Bryce Manubay is a graduating senior from Towson High School. He is attending the University of Maryland College Park beginning the fall of 2011 as a Chemical Engineering Major. He has been published in his school literary journal, Colophon, as well as the Harford Poetry and Literary Society journal, Manorborn.
Summer 2011
Table of Contents - Vol. VII, No. 2
Poetry Fiction Translations Reviews
Bryce Manubay
Gator Pontoon
(Brookesville County, Florida, 2006)
Out on the water’s edge of
the vast open lake in Terry’s pasture, I grabbed the bait out of the fridge
in his trailer. That time, raw chicken thighs, and the time before, old
steak, gone a little too far south of Brookesville in the heat of July. I
came back out, and Terry had managed to drink a few more beers, and pull out
the tiny Yamaha motor boat without falling over, an accomplishment indeed.
He liked to call the boat “The Gator Pontoon.” It had enough room for him, a
“first mate,” and one of the juvenile four-footers that liked to slip onto
his property now and again.
Terry wasn’t easily
bothered; he was more than content to laze around most of the day either
sitting on his porch watching the grass grow with his beagle Charlie, or
make wonderful pieces of furniture, all the while sipping on something here
or there. He was one of those strange phenomena--the man couldn’t spell his
own name, but give him thirty seconds to look through your house, and
without measuring anything, or taking time to think, he could cut you crown
molding that fit perfectly into all the seams of the walls in your house.
As we pushed the boat out onto the lake, it floated
gently, drifting weightlessly without springing a leak, as it often would.
We both hopped in and started gliding over the water, the old motor
puttering away, to the center of the lake. The water was wretched in the
summer, spawning mosquitoes and smelling of garbage. We reached the center
and immediately threw down anchor. Tossing in the warm chicken, we made sure
to get all of the blood and juices out of the bucket that we could. Within
fifteen minutes we had some fish getting interested and within an hour, we
had a four-and-a-half footer surface about ten feet from the boat. We saw
the sword rack on its back first, and then the gleam of its glass bead eyes.
Terry picked up the rifle, and, without hesitation, fired two shots into the
beast’s head. The first shot killed it; the second one was “just out of
plain spite.”
Terry pulled the trophy over the side
of the boat and we puttered slowly back to shore. By the time we reached
solid ground, the gator’s memories had completely poured out staining the
bottom of the boat as well as my right sock through a tear in my galoshes,
which I didn’t end up noticing until my stepmother was doing laundry a few
hours later.
Hauling the dinosaur of a creature out
of the boat was much harder than I had imagined. It was very dense for
something a little over half-a-foot shorter than I was tall. I can only
wonder how odd it must have looked to the passers-by, watching a
ten-year-old city boy drag a dead alligator out of the water to the side of
the dusty dirt road.
As we inspected the carcass, I
noticed a bronze-colored ingot stuck onto one of its bottom teeth. It read:
“Charlie,
352-411-1754
8 Lambeth Rd.
Brookesville, FL”
Terry quickly snatched the trinket from my tiny hands and pushed it into his
front pocket. With one fast, fluid movement he slung the gator up over his
shoulder with the rifle slung over the other, and we both walked home our
separate ways.
© Bryce Manubay
