Flight from a Firing Wall

by Baynard Kendrick

  He told me to quit kidding him when he was busy.

  “I mean it. It’s called the John Pennecamp Coral Reef State Park.”

  “The things that you and Old Grandad see! Where is it?”

  “Underseas. It’s part of the only living coral reef in the Northern Hemisphere. It is headquarters for all the game fish and tropical fish in this area.”

  “I suppose they’re going to throw all the visitors overboard with Scuba diving outfits on—tanks, masks and flippers.”

  “Like most of the men who go down in the sea in ships, you are very ignorant of the sea around us,” I told him.

  “I haven’t gone down in it yet.”

  “Just give it time. You haven’t been running this depth bomb long, at least not with me aboard. They’re building a museum and recreation area on Key Largo. They’re going to run glass-bottomed boats out here, like they do at Silver Springs.”

  “Well, they’ve lost a customer,” Joe said. “The fish I bring on board the Angelus are the only ones I want to see. I don’t see what they want glass-bottomed boats for anyhow. Most of these lights along the keys are only five to ten miles offshore. Inside of them you can wade to anywhere you’re going and still keep your ankles dry.”

  “There seems to be plenty of water here.” I looked yearningly toward the distant shore.

  “Fifty fathoms. Three hundred feet and we draw three.”

  “How far out are we?”

  “Twelve to fifteen miles offshore.” We passed the lighthouse and started on a westward swing. “It’s seven o’clock on the button and we’ve made over fifty miles. About a hundred and ten to go. If this wind holds on our stern, I’ll gas in Key West by half-past nine.” He switched on a dash light, pulled a Straits of Florida chart from under the seat and had a look. “It’s forty miles from here to the lighthouse on Alligator Reef, off Matecumbe. That’s a group four flasher. Hold your watch on me. You’ll have it right to starboard of us in less than an hour.”

  What few comforting lights I could spot coming on along the keys looked farther than ever away. I said, “Nobody’s questioning your hot rod, Joe. She’s fast enough for me.”

  “Well, I thought it would give you something to do if you went down into the cabin and got us some sandwiches, and some coffee out of that gallon Thermos. You can work out your passage by playing steward. I’m hungry and all hands have to do some work aboard the Tantivy.

  “All hands except Old Grandad,” I groused at him moodily.

  I went below, got the food, and made sure Old Lushwell was attending to his arduous duties by snoring in the proper key. Back on the flybridge we munched our sandwiches and drank the coffee in silence. If a last meal in a death cell tastes good, that one must have tasted good to me. A flight of jets passed overhead with a banshee wail. I didn’t look up. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even cheer when we passed the Alligator Reef lighthouse at seven-forty. Compared to the speed I was being rushed to destruction, that traditional bat out of hell was slow.

  After a while the sky grew black and the stars went in. After we passed Sombrero Key and American Shoals lights, we sped alone over a deserted sea. I remarked about the lack of ships. Joe said they were riding the Gulf Stream northward, now almost fifty miles to the east.

  At nine-thirty Joe slowed her down. We turned due north between the whistling buoy and the flasher on Sand Key. A Coast Guard forty-footer passed us close by, port to port, and answered Joe’s wave as she headed out. The lights of Key West lay dead ahead, beckoning to us cheerily.

  Old Grandad showed with his spectacles on, climbing up onto the flybridge with miraculous steadiness to stand with a hand on each of our shoulders. At Joe’s introduction he greeted me with a single “Hi!” It was a beautiful blend of fresh tobacco juice and lingering alcohol, strong enough to have hung my Panama hat on. The end of his beard gently. touched my temple as he leaned and peered at me curiously.

  “Is this the sixth or seventh, Skipper?”

  “Seventh,” Joe said.

  “That’s good.” His wiry beard scraped against my ear as he nodded reassuringly. “None of the others ain’t never been heerd from, but could be you’ll make it. Seven’s always been a lucky number, or leastwise that’s what they tell me. ’Tain’t never done nothin’ fer me.”

  The lights of Key West were shining closer and brighter, but for some reason not so cheerily.

  19

  It was shortly after ten when we left Key West and turned sharply southeast on a course of about 130° when we passed Sand Key. The northeast wind that had been on our tail was still blowing, giving us a quartering sea. Joe assured me that it was a friendly breeze and not even approaching the small-craft warning department. I assured him that it was plenty strong for me.

  I gave a silent vote of thanks to that mysterious Ray Hunt, who according to Joe had designed that deep-V hull on the Tantivy. I was beginning to grow very fond of those 800 galloping Daytona steeds that were holding her on our roller-coaster course so steadily.

  We had taken on 250 gallons of gas at Key West. That, as Luis Martínez had remarked about Liliana, was far too expensive for the likes of me. One thing was certain, whoever was picking up the tab for this sports cruiser must have known that she wasn’t any oversize package of economy. Friends of Cuba, or AFAO, her initial cost would have dug a deep hole into any organization’s crib—unless of course like the US Coast Guard they were drawing on some national treasury. In all likelihood I should have been preening myself. Who else had ever ridden to his grave in a hearse so fast, and pulled by 800 horses? Even Cleopatra after her famous asp act, floating down the Nile, couldn’t boast such luxury.

  It began to rain. At first it felt like just a drizzle. Then it started thumping on my Panama hat. Determined to let nothing dampen my spirits, I said, “Well, at least it’s warm.”

  Joe said, “Yes, and it’s also wet. Let’s take cover.”

  Followed by Old Grandad we ducked into the cabin below. Joe took the wheel at the starboard controls. I took the comfortable twin chair to port. Old Grandad took a look around for his bottle.

  When he failed to find it, he disgustedly poured three cups of coffee and gave each of us one. “¡Bazofia!” he exclaimed as he tossed his down. At least he knew the Spanish for “Swill!” Maybe he was a Cuban fisherman after all. “I’m goin’ to catch me a speck of shut-eye. Call me when you think I’m needed. Not that I think you ain’t goin’ to.” He flopped down in the starboard bunk.

  Joe said, “If you had any brains, you’d do that too.”

  “If I had any brains I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess that’s true.”

  The dual electric windshield wipers started their hypnotic sway. I kept staring ahead as the bow light glowed on rolling water and then on nothing with every rhythmic rise and fall of the Tantivy. Joe switched off the cabin lights, leaving only the shaded glow of the dials and compass to glare at me balefully.

  I have talked to many air pilots who claim that in long night flights they and their planes become detached from the earth and develop a sense of entity. The only thing that I had developed was a gnawing sense of inadequacy, or even better a sense of futility. Far from being detached from the earth, I felt too much a part of it: trapped like a germ in a drop of fluid, powerless to escape from my hopeless quest, helpless to resist the forces of night and sea, hurtling me onward against my will to some obscure destiny.

  With every mile we had traveled southward, like the skin from an onion, courage had been peeling off of me. I found that I was seeking new armor in poetry like a small boy praying in the dark. Verses from Washington Gladden’s Ultima Veritas, learned at school in Connecticut, and mostly forgotten except for a couple of stanzas, kept popping out at me crazily:

  When the anchors that faith has cast

  Are dragging in the gale,

  I am quietly holding fast

  To the things that cannot fail.

  In the darkest ni
ght of the year,

  When the stars have all gone out,

  That courage is better than fear,

  That faith is truer than doubt.

  That was all very nice, but I found that Mr. Gladden’s ultimate truths instead of acting as a shot in the arm were just further depressing me. I looked over the collector’s items in my mental records and hurriedly switched to one my mother used to sing from H.M.S. Pinafore:

  Now landsmen all, whoever you may be,

  If you want to rise to the top of the tree

  If your soul isn’t fettered to an office stool,

  Be careful to be guided by this golden rule—

  Stick close to your desks and never go to sea,

  And you all may be Rulers of the Queen’s Navee!

  While it was far too late to follow the excellent advice embodied in that golden rule, I found myself scanning that last line and coming up with: “Where you’ll dive to the bottom in the Tantivy!” I skipped the whole gloomy business.

  Joe hit a switch cutting off our running lights. The friendly glow of the bow light vanished and left me only the sensation of dropping to tell when we were coasting down a wave. The baleful eyes of the dials followed. Nothing but the moonglow of the compass was left to cheer me. Then from somewhere he produced a cowl to cover that, with only a tiny opening in it so he could follow our course.

  “Submarines?” I asked him. “Why the blackout?”

  “Ship,” he said shortly. “A big one. Didn’t you see her lights to starboard?”

  “No. I was writing poetry. I thought Burt Lancaster was after me.”

  “Well, don’t cry, Doc. She was a long ways off, and she’s probably much farther off by now. I just caught a glimpse of her starboard light and the lights on her mast. She was all lit up like a Christmas tree.”

  “Wouldn’t she have spotted us too?”

  “I don’t think there’s a chance in a million.”

  My fevered brain conjured up pictures of a fleet of Castro’s killer boats all flashing radio messages through the air: “Death to the gusano Carrillo!” “Would it have made any difference?” I asked Joe stoutly.

  By way of answer he fed more oats to our 800 fiery Daytonas. I thought we’d been making time before, but I’ve always been slightly silly. The Tantivy started a bobsled run, rushing down slopes and climbing up mountains I couldn’t see. With every dive my stomach turned wrongside out inside of me.

  “What difference could it possibly make?” Joe finally asked when he’d thoroughly fractured me.

  “Just my wild imagination. You seem to be taking it on the lam. What with the blackout, I thought we’d run into the Cuban Navy and that they might start lobbing red hot cannon balls at the good old Tantivy.”

  That plus the runaway roar of those Daytonas blew him up to cloud-9. Through the darkness he laughed at me joyously. “Don’t be ridic, Doc! In another hour we may have to outrun the Cuban Navy, but not up here. That vessel, unless I miss my guess, was the US Coast Guard Cutter Androscoggin, known as the Big Andy. She’s a 255-foot number that is Daddy of the Fleet down here, and is probably headed back to port in Key West after completing an Outer Patrol, which takes her close to the coast of Cuba.”

  “Well, wouldn’t she have tried to stop us, if she’d spotted us?”

  He laughed again. “What for? They know darn well that nobody is trying to mount an invasion against Fidel in this flying flea. I just decided to get out of her way in a hurry to save the boys on board any worry—that is, assuming they did spot me. Anyhow, there’s nothing afloat that can catch us, as you see.”

  “Except a shell or a plane with bombs,” I reminded him dismally.

  “So we’re blacked out tight, and I’m running sixty miles per hour. Be of good cheer, Doc. Nobody’s wasting ammunition on something they can’t hit or even see.”

  I was thinking again about those Cuban patrol boats when I asked him, “What about radar?”

  “Even with the flybridge, we’re less than a ten-foot silhouette,” he told me. “They’d think a flaxseed had gotten on the radar screen and started to crawl—if they spotted us at all.”

  I lapsed back into the private black dungeon of my own low spirits. Joe gabbled on, telling me how Fidel had pressed the panic button when the US Marines had been shipped to Santo Domingo, and how he’d ringed the entire island of Cuba with steel: barbed wire on the bathing beaches, searchlights at strategic points, and hand-picked bathing beauties from the militiawomen with Tommy guns hidden in their bikinis.

  I asked him how he knew that we weren’t going to hit a key.

  He assured me that our course was plenty far west of the Cay Sal Bank and that he wasn’t about to pile himself and the Tantivy up on anything. I took it that that also included me.

  He dug Old Grandad out of dreamland at one o’clock. The old man muttered into his beard and took his place in back of Joe without his glasses. He stared impressively out to starboard, certainly at nothing that I could see.

  At one-thirty Joe slowed down and turned due east. Five minutes later, as we rolled in the trough, I spotted a flasher working in groups of two.

  “What light’s that?”

  “Cayo Sotavento. Look just ahead and you’ll see the steady flasher on Puerto Sagua la Grande. That one marks the channel into La Isabela—about ten miles inshore. We’ve raised Cuba, Doc. How does it feel?”

  “I’m too numb to say. How close are we?”

  “Seven miles from the lights, at a guess. They’re visible ten miles away. The steady one is on one of the Dromedary Keys.”

  “I hope they have a sign up. As I told Dr. Martinez, there are a thousand of those keys.”

  “Don’t jump overboard just yet,” he advised me. “I know exactly what I’m doing or I wouldn’t be here. Relax and leave the details up to me.”

  “My heart is carefree!”

  “I’m going to head straight inshore now. Almost to the La Isabela channel. Then I’ll turn east and skirt the keys. Nothing is going to follow us into that shallow water, but it’s plenty deep for the Tantivy. Fishermen live out on those keys and there’ll be some house lights on, but at this time of the night not many.”

  “Just a couple, burning in the windows to welcome me.”

  “Anyhow, in between those house lights, Grandad will pick up the Black Light signals. They’ll tell us if we keep on going east or turn back west to Matanzas. At any rate, we’ll know where you’re landing place is to be.”

  I said, “Let’s hope it’s Caibarién. It’s closer, and while I’m not at all uneasy, I feel a slight touch of mal de mer creeping up on me.”

  “That’s just plain funk,” he informed me. “It will disappear as soon as they start shooting at you. This wind’s dying down to nothing. If it’s Caibarién, I’ll have you landed on Cayo Francés before three. Matanzas may take us an hour longer.” He turned sharply inshore.

  “I can hardly wait. I’ve never looked forward to anything so eagerly.”

  We slowed down to a piddling fifteen or twenty, with our 800 horses scarcely making a sound as they purred restlessly through their fiberglass nose bags. That ominous red eye grew closer and larger, blinking at me malignantly. Just before we ran it down, Joe twirled the wheel and put it astern. I thought of Hobson and Admiral Dewey, and sat in a glorious haze of anticipation waiting for round shots over our bow, and savoring the blood from my lower lip where I’d bitten it through.

  What seemed to me like an hour later, and which must have been a full five minutes, I saw house lights. We slid perilously close by the outline of a key. Joe switched the running lights on, an act which I considered most foolhardy.

  A few seconds later, Old Grandad said, “Keep on going east to Caibarién, Skipper. They’re flashing 4-2-3, 4-2-3, don’t you see.”

  Joe said, “You wouldn’t be getting fifty bucks and four bottles of O.G.D. if I could see.” He flashed the running lights off and on twice very quickly, then swung sharp northeast and gunned her wide
open.

  I shut my eyes and froze into a nice catatonic state of insanity. When I’d recovered my senses enough to open my eyes, lights were rushing toward me at overwhelming speed. Almost before my numbed brain could function, Joe had reined in our runaway horses, and clutching my bag and Panama I was standing on board barge No. 12 moored beside the freighter Lucretia, at one of the long dimly lighted piers on Frances Key. I took one last heartsick look at the Tantivy as she sped north to the land of the free.

  A fisherman in dripping rubber coveralls climbed up out of the barge’s hold and approached me incuriously. I reailzed that from here on in I must dump all my beautiful English determinedly.

  “I’m looking for Juan Jiménez,” I said.

  He said, “Juan Jiménez has sent a boat out for you to go ashore, señor.”

  I had almost landed in Cuba. It was twenty-five minutes to three. I wasn’t very quick on the uptake! I’d missed the fact that this fisherman had promptly fed two jotas right back to me.

  20

  Cayo Francés, where the freighter Lucretia had just about finished taking on a load of frozen seafood from the Cai barién barges, preparatory to sailing on the morning tide, is one of the more than four hundred rocky islets and small islands called the Jardínes del Rey.

  These cayos, or keys, make up the Sabana-Camagüey Archipelago, which stretches almost three hundred miles along the coast of Cuba to the north of the provinces of Matanzas, Las Villas, and Camagüey. The biggest of the islands in these two archipelagos is Cayo Romano with almost 320 square miles lying near the eastern end of the province of Camagüey. Cayo Francés, located midway between the two archipelagos off Las Villas Province, is the outside one of a string of keys which run out from Caibarién for about thirteen miles from the mainland.

  The territorial waters of Cuba possess more than five hundred varieties of edible fish. More than thirteen thousand fishermen, ten thousand workmen, and nearly three thousand small boats were employed in this industry in 1959 when Fidel Castro took over. The industry produced thirty-five million pounds of fish with a value of six million pesos, which included ten million pounds of shellfish, and smaller quantities of crabs, lobsters, oysters and sponges in that year. A large new Fishing Terminal was also completed in Havana in 1959.