Read Repairman Jack [07]-Gateways for Free Online

runnin’ down his spine and all the big scales that covered his back, but he was a flop. Didn’t collect a dime. People was heard to say it looked fake, that no one could really have a back that ugly, and wouldn’t drop a dime. The cops tried to arrest him for public disgustation or somethin’ like that, but he run off before they could catch him.
    Semelee was glad she wasn’t misshapen like Corley or Luke or the other members of the clan. But she was special too. She had a weird look that had been enough to bring her a lot of pain, but not weird enough to bring in loose change. She was special in another way. In her own way. Special on the inside.
    “Ain’t like this is the first time you ever done this,” she told Corley.
    “I know, but I hate it. If’n I do it a million times I’m still gonna hate it. That thing could take my leg off with one bite if it got a mind to.”
    “Not just one leg, Corley,” Luke said with a grin. “When you think about it, she could take both off at once—if she got a mind to, that is.”
    “Or if I got tired of your whining and told her to,” Semelee added.
    “That ain’t funny!” Corley said, dancing in place like a little boy who had to take a wizz.
    “Stand still!” Luke said. “We’re tryin’ to catch fish, not scare ’em away! Just be glad it ain’t Devil doin’ the herdin’.”
    Corley’s hands shook. “If’n it was Devil, I wouldn’t be in the water! Hell, I wouldn’t even be on the bank!”
    Semelee spotted a dark shape, maybe a foot or two deep, slidin’ through the water toward them, rippling the surface above as it moved.
    Dora was comin’, drivin’ the fish before her.
    “Get ready,” she told them. “Here we go.”
    Corley let out a soft, high-pitched moan of fear but held his ground and his end of the net.
    The shape glided closer and closer to Luke and Corley, and then suddenly the net bowed backward and the water between them was alive with fish, frothing the surface as they thrashed against the net. The two men pushed their poles together and lifted the net out of the water. A coupla dozen or more good-size mollies and even a few bass wiggled in the mesh.
    “Fish fry tonight!” Luke cried.
    “She touched me!” Corley said, looking this way and that. If his neck would’ve allowed it, it’d be swivelin’ round in circles. “She tried to bite me!”
    “That was just her flipper,” Luke said.
    “I don’t care! Let’s get these things ashore!”
    “Don’t forget to leave me some,” Semelee said. “Dora’ll be very unhappy if you don’t.”
    “Oh, right! Right!” Corley said. He reached into the net and pulled out a wriggling six-inch molly. “The usual?”
    “A couple should do.”
    He flipped one and then another onto the deck, then headed for shore.
    Semelee picked up one of the flopping, gasping fish and held it by its slick, slippery tail over the water.
    “Dora,” she sing-songed. “Dora, dear. Where are you, baby?”
    Dora must have been waitin’ on the bottom because she popped to the surface right away. The snapping turtle’s mountainous shell with its algae-and grass-covered peaks and valleys appeared first, runnin’ a good three-four feet stem to stern. Then her heads broke the surface, all four beady little eyes fixed on her, both hooked jaws open and waitin’. Semelee could see the little wormlike growth on each of her tongues that Dora used like fishin’ lures when she sat on the bottom during the daytime and waited for lunch. Finally the long tail broke the surface and floated behind her like a big fat water moccasin.
    Semelee was sure scientists would give anything for a look at Dora, the biggest, damnedest, weirdest-looking alligator snapper anyone had ever seen, but she was Semelee’s, and no one else was gettin’ near her.
    She tossed a fish at the left head. The sharp, powerful jaws snapped closed across the center, severing the head and tail. The right head snatched those up as they hit the