American Tropic (11 page)

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!”

J
oan 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 ill, 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.

C
eiling 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.”

Big slams his beer bottle on the mahogany counter. “Thousand fucking times you told me that. I hear it again, I’m going to bash your—”

Zoe interrupts. “Time to go, Boy Scouts. I’m closing.”

Big throws a questioning look across the counter at Zoe. “I’m always thinking, why’s a lovely lady like you running a bar?”

Zoe gives a weary smile. “Every time you’re here drinking, you ask that. It’s always the same answer: I have a university degree in philosophy. Can’t do anything with that except teach or tend bar. I had to support Noah through law school, couldn’t do that on a teacher’s salary. So here I am, still in the bar racket.”

Big keeps his questioning going, enjoying the beer buzz-cut of his words. “That Truth Dog of yours is a drinking man, sucks it up like a thirsty baby, but never comes in here. He stays away because he knows Big rules this roost. Your Dog’s a chickenshit.”

Zoe walks from the register to Big. She stares at his blurry, reddened blue eyes. “Okay, Big, I’ll tell you with no philosophizing why Noah is never here. You’re an amateur drinker—you drink in public places. Noah is a professional. A professional, he drinks alone. He doesn’t need an audience.”

Hard nods his head in agreement with Zoe. He digs a
coin out of his pocket. He flips the coin in the air, catches it, and closes his fist on it. He holds out his clenched fist to Zoe. “What side my coin be comin’ down on? Be it heads, you go home with me. Be it tails, you go home with Big. You call it, bitch goddess.”

Zoe shrugs her shoulders and laughs. “You can keep flipping that coin until it loses its shine. I’m not going home with either of you.” She quickly scoops up Hard’s and Big’s beer bottles. “Time to leave, guys. No more telling each other true lies.”

Hard shifts his gaze to the end of the counter, where Hogfish sits alone, his head jerking erratically to music pumping through iPhone earbuds. Hard turns back to Zoe and gives her a mocking wink. “I gets it now. You be savin’ yourself for the Hog. That guy can barely make a bologna sandwich with what little pink meat he’s got between the legs.”

Big belches in Hogfish’s direction. “What’s left of his brain has been boiled like a lobster in a pot.”

Zoe moves down to Hogfish and leans across the counter to him. “Sorry, camper. Two o’clock at night. I want to close up shop. You’ll have to leave.” Hogfish’s glazed eyes roll; he doesn’t look at Zoe. She pulls the earbuds out of his ears. “I said you have to go.” He snatches the earbuds back from her, jumps off the barstool, and runs for the door.

Hard hoots as the door slams behind Hogfish. “That sucka be a spook! Spookier than his crazy ol’ man!”

Big slaps his open palm on the counter and hooks a macho grin at Zoe. “If Hog ever hassles you, give Big the word. I’ll snip his balls off and run them up the flagpole.”

Zoe walks back along the counter and stops in front of Big. “I don’t need you to protect me, not from Hogfish, not from anyone.”

Big’s grin widens to a belligerent smirk. “I’m serious as a triple heart bypass. Hog gets a weird-on with you, just nod in Big’s direction and he’s dust.”

Zoe pushes away from Big. “Hogfish isn’t hassling me. Leave the poor guy alone. It’s Hogfish that’s being hassled. Hassled by the world. That’s what happens to these vets that come back from wars they didn’t start. I know. My father got the same treatment when he came back from Vietnam, treated like shit or ignored like a freak. Cut Hogfish some slack or this bitch goddess will scrape those blue eyes out of your head with her pretty fingernails.”

Big throws his head back and shouts up at the fan blades cutting the air, “Goddamn, ain’t nothing sexier than a sassy woman!” He looks back at Zoe. “You’re a spur under my saddle, but I still want to ride you. Ride your gorgeous ass right into the sunset!”

Z
oe steps outside beneath a neon
BOUNTY BAR
sign glowing blue above her in the humid night air. She locks the bar’s front door, puts the key in her purse, and zips the purse up. She tucks the purse under her arm and starts walking away. She stops, hearing shuffling from the other side of the deserted street. She looks across the
street and stares into the shadows of a tall night-blooming cactus tree. She sees no movement. She glances up at the hanging orange lantern of the moon with halos of light thickening around it, indicating rain is close. She continues walking, heading along empty palm-lined streets snaking between century-old white clapboard houses with wraparound balconies and widows’ walks, once inhabited by ship captains and harbor customs men, now tarted up in shiny new tropical colors and surrounded by the electrical drone of motors powering air conditioners and backyard swimming-pool pumps. The houses are constructed cheek by jowl; their tall pitched tin roofs lean into one another as if to block any hurricane winds that might come rushing unannounced through the streets.

Zoe hears the fall of footsteps behind her. She stops beneath the leafy canopy of a woman’s-tongue tree. She spins quickly around and looks back to surprise whoever might be following her. She sees no one; she waits. She hears above her the rattle of seeds in the long pods dangling from the woman’s-tongue tree. The air brings the scent of a rotting dead rat. She hears footsteps again. She stays still. Her breathing becomes faster, her heart pounds. She smells her own fear exuding with the perspiration from her exposed skin. She jolts at a sudden screeching. She hears a thump from the porch of the house across the street. The entwined bodies of two black cats locked together in lust roll off the porch as they scream in sharp pain.

Zoe turns and walks on at a faster pace, her long legs in her white shorts flashing in the night. Nocturnal skink lizards on the cracked sidewalk skitter away. The
sound of footsteps behind her grows louder. She doesn’t look back as she hurries to her two-story Bahamian-style house with its smooth plastered exterior of blush-pink walls and framed white windows. She opens the gate of the picket fence in front of her house and races up the flagstone steps. She unlocks the door, steps inside, and slams the door closed.