American Tropic - By Thomas Sanchez Page 0,20
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