American Tropic (8 page)

“I don’t want a fighting dog.”

“That dog be no fighter, he be a lover. That’s why I poppin’ him. He’d rather lick his balls than fight. That’s why his name be Chicken. You want Chicken or not?”

Luz studies the pit bull squatting on its haunches in a pool of blood. The dog’s pink tongue dangles out as it whimpers; one of its ears is a gnarly stub, bitten off in a
fight. The hair of the dog’s short black coat is slashed with white scars left over from the vicious bites of past battles.

Hard chuckles. “Take Chicken home to that baldheaded daughter of yours. She could use a friend.”

“I’ll take the dog.”

“Deal.”

Hard walks across the gravel. He unties the pit bull from the two dead dogs and leads it back to Luz. The sun glints off of Hard’s smiling metallic mouthful of teeth. “Now you finally got a friend for your crippled daughter.”

Luz’s knee whips up in a powerful jackknife kick straight into Hard’s groin. Hard’s Magnum flies from his hand. He grabs his groin in an anguished wail, gaping at Luz with eyes wide in shock. She rips her pistol from its holster and smacks the gun’s gorilla-grip handle against the side of Hard’s head with a loud crack. Hard drops to the ground, his feet kicking out at the gravel in pain. Luz stands above Hard, who is writhing in the dust. She aims her pistol down at him.

“You mention my daughter again, I’ll kill you!”

A
line of shrimping boats is anchored along a concrete pier jutting out into Key West Harbor. The boats’ tall masts and winged outriggers are decorated with strands of twinkling white lights. On the pier, a band plays festive Caribbean music to a crowd of shrimpers,
their families, and town locals gathered beneath an overhead banner declaring
SHRIMP FLEET BLESSING
. In the crowd are Luz and Joan with Carmen and Nina. Nina sits in her wheelchair, her brown eyes taking in the scene with nervous excitement.

Big Conch bullies his way through the center of the crowd. He holds two bottles of beer as he cocks his head back and forth, looking for someone. He spots Zoe dancing with a shrimper, her flared skirt spinning around her bare knees as the delighted partner stomps his white rubber boots to the band’s percussive rhythm. Big closes in on the shrimper and shoves him aside. The man stops dancing and sizes up Big’s imposing stature. The man slinks off. Big offers Zoe one of his two beers. She turns her back on him.

At the edge of the crowd, Hogfish wheels to a squeaky stop on his rusty bicycle. Stretched between the handlebars is the taut fishing line strung with barbed J-hooks. He jerks his head back and forth to the music he hears through the earbuds jammed into his ears and rises from the bicycle’s worn leather seat. He looks over the dancing crowd and glimpses Big following close behind Zoe as she walks quickly away from him.

Out of the darkness behind the line of docked shrimping boats, Noah’s trawler motors up. Inside the pilothouse, Noah steers his vessel between two large boats and cuts his engine. He looks through the window at the crowd on the pier. Behind him in the shadows is the slight figure of Rimbaud. Noah turns and speaks reassuringly in French: “Do what I told you and stay out of sight. Don’t go out on the deck. I’ll return soon.”

Rimbaud grabs Noah’s arm. “I’m afraid. What if they find me?”

“They won’t find you if you stay hidden inside the storage closet.”

Rimbaud’s eyes widen with fear. “They’ll find me and send me back to Haiti, where the earthquake cracked open the underworld, releasing zombies. Zombies breathing the death of cholera search for innocents to suck out their life.”

“Trust me, I’ll protect you. You won’t be sent to Haiti. I’ll come back with someone who can help us.”

Distrust crosses Rimbaud’s face as he slips away toward the storage closet.

Noah heads for the door and steps out of the pilothouse onto the deck. Anchored next to the trawler is a shrimping boat with its name painted along its side,
Pat’s Pride
. Pat stands on her deck, dressed in men’s jeans, shirt, and white rubber boots. She spots Noah and shouts above the raucous music from the band on the pier: “Truth Dog, we’re blessing shrimping boats here! Not pirate-radio boats! Shove off!”

Noah shouts back: “If you swear to stop net-killing endangered turtles, I’ll shove off! Until then, you can fuck off!”

Pat turns her back on Noah and bends over. She slaps her blue-jean-covered butt with a loud smack. “Kiss it, sucky eco-boy!”

On the crowded pier, a Catholic priest appears, dressed in a long billowing red robe. The priest is followed by altar boys in starched white cloaks. The boys swing metal censers smoking with burning incense. The crowd falls
silent. The band stops playing. All eyes go to the priest. He holds high a gold cross with a nailed Jesus. He looks at the long line of shrimping boats with their decorative lights blinking against the black sky. His voice booms: “Father, our shrimping boats are about to sail out again. We pray thee, Father, fill the nets of our men with thy bountiful gifts. We also beseech your Holy Mother, Mary, to shine her guiding light on our brave men, protect them from danger and stormy seas, return them home to the bosom fold of their families and loved ones.” The crowd shouts, “Amen!”

An old white-haired black shrimper walks with halting steps in front of the boats. His face is etched with deep lines from a lifetime under the sun. He holds in his hands a large fluted conch shell. He stops and raises the narrow end of the pink luminescent shell to his lips. He takes a deep breath and blows a high-pitched melancholic note.

Nina, seated in her wheelchair next to Luz, bends her head to the conch shell’s unsettling wail. She becomes agitated. Luz places her hands on Nina’s shoulders to calm her. The old shrimper blows harder into the shell, forcing a shrill note into the night air. Nina’s frail body trembles.

The old shrimper keeps blowing as women from the crowd step to the edge of the pier, facing the anchored boats. The women hold large bunches of long-stemmed white roses. They solemnly toss the flowers at the brightly painted high hulls of the boats. The roses hit the wooden hulls with soft thuds and fall below, where they scatter on the water and float around the boats. Zoe, among the women, tosses all of her roses except her last one, which she keeps, breaking off its long green stem, then securing its prominent white bloom next to her ear.

Noah jumps down from the deck of his trawler onto the pier and walks toward Zoe. He is grabbed roughly from behind. He spins around, staring straight into the face of Hogfish.

Hogfish screams urgently: “Roses can’t stop El Finito from coming! Listen to the roses talking! Chattering away like mourning widows of drowned shrimpers! They’re saying the Devil’s wind is winding up to punch the lights out of civilization! Roses are crying because the hurricane is coming!”

From behind Hogfish, at the far end of the pier, Big Conch lights the fuse of a fireworks cannon-barrel launcher. Shrieking fireworks sail high into the night sky and explode, illuminating the uplifted faces of the cheering crowd.

From inside Noah’s trawler, Rimbaud stares wide-eyed through the pilothouse window. His terrified face lights up from fireworks bursting with brilliant streamers. He cringes at the exploding sounds and twists his body in sharp turns, as if each of the flaring fireworks has him as its intended target. He falls to his knees and scrambles, with his head down, from the pilothouse out onto the deck. Fireworks whistle in the air around him; dazzling light showers down from above. He scurries to the boat’s edge and hurls himself overboard, plunging from sight beneath the water.

The crowd on the pier watches the last of the trailing light fade from the night sky. A belligerent voice calls out, “Fuck the eco-Gestapo!” The crowd turns to Pat, unfurling a canvas banner from her boat’s side railing. The banner proclaims
NO TURTLE EXCLUDERS ON SHRIMP NETS!
Some in the crowd break into an eruption of cheers at the sight of the banner. Pat shouts defiantly: “Listen, all of
you! My family fished turtles for generations off of Key West. No eco-Gestapo can dictate to me. I’ll net turtles, harpoon turtles, hook turtles, kill turtles with my bare hands if I want. The ocean is the last free frontier, the final home of the brave.”

More cheers burst from the crowd, followed by loud boos from others. Men angrily wave their fists and shove one another, their reddened faces inches apart. Women jostle each other, screaming vulgar insults. The priest frantically waves his gold crucifix in the air, but he is ignored.

The band strikes up a sudden rhythmic dance tune. Noah breaks away from Hogfish and makes his way to Zoe. He slips his arm around her waist and spins her in a dance to the band’s beat. Some in the crowd stand back, giving Noah and Zoe room; others join in the dancing. Luz lifts Nina up from the wheelchair and sways her in her arms to the joyous rhythm.

Zoe stops dancing and pushes Noah away. “If I want to dance with you, I’ll make the choice.” She pulls out the white rose tucked behind her ear and hands it to him. “You didn’t know you were in a garden of roses when you had it.”

Noah holds the rose up and plucks off a petal. “She loves me.” He plucks off another petal with a brave grin. “She loves me not.”

“You can pluck every petal off that rose, but it won’t bring me back. Marriage is not a one-way street just going your way. The street goes both ways.” She turns and walks off, leaving Noah alone with his rose.

Along the entire length of the concrete pier, the diesel engines of shrimping boats roar to life. The crowd rushes
to the pier’s edge, waving good-bye to the boats motoring away. The lights of the fleet become distant on the sea’s horizon.

L
ong after the fleet has disappeared and the crowd has left the pier, Noah and Luz stand alone in the night in front of Noah’s trawler. A stiff breeze off the ocean blows in, tugging at Luz’s white guayabera shirt. She looks impatiently at Noah. “It’s late; I need to get home to my family. Why did you ask me to stay behind with you?”

“I need your help with something. I didn’t want to mention it in front of Joan.”

“I don’t keep secrets from Joan. What’s so important that can’t be talked about in front of your sister?”

“I’ll show you.” Noah leads the way onto his trawler. They walk across the deck into the dark pilothouse. Noah switches on the overhead light and calls out in French, “It’s safe! No need to hide!” He waits for an answer—silence—calls out again: “This woman I brought can help.” He moves to the storage closet in the corner, pushes back its canvas curtain, and looks inside. “Damn, the boy is gone.”

“What boy?” Luz walks to the closet and peers in. “Who’s supposed to be in here?”

Noah doesn’t answer. He picks up a half-finished bottle of rum from the broadcasting table and uncorks it. He
takes a swig as he stares through the pilothouse window at the ocean. “Makes no difference now who he is. He’s vanished.”

L
uz steers her white Charger down the main drag of Duval Street. The flanking sidewalks are crowded with gawking tourists passing gaudy trinket shops, boisterous open-air bars crowded with long-haired motorcycle bikers, tattoo parlors filled with glassy-eyed stoned teenagers, and chattering people at outdoor restaurant tables beneath towering banyan trees. Luz keeps a vigilant eye for lowlife crack dealers, skinhead punks pimping young runaway girls from the North, and tweaked meth-heads looking to start a fight with someone, or with themselves, or with a plate-glass window.