Free Swamplandia! by Karen Russell Page A

from the screaming man’s cheek like a grinning eel until the Chief wrestled him loose. “Oh shit!” shouted the Chief. “Ossie, babe, get some napkins!”
    The bitten guy turned out to be a soupy-eyed lawyer from Arkansas. Now as a punishment for his forgetfulness Grandpa had to live at theOut to Sea Retirement Community, in a peeling umber cabin, on this refurbished and possibly haunted houseboat that he shared with a bunch of pissed-off septuagenarians. Grandpa’s bunkmate, Harold Clink, was ninety-two years old and almost entirely deaf and yet he would talk to you only in song, songs without rhythms, songs that he made up; we Bigtrees had all worried (some of us hoped!) that Grandpa would kill this person in the night. The houseboat was retired, too, at permanent anchor in the marina. The seniors got issued these pastel pajamas that made them look like Easter eggs in wheelchairs. If you went to visit, that’s what you saw: Easter eggs in these adult cribs, Easter eggs on toilets with guardrails. Black curtains closed the portholes.
    We all sat down in unison on the crinkly sofa. Flat red flowers crept up the wall. A nurse was mixing medicines in the galley, humming some jaunty tune—I could see her big brown arm stirring orange powder through a carafe. Grandpa called this woman Robina, although that didn’t necessarily mean this was her name. We liked possibly-Robina because she brought us orange juice with flexistraws and teased Grandpa with a humor that he tolerated well.
    “These your grandkids! No!
You
produced these beauties, Mr. Bigtree?” Robina’s laughter rose like the bubbles in the aquarium of coffee behind her, rich and automatic. “They must take after their grandmother, eh?”
    Ossie and I touched our crazy hair, flattered. Without consulting one another, we’d both worn our dresses. We smelled churchy, like Mom’s bottled roses. Kiwi did most of the talking; the Chief grew small-mouthed and uneasy on the undulating boat. It was like he’d caught Grandpa Sawtooth’s sickness—those two kept staring at each other as if they’d never before met. On our last visit to Out to Sea, the Chief hung the Seth of Seths skull on the wall, next to the steel clock, a gift that Grandpa failed to appreciate or even understand.
    “It was your first Seth, Dad!” The Chief didn’t start yelling until the second hour of our visit; you could almost watch his anger rising stealthily, like sweat stiffening on fur. “The Seth of Seths! The first alligator that you and Mama ever kept on the island. You’re going to tell me you don’t remember
that
?”
    Possibly-Robina was waiting for us at the cabin door. She hadwrapped the Seth of Seths skull in two Hefty trash bags, the twist tie done up like a bow, like this monster was her gift to
us
now. Robina ordered us to take the skull back home because all of a sudden it frightened Grandpa; he’d point at it and mewl, his eyes wet.
    “It’s his own damn alligator, ma’am,” the Chief sighed, accepting the trash bag. “I don’t know what’s gotten into him.”
    Nobody had told Grandpa Sawtooth that our mother was dead. I could feel the secret rolling between the four of us like an egg in a towel. We never talked about why we kept this a secret from him—the secret just happened.
Somebody should tell him before
he
dies
, I frowned. I pictured Grandpa meeting my mom at a red-lit intersection in the afterlife, his cry of sad surprise.
    “Why don’t you kids go wait outside?” the Chief asked. “Head over to the bus stop. I need to talk to your grandfather.”
    Kiwi raised his eyebrows at me and Ossie. He stood and pulled his ball cap down, sharked around our father, and Ossie and I scrambled after him. Sunlight burst into the gently rocking room and dazzled my pupils. We exited on the aft side of the vessel. I was happy to leave the perfume of medication and bedpans that filled the cabin. We debarked and sat on the pier, watching the ripples of our sneakers