American Tropic - By Thomas Sanchez Page 0,30

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.

In the jungle-thick garden behind Zoe’s two-story house, insects chirp and frogs croak in the dense foliage. The insects and frogs suddenly fall silent as oncoming footsteps sound. A person’s heavy breathing wafts through the air.

A light inside Zoe’s house goes on from the second-story bedroom facing the garden. Through the bedroom’s open window, golden lamplight illuminates her as she hurriedly undresses. She stands naked for a moment, then quickly slips on a silk robe. A sudden gust of wind bangs the wooden plantation shutters against the sides of her bedroom window. She leans out from the window and grabs the wooden shutters. She is caught framed by light behind her; the wind blows her hair and flutters her silk robe. Her robe falls open, exposing the swing of her breasts. She grabs the open robe and pulls it tightly together. She slams the shutters closed.

In the garden, wind rustles the jungle foliage. The noise of insects and frogs starts again. Thunder rumbles overhead; lightning bolts crack the darkness and expose in the garden the upturned body of a Cuban death’s-head palmetto roach. Red fire ants swirl up from the earth around the brown-crusted hoary creature and begin devouring its multitude of legs flailing hopelessly. Rain shoots down from the sky.

Rain slashes onto Pat’s boat, anchored at the shrimping-boat dock. Pat, belowdecks, in a narrow berth, tosses and turns in her sleep. The rain above awakens her. Illuminated numbers on a digital clock next to her glow: 4:02.

A clanging bang from the deck above startles her. She jumps out of the berth and pulls on her clothes. She grabs a flashlight and a sharp fish-boning knife. She shines the beam before her as she climbs the spiral galley ladder to the top deck and steps cautiously out into the rain. She aims the beam in the darkness. The beam illuminates a long rope from the mainmast that was ripped loose by the wind and dangles down. At the rope’s end is a steel pulley, clanging against the deck.

Pat struggles to secure the rope back to the mast in the wind and rain. She ties the rope down, then shines the beam around the boat again. Nothing seems wrong, she goes below. Rain continues to pound on the empty deck.

On the side of Pat’s boat, at the waterline, next to the heavy iron anchor chain, the skull head of a black-and-white-rubber-encased skeleton emerges from the water. The head turns slowly, revealing an iridescent skeleton face with two deep black eye sockets. Hard rain drums on the skeleton’s face.

The skeleton’s black-rubber-gloved fingers rise from the water and grab the anchor chain. The skeleton pulls out of the water, climbs hand over hand up the length of the anchor chain, and stands upright on the deck of the boat. Slung over the skeleton’s shoulder is a speargun. The rain beats on the skeleton as it moves stealthily across the wet deck. It stops before the closed galley door leading belowdecks. The skeleton does not move. It waits. The rain whips harder, thwacking against the skeleton’s tight rubber suit. The skeleton’s bony-fingered rubber hand reaches out slowly and clutches the latch of the galley door. It slides the door back, steps silently through the opening, and closes the door behind.

Halfway down the inside galley spiral ladder leading belowdecks, the flash of a thrown knife whirs past the descending skeleton. The tip of the knife’s blade drives deep into the wood wall behind the skeleton’s skull. The skeleton peers from its deep eye sockets into the surrounding darkness. Out of the darkness Pat appears, her breath bursting in a war-cry as she runs, swinging the barbed hook of a gaffing pole before her with a muscular hurl. The skeleton dives into the shadows. Pat’s gaffing pole