Under the New Moon- Chapter 3

          Cynthia had said she’d drive, since she knew her way around better than me. At the appointed time, I slung my purse over my shoulder and walked over to her house. Richard let me in.

          “She’s looking for her keys again,” he rolled his eyes upward.

          “I found them, I found them,” Cynthia chimed in from the other room. “Hi Lynn,” she walked in, wearing a grey pants suit, “How are you today?”


          The phone rang, just when I was following Cynthia to the garage.

          “Richard, answer it, will you? If for me, I’m not home.” It was more of a command than a request.

          “It’s Sylvia,” Richard called from inside. “She’s upset or something.” He rushed to us holding a cordless phone. “I can’t make out what she’s saying; she’s garbling it up. I don’t hear well as it is.”

          “Okay, give me it,” Cynthia yanked the phone from Richard. “What? What? Did you call anybody? I’ll be right there. Stay inside and close the door to the porch. And Sylvia, CALM down.”

          She handed the phone to Richard. “Richard, call the animal control to Sylvia’s. She’s hysterical. She says she has an alligator in her pool. Lynn, come with me to Sylvia’s. She’s only two houses down.”

          We raced on foot cutting through the backyards. Cynthia was out of breath. We came to an abrupt stop in front of what she signaled to me as Sylvia’s house.
“Oh, to be young like you...” she panted.

          Sylvia, an elderly lady with her small figure lost inside a wide summer duster, was standing at the door. “So glad you’re here. I’m all shook up,” she whimpered pressing her Bible to her chest.

          “You, Poor Dear,” Cynthia embraced her. “You must be so upset. They’ll be here soon. Richard’s calling them.” Then she let her go and pointed to me. “Meet Lynn here. She moved next door to me into Quinn’s place.”

          “Hi,” I said, “Nice to meet you.”

          “Dear me, such a young thing!” Sylvia reached up to hug me.

          Again! Me, young? I must have looked like a spring chicken to most, judging from the ages of the customers that shopped at Publix and Albertson’s. 'Not bad at all,' I thought. 'Here in this town, maybe I’ll never age.'

          “The pool-man left the door to the pump open yesterday, but I saw it in the morning.” Sylvia shook her head from side to side, dangling her white cotton-ball hair over her shoulders. “When I stepped out to close it, I saw it inside the pool. Can you imagine such a thing happening? I’ve lived here for seven years now and heard nothing like it. Can you imagine? Right inside my pool... My Goodness...”

          We approached the glass sliding door in the living room to take a look at the pool. Something definitely was in there; I could tell from the splashing. Sylvia and Cynthia shrieked in unison when the animal tried to slither out to the side but skidding, it fell back into the pool. It wasn’t too big, just long like three or four cats threaded on a string. It looked pale and greenish.

          “I thought they were much darker,” I said. “This one’s pale. It must be a baby.”

          “The men are here,” Cynthia said noticing two policemen outside the porch door. Sylvia crossed the living room to open the front door. There was a police car outside with two policemen. One of the men came up.

          “Is your porch door open?”

          “It is,” Sylvia said, “I never lock the side one on account of the pool-man coming and going.”

          “You stay inside, Ma’m. Our trapper will be here shortly.”

          “Do I have to empty the pool water?”

          “I don’t think so. Let’s see what happens.”

          Twenty minutes and several wild animal stories later, a small white truck pulled up into the driveway. We watched at the door as both policemen rushed to help with the gear. I saw the rifle first since the trapper’s back was turned to us when he got out of the truck. The policemen told him something; the trapper put the rifle on the front seat. Then he turned around to walk to the back of the truck. I tried to resist the urge to lean on the side jamb for balance when I saw his face fully. That glowing blond hair and that sturdy physique... I recognized him right away as the guy I had met during my morning jog. He was now wearing denim overalls with large pockets.

          “I’m glad he looks so strong,” Cynthia said. “The man who came to the pond at the sixth hole was puny and we were afraid for him. Still he got the animal.”

          “They must know what they are doing,” I commented.

          “They’d better. It’d be terrible otherwise,” Sylvia said.

          The trapper handed some coiled rope, a grocery bag, and other gear to one of the policeman. Then he walked toward us.

          “May I go through from the inside? I want to approach it slowly.” There was something powerful and unnerving in his voice which made me slide against the wall. He gazed at me then.

          “Hi, there. You live here?” He tapped his hand to his temple as a sign of greeting.

          “Hi,” I said, afraid of the jolt in my voice. “I live two houses to the right.”

          “She just moved into that Quinn’s house,” Cynthia volunteered.

          The trapper’s features tightened unexpectedly. He scanned my face.

          “Oh, I didn’t know,” he said walking in, through the hallway, then toward the back. The policemen followed him.

          “Have you two met before?” Cynthia asked.

          He answered immediately instead of me, “My dog got in her way in the morning. Does that to everyone. He's not a puppy anymore but he ain't on to it yet. He gets frisky outside.”

          He slid the porch door open and stepped out, taking some white cylindrical things out of his pocket. He threw them in to the pool one by one.

          “Marshmallows,” Cynthia said, “I’ve seen this before.”

          Having gained some confidence, we now stood at the open door.

          “He’s a young’un,” the trapper said. “We’ll have to transport him.”

          The animal bobbed its head on the water and swam to get the marshmallows. At first the trapper stood there letting the animal see him in full view; then he knelt down to hook some foul smelling bait to the end of the rope.

          “Pigs lungs,” he grinned. “I bet you ladies love this scent. Chicken is better bait though. ”

          He tossed the rope into the water but held on to its other end. Soon the hook was inside the animal’s mouth. It squirmed and wriggled, but the more it twisted its body the more the rope coiled around him. After a few minutes he didn’t move as much.

          “He’s all tired out now,” the trapper slipped out of his overalls stripping to his swim trunks. Next second he was in the water with the animal. He grabbed it from the back, clamping the mouth shut with his bare hands and lugged it out of the pool. He taped the animal’s mouth with duct tape, secured the rope around its body, and slung him over his shoulder to take him to his truck. We followed to watch him pull the shade over the truck.

          “I have to take it down all the way out to the lake now,” he said. “It measures just three and a half feet. Had it been bigger, I’d have a hide to sell.”

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          “Let’s leave shopping for tomorrow,” Cynthia said on our way back. “I’m worn out. What a day!”

          “Poor animal, he was harmless,” I said, recalling the writhing lizard with a snag hook in his mouth.

          “That trapper, what a young man! He’s good at it too. I thought maybe he was showing off a bit for you, Lynn. Wouldn’t you say?” Cynthia grinned mischievously.

          “No,” I laughed it off. “He’s at least ten years younger than I am. He was just being himself.”

          Yet, the vision of the trapper’s tanned skin, his muscles flexing into silky bulges as he grasped the animal, and his hair shimmering with each touch of the wind electrified me all through the evening. I had never been haunted this way by anyone before. A pre-menopausal attack maybe. My hormones had to be going wild.

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          Morning jogs cleared my mind. Along my route as the queen palms evaporated into the sky, the river sang to the thickets and cool drops of sweat formed on my forehead, I wanted to move faster and faster, not to run away from my thoughts and feelings but to just stay with them to evaluate them. Self-observation had to be the first step in finding whatever it was I had lost. To begin with, I yearned to have my daughter with me; yet, at the same time, I understood her. I yearned for what I could have been and regretted having woven a fancy floor mat out of my being for everyone to tread upon. I yearned to be savvy enough and not be weak-willed anymore; all my life I had given in, looked the other way, and accepted things, lacking to have the courage to change them.

          I thought of such things not only during the mornings but throughout the day, at home, or in the library while I checked out books, collected fines, labeled, tagged, filed, or sorted. If I could only sort my life as easily...

          That morning I started out earlier and jogged farther thinking about the past.

          Darren and I had met when Darren, a computer engineer, came to work in my father’s company. Dad had felt that Darren had much to offer to the company in security matters with his electronics know-how. But Darren had something else in mind. He needed a rich father in-law to finance his inventions. Although Justine never mentioned this, I believe he tried Justine first. But Justine was seeing Frank then. So Darren turned to me.

          I had been such an idiot. I wasn’t even in love with Darren; yet, his attentive manner led me to believe he would be the best candidate to make me get over Jimmy.

         Jimmy and I had been together since grade school, friends at first, lovers later. I had all my first experiences with Jimmy. After he got sick we got even closer. So much so that, his parents, after Jimmy passed on from leukemia at seventeen, came to thank my parents for letting us spend his last days together. After Jimmy died, I gave my total attention to school work. That’s how I survived for several years. Jimmy’s parents, who had remained my friends, agreed with Justine about Darren. Justine had seen through Darren right away. “He’s after something and that something is not you,” she warned me. But Mom and Dad adored Darren and I went with the flow.

          Two years after our marriage, Nora was born and Darren had invented a revolutionary computer chip. Dad financed Darren’s invention once more. Then seeing its success, he set Darren up with his own company. I have to give Darren credit here, because he worked very hard and became filthy rich in a very short time. Soon, Port Jefferson wasn’t good enough for him. He bought a place in Westchester and moved Nora and me away from family and friends.

          Suddenly I realized that I wasn’t jogging but running. The brush around the river had cleared and the pointed roofs of a water-front condo complex were in full view.

          “You’re wearing out the asphalt, Lynn.”

          I turned my head toward the voice to see a wry smile turn into a grin on the trapper’s face. My throat felt tight but I forced myself to talk.

          “Hi, there. How do you know my name?”

          “I heard the other ladies call you that the other day.”

          “And I thought you only jostled with that alligator.”

          “I jostle with many things, not just them critters. That fellow, if you’re curious, is having a grand time in Lake Okeechobee now.” He started jogging along with me. “My name’s Gerald.”

          “Hi Gerald, then.” I looked at him, then turned my head to the other side, and closed my eyes. Boy, he was handsome!

          Next, I pointed to the condos just to steer my mind away from his looks. “Do you live here?”

          “Nope, I couldn’t afford those. My pad is in town. Say, have you seen anything funny around your place, something big like a gator or a coon?”

          “No,” I lied, “I see only birds and frogs. Sometimes a little rabbit and a puny squirrel hop through. That’s about it.”

          "I know there’s a biggie around. I can sense it. And it’s the one that got that kid.”

          “You were here then?”

          “I've been here quite a while. I knew that Quinn kid. He was big and strong; he’d have fought it well. The seven-footer we got couldn’t be the one, but there was another trapper with me that day who insisted that we got the gator that killed the boy; I know that seven-footer wasn’t the one. But I’ll get him. The real killer’s out there somewhere and I’ll get him.”

          There was a tone so savage and fiery in his tone that I quivered inside. The large form with his musical bellow in my backyard paraded through my thoughts. “Why, it is only an animal,” I said.

          “This one’s different. He senses things. He’s tricky. He conceals himself like no other. Yet, I don’t know how...” he stopped broodingly for a few seconds, then he continued. “See, if a gator gets a person, that’s a death sentence for him. He's the murderer. I’m sure he comes back to the crime scene like any other murderer."

         He was silent for a while.

         "Do you mind if I came around and looked for signs of him in your backyard?”

          “Suit yourself,” I waved off as if I didn’t care. “I have to rush back now or I’ll be late for work.”

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          That evening Cynthia and I went shopping.

          “You know what, Lynn,” Cynthia said, while we were trying to decide between two living room sets, “That trapper went back to Sylvia’s, telling her he left behind some equipment.”

          “Didn’t the policemen cart away all his stuff?”

          “Well, Sylvia says he asked all kinds of questions about you. Maybe it wasn’t his gear he was after.”



Next: "Under the New Moon - Chapter 4"