Free American Tropic by Thomas Sanchez Page A

out with my Neptune Bay.”
    Chicken bumps up against Big’s knees and vomits a gut-load of half-eaten oyster shells onto Big’s bare feet. “Get out of here, you one-eared mutt!” Big kicks the dogin the ribs. He shouts at Luz as she pulls the yelping Chicken away: “And don’t you come around trying to trick me by pretending you care about saving my hide from some psycho killer. And I damn well don’t need lecturing about how conchs grow their dicks, especially since you don’t have a dick and balls. Hell, you no longer even have tits. You’re a sorry-ass situation.”
    Luz glares at Big. “You’ve got balls … balls for brains.”
    “I’m a sympathetic man, so I won’t respond to that, but answer me this: why, after your mastectomy, didn’t you get some fake titties? You’re a good-looking woman. You’d be a knockout if you bolted on a pair of Vegas-showgirl silicon hooters. That way you wouldn’t look so much like a …”
    “Dyke.”
    “Like a guy trying to be tough but he’s a punk.”
    Luz’s eyes narrow. She nods at the thick gold chain glinting around Big’s neck.
“Un mono que lleva cadenas de oro es todavía un mono.”
    “Speak American.”
    “A monkey wearing gold chains is still a monkey.”
    Big roars with laughter. “Fu-fuck … ing … monkey. That’s great. A goddamn fucking monkey.” His laughter turns to a snarl as he jumps up and slashes the blade of his knife in the air. “I’m not a fucking monkey, you dumb dyke! I’m a goddamn two-hundred-pound male gorilla with five-pound balls and a swinging foot-long dick! Don’t you ever forget it!”
    Luz faces Big. “I can see from the tiny bump in that Speedo you’re wearing that there isn’t much swinging between your legs. You don’t have enough juice to knock up a tick.”

    L uz nervously chews on a conch fritter as she watches the Duval Street night action through the windshield of her parked Charger. She keeps her eyes on the front of a nightclub. A neon rainbow sign arches above the nightclub’s doorway: LITTLE ORPHAN TRANNY’S . The sign’s garish pastel light reflects on three six-foot-tall drag queens with big hair, wearing sequined ball gowns, sashaying back and forth on the sidewalk on six-inch-high stiletto heels. The queens wink false eyelashes, blow kisses, and call out in basso male voices at passing locals, tourists, and high rollers to enter the nightclub and experience the wild side.
    Inside her car, Luz slips another fritter from the paper bag between her legs. Chicken sits beside her, expecting a treat. Luz hands the fritter to Chicken, and he tongues it from her fingers. She continues watching the people going in and out of the nightclub, looking for drug pushers and their clientele of tweaked, cranked, and cracked users and abusers. She flips on her car’s AM-FM radio and switches through the channels until she locks into a weak station. She turns up the volume and listens to the animated voices of Noah’s broadcast coming in through the static.
    “Hey, Truth Dog, I’m a Key West shrimper.”
    “Welcome, shrimper. You’re on pirate radio.”
    “It pisses me off that so many of your callers are against commercial shrimpers and long-liners here in the Keys.We’re seen as rednecks who don’t give a shit about marine ecology. Hell, we’re the ones who make a living from the sea. You won’t find stronger guardians of marine life than us.”
    “I’m with you. Many of the old-timers here were the original ecologists, against the slaughter of the turtles, whose meat was being turned into steaks and soup, their shells made into combs and toothbrushes.”
    “Right, we were the first to use excluders on our boats. We were the first to use safety O-hooks instead of J-hooks on our longlines.”
    “My rage is against those who refuse to do that. You know how many endangered female leatherback turtles are left laying their eggs in the sands of Florida’s east coast?”
    “Not