The Passage

by David Poyer

  “Tomás.”

  “Feeling better today, Cousin?”

  “I’m well, but …” She examined her cousin’s familiar swarthy face. She wanted to tell him about the man in the cane field, but something held her back. What was it he’d said … “Someone is lying”? He meant the informers, the chivatos. Now she feared to speak her mind even to her relatives.

  “They say this is the end of the harvest—the last day of cutting.”

  “I thought there were some fields left over by Alcorcón.”

  “They moved in an army unit and cut those yesterday. No, this is the last field, the one you’re working.”

  “What are you doing today?”

  “Work assignment. Cleaning out the hog pens.”

  “So that’s why you smell like a pig.”

  She liked his quick grin. “I don’t care. As long as they pay me, I’m happy. If that makes me a pig, I’ve been called worse. Any letters from Armando yet?”

  “No.”

  “He hasn’t written once since they took him.”

  “No,” she said, wiping sweat from her hair. “I worry, Tomás. He wasn’t well when they came for him. The first time he nearly died, and now he’s not a young man.”

  “He’ll return,” said Tomás fiercely in a low voice. “If the Batistianos couldn’t kill him, the Fidelistas never will. Are you eating? There’s no line now … . What are they giving us today, chico?” he called to a passing boy.

  “Rice, beans, a shred of pork, coffee, Comrade Tomás.”

  “Shall we go in?” Tomás said, offering his arm like a gentleman to a great lady. She smiled sarcastically and struggled up, grateful for his strong arm under hers.

  “Thank you, Señor Guzman. Let us go in to dine.”

  THE afternoon was like the morning, only hotter, as if the whole earth itself was baking and nearly done. A group of older workers grew in the shade of the trucks, those who’d fainted or cut themselves, or couldn’t finish for whatever reason. Graciela worked on, though her hands had gone numb and her shoulders felt like lead. Now she no longer thought about the man in the cane or about her missing husband, but only about the next stalk to be grasped and when the water would come around again. She finished her quota but kept on without slackening. The men and women sitting glumly by the trucks would not be paid today, though they’d labored through the morning. They hadn’t made the meta. But once you had, you didn’t stop. You had to keep cutting, for the revolution.

  When at last the whistle sounded, she staggered back, straightening with a great effort. Her back was iron, twisted with pain. Her clothes were soaked dark and her hands shook as she fitted the hose back on the pitted, dulled blade.

  SHE sat outside that evening on the rawhide taburete, which she’d taken out in front of the hut to escape the closed-in air that lingered from the day. And truly it was pleasant now, with the night coming, the breeze no longer a breath from hell, laden instead with the green perfume of spring flowers. She sat exhausted, not speaking as the children ran past her barefoot, only staring across the cropped dry fields that surrounded the batey. Her hands clutched her stomach, feeling, or perhaps imagining, a fluttering within.

  She sat hunched, mind a hollow bowl, watching the coming of darkness. It was almost undetectable, the way evening came in the tropics; presaged only by an almost-imperceptible shadowiness, then, in seconds, the sudden descent of night.

  Just then, she noticed something white off across the bare cut fields, out on the road. It was eclipsed by some ragged trees, then emerged again, closer. It was a person. No, two, one taller, one shorter.

  Something about the tall one seemed familiar. She frowned but couldn’t make it out. The darkness was falling swiftly now, like a black machete blade, and she was getting nearsighted; she’d noticed that.

  But it did look like him … .

  The two left the road where it cut away across the fields and they crossed toward her along a bare path.

  She slowly put her fist to her mouth. The next moment, the chair tilted and fell, and she was on her feet, stumbling as her tired muscles gave way, but recovering and running, running toward the man who approached over the barren field. She screamed hoarsely as she stumbled over the cutoff stalks on the littered, hard-baked ground. Thought surfaced in her mind, then vanished in the manic tumbling of joy. It was him. They’d let him go. But why didn’t he wave? Why did he stand waiting; why didn’t he run to meet her?

  Then she saw the boy.

  Miguelito, looking sad and frightened, supported him under one arm; he was leading him.

  Before she understood it, she had reached them, thrown her arms around him, screaming and sobbing in joy. She felt his arms come up around her, hesitantly at first, as if they could not believe what they held, as if her sturdy body were delicate as blown glass. He was so thin beneath the old white shirt. She thought, I must feed him. They didn’t feed well at the prison. Those who had been there did not like to talk about it, but they always mentioned that. There were yuca and beans in the patch back of the house, but they weren’t ready yet … . She’d fry plantains for him. He was really here, home! Oh Lord, she thought, you have delivered him.

  “Graciela,” Armando said then, in a strange voice. It was his, but thick, strained, saddened as she’d never heard it, even at Victoria’s death. And when she looked up, she saw why the boy had been leading him, saw that his eyes were open, yet could not perceive her, or the open fields, or the curious children who came running; could perceive none of it; could see nothing at all of the world of light.

  3

  Johns Island, South Carolina

  THE light leapt out at them long before they reached the grounds, wheeling and dipping and blazing with vibrating electric brilliance; and the music, too, loud ludicrous hurdy-gurdy amplified through buzzing speakers till it boomed out across the cars and pickup trucks and the rapt open faces of the children and the wary suspicious faces of the adults, closed and defensive, as if they feared and grudged themselves any part of wonder or joy. The circus had set up on a plot of empty land, an old pasture or cornfield somehow left unbuilt on while all around it suburbs had crept out. Now, as they neared, the boy tugged at the man’s hand. “Let me go, Dad.”

  “No, buddy, better hold on. There’s a crowd; I want you to stay close to me.”

  “The Ferris wheel! A Tilt-A-Whirl! Keen!” The boy tugged again, and the man smiled, looking down at the top of his head. “Dad, let go of my hand. Please!”

  “Okay, but stay in sight. We’ll need tickets to get on those, anyway.”

  Released, the youngster darted ahead, looking back only when he’d wedged himself into line for the first ride. He waved wildly to his father, who waved back. Touching his wallet lightly through his slacks, he looked around for a ticket booth.

  He was standing in front of it, smelling the roasting peanuts and the caramel coating of the apples and the sulfur reek of gunpowder that drifted from the shooting gallery, when he saw them.

  Suddenly, a dry feeling came in his throat, a faint falling away behind his chest as he stared out.

  They stood on the open field beyond the last row of stalls. The glaring garish electric lights on the wheeling rides, the strings of incandescent bulbs that lighted keno and bingo and the games of chance and skill made the evening out there even darker. As he watched, money clenched in his damp hand, he saw two of them merge, melt, and then slowly dissolve into the darkness, till he could no longer make them out at all.

  “How many, Mac?”

  “What?”

  “How many tickets you want, Mac?”

  “Oh. Let’s start with five dollars’ worth.”

  Tearing his eyes from the dark, he said, “Thanks,” then turned back toward the music, toward his son, hands clenching and unclenching as he looked openmouthed up at the Rocket to Mars.

  Later he watched as the boy rotated high above him, fists white on the safety bar as the make-believe rocket twisted and rolled. Just
watching it made him feel sick. But he was glad they’d come. This would be their last time together for a while. When he returned, the boy would be older; he’d have missed part of his life, and he regretted this even as he knew that he couldn’t stop it, and wouldn’t if he could. He had to grow up. Nothing could change that. But tonight they were together at the circus, and they were going to have fun.

  When the ride was over and the attendant clanged up the safety bar, the boy struggled out. “That was great!”

  “You liked that?”

  “Hell yes. Why don’t you go on it, Dad?”

  “You’re not getting me in one of those things. Maybe the Ferris wheel, though.”

  They went on a couple of the easier rides together and had withered greasy hot dogs. They pitched pennies and the boy won. At last the man glanced at his watch. “Ten o’clock,” he said.

  “Aw, Dad, we just got here. Can’t we stay longer?”

  “School day tomorrow, big guy. C’mon, Mom’ll be waiting up for us. You remember where we left the car?”

  WHEN he dropped the boy off, his wife was at the door, smiling at them both, and he winked as he turned away, calling, “I’ll be back in a little while, okay?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “We need some milk. I’ll pick up a quart at the Piggly Wiggly. Anything else we need?”

  “We’re out of your cereal,” she said.

  He stopped at the corner and got milk and cereal, then sat in the car with the engine running, there in the lot. His hands felt numb, gripping and releasing the padded plastic of the wheel.

  You shouldn’t do this, he told himself.

  But he knew even as he thought this that he was going to. It had been too long and he would not be able to resist. He had tried not to want to; he had even, once, prayed not to want to. But it was something inside him that was different and unalterable—not something that he did, but something he was and would always be.

  THE fairway was almost empty, dying back now toward night. Darkness trickled like black blood between the naked transparent bulbs. His loafers scuffed up dry dust that smelled of cotton candy and stale popcorn and old cowshit and oil from the engines that powered the wheels and rides and the sharp scared smell of his own body. The barkers and roustabouts and sharp-voiced stall keepers glanced incuriously past him as he strolled, sleeves rolled up in the lingering heat of the summer night. The grinning and crying masks leered down from the carousel; the painted horses nodded knowingly as they swept round in endless circles, the music jangling and bleating out into the night with forced desperate joy.

  The shadows waited—out there, beyond where the last parents tugged the last whining kids toward the cars, past where the last teens threw baseballs at cascades of milk bottles.

  He stood under the light and bought a Coke he didn’t want. He drank it with a dry mouth, tossing the ice cubes back and crunching them as he looked blankly at the grinning faces of stuffed dinosaurs, rag clowns, cheap stuffed dolls. If they found out, he would lose everything. He’d seen it happen to others, men he knew and respected. Decades of work, sacrifice, achievement, none of that mattered. They’d been cast into the outer darkness, and there was no way back.

  And his family—he did love them; he loved his wife, his son, his daughter. It was not their fault that love was, somehow, not enough. He could lose them, too. No, this was madness, idiocy. It wasn’t too late to turn back. He tossed the empty cup toward a trash barrel and touched his slacks lightly. Wallet, car keys … he had only to get into his car, return to his wife, his home, his family.

  Touching his lips lightly with the back of his hand, he walked slowly out from the circle of light. His chest was tight with mingled fear and yearning. Fear, because you never knew exactly what or whom you would encounter. He moistened his lips, eyes flicking around in the growing darkness around him. Avoid groups. Look for cover. Sometimes he thought it might be wise to carry a knife. But he never had, and up till now, he’d been lucky.

  And yearning, because if just once in a long time you could take off the mask and breathe … then you could stand it. You could stand all the rest.

  He walked slowly on, back rigid, as his shadow grew longer out in front of him and the field grew dark and the music faded to a whisper, a jangling discordant rumble—until he heard the whisper, so close and intimate, it seemed to come from within some secret chamber of his own divided heart.

  II

  CHARLESTON

  4

  U.S. Naval Base, Charleston, South Carolina

  TWO months after Barrett’s commissioning, Lenson squinted into his stateroom mirror. His head pounded; his teeth hurt; his hair smelled like smoke. He’d been out late attacking the Fleet Bar’s fifty-cent double martinis. His bike was still there. Fortunately, the ship was moored at Pier Juliet, close enough for him to stagger back to his bunk.

  He closed his eyes, remembering Palma de Mallorca, when he’d stayed at the Brasserie till the taxis stopped running and had to walk eleven miles back to fleet landing. He’d made it just before dawn and collapsed on a bench by the seawall, waiting for the early boat. He’d come to with an old man groping him, muttering love Spanish.

  He grimaced, felt around in the cabinet, and swallowed three commissary aspirin. He pulled on khakis and headed down the passageway.

  Barrett’s wardroom was luxurious compared with those of the ships he’d served on before. The carpet was deep blue. Armchairs covered in blue leatherette ovaled a dining table. The sitting area had a coffee table, corner sofas, and built-in bookshelves, though the only books yet were Crenshaw and Knight and Customs and Ceremonies. The bulkheads were off-white and the overhead pierced steel, with fluorescents too bright for a hangover. A gray joiner door led out to officers’ country.

  “Mr. Lenson, what can I get you? Hash bacon eggs, grits corn muffins.”

  “Just coffee. And some battery acid.”

  As he waited, he looked down the table. The other men at it wore khakis, the usual in-port uniform, except for Giordano, who was in coveralls.

  Dan remembered the light cruiser he’d served on during his third-class cruise. The wardroom was lily white then; a Catholic or a Jew was exotic. Barrett reflected a changing Navy. The majority was still Caucasian, but Burdette Shuffert, Dan’s fire control officer, was black; so was Glenn Crotty, the main propulsion assistant, and Martin Paul, the first lieutenant. The operations officer was Felipe Quintanilla, a dark stocky man with a Hispanic accent that got stronger when he was excited. He’d grown up in a family of migrant farmworkers and managed to get himself appointed to the Naval Academy.

  His musings on sociological change were interrupted by one of the ensigns, talking to Ed Horseheads, who was scanning the morning paper. “What’s the news, Mister Ed?”

  “The usual shit. Castro’s making hostile noises again.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Threadfin, that sub they lost. There’s an article says it was probably a flaw in the welding.”

  “Welding, shit! The fucking Commies sank it.” A lean, grizzled man in an old-style foul-weather jacket stenciled uss ENTERPRISE pulled out a chair next to Dan. He wore a knife and a flashlight in a black leather holster, aviator-style glasses, and had whitewalls to his haircut, though he was going thin on top. “Caught it out there alone and dropped the hammer on it. Morning, shipmates.”

  “How’s it going, Chief Warrant?”

  “I’ve had it better, but I’ve paid more.”

  CWO3 Jay Harper was the C3M officer, short for command, control, and communications maintenance, though most still called him the electronics maintenance officer. Dan had seen a lot of him since commissioning, since Harper was also the combat systems test officer, responsible for accepting the sensors and weapons as the yard finished installing them. This had made it awkward for Dan, taking over. The captain had developed reflexes, and even now, when something was wrong, he’d pick up the phone and call Harper. Dan was trying to cure him of that.r />
  “Look like you got up on the leeward side, Lieutenant. Out steaming last night?”

  “Cracked a couple. You, Chief Warrant?”

  “Pussy and booze don’t affect me like it does you young guys. Want me to take officers call?”

  “I’m on deck. We ready for the conference?”

  “Right after quarters.”

  Horseheads, still deep in the paper: “Christ, you see this? About the chief getting murdered?”

  “What’s that, Mister Ed?”

  “Told you, J. J., call me that again and I’ll shove a horseshoe up your ass.”

  “One of our chiefs?” said Dan.

  “No, no. Yeoman chief on the Biddle. His wife was banging this guy who works at a Seven-Eleven. When the chiefs in port, the guy works nights. He’s at sea, the guy works days. Chief deploys, he moves in. Finally, he gets back from the Indian Ocean a week early and finds them both there. The wife hands the guy a knife, he ventilates the chief about twenty times, and the cops catch them hoisting him into a Dumpster.”

  “Any kids?”

  “A boy. He was at Scout camp when they whacked his dad.”

  Shuffert grunted, “Why do we keep people like that around?”

  “Now you’re talking, Hoss,” said Harper. “Microwave ’em both.”

  “Her, too?” said a slight man with a black beard. “Then who raises the child?”

  “Hey, the cunt’s been screwing the guy all along, gave him the knife. What kind of mother’s that? You always was a softy, Mark. Being liberal, does that go with being kosher? It’s genetic, or what?”

  “Some of the most right-wing assholes I know are Jews,” said Deshowits. “What’s your excuse, Chief Warrant?”

  Antonio and Pedersen, the stewards, came out of the pantry and ranged themselves on either side of Ensign Paul. He stared at the coiled brown mass that had materialized in front of him. A single pink candle burned on top of it. “What the fuck’s this?” he said, pushing himself away.