SHALLCROSS

A surreal literary novel about life in Florida.

This installment in Porter’s Hearing Voices series follows up The Underwater Panthers (2024) with the return of Aubrey Shallcross. Aubrey is a “half handsome” man in his late 60s; he hails from the town of Stuart, Florida, and was raised in a house that resembles a great horned owl. Aubrey is also schizophrenic. He communicates with a presence in his head (called a “slipper”) known as Triple Suiter. Readers learn that, back in 1838, a famous Seminole warrior named Osceola died in a South Carolina prison. Osceola’s head was cut off by the attending physician, one Frederick Weedon. Weedon preserved the head in a jar, though where it ultimately ended up is lost to time. Fast-forward to the modern day: Weedon’s spirit controls a python in the area in which Aubrey and his friends live. It is not just any ordinary constrictor, either, but “a cross between the quicker Indian python and the Burmese python.” It is capable of killing people, which is exactly what it does to state representative Alfred Alongo while the man is on a nature walk with his family near Lake Okeechobee. Even worse, as Weedon is in control of the snake, the reptile is racist; it will specifically attack people of color because, for some reason, this is “some kind of catharsis” for Weedon. Meanwhile, the people of Florida go about their often bizarre and rugged activities, including Aubrey’s friend Henry, who raises snail kites and teaches them to eat specific snakes.

The narrative’s dark humor plays out effectively over the pages. There is something uniquely horrific but also absurdly comic about a powerful creature targeting specific ethnic groups because it is supernaturally controlled by a uniquely awful figure from the past. As bizarre as it all is, the setting is realized in a distinctive, knowing way—it’s a place where a “sizeable” ranch “means about twenty-five thousand acres.” Those who inhabit such lands have their quirks; local hunters with their “sacred trucks” fill their vehicles’ windows with decals celebrating deer hunting despite the fact that they do not actually hunt deer but rather wild pigs, which is a fact that they seem embarrassed by. Then there is Henry, whose farm, despite the presence of dangerous creatures, is run with the best of intentions—in addition to his snail kite training, he also raises endangered rattlesnakes that he secretly releases into the wild. He finds nothing strange about this: “He grew up with the poisonous creatures and was sentimental about them, the same way the wild scaup ducks that used to land on the St. Lucie River reminded Aubrey of his youth.” Not every character is full of such striking complexities, however; at one point, a “fourth-generation racist” shoots his television because he is displeased with a sign-language interpreter. It is exactly the sort of act that one might expect from a dim-witted racist and doesn’t quite have the same dramatic power as, say, a murderous historical spirit/hybrid python on the loose.

A scorchingly funny, if occasionally obvious, blend of oddball characters and supernatural elements.