Never Again

by Harvey A. Schwartz

  Once, however, Reuben yelled to waken Levi, who was sleeping in the main cabin. A black line of cloud squatted on the horizon directly in front of the boat, barely visible at first as nothing more than a pencil line where sky and water met. The cloud raced toward the boat, flashes of lightning visible within its mass, illuminating it from within.

  “Quick, get the sails down.”

  Reuben rolled the jib, the big sail in the front of the boat, and tied it down. Levi dropped the other two sails and wrapped ropes around them.

  “That’s the best we can do for now,” Levi said. “Now we go inside and wait it out. We are going to bounce around a lot.”

  The black clouds brought what sailors called a line squall—fierce winds that went from almost calm to near hurricane force in seconds, churning the water into short, steep waves that washed over the boat from all sides at once. Levi and Reuben were snug in the cabin, holding onto whatever handholds were available. It was terrifying at first, but after fifteen minutes of feeling as if they were inside a washing machine on spin cycle, it became obvious they were not going to die and they both sat in silence, side by side on the bench seat, holding on and waiting for the storm to pass, Levi’s arm around Reuben’s shoulder, offering what protection he could.

  Something on deck rattled ominously after a wave crashed on top of the cabin. Another wave and the rattling became a deep thump sounding as if it were trying to crash through the roof under which Levi and Reuben huddled. Another wave. The thump was louder still. Reuben watched the blood drain from Levi’s face.

  “I’ve got to go out and see what that is,” Levi said, putting on foul weather gear, waterproof bibbed overalls, and a jacket with seals at the neck and wrists. He opened the cabin door and stuck his head into the cockpit, only to be drenched by a wave breaking entirely over the boat. He pushed through it, thumped to a seat in the cockpit, glanced forward at the top of the cabin, then poked his head down into the cabin.

  “Not too bad,” he told Reuben, who was curled on the cabin floor, wondering now whether she really would survive this voyage. “The life raft is loose. Waves must have broken the bracket holding it to the deck. I’ll cut it free and carry it inside. Hand me that big knife, will you, and the vise-grip pliers from the tool box.”

  Minutes later the cabin door flung open, letting in a spray of water. Levi entered carrying a white fiberglass canister, three feet by two feet, obviously quite heavy.

  “Here is the raft,” he said. “I hope we won’t need it. I’ll find a place to store it where it will be out of the way.”

  Levi carried the heavy canister into the boat’s forward cabin, where there was a V-shaped berth Reuben usually slept in. He pushed the canister as far forward on the berth as it would fit, right up into the pointy front end of the sailboat.

  “You’ll have to sleep with your legs bent,” he said, smiling, then added, “or you could sleep with me in the main cabin.”

  The storm blew itself out as quickly as it arrived, and within the next hour the sails were back up and the boat continued its northerly course. Levi and Reuben resumed their debate about where in America they should make their landfall.

  “Right into New York Harbor,” Reuben said. “Then we tie up or dock or anchor or whatever it is that boats do when they get to the land. I climb off this stinking thing and never get on another boat for as long as I live. I can’t say I know what I’ll do when I get to shore, but whatever, it will be better than this. I’ve had it with this fucking boat. Goodbye ocean.”

  She was reaching her limit. What had looked luxurious tied to the dock in Spain was taking on the feel of a damp pup tent. Worst of all was the constant movement. Reuben expected the rocking to continue for days after she reached shore. The storm had terrified her more than she wanted Levi to know.

  “No, not New York. Not a city,” Levi responded. “Someplace small. Someplace where nobody is looking out for anything. Someplace where the government is not on watch for terrorists sailing in with a bomb on their boat.”

  Levi’s knowledge of American geography was a bizarre mix of what he’d figured out from hearing stories about the hometowns of American tourists in Israel, what he’d seen in American movies, and what he’d studied in the few books left on board the sailboat, including The Cruising Guide to the New England Coast. That book, the classic bible for Yankee sailors entering new ports, described useful details of every cove, marina, harbor and island from New York to the Canadian border.

  “I want a place with no Coast Guard station, no military base, with no police department, if there is such a place in America,” he said. “I want us to sail in as if we’re stopping by for lunch, a loving, sailing couple on vacation on their beautiful sailboat. I want someplace with lots of other sailboats, lots of other couples on sailboats, where we are just like everybody else, nothing special about us. Who goes to New York City in a sailboat?” Levi asked. “You grew up there. Does anybody sail into New York City harbor?”

  “Well, nobody I knew actually sailed into the city. That was what the Long Island Rail Road and the Long Island Expressway were for. People kept their sailboats at yacht clubs, on the sound, Long Island Sound,” Reuben answered. “But cruise ships go there, and ferry boats. Maybe no sailboats, though.”

  She paused, thinking.

  “Okay,” she continued. “I see your point. We’ll sail this boat where other sailboats go, and I agree it should be somewhere quiet and out of the way. We don’t want anybody snooping around this boat.”

  The Cruising Guide was open in Levi’s lap. “Not New York. We are sailing to Brooklin,” he announced.

  Levi was shocked at Reuben’s reaction. She cracked up, literally falling out of her seat in the boat’s cockpit and rolling on the cockpit floor, laughing so hard she gasped for breath.

  “Brooklyn?” she shouted at last. “Brooklyn? You don’t want to go to New York, so you go to Brooklyn instead? I’ve got to get off this boat before I get as crazy as you are.

  “For your information, Captain or Lieutenant or whatever you claim to be, Brooklyn is part of New York, one of the five boroughs of New York. Brooklyn is where my bubba, my grandmother, lives right now. Great plan, oh fearless Sabra. A couple of Jews try to sneak oh so quietly into the United States, which has ringed its coast with the Navy, with the Air Force, with the Coast Guard and probably with Boy Scouts in kayaks. All looking out for bad guys trying to sneak in and do bad things in America. And where does the great Jewish warrior decide we should go? To Brooklyn, New York, the same place in America where a million other Jews went from Poland and Russia and who knows where.”

  Levi stared at her. She couldn’t stop mocking him.

  “They have the best bagels there, you know. And knishes. We’ll step off the boat and ask the first cop we see where the best potato knishes are sold. Maybe I’ll ask him in Yiddish, so we’ll blend better. That’s what you want us to do, isn’t it, to blend? Right, we’ll blend in Brooklyn.”

  “Are you finished,” Levi said. He turned the book in his lap toward Reuben. “Not Brooklyn, New York. Brooklin, Maine. Population eight hundred and forty-one. And, I’ll bet, not a single Jew among them.”

  The week after the storm provided pleasant, straightforward sailing under clear skies. Levi glanced at the glowing GPS screen showing a map of the Maine coast with a blinking dot next to an elongated island. Monhegan Island, their destination, was dead ahead. He looked over the boat’s bow at the lighthouse on the island’s southern shore.

  “You know,” Reuben said, staring at the rocky island covered in pine trees, a few scattered rooftops showing, “I think I went there on vacation with my family when I was a kid. I thought it was way out in the middle of nowhere. I never thought I’d be so happy to see it again. I am so sick of this boat and so sick of this ocean. And so sick of—”

  “Don’t say it,” Levi interrupted. “I’ll admit I can be difficult to live with, and I’ll admit, too, that you are the first woman I’ve lived with
for more than a month but—”

  “You asshole,” she shouted. “Don’t you dare call what we’ve been through living together. You damn well better get your head clear; our Ken and Barbie days are over. We’d better get real serious real quick or we are going to spend the rest of our lives looking back fondly on this little sea voyage as we make license plates or break rocks or whatever it is they do in federal prisons.”

  “I know all that. But, Debra . . . before it all changes, I want to tell you how much I respect you for what you are doing. I admit that you give a first impression like a Jewish-American princess, and I’ve seen my share of that form of royalty, but you know that I know what you did.”

  Levi saw the dark cloud cross Reuben’s face, although he didn’t know whether it was the precursor to anger or tears. He quickly corrected himself.

  “I mean, what you had to do before you left Israel. I was just trying to tell you that deep down, you are one of the toughest Jews I’ve ever come across, and I’ve seen some pretty tough Jews in Eretz Yisrael.”

  She just nodded at him, perhaps in thanks.

  “Time for some real navigation,” Levi said, trying to hide any hint of nervousness from his voice. He guided the boat down a wide bay between pine-covered islands, surrounded by other sailboats, fishing boats, lobster boats and scattered ferries. The GPS directed them toward their destination.

  The boat rounded the lighthouse at the western end of the oddly-named Eggemoggin Reach. Levi steered down the center of the long, narrow channel, heading for the middle of the Deer Isle Bridge, with the town of Brooklin a few miles beyond.

  “Okay,” Levi said. “We will be there in an hour. Remember, we are a lovely couple on vacation on our lovely sailboat. Use your best American when you talk to people. I’ll get us there. But once we get there, you are in charge. I assume, although you sure have not told me, that you’ve got this all planned out for after we arrive. You know what we are going to do, right? I expect that you have it all arranged for people to meet us and hide us and take care of us, right?

  So, isn’t it about time you let me know the plans?”

  Levi looked at Reuben expectantly. She shook her head.

  “To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t have a clue what we are going to do. I’ll be goddamned happy to be home in America. Maybe I’ll call my mother and tell her I’m alive. Maybe I’ll forget about being the warrior queen of Israel and find some nice doctor to marry and move to Long Island and have a couple of kids. Maybe I’ll take you to McDonald’s. Maybe we’ll just, as you say, blend, maybe forever, maybe nice and quiet and blending will be what I do from now on. I’m so tired of excitement. All I know is that I want to get off this boat in the United States of America.”

  Levi was silent, staring at the coast, at the huge summer cottages on the shore they sailed past, eyes on the sails, trimming them in and out as needed. After ten or so minutes of silence, while he struggled to come to terms with the realization that she had no secret plans for what they would do next, he looked into Debra Reuben’s eyes.

  “Go ahead and rest, Debra. Eat your McDonald’s. But do not forget who we are. Do not forget what we left behind us. Do not forget a million dead Jews behind us. And, Debra, you want to blend? You want no excitement? Do not forget what is sitting inside that water tank, what you have been living with and I’ve been sleeping on. We can make more excitement than this country has ever seen, Debra. We have serious decisions to make, responsibilities. Debra, your family is here. I have no family.”

  Levi paused, eyes closed.

  “My family was there. You may be able to forget. I want to remember.”

  In all their weeks alone together, Levi never mentioned having family in Israel. Reuben felt terrible to realize that she hadn’t ever thought to ask. He was right, she knew. She had responsibilities—to herself, to a million dead Jews, to the Land of Israel, to history. It was her responsibility, she knew, because history had, for some bizarre reason, given it to her. She also knew that she already had a place in history—a place called Damascus.

  “You’re right. We have responsibilities,” she said. “And I agree. We blend, that’s our first job. Inconspicuous. Don’t stand out. Let’s enter America. And once we get there, we’ll figure out what happens next.”

  The GPS indicated less than a mile to the harbor at Brooklin. Levi spotted a dozen sailboats swinging at moorings ahead and to the left. He dropped the sails, rolled them neatly over the boom and started the engine to motor into the harbor.

  Inconspicuous, he thought. Don’t stand out.

  The modern fiberglass sailboat puttered into Brooklin Harbor and anchored in the middle of the fleet of classic, white-painted wooden boats moored in front of a dock with a large sign declaring, Brooklin, Maine, home of WoodenBoat Magazine.

  CHAPTER 19

  Ben Shapiro listened to WBUR, one of Boston’s two National Public Radio stations, as he drove to his office wondering for the hundredth time why he bothered to pay for the upgraded sound system in his car when all he ever listened to was either news or talk stations. Mention of Boston on the national news broadcast caught his attention.

  “President Quaid said he regrets having to take this action against American citizens in the Boston area,” the announcer reported. “Nonetheless, he said at last night’s midnight news conference that he refused to stand idly by while a virtual insurrection took place in New England that resulted in the deaths of ten American military personnel, and two additional federal officers last night.

  “Those taken into custody in last night’s roundup included approximately seventeen hundred American citizens who harbored refugees from the two ships in Boston harbor, and an additional thirty-two hundred persons who fled the ships. Tragically, two federal agents were murdered last night when a man being arrested resisted and opened fire. The man was killed by the FBI. The names of the victims are being withheld.

  “President Quaid said there are at least a thousand people from the two ships still at large. He said a manhunt on an unprecedented scale is in effect for those people and anybody harboring them.”

  Shapiro was so distracted by this news that he swerved into the adjacent lane, correcting himself quickly.

  “The president said he expects arrests to continue for the next few days. The midnight press conference was called with only thirty minutes’notice as word of the roundup spread through the Internet. The president said he expects to make further announcements during the day today.”

  Shapiro turned down the volume on the radio and dialed his office. He first left voicemail messages for his partners telling them he’d be tied up at least all morning and didn’t know if he would be at the office at all. They would have to tap-dance him out of a ten o’clock deposition in an age discrimination case, call opposing counsel to reschedule. He wouldn’t be making friends by doing that, but Shapiro sensed where his priorities would be today, and for many following days.

  Next, Shapiro dialed Aaron Hocksber. Hocksberg was an attorney with a large Boston firm known as much for its political connections and lucrative public-bond-offering representation as it was for the opulence of its new offices on the continually developing South Boston waterfront. Hocksberg was the fundraising chair for the Anti-Defamation League. He and Shapiro had served in the district attorney’s office together. While they weren’t close friends—moving in decidedly different legal circles in their careers— they got together for lunch every few months.

  Hocksberg had recently urged Shapiro to take more of a role—actually, to take any role at all—in the ADL. Shapiro begged off, claiming that his involvement with the ACLU took up all the time he was willing to devote to such cases, which usually took on lives of their own, lives that went largely uncompensated. If anybody was wired into this whole refugee business, Shapiro knew it would be Aaron Hocksberg.

  Rose Hocksberg, Aaron’s wife, answered the phone on the first ring.

  “Hello, Rose, this is Ben Shapiro. Sorry to
call you so early, but I need to speak with Aaron. Has he left for work yet?” Shapiro said into his car’s speakerphone.

  “Oh, Ben, I’ve been trying to reach Aaron’s law partners all night but the phone was broken and it just started working a few minutes ago.” Her voice, while not quite hysterical, was well down that road. “Ben, you have to help us. They took Aaron away last night. Two men came and took him. I don’t know where he is. I haven’t heard from him, and it’s been hours and the phone hasn’t worked all night.”

  “Calm down, Rose. Who took Aaron? Did they say who they were?” Shapiro asked calmly.

  “They wore suits. They had some legal papers. They knew his name. They knew my name. They took those Israeli people who were in the boys’room. They left me and our girls at home. And the phone has been dead all night. I didn’t know what to do. Will you find Aaron and get him back to me, please, Ben?”

  “I’ll do everything I can, Rose, I promise,” Shapiro said. “Stay home. I’ll call as soon as I know anything. Stay in the house. I promise I’ll call.”

  Shapiro pressed the steering wheel button that terminated the call. He had not expected to get his first new client that quickly.

  Ben Shapiro also had not expected to have so much difficulty locating his new client, Aaron Hocksberg. He got nowhere with state authorities, calling district attorneys’offices for counties around Boston. All he’d learned was that whatever happened the prior night in the suburbs north of Boston, it was entirely federal. No state prosecutors involved.

  At nine thirty in the morning, nobody who was anybody at the United States Attorneys Boston office was there. They were, he was told, universally “unavailable,” probably meaning the entire crew was awake through the night and were all home sleeping.

  “I don’t think any of the assistants are in yet,” the phone receptionist said. “Oh, wait just a second.”