The Bindle of a Crocodile

She looked down at her bare feet and stained girl’s wool nightgown. The floor was cold and the dress itched her skin. Dusk was resting its fat jowls on the town and the “reckoning time,” as Charlie called it, was upon them. She grabbed her chest as she began to feel the pain. The young girl grabbed her bindle before setting off.

            As she walked she dragged her hands across the bark of each tree. The rough texture took her mind off of the ache in her chest. The soil was still unsettled where she had left him. Using her tiny hands she began to shovel the ground away. It seemed like forever until she reached his body. His once pink lips were frozen, blue and purple. The arms that once sheltered her lay still and pale by his sides. She wept as his voice echoed in her head, “Now none of that girl stuff ya hear!” Her knight lay broken from the bullet that had torn through his body. Maggots ate at the wound she had given to her fallen friend. Her thoughts were too busy to hear the sound of feet disturbing the bayou’s floor.

            “Whatcha doin’ back here, gurl?”

            She slowly pulled her hands down from her face to see Billy Bob’s eyes bulging from their sockets. No words escaped her lips, only a soft whimper.          

            “Iz dat da Charlie boy?”

            She cried harder.

            “Come back from dere now, gurl.”

            She did not move; she could not move. The idea of abandoning Charlie was too much to endure. Billy Bob decided it was best to pick up the tiny sprite of a girl and move her away.  As he hugged her she began to fight like a wild cat. She thrashed, she bit, she kicked and she howled. When her eyes met his, she crumpled.

            “It’s awright, lil miss. I gotcha.”

            He moved her under a willow tree and returned to the body. She looked back soon enough to see Billy Bob kick Charlie into the swamp. Within only a second a croc swallowed him whole. As Billy Bob hoisted her over his shoulder she saw a series of snapshots unfold behind her eyes. The pregnant crocodile attacked a goat by the riverbank; a man wrestled the crocodile into submission; the same man dragged the croc out on the bank and finally hung it to a nearby branch. Then the scene slowed as he slit the croc’s stomach open to reveal the man possessed the same eyes as Charlie. As he spilled the stomach onto the floor he found the remains of his missing brother.