Cross Current

by Christine Kling

  A hand grabbed hold of my clothing and started pulling me up toward the surface. I struggled, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go. Then I heard the voice of a man speaking Creole, and I knew I was not going to let them take me away from Solange again.

  “No,” I cried out, and swung my fists at the arms that grasped my clothes. I was dragged into the bottom of a boat, and a plastic tarp was thrown over me. I felt the weight of several people lying on top of me. I stopped struggling because if they didn’t get off me, I would soon suffocate.

  The corner of the tarp lifted. My strobe light was still flashing in my eyes, and I couldn’t see anything. A hand reached in and turned off the light. Red lights continued to dance in my vision.

  “Lady?” someone said. It was a young man’s voice, and the accent was distinctly Haitian. Maybe this was another of Malheur’s henchmen. “You okay, lady?”

  I tried to blink away the red spots. My eyes began to focus on the person nearest me, a woman. Her skin was very dark, and she was wearing a headscarf. She was the one sitting on my midriff. The young man was behind her, and there were other faces behind them, more and more as my eyes started to see better.

  “What—” I tried to speak, but with the woman sitting on my diaphragm, it was difficult to get enough air. Then I looked up, above all their faces, and I saw the sail. It was made of flour sacks and other odd bits of fabric. It puffed out, round-bellied and pulling hard in the strong night winds. I looked back at the woman sitting on me. “Can I get up?” My voice sounded strange even to me.

  A puzzled look crossed her face, and she looked over her shoulder at the young man. He smiled and nodded, saying something to her in Creole. She laughed and wiggled her way to a stance.

  When I tried to stand, I discovered my legs could not support me, and I collapsed back to the deck of their boat. In the moment I had tried to rise, however, I had seen that the boat I was on was only about thirty-five feet long. People were packed into every square inch of space. They had squeezed even closer together to make space to pull me aboard. There, where I collapsed on the deck, exhausted and suffering from hypothermia, the lady who had been sitting on me took over and began to undress me.

  I didn’t have the strength to object. She removed all my wet clothes and paused as she fingered the pouch at my throat.

  “No,” I told her, not yet wanting to remove the pouch.

  She smiled and muttered to herself as she wrapped me, naked, in a blanket. She was telling a story to the others in Creole as she began to rub my arms and legs, and I heard the same words repeated, passed from person to person across the crowded vessel. In the starlight, I saw face after face smiling in my direction. The woman handed me a plastic water jug and I drank the water in great gulps.

  When the young man came close to the woman rubbing my legs, I asked him, “Do you have any idea how far we are from Florida?”

  He shook his head. “We leave Haiti five days ago. Weather very bad.” He pointed toward the bow of the boat. “Florida, soon.”

  He looked to be no more than eighteen years old. “What is your name?” I asked him.

  “Henri Goinave.”

  “Will you please tell the captain, thank you, thank him for saving me.”

  The young man smiled shyly. “Oui,” he said. “He is my papa.”

  The woman who had been rubbing my back then handed me a plastic glass. Thinking it contained more water, I took a big gulp, then grimaced at the taste of the raw burning liquor. Many of the people near enough to see me laughed and talked around me. Their voices reminded me of Solange. I returned the glass, and she handed me a comb and a fragment of a mirror.

  “Thank you,” I said to the woman, and I began to comb some of the knots out of my hair. The voices around me grew louder, and it seemed everyone on the boat was watching me. Then, to the young man, I added, “Can you tell everyone thank you?”

  “You make them very happy.”

  “Why?”

  “La Sirene will guide us to Florida.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?”

  “When we saw you in the sea, we spoke, and you say your name is La Sirene.”

  “No, I was dreaming.”

  He shook his head. “Eyes open,” he said. “And we asked you in Creole.”

  Henri was shaking my shoulder. “Miss,” he said. He pointed to the bow. “Florida.”

  I sat up and stretched my legs out. I’d been dreaming again about Solange. She kept crying out, Help me. It took me a few seconds to get her voice out of my head. I tried to stand and realized I hurt in every part of my body. The woman who had undressed me earlier arrived with my shorts and T-shirt. They were stiff with salt, but nearly dry. Once I had dressed, Henri motioned for me to follow him. When I stood, I saw the bright lights of the Florida coastline no more than a mile off our beam. Henri led me through all the people sitting, sleeping, but mostly standing and staring at the lights. At the bow of the vessel, he introduced me to a distinguished-looking gray-bearded man who stood staring at the lights.

  "Papa, ici c’est La Sirene.”

  The older man was wearing a dark shirt buttoned to the neck. He nodded and shook my hand, then turned to his son and acted as though I were not there. While they spoke to each other in Creole, I searched the coastline for a familiar landmark, trying to figure out where we were. Finally, I spotted the Hillsboro Light to the south of us. We would be off the coast of Deerfield Beach, then. I was amazed that the Coast Guard had not yet intercepted us. It looked to me like the boat was making a good four to five knots through the water, and we were headed straight for the beach.

  “Henri, can you tell your father that there is a harbor entrance back to the south of us. It isn’t very far.” The young man translated what I said, and then the older man spoke to him at length, frowning and ignoring me.

  “My father says if we go into the harbor, they will only send us back to Haiti. He says we will land on the beach.”

  I could see even from as far out as we were that there was surf breaking on the beach, swell left over from the weather system that had passed over us. The hotel lights lit the mist from the breaking waves. I’d seen boats go on the beach in weather like this, and it wasn’t a pretty picture. “Henri, tell your father that people will get hurt and drown if he beaches a boat this size.” Again, he translated, and again the father was very emotional in his reply, but he would not look at me.

  “My father says everyone on the boat agrees. We didn’t come this far to look at the sand and trees of Florida and then get sent back to Haiti. We come to stay, even if some die getting there. Some will live, and they will be free.”

  I looked around me, and I saw weak, sick, tired adults, some teens, and a few younger children. “Do any of these people know how to swim?” I asked.

  “Few,” Henri said. “I do. I lived in Miami for two years, and I learned to swim in school.”

  “Good. Henri, will you tell your father that I am a trained lifeguard, and I am the captain of my own boat, a tugboat. If he will listen to me, maybe nobody will get hurt.”

  The old man looked at me for the first time, and I saw questions in his eyes. He was trying to decide whether or not to believe me. I held his gaze, willing him to trust me. Finally, he nodded.

  “Okay, Henri, this is what we’ll do.” I explained to him that we would have to get just outside the surf line and then sail parallel to the coast, luffing the sails until we felt a big set of breakers pass. We’d then make our turn and try to sail in on the smaller set. The point was we didn’t want the boat to broach, or turn sideways and roll over while surfing in on a wave. The shore was so close. This section of the beach was where the private homes north of Hillsboro ended and condos began. The swim ashore would be nothing for me, even as exhausted as I was. That beach was life and liberty and happiness for the folks on this boat, and it was very possible some of them would not make it.

  The sky was just starting to lighten along the eastern horizon when we t
ightened the sheets and felt the wind begin to push us onto the beach. Some early-morning beach walker whipped the T-shirt from around his shoulders and waved it at us, swinging it round his head. I wasn’t sure what he was signaling, if he was saying come on or go back. The first couple of waves passed under us as mere ripples, barely lifting the heavy island boat. It was the third wave that came and lifted our stern, and when I looked at the old man, I could see that though he gripped the wheel, he had lost all steerage as we started to surf toward the shore. I clutched the pouch at my neck and figured it couldn’t do any harm to ask La Sirene once more to watch out for us, to help us make it ashore.

  The old boat must have had a nice long keel on her, as we held a steady course and made it through the surf without broaching. It was only when the bow grounded that the stern swung around, and the whole boat rolled onto its side. We had grounded on a sandbar about forty feet from the beach.

  People were scrambling everywhere. Many had been thrown off the boat when she rolled. Children were crying, and I heard splashing and saw folks running up the beach in every direction. I jumped off the boat and was surprised to find the water nearly over my head. Many of the smaller people on board would need help getting to shallow water. I ferried children and women to where they could reach shore. The waves continued to roll in, battering the sick and the weary even when they’d found bottom under their feet. Many jumped off the boat and went straight down and had to be plucked, sputtering, from underwater. My body ached in every fiber, and each time I turned back toward that listing wreck, I thought my arms would not be able to grasp another person. On my fourth trip, I carried in a little boy, no more than five years old, and looked around for an adult to take charge of him. I was startled to look up and see Racine Toussaint standing there at the water’s edge, holding up the hem of a long black dress.

  “I’ll take him,” she said, reaching with one arm.

  Someone a few feet away shouted something in Creole, and I felt the temperament of everyone change. Racine took the child, turned, and without another word disappeared into the darkness. Beyond the sand, I saw blue and red flashing lights, and I knew that some would get caught, but others still might make it away. I stayed in the water until the last person was off the boat and clear of the breakers, then I swam away from the wreck down the beach to where a small unit of condos had a back door onto the beach. To the east, the sky had turned a whitish blue and the clouds on the horizon looked like ash-covered charcoal with the glow of the occasional burning ember shining through. I exited the water, not sure I had the strength to stand, and staggered right into the building. No one paid any attention to me. There were far more Haitians than there were cops on the scene.

  I walked through the condo lobby, down the driveway, and out to A1A. I could still see blue flashing lights to the south, so I turned north and began walking along the highway toward the city of Deerfield Beach. I was gauging the distance to a small minimart where I might locate a telephone when an older-model station wagon pulled up alongside me and stopped. I bent down to look inside the dark car, but before I could make out the identity of the driver, I heard Racine Toussaint’s gravelly voice say, “Get in.”

  XXX

  Racine drove north until she found a driveway large enough for her to be able to make a U-turn in her big station wagon. She paused before pulling back out onto A1A and sat looking at me in the dark car.

  “I lost her,” I said, my voice breaking with emotion.

  Racine reached over and placed her hand on my arm. “Yes, I know.”

  “She’s in terrible trouble.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  I swallowed hard to try to get the tears under control. The place where Racine’s hand rested on my arm grew warm, and when I placed my hand on top of hers, I felt a sense of relief flow through me, knowledge that I was not alone in this. “We had moved her to this condo on Hollywood Beach, thought she would be safe there, but when Rusty and I went out to dinner, she must have hidden in the cabin of his boat. She followed me.” I went on to explain all of it—the boat trip on the Bimini Express, the camp on South Bimini, Malheur, the encounter with Joe, and getting rescued by the Haitians.

  Though we were still in the shadow of the tall building, I noticed the tops of the coconut palms were lit with the first bright rays of the sun. I said, “I didn’t think I was going to see this morning. I really believed I was going to die out there, Racine.”

  She squeezed my arm. “La Sirene would not allow it.”

  Staring out the car window at the silver blue sky, I touched the still-damp pouch hanging around my neck. “I’m not sure who to thank, but I am thankful.” I twisted around on the car seat and faced her. “But now, I’d be so much more thankful if I could find Solange. Her father is going to make her a restavek again, here, as soon as he’s used her to get what he wants. But there’s something even worse. I don’t know what, but she needs our help, now.” I could not explain how I knew, not even to Racine.

  She stretched her hands out toward me, palms up. I placed my hands in hers, and she said, “We will find the child, and the lwa will take care of this man. You are not the only one who has suffered a loss to him. Many have died on his boats. I told you I came that night looking for the Miss Agnes, hoping to find my sister?”

  “I remember.”

  “Her name was Erzulie.”

  If my pounding on his hull didn’t wake Mike up, I had decided I was going to climb aboard his boat and roll him out of his bunk. The companionway hatch slid back just then and Mike’s tousled hair was the first thing out.

  “Jesus H. Christ, what the blazes is going on out here?”

  “Mike, get dressed. I need your help.”

  During the drive south on the coastal highway, Racine and I had discussed how best to get Solange back. My first thought had been to go to the police, but Racine pointed out to me that I had absolutely no evidence to prove any of my story. And to make matters worse, she said, Joe was a retired law enforcement officer. Yes, I had witnessed him kill a man, but where was the body? It was my word against his, and whom were they more likely to believe? And, as for Solange, what could I accuse him of? Kidnapping his own daughter? I wondered if this was Racine’s natural Haitian fear of the police, or if she was right. She kept telling me not to worry, we would get her back and that the lwa would protect us.

  I finally explained that I’d feel a lot more protected by a guy with a gun.

  Mike rubbed his eyes. “Seychelle? I heard you were missing.”

  “You heard wrong. Now come on. Put your pants on and let’s go.”

  Mike emerged a few minutes later wearing a wrinkled T-shirt that read “Arms Are for Hugging” and had a circle and slash over a rifle. He sat on the cabin top and began strapping on his leg.

  Racine looked at me with raised eyebrows, as though asking “This is the fellow who is going to protect us?” I knelt down and began to untie the dinghy painter and pointed for Racine to get into the boat.

  “Geez, it’s hot out here already,” Mike whined. “What time of the god-awful morning is it, anyway?”

  “It’s six forty-five, Mike. We’re taking your dinghy. Like your shirt. You’ve got your gun?”

  He finished with his leg and smoothed his pant leg down over the prosthesis, but he made no move to get up. He said, “Sey, you asking about my gun makes me think I need to know just a bit more about where we’re going.”

  This was the moment I had been dreading. Just because Mike was now retired didn’t mean that he no longer thought like a cop.

  “Okay, Mike, here it is. Your buddy Joe D’Angelo is the brains behind this whole immigrant smuggling outfit. I’ve been to their place in the Bahamas. Mike, he shot and killed Gil Lynch right in front of me, then left me to die, dog-paddling in the middle of the Gulf Stream. Yeah, Malheur was the instrument that Joe usually used, but Joe’s a killer, too. And now he has Solange, and I’ve got to get her back.” I paused, knowing that what I was sa
ying to him would sound so outrageous, he was probably thinking about hauling me off to a psych ward. “I know this is a lot to take on faith, and I’ve got nothing to prove any of it is true, but please, Mike, I need you to trust me here.”

  Mike shook his head, then he looked up at me, squinting his eyes. “Joe D’Angelo?”

  I nodded.

  Mike sat there without moving for so long that I thought for certain he was going to say no. I had about given up and was beginning to formulate Plan B when he finally said, “Okay. I’m going to agree to go along on this one, Sey, against my better judgment. If this was anybody but you, I’d be saying you’re full of shit—and so would any cop. But the guys on the force don’t know you like I do. If it was a toss-up as to who to believe, they’d go with Joe. But I’ll go along with you—to a point. Let me talk to the man, alone. I don’t like what I see or hear, and” —he lifted the pant leg on his good leg and showed a small stainless revolver in a holster strapped to his ankle—“I’ll keep Mr. D’Angelo tied up while you ladies call the police. You realize, we’d better figure out a way to do this so he doesn’t know what’s up. Joe was a hell of a good cop.”

  “From what I’ve seen, Joe was never a good cop. But he’s mighty good with a gun.”

  On the ride up the river, we ignored all the speed limits, the manatee zones, and the no-wake areas. Even with the three of us in his dinghy, that twenty-five-horsepower Honda four-stroke of Mike’s pushed his dink up onto a plane, and we rounded the curves in the river sliding sideways, barely missing the yachts tied along the seawalls. Racine sat on the seat in front of the center console, her body rigid, her back straight, black dress flapping around her legs, eyes squinting into the wind. The closer we got, the higher the sun crawled up into the sky, the stronger I felt it. Solange needed help now.