Stiltsville: A Novel by Susanna Daniel

wielding her paddle like a jousting stick against a large alligator a foot away. We had startled it—perhaps Bette had bumped it with her paddle when passing—and its top jaw was open and its teeth bared, its tail curled upward, and its strange pudgy claws spread wide against the marshy bank. Above it, Bette stood brandishing the paddle like a warrior and looking straight into its eyes. Marse gave a quick thrust and Bette pivoted as we passed, keeping the paddle inches from the gator’s jaws. Once we were at a safe distance, she sat down. Slowly, the alligator lowered its jaw and settled deeper into the marsh. “Goddamn it!” said Marse. “What the hell happened?”
    “We got too close,” said Bette.
    “Goddamn,” said Marse again. I’d never been around a woman who swore as freely as Marse did. “That thing looked hungry.”
    “It might be hungry,” said Bette, “but it doesn’t want to eat us.”
    One might assume, given the prevalence of alligators in South Florida, that attacks on humans would be more common. Over the years, there was the occasional anomaly: once a gator chased down and mawed a young boy riding a bike down a boardwalk in Shark Valley, and once one found its way into a private swimming pool in Coral Gables and drowned a full-grown man. But for the most part, alligators eat fish and ducks. Despite their ability to outrun a human, they wait for their prey to come to them. Years after the incident at Fisheating Creek, I saw a photograph of an alligator being swallowed whole by a Burmese python (for some reason, many South Floridians come to own exotic nonnative animals, then release these animals into the wild when they become tiresome, and they multiply) and I remembered that day, when we were inches from an alligator’s open jaw, and I felt sorry for it.
    Down the creek, we met the boys head-on. Kyle held up a string of jewel-toned bass, and we turned and followed them back to the campsite. When the boys noticed Bette’s hair, Kyle said, “Wow!” and Dennis said, “Can’t we trust you girls to be left alone?” I thought I heard an undercurrent of irritation in his voice. I supposed he’d witnessed a lifetime of impetuous decisions on Bette’s part.
    “God, woman,” said Benjamin, “you went ahead and did it, didn’t you?”
    I was relieved to know that the haircut had been discussed prior to that afternoon. I realized that Bette had brought the scissors for this purpose. When we were all standing on dry land, Benjamin touched Bette’s head, laughing, then patted her butt affectionately. “You’re something else,” he said. He turned to me, because I was closest. “Isn’t she something else?”
    “Frances did it,” said Marse.
    Dennis said, “You cut her hair?”
    “I have a little experience,” I said. “I think it looks pretty good.”
    He looked at me as if he wasn’t quite sure what to think. “You’re not going to do that to yourself, are you?”
    I put an arm around his waist. “You never know.”
    That night, Dennis taught me to gut a fish, and I helped him cook it and made potatoes in a skillet. The meal was as good as any I’d eaten in my life. We told the boys about our encounter with the alligator, and Dennis squeezed my knee and told me to be careful, and I caught Marse watching us in the firelight. Also in the firelight, I watched Bette bring a hand to her hair. Her gaze was deep and private. Though she and Benjamin were planning to wed in a few days, I knew in my bones that this would not happen.
    We set the timer on Benjamin’s camera and took a group photograph on our last morning at the campsite. Marse, Bette, and I sat cross-legged on the ground and the men stood above us. Dennis was behind me, Benjamin was behind Bette, and Kyle was behind Marse, waving at the camera. I wore a diamond-checked minidress, Marse wore a red Swiss dot jumpsuit, and Bette wore a crocheted halter top and long canvas shorts. The men were shirtless. All six of us were