The Underneath

A mile away stands an enormous pine tree, which was more than 1,000 years old when it was struck by lightning in a storm 25 years earlier. This killed the tree, but it still stands. Trees have long memories of the storms of years gone by.

This area of the forest is called Little Sorrowful Creek.

Under the roots of the dead pine tree is a jar containing an ancient creature. The jar is becoming loosened from among the tangled roots.

The cat hears the baying of a hound. She follows the direction from which the song is coming.

An illustration depicts a small cat in a dense forest of tall trees. The cat’s focus is directed at a site beyond the illustration.

Although a cat would ordinarily be afraid of a dog, the cat feels drawn to this hound because of its beautiful and sorrowful song. She approaches a run-down house and finds the hound chained to the back porch. She rubs against his legs.

Twenty-five years earlier, a boy prowled the neighborhoods of south Houston. The boy’s father was a cruel drunk. His mother, who was kind and gentle, left after her son poisoned her bird bath; he laughed as she sorrowfully held the body of a dead cardinal bird. The boy trapped a rat in a crab trap and watched as it starved. He was indifferent to his mother’s departure. His father struck him across the face; his jaw never closed properly again. He took his father’s rifle and left, walking 300 miles to the forest around Little Sorrowful Creek.

The man, known as Gar Face, still lives in the forest. He’s still bitter and cruel.

The hound is shocked and moved that the cat approached him. The cat licks his ears, and they touch noses. The hound knows that she has understood his song.

The woods in far East Texas, where Little Sorrowful Creek is located, are dense and wet. In the woods are turtles, dangerous snakes, and alligators.

West of Little Sorrowful Creek is the Bayou Tartine and a smaller adjacent bayou, the Petite Tartine. Between these waterways are marshlands, swamps, and quicksand. The narrative warns to stay away from this area.

Gar Face lives off beavers, foxes, rabbits, and skunks that he catches and eats. He has immense respect for alligators, which fear no one. While poling on the bayou, he sees a huge whirlpool and thinks he sees a 100-foot-long alligator within it. He feels the word “respect” floating through his consciousness. He vows to be back. Gar Face, desperate for respect, wants to kill the Alligator King.

An illustration depicts Gar Face poling in dark water between trees. Below his small boat is an enormous, twisting alligator.

The hound’s name is Ranger. He belongs to Gar Face. He points out the skinned pelts of animals, warning the cat about Gar Face. Gar Face shot Ranger instead of a bobcat years earlier; now Ranger is chained to the porch, his only function to bark when anything comes nears. He’s miserable; the bullet is still lodged in his leg. Ranger wants the cat to be safe—he knows that Gar Face would probably use her for target practice or for alligator bait—but can’t bear for her to go. She says that she has nowhere to go. They hide under the house together.

An illustration depicts Ranger and the cat lying in the dark underneath the house.

Only the trees keep records in the forgotten forest of Little Sorrowful Creek. They don’t count in years, but if they did, the 100-foot alligator may have been alive for 1,000 years. As a young alligator, it was wily and avoided being eaten by the bigger alligators or the birds. As a larger alligator, it eats both large and small pray with terrifying ease and efficiency. The only ones who know that the Alligator King rules the bayou are the other alligators and the birds, as well as the creature in the jar. The Alligator King whispers, “Soon, my sister. Your time will come” (28).

In the jar, Grandmother blinks. She’s far older than the Alligator King.

Ranger is a bloodhound; he can hear and smell all that goes on around him. In particular, he hears the coming and going of Gar Face’s truck. He hears the cat’s purrs and decides that they’re the sweetest noise he has ever heard. He realizes his loneliness before this point. He tells the cat about being a puppy; his mother taught him to bay at the moon and to follow scents on the ground. The cat tells Ranger about playing as a kitten with her brothers and sisters, before she was taken to the pound and then abandoned by her family.

The cat gives birth to two kittens: a boy and a girl, both silver. They climb over Ranger. He watches them lovingly.

An illustration depicts Ranger lying on the ground beneath the house, with the two kittens climbing over him. The cat watches them.

The other trees whisper that Grandmother is waking up. The jar continues to loosen in the roots of the rotting tree.

For 10,000 years, Grandmother sailed along on the currents of the open ocean. She’s the cousin of mermaids and seafolk. She swam into the pine forest and fell in love with the darkness of the trees and the snakes, who hailed her as their sister. She became known as Grandmother Moccasin.

The Alligator King has eaten a dozen turtles, a giant bullfrog, a mink, and several fish. He’s always hungry. The narrative warns to “beware,” as he prefers “the creatures of the land” (37).

Ranger names the kittens. He calls the female kitten Sabine, after the Sabine river, which Ranger remembers visiting as a puppy. He calls the male Puck because of his puckish ways.

The trees pass along word of the new son and daughter. It reaches Grandmother. She remembers when she had a daughter; that daughter was taken from her while she slept. She thrashes in her jar, vowing that “a price will be paid” for this injustice (40).

Puck and Sabine know only the underneath of the house, where they play in an old boot, as well as fishing crates, bottles, and boxes. Ranger and their mother sternly tell them not to leave the safety of the underneath; they fear what Gar Face would do to the kittens.

On the days that Gar Face remembers to feed Ranger, the cat eats with him once Gar Face has gone. On the days that Gar Face doesn’t feed Ranger, the cat hunts rats or lizards and brings them back for Ranger. Ranger longs to roam free in the forest again.

Grandmother is still beneath the rotting tree, which has been home to so many animals throughout its life.

Grandmother Moccasin remembers napping and hunting with Alligator King, whom she called brother. While the forest has millions of snakes, it has no other lamia; which is what Grandmother is: half serpent, half human.

Grandmother once lived in the world of humans; she became a human and took a human man as a lover, but he betrayed her. She slipped into the Aegean Sea and took her animal form.

Centuries later, another man—one who had coppery feathers in his hair betrayed her when he stole her daughter.

Years earlier, Gar Face stumbled into the woods as a hungry and desperate boy. He used his last shot on a deer. He hit it but it managed to run away. Desperate and angry, Gar Face stumbled after the deer in the dark. He’d all but given up when he finally came across it, dying. He laughed happily, knowing that he’d eat that night. Grandmother, in her jar, whispered that there is a price.

The cat now has to hunt for her babies as well; her milk is no longer enough for them. She knows that soon she’ll have to teach them how to hunt but dreads and fears the day she leaves the safety of the Underneath.

The kittens play happily in the Underneath. Stalking each other and hiding among the objects, they pretend that they’re mountain lions and snow leopards.

A thousand years earlier, life was almost perfect for Grandmother Moccasin, except that she was lonely. She heard the humans nearby and envied their companionship.

One day, a small snakelet called to her: “mother!” The snakelet smelled like her, but more like the open sea rather than the piney woods. Grandmother’s heart sung with happiness as she curled herself around her long-lost daughter.

Grandmother called her daughter Night Song. She didn’t know where Night Song came from, but she also didn’t know where she herself came from. Sometimes they napped on the back of the large alligator. Night Song sang beautiful lullabies for the forest. She and Grandmother lived happily together—and might have continued living happily together forever.

The Alligator King senses that Grandmother will return.