No use trying to persuade him to stay, Juan thought.
“Have you boys eaten? Don’t have much, but no reason to leave anything behind. I could heat black beans and a little rice,” said Andrés.
“I’ll have some,” said Raúl.
“You better eat too, Juan. You’ll need your strength,” said Andrés.
“Do you have any rum?” Raúl asked.
“I have a bottle in the cabinet. Would you like me to pour you some?”
“No, but let me have the bottle. I’m going out to check on the guard situation while you heat the food.”
Half an hour later Raúl returned, smelling of rum.
“Wouldn’t take the bottle,” he said.
“You didn’t make them suspicious?” asked Juan.
“No. Spilled some rum on my shirt and sat there on the sand acting miserable until they found me. Told them my wife ran off with another man while I was in Angola.”
“Can’t believe your cojones,” said Juan. “You sure they didn’t get suspicious?”
“Yes, I’m sure. We spoke of Africa. Showed them my medals. Told them how many imperialists I had killed and what a shock it was to get back home and find my wife gone. I think they truly felt sorry for me.”
“Come on and eat before it gets cold,” said Andrés.
They sat on taburetes—rustic wooden chairs—at a small table pushed against the wall next to the paddles, and ate the beans and rice. Raúl passed the rum around the table and each of them took a few swigs out of the bottle.
“Better wait till they move down the beach before we get the things from the car,” said Juan.
“Did you get everything?” Andrés asked.
“Yes,” Juan said. “But we had a close call.”
“Trouble?”
“Not really,” said Raúl. “Stopped around Tarara by the G-2. Young kid. Didn’t look old enough to carry a gun. He was more scared than we were. Isn’t that right, Juan?”
“Yes,” Juan said. “He sure looked scared. Didn’t see anything, either. We hid the stuff under the backseat.” For a moment Juan felt ashamed to lie like that and pretend he had not been afraid. But he was used to lying by now, and soon he got over the unpleasantness and the shame.
An hour later Raúl brought the inner tubes and the air pump from the car and spread them out on the floor of the bungalow. Juan and Andrés took turns pumping air into the tubes while Raúl made trips to the car, picking up odds and ends.
“Better lash them together after we get to the beach,” said Raúl. “Too awkward to take it out the door after it’s put together.”
“They might see us working out there,” said Juan.
“Just have to take that chance,” Raúl said. “In fact, don’t pump them up too big here. We’ll finish pumping them up at the beach. They won’t get through the door if you pump them too big.”
After sunset, clouds had moved in from the northwest and it was overcast and pitch black out by the water. They laid the inner tubes in a row on the coarse sand and finished pumping air into them. Every few seconds Juan stopped and looked over his shoulder. The squeaking noise the pump made each time he pushed in the rusty cylinder sounded much louder out here, and any moment he expected to see one of the guards looming over him, a growling German shepherd at his side.
They lashed the inner tubes in a straight line and strapped the tarpaulin over them. They had dragged the raft into the surf and were about to push off when Raúl decided to go back to the car.
“What the hell are you doing now?” Juan whispered.
“Just going to get a couple more lines. Be right back.”
As Raúl came back with the lines, Juan saw a flashlight coming around a point off in the distance.
“Hurry, hurry, they’re coming back,” he whispered, on the verge of panic.
Raúl finished tying the lines, threw the paddles on the raft, and the three of them waded deeper into the water, holding on to the lashings. Soon they were drifting eastward along the coast with the outgoing tide.
By midnight the sound of barking dogs on the beach, and of an occasional passing truck, and all the other sounds of the shore that had been with them for the first few hours after they put in, had faded and died, like the glow of Havana on the horizon that had vanished behind them in the enveloping gloom.
None of them had ever been at sea. And now their eyes were fixed on the dark water, the rhythmic splashing of the paddles mesmerizing them, as they sat on the awkward raft. No one spoke. There were only the sounds of the sea.
By the time the overcast began to clear from the northwest, the paddles had grown heavy and blisters had formed on their hands. As the sea slowly turned gray with the first hint of dawn, Raúl and Andrés began to nod off.
Only Juan was still paddling when the stars above the eastern horizon dimmed with the coming sun. His eyes turned north to the rising stars of the Great Bear and then overhead to the tight Pleiades cluster, which was fading rapidly in the soft light. The wind was fair and warm and blew from the south.
A proper boat would have been easier to navigate, he thought. But a boat would have increased their chances of being detected and captured. Besides, where could they have gotten a boat? And if they had managed to find a boat, where would they have hidden it while they made their preparations and collected each item needed for the crossing? The truth is, the raft served them well. It was as fine an inner-tube raft as ever attempted the crossing.
Juan thought about the native Cubans who had lived in the island before Columbus arrived. He remembered studying about them while he was still in elementary school, before the revolution, before everything changed. He thought about how the Tainos and the other, more primitive tribe, the Siboneys, plied these same waters in canoes dug from the trunks of their sacred ceiba trees hundreds of years before the Spanish came and discovered the green islands of the Caribbean. He remembered looking at the sea through the window in his classroom and imagining what it must have been like to kneel in a shallow dugout canoe, paddling out toward the horizon as the color of the water changed from a crystal aquamarine near the shore to a profound dark blue over the fantastic trenches and basins of the ocean floor, where steep walls drop thousands and thousands of feet to a place that is dark and cold, where the water never mixes with other, warmer waters.
Juan thought about these things and he thought about the girl with the dark hair and radiant blue eyes who was now in Miami. Then he eased his lean, muscular body into a reclining position on the canvas and fell asleep listening to the muffled sound of the water lapping against the inner tubes. He dreamed of sweet-smelling green fields of sugarcane, and his dream was so vivid that he heard the rustling of the cane in the wind and then, later in his dream, he heard the sound of hard, driving rain beating down on the tall stalks of cane.
As the morning brought the colors back to the sea, birds came from their nesting places in the river estuaries along the north coast, looking for fish. A pair of terns circled with intense concentration, one or the other occasionally diving into the warm, silky water near the raft.
Later the breeze picked up, giving the water a light chop, and dolphins began to feed on a school of mackerel north of the raft. The dolphins worked in concert, herding the mackerel into a tight circle. The mackerel churned the water inside the circle, and their frenzied movements made a sound like the rain makes when it falls on the sea. The sky was brilliant blue and broken only by a few feathery cirrus clouds moving fast to the northwest.
Two burly arms shook Juan awake. “How far have we come?” asked a groggy voice behind him.
“We came far in the night,” Juan answered as he yawned. “At least twelve miles, maybe more. The outgoing tide helped.”
Raúl was sitting on the inner tube lashed behind Juan’s. He was leaning back now, looking at the feathery clouds. As he sat there, with his massive legs and arms and shoulders spilling over the sides of the inner tube, he looked absurd, almost comical, Juan thought.<
br />
“Bueno, well, I guess even if we wanted to, we couldn’t go back now,” said Raúl.
“Damn right,” said Juan. “We beat the contra-corriente. We are in the main stream. We can’t turn back.”
The contra-corriente is what Cubans call the currents that spin off the Gulf Stream, like eddies, and sometimes push you back toward the coast.
Andrés was now beginning to stir.
“Who’s going back?” he asked, his eyes still closed. “Are we going back?”
“Nobody’s going back, Andrés,” said Juan. “We’re just talking about the contra-corriente. We beat it last night and now we are in the great stream; we can’t turn back.”
“Good,” said Andrés, rubbing his eyes. “I was afraid we were going back. Is anybody hungry?”
“Sure,” said Raúl. “I’m starving. What have you got there?”
Andrés took out a can of Russian meat and a rusty can opener from his knapsack, which was strapped to the raft with the same line they used to secure the tarpaulin to the inner tubes. He opened the can and handed it to Raúl, saying, “Here, eat some of this. Give some to Juan, too.”
“Aren’t you going to have any?” Raúl asked.
“No. I’m not hungry. You and Juan eat well and finish it up.”
When Juan and Raúl finished eating, Andrés untied a bottle of water that he had fastened to an eyelet on the canvas with some cord, and handed it to Raúl.
“Drink up, boys, you’re going to need your strength to paddle this old man all the way to Miami!” he said, and his eyes brightened.
Andrés then reached into his knapsack and pulled out a creased clear plastic bag. The bag was folded over several times and held together with rubber bands. He removed the rubber bands and slowly unfolded the plastic. From the bag he took out a small Bible with a worn red leather cover and opened it to the place where he kept a photograph. The photograph was black and white and faded and showed a little girl about seven years old, with a big smile and cheerful dark eyes. Andrés turned the photograph over and read the name and the date scrawled in pencil on the back in a child’s handwriting: Margarita, October 29, 1967. He then ran his fingers over the name and remembered the day his daughter wrote it—a bright Sunday, twenty-three years ago, the day before she left for Miami. His shirt, unbuttoned to the waist, was fluttering in the light breeze. The breeze felt pleasant on his skin, and in the warmth of the morning sun, Andrés was happier than he had been in many years.
Chapter Three
When Juan first saw the gunboat, it was a small black dot on the southern horizon. It was a Soviet-made Zhuk-class fast attack boat out of the naval base at Canasí.
“I think he’s coming this way,” Juan said, tracking its course with his eyes.
“No, I don’t think so. He can’t see us,” said Raúl.
“Maybe he can’t see us, but he’s coming this way,” Juan said.
“No, he’s not coming this way. It just looks that way. It’s an illusion,” said Raúl.
“It’s no illusion. He’s bearing down on us!” said Juan with such panic in his voice that he flushed, embarrassed, upon hearing himself.
“Maybe he has us on radar,” Andrés said, sensing Juan’s embarrassment.
“He can’t have us on radar; we’re too small,” said Raúl.
“Maybe it’s a good radar,” said Juan, trying to regain his composure.
“What the hell do you know about radar?” said Raúl.
“A hell of a lot more than you! Anyway, they can probably see us already.”
“No, they can’t see us. It’s a coincidence.”
By now Juan could see the white spray where the dark bow of the gunboat split the water, and he felt his heart pounding out of control, the blood vessels pulsing in his head.
“Maybe we better lie flat,” he said weakly.
“Get in the water! Everybody get in the water behind the raft! Now!” yelled Raúl.
Juan and Raúl slid into the water behind the raft. Andrés did not follow. He slowly wrapped the Bible and the photograph back in the plastic bag and replaced the rubber bands. As the twin diesels throttled down, Andrés put the bag in his knapsack and fastened the knapsack tightly to the raft.
By the time Andrés finished the last knot, he could see the pennant numbers on the gunboat and the uniformed men standing on the deck. He sat on the raft for a few more moments, unruffled, gazing at the water. Then he looked up toward the boat, waved wildly, and yelled in a deep voice, “¡Aquí! ¡Aquí! Here! Here!”
“What are you doing, Andrés, are you crazy?” Juan asked between his teeth, as he treaded water behind the raft.
“Quiet, they didn’t see you two. They only saw me. It’s the only way,” Andrés whispered.
Andrés then jumped into the water and started swimming away from the raft, all the while yelling, “¡Aquí! ¡Aquí!”
The gunboat slowed to idle and changed its course away from the raft, toward Andrés. One of the men on the gunboat leaned over the port gunwale and started taunting him.
“Hey, worm! What are you doing in the water? Don’t you know fish eat worms?” he yelled.
“What should we do with this worm?” he asked the others. “What good is a miserable, filthy worm?”
“Maybe he’s good for target practice,” said another.
“Yes, he’d make a good bull’s-eye, wouldn’t he?” the first man agreed.
As the men continued mocking Andrés, the gunboat slowly circled him, and Juan and Raúl, holding on to the raft, drifted farther away. Downwind from the boat, Juan could hear the insults and the laughter.
Andrés did not respond to the taunting. He treaded water and kept his eyes fixed on the uniformed men.
“We have to do something, Juan, the bastards might shoot him,” Raúl said under his breath, his big hands squeezing the lines that held the inner tubes together.
The first man drew his pistol and aimed at Andrés’s head. He then raised it a couple of degrees more and pulled the trigger.
The bullet whistled near Andrés and splashed into the water behind him. The man shot again and again, and water splashed all around Andrés. The man seemed to be a good marksman, because the bullets kept hitting the water in a small circle around Andrés’s head without touching him.
Juan, hiding low in the water behind the raft, his eyes just above the surface, was peering through the narrow space between two inner tubes below the place where they were lashed together. From there he could see Andrés’s arms flailing in the water and his head jerking this way and that, away from the spot where each bullet struck. Juan felt cold, as if all the blood and everything else inside his body had been squeezed out, leaving nothing there. And he began to tremble out of control.
“We’ve got to do something,” said Raúl, squeezing the lines until they cut into the palms of his hands. “We have to get their attention before that idiot kills him.”
“There’s nothing we can do, Raúl, nothing. ¡Nada! ¡Nada! ¡Nada!” said Juan, numb with terror. The word nada kept ringing in his head even after he stopped saying it.
It was still ringing when he saw the red and white splatter as a bullet smashed into Andrés’s skull, scattering pieces of his brain on the water.
Someone on the deck of the gunboat yelled, “You’ve hit him!”
The boat then made a half-circle and the engines came to life, churning the water behind the stern and lifting the bow from the water.
The boat headed southeast, but Juan did not watch it go; he was staring at the dark stain made by the blood on the water where Andrés had been. It seemed small at first, but gradually spread on the surface like a cloud, growing lighter as it mixed with the sea.
When they climbed back onto the raft, the breeze was stronger and there were swells on the sea. The surface of the ocean was shimmering, and the play of the light on the water reminded Juan of the shifting patterns made by undulating fields of sugarcane on days when there was a strong wind. He trie
d to think about the fields and about his childhood, before everything changed. But the images of Andrés, and of his blood on the water, would not leave him.
Raúl was the first to speak.
“He did it to save us, Juan. Poor man. He said it was the only way. Didn’t you hear him?”
“Yes, I heard him. I heard him say it was the only way,” Juan said.
“Maybe they wouldn’t have killed him if we had gotten their attention,” said Raúl.
“Maybe they’d have killed us all,” Juan said.
“Still, we should’ve done something. We should’ve done something, Juan.”
“What could we do?”
“At least we’d have been with him.”
“What good would that have done?”
“He wouldn’t have been so alone,” said Raúl, and tears welled in his eyes.
“He did it for us.”
“Yes, he did it for us.”
“He knew what he was doing.”
“Yes, he knew.”
Chapter Four
In the afternoon, flying fish began to break out of the water all around the raft, like a swarm of silver insects with stiff translucent wings rising from the sea. When they broke close to the raft, Juan could hear the rustle of their wings as they left the water, and he was surprised how far their quaint wings could carry them, always in a straight line, away from the predators that came after them from the deep.
Looking at the water, Juan tried to think about the face of the girl in Miami, but her image would not come. He tried to think of her eyes, her hair, her body, but he could not get the thought of Andrés’s head out of his mind. The only thing he saw now was Andrés’s head exploding, with all those clumps of brain and bone flying high in the air and then raining down, like a sudden shower splashing into the sea.
He felt responsible for the death of Andrés, and embarrassed by his own fear. Raúl would have done something if I had not stopped him, he thought. Raúl would have gotten their attention and then they would not have killed him.
But it was always like that. He would start shaking and a negrura sofocante, a suffocating blackness, would come over him, paralyzing him. It was as if he were not there, as if he were no longer a man. And, in truth, he was not. Then this thought would fill him with unbearable shame, and an even greater negrura, a profound darkness, would open up and engulf him, squeezing him, choking him. Each time this happened, he thought his life was at an end. And each time, afterwards, he wished it had ended.
The Lonely Crossing of Juan Cabrera Page 2
