The Lonely Crossing of Juan Cabrera

by J. Joaquin Fraxedas

  “I was going to have breakfast with Vivian at Versailles on Eighth Street—do you know her? She’s an officer with the Coast Guard.”

  “Yes, yes. She’s always been so kind.”

  “Can you meet us there?”

  “Of course. I’m on my way.”

  Every morning, as she drove down Brickell Avenue, Carmen enjoyed looking at the buildings lining Biscayne Bay. She specially liked the bolder, more colorful ones resplendent in the early sunlight reflected off the bay. Up close, from the road, the colors were so powerful that they seemed outrageous—a cacophony of shades. But from afar, out on the water or looking down from an airplane, the buildings came alive. From that distance the great buildings moved and changed with the light and seemed to dance.

  Today Carmen did not see the buildings. She did not see anything else as she drove down Brickell Avenue, weaving desperately through the morning traffic. She did not think—she refused to think—about Juan and the others adrift on the Gulf Stream. She only wanted to get to Vivian and … and what? She did not know what.

  The scent of freshly baked Cuban bread mixed with the steamy aroma of café con leche and floated over the crowded restaurant. Dark-haired men in silk suits or heavily starched traditional guayaberas sat around small tables engaged in heated conversations, driving home each point with expansive gestures.

  Carmen spotted Vivian and Margarita at a table near the kitchen and made her way toward them, carrying the portrait of Vivian’s son. There was a hush at each table as Carmen walked by and the men stopped in mid-sentence and centered their attention first on her body and then on her eyes, which, in the low light toward the back of the restaurant, were deep violet and full of pain. And after they saw her eyes the men looked away and did not smile or make any comments as they normally would, but remained silent.

  Vivian spoke first.

  “Margarita told me they left.”

  “Are you sure?” Carmen asked, sounding more accusatory than she meant to, and fixing her eyes on Margarita’s with such intensity that Margarita looked down and played with her teaspoon for a moment before answering.

  “Rogelio said they left from Guanabo,” said Margarita.

  “Did he see them go?” asked Carmen.

  “No, but Juan told him they were going to try to leave through Guanabo that night or the next, and asked Rogelio to call one of us. Juan told Rogelio that he had tried to call you, but could not get a call out. It’s getting almost impossible to get a call out—you know how it is.”

  “What day did Rogelio see them?”

  “Last Sunday … five days ago.”

  “The day before the…”

  Carmen did not finish the sentence. She felt clammy and cold and began to shudder as the hopelessness of the situation broke over her like a dam bursting and overwhelmed her with such force that she could not speak. But then out of her despair a familiar feeling began to rise like a fine wind blowing from a secret place.

  “Vivian, do you think there is any way?”

  “I know of at least one confirmed case,” said Vivian. “A few years ago, four men on an inner-tube raft were picked up by a freighter in the Old Bahama Channel. They had been carried nearly two hundred miles to the east by a hurricane.”

  “They survived the hurricane?” Margarita asked, her voice rising.

  “There have been other stories, but this one was definitely confirmed by the freighter captain.” Vivian kept her tone level and maintained the same cool, professional detachment she used while briefing her staff. “He had tracked the hurricane, and based on where the men had left and where he picked them up, there was no question that they were carried by the hurricane.”

  “I think I remember reading something about it,” said Margarita.

  “Yes, it was all over the papers, and one of the networks even wanted to do a special on them. But the men had relatives in Cuba and they were afraid their families would be harassed, so they refused to be interviewed.”

  “And there have been other stories of survivors? You know of other cases—on rafts?” Carmen asked with growing enthusiasm.

  “Yes, I’m familiar with other cases of people who have escaped on rafts and survived hurricanes, many other cases,” said Vivian.

  She lied about the “many,” and she did not talk about the empty rafts she had seen over the years as a Coast Guard officer, but she thought about them. And she remembered the first time she had spotted one of those sad, flimsy things adrift on the Gulf Stream.

  Vivian had been a young petty officer then, at the helm of a cutter, and when she first saw it she thought it was only another piece of garbage carried by the current, just more refuse from some unknown shore. So her first reaction to the thing was one of irritation, and she began to mumble something about how bad the pollution was getting on the high seas. But as she steered clear of it, she recognized what it was, and all at once, without expecting it, without preparation, she came face to face with all the stories that Cuban children in Miami grow up reading, mostly in Spanish—fantastic stories of men and women, and sometimes children, wading into the sea late at night grasping an inner tube or a piece of wood or a chunk of Styrofoam, dousing themselves with kerosene to fend off sharks, and floating into the darkness.

  Once she had even heard a crazy story about a man who set out from Baracoa into the Gulf Stream on his horse. He had spent days carving four big flippers out of yagua—which is what Cubans call the bud shields of the royal palm. When his neighbors asked him what he was making, he told them that they were horse flippers, which he was going to strap to the legs of his horse and ride to Miami. His neighbors shook their heads and laughed and poked fun at the man. Then one evening, after the sun had set, when the sky was still light and the sea was purple, they saw the man riding his horse into the water and ran up a small hill by the shore and yelled out to him. But the man did not answer them, and they never saw him again.

  But even after all the stories she had read and heard, Vivian was not ready to see what she saw that first time because, attached to one of the inner tubes, by a rope around his wrists, was the body of a man. And when they pulled him out, they realized that it was only the upper torso, because something had eaten the bottom half.

  And now Vivian thought about that first time and felt the horror all over again, but she hid her feelings well, just as she had done so many years ago when she was the only woman and the only Cuban in the cutter.

  “Vivian, is there anything…” Carmen was not sure what she was going to ask, or what Vivian could do.

  “I’ve already notified stations from Key West to Port Canaveral,” said Vivian. “I called as soon as Margarita told me. I also asked my staff to tell all the marinas to put the word out to the charter boat captains.”

  “I hate to ask, Vivian, you have done so much already, but is there anything else…” said Carmen.

  “I can’t think … well, yes, there is. I can call Alberto.”

  “Who’s Alberto?”

  “He owns a flight school in Marathon. He escaped in a small airplane back in the sixties, and he’s always on the lookout for raft people.”

  Chapter Ten

  Juan was floating facedown with his head halfway in the shade at the center of the inner tube. It was a very small shade and would soon disappear as the sun rose higher, but it was the only shade for miles, and it protected his eyes for now from the morning glare. His body was swollen. There were painful welts on his legs from jellyfish stings, and his face was puffed up like a blowfish with open sores that oozed bloody pus.

  The sun was very hot even at this time in the morning, and there was hardly any wind, which made it even hotter. The black surface of the inner tube was covered with white spots of caked salt crystals where the sun had dried the seawater. He tried to remain still, because each time he shifted position he burned his bare, sun-blistered arms against the rubber.

  Looking down into the clear water, he could see what remained of the net Raúl h
ad made, moving limply under the inner tube. His belt buckle was still attached to the bottom of the net, and in the slanted shafts of the morning light it shone greenish gold. Around the net flashed a bright-colored cloud of tropical fish, feeding on the tiny shrimp and crabs that crawled along the mesh. The cloud expanded and contracted and changed colors as it swirled like a watery kaleidoscope.

  Fifty thousand feet above him, a military jet streaked silently, painting a thin white contrail against the sky. From that altitude the pilot could see the deep purplish color of the Gulf Stream and the thin, serpentine line separating its currents from the shallow littoral waters, which showed a light green. North of the line the pilot could see the Florida Keys, a string of small, irregular green islands arcing gently to the northeast, toward the mainland. Right about the middle of the string of islands, Marathon airstrip showed clearly like a thin white chalk line set off against the greenness of Vaca Key.

  On the ramp south of the airstrip, Alberto was standing next to a little single-engine Cessna, going over the preflight check procedure as a young female student pilot listened attentively and followed him around the airplane.

  “Look here. See the cotter pin securing this nut to the flap hinge?” he asked as they both crouched under the wing.

  “Yes.”

  “Always look for cotter pins—nice and tight. No cotter pins, no fly. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Alberto was around the other side, reaching into the open cowling to drain fuel from the sediment bulb, when the telephone rang inside his office, and he went to answer it.

  “Alberto? Vivian. We have a reliable report of three who put to sea five days ago at Guanabo.”

  “Boat?”

  “No. Inner-tube raft.”

  “¡Dios mio!” he gasped. “There’s no way, with the hurricane.”

  “I know the family.”

  “Five days ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Guanabo Beach—just east of Havana.”

  “Okay. I was just about to take off with a student. I’ll tell the other pilots.”

  The ground fell away and Alberto saw the number 25, upside down, three hundred feet below him on the concrete, as the little aircraft cleared the far end of the runway and headed skyward, guided by the student pilot seated to his left. The airplane jerked left and right and up and down as the fledgling pilot overcorrected for every bump and air pocket caused by the rising columns of air over the hot concrete.

  “Relax. Don’t hold the yoke so tight,” said Alberto. “Remember what I told you, the airplane wants to fly. She’s not going to fall from the sky. She wants to fly. Just like a horse wants to gallop. Do you know how to ride a horse?”

  “Yes.”

  “The airplane is just like a horse. You have to be firm but gentle. Don’t jerk the controls. Be smooth, real smooth. Just let her know where you want to go, and let her handle the terrain. Like you do a horse. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re doing fine—real good!” he added with a grandfatherly grin.

  “Thanks.”

  “Turn right now, to the south, heading one-eight-zero.”

  The Cessna crossed the shoreline, and Alberto asked his student to level off lower than they normally did. This time, as they flew over the fishing boats, they could see the people moving around the open cockpits where the fighting chairs were. From that altitude it was more interesting and more personal, and they could sense the excitement and anticipation of the fishermen as they sped toward deeper waters, throttles wide open, to a place where each hoped to find billfish.

  Leaving the bright green coastal waters behind, the little airplane came across the edge of the Stream, and Alberto remembered the day he left Cuba. He was thirty then, and working as a spray-plane pilot for a government farm. The farm’s previous owners had escaped after the National Institute for Agrarian Reform confiscated their farm, and they’d left behind several airplanes.

  One was a brand-new Twin Cessna 310 that had caught the eye of the comandante in charge of agrarian reform, and he had ordered it flown immediately to Havana to be used as his personal airplane. There was no time to fly in a military pilot to pick it up. The comandante wanted it now. He had a date that night and he wanted to impress her with this new toy he had stolen from the latifundistas, as the Communists called the large landholders. Alberto was the logical choice to fly it; he was the only pilot on the farm who had a multi-engine rating, and he seemed reliable. They were less careful back then.

  Alberto topped off the tanks and climbed into the cockpit, which still smelled new. He left the grass strip near Ciego de Avila, in the center of the island about two hundred forty miles east of Havana, and headed for the capital. They did not have Soviet radar back then, and they were not very well organized, but they followed him on the radio and asked him to report his position and altitude on a regular basis.

  When he was halfway to Havana, he called Havana control and reported, “Twin Cessna CUN-two-two-three, ten thousand feet over Sagua la Grande.” The controller responded, “Two-two-three, report over Cardenas.”

  Alberto then put the microphone back on its holder next to the trim control and turned toward the north coast, which was twelve miles off his right wingtip. As he flew over the mangrove-covered cays and islets hugging the coast, he pushed the nose down and dove toward the water without throttling back. The sky disappeared from his windshield, replaced by the deeper blue of the Gulf Stream, and he watched the airspeed indicator needle swing out of the green arc into the yellow arc and approach the red “never exceed” line as the aircraft accelerated smoothly, trading altitude for airspeed, in its dive toward the surface of the sea. He waited until the very last moment before he pulled back on the yoke and leveled the Cessna a few feet above the crests of the waves, feeling the G’s as his body pushed against the bottom of the seat.

  Forty-five minutes later the radio crackled, “Twin Cessna CUN-two-two-three, Havana Control, report Cardenas. You should be over Cardenas.”

  Alberto reached for the microphone and then stopped. But when he heard the controller again, saying, “Cessna CUN-two-two-three, report Cardenas,” he could not resist.

  “Havana, Cessna CUN-two-two-three, cannot report Cardenas.”

  “Two-two-three, report position. Are you lost?”

  “Negative, I have the field in sight.”

  “What field?”

  “Marathon field.”

  “Cessna CUN-two-two-three, say again, what field?”

  “Marathon airfield, Florida Keys, Estados Unidos de Norte America.”

  “Cessna CUN-two-two-…”

  Alberto switched frequencies and, in the best English he could muster, spoke into the microphone, “Miami Center, Twin Cessna Charlie Uniform November two-two-three, fifteen miles south of Marathon, advise immigration requesting asylum, request landing instructions…”

  That was almost thirty years ago, but he remembered every detail. He remembered the way the sunlight reflected off the metal hook on the back of the microphone when he picked it up, and the pleasant new smell inside the cockpit, and how comfortable and quick his flight had been. And he smiled as he always smiled when he thought about that flight across the straits almost thirty years ago. But he also felt guilty because it had been so easy for him.

  For him the flight had been not so much an escape as a great adventure, a going forth, he thought. He always told others when speaking of his flight that he ran away, that he escaped, and, of course, there was truth in what he said. He escaped.

  But the attraction of the vast, bright land to the north was undeniable. All his life it had been like a physical thing, like a great, irresistible magnet drawing him northward. Reading American flying magazines as a teenager, he had dreamed what it would be like to fly into an American airport. And he had spent most of his free time poring over charts and memorizing frequencies and approach plates and practicing his English. Still, when the
voice of the American controller answered strong and clear that first time, “Twin Cessna Charlie Uniform November two-two-three, Miami Center, radar contact. Turn right to a heading of zero-three-zero. Expect radar vectors for the approach into Miami,” it took him by surprise. He could hardly believe that what he was hearing over the radio was reality instead of one of his fantasies. And when the controller added, “Welcome to the U.S.A.,” he was filled with great emotion and got such a big knot in his throat that he could not acknowledge the controller’s instructions for a couple of minutes.

  But now, thirty years later, it was different, he thought. Now there were only two ways to escape. One was for the big shots, the ones the press referred to as “defectors.” These were quick, painless affairs, usually at a refueling stop at Gander, Newfoundland, on the Moscow-to-Havana route. Excuse yourself from the group to go to the bathroom, approach a Canadian officer, whisper a few phrases about political asylum, and it’s over. Without even ruffling your tie.

  Then there was the other way, Alberto thought. This was the way of the ones who did not get to go to Moscow to participate in high-level conferences, the way of the ones who were not allowed inside the fancy Havana restaurants and beach resorts reserved for the party elite and for the lavish entertainment of western journalists and politicians and movie stars who came to see with their own eyes the truth about Communist Cuba.

  Last week Alberto had gone to Miami to attend the funeral of one of those they called balseros, rafters. He was a dark-skinned boy with long eyelashes who could not have been fourteen. Nobody knew his name or what part of the island he came from. But there were thousands at his funeral, and there were flowers everywhere. Huge, ornate arrangements from the leading Cuban-American businesses and civic organizations, and small bunches that said things like, “From your fellow compatriots at the assembly line of Landmark Industries.”

  Everyone at the funeral had seen the video of the boy’s rescue that was played over and over on Spanish-language television. They had seen the burly, blond American Coast Guard officer stroke his hair and cradle the boy in his arms the way a father holds an injured child. And they had seen the boy try to say something, move his lips as if to form a word, before he died.