The Passage (51 page)

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Authors: David Poyer

BOOK: The Passage
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Pushed downwind, yet held back by the floating scoop of the life vest, the hulk swung slowly to present its back to the wind. Now when the waves hit, the stern split them like a blunt ax. The water still rolled over them, but at least it didn't feel like it was going to capsize.
Reprieve, he thought. He dragged a sodden arm across his eyes and blinked around, hoping for a glimpse of the whaleboat's lights. But his eyes found no color, no light, only the cold phosphorescent sparkle of the breaking waves. Either the motor was still dead, the whaleboat drifting downwind without power, or else Casworth had lost them in the storm.
A moan from forward jerked his thoughts from his own problems. A long, animal whimpering, building to a scream that made his scalp prickle.
Yeah, he thought when he reached her. Her arms were rigid, and when his hand found hers, the cold fingers clamped on with inhuman strength. Her nails dug into his flesh like the points of a grapnel.
She was due, and it was coming—now. Another glance at the huddled boy told him there'd be no help from that quarter.
Staring into her face in the dark, he muttered, “I'm here. I'm going to help. Don't worry, it'll be all right.”
He hoped desperately that he was telling her the truth.
A
S he stared into her pain-twisted face, he slowly became conscious of a faint light vibrating at the edge of his vision. He couldn't tell if it was coming up out of the sea, or falling from the sky, or generated somehow by the wind, like static electricity. Darkness surrounded them, yet he could make out outlines and shapes. Strangely grainy, as if he was seeing by the individual particles of light itself, it was just enough to make out the huddled body under the cuddy, the crouching boy aft; enough to sense a wave as it bulged above the stern.
Okay, he thought. First inventory what you have, then you'll know what you can do. It wasn't a long list. They had two hard hats, a flashlight that didn't work, and the clothes he, the kid, and the woman were wearing. They had a grapnel, line, and life jacket, now deployed as a sea anchor. And that was all. Oh, and whatever was in the woman's bottle—water, probably.
It didn't sound like much. But the coolness licking his legs told him what he'd better deal with first.
He groped in the bilges, found the second hard hat, and thrust it at the boy. “Bail,” he snarled. The kid took it but didn't move. Dan picked up his own again and began scooping and throwing. After a moment, the kid slid down and started bailing, too.
Next: the woman. Thank God this wasn't the first time he'd been around for a birth. He tried to remember the classes he and Susan had gone to before Nan was born. He just hadn't thought about it for so long, years, and when you piled on the Navy schools and all the stuff you had to memorize … Don't think about that now. Remember Lamaze classes in the Navy hospital: lying on the prickly thin carpet, adjusting the pillow behind Susan's back; slides of a baby angled in the womb; a room full of panting women, husbands eyeing wristwatches. Crouched in the heaving, pitching boat,
he tried to summon the green-tiled room where they'd awaited the obstetrician.
Only here there was no room, no doctor, no pillow, nothing to work with. He crawled forward on his knees to slump next to her.
“Can you hear me?” he said as gently as he could and still be audible over the storm.
The faint gleam of opened eyes … He put his hands on her shoulders and his cheek against her face. She was panting, gasping for breath. The muscles of her arms were like cables.
“Do you speak any English?”
“
No. Mi marido
…”
“Okay. You understand, okay? We're going to help you out here. I'm just going to get you a little more comfortable … .”
He chattered on, not paying much attention to what he said but trying to sound reassuring. He had to get her to relax. Those rigid muscles were burning up energy she'd need later. He started by massaging her shoulders. His hands brushed the bottle and started to shift it. She moaned and pushed his hand away, so he left it.
He massaged down her neck and shoulders to her back, worked on that for a while, then ran his hands gently over her belly. Then he worked her thighs, digging his fingers in, gradually moving down. Susan had said that helped, forcing the tension out. This woman didn't feel like Susan, though. There wasn't much on her
but
skin and muscle. At the same time, his face close to hers, he mimicked deep, slow breaths.
Gradually, it worked. The locked flesh softened under his hands. Her breathing slowed and her eyes sank closed. He glanced back, to see the boy still bailing.
Finally, he ran his fingertips over her face. Then he straightened and pulled his light out again.
Carefully—because if he lost any parts, that was it—he disassembled it. He shook the water off each piece, the batteries, the reflector and bulb combination, the barrel. He held them up to the wind, thinking maybe they'd dry a little, though the spray was still flying. The red filter seemed useless, so he threw it away, then immediately regretted it. He had so little, he shouldn't be throwing
anything
away.
When he put them all back together and thumbed the switch, he was rewarded by an orange spark. He shook it and it brightened a bit.
Muttering, “Excuse me, got to see what's going on here,” he seized the sodden hem of her dress and folded it up over her knees, squeezing the sea out of it.
The red-orange waver showed him a patch of hair above a streaky darkness on the thwart. Something about a mucus plug, bloody show … Susan had spent seventeen and a half hours in labor.
The nurse had told him that was longer than average. But it could be more, if there were complications.
Complications. God. He turned and yelled to the kid, “Hey, you speak any English?”
The boy didn't answer. Dan shone the light at him for a second and saw that he was terrified. Also that he wasn't seventeen, as he'd thought at first. Now he figured twelve or thirteen, with long spindly legs. “Hey,” he said again, making his voice kinder, “We're going to be all right here.
¿Comprende? Buenas. Tout sera bien
.” He knew that last was French, but Spanish was a Romance language, too; maybe the meaning would filter through. And the boy might have been responding to that or just to his tone, but he grinned a little.
Dan turned back to the woman. He wished he knew her name. He started to ask, but just then she sucked a sudden breath and stiffened. He held her arms, reminded her to relax, talked her through it. This time, her hand left the gunwale and searched for his, gripped it so hard it hurt.
When the contraction receded, she lay there, panting, her head thrown back. He said, “How many kids you have?”
“¿Qúe?”
“How many kids? Children?
¿Niños?”
He pointed at her stomach, held up one finger, two fingers, three fingers.
“
Este es el cuerto hijo
.”
Graciela could only occasionally see the man who talked to her out of the orange light. She didn't understand who he was or where he'd come from. It had crossed her mind that he was an angel, but this seemed unlikely. She certainly wasn't dead; she felt too much pain. Still, he was here, talking with her, and he sounded friendly.
Then she had to stop thinking about it as the wave gathered again, first in the back of her mind, then moving down her body like massive steel rollers. She tightened her grip on his hand. The angel-devil leaned into her face, telling her something in his strange slow language that only now and then she caught a word of. Then he was breathing with her, only more slowly now, and she remembered the chant old Aracelia had taught her last time, how to breathe to the rhythm of the chant. She concentrated on that as the wave crashed over her, until she couldn't breathe anymore at all.
 
 
IN the absolute dark of midnight, he could see—not only the luminescent hands of his watch, soldered together and pointed straight up, not just the weird emerald fire of the sea as it broke
around them. It was as if his sight had been sharpened. He didn't think he was dreaming, though he was deadly tired. It was as if he had the eyes of a cat, just for one night.
Or maybe somewhere up there, the moon was out, above the riding clouds … .
He and the woman were communicating now. They didn't share a language, at least not a spoken one. But the language of hands, of help, they shared that. Isolated from the rest of humanity, separate and alone, they had only each other.
The boy bailed. He'd been bailing so long, he must be exhausted, but he was still dragging the helmet up and dumping it over the side. The water came in as fast as it went out, but at least it wasn't rising. If the seas didn't get any worse, Dan thought they might make it till dawn.
If they were still afloat when light came, they ought to get picked up. He figured Reska had eventually gotten the engine started again on the whaleboat. If not, they had the radio; the ship would have left station to pick them up.
Conclusion:
Barrett
knew he was adrift out here with two Cubans; they'd be searching for him. There were other ships out, too. Sooner or later, they'd run into one. If they could stay afloat … He blinked, realizing he was falling asleep, and sat up and looked around. Darkness, that was all, and the flickering light that ran along the tops of the waves. The world had contracted to the limits of the open boat, as if all that mattered was here: himself, the kid, and the woman.
The good news was that she seemed to be doing okay. He even knew her name now. She'd said it several times, guiding his hand to her chest, as if that was where she truly existed. “Graciela,” she'd said. “Graciela Gutiérrez.”
“Daniel Lenson.”
“¿Cómo es tu nombre?”
“Daniel. Dan.”
“Dan,” she'd whispered, eyes sagging closed again.
“Graciela,” he murmured now, still holding her hand. She muttered something back. But her voice was higher. He glanced at his watch. Not much interval now.
Suddenly, she gasped and pointed to a leg. He ran his hands down it, dug into the spasmed knot of muscle. Potassium would help. Wasn't there potassium in seawater? He decided giving her seawater was not a good idea. Maybe a drink from her bottle? He pointed to it, but she shook her head fiercely.
When the contraction passed, she moved her legs slowly. She seemed uncomfortable on the wood, and he took off his foul-weather jacket and padded the cuddy with it under her back.
 
 
SHE lay exhausted, feeling the sea beneath her. But this wasn't so bad, she thought dreamily. The sea was warm on her bare legs. Only her lips hurt—cracked, raw, open wounds. She thought of the water again but didn't reach for it. It was not for her.
The contraction came again. It felt as if she was being forced through the huge rollers they used to crush the cane. The smooth green stalks went in, then came out as an emerald paste as the sweet juice drooled down into the tubs. She remembered the sweet smell, like cut grass and molasses.
The contraction eased, but she knew it wouldn't be long before another took its place. Only a little while now until the baby came. She could feel it move and shift, feel her body mold itself around the insistent heaviness being forced through it. It hurt so much sometimes, she couldn't breathe or even think, but it was comforting to know that soon it would be over.
She remembered the first time, with Coralía. How frightened she'd been, and how sick.
Yes, sick, with chills and the vomiting. They hadn't known what was wrong with her for a long time, and the
sanitario
at the farm had not known what to say. Then Armando had taken her to the hospital in Minas. They told him she had to have a certain medicine but that they did not have it. And Armando had looked at them with a hard look and said, “
I
will get it. Give me a prescription so that I may buy it when I find it, and I will get it for her.”
And it had taken him two days to go to Camagüey and get the medicine and come back. Part of the way, he rode on a sugar truck, and the rest he had to walk. He'd walked all night to bring her the medicine. Later when she asked where the radio was, she found he'd had to sell it and borrow money, too, for the medicine; it was foreign and very expensive. Then her time had come, and she'd been so frightened, and then she'd had Coralía. But then she had been sick again and for eight days had not known anyone, so they told her.
The second child, Victoria, she'd come very easily. There had been no problem with her; all the old woman had to do was talk to her a while, then later cut the cord. The only thing that made her sad then was that she knew Armando wanted a man-child, to pass on manhood as it had been passed to him by his father. Who could blame him for that? But he had never said anything or slighted the girls in any way. Yes, a good man. She saw his face again, leathery and lined, the metal teeth startling in his face, as if from another life. But the third child, Tasita, had been difficult again. And when
she came, she never breathed or moved at all. So much pain, and then the sweet little face with its eyes closed so peacefully …
Feeling the wave coming again, breathing fast to make up for when she would not be able to breathe at all, she thought suddenly,
I
can die, too. The last time Tasita, and this time me.
Only it didn't feel frightening now. Now, in the darkness, it felt reassuring. She wouldn't hurt any longer if she died. And for another, she believed.
She thought now calmly, waiting for it to reach her, that made all the difference. Who could really be afraid, thinking that if you died, why then you would be with them again? With Victoria and Tasita and Armando, and her mother, Dona Eli, and her father, José. He had not known the revolution; he'd passed away while Castro was in the mountains. And maybe it was better that way; a man with her father's temper would never have been happy after the revolution. Maybe that was why the
revolucionarios
said that you should not believe. Because without that, then you were afraid, and if you were afraid, you would do as you were told.

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