The Jaws of the Common North American Alligator

Author’s note: This story contains strong language and the views of an openly racist character, which are portrayed in a negative light.

“Well, look who the gator dragged in.”

The German maintained his professional smile with difficulty. The jaws of the common North American alligator could crush bone into shards, and he did not like to think how close the man behind the secondhand desk had brought his bones to that. But like spies smuggling troop placements and guard changes inside books, these Southerners concealed insults and threats within pleasantries. “I submitted my application under a pseudonym. Given your clientele, I am sure you understand.”

“I got tenants with real reasons to want a gated community, and none of ‘em, none, tried to rent a trailer through a shell corporation.”

Calling Gator Hill Estates Trailer Park a gated community was true in the same way that a hurricane was a storm. The metal picket-style fence surrounding the park was too high to see over without a fifteen-foot ladder—provided one could bring a ladder that close, considering the swamp at its border held more trained alligators than the German or any of his three compatriots had been able to count, all of which were allowed to wander the perimeter at leisure. The front and back gates, with their system of ever-changing codes unique to each residence, seemed almost unnecessary beside several collective tons of hired reptilian muscle. It all seemed a bit much to house battered women, corporate whistleblowers, and one family with no right to exist.

Florida Man let the German’s handwritten application flutter to his desk. “Should I keep calling you Steve, or should I call you Aspirational Hunting Supplies LTD?”

Neither Steve nor Aspirational Hunting Supplies Limited was the German’s name, no more than Florida Man was the name of the muscular, tattooed landlord who seemed to fill the trailer despite taking up no more space than the German. But the German did not bother giving Florida Man his true name. Florida was a land of legend, from the supposed Fountain of Youth to haunted island fortresses to an unpredictable figure stalking the streets and gas stations. Newspapers (or what passed for newspapers these days) called him Florida Man. The landlord’s exploits in the Iraq War (including one episode involving a cheese grater, two discarded tires, and a jar of Nutella) had earned him the nickname from his fellow soldiers. The German preferred it to his legal name. When facing an unpredictable foe, one needed a constant reminder of the threat.

“You must consider my application.”

“Says who?”

The German smiled a little. “I am homeless. Surely you would not leave me on the streets?”

“Y’all been staying at the Palisades. Dunno who’s paying for it, but you cain’t afford rooms at that hotel on a salary of zero.”

“Then you know I can pay the rent.”

“I don’t care if you can afford half the park.” Florida Man leaned forward in his secondhand office chair. “You got some balls, trying to rent from me.”

“You thought I was a private firearms company.” The German couldn’t help smiling a bit at the success of his ruse.

“I knew it was one of you dipshits the second I read it.”

“Then why did you agree to the interview?”

Florida Man gave a cold smile that showed his teeth. The German wondered how many alligators lounged outside the rental office. “I saw your app and thought, ‘No way is he this stupid. No way would he just apply and think I’d let him into my trailer park.’ That’s why I called you in. I just had to see.”

The German set his jaw. The park was as impenetrable as the swamp at its border. Palm trees sprouting up along every sidewalk and corner didn’t provide enough cover to prevent the German’s local allies from mapping the park from above, but whatever reflective material Florida Man had used to adorn every rooftop and flat surface rendered their drones useless. The German had assumed the rental office would, as usual, sit just inside the park, giving him an easy means of entry; but the small trailer with a sign in its window had been moved to a lot of its own a few yards from the gates. He might as well have asked Florida Man to meet him at a coffee shop in Winnipeg. At least then he would be away from this sauna-like humidity that refused to submit to even the strongest air conditioner.

But such a retreat would be tantamount to surrender. A white flag to the family who only lived because they’d had the sense to flee their northern home and the blind luck to land here. The German had not traveled eighty years into the future to let them go anywhere other than an unmarked grave.

“Why will you not rent to me?”

“Read the bylaws. I reserve the right to refuse entry to any guest or prospective tenant who threatens the safety of an existing tenant. Even if there’s no court order keeping y’all apart.”

The German chose his next words carefully. They needed to be precise, to pierce this idiot’s self-delusion.

“An invasive species ought to be destroyed before it can choke out everything good, every bit of beauty and life in a superior ecosystem. Such creatures ought to be crushed. Without hesitation. Without remorse.”

Florida Man met his gaze. “That’s just how I feel about poachers who kill lions for the hell of it.”

“You cannot poach a parasite. You can only cleanse it.”

He leaned back a bit, regarding the German with contempt. “Most poachers shoot up nature preserves ‘cause they think life owes ‘em something. Never met one who thought he was a goddamned hero for trying to wipe out an endangered species.”

“He is endangering your other tenants. I am nothing compared to him.”

“He’s a therapist who makes ice cream.”

The German scoffed. “You have no idea, do you? What he wants to do to you? To your precious trailer park?”

“What, make us all fat? This is the South. We’re fat already.”

The German sat back, lips pressed together. Florida Man was determined not to understand. The German knew this, and yet seeing it anew made him want to clench more than his teeth. He wanted to ball his hands into fists, swing one against this mongrel’s jaw, drive the other into his stomach. He wanted to beat him until he lay prone on the floor and kick him until he ceased to move. In a more sensible era, the German would be congratulated with good humor and beer until the anger of the moment became enshrined in memory as an act of justice.

He had never been able to determine what caused those flashes back to an era gone too soon, what the locals called time slips. Strong emotion and significant events seemed to have no bearing on them: they were as likely to visit him in the throes of triumph as they were on an average Tuesday. He willed one to visit him now. The German did not know which god might oversee such a thing, but he silently pled to them all to send him back. He could not use his pistol on Florida Man here, not without inviting a retaliatory attack and the attention of the police; but if he had surprise and a sensible regime on his side, the odds would change. A few seconds was all he would get. A few seconds was all he would need. Five, ten seconds under the Führer’s flag, and he could give this American soldier the death he deserved.

The German waited for one second, then two, then five. But time remained untouched, marching into a future unworthy of the past.

Florida Man leaned forward, lowering a voice that was already clear in the small trailer. “I can rent to whoever I want. And if I’ve got to choose between a nice Jewish family and the assholes who keep trying to kill my gators, it ain’t much of a contest.”

Trying. He said that as if it were an insult. As if each try didn’t take you closer to your goal. The German savored the thought of what was to come, but let none of it show on his face.

“’Nice Jewish family.’” The words tasted like bile. “You don’t see the contradiction?”

“Can’t see what ain’t there.”

A distant sound cut through the trailer’s thin walls. The German thought it might be a shout, from one neighbor to another, but then it came again, longer and louder.

The German watched Florida Man carefully as he took a long sip of his iced coffee. If he heard the next scream, no trace of it showed on his face, and it took every bit of the German’s self-control to suppress a smile.

He pictured the screams coming from within the park walls before he remembered that no one inside would have a clear view of the swamp. It had to be someone outside, a woman maybe, dropping her child’s hand as dead fish and dying alligators bobbed to the surface. A small pang of guilt struck as he pictured a respectable young woman, but he reminded himself that none who rented from Florida Man had provided the German or his compatriots with the smallest bit of aid. All were equally guilty of sheltering Jews.

Florida Man set his coffee on the desk as another scream cut through. A man’s this time, a young one from the sound of it. Perhaps the Jew’s son had witnessed the death of his precious swamp, seen the effects of the spreading poison as it did its work.

“Got any more stupid questions, or you want me to walk you out?”

“Walk me out, please. I do not wish to see any more of your alligators.”

Florida Man smiled. An ironic one, the German thought, but there was an edge to it that sent a cold spike of dread through his stomach. Experience, he told himself. He’d seen that smile before, and so anything like it provoked the same reaction.

Florida Man opened the door and followed the German out.

Heat hit him first, woven into an air so thick it might have been a wall; then the bite of a mosquito; then the smell of the swamp, with the warm musk of nearby reptiles, all of them very much alive and, in the case of one that watched with yellow eyes, far too close. But the German had scant seconds to think how that couldn’t be right before the screams became cries of alarm in another language.

His language.

The German didn’t break into a run, but he came as close as a walk would allow. His companion was right where the four of them had planned: on that narrow strip of land cutting halfway through the swamp, distant enough from the park to lie outside the immediate interest of those ever-present alligators, close enough to allow the poison they’d selected to do its work with admirable speed. It took the German a moment to work out that the brown things swarming his compatriot, the things with teeth and claws tearing at every inch of skin, speed and malice enough to keep his compatriot’s hand far from his gun, were otters.

Florida Man chuckled. “Yeah, they’re cute little things, but they’ve got a territorial streak a mile wide. Get between them and their supper, and you might wind up at the bottom of the swamp.”

The German said nothing. He’d known there were otters. He had known they were creatures of sharp teeth and sharp claws, but they had factored into his plan as nothing more than a regrettable casualty of a righteous war. The noise that came from his throat must have sounded like surprise, because Florida Man looked to him.

“You didn’t know that? Thought y’all were one with the soil’s blood or some bullshit.”

The German held his hand back from his well-concealed pistol and searched for some sort of opening. The otter that had climbed atop his compatriot’s head couldn’t be shot without killing the man, even if the animal seemed intent on grabbing an eye in one of its paws. The same was true of the otter scrabbling across his chest and the one twining its way up his right arm; the two on the ground trying to drag the man into the swamp by his cuffs made a more prudent target, but as the German reached for his pistol, one clawed its way up his compatriot’s leg and the other sank its teeth into his ankle.

The German found words, but only one at first. “How?”

Florida Man scoffed. “Thought you were the only ones who knew ‘bout that little peninsula? Been using it ever since I built this park. Used it to show Zach and his kids the otters not too long ago.”

The thought of Jewish children cooing over creatures doing their level best to murder one of his own would have sent the German into a rage, had the murder in progress been less horrible to see.

“I knew y’all’d try and poison the swamp sooner or later, and that peninsula’d be your best shot, what with the gators staying closer to the park and all. So all’s I did was let the otters know that’s where the best food was so they’d raise hell next time somebody threatened their territory.”

There was more to it than that. There had to be. Otters, no matter how hungry, no matter how rabid, did not engage in this sort of targeted violence against a creature ten times their size without prior training. Florida Man had done something to them, taught them things, trained them the same way he’d trained nearly every alligator in this infernal swamp, made those sweet-looking water pups as great a threat as those overgrown lizards and the soldier who had raised them.

As if hearing the commotion, two, three more otters poked their heads above the nearby waterline. Charming, in any other circumstance; but now the German felt, more than saw, their beady eyes lock on him. Every fiber of his being screamed for his retreat.

“Have you never heard of calling the police?”

“Cops’re all the way ‘cross town. Got a whole bunch of otters right here.” He frowned in thought. “Not a bad idea, though. Y’all racked up some pretty serious charges today. Feds might even get involved.”

Feds. The FBI, or whatever branch of Federal law enforcement handled things like this. Florida Man would call them, would escalate his calls until the highest authority in the land that could be involved was standing on his doorstep.

He needed a plan. Some masterstroke that would make all of this trouble vanish, make the otters go back into the water and the alligators behind him return to Hell, but his mind had gone blank.

Out of his periphery, an alligator began to lumber toward him, but the German could only stare at the otters thirsting for his blood. He could shoot now, but would the gunshot drive them back into the water, or spur them to attack before he could fire again?

With a sinking suspicion, the German knew the answer to that question.

Florida Man patted his shoulder. “Enjoy your day, now.”

And he strode off past the approaching alligator, as unbothered as if he were one of their own.