American Tropic - By Thomas Sanchez Page 0,1
The mirror reflects Joan’s naked blondness on the bed behind, superimposed over the image of her own shadow-skinned reflection. She drops her loose shirt over the pistol holstered at her hip and looks closely at herself in the mirror. Her black hair is cropped short; her smooth facial features are natural, devoid of any makeup; her eyes hold a steady gaze and do not blink.
Luz leaves Joan sleeping in the bedroom and walks with quiet steps down a narrow dark hallway to a closed door. She pushes the door silently open and looks in on two teenaged girls asleep in separate beds. The older is a healthy sixteen-year-old; her untroubled breath is even, her lips are curved in a smile. In the opposite bed is a younger girl, of fourteen, her bone-thin body pallid and hairless from chemotherapy treatments fighting her childhood leukemia. Next to her bed is a wheelchair, and a nightstand covered with medicine bottles. She stirs awake; her eyes open slowly, with painful effort. She smiles at the sight of Luz. Luz puts her fingers to her lips and blows the girl a kiss, then softly shuts the bedroom door.
In her living room, Luz kneels before a walnut-wood Spanish chest. The top of the chest is commanded by a tall ceramic statue of a Black Madonna. The Madonna holds in her arms an infant child with a beatific smile etched on its face. Luz strikes a match and lights a candle in a red glass holder in front of the statue. She clasps her hands together in a pointed prayerful position. She looks straight into the Madonna’s soulful eyes as she whispers her prayer.
“As a mother myself, I beseech you to take pity on my daughters, Nina and Carmen. Cure my little Nina of her cancer and suffering. Only you, holiest of all mothers, can stop the pain of an innocent child. Give me the strength to protect my daughters and my beloved, Joan. Give me the strength to do what I must do to keep my family safe from the evil that surrounds them.”
Luz’s misty eyes focus on the candle flame flickering in front of the Madonna. The flame sparkles and burns stronger, transforming into a brilliant glow.
A red rising sun emerges on the ocean’s dark horizon. Out of the sun flies a winged armada of seabirds. The birds swoop down from the sky over the water’s surface. They glide above the humped shell of a large sea turtle below. The turtle’s green front fins stroke through the blue, propelling the primeval creature’s bulk relentlessly forward. The birds pass on; beneath them, dolphins break the sea’s surface. The dolphins’ sleek wet bodies arch out of the water into the air in a dazzling, twisting spray. They then dive back out of sight. Impervious to the dolphins, the birds sail on over the dark saucer-shaped shadows of giant stingrays just below the ocean’s skin. The birds continue their journey over open water. They suddenly bank hard, whooshing the air as they descend in a wing-flapping circle around a channel-marker buoy afloat below.
The large anchored buoy’s wide platform base sloshes in the water. Rising up from the base is a tall metal pole with an orange plastic star-shaped reflector at its peak. The reflector glints with shards of orange light. A dead man’s naked body is tied by a thick knotted rope to the pole. Slashed on the body’s abdomen is a painted red X. A steel spear is pierced through the man’s chest. From below the spear a stream of blood has hardened into a congealed purple crust. The white lips of the man’s blood-drained face have been sewn crudely shut with fishing line. His ears have been cut off, leaving two gashed holes. The orbs of the man’s eyes remain open. The eyes stare off across the distance of the ocean. In death, the eyes seem fixed on a horror that the sewn-up lips cannot scream the name of.
Between the islands of Key West and Cuba, the sun’s globe rises into the sky above a weather-beaten 1950s West Indian Heritage trawler. The anchored boat sways in a watery blue canyon created by the rise and fall of waves. On the bow of its thirty-six-foot-long hull is painted the name Noah’s Lark. A twelve-foot-high steel radio-transmitter antenna is bolted to the deck. Inside the windowed pilothouse is a jerry-rigged radio-broadcasting control room. Seated on a ragged swivel chair in front of a console of outdated analog equipment