American Tropic

by Thomas Sanchez

  The surprised man yells, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “The girl’s only sixteen!”

  “Like hell! She’s eighteen!”

  Luz swings her beam at the girl spread-eagled on her back beneath the man. Her long black hair is tangled over her face. Her bare breasts heave from rapid breathing. Her skirt is pushed up and her panties are pulled down. In the dark V between her naked thighs glistens a worm of spilled cum. The teenager shakes the tangled hair away from her face. Luz stares at the face brightly lit in the flashlight beam. The teenager is not Carmen.

  The girl glares at Luz. “I can prove I’m eighteen. My driver’s license is in my purse.”

  Luz takes a deep breath. “No, you’re not eighteen. I recognize you. You’re the Munoz girl. I know your family. I was at your Quince party two years ago. You’re just seventeen.”

  “That was three years ago! I’m eighteen now!”

  Luz steps out of the car and looks at the man. “Pull your pants up, you chicken-hawk bastard.”

  The man gets out of the car. He shoves the still-hard stub of his prick beneath his underpants, hitches up his blue jeans, and winks at Luz. “I bet you wish you could whack off a piece of her yourself. She’s not underaged. She’s street legal. You can’t arrest me. Can’t do a fucking thing.”

  “Don’t count on it. I see you with her again, I’ll toss you into lockup, where your new boyfriends will be waiting for your white ass. Get the hell out of here!”

  The man takes off running. The teenager climbs out of the car. Luz grabs her wrists and handcuffs her.

  “You can’t take me prisoner! What are you doing! I didn’t do anything wrong!”

  Luz stays silent. She marches the teenager to the Charger, shoves her into the back, and slams the door. In the front seat, Chicken turns around and puts his front paws on the seat separating him from the teenager. He cocks his one ear, wanting to lick her hello with his tongue. Luz jumps into the car next to Chicken. She looks into the rearview mirror at the teenager in the back.

  The handcuffed girl stares defiantly. “This is illegal. You can’t do this. My dad’s brother is a big-time lawyer in Miami. Manny Munoz—you ever heard of him? He’ll sue you!”

  “Let him sue.”

  “And he’ll sue you for having this mangy mutt in a cop car. I bet that’s against cop rules. Hey, but this isn’t a cop car! What’s going on?”

  “I’m not a cop. I’m a plainclothes detective.”

  Luz starts the Charger and drives off. She hears the teenager crying in the back seat. Luz weaves through dark back streets until she arrives before the twelve-foot-high bullet-shaped concrete monument lit up in the car’s headlights. Bold black-painted words declare SOUTHERNMOST POINT CONTINENTAL U.S.A.—90 MILES TO CUBA.

  Luz drives behind the monument, where the street abruptly ends and the Atlantic Ocean begins. She turns off the car’s engine and rolls down her side window. The ocean’s surface ahead is a black mirror in the night. A rush of salt-scented air fills the car. She looks in the rearview mirror at the crying teenager. “You smell that?”

  The teenager sniffles. “Please don’t tell my parents about my boyfriend. I beg you. He’s thirty-two. They’ll kill me.”

  “Take a deep breath. Smell the air.”

  “It’s salty.”

  “It’s the air of Cuba blowing in from across the Florida Strait.”

  “I beg you not to tell my parents.”

  “That’s the air of your great-grandparents. People who immigrated to Key West in the eighteen hundreds with nothing and built a life. Hardworking people who had pride and morals. People who brought those qualities with them.”

  “I’ll just die if you tell my parents.”

  “The problem now is, no pride, no morals.”

  “Listen, lady, we’re friends, right? I remember you at my Quince. You were there with your girlfriend.”

  “Not girlfriend. Life partner. Love of my life.”

  “Whatever.”

  Luz turns on the car radio. She switches through the stations, playing rock, country, and Latin music. She stops on the voice of Noah coming in. She glances at the girl in the rearview mirror. “Do you know who this is?”

  “Isn’t he that pirate guy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nobody I know cares about him.”

  “You should care. He’s about saving what counts. He’s fighting for what good is left in this world for your generation.” Luz faces the girl. “Listen to Noah, then I’ll let you go.”

  “You won’t tell my parents about what happened?”

  “I won’t tell them if you learn something here tonight.”

  Luz turns up the volume on Noah’s voice.

  The girl slumps in the back corner of the car. Her face turns sullen as Noah’s words crackle from the radio.

  You’ve got to work with me tonight, pilgrims, or ol’ Truth Dog is going to sail away back home. We’ve got four endangered turtle species here in the Florida Keys: the leatherback, the loggerhead, the hawksbill, and the green. Why can’t we stop the slaughter? I’m waiting for your answer. Okay, here’s a pilgrim. Talk me some sense.”

  A woman’s shaky voice answers. “I never called before. I’m so nervous.”

  “You’ll be fine.”

  “You know, uh, there’s been, uh, extensive scientific research into cancer. They’ve scrutinized Neanderthal fossils and found no evidence of cancer. Cancer only shows up two hundred years ago. It’s modern times that have surrounded us with cancer and …”

  “Don’t stop. I’m here for you.”

  The nervous woman’s voice becomes emboldened. “Remember when you said the dumping of toxic stuff by the military around the Keys might have poisoned the water?”

  “Military’s been here since the Civil War. Ships, submarines, fighter jets, you name it. Toxic dumping is our legacy.”

  “Now we have abnormally high rates of cancer.”

  “I always say, you want the true picture, you’ve got to connect the right dots.”

  “The picture is,” the woman says, sobbing, “everything is being poisoned. People, coral reefs, sea life, everything is going to die of man-made cancer.”

  “You’re right. It’s all connected. Next caller, you’re up. Connect the dots.”

  A squeaky male voice begins excitedly: “What’s that ditzy dame talking about? She’s got cancer on the brain. Everybody wants to cure cancer, but it’s the witty bitty we should worry about.”

  “Witty bitty?”

  “The Key Largo cotton mouse. It’s on the official endangered list. It’s being wiped out by runaway cats from trailer camps.” The squeaky voice drops to a confidential tone. “Truth Dog, I’m reaching out my hand to you. Will you pray with me?”

  “Whatever floats your boat. Okay.”

  “You got my hand?”

  “I got it. It’s sweaty.”

  “We pray thee, Lord, to keep safe all your creatures great and small. Especially the witty bitty.”

  “Maybe the Head Man up above will hear your prayer.”

  “Oh, he will. He’s listening right now. He’s going to show you the light. Good-bye, brother.”

  “Next caller. Go. I’m waiting.… I said, go.”

  The baritone of a man’s belligerent voice slams through the silence. “I’m the vet who called before.”

  “Welcome back, vet.”

  “I saw bad shit in Nam. Shit that makes what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan look like a Disneyland ride. A famous photo was taken durin’ the Nam war. It showed a naked Vietnamese girl runnin’ up the road. Her village had been napalm-flamed by us. She was on fire. Blobs of smolderin’ napalm burnin’ off her skin. That stricken look on her face—fuck, man—that look! That was the look of innocence destroyed by our evil.”

  “That’s it, show me the rage.”

  “I was one of the guys napalming those Nam villages. I was nineteen years old. I still see that girl’s smolderin’ sk
in in my dreams, nearly half a century later. The smell of burnin’ flesh wakes me up every night.”

  “The smell of rage.”

  “I saw the same look that girl had in another photo more recently, when that oil well blew in the Gulf.”

  “Deepwater Horizon blowout. Worst ecological disaster in American history. Total cover-up.”

  “It was a photo of a pelican flounderin’ in a sea of oil. The bird’s body was drenched in brown slime, its wings stretched out, tryin’ to fly, but it couldn’t. Its eyes were huge with fear, like that girl’s eyes, that girl with her skin on fire runnin’ up the road. We’ve got to stand against innocents’ being slaughtered.”

  “We’ve got to stand up to the war machine that runs on soul-sucking oil or our days are numbered.”

  “That’s why I called before about the comin’ Permian Extinction Event. Next time I’ll call with proof that it’s all gonna blow sky-high.”

  Seagulls swarm in the sky above Pat’s shrimping boat as it plows through heavy ocean swells far out at sea. The boat’s long-poled twenty-foot outriggers are winged out on both sides of the vessel, their unfurled dragnets roiling the water. Pat swings in one of the outriggers and cranks up its dripping net. The net breaks the surface of the water, weighted with a squirming catch of pink-shelled shrimp. Pat pulls the rip cord on the net as it swoops in over the deck. A small catch of briny shrimp drops from the net onto the deck. She yanks off her canvas captain’s cap and whacks it in frustration against her blue jeans. She whips around to her boat mate, standing next to her. The mate is shirtless, the sun-darkened skin of his broad upper torso swirled with wicked-looking interlocking tattoos. He hikes his tight jeans up and takes a boxer’s stance in his white rubber shrimper boots, expecting a punch from frustrated Pat as she shouts: “We’ve been out here for three days, and all I get is a twenty-buck load of pink bug-eyes! I can’t even pay my fuel with that!”

  The mate cocks a hand over his eyes and squints at the sunlight’s glare on the ocean. “Looks like your luck is taking a turn.” He points to a bubbling break on the water’s surface. A pod of fast-moving dolphins leaps from the water into the air, their bodies twisting in muscular turns as they approach the side of the boat.

  Pat claps her hands together. “Hallelujah, let’s get some bait for the longlines!” She runs into the pilothouse and races back out with a shotgun. She takes a position on the prow of the boat as the pod of dolphins nose-dive back beneath the water and disappear. She aims the shotgun at a calm spot in the water in front of the boat. She waits. The dolphins break through the surface of the calm spot in a gushing spray of saltwater; sunlight shimmers on their sleek, wet bodies arched high in the air. She fires a blast from the shotgun. Blood spews from one of the arched dolphins. The others dive from sight, leaving the dolphin with its side blown open floating on the sea close to the boat. Pat puts down the shotgun, grabs a long gaffing pole, and whams its steel hook-point into the floating dolphin. The mate short-gaffs the creature from the other side. Together they heft the dead weight up onto the deck.

  Pat grins with delight at the mate. “Hurry, get that bucket of J-hooks.” She pulls out her knife from the leather holster belt strapped around her waist. She grips the knife and slashes at the dolphin’s thick dorsal fin, curved up high from the center of its back. The blade cuts through the fibrous veins of the fin in a spurt of blood.

  The mate comes back with the bucket of barbed J-hooks. Pat pushes sliced bloody dolphin meat onto the hooks. She wipes sweat off her face and looks up. “Perfect bait—the turtles always think it’s drifting squid.”

  Pat goes into the pilothouse and throws the engine switch. The engine growls to life in a loud metallic clang of firing pistons. She steers the boat out on a new course. The mate feeds the baited hooked longline off the stern into the slashed V-wake of the propeller-churned water behind the boat. The longline whirrs away into the distance, sinking from sight beneath the water.

  The sun smacks down on Pat at the back of her boat; she is cranking the wood handle of the line-winch, which reels in the longline trailing in the water. The mate works next to her, hoisting the longline onto the deck. All the longline’s barbed hooks are stripped of dolphin bait. Pat keeps cranking the handle; the veins on her neck pop out purple. The last of the longline left in the water jerks, goes taut, whirs back out. Pat grips the handle tighter, puts all of her strength into trying to stop the line from stripping farther out behind the boat. The mate grabs the handle with Pat. They strain together, groaning as their muscles burn, holding the longline. The tension reverses toward Pat and the mate; they crank the winch handle harder. The longline in the water comes closer to the boat.

  The gray humped shell of a sea turtle crests above the water. The steel barbs of a J-hook are sunk deep into one of its thrashing front flippers. The turtle aggressively flaps its free flipper against the water’s surface, struggling to turn its great weight against the hook that holds it to the taut line.

  Pat whoops with joy. “A leatherback! Jackpot!”

  The mate holds the winch handle steady.

  Pat grabs a heavy net. She leans off the side of the boat and casts the net across the water over the splashing turtle. She holds the rope attached to the net as the turtle’s bulk thrusts against its sudden entrapment.

  The mate jams the winch handle into the locked position. He joins Pat in holding the net rope against the fury of the turtle. They are pulled to the edge of the boat. They lean dangerously off the side of the boat, about to fall into the water, pitting their combined weight against the turtle. A mighty thrust from the turtle knocks Pat and the mate off balance, and they fall to their knees on the slippery deck. They hang on to the rope, pulling back harder, groaning as they haul the turtle up from the water and heft it aboard. The turtle’s bulk crashes onto the deck in a booming thump, its massive shell glistening; its prehistoric sharp-beaked face snaps from side to side as it gasps in exertion with humanlike sounds.

  Pat gazes at the formidable animal before her. “What a beauty. Must be a hundred years old. Big money in the fin meat. Chinese are convinced eating it will give them King Kong hard-ons to bang their girly friends all night long.” She throws her head back, joyfully singing out at the top of her lungs an old pop song, “All night long, forever!”

  The mate wipes sweat off his tattooed chest. “Yeah, Chinese will pay a fortune.”

  The turtle powerfully slaps its long leathery flippers against the deck, futilely searching for water to make its escape. The hollow gasping from its beaked mouth becomes desperate; its bulging sea-green eyes gape up at its captors.

  Pat picks up an iron mallet and grips its handle. She mounts the netted turtle. Her legs straddle both sides of the humped shell body. She raises the iron mallet, takes aim at the back of the turtle’s exposed head, and swings. The mallet penetrates deep into the turtle’s skull with a bone-shattering blow.

  The mate stares at the turtle’s crushed skull. His face cracks into a downward frown. He turns and leans over the railing of the boat, spewing an arc of vomit into the water.

  From her perch atop the dead turtle’s massive shell, Pat swings the bloody mallet high and shouts with a laugh at the mate, “Man up, you pussy!”

  Joan sits on the edge of her bed. The soft curves of her body are outlined through a sheer slip. She tilts her head and listens to approaching footsteps in the hallway. She looks anxiously at the closed bedroom door as it creaks open. A figure comes through the doorway.

  Luz steps into the room. “Sorry I’m late, hon.” She unbuckles her pistol and sets it on the dresser. She pulls off her shoes and trousers and stands in her loose white shirt and white panties. She begins to unbutton her shirt and notices the concerned expression on Joan’s face. She speaks in a soothing voice: “You can stop worrying, I’m home.”

  “I can’t help worrying. I know what’s going on.”

  “What do you mean, you know what’s going on?”

  “Since Nina became i
ll, you’ve changed. You hardly touch me anymore. Nina is my tragedy too.”

  Luz gets down on her knees before Joan. Her sad eyes stare apologetically. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just can’t … get beyond … this pain.”

  “There is only one way out of pain. You have to push it aside with new life.” Joan takes the bottom of her slip with her fingers. She sensually glides the slip up over the swell of her hips, past the thinness of her waist, and above her arched breasts. She pulls the slip over her head and tosses it aside. The white skin of her face flushes pink as her lips part, offering Luz her mouth for a kiss.

  Luz leans toward Joan, then stops. “Forgive me, darling. I can’t.”

  Joan slides an arm around Luz’s waist and pulls her close. She covers Luz’s face with lip-brushing kisses. Luz’s breath sucks in sharply with a gasp. Joan lies back on the bed, her arms outstretched, the fullness of her naked body exposed. Her breasts heave; her rib cage expands and contracts with deep, expectant breathing. She reaches up and gently pulls Luz’s head down.

  Luz’s cheek rests on Joan’s smooth thigh. She inhales the sweetness of Joan’s skin. She listens to Joan’s urgent breathing. She hears the sound of her own breath. She tastes the wet saltiness of her tears as they fall from her eyes. The tears run down Joan’s thigh, disappearing into a shadowed crevice.

  Ceiling fans swirl in the humid air over the heads of Big Conch and Hard Puppy, who are perched on stools at the Bounty Bar’s long counter. Their eyes are riveted on Zoe, dressed in her work uniform of tight white shorts and white halter top. She stands in front of the cash register, adding up the night’s receipts.

  Hard swings around to Big. The left side of his forehead has a red gash where Luz whacked him with the butt of her gun. His platinum teeth flash as he drunkenly slurs his words into Big’s face. “Only be two things in life you need to know. First be, how to get along with people. Second be, how to get around people.”