Cuba by Stephen Coonts Page B

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