The Passage

by David Poyer

  Dan stared at the captain. Leighty looked back, holding his eyes.

  He lurched to his feet suddenly, onto legs that felt numb and separate. Without saying a word, without being dismissed or asking for dismissal, he let himself out, closing the door quietly behind him.

  He stood in the corridor, heart shaking his chest so hard he felt dizzy. Then he heard a movement from inside. He flinched, went around the corner to the ladder and slid down it, and jogged aft till he had several compartments between himself and the sea cabin. Sailors walked by, giving him quizzical glances.

  Had the captain just made a pass at him?

  Or was he weird from fatigue, imagining things?

  Had he actually been attracted to Leighty for a few seconds? Had he really wanted to touch him?

  He thought again of Diehl, realizing with horror that what he’d done with the diary, and everything he’d said to the NIS agent, had been based squarely and solely on Leighty’s word that he wasn’t gay—Leighty’s unsupported word.

  A naval officer didn’t lie. Everything was simple that way, clear—like ice, thick clear ice that you could walk out across without worrying about whether it would crack under you.

  But now he wondered if he’d been naive.

  If he couldn’t trust the captain’s word … then not only might Leighty be gay but he might be the reason Sanderling had killed himself. And Dan had helped him cover it up.

  What was the meaning of Leighty’s offer of friendship? Of a friendship that could help his career?

  Suddenly, his legs gave way. He leaned against a stanchion, buffeted by alternate waves of rage and fear as he struggled to understand.

  26

  Bahía Jigüey

  THE humid heat surrounded them, close as a blanket over their faces. Above them, the wind made the dangling black runners clack like castanets. But not a sigh penetrated the nightmare branches that knitted an impenetrable canopy of dense green. Only shadow, a rotting smell, and the sounds of hushed furtive beings living and dying: the creak of frogs, the ripple of tiny fish, the whining cloud of biting mites that had tormented them since dawn.

  Graciela lay with her head pillowed on her arm, looking over the side of the boat. Like a thick, flexible mirror, the black water pulsed slowly between the prop roots the trees dropped to support themselves. Such a clever plant, the mangrove … so shallow she could see the bottom, a sticky-looking tangle of roots, mud, and debris that bubbled as if heated from below. Gone abruptly noisy, then deathly quiet as they’d pulled in, the swamp had gradually resumed its normal life around them. Finches flitted between the branches, scarlet bills sharp and impeccably clean, as if polished that morning. Butterflies vibrated like flying flowers. Shrimp stirred the water like tiny silver spoons, and striped snails measured roots centimeter by centimeter. She watched a crab hunch patiently, then lunge for a tiny fish so fast that the eye couldn’t follow.

  She was the fish, and the planes that droned overhead from time to time, they were the crabs.

  They’d reached the patch of mangrove just as the sun rose in a bloody boil of cloud. The motor had run out of gas during the night, but when Augustín put more in, it wouldn’t start. For the last few miles, the men had paddled savagely toward the dark line of cay, racing the sunrise. As the great bay had gradually brightened, making their hearts racket with fear, they’d seen three other boats in the distance, black silhouettes against the delicate shimmer of dawn. They couldn’t tell what they were—patrol boats, fishing boats—and Tomás had ordered them tensely to row, row till their lungs burst; they had to reach cover before they were seen.

  And at last, they had. Julio and Tomás and Miguelito, on the bow, chopped furiously with machetes as Augustín and old Gustavo and the women, Nenita and Xiomara and even the bent, ancient Aracelia, pulled on the bulging humped roots to move them forward. The tin bottom boomed and scraped over root clumps as parrots exploded from the trees like screaming green-and-yellow fireworks. Branches trembled as steel sang through them, then collapsed onto the huddled children. Till finally they’d come to a halt. The twins had been throwing the fallen branches overboard, but Tomás ordered them to stop at once. Woven back together, they’d serve as a screen, shielding them from both the sea and the air.

  Breakfast was a mug of guarapo, warm cane juice, passed from hand to hand. Tools clicked as Augustín disassembled the motor. The other men conversed in the cabin, jabbing fingers at the map and pointing shoreward. Finally, Julio and Gustavo and Miguelito swung down into the mud and slogged away, sawing through the thickest patches with their machetes instead of swinging them—the pock of a blade on a hollow root could carry for hundreds of yards.

  And now she and the others were waiting, sweating in the windless heat, trying to ignore the insects, so thick sometimes that you couldn’t help breathing them in. Xiomara smeared gasoline on her skin to discourage them, but Graciela couldn’t stand the smell. So she just pulled her dress tighter around her and closed her eyes.

  For years, she’d dreamed of escape. When Armando had closed his eyes forever she’d sworn she’d get out at any cost—even if she never saw Coralía again. But you lost her long ago, she told herself coldly. No, even if she had to leave her, and two tiny graves, even if her heart shattered like a dropped bowl, she had to go. No matter that she was pregnant or that she felt like throwing up. She’d had enough.

  But part of her still wanted to stay.

  Cuba, beautiful Cuba, it was still her country and always would be, and she longed for it even as she left it behind: the cry of the owls at night; the thud of bongos and cricket click of the guayo; the smell of the fields in the spring, of mariposa and frangipani … . Did they have mariposa in the United States? She didn’t know. She wished she didn’t have to go. Lo hago por ti, hijo, she thought. I do it for you, loved one, child.

  Eyes closed, she put her hand softly on a mysterious hidden movement only she could feel. Did it understand that it was leaving its native land forever?

  Mi hijo. Again and again she said it, and after a long time, the fear stepped back a pace.

  THE boy threw dripping hair back, trying not to think about what lived under the lightless spotted surface, brushing his bare legs as he plowed through the black water. Lizards ran like iridescent mercury up misshapen roots. Birds waited till he was inches away, then burst shrieking from concealed nests. Each time, he froze, gripping the slippery handle of his machete. He wanted to run away, back to the boat. But he couldn’t. Tomás had sent him out, two hundred paces along the water’s edge, to stand picket. He had gripped his shoulder and said quietly that he depended on him. That meant that no matter how scared he was, he had to do it.

  He circled to skirt an immense tangled mass of roots and fallen trees, finding himself at the edge of an open bowl of water so black and still it mirrored his frightened face. He waded into it, then scrambled back, flailing his arms for balance. The bottom had dropped away, the mud crumbling under his toes. Strange, this empty crater. As if the mangroves had been blown apart …

  His eye picked the skiff out of the debris before he realized what it was. It was lying on its side in the tangled roots, vines twisted through the hull. His head came up and he waded the rest of the way around the pool. He grabbed it and tugged, experimentally, to see what was inside.

  It rocked down and splashed into the black water, then slowly started to fill as he stared at the tumbled mass inside—crude handcarved paddles, plastic bottles of water, still capped, just like the ones their own boat carried. But along with these were faded cloth, white bone, a skeletal hand gripping a crucifix, a boiling of black insects within a skull that regarded him for a long time, staring into his eyes, into his soul.

  He turned away at last, unable to meet that chill and distant regard. Miguelito Guzman swallowed hard, not because he was afraid of the dead, but because he was afraid of joining them.

  THE patrol boat came that afternoon, in the hottest part of the day.

  She lay th
ere, her mouth parched, panting for water. In the moist heat, you wouldn’t think you needed it, but she did. Finally, she asked old Aracelia to hand her the bottle. The water was warm and tasted of resin. She held it in her mouth, letting it seep into her tongue, but when it was gone, she was still thirsty. She looked at it again longingly, then capped it and wedged it down beside her. She was used to going without in the fields. She put her hand over the side of the boat, wet it, and drew the moisture over her face. It cooled her a little as it evaporated. Beside the boat, the little chalana, the skiff, was drawn up, the one Miguelito had found in the mangroves. He and Gustavo were working on it, plugging the bullet holes with whittled chunks of wood and patches of inner tube.

  At that moment—maybe because her cheekbone was resting against the wood and the sound came through the water to it, not through the air—she heard something. It grew nearer slowly, out beyond the whispering screen of the mangrove leaves.

  “A boat,” she murmured, and the others lifted their heads. Barefoot, moving in a crouch, Tomás stepped between the packed children and squatted on the stern. Extending his machete, he parted the hacked-off branches, slowly, slowly.

  Looking past him, Graciela saw it. Framed by the leaves, as if she was looking out at a moving picture. Not sharp, to her nearsighted eyes, but she could make it out.

  The motorboat was painted camouflage brown and green. A curl of white rippled along its bow. At the stern fluttered the Cuban flag, blue and white stripes, red triangle, white star. A man in a shoved-back cap was scanning the shoreline with binoculars. A soldier in fatigues leaned on a machine gun.

  Tomás turned his head very slowly, so slowly it might have been swayed by the wind. “Silencio,” he whispered. “¡No se muevan! They’re looking for us.”

  A moan from one of the children was instantly stilled by its mother’s hand.

  “Rámon. Nenita. You’re the only ones armed. If they discover us, what?”

  “I say we fight,” said Colon, his throat moving as he swallowed.

  “What of the children? The women?”

  “You’ll just go to prison, but they’ll shoot us. We can’t let them take us.”

  Aracelia spat. “Why you ask him, Tomásito? These lousy Communists. They found out about us; maybe they turn us in already. Why you listen to them?”

  The big man with one hand looked back at Colon for a while, his face thoughtful. Finally, he said. “So they were Communists. And I was in the army, grandma.”

  “That’s right, amigo. They fooled us all, the bearded ones,” said Rámon. “The only question, how long it took us to wise up.”

  “Which ‘bearded ones’ do you mean, exactly?”

  “All of them—Marx, Lenin, Castro. Ever notice? They’ve all got beards.”

  Tomás said, shrugging, “Okay, we fight. Nenita, you any good with that, or is it just jewelry?”

  “I can shoot it.”

  “We’ll see. Better get up here, get sighted in.”

  As she squirmed back, Tomás told Graciela, “Get as low as you can. The children, too.”

  “Shouldn’t they get out, Tomás?”

  “Even better, but wait a minute. Let’s see if they keep coming this way.”

  They waited. The buzz of the motor came through the leaves like the drone of a huge and remorseless mosquito. Then it changed.

  “He’s altered course. Toward us.” Guzman narrowed his eyes. “Think you can hit the officer? The pale one, the gallego?”

  “I think so, but I’m not much good at judging distance. At the range, they always tell us how far it is to the target.”

  Guzman raised his handless arm to shield his eyes. “Call it four hundred meters,” he said.

  Nenita Marquez flicked the leaf on her sight forward, settled the stock on the gunwale, and turned the safety down. Graciela, looking up at her from inside the boat, saw beads of sweat quivering on her upper lip. Nenita took two deep breaths, then settled her cheek to the lacquered wood. “You want him first? Or the one on the machine gun?”

  “You choose, but try to get them both. Everybody else, quietly now, into the water. Miguelito, Tia Graciela’s your responsibility, okay? Stay with her. If we have to split up, run, swim, get as far away as you can. When we stop shooting, come back. If we’re dead, go ashore, find a militiaman and give up. Say we forced you to come, okay? Nenita, three hundred meters.”

  The motor droned louder. Graciela felt the boy tugging at her. She knew she was supposed to get out of the boat, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t going to get over that thwart without a lot of noise. “I’d better stay,” she whispered. She looked up at Nenita again, at the bottom of her chin. A drop of sweat gradually gathered, then dripped off it. Over both their heads, a seedpod hung above the boat. It looked like a miniature plant, and she realized the tree must spread that way, the seed growing till it became a little tree itself, then dropping into the mud and rooting itself another few inches farther out from the shore. How perfect, how clever, how beautiful! She stared at it for a long time.

  The click of the safety going back on made her flinch. Tomás sighed, and Marquez slid back down into the boat. She mopped sweat with the sleeve of her shirt. “He didn’t see us?” Graciela asked her.

  “Apparently not. But I don’t see how. He had the glasses right on us.”

  “It’s dark in here. He couldn’t see past the shadow.”

  Tomás, rocking the boat as he dropped down to where the women were, said, “Okay, he’s gone. Everybody back in! Let’s try to get some sleep; we’ll be awake all night.”

  THOMÁS squinted at the plug, then reversed his machete and tapped it. He asked Gustavo, “You’d trust your life to it?”

  “Sí, jefe. Wood swells when the water hits it.”

  “Don’t call me chief, Uncle; we’re all equal here—even those who think a gun makes them a king.” Tomás straightened and passed his hand over his hair, looking once more out at the darkening bay.

  His stomach felt like a ball of concrete. It was like the hours before an assault. Remembering Africa made him think of his hand. He examined the stump clinically. It looked like the puckered end of a chorizo, the spicy Cuban sausages he’d loved in the days you could still get them. Some said when you lost a limb, you could still feel it, like a ghost. He never had. It was gone as if it had never been. Four years now since the South African mortar shell had taken it off.

  It had crossed his mind that maybe in Miami the doctors could do something. Perhaps one of the metal claws, or a plastic hand? But mierda, he was lucky to be kicking around at all. Too many guys had died there. And for what? Once he’d believed it, that they were fighting for the poor and starving of the world.

  “Mierda,” he whispered again, and his thoughts left his missing hand and moved remorselessly ahead. It was a miracle they’d found cover in time. If they made it to sea tonight, it would be another miracle. If they could find Miami, yet a third.

  He hoped old Aracelia had done her ceremonies right. They were asking an awful lot of the gods.

  Colon came climbing over the huddled, waiting women and children, his cheeks quivering like jelly. He levered himself over the side, splashed into the water, and waded back to join Guzman. “That was close. They almost saw us,” he muttered, looking curiously at the skiff.

  “Yeah. But they didn’t.”

  “Who you putting in here?” he asked, adjusting the pistol holster around his paunch.

  “Whoever wants extra room. You?”

  “Fuck no, not us. That’s all you want, get us in there, then cut the rope some night! What’s wrong with the big boat? Get rid of the cement, it’ll ride better.”

  Tomás said patiently, “We need it for ballast, but this boat will not stay afloat with fifteen people in it. You hear that wind. It’ll be rough out there. We’ll just turn over and sink, and the fucking sharks will eat everybody. ¿Entiendes?”

  “Maybe we can’t take everybody,” said Colon, fingering the holster. “We don�
��t have much food.”

  “I figured you’d come up with that sooner or later, compañero. That’s why I got the skiff fixed. And speaking of food, let’s not forget, you didn’t bring a fig, not one mouthful of rice, not one bottle of cerveza. You didn’t bring a thing but that gun and your big mouth, and you want us to abandon somebody else so we can take you? You’re an asshole, a culo. Get out of my sight.”

  “My family’s staying in the big boat,” Colon repeated.

  Tomás shrugged. He waded over and looked in. The old woman sat staring at the twins, who were playing with a lizard they’d caught, making it run around inside the hull. It could not escape, and so darted here and there in frantic silence. It had already lost its tail. Graciela lay with her eyes closed, sweat shining on her face like a coat of varnish. He gnawed his lip. She couldn’t take much of this. And the way she looked, the kid could arrive any second.

  Augustín straightened and wiped his hands on a piece of rag, grimacing at the motor. “Will it run now?” Tomás asked him.

  “Think so. But it used a lot more gas than it should last night. Half of what we brought … in only three hours. These Russian machines are shit.”

  “We can put the sail up once we’re out of sight of land. Okay, listen, everybody: Some of us are going to get in the chalanita. We’ll tow it astern. That will give us more room and be safer.” He glanced at Colon. The fat man shook his head, scowling. “Okay … Gustavo, you patched it. Get in. You can fix the plugs if they work loose. Uh, Tia Graciela, do you want to stay where you are?”

  She opened her eyes slowly. “I can if you want me to, Tomás.” “Yes, but you have a choice, okay?”

  “Room to stretch out would be nice.”

  “You can lie on the bottom; it’s flat.”

  “Maybe it would be better there. Yes.”

  “Help her up, Miguelito. That means you go, too, and Julio—he’s the best swimmer we’ve got. That’s four—no, five. I want Aracelia with her, in case the baby … Give them a bottle of water, food, a paddle. Hand me the rope. Is this all we have? Okay, tie it tight; we don’t want it to slip.”