My+Florida+Example+of+the+Short+Story

The thing you remember most about Florida are the mosquitos, and how huge they are—how they have bulging eyes and spiny legs, how they buzz in your ears just like back home, but not with the same high pitched whine. In Chicago, the mosquitos are annoying; in Florida, they’re like pesky birds that zoom straight for your head. You’re standing at the edge of a swamp next to a wooden shack with a sign that reads Tex’s Canoe Tours, paint peeling at the edges. In front of you, dad is speaking with Tex about renting a twelve footer, asking if the four of us could manage to lift the boat ourselves. Tex glances at mom, just emerging from the rental car, and humphs.

“She’s plenty big,” he says, wiping the dribble of chew dripping down his cheek with an oily rag.

Near the water’s edge, John holds a hollowed out horseshoe crab shell above his head against the sun, and I make my way over to him. He hands me the shell—some remnant of the prehistoric age—and I trace my fingers along its spiny ridge. Behind us, the mangrove trees huddle silently, their branches covered in wooly moss, their roots grasping the marshy earth like spiny hands.

By the time we’re in the canoe and have shoved off the shore, I study my father’s paddling at the helm of the boat. It’s hurried, frantic, shallow. Clearly, he has no skill whatsoever, and that’s why he’s up front, with mom in back, steadily dipping her oar into the murky water and guiding the canoe downstream. Seated between the boat’s ribs, John crinkles his forehead and studies the shoreline to the left. “I’m pretty sure it is,” he says, cupping his hands on his forehead to shade his eyes.

“A snake?” I say. “You sure?” I shift my attention to the shoreline, too, and, sure enough, there it is: a jet-black snake draped from the branches of the tree, its scales glinting in the morning light.

Florida. The Everglades. A swamp so old you can feel the age of the moss beneath your feet. The waterways snake their ways between mangroves and Cyprus trees, and the humidity is so strong that you can feel the weight of the air as your parents propel the aluminum canoe forward. A sudden splash draws your attention to the right, to what you think is a log just beneath the surface of the amber water.

"Mom?" you say, drawing in a musty breath of humidity.

"Yes, honey," she replies from the back of the boat. "What is it?"

"What's that—over there? Is that a log?" It's hot, and the sunlight beats down on your forehead as you squint to get a better sense of the log—in fact, logs—that seem to be surfacing in the water around you. They're bumpy and shiny, but there's an element to them that gives you a sense of pause drawing goosebumps from your shoulder blades. In fact, you feel something primal, something essential, and you feel the need to re-center yourself along the center seam of the boat.

"Diane," your dad says between strokes, "I don't think this is a good idea." He wipes sweat from his forehead and pauses, the wooden oar now strewn across his lap. "They didn't say anything about danger."

Now John notices them, too: ten-foot creatures lazily bobbing just below the surface of the water, their tails drifting back and forth slowly and deliberately. You peer over the edge of the canoe and take it all in: the yellow eyes that snap open and then shut again in the morning light, the nostrils that flare open with each breath, the sharp claws on short, stumpy arms splayed out at their sides. But your mother's voice remains calm. "Bill, just keep paddling. And keep your weight centered. They'll leave us alone if you do the same."

**. . .**

A few days earlier, you and John are back at the resort spending the late afternoon in search of coconuts on the beach. On the flight, your mom told you there might be coconuts, and you imagined them to be perfectly round and shaggy with three dark dots just like in the cartoons, but at the present moment you've discovered that the coconuts look more like smooth, wrinkly footballs. You play catch with them on the beach for a while and the John says he wants to paint his coconuts, and, because he is older and you copy his every move, you would like to, as well. Back at the cottage, Mom and Dad are getting ready for dinner and Mom says they don't have any paint at the resort and you say, "We could use crayons? We could see if the restaurant in the lobby has crayons?" and your dad sighs because he just poured a glass of wine, but he gets up anyway, takes you by the hand, and you walk across the grounds only to return with two small boxes a few minutes later.

You are excited because a cardboard sign in the lobby said "Tikki Torch Dinner Night", and, while you don't know what tikkis or torches are, you figure out quickly that it means dinner was on the beach, which means, of course, more coconut collecting. After the meal is over, you, John, and a few other kids at the resort invent a game kind of like "five hundred" using some of the smaller ones. You're down the beach a little and away from the adults laughing, the thatched huts, and the clinking of glasses. As you run to catch the coconuts John is lobbing into the black night sky, you're careful not to put a single toe into the water since there are no shark fences on this part of the beach.

The wind picks up with a gust that smacks dry sand against your arms and forehead, and out over the darkening waters you see a flash of lightening followed by the distant rumble of thunder. The game of five hundred pretty much over, you sit down on a log away from the water and imagine the whole ocean lit up by that single lightning bolt. //How do the fish survive it? How are they not electrocuted?// you think to yourself. John leaves the group of kids standing at the water's edge and sits down on the log next to you. "Better get going," he says, looking out at the water. "The storm's getting close." Down the beach, a cheer erupts from the adults followed by the clinking of glasses and more laughter.

"Oh, honey, of course you can go back. The door's unlocked," your mother says to you and John outside of the tikki hut. "Dad and I will be right here."

"You're not coming too?" you ask. "With the storm?"

"It's alright, honey. We'll come in if it starts raining. We'll be right here."