Heart of Palm by Laura Lee Smith

with his hands on his hips and stared at Do-Key’s car, where by now the alligator had renewed its efforts toward escape and was methodically thwapping its tail against the cruiser’s windshield, a thick smear of mud and dung being deposited on the window with each contact. The way Do-Key had turned around in the parking lot, his face like stone, peering in every direction into the pale light of the dawn, searching for the Bravo boys, the only shit-heads who possibly could have pulled this off. They knew it, and Do-Key knew it. But they were well under cover, watching the entire proceeding from the rooftop of the building next door, Carson’s truck tidily obscured four blocks to the south. When the other officers dispersed to begin the parade preps and Do-Key still stood, scratching his head, wondering what to do about his unwanted passenger, the boys slunk away, breaking into a run once they’d cleared the vicinity, laughing, hysterical, jumping into Carson’s truck and peeling out of St. Augustine, back up A1A to the thickly wooded roads of Utina, where the morning’s light was now coming hot and sharp through the trees, where the fog was dissipating like smoke, rising like a ghost through the hammock.
    They’d laughed so hard Frank thought he’d be sick. At home they ran behind the house and jumped into the Intracoastal fully clothed, washing away the sweat and the alcohol and the alligator shit. Arla came out to the concrete picnic table and stared at them, angry at first, asking where they’d been all night, but even she was taken with the levity of their moods and the sheer lunacy of their laughter, the beautiful abandon of their young bodies floating in the tide.
    “You boys,” she’d said. “Mac Weeden, don’t let your mama blame this on me.” But she smiled, and Frank watched how her gaze lingered longest on Will, on his sweet, wet, round face, the way he blew a spray of water from his mouth, the way he clung to Frank there in the current, holding on like an infant, in love and in fear and in awe of it all. “Frank the Prank!” Will said. “You struck again!” Will . He was fifteen.
    Now, Frank’s coffee threatened to grow cold in the cup while Tip stared out the Lil’ Champ’s window, watching Susan Holm, and Frank could almost see Tip’s brain slide back from his reference to Do-Key’s campaign to their previous topic of conversation: Susan’s ass. “It was me, I’d do more than talk to her,” Tip said. “You know what I’m saying?” The absurdity of this observation, coming from Tip, who was no doubt the last man in Utina Susan would talk to, much less touch, was almost enough to make Frank smile.
    “Tip, I’m in a hurry. You going to take my money, or what?” Frank said. He placed a five-dollar bill on the counter and waited. At the Lotto stand, two tiny, gray-haired women were penciling in numbers on a long sheet of paper, and Tip glanced at them, then leaned in to Frank conspiratorially. “Susan comes in, you want me to tell her I haven’t seen you?”
    “You haven’t seen me, Tip.”
    “What?”
    “You haven’t seen me.”
    “That’s what I said.”
    “Because I’m not here,” Frank said.
    Tip blinked. “Well, you are here. But I’ll tell her you aren’t. I mean, weren’t.”
    “Right. Unless of course, I was.” Frank gave up waiting for Tip to ring him up. He put the five-dollar bill into a tip jar on the counter and fished out two singles, leaving Tip staring at him in complete confusion. “I gotta go, Tip,” he said. “Make sure you’ve got me covered now, hear?”
    Outside, he glanced to the right and saw the back of Susan’s lime green T-shirt still moving east along Seminary Street. Up the road at the First Baptist Church, the marquee had a new message: JESUS WROTE A BLANK CHECK . CASH YOURS TODAY!
    Frank climbed into his truck and started the engine. He peered at the sky in the direction of Uncle Henry’s. Still no smoke, but he caught sight of a