Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/401545
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 6 9 them halfway to Charleston and turned them loose. Two weeks later, that big female missing the first toe on her left hind foot was right back where they trapped her. A long distance of 40 miles, half of it across deep saltwater with a four-knot tide. Figure that out in your spare time. And it gets better. Once they fitted a few big 'uns with trackers, scientists noted homing gators ran the compass rather than taking the easy route. Points, islands, parking lots – didn't matter. Like migrating birds, they were headed home. D own at the beer joint, Cadillac James is working the bar and Wendell is bending the guitar strings. We call him Cadillac from his '85 lemon- yellow Coupe de Ville. He's a mighty fine barkeep, remembers your name, what you like to eat and drink, and he is fine company when not too busy. Wendell drifted down from the Tennessee high country to lay low, write songs, and pick up tips and maybe a girl or two. He's among the legion of fine song-writers the South has raised but struggles to support. A shrimp boat of dope coming ashore on the new moon, a pickup wreck on a lonesome pinewoods road, a ghost on the beach at midnight? Wendell has it covered. He'll wait tables if he has to, tend bar too so long as he can still make his music. "Whiskey and water?" Cadillac asks. "Baptize 'em, don't drown 'em," I reply. I catch Wendell's eye. He smiles and nods and breaks into a new song. There's a mean ol gator comin' round again, He's a twelve footer in the pond behind the inn. You joggers and jigglers and Jaspers beware, Don't wander off the trail if you're going down there. Then he picks a jazzy bridge and takes up the next verse. Me and Frankie Nash Found a way to make some cash, Sellin' gator skin up in the hood Po ol Frank Slipped down the bank, The gator got him good, Now his leg is made of wood. "You hungry?" Cadillac asks. How 'bout some gator bites?" "They any good?" "Make your tongue beat your brains out." "You got any honey mustard?" Cadillac pours my whiskey and the sun slips off toward Savannah, across the vast spartina grass flats, the little side creeks and backwater ponds glistening like a shattered mirror of the sky. Fourteen miles and Lord knows how many gators away, the domes and spires of that beautiful and tragic city catch the slanting light and glow like some Pentecostal vision of the New Jerusalem. And Wendell breaks into another verse: Mr. Roy Lincoln Took to brown likker drinkin'. Kept a bottle hid behind the fence. He went to take a drink, Fell in the creek. Gator heard the splash, Roy ain't coming back. The tide rises to brimming full and the wind drops to a whisper at the tide change. Then way off in the marsh I hear it – burrup- burrup. Maybe it's just a heron. But maybe it's Big Al coming home. Note: Roger's latest novel, Blow the Man Down and Ben Moise's tell-all memoir, Ramblings of a Lowcountry Game Warden, are available on Amazon. Wendell's music videos, including Mean Ol' Gator, are on Youtube.