text: Old Chi Wepps crushed a cigarette out on the bow of his john boat with a worn, wet boot. The darkness of the swamp was made sexy by a full moon bouncing its ass all over the blackwater, and in the distance the old man heard an outboard motor start up. A couple gators lay slopped and twisted behind him done bleeding now through holes in their heads. He had harpooned them both and then popped them with bang sticks after he pulled them to the side of the boat thrashing and chomping. He fingered his .38 Smith and Wesson holstered to his side to make himself feel a little better, and lit another cigarette. He took a long drag and puffed smoke in front of him toward the direction the buzzing, far-off motor. It was coming toward him, and the motor sounded clean to his ear. He reckoned it was a newer motor, and it was more than likely the law. Ain’t nobody out this late but him, and whores, and the law. He’d be damned if he ever got caught poaching, and he wasn’t about to get caught this time. Chi pull-started his small motor, and it revved and sputtered its blue smoke as he puffed his cig glaring down as if daring his motor to quit. He knew the approaching boat was too loud for its occupants to hear his small two-stroke, so he took the tiller handle and revved off to his starboard scattering duckweed and rippling moonlight on the water in his wake. Tilling the boat with his left hand he scratched the thick gray scruff of his beard with his right hand burning some of his loose, long hair with his cigarette. He smoked it down until he tasted filter and flicked it. Chi did not give one muskrat fuck. If any law man caught him he’d shoot him in the face without a second thought; he’d stomp their skulls until he had to scrape brains off his boots. He knew every inch of this swamp and had lived out in it since he was a little boy, and he thought of the swamp as his special lady and was headed straight for her sweetest spot. Even if he didn’t get to his camp tonight there was always a spot he could crawl into. He chuffed to himself a little his hard eyes never changing. Chi thought to himself how in his older age the swamps’s sweetness meant more to him than the women he had known as a pup, and that called for toast. He rummaged into his jacket pocket and took a scarred, wide flask out. He gave a hard pull on it not taking his eyes off the water. The motor behind him was gaining. He reveled in the burn the whisky left in his throat. *Fug them,* he thought. *Dey caint catcha me.* To his surprise he heard another outboard with the one behind him setting a new, high vibration, and Chi felt pure heat pour from his face and neck. He quickly put his flask away, curled his hand around the cold pistol at his side, and scowled. “I drive dis boat straight to da momma’s pussy see how dey like it.” Seeing a tributary bushy and hidden he pushed his tiller hard right and swooped his boat port into the overhanging vines and a trickle of black water. Sixty seconds in he cut his motor and took off a long wooden pole that was lashed to the side of the beaten boat and began to pole silently along as if he were a gondolier in Venice, and the two gators behind him were lovers whose new lust had shot each other’s brains out. Chi chuckled as he heard the boats pass him by full bore, and had a surge of excitement when he heard the unmistakeable thunk of one of the boat’s lower units smashing into the submerged cypress stumps and the dismayed cries of its occupants. The other boat motor cycled down quickly to idle, and Chi knew they’d be helping the injured in the other boat, and not following a little ole alligator poacher like him. He poled on for another mile or more using his push-pole to swipe down spider webs from the low hanging brush. He covered the gators with tarp, and started to prepare his camp right in the boat. Grasping an aluminum pole from the bottom of the boat he seated it into a bracket in the middle and strung a vinyl tarp that was bordered with mosquito netting up over it and snapped it in place all around the boat. Affixed to the top end of the pole was another bracket with holes drilled into it to which Chi pushed tent-poles into and then pushed the far ends of those into small brackets into strategic areas along the rim of the boat which lifted his tent all around him. Done with this he laid down on top of the wet tarp face-first on the gators. He kissed one of their heads smooching and smelling the fishy smell and humping them a little as he listened to the faint sounds of dismay coming from the injured lawmen not just a mile or so away. He sat up and let the sounds of the swamp drown away his focus on duties, and so the buzzes and chirps increased their value and loud dankness took him in. He sat back right on them gators and laughed. He pulled out his flask and laid some jerky on his chest took a pull of whisky and lit a smoke. He chewed on some jerky savoring the seasoning and chuckled when he heard a scream. Chi thought he heard a burly voice yell, “Fuck you!” into the night. Maybe one of the lawmen was dead. He patted the back of one of the gators he sat on and said, “Oh, I love you babies!” Those alligators he hunted and took gave him his Marlboro and biscuit money he liked to call it, and he never hurt nobody who ain’t tried to hurt him. And he ain’t never hurt none of the ladies who came out to the swamp to give him their bodies and their cheer by his firelight, except that fair one that stole from him. The one that took his heart away from the swamp and kept it wrapped in that black mold town like dirty panties in her pocket, and she wouldn’t let him leave and come back to his shacks in his wet, green world. But his swamp was a jealous, mean bitch, and she meant to have him back. And her pull was slick and humid, and she was so sticky he could not pull himself off of her. So he took that thievin girl like he takes them gators, and he took her back to the rolling greens and blacks, them snapping teeth and fangs, that swirling algae and moist, earthy decay that was her soft breast where he laid his head, and he gave both their beating hearts on back to her for good.