by Pablo Medina
SWIMMING
TO MIAMI
Out of gas and taking water where the prow had rammed into a piece of flotsam, the Ana María floated helplessly past the tall buildings of Miami, carried north by the Gulf Stream at great speed. When Johnny Luna realized that they might miss their destination altogether and wind up circling the Sargasso Sea forever, he took to the oars and began rowing as hard as he could toward the shore. Obdulio, his mind too simple or too complex to understand the situation, sat on the leather Chrysler seat and stared at the high clouds morphing into a myriad of shapes over the Florida Peninsula.
He saw a panther biting the neck of a lion, a ballerina leaping over a bishop, a giraffe on fire, ten angels pissing into a bottle, an old man with a crooked nose and a single horn growing from his forehead, a beast with the head of a crocodile and the wings of a bat, a baseball player who had just struck out, an ox, a 1956 Buick, and a pregnant mare with the face of the Virgin Mary.
¡Coño! We’re going by Miami, Johnny said, interrupting Obdulio’s catalog.
After two hours his hands were raw and bleeding, his upper back felt like someone had taken a baseball bat to it, and his arms were as heavy as concrete. Obdulio woke from his catalog and pointed out a stretch of shore toward which they could aim. In a final burst of energy Johnny rowed the last two hundred yards like a galley slave until the Ana María nosed itself onto the sand. Johnny jumped off the boat to secure it, and as he did so, a group of naked men and women came running to help. Johnny couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
¡El Paraíso! Obdulio screamed as he took off his shirt.
Paraíso no, an old man in the group said. Haulover Beach.
He was wiry and brown and his long hair was tied in a ponytail. He was surrounded by equally tanned people, all of them naked except for a few wearing straw hats and old baseball caps. By now the group of nudists had pulled the Ana María off the water and were walking around it admiring its construction.
Miami? Johnny asked. Obdulio had taken off his clothes and was dancing around the group, who were as happy to see him naked as he was to see them. ¡Eto tá buenísimo, buenísimo! Obdulio said as he was embraced by a lanky and very jolly woman whose breasts flapped against his face.
Miami down there, the old man said, pointing to the south. About five miles. Welcome to America!
Johnny gave a pained smile. He never liked being unclothed in front of others, just as he never liked others unclothed in front of him, not even his wife. Now his emotions were experiencing a strange reversal, and he felt a growing discomfort at having his clothes on in front of the nudists. Modesty got the best of him, however, and all he could do was take off his shirt, which he folded neatly, though it was smudged and wrinkled and smelled of gasoline, and placed on top of a plastic cooler. His shoes he had left behind on the boat, wrapped in plastic so they wouldn’t get wet.
The nudists led Johnny and Obdulio to their encampment about fifty yards away, and soon they were sitting on the sand devouring ham sandwiches and drinking beer. Johnny’s embarrassment was gone along with his shirt. He looked over at the Ana María, glistening in the sun, and was overcome with emotion. He’d failed to cross six times, and he made sure he wouldn’t fail again by building a solid, beautiful boat. Except for the piece of sea junk that had opened a breach in the starboard side of the prow, the Ana María had held and taken them safely across. There wasn’t a better boat anywhere. With tears in his eyes, he raised his fifth bottle of Mexican beer and said in his best American-movie English, I want to be thanking you very much. Viva los Estados Unidos, Viva la libertad! Obdulio followed suit, and so did the rest of the nudists, except for a fellow with a handlebar mustache who looked like an overweight Jerry Colonna. He complained about aliens taking over the country.
You can’t go anywhere without running into these people, even Europe, he said, chewing on a piece of carrot smeared with onion dip that stuck to his mustache.
A middle-aged woman with the breasts of a seventeen-year-old girl said, In this country you’re free to do as you wish, and as far as I’m concerned everyone is welcome, especially the hungry and the oppressed. She looked over at Obdulio, her face bathed in compassion.
I don’t know about oppressed, the man with the mustache said, but these boys look pretty well fed to me.
Johnny had had his fill of food and drink and wanted to move on. He was seeing double and the beach was tilting away from the ocean. Obdulio was still eating. His cheeks were smeared with mayonnaise, and it looked to Johnny like he was getting an erection, though he wasn’t sure. It might have been the way Obdulio was sitting.
He was about to order him to get his clothes on when they heard voices in the distance and turned to see a man in a gray suit and a woman in high heels followed by a cameraman. The three were tramping in their direction, past an animated volleyball game and a European family that seemed never to have lost paradise, let alone regained it.
Obdulio, Johnny said, ponte la ropa. Obdulio started fumbling for his clothes, but it was too late. With his mouth full of ham, lettuce, and whole-wheat bread, he mumbled something back and smiled. Bits of ham were stuck in between his teeth and he looked like a shark that had swallowed a pig whole.
Not to worry, said the old man with the long hair. Es el television his-pánico.
Yes, me worry, said Johnny. He quickly retrieved his shirt and put it on.
Where are the balseros? asked the male reporter. He was a tall, handsome Cuban American with a voice trained to be deep and professional. He was out of breath, and sweat dribbled down the sides of his face. From the looks of it he had pulled this kind of duty before—balsero stories were a dime a dozen in those days—and he was not too happy; nor was the woman, who kept rearranging her hair and smacking her lips. She had to balance her considerable girth on Manolo Blahnik shoes, which sank all the way into the sand every time she moved. She complained about the heat and her puñetero producer, who kept giving her shitty assignments.
If it were up to me, said the cameraman, they would all sink in the sea. Que se ahoguen pal carajo.
Johnny and Obdulio stood up. Johnny tucked his shirt into his pants. Obdulio was still naked, his penis at half mast.
The female reporter shook her head dejectedly and looked away. The cameraman fidgeted with his camera. The male reporter, holding the microphone to his mouth as if the taping had already begun, wanted to know what had happened to the raft.
The Ana María no is a raft, Johnny said. He pointed at the boat. I built it I myself.
We were told there was a raft, said the reporter. You could cross the Pacific on a boat like that.
I work on it six months each night, Johnny said in proud deliberate English. He tried to sound like Ricardo Montalbán in Fantasy Island.
Martínez, the male reporter called out to the cameraman. Why don’t you break the boat up a little. Make it seem more weather beaten, ¿tú sabes?
Martínez gathered up some dry seaweed and placed the camera carefully on it, making sure it didn’t touch the sand. Then he started throwing karate kicks at the prow of the Ana María.
Johnny felt like his very grandmother was being kicked to death.
¡Coño! Johnny said. What are you doing? Then he jumped on Martínez, who fell backward and scurried away on his hands and feet like a crab, kicking up sand as he went.
El tipo está loco, man, the cameraman said. He stood and looked over at the camera. The male reporter held Johnny back.
It is my boat, Johnny said.
Take it easy, the male reporter said.
When things had settled down and Martínez was a safe distance away, the reporter explained to Johnny that crossing the Straits of Florida was a dangerous thing, and lots of people had lost their lives trying. Johnny said that that was because they didn’t know what they were doing. The reporter said he understood, bu
t they couldn’t run a story on television about someone who had made the crossing on a sturdy boat he built himself. You are either trying to flee communism or off on a pleasure cruise, and believe me, nobody’s interested in two guys on a pleasure cruise. This boat looks brand-new. Now he was lecturing the group of nudists around them. We need to show how hard it is for the people, how much they are having to sacrifice, even their own lives, in order to escape the tyranny of Castro.
He stopped, wiped his brow with a silk handkerchief he pulled from the front pocket of his jacket, and added as an afterthought, Too bad we don’t have a mandarria.
What’s a mandarria? one of the nudists asked.
A sledgehammer.
That’s all Johnny needed to hear.
Me cago en el coño de tu madre, he said to the reporter. On that note he sounded like nobody but himself. You under-estan, idiota? ¡Me cago en el recontracoño de tu madre!
He grabbed the microphone from the reporter’s hand and threw it into the sea.
That’s a five-hundred-dollar mike, the reporter said, running into the surf and trying to retrieve it. He came out dripping wet, his suit ruined, his pink silk tie turned a corrugated brown. He stood inches away from Johnny and said, You’ll pay for this, balsero de mierda, and ordered his crew to get out of the goddamn beach. The female reporter had taken off her expensive shoes and her jacket and given up on her hair, letting the sea breeze blow gently through it. She didn’t seem half-bad that way, more relaxed and easygoing. As she ambled toward the exit through the sand dunes, she turned and looked out over the water searching the horizon for God knows what: a sailboat, a respite, a good story.
The police found Johnny and Obdulio walking south toward Miami Beach on Route A1A. Obdulio was fully dressed and was even sporting a New York Yankees cap one of the nudists had given him as a good-luck charm. Johnny hadn’t been able to find his shoes in the boat, and so he went barefoot, hopping whenever he stepped on a pebble or a burr but otherwise happy they were headed in the right direction. He was singing boleros and looking forward to the day when there would be a woman on the other side of his love songs.
The police surrounded them with three vehicles, as if they were bank robbers or child rapists. Six officers spilled out, five in uniform, one in a sports jacket who spoke in the raspy baritone of Broderick Crawford. Johnny couldn’t understand a thing. He was lost in a sea of language no American movie or television show would help unravel. The sky turned dark, and peals of thunder rolled over them, followed by lightning flashes far inland over the Everglades.
Johnny was afraid. Broderick Crawford was a tough cop and a drunk as well. He tried to explain their situation, but all that came out was a jumble of words that sounded like a lost language from a remote part of the Amazon. Obdulio was smiling his usual fool’s smile and stood at attention giving the officers a military salute. Johnny shook his head. One of the uniformed officers handcuffed them and said something about remaining silent—Johnny caught that—and then he led them to the back of the paddy wagon. Just then the rain came down in thick sheets that made everything blurred. Mala fortuna, mala fortuna. Obdulio’s face was twisted by apprehension and his eyes were wide open. He looked to Johnny for reassurance but found none.
Changó, Changó, he yelled. Ampáranos.
Changó was offering no protection today. The van moved with a lurch, then did a U-turn, and headed back north away from Miami, the two cruisers in front and the wagon following them, lights flashing, sirens wailing. It was too much for Johnny, who, exhausted from the last ten years of his life, the desperation, the secret planning, the work of building the Ana María, and weary from the hangover that was beginning to manifest itself in every cell of his brain, began to blaspheme God with such ferocity that God himself—if there is one—must have trembled in his heavenly seat. It rained hard, harder than Johnny could curse and Obdulio could pray. And as suddenly as it started, the rain ceased and the sun came out again.
A few minutes later, when the water evaporated from the asphalt and the cars, turning the air into thick Florida soup, the caravan stopped. The van doors opened and Johnny and Obdulio were led into a glass and brick building and made to stand before a young officer sitting behind a tall desk. His head was clean shaven, and he said to them in rapid Miami Spanish that they were under arrest for vagrancy and recited their Miranda rights.
Vago, Johnny said. Vago? There were traces of Alfonso Bedoya’s voice from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. I’m no vago. I build my boat. Wood by wood. In Jaimanitas. Now we come to La Yuma to work more.
Johnny protested that he was a decent man. They’d landed among a group of nudists. It wasn’t their fault.
¿Cómo? said the booking officer.
Era inevitable, Johnny said, lying slightly. They obligate us to take off our clothes. They say it is natural. In Ho-lo-beh Beach.
The booking officer turned to the two remaining arresting officers and translated for them what Johnny said. The three of them broke out in laughter, and Obdulio laughed, too, though he didn’t understand anything. Only Johnny was serious, serious as stone, serious as someone who didn’t want to get sent back to the hell he’d just left. While the officers figured out what to do, he sat on a bench directly across from the booking desk. Obdulio asked him what was going on and he said he didn’t know.
The only thing I know is that I don’t know anything, Johnny said, quoting a self-styled philosopher who lived in his neighborhood in Havana. Maybe they were dead and this is purgatory; maybe this is a way station on the way to paradise, or hell. He kept the thoughts to himself, not wanting to alarm Obdulio, who could go from elation to panic in an instant.
Someone brought Johnny a pair of sneakers that were too large for him, and they got back into the paddy wagon and drove to Haulover. They walked across the wide beach toward the nudists, to whom the policemen must have appeared like Nazi storm troopers—two big American men in black uniforms and a smaller Cuban American trailing behind, the two balseros hidden among them. The volleyball players stopped batting their ball and several of the nudists began to gather their things.
At the water’s edge Johnny noticed that the Ana María had disappeared. He looked up and down the beach and back to the dunes that separated the road from the beach, even out to sea, thinking perhaps the tide had taken it. By this point the old man with the ponytail had come over to the troopers, and before he could speak to them, Johnny asked him in his frantic movie English where his boat was.
The Coast Guard sank it, the old man said.
What? Johnny said, though it came out sounding like Guat.
The Cuban American officer explained that that was what the Coast Guard did with all vessels that came illegally from Cuba. But Johnny should be happy. He had touched American soil. That meant he could stay. Wet foot, dry foot, remember that when you go before la migra. Wet foot, dry foot, he repeated slowly so Johnny could catch it.
Johnny didn’t want to catch anything except a break. Crossing the Florida Straits had been his obsession for ten years. Now his obsession was gone along with the Ana María. He was here on solid ground. Wet foot, dry foot. He stood still a moment pondering whatever it was fate had prepared for him. He had set out for Miami and instead landed among a bunch of crazy nudists. ¡Qué cosa! Still in handcuffs, he started walking down the beach away from the group, increasing his gait as he heard the policemen’s voices yelling to stop, and then he broke into a gallop, clopping along in his big sneakers until they slid from his feet and he could run freely. The voices got dimmer and finally stopped altogether. He felt like he had escaped demons wanting to pull him back, and just as he looked over his shoulder to see where they were, he tripped and landed with his cheek on the sand. For a moment he was stunned. He could see the waves moving up the beach and reaching his left arm; he could hear seagulls squawking overhead and the far-off hum of traffic. He could feel
his breath as it moved in and out of his lungs and under that his heart beating loud and deep like a drum just before it breaks. He turned to face the sky. He’d never felt so tired. He closed his eyes a moment and heard Miami calling. He stood and wriggled his arms until the handcuffs slid from his wrists, then waded into the water, and swam toward her with long easy strokes. In his sleep he was swimming to Miami.
THE SPANISH
TINGE
Jelly Roll was with a woman when the Cuban showed up at his door looking for work. The Cuban was holding a horn case in his left hand. The right, long and graceful, dangled at his side and swung back and forth grazing against his pants.
At this hour? Jelly Roll asked. It’s one o’clock. Good thing I’m done.
I’m not, the woman said.
Give me a minute, Jelly Roll said over his shoulder. Then he turned to the Cuban and asked his name.
The Cuban had not eaten very well in his life. His cheeks were hollow and his jacket hung loosely from his shoulders, pant cuffs barely below his ankles. He was wearing somebody else’s suit.
Adalberto Fuentes, the Cuban said.
That’s some name.
Yes, the Cuban said, looking beyond Jelly Roll to the woman. She was caramel colored with straight hair and full lips and she was very beautiful. The sheets were pulled all the way up to her neck.
A-dal-ber-to, the Cuban repeated. I need a job.
I’ll call you Bert. Sugar, meet Bert, Jelly Roll said. He looked into the Cuban’s eyes. Come by the club tomorrow at five. See if you can play that thing.
Adalberto turned on his heels and, in his elation, walked the three miles to Franklin Street, where all the Cubans stayed. There were flute players and piano players and bass men. Couple of violinists, half a dozen horn men. Adalberto acted like he was the only cornet player among them. He was cocky and ignorant, but he had a natural talent that was bigger than he knew how to handle. Two weeks in town and already he had an audition with Jelly Roll Morton.
