Alligators May Be Present: A Novel

Meet the Wood Stork

Meet the Wood Stork G lassman, upon Shuman’s instruction, arose from bed at the crack of dawn Sunday and headed to Loxahatchee, the last surviving remnant of the northern Everglades. Just who was this Irving Shuman character? Rebecca asked him the night before as they lay in bed. They had just dutifully coupled so as not to miss that crucial window of ovular receptiveness. Glassman explained to her, elusively, that the old man was just someone he had met at the Jewish Weekly Times, which was true enough, and she seemed satisfied with his sparse response. Still, she thought he was out of his mind to get up so early on the weekend and instructed her husband to refrain from waking her if he could manage it. So Glassman crept stealthily out the garage door, his car keys in one hand, a green spray can of insect repellant in the other. The road taking him west at six thirty was nearly empty, almost eerily so given its usual congestion. Glassman marveled at the change in scenery as he made his way past the strip malls and condo complexes that were so familiar to him. It didn’t take long to enter utterly unfamiliar territory. In less than fifteen minutes of westward driving on Atlantic, stuccoed walls, security fences, and shopping centers gave way to open farmland and flat-bed trucks. Not many trees, 100 101 though. Mostly the large sloppy pines, non-native aggressors planted years ago as fast growing wind-breakers, Glassman had heard, by myopic developers; the droopy, dusty looking trees had been busy ever since muscling out their arboreal competitors. Neither he nor his relatives knew anything about this place just minutes from their homes. It was much farther away, Glassman mused regretfully, than its proximity suggested. He noticed dark men and women in the fields, some wearing round, straw hats, others with just some loose pieces of fabric covering their heads. They were crouching between tall cane breaks, plucking fruits or vegetables. Tomatoes, Glassman thought. Or maybe they were red peppers. When he reached the 441 he noticed a mini-mart on the corner and stopped to pick up a drink. He parked his Toyota next to a dilapidated bus, a retired school bus Glassman figured that had probably dropped off its workers between fields to pick up some food and drink. Stepping out of his car, he read the large blue words painted on the white stucco: Food Groceries Beer Mexican Food Bait & Tackle envie dinero rapido, he noticed in smaller, hand-painted white script as he swung open the glass door. The terse Spanish phrase, he suspected, said more about Florida’s “illegals” than any of Chuck’s rantings. On the way to the refrigerator at the rear of the store, he scanned the items on the shelf: bags of Ever-So-Hot Rancheritos , Churritos y Limón, and some strange dried peppers he was fairly certain he had never eaten—ancho, pasilla, and guajillo. He also noticed giant cans of chipotle en adobo, serranos, and jalapeños. Now jalapeños he knew. Rebecca grew up in Pennsylvania’s Dutch country on a curious admixture of Jewish and Dutch cooking, high in starch but low in spice. After years of pickled eggs, kugel, apples and cabbage, brisket, creamed chipped beef, chicken corn soup, and shoo-fly pie, she couldn’t quite fathom the use of the jalapeño as a food item (Why eat something that hurts your mouth? she had asked Glassman, who had dragged her to her first Mexican restaurant), but Glassman loved their flavor and heat. He wondered about the potency of the other peppers he was only just discovering. Standing at the glass window of the refrigerator, pondering the beverage selections, Glassman was suddenly conscious of two burly workers (Mexican? Guatemalan? Honduran?) on either side of him, also peering into the refrigerator. They were a bit too close for comfort . He felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. Then, suddenly, they opened the doors in front of them, selected a drink and departed, leaving Glassman in peace and ashamed. Along the 441, he noticed several black people fishing in the canal, in between the solitary great blue herons, one of the few birds Glassman knew by name. There were plenty of other birds fishing in the canal as well. A solitary...