BY Steve gerson
I poled my shallow draft through the swamp, Spanish-moss-covered, each wisp draping on me in
a mummy's cloth, caressing my skin in spider webs. Ponchatoula Bayou, 20 miles southwest of
New Orleans, was hot, suffering under two weeks of 100-degree weather. Climate change the
weather forecasters reported. Creatures below the surface were blowing bubbles of desperate air,
the water boiling in the heat. A blistering wind slithered through the humidity like a
cottonmouth late in July.
I didn't want to be there, damned algae-clogged waters, turgid in mud sludge, cigarette butts on
the surface bobbing like nicotine lures, used condoms floating like jellyfish washed inland by the
Gulf of Mexico throwing ashore its detritus, plastic six-pack rings trapping gill-gasping fish, beer
bottles broken and shining in the sun like a pirate’s lost loot. Crocs thrashed in the underbrush,
heard though unseen. But me and Marie needed to eat, and my job at the Piggly Wiggly sacking
groceries wasn't paying enough to keep us in red beans much less rice.
So here I was, poling, ready to gig toads or seine some crawdads. I'd set a trawl line to hook a
cat or snapper—anything. When your belly's as empty as the leaky oil drums littering the
estuaries and coating seagulls with oil globs, when your credit's as holey as Palm Sunday, it don't
matter whatever. My back aching from the pole, I tied up to a cypress stump lichen-slick, pulled
out my pack of Pall Malls, lit up, and set to rest a spell, the midday sun glaring from behind rain-
yearning clouds.
Then I felt a tug on the trawl line, just a shiver at first like a twinge of fear, so I threw my smoke
in the water, hearing the flame hiss like a swarm of mosquitoes. I wrapped the line three times
around my left hand and drew in some slack with my right. There it was again, a tug, like a gator
mouthing my bait for taste before grabbing hold. Another tug, this one harder, then another, so I
pulled tight to set my hook.
Up rose a presence, a specter, more nightmare than midday. I'd say a head, but that wouldn't do
it justice. I'd say a body, but that wouldn't tell the tale neither. What I saw in the sun’s scowl
was something from one of my grandma’s ghoul stories, those she told us kids at night to scare
the bejesus out of us when we was acting bad. Emerging from the dank water, its body covered
in old fishing lines dangling like tomb rot, its head with boar horns, its gaping maw tooth-jagged
with pull tabs, and eyes red like a storm brewing in the Gulf was a Basurapaca, a beast from
Cajun lore and moonshine drink.
And he was reeling me in. I’d set the lure, but I’d become the bait.
I could smell his swamp breath of musk and decay. I could hear his teeth gnashing, clicking like
nails hammered into a coffin. I could feel my body submerging into the monster’s lair, the
bayou ripe with trash and tragedy.
I’d like to tell you that I shared this story with Marie, with my unborn kids years later, with my
grandkids around a campfire sweet as marshmallows.
Can’t do it. I was gone, my body never found. Searchers sought a trace—my bones maybe, my
gear from the boat. But all that remained in the swamp where I had fished was what one
swamper said seemed to sound like a wail in the wind, a cry within the cypress. I had become
another victim of sea waste, another piece of marine trash gobbled by the Basurapaca.
Steve Gerson writes poetry and flash about life's dissonance. He has published in CafeLit, Panoplyzine, Crack the Spine, Decadent Review Vermilion, In Parentheses, Wingless Dreamer, Big Bend Literary Magazine, Coffin Bell, and more, plus his chapbooks Once Planed Straight; Viral; and The 13th Floor: Step into Anxiety from Spartan Press.