Cuba (12 page)

that he didn’t.

As Toad walked toward the table with a coffee cup in

each hand, Rita Moravia took a last stab at

explanation: “Jake Grafton and Toad

Tarkington are not uniformed technocrats or clerks

or button pushers. They are warriors: I think

they sense that in one another.”

The shadows were dissipating to dusky twilight as Ocho

Sedano walked the streets toward the dock area.

Over each shoulder he carried a bag which he had

stitched together from bedsheets. One contained a few

changes of clothes, a baseball glove, several

photos of his familyall that he wished to take with

him into his new life in America. Truly, when

you inventory the stuff that fills your life, you can

do without most of it. Diego Coca said to travel

light and Ocho took him literally.

The other bag contained bottles of water. He had

searched the trash for bottles, had washed

them carefully, filled them with water, and corked them.

Diego hadn’t mentioned water or food, but Ocho

remembered his conversation with his brother, Hector, and

thought bringing water would be a wise precaution.

He also had two baked potatoes in the bag.

Diego would laugh at himthey were not going to be at

sea long enough to get really hungry, or so he said.

Please, God, let Diego be right. Let us be

in America when the sun rises tomorrow.

There would be a man waiting in the Keys, waiting on

a certain beach. Diego showed Ocho a map with the

beach clearly marked in ink. “He was a close friend

of my wife’s brotherea”…Diego said. “A man who

can be trusted.”

The boat was fast enough, Diego said, to be in

American waters at dawn. They would make their

approach to the beach as the sun rose, when

obstructions to navigation were visible, when they could

check landmarks and buoys.

Diego was confident. Dora believed her father,

looked at him with shining eyes when he talked of

America, of how it would be to live in an American

house, go to the huge stadiums and watch Ocho play

baseball while everyone cheered… to have a

television, plenty to eat, nice clothes,

a

carl

Dios mio,

America did sound like a paradise! To hear

Diego tell it America was heaven, lacking only

the angel choir … and it was just a boat ride

away across the Florida Straits.

Of course, Diego said they would probably get

seasick, would probably vomit. That was inevitable,

to be expected, a price to be paid.

And they could get caught by the Cubans or

Americans, get sent back here. “We’ll be no

worse off than we are now if that

happensea”…Diego argued. “We can always try again

to get to America. God knows, we can’t get any

poorer.”

Dora with the shining eyes … she looked so

expectant.

She was the first, the very first woman he had ever made

love to. And she got pregnant after that one time!

When she first told him, he had doubted her.

Didn’t want to believe. She became angry,

threw a tantrum. Then he had believed.

He thought about her now as he walked the dark

streets, past people sitting in doorways,

couples holding hands, past bars with music coming through

the doorways. He had spent his whole life here and

now he was leaving, an event of the first order of

magnitude. Surely they could see the transformation

in his face, in the way he walked.

Several people called to him, “El Ochoff”…Several

fans wanted to shake his hand, but no more than usual.

This was the way they always acted as he walked bythis

was the way people had treated him since he was fifteen.

He left the people behind and walked past the closed fish

markets and warehouses. His footsteps echoed off the

buildings.

The boat was in a slip, Diego said, behind a

certain boatyard.

He rounded the corner, saw people. Men, women, and children

standing in little knots. Hmm, they were right near the

slip.

They were standing around the slip.

He saw Diego standing on the dock, and Dora.

People stepped out of the way to let him by.

“All these peopleea”…he said to Diego, “Did you

announce our departure at the ballpark? I thought

we were going to sneak out of here.”

Diego had a sick look on his face. “They’re

going with usea”…he said.

“What?”

“The captain brought his relatives, my brother

heard we were leaving, talked to some of his friends….”

Ocho stared at the boat. The boat’s name on the

stern

was written in black paint, which was chipping and peeling

off.

Angel del Mar,

Angel of the Sea. The boat was maybe forty feet

long, with a little pilothouse. Fishing nets still hung

from the aft mast. The crowdhe estimated there were

close to fifty people standing here.

“How many people, Diego? How many?”

“Over eighty.”

“On that boat? In the Gulf Stream?

Estd locot

Diego was beside himself. “This is our chance, Ocho.

We can make it. God is with us.”

“God? If the boat swamps, will He keep us from

drowning?”

“Ocho, listen to me. My friends are waiting in

Florida. This is our chance to make it to America,

to be something, to live decent…. This is

our

chance.”

People were staring at him, listening to Diego.

Ocho looked into the faces locking at him. He

tore his eyes away, finally, looked back at

Diego, who had his hand on Ocho’s arm.

“No. I am

not

going.”…He pulled his arm from Diego’s grasp.

“Go with one less, you will all have a little better

chance.”

“You

have

to goea”…Diego pleaded, and grabbed his arm.

“Ochoea”…Dora wailed.

“You have to goea”…Diego snarled. “You got her

pregnant! Be a man!”

CHAPTER FIVE

Eighty-four people were packed aboard

Angel del Mar

as she headed for the mouth of the small bay under a

velvet black sky strewn with stars. A sliver of

moon cast just enough light to see the sand on the bars at

the entrance of the bay.

The boat rode low in the water and seemed to react

sluggishly to the small swells that swept down the

channel.

“This is insaneea”…Ocho said to Diego Coca, who

was leaning against the wall of the small wheelhouse.

“We’ll make it. We’ll reach the rendezvous in

the Florida Keys an hour or two before dawn.

Vamos con Dios.”

“God had better be with usea”…Ocho muttered, and

reached for Dora. The baby didn’t show yet. She

was of medium height, with a trim, athletic frame.

How well he knew her body.

As far as he knew, he was the only one on the

boat who had brought water or food. Oh, the other

passengers had things, all right, sacks and boxes of

things too precious to leave behind: clothes,

pictures, silver, Bibles, rosaries,

crucifixes that had decorated the walls of their

homes and their parents” and grandparents’ homes.

Boxes and sacks were stacked around each person, who

sat on the deck or on his pile. Men, women,

children, some merely babies in arms… It appeared

to Ocho as if the Saturday night crowd from an

entire section of ballpark bleachers had been

miraculously transported to the deck of this small

boat.

The breeze smelled of the sea, clean, tangy,

crisp. He

took a deep breath, wondered if this were his last

night of life.

He pulled Dora closer to him, felt the warmth and

promise of her body.

Well, this boatload of people would make it

to Florida or they wouldn’t, as God willed it.

He had never thought much about religion, merely

accepted it as part of life, but through the years he had

learned about God’s will. He was not one of those

athletes who crossed himself every time he went to the

plate or prepared to make a crucial pitch,

vainly asking God for assistance in trivial

matters, but he knew to a certainty that most of the

major events of life be you ballplayer,

manager, father, husband, cane worker, whateverare beyond

your control. Events take their own course and

humans are swept along with them. Call it

God’s will or chance or fate or what have you, all

a man could do was throw the ball as well as he could,

with all the guile and skill he could muster. What

happened ajfter the ball left your fingers was beyond your

control. In God’s hands, or so they said. If

God cared.

For the first time in his life Ocho wondered if

God cared.

He was still thinking along these lines when the boat

buried its bow in the first big swell at the harbor

entrance. Spray came flying back clear to the

wheelhouse. People shrieked, some laughed, all tried

to find some bit of shelter.

People were moving, holding up clothing or pieces of

cardboard when the next cloud of spray came flying

back.

The boat rose somewhat as she met each swell, but

she was too heavily loaded.

“We’re not even out of the harborea”…muttered the man

beside Ocho. His voice sounded infinitely weary.

Dora hugged Ocho, clung to him as she stared into the

night.

She barely came to his armpit. He braced himself

against the wall of the wheelhouse, held her close.

The boat labored into the swells, flinging heavy

sheets of spray back over the people huddled on the

deck.

The door to the wheelhouse opened. A bare head

came out, shouted at Diego Coca: “The boat

is overloaded, man! It is too dangerous to go

on. We must turn back.”

Diego pulled a pistol from his pocket and

placed the muzzle against the man’s forehead. He

pushed the man back through the door, followed him into the

tiny shack and pulled the door shut behind him.

The man next to Ocho said, “We may make it…

if the sea gets no rougher. I was a fisherman

once, I know of these things.”

The man was in his late sixties perhaps, with a deeply

lined face and hair bleached by the sun. Ocho had

studied his face in the twilight, before the light

completely disappeared. Now the fisherman was merely

a shape in the darkness, a remembered face.

“Your father is crazyea”…Ocho told Dora, speaking

in her ear over the noise of the wind and sea. She said

nothing, mexgly held him tighter.

R was then he realized she was as frightened as he.

Angel del Mar

smashed its way northward under a clear, starry

sky. The wind seemed steady from the west at twelve

or fifteen knots. Already drenched by spray, with no

place to shelter themselves, the people on deck huddled where

they were. From his position near the wheelhouse Ocho

could just see the people between the showers of spray, dark

shapes crowding the deck in the faint moonlight, for

there were no other lights so that the boat might go

unnoticed by Cuban naval patrols.

“When we get to the Gulf Streamea”…the fisherman beside

Ocho shouted’ in his ear above the noise of the wind and

laboring diesel engine, “… swells … open

the seams … founder in this sea.”

In addition to heaving and pitching, the boat was also

rolling heavily since there was so much weight on

deck. The roll to starboard seemed most pronounced

when the boat crested a swell, when it was naked to the

wind.

Ocho Sedano buried his face in Dora’s hair

and held her

tightly as the boat plunged and reared, turned his

body to shield her somewhat from the clouds of spray that

swept over them.

He could hear people retching; the vomit smell was

swept away on the wind and he caught none of it.

On the boat went into the darkness, bucking and writhing

as it fought the sea.

Late in the evening William Henry Chance met his

associate at the mahogany bar hi El

Floridita, one of the flashiest old nightclubs

in Old Havana. This monstrosity was the dazzling

heart of prerevolutionary Havana hi the bad

old days; black-and-white photos of Ernest

Hemingway, Gary Grant, and Ava

Gardner still adorned the walls. The place was full

of Americans who had traveled here in defiance of

their government’s ban on travel to Cuba. As

bands belted out salsa and rhumba, the Americans

drank, ate, and scrutinized voluptuous

prostitutes clad in tight dresses and high

heels.

Chance’s associate was Tommy Carmellini, a

Stanford law school graduate in his late

twenties. The baggy sportscoat and pleated

trousers did nothing to show off Carmellini’s wide

shoulders and washboard stomach. Still, a thoughtful

observer would conclude he was remarkably fit for a

man who spent twelve hours a day at a desk.

“Looks like the Cubans have come full

circleea”…Chance said when Carmellini joined him at

the bar. He had to speak up to be heard above the