Bolt jolt.  Night strike.  Sky bleeds white.  Instant.  Magnolia cracks.  Next instant.  Eyes glow on top of a swamp.  Run into me . . . run into me.  I would love to taste you, alive, alive.  Waves roll over the beach as sea oats flash brightly inside a silvery clap of light.  This is the picture I am waiting for.  In that instant of the light, I see you out there, on the other side of the lake, watching me, perhaps having similar thoughts:  as far as I can tell, only two of us are left, so one of us must die.
      I see a Loggerhead glide over the sand.  So do all of the others who may be watching the ocean this evening.  A softer light.  We haven’t seen such a turtle land here in three months, but why doesn’t she lay any eggs before she catches the wave back out?  Does she see something she doesn’t like, or is the dawn breathing light?  For she will only lay them in darkness.  Midnight is the best time.  Under a dark moon.
      Lately there has not been much to eat.  We are starving, but for some reason we survive.
      During the day we sleep better.  I realize impatiently that I’m going to need to kill you soon, or I will starve.  You and I must feed off of the same sources.  For a week or two, your corpse will feed the others who are preying on us.  The alligators can feast.  Your lingering stench in the humid night will fill their bellies even longer.  By then, a female may surprise me if she swims across to beach upon my shore to mate with me.  But how will she continually survive the journey?  With all these eyes lined along the waves, will she make progress beyond their considerate hunger?
      I realize you and I, and she, if she exists, are the only ones left of our kind.  Where did all of us go?  Did we really kill all of each other?  When did our last female die?  Only the alligators know, for they must have feasted on her.  They are breeding all the time, all over the place, seemingly without any problems.  Meanwhile, the humans keep on counting the Loggerheads’ eggs; they do this every day.  They only care about the big stupid turtles.  The gators do prefer to eat meat rather than the Loggerheads’ eggs, but they will eat the Loggerhead eggs if they have nothing else.
      I have several reasons to kill you before you do me, so I know you are thinking along the same lines.  But I won’t be first.  I won’t go ahead of you.  The last thing I do will not be last ahead of you.  I am waiting for the proper time as well as the correct location.  Near the swamp moss is best so that I can force you into the alligators’ reeds in case my luck is bad and you turn around to be more challenging than I suspect.  I have been searching all day for the place where still waters run deeply.  I believe I may have located a reliable fresh water source, but I’m not going to tell you where it is.  I know you are thirsty, as well:  which do you think is worse, hunger or thirst?
      Your rack is bigger than mine.  If only that matters.  It does not.  Courage and determination last considerably longer, if applied, but only if applied, so I will try to surprise you.  You will not have time to think about the possibilities of your success.
      I see the Loggerhead flapping her arms, burying her shell in the sand.  She goes into a trance, something no one has ever been able to figure, and she lays at least a half a dozen eggs.  Allowing nothing to interfere, she gets it done.  This makes it easy for the humans to walk right up to her.  Not even the human taking a few secret pictures stops her nesting.  Not even the human closely watching the eggs melt out of her old birthing lips gets in the way, thereby distracting her out of her trance.  The pain is unbelievable, but she doesn’t feel it.  The human female who has been lying next to the Loggerhead sits up and rubs her salted tired eyes.  Looking behind at the island, she sees the reddening sky and smells the raging fire.  Somewhere an oil refinery has exploded, but she doesn’t expect it to interfere with their duties.  The wind seems to be increasing, so I should pay proper attention to the approaching storm rather than spend all of my time thinking about you and our eventual meeting, or wasting my time watching this human attend to the Loggerhead.  The air smells, actually, spicy, as though it is coming from a long way, and we all know what that means:  we need to seek shelter immediately.
      The Loggerhead remains in trance.
      She lays back her head on the warm blanket of sand, and all she can hear is the swish of water and sand, the echo of a pound of a wave.  There is no reason to hear anything under the sea.  All that matters, all that warms them, is moving water.  A very large roaring sound approaches underneath the water, cutting its pathway through the Gulf sands, causing all kinds of shifting and rearranging.
      The Loggerhead doesn’t even move when the human sticks in the needle to draw out her blood.  The wind is blowing the human’s hair all over the place.
      If only, right now, you would swim across to my shore, we could begin our new family.  We would have a second chance, and since I’ve learned to protect you better by studying the alligators‘ routines and preferences, you might last long enough to birth a pair.  If you make it another year, that is, if I protect you from them for at least another year, you can birth another pair, and so on, and so on, again.  But what island do you roam on tonight, and how are you ever going to make it over here?  I imagine you roam around St. Catherine’s Island because you are my only miracle.  You must be waiting patiently for an enormous wave.
      Tonight could be the one we have been waiting for.
      On a cloudy windy magical night at 4:00 a.m., the air thin with mosquitoes, Loggerhead hatchlings outnumber us all.  The storm filling everything with anticipation stalls offshore somewhere, giving everyone a little more time to adjust, if needed.  The humans who are so concerned about the Loggerheads have driven away in their jeep, and, as usual, they never notice that there are only two of us left.
      When I kill you, and I am the only one left, will they, finally?
      Only one male can survive, especially when she is so rare that she leaves us dreaming she will swim across to land on our shore.  I know you are getting ready to fight for the same reason:  we cannot share her.  We cannot live without her.
      Suppose I am wrong, or we are both wrong?  Suppose another one of us is still alive here on our own barrier island?  For some reason she has been hiding herself from us, feeling all alone inside her haunting fears.  Well, perhaps.  When she comes out of the woods with a velvety rare orchid curled tightly around her tail, which one of us will she choose?
      It has to be me or I will die.  I was born seven years ago on a wilder night than this one, the night Katrina dropped some orchid seeds here and killed my brother and my mother.  I hope my life is only half over.
      I don’t see hide or hair of her, though, so I am deluding myself, aren’t I?  Neither of us can locate her, can we?  Was she ever here to begin with?  I suspect you hope that she is alive and well, but wonder like I do about whatever happened to her.  Sometimes it hurts so much to ask.  Our last one was gone before we realized her preciousness.  I spent the majority of my life waiting for her.  Didn’t you?
      The sunrise wakes the Loggerhead from her birthing trance, and her hasty retreat into the sea leaves me wondering what in the world was she thinking when she was lying there on the beach, if anything at all.
      Oh my goodness:  you are right behind me.
      I thought I was hidden by the smoke from the refinery fire.  I thought you couldn’t see me.
      Our racks lock, and we push each other against the rest of our lives.  I realize fairly quickly that your significant strength and experience is going to outlast mine.  I realize this too late to do anything to help myself, but I do try.  I do continue to try.  I can do nothing less.  Giving up would be wrong.  To give in would be unforgivable.  I will fight you until you push my head into something else, I lose consciousness, and you slash my neck open with your pointy rack.  When you loaned me more time, I thought you were going to spend it with me; I thought we were giving each other a little more time to change our minds about fighting each other. 
     

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