The New Madrid Run (6 page)

Anyway, like he’d been telling God, everything went just like he planned it. Late morning on the fifth day he looked up after a little siesta and there was America. The Keys were no more than a mile away. He could already taste his first
hamburguesa. Madre de Dios
, he could feel that first cold American Bud-a-wiser
cerveza
sliding down his throat. He was already rehearsing his “God Bless America” for when he hit the shore. Then, out of nowhere, came this rat’s-ass, son-a-bitchin’ giant wave! Carlos looked at the wave coming at him and crossed himself. He knew he was as dead as last week’s chicken —all those Hail Mary’s and all those candles for nothing. But even a dying man will cling to hope.

Carlos clung to the raft. He held on like a fat tick buried in the back of a skinny Cuban pig. Afterwards, the only thing he could figure was that because the raft was so light, it rode over the wave instead of being crushed by it like everything else. Carlos and the raft struck the peak of the wave and went flying over the top like a UFO. With eyes the size of manhole covers, the little Cuban screamed like a banshee and held on for dear life. When the mist had finally cleared, Carlos discovered that he had crash-landed on the back side of the wave.

The raft was broken in half. Carlos found himself clutching half the deck and one inner tube. He had a broken nose and he was sure that he’d cracked a couple of ribs, but by the most remarkable of circumstances, he was still alive. He rested for a while, hanging on to what was left of his raft, trying to get his nose to quit bleeding.

Given the situation, most people would be thankful just to have survived. Not so with Carlos. The Keys were gone.
Cono! One stinkin’ mile to bikini contests, Bud-a-weisers and
Macadonal’s hamburguesas, and God played a stinkin’ trick on Carlos. Madre de Dios, was God on vacation? Maybe he went to Palm Beach and forgot about Carlos?

“Hey, God, why you don’t just kill me in Cuba and make it easy for both of us? I go all this way to America.
Jesus Christe
, what am I supposed to do now? Just drift around and bake like a chicken in the sun?
Arroz con
Carlos
, eh? Very funny joke you play!”

It had been two days since Carlos and the raft met the son-a-bitchin’ wave. He’d had nothing to eat or drink since then, having lost his food and water with the other half of the raft. Floating on an ink-black ocean, aware that he was becoming more than just a little delirious, he suddenly spotted something up ahead.
That sure looks like a light bobbing in the water—maybe it’s
the Coast Guard with a hamburguesa
.
Sí! Gracias a Dios,
it is the Coast Guard. He could even smell the fat,
delicioso
,
Macadonel’s hamburguesa
. And there was a beautiful
señorita
in a Japanese kimono gazing down at him. As he drifted toward the light, he croaked out the only words he could think of.

Travis was just about asleep when he heard the sound. At first he passed it off to a seabird, but the noise took shape as it neared the boat. ”
God Bless America?” Somebody was
out there singing “God Bless America
” ! When Travis reached the deck, he saw the sensei standing by the rail, looking out at the dark waters.

“He’s over there.” The sensei pointed about fifty feet off the bow.

Travis peered into the night. Sure enough, there was someone lying on the wreckage of some sort of raft. He was ranting something about no onions, ketchup
solamente
.

Carlos had not been alone in that sea of desperation. Less than a mile away, another life hung in the balance.

The boy trembled and drifted in and out of consciousness. It was dark again. He was terrified that he would drift off once more and the nightmares would return. How could it be real? Surely he was going to wake up and find himself in his warm, soft bunk on the family yacht, his father’s smiling face above him saying, “Get up, sleepyhead, we’re going after a sailfish today.” But, the saner part of him knew that would never happen again. When he closed his eyes, he could still see the giant wave surging towards them. He could feel the shock as it slammed against the big craft.

The yacht was a fifty-two-foot Hatteras—a strong, expensive boat. “The wealthier the man, the bigger his toys,” his father used to say.

His father was rich—had been rich. (It was impossible to think in the past tense yet.) He had owned a small software company. Every summer he took a month off and the three of them, the boy and his parents, would take “The Fifty-Two,” as Dad called it, to the Caribbean.

They were loaded with provisions and headed for Eleuthera Island when it happened. The boat had barely left the dock in Marathon when his father, steering from the flying bridge, saw the wave coming. The ocean was sucked out around them, leaving the craft in less than ten feet of water as the wave approached. The boy knew that his father was a brave man—a man’s man, his friends called him—but when he saw the fear etched on his dad’s face as he and his mother were herded below, the child sensed terror for the first time in his young life. Frantically shouting orders, his father shoved his wife and child onto the couch in the salon, dragging the mattress from the closest bedroom to throw over them. He was on his way back through the galley, to close the cabin doors, when the wave struck. It was as if a giant hand hammered the boat, shoving it downward. From behind the mattress, the boy heard the flying bridge explode into splinters and felt the craft being ground and crushed on the bottom. The room darkened as they were engulfed by the wave. The couch snapped its moorings and slid across the cabin as the yacht cantered wildly and rolled. As he was slammed against the far wall, the lad felt a searing jolt to his shoulder. Through the kaleidoscope of terror and pain he could hear his mother screaming, but she was no longer next to him. A few moments later he heard his father’s anguished cry. Finally, toward the end of the battering, the Hatteras broke free and surged to the surface like a cork.

The ship was still being tossed about, but nothing like before. He felt a hand grasp him as he struggled to his feet. It was his mother. She had a wild, frightened look in her eyes and blood streamed down the side of her face. He cried out when he saw her and she pulled him close.

“It’s okay,” she yelled. “Come on, we have to get out of here.” He understood her panic. The boat was rapidly filling with water. They stumbled through the mangled, listing ship, wading through the rising water, grasping bulkheads for balance like drunken sailors.

They reached the galley and stopped, frozen in the knee-deep water like clay statues. There before them lay the child’s father, pinned against the far wall.

The refrigerator, at some point, had broken loose from the bulkhead and careened across the cabin. It had crashed full force into the man, crushing him against the wall. The heavy appliance lay sideways across his body; his head and shoulders above it. Blood was streaming from his mouth and nose.

“Dad! Dad!” the boy cried, breaking loose from his mother and rushing to his father’s side.

The water was rising rapidly, and the ship groaned and shifted in its death throes. The refrigerator moved against the pinned man and he moaned in agony. The boy tried to maintain his balance in the shifting hold of the ship as he struggled frantically to move the icebox, crying, begging his father to hold on. His mother, already weakened from loss of blood, did her best to help, but the heavy box wouldn’t budge. The water was hip deep by then, almost to his father’s chin. Blood continued to pour from the man’s mouth and his eyes were beginning to glaze from shock.

The dying man turned his head toward the child, and with an effort born of desperation and love, reached out and clasped his son’s hand. “Go,” he whispered. “Go now, son.”

Moments later, as the waters rose over the dead eyes of his father, the boy wailed, “Noooooo! Noooooo!”

Then his mother had his arm again and he was being pulled through the cabin. With the desperate strength of maternal instinct, she dragged him through the debris-strewn water and out the hatch to the deck. By some small miracle, the Avon raft was still partially attached to the deck. Two of the four clasps that held it were gone. While the ship groaned and shuddered and began to sink, they undid the remaining clasps and freed the raft. As it slipped off the deck and into the sea, they jumped into the water next to it, and climbed in.

Gasping in fear and exertion, the two held onto the raft as the rough waters bucked and tossed them. They sat helplessly and watched as the boat that held the man they both loved foundered and sank in a matter of seconds.

A few minutes after the boat had gone down, the boy noticed the blood in the raft. He looked over. “Mom, Mom, are you all right?” It was a stupid question, and he knew it; he just didn’t know what else to say.

She lay with her head and shoulders propped against the round, inflated hull of the rubber raft. She was deathly pale. One of her hands gripped her son, the other held the boat as it rocked in the waves. The cut on her head, just above the hairline, was still bleeding, though not badly. But all the blood in the boat; where had it come from? Then, as she shifted her weight, he saw the redness spurt from the back of her leg. In the melee, something had sliced through her thigh. The wound lay jagged and open. An artery was nicked and her life’s blood pumped out every time her heart beat. She had, in an incredibly heroic effort, managed to get him out of the sinking boat while bleeding to death.

He grabbed her. “Mom . . . your leg!” He reached down with his small hands and tried to hold the wound closed to stop the flow. Tears ran down his face, falling into the crimson water of the raft.

His mother barely moved through all his efforts. Her hands had fallen to her sides and her eyes were nearly closed. As the last of her strength pulsed through his trembling hands, she mumbled, “Just gonna rest. Close my eyes for a while.”

“Please, Mom, don’t die,” he pleaded. “Don’t leave me. Please don’t close your eyes.” But she did anyway, and she left him.

He continued to hold her long after he knew she was gone. He held her and he cried. The pain and the grief inside him welled up like a burning, angry sun and seared his very being. He cried out in helpless rage at the night and sobbed himself breathless until, exhausted, he slept.

CHAPTER 5

Battered, sunburned, and incoherent, Carlos lay on a bunk in the cabin of the sailboat. His small, dark frame shivered as he drifted into a restless sleep, his brown eyes fluttering open occasionally, shining with fever and delirium. Travis and the sensei had given him some water, and soup from one of their last cans, then put salve on his worst burns. They watched him as he struggled with slumber.

Travis turned to the sensei. “Well, he looks a little rough, but I think he’ll make it. From all the bilingual rambling about America and
hamburguesas
, he sounds like a Cuban refugee. But Cuban, American, or Afro-Hungarian, he’s another mouth to feed. If we don’t find ourselves some signs of civilization in the near future, we’re going to be up that famous, foul-smelling creek without a paddle.”

The sensei smiled. “Ah, the river of defecation, yes?”

Travis grinned. “Yeah, one and the same.”

“Then we should be underway at first light,” said the Japanese.

He motioned to the prostrate Cuban. “I will watch him tonight. You go back to sleep.”

“Okay,” Travis replied. “See you in the morning.”

Night passed quietly. The gentle movement of the ship and the rhythmic, soft slap of the waves against the hull lulled them all to sleep.

When Travis rose in the morning, he found the sensei already on deck and together they watched as the first edges of the sun rose over the dark waters and threw tendrils of yellow and orange into the smoky-colored sky. The morning breeze skipped across the sea, rippling the waters and caressing the two men, ruffling their hair. They stood there savoring the sweet, salt air, silently acknowledging their mutual bond with the sea, when suddenly a voice croaked from behind them.

“
Donde estan
—where am I?”

Travis and the sensei turned around as one. Somewhat disheveled, but apparently improving, the little Cuban stood by the hatchway looking at them. Small, tight ringlets of curly, black hair framed a narrow face with tired but sensitive eyes. A thin mustache dusted his upper lip. His mouth, which seemed too wide for his face, softened into an uncertain smile, conveying the image of a man accustomed to laughter. His features were drawn with fatigue but, looking at him, one expected a degree of wit, a benign roguishness.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“We’re the last people left in the world,” Travis replied.

Carlos gasped, ”
Madre de Dios!
It is all gone?”

Travis grinned. “No, it probably isn’t, but as far as we know, we’re all that’s left around here. The name’s Travis and this gentleman is Higado Sensei. I would offer you a cup of coffee, but there’s no gas for the stove. Line’s ruptured.”

“
Mi llamo
Carlos,” the Cuban replied. “Hey man, chu got any more of that soup?”

Carlos was barely conscious when brought aboard the boat, and Ra hadn’t recognized him as a threat. Carlos hadn’t seen the dog at all. When Ra suddenly appeared from the far side of the cabin, cautiously padded over and rumbled threateningly, Carlos went stiff as a wooden Indian.

“
Madre de Dios
, where chu get de frigeen’ dinosaur?” he mumbled tensely as the Rottweiler sniffed him.

Travis chuckled, “It’s okay, Carlos. He seems to think you’re all right, but I wouldn’t make too many sudden movements ’til he gets to know you a bit.”

“Jesus,” Carlos exclaimed, “I don’ move at all if he no want me to. That son-a-bitchee snap Carlos’ whole leg off just for snack.”

Travis laughed and called Ra over to him, allowing the little man to relax. “C’mon, let’s go get a bite to eat.”