The Lonely Crossing of Juan Cabrera

by J. Joaquin Fraxedas

  Juan’s reverie ended when the crest of a huge wave collapsed upon them in a watery explosion. The force of the water pushed the raft ten feet under the surface and he found himself submerged, face upward, looking at a surreal cloud of minute bubbles rising slowly away from his face toward the surface of the sea.

  He then felt himself tugged upward and was surprised to find his left hand still grasping one of the lines, without the least awareness of willfully doing it. In the dim, murky light he caught a blurry glimpse of his fingers wrapped around the line, and he felt as though he were looking at the severed claw of a crab that continues to grapple its prey even after it is wrenched from the body of the animal. He saw the line was looped around his wrist, and as he followed the raft to the surface, he wound a couple more loops with a quick motion of his arm.

  His head broke the surface and he gasped and gagged as he swallowed a foamy mixture of air and brine. Juan then peered into the blowing mist, looking for Raúl, his eyes burning with salt water, and did not see him. He called out his name, but the wind overpowered his voice and he only heard the sound of the wind, which blew so strongly now that it flattened the tops of the waves.

  Toward the end of the third night, the hurricane left the north coast of Cuba through the Bay of Cardenas, crossed the harbor, and cut across the thin peninsula of Hicacos, which forms the north rim of the bay and separates its waters from the much deeper waters of the Straits. It moved in the darkness over the Gulf Stream and came upon them west of the Cay Sal Bank, a triangular area of shoals, rocks and shallows lying between the north coast of Cuba and the Florida Keys.

  The hurricane hit them head-on, fifty miles west of Elbow Cay, a tiny, slender spit of coral rocks and sand at the westernmost edge of the Cay Sal Bank. The sun was rising as the leading edge of the spinning winds struck the raft, but they could not see it. The outer gales blew them westward, against the Stream, toward the Gulf of Mexico, and the clouds concealed them from the bright colors of the morning and held them in a private darkness.

  The strongest winds, the inner ones, raced around the eye in a tight counterclockwise circle and leveled the heads of the waves below them. But inside the eye itself, where the wind was calm, there were strange, fluttering, cone-shaped waves that seemed confused and moved in different directions, tumbling and crashing into each other.

  The sound of the wind, which had been a deep, thundering roar to this point, grew shriller as the eye approached. The innermost gusts blew the raft sideways over the water, as the breeze blows a leaf across a pond.

  Juan’s only care now was getting air into his lungs as he held the line and dragged behind the raft with his face in the water. Like a swimmer in a race, he brought his face out of the water every few seconds with a quick rotating motion and took a quick gasp of air. He was grasping one of the two nylon ropes that Raúl had tied to the inner tube at either end of the raft, while the three of them carried the raft into the surf at Guanabo Beach.

  Juan remembered wading into the warm water of Guanabo, coarse grains of sand between his toes, his heart pounding and his ears cocked, expecting at any time to hear the sound of heavy boots trampling the crisp, dry sea grape leaves strewn along the sand. And he thought about the hard time that he and Andrés had given Raúl as he tied the two eight-foot lengths of rope that he had brought back from the car at the last minute. He remembered whispering, between clenched teeth, “Dammit, Raúl, hurry up! Why are you wasting time with those stupid ropes?”

  Andrés was much calmer and kidded Raúl in a good-natured way, “What are those lines for, Raúl, are we going to be docking somewhere?”

  Even though that was only three days ago, it seemed that it was in another lifetime now, as Juan clung to the thin nylon line that kept him in this world.

  At the threshold between the innermost gales and the eye of the hurricane—that improbably thin horizon that separates the Armageddon of all winds from perfect calm—arises a monstrous wave. It is the origin of all the waves that radiate out from the hurricane and travel hundreds of miles across the ocean, heralding, under brilliant skies and pleasant breezes, the coming wind.

  This wave, crowned by purple-black clouds, now arose from the sea behind the raft like the mountainous back of a great behemoth. Juan could not see it approaching, but he sensed the change in the sea as he began to rise toward the peak of the giant swell.

  The scale of the wave was so out of proportion to his own puny dimensions that it seemed to Juan that the whole of the sea was rising below him, thrusting him higher and higher and higher, through the swirling madness of clouds, like an offering to the god of the wind.

  When he reached the peak of the rising water, Juan felt in the pit of his stomach that lurching, weightless feeling that comes at the top of a roller-coaster ride. The raft teetered atop the crest for a moment before the uppermost eddies cast it over the rim and down the sheer back of the wave. The raft cut a tiny furrow in the smooth, dark green wall of the swell as it came down, almost vertically, toward the trough dug by the wind at the base. In the splashing chaos, Juan felt a heavy bulk bump against his chest. At the same time, a pair of powerful arms clasped him in a bear hug. ¡Raúl! ¡Dios mio! My God! He must have held to the other line, Juan thought, as they clung to each other flipping through the air.

  The water and the sky and the foam and parts of thoughts—of Carmen, of her eyes, of waiting for his father amid the fields of sugarcane—swirled in Juan’s mind as he plunged into the sea.

  The sun was shining when he returned to the surface. The color of the sky was a soft powdery blue, and it was clear except for some wispy white clouds that seemed to be materializing over him. These clouds looked delicate and were exquisitely formed, as if each line were painted with a very fine brush, and they had the elegant shape of the tailfeathers of a rooster. The wind had died, and everywhere there were birds that flew in circles around them and filled the sky with their plaintive cries. There were small, dark terns with snowy breasts and many kinds of sea gulls and large, ungainly pelicans diving into the sea in sudden splashes, their wings never fully retracting before striking the water. There were even some land birds, and these looked lost and out of place as they circled, confused and exhausted, searching for a place to perch in this unsubstantial, fluid universe of sea and sky, where the single reality was transformation and where there was not so much as the slimmest twig to be grasped and held, solidly and comfortably, with a claw.

  Twenty yards north of them, what remained of the raft was bobbing on the water. There were small blue birds huddling close together and covering every bit of exposed surface on the raft. The tarpaulin was in tatters, and they could see a few ragged strips of canvas floating on the water, still attached to the inner tubes by the lines tied to the eyelets.

  They swam toward the raft, jostled on their way by peculiar conical waves that seemed to rise and fall around them without traveling much distance on the horizontal plane, as proper waves normally do.

  With great effort they pulled themselves onto the inner tubes, scaring away the tired, swallowlike birds, which then circled above them until a few brave ones alighted on their backs as the two of them lay facedown, exhausted, on top of the raft.

  When Juan looked up, the scene that unfolded before him was of a haunting and terrible beauty unlike anything he had ever experienced or even imagined before. Raúl kept whispering, “El ojo, el ojo, the eye, the eye,” like an obscure religious incantation. Juan kept silent as he looked around, eyes wide open, taking in what few men have seen in this world.

  They were now at the center of an immense bowl carved out of a mass of dark clouds. The wall of clouds completely encircled them, sloping steeply away as it rose toward heaven in all directions, forming terraces like tiers in a colossal stadium. Above the perfectly smooth rim at the top of the wall, the brilliant tropical sun was shining in regal splendor. The color of the sea was a deep emerald green, and all around the base of the clouds there was a wall of white water, as if
someone had taken all the waterfalls in the world and arranged them in a circle, fifteen miles in diameter. And in the distance, from all directions at once, Juan could hear the deep roar of the water and the higher, more ominous sound of the wind.

  “We’re in the eye,” said Juan.

  “I know. The worst is yet to come.”

  “How long do you think we have before the wind picks up again?”

  “Twenty minutes … maybe less.”

  “You think we can ride it out?”

  “Don’t know,” said Raúl in a low voice. Then he added, “Maybe,” his voice rising and sounding more hopeful. “We’ve made it this far.”

  “Even if we make it, how are we going to survive afterwards with everything gone?” Juan asked.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Everything gone! The water, the food … everything!”

  “Yes, even my cigar,” said Raúl.

  “You packed a cigar?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why in the world would you pack a cigar?”

  “Why not? I figured I’d save it till we arrived. Then I’d strut up on the beach, pull out my cigar, and light it.”

  “You’re crazy, Raúl. You’re completely crazy!”

  “I know. I’m here with you, aren’t I?”

  “We better get ready.”

  “Yes.”

  A line had cut into one of the three inner tubes and deflated it. They still had two good ones, though. To avoid another mishap, Raúl pulled his pocket knife from a zippered pocket in his army trousers and cut two wide strips of rubber from the bad one, and they used these strips to reinforce the area around the two good inner tubes where they wrapped fresh lines, fastening them with square knots.

  “How’s your side coming?” Raúl asked.

  “Good,” Juan replied.

  “Make sure the knots are strong, and tie a few extra ones for more security.”

  “They say the winds behind the eye are the worst.”

  “Yes. I’ve heard that.”

  “Maybe it just seems worse because the strongest winds hit you first, instead of building up gradually as they did with the leading edge,” Juan said.

  “That’s good.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if we make it through the first part, we’ll know we’re okay. We’ll know it’s behind us instead of the other way round.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “But, whatever happens, we better stay in the water until it is all over and just let the inner tubes drag us along like they did before.”

  “Yes, that seems to work.”

  “If we climb on top too early, before it is truly over, a sudden gust might flip us.”

  “Yes, we’ll stay in the water and put as little strain on the raft as possible.”

  “The secret is to stay low.”

  “We can’t get any lower.”

  “I hope not.”

  Juan’s wrists and the palms of his hands had been cut by the ropes during the first part of the storm, and were bleeding now in the water as he worked tying the lines, but he did not feel the pain. He tied a loop around the far end of each line to slip around his wrists. Before tightening the loop, he used Raúl’s knife to cut two small strips of rubber from the deflated inner tube and wrapped them around his wrists for protection.

  The roar grew louder, and as he worked securing the lines, Juan looked back over his shoulder every few minutes to check the progress of the approaching wall, which loomed over them now, casting its shadow on the sea. He saw the shadow pass over them and race ahead to the north, darkening the water as it passed.

  “Ready?” Raúl asked.

  Juan was holding his line with a distant look and did not answer.

  “Make sure they’re good and tight,” Raúl added.

  “Listen, if I don’t make it, tell Carmen—”

  “You’ll make it.”

  A greater darkness came now as a low, gray mantle of clouds spread over the water. A heavy mist surrounded the raft moments before the sea broke over them and the wind began to flail them. The wind now came from the opposite direction and blew them with the current to the northeast, toward the Florida Keys, as the great storm straddled the Straits.

  With the rolling countryside of Cuba behind it, the hurricane was now once more in its element as it drew its life from the Gulf Stream. The current gave its warmth to the wind, and as the hurricane drained energy from the water, it left in its wake a cold trail on the surface of the sea. Viewed from space, one set of spiraling arms could be seen racing over the southern tip of the Everglades, bringing showers to that fragile, broad river of grass while, at the same time, another set of arms was still pouring rain over the northernmost Cuban cities, including Havana.

  In Miami, grocery store shelves had been emptied by excited housewives who, in their enthusiasm to make sure their families were prepared, had bought more food and supplies than they could possibly consume in a month’s time. Radio stations blared the latest coordinates in English and Spanish, and the Overseas Highway, stretching more than one hundred miles from Key West to the mainland, was jammed with cars inching their way north. At Dinner Key Marina, as in scores of other marinas dotting the bays and inlets of south Florida, boatmen were securing their yachts, lashing rows of old automobile tires to the lifelines and hanging them over the sides to protect the gunwales, reminding themselves to leave plenty of slack in the mooring lines to allow for the rising sea.

  From a studio window atop a high-rise on Brickell Avenue, a brunette with violet eyes was watching the whitecaps on Biscayne Bay. As she looked south across the water, she held a telephone to her ear waiting for her friend at the Coast Guard base to pick up on the other end.

  “Hello, Vivian? Carmen. Anything?”

  “No. No one has been picked up today.”

  “Will the hurricane keep them in port?”

  “No. The cutters are out, and they’ll stay at sea until the storm passes. We’ve deployed them to the east, out of the way, so they’ll be ready to swing south and come in behind the hurricane.”

  “Any idea where it will hit?”

  “It’s headed straight toward Key West right now. Did you get through to Juan?”

  “No, the lines are down.”

  “I’m sure he’s all right. Radio Martí put out advisories early on. He’s probably at home right now, trying to get through to you.”

  “Please, Vivian, let me know the minute you hear they’ve picked up anybody.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “Thanks. By the way, I finished your son’s portrait. If you swing by my apartment tonight, I’ll have it for you.”

  “I think I’ll wait till the hurricane passes.”

  “Any chance it will hit Miami?”

  “Probably not. After Key West, it’s predicted to cross Florida Bay and make landfall somewhere between Sanibel and Tampa. But anything can happen. I’ll be at the base until it passes, in any event.”

  “I’m glad. I feel better knowing you’re there. Let me know if I can help in any way.”

  “Thanks.”

  Chapter Seven

  The colors of the sky grew softer after sunset. A few trailing cloud ribbons flushed pink as they raced northward over the western horizon. Above these flat, tenuous clouds, a thin crescent moon was beginning to glimmer in the fading light, and a gentle breeze blew over the water.

  Juan and Raúl were shivering as they pulled themselves up on the raft. They lay on their backs, shaking violently, with their arms folded across their chests.

  “Juan, are we still in the Stream?”

  “Yes, we have to be.”

  “Why does the water feel so cold?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe the hurricane drew the heat from the sea.”

  “You think it blew us into the Gulf?” Raúl asked.

  “No, the trailing edge blew us to the northeast, so we should be closer to the Keys.”
/>   “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Why are you so worried? It’s not like you to be worried.”

  “Just had a bad feeling all of a sudden.”

  “Like what?”

  “I felt I was never going to see land again.”

  “But the worst is over, Raúl. We made it through.”

  “I know, it was just a strange feeling.”

  “You’re just hungry. That’s what Andrés would have said.”

  “I must be. I’m beginning to think weird thoughts, like I always do when I get hungry. But it sure was strong.”

  “What was strong?”

  “The fee … Never mind, I’m just hungry. That’s all. I’m hungry as hell.”

  Along with everything else, the storm had taken the three paddles Andrés had carved from a single twelve-foot length of pine board. The loss of the paddles bothered Raúl even more than the loss of the food and the water. Raúl was a practical, physical man, at ease in the everyday world of objects. No matter how remote or bleak the place, or how dismal the circumstances, he always found structure and meaning in his universe as long as he held a machete or a shovel or an ax or any other tool securely in his hands. The very act of digging a trench or cutting a path through the jungle brought him comfort.

  Even though, like Juan, he was a stranger to the sea, Raúl made himself at home in this new world and, paddle in hand, attacked the waves as he had, at other times in distant places, conquered the jungle with his machete and broken the earth with his shovel.

  Unlike Juan, who had taught physics and astronomy at the University of Havana, Raúl was not comfortable in the ethereal world of ideas. He was, without pretension, a guajiro, a man of the earth, and he distrusted those things he could not touch and hold in his hands. How can a man, without ever touching it, weigh and measure a star? Raúl could not understand it, and he did not completely believe it.