The Lonely Crossing of Juan Cabrera

by J. Joaquin Fraxedas

  Now, adrift, without anything to do and without a tool to do anything, Raúl felt, for the first time in his life, truly lost. His soul was restless as disturbing thoughts raced through his mind. He felt resentment toward Juan, who, never having been at sea, spoke with assurance about the speed and direction of the currents; who always pointed the way they should go, day or night; who could barely tie a decent knot, but who regularly announced their location on the black, trackless water by measuring the height of the North Star, stretching out his arm and aligning the bottom of his closed fist with the horizon. A closed fist was ten degrees, he said. A finger’s width was two-point-five degrees, he said. Now they were twenty-four degrees north latitude, better than halfway there, he said. Why should he believe Juan, who, after all, was a damned liar and a coward? No, he didn’t even want to think about that, or about the things Juan had done, not now.

  Raúl resented Juan and his knowledge acquired from books, and he resented his own reliance on that knowledge.

  “Juan, are you sure we didn’t get blown into the Gulf of Mexico?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Why?”

  “We were too far to the east by the time it hit us, and the tail end must have blown us closer to the Keys.”

  “How far do you think we are?”

  “Around forty miles south of Key West.”

  In the dark water, they saw bright green phosphorescent streaks as unseen fish darted, like meteors, under the inner tubes. Pangs of hunger gnawed at Raúl, and he thought about the tasty fish swimming beneath them and he imagined that he was frying them now on a big cast-iron frying pan over the open flame of a campfire under the stars. He could smell the onions and the green peppers and he could hear the pan sizzle as he squeezed lime juice, plenty of lime juice, over the delicious blackened fillets, and his mouth watered.

  “Do you think we might be able to catch a fish?” he asked Juan.

  “How?”

  “Don’t know, just thought you might have an idea.”

  After midnight, Juan saw the constellation of Orion rise majestically in the east and he showed it to Raúl. Then he lay on his back, looking at the stars until he fell asleep.

  He dreamt that Orion the hunter, the son of Neptune, was walking on the sea, as he used to do before he was killed. In his dream, the good giant Orion came walking sadly on the surface of the sea and passed him in the darkness and did not see him but walked on by, without disturbing the waves, and disappeared forever in the west amid a crowd of stars.

  The morning was bright and calm. Great patches of yellow sargasso weed covered the sea around the raft. Tiny crabs and shrimp crawled around the little air sacs that kept the seaweed afloat. Sleek blue and gold dorados swam in the shade under the seaweed, waiting for the smaller fish that fed on the miniature crustaceans.

  Raúl picked up a clump and saw the colorful half-inch crabs scurrying around the thickly matted branches. He reached in, searching with his fingers, and pulled one out. He held it between his thumb and forefinger as the tiny pincers opened and closed grasping the air. He threw it into his mouth, cracking the salty shell between his molars. It tasted better than he thought it would. He tried another and then another, chewing them and letting the juices run over his tongue.

  “These taste good, Juan. Here, try one.”

  Juan chewed a crab and then tried one of the shrimp. They are tasty, he thought. It had not occurred to him that they would taste this good uncooked.

  Raúl’s spirit was lifted by his discovery, and he began to think how he might catch one of the dorados swimming under the inner tubes. The shrimp and crabs were good, but they were not sufficient. If he could only figure out a way to capture a big dorado, they would eat well, very well, he thought. Then their only problem would be fresh water, and he had already thought of a way to collect rainwater, using the remnants of the deflated inner tube. All he needed was rain, and it was bound to rain. Of course it would rain. It always rains, he thought.

  An idea then began to form in his mind about how he would capture a dorado. He reached into the water and undid the two eight-foot lines he had lashed to the raft at Guanabo. He took the end of one line and made a big S. He then took the end of the other line and tied it across the top curve of the S to make an enclosure. He continued making S’s with the first line and tying the second one straight across, and then, after a while, he came back, tying knots along the center part of the S’s, and made a number of rows like that until he began to see something that looked like a net.

  When he first started thinking about his idea, he thought he would have to cut the lines in many places, and that it would be laborious and take a long time. Thinking about that, he reached down and felt around the zippered pocket of his army trousers for his pocket knife and confirmed it still was safely tucked in there. But as he began to work with the lines, he realized that he hardly had to cut them at all, and that it was easier than he thought it would be. But when he had used up the lines, he saw that the size was not adequate, and he was surprised at how small a net sixteen feet of line made. He then noticed that the quarter-inch nylon rope he was using was actually made of four separate smaller strands twined together. He undid what he had done, unraveled the individual strands, and repeated the process using the smaller strands. He also took the lashings that had held the remnants of the deflated inner tube to the other two and used them to get more strands. He saved the rubber remnants to make a container for rainwater; he would figure out the exact details for that project later.

  In a few hours, after several attempts using different knots and approaches, he had what looked like a decent net, about four feet by four feet when he stretched it out. The problem now was to wait for a dorado to come swimming under his inner tube and trap it in the net. He did not expect immediate success—that was not his nature, and he had lived long enough to know that success was hardly ever immediate. Sometimes it was, but that was luck, and he did not trust luck. He did trust his perseverance and he knew he had plenty of that in reserve. But he was not sure exactly how he would go about capturing his dorado. He figured he would try the first thing that came to mind, and if that didn’t work, he would keep modifying his technique until he found one that did. It is not important to know exactly how to do something, he thought. It is only important to know that you are going to do it. And he knew he was going to catch his dorado or—at worst—another fish that was not so fast. But he hoped it would be a big, tasty dorado.

  The sun was high, and shone down into the water that was now a deep dark blue. The hurricane had churned the water and made it look greenish and strange as it passed. But the powerful currents of the Gulf Stream had swept all that water away during the night, and now it was blue again and warm like before. The rays of the sun penetrated deep into the water, and the men could clearly see the different fish as they swam by under the raft.

  Raúl lay on his stomach across the inner tube, with his head and upper body hanging over the side. He gathered two corners and the middle of one side of the net and held them with his teeth, making a sort of scoop. He then held the two remaining corners in his hands and stretched his long arms as far as he could under the raft. As soon as he did that, he thought that he should have gathered some of those little shrimp and crabs and dropped them under the raft to attract smaller fish that would then get the attention of the dorados. It was too late now, though. He had gone to some trouble getting one end of the net just right in his mouth to make a scoop, and now he was in this awkward position and he decided to wait and see if it worked before he tried anything else.

  After a while he saw a greenish golden shape rise from the deep and approach the raft, sparkling as it moved in the sunlight. Then it came under the raft and hung suspended in the shade. It was a male dorado, about ten pounds. With his eyes close to the water, Raúl could see the fish as it inspected the underside of the raft. He could see it gradually adjust its position, slowly moving its pectoral fins. Then he saw it as
it began to bump the bottom of his inner tube with its prominent forehead. The magnificent colors of the living dorado amazed Raúl. He had seen dorado before, but always at the docks, as fishermen flung the dead fish on the rough concrete. Even there, stiff and lifeless, and stripped of all dignity, they were beautiful fish. He could tell the males from the females by their high foreheads, tapering back to the forked, swallowlike tails. But he had always thought their color in life was the same dull gray they displayed in death, and when he was a boy, he wondered, without ever bothering to ask anyone, why the fishermen called them dorados, which in Spanish means “golden ones.” He had later decided that the name probably had more to do with the spirit of the fish than with its true color, since he had heard fishermen describe them as great fighters. But after a while he grew up and stopped wondering about this and other inconsistencies.

  Now, as he watched the fish in the full splendor of life, he could see the deep blue of its back, which started out at the top almost purple, like the Gulf Stream. As the blue came down its sides, he noticed how it gradually grew lighter and lighter until it began to blend with the gold along the middle. The mixture of the blue and the gold produced an exuberance of greens from deep emerald to the most delicate color of the freshest spring. Then the green, farther down, yielded to the gold, which, like the blue, started out in deep hues. At first it was like tarnished brass, with dark spots. Then it descended through all the possible shades of gold so that the belly of the fish looked almost silver. But even there, at the very bottom, there were specks of gold. And, as the fish turned in a shaft of light, all of those colors, all of them at once, exploded in a fantastic burst of brilliant tones of gold. Seeing that, Raúl remembered the stiff, dull bodies on the dock and he knew what no one who is a prisoner of the shore would ever know. He knew why the fishermen of his boyhood called them dorados, the golden ones, and why the name had such a sad and distant sound whenever they pronounced it.

  Raúl lay still now, with his outstretched arms in the water, and held his breath as the dorado edged closer and closer to the suspended net. The water magnified the fish like a lens, and it looked huge to him as it poked its head over the open end of the net. He could hear his heart beating so loudly that he was afraid it would scare away the fish, and he could feel the pounding of his blood inside his head. Raúl waited until the entire fish was over the net, and then raised his arms against the inner tube and brought them together in one quick motion.

  The upper half of his trunk was already hanging over the side, and this movement was so violent and sudden that he plunged headfirst into the sea, grasping the net under the water and thrashing the surface with his feet. In the blurry, bubbling confusion he saw a quick flash as the dorado turned and disappeared in the purple water like a glittering bullet.

  Juan was laughing as Raúl pulled himself onto the raft, with streams of water running down his beard. Raúl laughed too, and was not discouraged. They then discussed different ideas about how to capture a fish, and they decided that the best way was to take some of the leftover strands from the lines and tie a four-foot length to each corner of the net. That way each man could hold one strand in either hand and, with their backs to each other, they would lower the net until it hung in the water, several feet under the raft, weighed down with Juan’s belt buckle, which they tied at the center. This idea seemed to have a number of virtues; one of the chief ones was that it allowed them to sit in a comfortable position while they waited for the fish.

  As the clumps of sargasso floated by, they picked them up and shook out the little crustaceans over the holes at the center of the inner tubes. Then they began to put some of the seaweed there to make it more realistic and enticing for the fish. After a while, schools of pinfish gathered under the raft and began feeding. Raúl encouraged them by picking out little crabs, cracking the shells between his teeth, and spitting them into the water.

  Above them, a frigate bird looked down on the raft as it glided in wide circles, barely flapping its long, elegant black wings. Juan and Raúl did not notice the bird. They squinted as they looked into the water with great concentration. The sun was lower now, and its light more subdued. A warm breeze blew from the south and it felt soft and pleasant.

  Under a drifting island of sargasso, Raúl saw another dorado. It was a female and not as big as the first one. Still, it looked over two feet long, and Raúl could see its flank glistening in the slanted light of the afternoon. He tensed as the yellow island floated near the raft.

  “Don’t move, Juan. There’s one under those weeds. Maybe she’ll pay us a visit.”

  They slowly lowered the net even farther, to make sure there was plenty of room between the net and the bottom of the raft for the fish to swim in, should it decide to come over and inspect. The dorado appeared to be in no hurry to go anywhere, and for a moment it looked as if it was going to stay in the shade of the passing sargasso. But as the floating island drifted away, the dorado suddenly turned and darted under the inner tubes. With the fish suspended under them between the hanging net and the bottom of the raft, they argued in whispers whether it would be better to raise the net in one quick motion or to bring it up gradually until the penultimate moment. They decided that even their quickest action would be no match for the explosive speed of the dorado.

  Then, with great patience, Juan and Raúl began to raise the net gradually, almost imperceptibly, while they kept an eye on the fish through the gaps between the clumps of sargasso that they had placed in the holes at the center of the inner tubes. The fish nibbled on the miniature animals in the sargasso unaware of—or unconcerned about—the approaching net.

  “Do you think she can see that the net is coming closer?” Raúl whispered.

  “Don’t know.”

  “She seems so damned calm and unruffled—almost cocky, like she’s taunting us.”

  “Wouldn’t you be, if you had her speed?”

  As the net was about to brush against the dorado’s tail, Raúl yelled, “Now!” and they quickly yanked up the four corners of the net, pressing it tightly against the bottom of Raúl’s inner tube. At the same time, still holding on to the lines, Raúl threw himself across the inner tube, covering the hole in the middle with his huge chest. All hell broke loose as the fish desperately tried to escape. The dorado leaped out of the water and bounced off Raúl’s chest. It then shot straight down and pushed against the net. Coming back up, it swam in frantic circles around the inside rim of the inner tube, beating the water into a froth with its tail as small clumps of sargasso flew all over the place.

  “Grab her, Juan! Grab her!” Raúl yelled.

  “How? I can’t let go of the lines!”

  “See if you can hold two in one hand! But, whatever you do, don’t let the net go slack!”

  Juan held both of his lines tightly against the inner tube with his left hand, and reached in for the fish with his right. Again and again he grabbed at the fish, but each time the fish slipped between his fingers.

  “Grab the gills! See if you can grab her by the gills!” Raúl yelled.

  The dorado leaped again, and as it hit Raúl’s chest, Juan managed to get his hand around the bottom of the fish and slip his fingers under the gill covers. He squeezed with all his strength and felt the delicate structures inside the gills break and the blood begin to run on his hand and drip down into the water. The fish, feeling the pain, shook violently and Juan pinned it against Raúl’s chest and held it there. He could hear the tail slapping against Raúl’s body, and in his hand he felt the spasms of the fish in its death struggle. After a while the convulsive shaking stopped, and then Juan felt a gentle tremor as life left the dorado.

  “We got her, Raúl! Your net worked!” said Juan. “And what a fish! Look at those colors!”

  Juan handed the fish to Raúl, his hands trembling. He then pulled the net from the water and folded it across his lap, and they laid the dorado on it. Even as they were admiring it, the colors began to fade and in moments turne
d into an ugly gray, almost as dark as charcoal at the top, and lighter, but just as dull and lifeless, along the sides.

  Raúl took the knife from his pocket and slit the fish’s belly, and a handful of fish eggs spilled on Juan’s lap. As Juan held the fish, Raúl scooped up the clumps of roe, letting only a few shiny yellow eggs dribble into the water. Raúl ate the roe slowly, savoring each salty lump, first rolling and then squashing the tiny eggs between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. Reaching into the cavity with two fingers, Raúl cleaned out the remaining eggs and shared them with Juan. He then made the slit bigger, thrust his whole hand into the belly of the fish, and began to pull out the organs. They ate the liver and all the other soft parts and found most of them good and sweet except for a few bitter pieces, which they spit into the water.

  Then Raúl carved a fillet of white meat from one side, starting at the top next to the dorsal fin, and cutting down along the ribs. He cut the meat in little chunks and they ate their fill, finishing all the meat from one side. Feeling strong and full of life now, with the essence of the fish coursing through his veins, Raúl cut out the meat from the other side in one big slab more than a foot long and almost an inch thick at the top. He dipped it in the water to clean off the blood and, without scaling it, he secured it to the inner tube using two strands from the rope.

  When he finished with the fish, he watched the disk of the sun descend toward the western horizon. And as the last shining remnant of the uppermost rim vanished into the sea, Raúl saw the quick flash of green light that sometimes comes at sunset on very clear evenings when the air has been cleaned and purified by the passage of a great storm.

  Chapter Eight

  A heavy jolt awoke Juan. At first he thought they had struck rocks, and he sprang up and sat stiffly, peering into the dark water. But he saw no rocks. The surface of the water was smooth and unbroken. Everything was still, and the only thing he heard was the muffled sound the inner tubes made against the water as they moved slightly when he shifted his position to look over his shoulder.