Boys Life

think about being scared.
    I cain’t swim.
    That’s what I thought about.
    I jumped off the table to where Gavin had gone in. The water was heavy with mud, and up to my shoulders, which meant Gavin was nostrils-deep. He was flailing and kicking, and when I grabbed him around the waist he must’ve thought it was Old Moses because he almost jerked my arms off. I shouted, “Gavin! Stop kickin’!” and I got his face up out of the water. “Humma hobba humma,” he was babbling, like a rain-soaked engine trying to fire its plugs.
    I heard a noise behind me, in that dark and soggy room. The noise of something rising from the water.
    I turned around. Gavin yelped and grabbed hold with both arms around my neck, all but throttling me.
    I saw the shape of Old Moses-huge, horrible, and breathtaking-coming up from the water like a living swamp log. Its head was flat and triangular, like a snake’s, but I think it was not just a snake because it seemed to have two small arms with spindly claws just below what would have been the neck. I heard what must have been its tail thwacking against a wall so hard the house shook. Its head bumped the ceiling. Gavin’s grip was making my face balloon with blood.
    I knew without seeing that Old Moses was looking at us, with eyes that could spot a catfish through murky water at midnight. I felt its appraisal of us, like a cold knife blade pressed against my forehead. I hoped we didn’t look much like dogs.
    Old Moses smelled like the river at noon: swampy, steaming, and pungent with life. To say I respected that awesome beast would be quite an understatement. But right at that moment I wished I was anywhere else on earth, even in school. But I didn’t have much time for thinking, because Old Moses’s snaky head began to descend toward us like the front end of a steam shovel and I heard the hiss of its jaws opening. I backed up, hollering at Gavin to let go, but he would not. If I’d been him, I wouldn’t have let go, either. The head came at us, but just then I backed out of the front room into a narrow corridor-which I certainly didn’t know was there-and Old Moses’s jaws slammed against the door frame on either side of us. This seemed to make him mad. He drew back and drove forward again, with the same result, except this time the door frame splintered. Gavin was crying, making a whoop whoop whoop sound, and a frothy wave from Old Moses’s agitations splashed into my face and over my head. Something jabbed my right shoulder, scaring a ripple up my spine. I reached for it, and found a broom floating in the debris.
    Old Moses made a noise like a locomotive about to blow its gaskets. I saw the awful shape of its head coming at the corridor’s entrance, and I thought of Gordon Scott’s Tarzan, spear in hand, fighting against a giant python. I picked up the broomstick, and when Old Moses hit the doorway again I jammed that broom right down its gaping, dog-swallowing throat.
    You know what happens when you touch your finger to the back of your throat, don’t you? Well, the same thing happens, evidently, to monsters. Old Moses made a gagging noise as loud as thunder in a barrel. The head drew back and the broom went with it, cornstraw bristles jammed in the gullet. Then, and this is the only way I can describe it, Old Moses puked. I mean it. I heard the rush of liquid and gruesome things flooding from its mouth. Fish, some still flopping and some long dead, went flying all around us along with stinking crayfish, turtle shells, mussels, slimy stones, mud, and bones. The smell was… well, you can imagine it. It was a hundred times worse than when the kid in school throws up his morning oatmeal on the desk in front of you. I dunked my head underwater to get away from it, and of course Gavin had to go, too, whether he liked it or not. Underneath there, I thought that Old Moses ought to be more particular about what he scooped off the Tecumseh’s bottom.
    Currents thrashed around us. I came up again, and Gavin took a gasping breath and yelled his head off. At that point I started yelling, too. “Help!” I shouted. “Somebody help us!”
    A light speared through the front door, over the choppy water, and hit me in the face.
    “Cory!” came the sound of judgment. “ I told you not to move, didn’t I?”
    “Gavin? Gavin?”
    “Lord God!” my mother said. “What’s that smell?”
    The water was settling down. I realized Old Moses was no longer between the two mothers and