knowing he had an aura she could see and he couldn’t. Sometimes she’d catch him standing in front of the full-length mirror on the bedroom closet door, looking at himself naked.

This morning he was looking out the kitchen window by the sink.

“Nice day, huh?”

Almost pleasant for a change.

He usually didn’t get up till seven. By eight-fifteen he’d be in his pickup truck with a mug of coffee heading for the courthouse.

“We could use a cleanup, that blow we had. I’ll call the Stockade for a crew. Those monkeys, if I could find one guy knew what he was doing… Get me a Japanese gardener brought up on some charge, killed his wife, I’d have the son of a bitch confined out here. Lock him up in the pump house at night.”

What Leanne could not understand was how a person who loved flowers could be so irritable. What happened to the soft-spoken gentleman who came to Weeki Wachee, bought her Coca-Colas, patted her hand in the hospital… made promises he never kept. That part was okay. She had Wanda Grace, she had Pokey, she had her crystals, she had gifts more valuable than any earthly goods… Which reminded Leanne, as she gathered three white quartz forming a triangle on the kitchen table and dropped them in a leather bag, she had a window crystal buried out in the yard, returned to the earth to get its visionary power turned up. She’d dig it up this morning after meditation and a nice talk with Wanda. Leanne turned from the table.

“Pokey? Where are you? Here, Pokey! Come on, sweetheart.” She stooped down as Pokey came skidding across the vinyl floor to hop up into her arms. “Her wants to play with Wanda’s Pokey, don’t her? Big, she hears that other Pokey bark and just about goes crazy, runs around in circles.”

She heard Big, standing at the sink, mutter, “Jesus Christ.” If she could ever get him to say that with reverence it would change his life. The old poop.

“You want, I’ll fix your breakfast.”

“No, you go on.”

“There’s oat bran, bananas…”

“Fine. Listen, you be careful.”

Walking through the dining area and the living room with Pokey and her bag of crystals, Leanne was thinking, Careful of what? That was a strange thing for Big to say. Was he becoming human after all these years?

She slid open the glass door and stepped out on the porch, a concrete slab painted a pale gray that ran the length of the living room, across the front of the house. About to slide the door closed behind her, Leanne stopped. She saw the huge hole in the screen, the edges of it pushed inward. She heard a strange hissing. She turned her head toward the sound and saw the alligator, a giant alligator up on its legs looking at her, and she screamed and was back inside the house sliding the glass closed, locking it, before she realized she was no longer holding Pokey and her bag of crystals. She screamed again and kept screaming as Big came in a hurry from the kitchen.

He got to the glass door in time to see Pokey, for a moment, in the alligator’s jaws before the alligator raised its head as if to look up at the tile ceiling and Pokey was gone, swallowed whole. In those moments all Bob Gibbs could do was stare, not believing an alligator was on his porch. It wasn’t supposed to be there but it was. The next moment he was running into the bedroom to get his.38 revolver, knowing his shotgun wouldn’t do the job. By the time he got back with the weapon Leanne was wailing and sobbing something awful, becoming hysterical on him and standing in the way. He had to push her aside to slide the glass door open enough to draw a clear bead on the gator, Jesus Christ, a big one he estimated to run ten or twelve feet. There were hollow-points in the revolver, given to him by a fishing buddy of his in the Sheriff’s Office, Bill McKenna, in charge of all their criminal investigations. Bob Gibbs closed one eye, aimed at the alligator’s head, a spot between its beady eyes that showed red when you shined a light on them at night, and fired-Christ, Leanne screaming again, throwing him off-and fired and fired again until the revolver clicked empty. The alligator didn’t even shake its head. It hissed a couple of times, came over and smashed the glass door to pieces with one swipe of its tail.

When the first green-and-white arrived Leanne and Bob Gibbs were out in front by the gravel drive, on the side away from the porch. Both the uniformed deputies came bareheaded with their hands on their holstered revolvers. One of them asked where it was, sounding confident, used to this type of call. Bob Gibbs said, “It’s in the goddamn house. In the living room.”

By the time they had gone around to the yard by the porch and could see the alligator inside, another green-and-white arrived and two more deputies in dark green joined the group. Bob Gibbs told them he had put six hollow-points into the son of a bitch and it was in there eating his sofa. Leanne, still sobbing, told them it had eaten her dog. One of the deputies said, “Well, it’s a fact, gators love dog.” Leanne asked if somebody would get that leather bag, see, lying there on the porch? The deputy who mentioned gators loved dog checked the loads in his revolver and said, “Let’s go do it.”

The four deputies stood in the middle of the porch, about fifteen feet from the alligator in the living room. They fired their magnum revolvers through the shattered door frame with patience and deliberation until the alligator raised up, started to come at them and the deputies got out of there, hurrying out to the yard.

Now the alligator was once again on the porch. Leanne watched it nuzzle her bag of crystals with its snout, saw the jaws open and she began to scream even before the leather bag disappeared inside the alligator’s mouth.

Gary Hammond came in an unmarked Dodge Aries, light gray. He was in the driveway on the other side of the house, out of the car putting on his suit coat when he heard the scream. So Gary arrived on the alligator scene in his dark-navy tropical suit, dressed to go to work.

He had been told what to find here, but was still surprised to see the judge and a woman who must be his wife, in a pink warm-up suit, and four deputies with drawn guns, all looking at a full-grown alligator on the porch, the gator not paying much attention to them. It twisted sideways as if to bite its own tail, jerked itself straight and that tail lashed out to send a metal table and chairs flying. Now it crawled around to see what all the noise was about and rested there with its back to them.