Freezer Burn Read Free Page B

of trees.
    The deputy had reloaded and was firing again. Lead danced across the water, but after a moment, Bill and Fat Boy realized the lead was only dancing so far.
    “We’re out of range,” Fat Boy said.
    At that moment, the deputy waded into the water and started calling them “cocksuckers.” They could hear his voice loud and clear across the water. He was wading and holding the hand with the pistol up out of the water and firing toward them. “Cocksuckers!” he kept saying over and over.
    Before the deputy could bring them into range, they turned and went through the trees, back into waist-high water, and started wading toward an isle where great roots stuck out from the shore and plunged into the water like anacondas frozen on film. On the island itself, gnarly willows twisted amongst cypress stumps. There werehigh weeds beyond that and more cattails and thick brush and plenty of darkness.
    The swamp smelled like an outhouse, and the moonlight on the water made it silver. In spots near the shore the water boiled, and pretty soon they were close to the boiling, and Bill could see there were little heads sticking out of the water, and the moonlight caught the dead eyes planted on the little heads and made them no brighter, but showed them for what they were. The flat black eyes of the devil, multiplied and trapped in the triangular-shaped faces of about twenty-five cotton-mouth water moccasins.
    “By Jesus’s blue-veined dick!” Fat Boy yelled.
    Bill backpedaled, trying to return to the bank behind him. Then he heard, “Cocksuckers . . . Cocksuckers,” and the water grew hot with pistol shot. Bill floundered back toward the snakes and to the right, and Fat Boy panicked, screamed, began to slap at the water to scare the snakes. But the snakes didn’t scare. The slapping excited them. They swam toward Fat Boy, their heads standing out of the swamp like malignant periscopes.
    Fat Boy ducked under the water, possibly trying to swim under the snakes, or hoping the old story about how snakes couldn’t bite underwater was true, but the snakes dove down after him, and in the next moment he rose up wearing several of them, dispelling the myth. He screamed and screamed and the snakes struck up and out of the water and buried their fangs in him.
    Fat Boy quit fighting them. He swam toward shore with the snakes dangling from his body. He made the bank by taking hold of a root and pulling himself up. Just before he was completely on shore, the deputy yelled“Cocksucker” again, and fired, and perhaps by accident, put a load in Fat Boy’s back.
    Bill, who had made shore, was watching Fat Boy from behind the cypress stump. Fat Boy crawled onto shore and the snakes let go and bit him again and slithered away into the water. Fat Boy rolled onto his back and lay beneath willow shadows and a rich slice of lime-colored moonlight on his face.
    The deputy, who was halfway across, partly wading, partly swimming, saw the little heads coming his way, gave out with a couple more “cocksuckers” and retreated. He made the shore ahead of the snakes and snapped a half dozen bullets across the water into the woods where Fat Boy lay and Bill cowered. He just kept firing and reloading, and Bill realized the deputy actually had two pistols. However, his marksmanship proved no better than his language, and Bill was certain the shot that had caught Fat Boy was an accident.
    The deputy began to snap an empty revolver at them. He yelled. “Cocksuckers. I’m gonna get the shotgun. Hear me cocksuckers!” Then the deputy moved out of their sight, and Bill could hear him across the way, cussing and thrashing through the water back to his car.
    Bill came out from behind the stump and looked at Fat Boy. Fat Boy had a head like a watermelon now. He looked much fatter all over and the steering wheel indentation and the knot made him look like some kind of space monster.
    Fat Boy turned his head toward Bill. Fat Boy’s eyes were barely visible.