Cracked Window

Florida, 1973: I’m trudging through a Panhandle swamp on an August day with four other guys. Country Boy leads the way. Everyone on the land survey crew calls him this because his molasses twang sounds like gibberish half the time.

Country Boy wants to kick my ass. My machete nicked his hand not far back as we hacked through a hammock of hardwoods and cypress knees jutting from the water. But seeing that I still hold the machete, he only cusses me. If Country Boy knows my name, he never uses it. He calls me College Boy.

The sun is high, but it’s dusk beneath the trees. We push through calf-deep water and curtains of vines. Turkey vultures stare down from high branches. Ahead is an island of damp sand. We collapse there, water seeping from our boots. The heat presses down. I stick my machete in the sand, kneel, and drink from the swamp, the water tannic red but clean. My reflection looks up at me, a ghost. Someone whispers: snnnnnake.