The sun had lost it's heat and shadows were lengthening toward evening. "The river's up," he thought "got weather coming." Taking another pull at the beer, he swallowed slowly; not warm yet, but no longer cold. Slowly, almost lazily, he rolled another piece of bread into a doughball and threaded it on the hook. Watching it dissolve in the water he muttered "Hell with it, got enough for supper". He quickly sliced off the sides and cheeks of the catfish, and as quickly tossed the offal back to the river from whence it came. For a moment he considered waiting for a gator to come to the blood, then shrugged and used the last of the beer to rinse the mess from the sink. Nailed up with a jerry rigged frame, the sink drained into the river. A rusty pail lay on the rickety shelf below. When the sink got so dirty that he couldn't see the paint, he drew water from the river to clean it. The dock shifted as he turned. "Gotta fix that brace" he said aloud to the swamp, "but not tonight. Cold coming." As he turned up his collar, he thought again about the river being high. "Got a nor'easter coming, likely." Stepping onto the barge, he tossed the bread inside the shanty. Aimed in the general direction of the ‘kitchen', the bread landed in the sink. Unlike the one on the dock, this one was clean, the dishes stacked on edge in a home made drainer. Carefully, deliberately he hung the fishing pole under the overhang of the roof. The line was carefully wrapped and the hook stuck in an old piece of cork that might once have been a float. Glancing up, he noticed the water barrels were almost empty. "That's alright" he thought "too cold to stay here tonight anyway." Stepping inside, he retrieved the bread from the sink and put it on a shelf. Slowly he made the rounds inside the shanty, closing the windows. Wrapping his catch in a piece of well used wax paper, he took up the other half of the sixpack and the old military carbine and disappeared into the swamp. Seen from the river, the dock was an anomoly. An old work barge, eight or nine meters long, with a shanty that looked ready to slide into the river in the slightest breeze. A peeling flat bottom work boat, the kicker tipped up and spotless. A cheap tarp rigged into a canopy for the skinning bench. No other sign of civilization, not even a jeep track. With three steps he had disappeared as surely as if he had never been. The sounds of the swamp never lessened; the buzzing, thrumming, screeching, croaking was as loud as ever. He was one of them, belonging to the swamp. And the river slid quietly by. Holding his M-16 at the ready, the sharkskin boots feeling every vine and grain of dirt, he floated through the jungle. When he got transferred out of the Nam to a special assignment, the Yards had taught him to live in the jungle their way. Having grown up in the swamp, he was already half taught when he went there and made an apt student. Coming on a trip wire, he backed out and circled around. After checking the clearing thoroughly, he crossed the sand road and studied for tire tracks or footprints. Only when he was sure there was no sign of Charley did he enter the clearing. Opening the door of the trailer, he stepped in far enough to place the beer and fish on a counter. He cleared the weapon and replaced the chambered shell in the magazine. Taking an oily rag, he lovingly wiped the old carbine clean. His father had brought it home from the Japanese war, and it looked as usable as the day it was issued. Carefully he placed the old rifle and it's magazine near the door and took down a revolver from it's peg. The revolver looked at least as old as the carbine and in as good shape. Checking the shells, he spun the cylinder, then stuck it in his hip pocket and went outside. At one end of the trailer he had thrown up a lean to like arrangement around three trees. The roof was a platform for water barrels. Taking out a can of gasoline, he smelled of it to be sure it was two cycle mix. After he poured a cup or so in the pump and twice that in the generator, he started both engines. The pump kicked off with the first pull, but the generator was beligerant, again. "Have to check that' he thought "Probably the carburator again. Make a good project for tomorrow." Returning to the trailer, he switched on the lights and water heater. From inside, the engines were barely audable. The Rube Goldburg contraption of old pipes on the shed made a surprisingly effective muffler. With the radio playing softly in the late evening, he put the palmetto hearts on to cook. Pouring up the meal for fish batter, and opening the last box of spice, he thought again of the boatyard. "Nah, got enough to last another month. Might take a deer, though. It's cool enough now the meat should be good." The water heater gurgled over the radio. After showering, he shut it off. There would be enough hot water left to do the dishes. While frying the fish, he thought again about the deer. So many outsiders moving in around here, getting too close. Hell, there was a new neighbor right next door, just over a mile up the road. The Game Warden left him alone now. Where he moved through the swamp, no one could follow. They had given up long ago trying to catch him. At first, when he came home from the war that wasn't a war, he would tease them. Leaving sign, making noise, then making his kill miles away. Or leaving a simple booby trap, one no more dangerous than a rabbit snare. On the river, sound travels almost forever. And he killed with one shot. Always. Now he simply avoided them and they; well, it wasn't like he was poaching trophies. He lived off the swamp, taking meat when he needed it and passing it by when he didn't. Officially, he was wrong. But what the hell, a man had to eat. Now, with the outsiders moving in, there were complaints. As he ate his supper, the pump coughed to a stop. The generator should give him lights for another half hour at least. While washing the dishes, he noticed the water was sluggish. "Leaves in the barrels again." He said it aloud, irritated that several things were requiring his attention at the same time. Outside, the trees and the swamp blocked the wind so it didn't have the bite that it had down by the river. The porch looked even more rickety than the trailer. But it was cyprus, old lumber from his grand father's time. What was going to rot had already rotted. What was left should last, oh, say, another century or two. The water barrels sat on the topped out pine trees, making part of the roof to the shed. The trees looked as though they had been planted for the sole purpose of making a water tower. Fortune had smiled on him there. The trees had been barked and painted. A series of slats nailed to one provided a ladder. He walked out to the garden, checking that there was enough water. Sometimes there wasn't quite enough gas in the pump, and the overflow from the barrels didn't water the whole garden. There was enough tonight. He returned to the porch, opened the last beer, and watched the swamp go to sleep. Nate Perry (Little Red, but not to his face) was the fourth generation to grow up in that swamp. Normal for a country boy of the time, he learned to hunt and fish the river from his grand father. Old Man Perry, at the age of eighty two, was still the best guide in four counties. Young Nate helped the old man skin ‘gators before the government outlawed them. And kept on skinning them after. During high school, he took little interest in sports, prefering the outdoorsman life. Logical enough, he drove his boat three miles down and across the river to get to town. It was near twenty miles by road. Popular enough with the girls, he often had company when he went to "The Camp" on weekends. When he graduated, not too near the top of his class, his father, Big Red, had given him the keys to the house boat and a carton of condoms. When he came home after, he went to work at the shipyard as a laborer. Big Red saw to it that he got a decent boss. Six months later, Charlie had a whiz-bang celebration for Tet. He signed up. The Coast Guard, of all things. On the river, they were the only military he knew. So instead of going fifty miles to Gainesville, he went to the local Coast Guard station. It was just next to the city docks where he had tied up most of his life. Known now as "Gator", there were few old timers left that knew Nate Perry's real name. He preferred it that way. He had made it through the Nam, and some other places better not spoken of, without a scratch. Well, the scarred soul didn't count. Less than a week stateside, a drunk redneck had taken offense to his G.I. haircut and did six hundred stitches worth of carving on his gut. Welcome the f##k home, sailor. It was the seventies, you had to have been there.