The Lonely Crossing of Juan Cabrera

by J. Joaquin Fraxedas

  A journalist who was a friend of Alberto’s spoke to the crowd that had gathered at the graveside, and he speculated about what that word might have been. He said some people thought that the word had been “freedom,” which is what the boy sought, and finally attained after paying the ultimate price. Others thought the word had been “Cuba,” the beloved Patria the boy had left behind.

  But the journalist personally thought the word had been “mother.” He thought that, in his last moment, the boy had tried to call his mother, as all children do when they are hurt. And, of course, no one knew who his mother was or whether she had left with him on the raft and had died along the way or had stayed behind and was now sobbing quietly, terrified and alone, in some desolate corner of the island. And the eyes of the people filled with tears when he said that, and the speaker himself choked up and for a few moments the only thing that could be heard was the sound of all the flags fluttering in the wind.

  Chapter Eleven

  Before falling asleep, Juan had wrapped a line around his wrists to keep from slipping off the inner tube, and now he was dreaming of the wind. In his dream he saw the ripples on the water as the wind stroked the water the way a man caresses a woman. Then he felt himself lifted above the water and carried by the wind, and his dream was so vivid that he felt in his stomach as though he were truly flying and he saw the white crests of the waves pass under him at great speed. But the burning pain from the jellyfish stings awoke him before he finished his dream.

  The pain annoyed him now not so much for its unpleasantness but because it did not let him sleep, and lately when he was awake he only thought about death, which he considered to have already begun and now it was only a matter of seeing it through to its conclusion. He was not sad about death and he was not frightened. Nor did the loneliness bother him. Besides, he thought that he was not truly lonely as long as someone cared for him and he knew that even now Carmen was caring for him and perhaps other people he did not know were caring for him. He also still felt connected to Raúl in a strange way, and he felt that what he thought and what he did continued to affect Raúl, the same way Raúl was affecting him now as he flowed in the current. So he did not feel lonely and he did not feel sad because he considered himself already a dead man. But he continued to think about death and wondered if dying was different from what anyone supposed, if perhaps it was a good thing, a lucky thing. He wondered if Andrés knew that death was lucky, perhaps luckier than life, and had reconciled himself to it when he said, “It’s the only way.” He thought he had. His voice had sounded strange, as if it came from another world. But maybe that was just the nature of his voice, he thought. Andrés had been a preacher of sorts, and they have voices like that.

  Whether Andrés had or not, Juan could not reconcile himself to death, and since that was all he thought about now when he was awake, being awake bothered him. So he forced himself to concentrate on the swirling patterns of many-colored fish swimming around the net until he could no longer see the individual fish, but only the changing colors. The colors mesmerized him, and after a while he was asleep again and dreaming of the wind.

  In his dream he was aloft once more and felt the familiar butterflies in his stomach, but this time he was over fields of sugarcane and he saw the fingers of the wind stroking the tall stalks of cane. And as the wind stroked the cane, he saw how the fields changed colors from a deep green to a lighter green where the wind passed. The rippling colors reflected the ebb and flow of the wind as it moved over the great fields that extended to the horizon in all directions.

  Juan knew that this was a childhood dream in the strange way that you know certain things in dreams because now, looking down on the fields, he felt as he had when he was very young and climbed a framboyán tree every day to sit on a high branch that was broad and smooth where he waited in the coolness of the midday shade for the wind that always came in the afternoon.

  He started climbing the framboyán tree after they took his father away, and at first he scanned the horizon for weeks looking for his father’s return. Then his mother told him that his father would never return because the uniformed men who took him away had killed him. But he continued to climb the tree even after she told him, and he continued to scan the horizon every day until after sunset when it became too dark to keep looking, and after a while he learned the habits of the wind.

  For the rest of that year he continued to climb the framboyán tree. But by then he had stopped looking for his father and climbed only to wait for the coming of the wind, which always came without warning early in the afternoon.

  And now in his dream he felt the wind blowing again through his secret place, caressing his face, stirring his hair and rustling the great stalks of cane until they became as fluid and impermanent as the waves in the ocean. And he remembered, as you remember things in dreams, that the only thing that was constant and reliable in those days was the wind that came in the afternoon and then moved away until it disappeared over the horizon, leaving the fields still and flat again, like a green, tranquil sea.

  When the wind stopped, Juan knew he had finished his dream and he felt the same longing that he felt when he was a boy and thought that the wind was connected in some mysterious way with his father and that every day after sunset the wind went searching for the place where his father was now and reached that place at an appointed time.

  Chapter Twelve

  The sun had risen farther, and now it shone almost straight down on the water. Alberto had dropped off his student at the airstrip, refueled, and taken the Cessna back out. This time he was by himself. He could not concentrate on the search with the student next to him. Besides, it was unfair to her, although she had been enthusiastic enough and willing to help when he told her.

  He headed southwest, toward Key West, flying over the edge of the Stream. Earlier he had covered the area around the middle Keys, searching inside a long rectangle that went from Boot Key south to Sombrero Key light, then northeast along the edge of the stream all the way to the light at Tennessee Reef, then toward the shore to Long Key and back down to Boot Key. After that he had searched a similar-sized rectangle but farther off shore, from Sombrero Key light south to about fifteen miles over the Gulf Stream, then northeast until he was about even with Tennessee Reef, back in toward Tennessee Reef, then south again to Sombrero Key.

  He scanned the surface with great intensity, attentive to the slightest break in the blue monotony, the merest hint of something—anything—floating on the water. Sometimes his eyes would catch a glimmer, a flash, a change in the way the sunlight reflected off the water, and Alberto would pull back on the throttle, slip down closer to the surface, and slowly circle the spot. A piece of plywood. The top of a Styrofoam cooler. A loose lobster-trap buoy. A yellow island of sargasso weed. A nondescript accumulation of garbage. But mostly nothing. A false reflection off a rogue wave from some passing tanker. Or his imagination, a feeling, a sudden urge that something is there. Like a fisherman who sees the silhouette of a sailfish’s bill break the surface near his bait and right away tells himself he imagined it. There was nothing. I saw nothing, he says to himself just before the line flies off the outrigger.

  A man is so hard to see from an airplane, Alberto thought. Sometimes a thing as insignificant as a paper plate or a yellow rag lying on the grass is easier to spot than a man walking across a field. And it is even harder if the man is in the water, he thought. Then the only thing that usually shows is a tiny speck of a head bobbing on the surface.

  But Alberto’s eyes were still good and he was sure that in certain ways it was easier for him to spot things from the air now than when he was younger. Over the years his eyes had grown accustomed to seeing the world from an airplane. The vast expanses did not overwhelm his senses as they had when he was younger. He was more patient now and took the time to look for subtler things. He remembered how hard it had been for him to spot his instructor on the ground during his first solo flight.

  Respectin
g the established ritual surrounding the first solo, his instructor had not told him ahead of time that he would be soloing that day. They had spent the morning doing touch-and-go’s at the airport in Santa Clara, as they had for the previous two weeks. After a particularly good landing his instructor asked him to come to a full stop on the runway. As soon as the airplane stopped, Alberto heard the door open on his instructor’s side and felt the warm rush of adrenaline as he thought, This is it. His instructor stepped out quickly, leaned his head inside the cockpit, and told him to do three touch-and-go’s. “I’ll be here on the grass at the head of the runway,” his instructor said. “If everything doesn’t feel right on final, or if you see me waving my arms, just apply power and go around.” Then his instructor smiled, shut the door, and gave Alberto a big thumbs-up. Alberto took off smoothly and gained confidence as he maneuvered the little red airplane around the pattern. As he lined her up on final, everything seemed right, but he began to look around for his instructor just to be sure. He saw nothing but a long white concrete runway surrounded by a sea of green grass. The runway came closer and loomed larger and larger. Full flaps. Airspeed okay. Still no instructor. Where is he? Is he playing a practical joke? Did he go to the bathroom? Hand on the throttle, ready to go around. Drifting to the left. Correct for the crosswind. Crab her just a little. Okay lined up again. Looks good. Where is he? Nothing but grass and concrete. If I don’t see him I’ll put her down and taxi off the runway. I won’t do a touch-and-go. Okay. Almost there. Concentrate. Here we go. Begin the flare. There! There he is! Sitting on the grass by the runway. He’s smiling. Giving me a thumbs-up! Feel the reassuring bump of the gear on the runway. Okay! Full power. Flaps up. Carburetor heat off. Here we go.

  Surely a man is the hardest thing to see from the sky, Alberto thought. But he also felt great confidence. Today he felt as he had the day he left Cuba, as if there were a great, irresistible magnet out there in the blue distance, just over the horizon, drawing him toward darker waters. He had heard fishermen speak of the same thing many times. They said their prey called to them.

  His plan now was to search the area around the lower Keys. He would go beyond Key West, past the Marquesas, almost to the Dry Tortugas, and then return to the middle Keys in the afternoon with the sun at his back. Now he was about seven miles out and even with Bahía Honda, where the lower Keys begin. Ahead he could see the light at Big Pine Shoal. No sense in looking around the shallows between the lights and the Keys. If they make it this far, someone is bound to see them. Earlier he had wasted time looking around the shallows off the middle Keys. But he had not wanted to take the student out too far, that would have been unfair to her.

  The long row of navigational lights that begins near Miami, at Fowey Rocks, and arcs down all the way to the Tortugas, follows the curve of the Keys about six to eight miles offshore and warns passing ships of the nearby shallows and living coral reefs. Beyond the lights, the floor of the sea drops off and forms a great canyon ninety miles wide and over a mile deep. And through this canyon the Gulf Stream flows like a warm wind blowing silently through the inner spaces of the earth. The power of the Stream is so great that the huge tankers traveling westward, against the flow, hug the shallows to avoid the full force of its currents.

  The sea was brighter now as the sun began to arc down toward the west, and the glare made it harder for Alberto to see. It would be better coming back with the sun behind him, he thought.

  He saw more white fishing boats. Some were returning after a morning of trolling the Stream, and they passed by other boats going out. In the morning they are all going out and toward evening they are all returning, he thought, but around midday the outgoing and incoming traffic is about even. And seeing all the boats gave Alberto more confidence. If they are still alive, someone is bound to see them.

  But Alberto saw nothing and flew on beyond the Sambos, beyond Sand Key, toward the Marquesas. Maybe they are around the Marquesas, where four hundred years ago a hurricane tossed the treasure-laden Spanish galleons Nuestra Señora de Atocha and the Santa Margarita against the reefs, he thought. Or maybe the storm blew them farther west, toward Rebecca around the Quicksands, or as far as the Tortugas. They must be somewhere. Unless they were blown past all that into the broad waters of the Gulf, and then nothing can save them.

  When he came upon the Marquesas he went down close to the surface and flew all around and searched the water in a great circle and then searched the area around Rebecca Shoals and the Quicksands and saw nothing. Then he went as far as the Dry Tortugas, although he had not planned to because the Tortugas are farther west than Havana, and normally no one who puts to sea at Guanabo should end up at the Tortugas with the current carrying them to the northeast with all that force. But there is no telling what a hurricane can do. So Alberto searched around the Tortugas and then flew to the northwest over the still, bright waters of the Gulf for a while because the thought of these men … Were they men? Vivian had not said. She’d said she had a reliable report of three who left from Guanabo. Three what? Maybe they were women. Maybe there was a child with them. Alberto thought about the funeral in Miami and shuddered.

  It is very strange to be a Cuban exile in the United States, having gone through what you have gone through and knowing what you know and seeing what you see and hearing the stories you hear every day, and still go on living a normal everyday life as if nothing were happening around you, he thought. It is like living a double life, like constantly stepping out of one universe into another and back again.

  He remembered talking recently to a lady from Sancti Spiritus with a refined manner who was still very beautiful in her sixties. They were exchanging escape stories. She had been with the resistance against the Communists in 1961 and had smuggled food and weapons to the men who were fighting in the Escambray Mountains. At night she would ride a horse across the mountains, carrying saddlebags full of ammunition. During the day she taught a kindergarten class. The secret police became suspicious of her comings and goings, and when they began to close in on her, the resistance took her out in a fast boat to Islamorada in the Florida Keys to save her life. A CIA contact met her at the beach, and the men who took her out went back to Cuba. There happened to be some tourists drinking beer and having a party at the beach when the Cuban boat arrived, and the whole scene was so surreal that the tourists in their mellow stupor thought someone was filming a movie and they were too drunk to notice there were no cameras. But to the tourists it seemed like something out of a movie set. This ominous-looking launch with a .50-caliber machine gun mounted on a tripod appears out of nowhere and men in jungle gear jump into the water and help a hauntingly beautiful dark-haired woman up to the beach. At the same time a man wearing a coat and tie comes running down the beach and into the water up to his waist to meet the group. At first the tourists are frightened and don’t know what to make of it. Then one of the tourists yells, “Look! It’s Sophia Loren!” and everybody runs up and tries to get her autograph.

  And thirty years later this lady, still hauntingly beautiful, is laughing and reminiscing with Alberto and says to him, “Can you imagine? One night I’m running arms, riding through the Escambray Mountains, scared to death, the wind blowing my hair, and the next day I’m in Islamorada with a bunch of drunk americanos who think I’m Sophia Loren and ask me for autographs. How can anything surprise you after that?”

  But even as she laughed there was a distant sadness in her eyes and Alberto had understood her sadness because he felt it himself and he always recognized it in the eyes of others who had made the crossing and now felt a spiritual link with the ones left behind on the other shore, a sense of something unresolved, a strange wistfulness when they looked south that would not leave them even after all this time.

  Alberto made a very wide circle, flying low over the Gulf, and looked in every direction and, seeing nothing, headed back south toward the Straits. It was a very clear day without even a hint of haze over the water. To his right he could see th
e Tortugas in the distance and the little speck that was Fort Jefferson shining in the sunlight. Closer in, around the Quicksands, a boat had run aground and was now trying to extricate itself by reversing engines. The boat churned the soft sandy bottom and the water around the boat was white, like milk of magnesia.

  Looking at the gauges, Alberto saw that each tank was almost three-quarters full, but he decided to put in at Key West and top them off before heading back out over the Straits; then he would not have to come in until well after dark.

  The brunt of the hurricane had missed Key West—it had passed over the water near the Tortugas—but the edge had dumped plenty of water on the city, and there was some flooding and a little damage to a few buildings under construction along the waterfront. The older buildings in the center of town were not hurt.

  Most airplanes without hangar space had been flown out of harm’s way before the hurricane arrived, and except for a couple of awnings that had been torn off the terminal building and some broken glass, there was not much evidence that a hurricane had come through the airport at Key West.

  But water had seeped into the underground gasoline storage tanks, contaminating the aviation fuel, and there was none available for Alberto’s airplane.

  He went inside the air charter office and bought himself a Coke from an old bottle machine, then called the FAA to get an update on the weather. When he got through, he came back out to the flight line and stood next to his airplane, sipping on the bottle, debating with himself about what to do next. He thought of returning to Marathon, but the distance to Marathon from Key West is half the distance to Havana. By the time he landed and fueled up in Marathon it would be too late to go back out. So he decided to press on and head south, toward Cuba. I have three more hours of fuel, he thought. I can search plenty in three hours over the Stream in this weather.