The Passage

by David Poyer

  He hooked the trash can out from under the desk with his shoe. A moment later, the imploding bulb burst and rattled against the inside like the explosion of a tiny shell.

  32

  The Santarén Channel

  THE world roared. Gone mad, the wind was no longer wind but an irresistible power so violent that even the gigantic waves it had built cowered before it, cringing as it stripped the white crowns from their heads and flung them across the sea. The flying spray mingled with torrents of rain to make what she breathed, even lying facedown in the bucking, rolling skiff, as much water as air.

  The black wall had grown steadily as it approached, and with it the wind, until at midmorning, with the sky lightless as night, the rain started—rain as if an enraged God had abrogated his word to Noah and determined again to drown the race of men. It was so heavy and continuous that she could only breathe by making a mask with cupped hands over her mouth. The rain whipped her back as she lay gasping and choking. The gradually sinking boat reeled and leapt so madly that only wedging their bodies beneath the thwarts kept them from being shaken out.

  The wind increased, and increased … for hour on hour, till it became one prolonged shriek, till the world, unable to endure, began to break apart. The waves smashed over them, and for long seconds she couldn’t breathe at all, just stared at her hands through the green water. The mad shaking and roaring went on and on, till there was nothing else inside her head at all, just the insane wind, the steady crash of the sea.

  Then the wind increased.

  SOME time later she felt another body pressed close to hers. She opened her eyes in the midst of pandemonium.

  The sky was black. She’d never seen night in the day. She could only dimly make out the person whose face was pressed against hers. It was Julio, his eyes streaming water, hair a black pressed-down slickness, mouth an open O. The side of his face streamed blood.

  “I can’t hear you,” she screamed, and couldn’t even hear herself.

  His head turned away, and she felt something rough brush her hands. She flinched, then realized what it was.

  She let him pass the rope under and around her. It dug into her flesh. But now she could relax the terrible tension in her arms. She no longer had to hold on.

  With relief came utter weakness, as if her body, no longer needing to resist, had surrendered. A black wall at the edge of her consciousness swept toward her, flickering with lightning. Shaken, battered, she slid downward into lightless caverns bigger than the sea, an abyss that closed around her like welcoming arms.

  WHEN she came back to consciousness, the rain had stopped, but the wind had reached a fury that made everything that had come before seem pitiful, slight, and only a prelude to what now seemed the destruction of the world. She raised her head and peeped into it, like a smelter peering into a fiery furnace.

  There was no sea, no air, only a frothing airborne foam that boiled in the black light like seething milk. Whenever the flooded boat rose to a crest, the wind clawed at it, trying to careen and tumble it away, smash it apart into boards, bodies, splinters. She was alternately weightless and incredibly heavy, either gasping salty liquid air or crushed breathlessly beneath the solid sea. She gagged and strangled, fighting against the ropes before animal fear subsided and she remembered they were there to hold her aboard the only solidity in this howling waste. Still choking and coughing, she tried to lift her head again—into a terrifying world of gray-black clouds, driven like mad horses by the flickering lash of lightning. The boom and roar of thunder was the only sound the horrific howling of the wind could not blot out. A strange pale penumbra glowed and shimmered around each corner of the boat, and she stared, blinking as cold spray razored her eyes, before she realized it was the wind itself made visible, streaming at unimaginable speed around anything still projecting above the welter of boiling foam.

  A black head thrust itself suddenly up from it. Under an incandescent sheet of lightning, she made out Miguelito’s blank eyes, his mouth dilated in an expressionless gasp—so bright, she could see the black rot of his teeth and the molded curves of the back of his throat. Another motion and her staring eyes flicked aft. Julio, cheeks drawn back in a rictus of effort, was bending into the paddle as foam covered him like a blanket drawn up to his chest. Every muscle in his thin arms stood out. Behind him, old Gustavo was staring aft at an oncoming wave. Then the glare flickered and ran down into the sea, and they all disappeared, sucked back into nonexistence, and the black came back with a clap like the thunder.

  She thought, We’re going to die here.

  And somehow it didn’t seem hostile or threatening. She thought of Death now with yearning, as a black peace where storms could reach no more. It couldn’t be so bad, Death. Did not Armando, the dead children, her own mother wait there for her and the child she carried?

  At her feet in the dark, the scrabble of nails, the old woman. She was dragging herself up inch by inch, pressing her bony old body close. Graciela could feel her pelvis, her ribs as they dragged across her own. Their faces touched, and the ancient fingers dug into her arms like talons.

  Then, to Graciela’s slow wonder, she felt the old woman shove herself upright. What was she doing?

  Then the lightning came.

  The flash showed her old Aracelia kneeling in the madly plunging boat, gaunt body swaying, hair blown straight back by the wind from her transfigured hollow-cheeked face. Her hands were raised in supplication or curse. White-rimmed eyes stared up at the roaring clouds. Her mouth was open, screaming soundlessly in the shrieking fury—no, not screaming, but her lips were moving in prayer or charm, but speaking to something. Graciela felt horror move in her soul. She followed the old woman’s locked gaze. Black churning clouds, the flickering curving underbelly of the storm like huge crushing rollers in a great mill. But what did the old woman see? What scarred, glaring orisha, what enraged ancient god of Africa riding on the lightning flashes, beating the drums of thunder?

  The skiff plunged over a crest and dropped as if there were nothing below them for a thousand miles. All at once, the sea seemed to open and then close, sealing its lips over them, swallowing them like a great fish.

  Graciela’s whole body contracted. Her fingernails ripped into the wooden bottom as it rolled over her, as the whole sea turned itself upside down. Then there was no light at all, only a green flicker from below, above, from all around her, lighting up the screaming yet soundless face of the old woman, eyes staring open, hair streaming, below her … .

  They were upside down, capsized, sinking, and she was tied in … .

  With a tired, logy toss, the boat surfaced again. The howl of the wind was muffled now, and the spray drummed hollowly on the bottom, above her head. She opened her mouth, hoping for air, but as the foam melted, it seemed to bleed away through the wood, leaving her only water to breathe—salt water, bitter and warm in her mouth. Her chest heaved and her hands scratched and tore, gouging out palmfuls of splinters, her nails snapping without pain as the buried, panicking, dying animal tried to dig its way to the air.

  Someone was beside her, kicking and struggling, too, against the sea. But her open eyes caught only dim underwater shapes, outlined and frozen by the ghostly luminescence of lightning. She sagged, exhausted, unable to fight any longer. She opened her mouth to the sea.

  The boat came up and the edge of it caught the wind. The terrible shriek reached her only distantly as she sank away. Then the cord at her arms and thighs came taut and she was pulled upward. She fought it, wanting to sink into the peaceful green. Were those faces down there? Yes, there were her father and mother, and old Abuela, Grandmother, reaching out their arms for her in the streaming green-gold light.

  Suddenly, one of the cords went slack. Her arm fell free and she beat the water with it weakly. The other cord tugged, and she saw in another flicker-flash two sets of legs kicking madly above her, then felt arms around her, pulling her up.

  Then all at once, the remaining cord tore at he
r again, cutting into her flesh like the edge of a dull machete, and she was ripped bodily from the sea’s womb and grave and thrown up and across a hard narrow blade of wood. Back into the roar and howl, but also back into something resembling air. Her throat unlocked and she coughed and gagged as the flooded hulk rocked slowly from side to side.

  Just then, the lightning detonated across half the sky, a solid blue arc of vibrating flame that lighted the whole of her heaving, shrieking world. In its hellish light, she saw a thin brown hand reach up through the seethe and welter of sliding sheets of foam. Then, fingers still extended, it slowly slid beneath the surface of the sea.

  IT wasn’t as if the storm ended after that. It didn’t. The waves were as huge as ever, and now, with the boat half-submerged, they passed over as much as under it. The waterlogged chalanita rose as each one rolled in, but too slowly, and the sea covered them for long seconds, sealing them like flies in green jelly. But then it passed and the hulk swam slowly upward, and they could gasp and breathe for a little while before the next. Nor did the rain stop. But the hellish wind slacked a little. The racing black clouds still hurtled past above them, but as if to a destination farther on and not to concentrate their fury on this one small spot of ocean. The lightning flickered on, but in the distance now.

  They clung to the half-submerged wreck, exhausted, staring at each other or at nothing: Graciela, Miguelito, and old Gustavo, his white hair streaming water. He looked exhausted, a hundred years old.

  Julio hadn’t come up again.

  Graciela realized now what he’d been doing in those last moments under the overturned boat. He was trying to right it. But with her tied in, he couldn’t without lifting her deadweight out of the water, too. That was why he’d unlashed her arm, so he could get the gunwale high enough that the wind, catching its edge, would do the rest, finish flipping it upright again. Then somehow he’d managed to thrust her up and out of the water, back into the little pocket of wet wood that was their only protection against the sea.

  Only he’d already been tired, fighting all night to keep their stern to the swells. That last effort had exhausted him, and he’d slipped away … and Aracelia, too. The old woman was gone without a trace. Graciela remembered her open mouth, fixed horror-stricken eyes, hair streaming out as if still blown by the wind as she fell slowly into the flickering black.

  The three who were left clung silently to the wreck, looking out over a barren, chaotic sea.

  Sometime later, Miguel crawled and splashed toward her. He put his mouth to her ear. This time, she could just make out the words he shouted at the top of his lungs. She shook her head, close to fainting, then opened her eyes again and thrust her hand inside her dress.

  Miracle of miracles, the bottle was still there. She pushed it toward him and he scrambled forward and wedged it in the little overhang at the front. Then he looked back at her.

  “Tia? This might give you some shelter.”

  It was only a tiny niche, but as soon as he said this it seemed infinitely desirable, somewhere she’d be safe and protected. He helped her untangle the line and move up over the thwarts. She fell, hurting her knees, but kept crawling with awkward, fierce determination till she reached it and curled herself in.

  Gustavo crawled aft to counterbalance her and the two men huddled in the middle of the boat, carefully, so as not to turn it over. A wave submerged them. The waterlogged hull rolled, started to turn over, then came slowly back as Miguel threw himself across to the other side. The water drained away and the old man yelled, “No paddle. Can’t keep her right.”

  Miguel: “The food’s gone, too, and the bailer.”

  “Julio should have tied all that stuff in.”

  “He used the line for Tia. And how could he tie the paddle in? He was using it till we went over.”

  Gustavo rubbed his face. Salt caked his eyebrows. “I think the worst part’s passed over. If we can keep afloat one more night, maybe another boat will pick us up.”

  “I haven’t seen anybody since the storm started.”

  “They’re out here; we just can’t see them. We can’t see a hundred varas in this.”

  Miguel wondered why the old man kept using the old words, the old ways of measuring. Then, suddenly, he understood. That was why he was old: He refused to change. Looking at the old man’s reddened eyes, his thin bare shanks, he promised himself to remember this secret. A little later, his head fell forward and he nodded slowly to the pitching, fast asleep.

  LATE that day, the wind rose again, though not to the madness of the storm’s climax. The rain came back with it, the low gray clouds lashing them with cold silver whips. Spray and rain mingled, as if the sky and the sea were quarreling over who could punish them more. Graciela crouched like a hunted animal into the enclosing wood of the boat’s bow. And like an animal, she wished for the concealing dark.

  Miguel and Gustavo were bailing, back in the waist. They had no bailer, so they were simply throwing water out with their hands. As they worked, they yelled to each other. She wasn’t really listening, but now and then the wind brought her a snatch.

  “You think they’re out there? Or could they have gone down?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I miss them.”

  “Me, too, muchacho. But maybe we’ll see them again in Miami.”

  “You think so?”

  “Si Dios quiere.”

  “You think we’ll make it, Tio Gustavo?”

  “If God wills,” said the old man again. “Do you think this water’s going down at all?”

  “I don’t think so. Should we keep on bailing?”

  “It can do no harm.”

  “Have you ever been to America?”

  “I saw Tampa once—fishing, back before the revolution.”

  “What did it look like?”

  “Like any land. Like Cuba.”

  “No skyscrapers?”

  “I didn’t see any,” said Gustavo. “Of course, they might have built some since then.”

  Miguel was silent for a while. Then he said, “Do you think they’ll send us back?”

  “Send us back?” the old man sounded surprised. “Why? They’re friendly people, the Americans. And there are other Cubans there. They’ll help us. No, I don’t think they’ll send us back.”

  “I won’t go back,” said Miguel. “Never.”

  The old man didn’t say anything to that. He shielded his eyes, and rain ran off his fingers as he peered into the squall. “I thought I heard something—a motor or engine.”

  “Another airplane?”

  “Maybe not. Over there?”

  “I don’t see anything,” said the boy. He turned slowly, running his eyes along the ragged waves.

  “Coño, it’s getting dark,” he said.

  And Graciela put out her hand, groping, to seize someone or something. Her mouth came open without her direction and an agonized low moan vibrated in her throat.

  It can’t be, she thought with that corner of her mind that no matter what she felt, no matter how afraid she was, still looked on with bemused detachment at the strangeness of this life on earth. Not yet. This was too early, weeks too early. She waited through the minutes, praying for the pain not to return.

  When it came again, it was like a wave, only not outside, but within her body. It started as a tightening, then grew into a pressure, squeezing, twisting tighter and tighter. She panted for air as it reached its peak. Then the wave passed and the knot loosened slowly and she could breathe again and open her eyes, to see the boy and the old man peering in at her warily.

  “Are you all right, Tia?”

  She felt her salt-dried lips crack as she smiled at them. They were afraid, even though all they had to do was watch, and maybe help a little. But this was something men never knew. A passage through which they could never step. It was strange, but even here she felt as she had when it first began, the other times—as if the baby brought with it some mysterious glory. Or maybe just that so
on it would be over, one way or another. Ahead lay pain and fear and maybe at the end nothing but sorrow if the child didn’t live. But that euphoric glow, like a long swallow of aguardiente, warmed her icy hands and seeped like slow fire along her legs. If only the old woman were still here to help.

  “It’s starting,” she gasped. “It’s coming.”

  “What is coming, Tia?”

  “The baby, Miguelito. The baby.”

  The wind rose again as a wave drove the lonely boat upward with dizzying speed, lifting them all, boy and old man and woman, once more toward the steadily darkening sky.

  33

  August 3

  THEY caught sight of the first one late in the morning.

  Dahlgren and Barrett had run northeast for the entire day and night, making this their second day out of Guantánamo. Dan and Leighty and Quintanilla were standing on the wing, holding their hats against the blustering wind, when the lookout leaned over the rail of the flying bridge. “Sir,” he said, and all three officers’ heads jerked up. “Look out there around zero-three-zero relative. I think you’ll see a boat.”

  Dan lifted his binoculars, and the ring of sight caught it right away: a white triangle amid the heaving gray of a running sea. A sail … a wave lifted it and for an instant his eye froze and plucked from motion an elongated shape. Then it disappeared, sinking again.

  “Any more of them?” the captain shouted up.

  The lookout didn’t answer, hunching his shoulders into his binoculars. Then, without a word, he extended his arm and swept it from port to starboard, taking in an immense arc of sea.

  Leighty hung his cap on the speaker tube and pulled himself up the ladder. Barrett took a roll as he got halfway up, and he crouched and gripped the handrail, then recovered and kept climbing. When he reached the Big Eyes, he uncapped them and swung the huge pedestal-mounted binoculars slowly around the horizon, tracing the same arc drawn by the lookout’s arm.