Hurricane Hannah. Sue Civil-Brown

but me and Joyce got tired of me being away for six weeks at a time. So we saved up to buy our own boat we could live on and fish from at the same time.”

      “Yeah,” said Joyce, who still looked as if she could haul in a net. “Then we found this place. Been stuck here ever since.” She laughed, as if it were an old joke. “Now our son runs the boat and our grandkids turned coat and went to work at the casino. What kind of job is that, I ask you? Taking hard-earned money away from other people.”

      “Now, now,” Dil said to her as if he’d said it a thousand times, “those people come to the casino knowing what the odds are.”

      “Still don’t think it’s right,” Joyce said. “It’s not fair like our poker games. I just can’t imagine them taking a rake out of every hand. It’s pure thievery if you ask me.”

      Hannah, already perspiring in the humidity and heat, drove screws with a drill while Buck balanced the plywood.

      “It’d be better,” Dil said, “if Anstin were on the up and up, though. Now if he transported private jets for people like you do…that would be an honorable calling.”

      Hannah almost dropped the drill. Cussing under her breath, she reseated the screw and started again.

      “Hurry up,” Buck said. “I’m not Superman. This thing is heavy.”

      “Quit your complaining.” She turned to Dil, knowing better than to ask how he knew her business. Instead, she asked, “What do you mean Anstin isn’t on the up and up?”

      “No regulations,” Dil said as if it were self-evident. “If he gets his way and builds that big hotel and casino, we’re going to have to get a gubmint. Now won’t that be a hairy shame.”

      “Yeah,” Joyce agreed. “All this time we ain’t needed anybody sticking a nose into our business. This Anstin is going to change all that.”

      Buck spoke. “We ought to tar and feather him and ride him off the island.”

      Dil laughed wheezily and Joyce emitted a belly laugh. “You put tar on him,” Joyce said, “and he won’t sink!”

      “You got a point there,” Buck agreed.

      “Done,” said Hannah, climbing down the ladder.

      “Thank God.” Buck let go of the plywood and shook his arms. “You ever hear of lactic acid build-up?”

      She smiled sweetly. “Maybe you should do heavy work more often.”

      He glared at her. For once there was no cigar. He must have lost it somewhere.

      While they stood in this eyeball-to-eyeball contest, neither of them willing to blink first, Joyce let out a little shriek.

      “Oh, my word, Buster, what are you doing here?”

      Hannah blinked first. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and she whirled, looking for the alligator. Yup, there he was, crawling his scaly way across the thin grass toward her.

      She was never quite sure how she got there, but in an instant she was on top of the ladder, saying, “Get that thing away from me!”

      Buck laughed. “He wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

      “No? Then what does he eat?”

      “Mostly people food,” Joyce confided. “Everyone feeds Buster.”

      Hannah glared at the three people and then the alligator. “That’s a mistake. Some day when you don’t give him food, he’ll bite off your hand the way he did Hanratty’s.”

      Joyce looked at Dil. “You don’t think he’d really do that, do you?”

      “Nah. We been here forty years, girl. Don’t you go taking strange notions just ’cuz Sticks here is frightened of poor old Buster.”