Continental Drift

A skinny teenaged boy squirms his way out of the clot of people and comes forward on his hands and knees and extends the metal dipper to Bob, then quickly retreats.

“Merci beaucoup,” Bob says. He stands up and takes the bucket back down to the galley, refills it and returns to the Haitians, sliding it over the deck toward them.

Again, it’s the boy who separates himself from the others by retrieving the bucket and dipper. Then, turning his narrow back to Bob, he proceeds to fill the dipper and hand it to the others, one by one — first the women, who let their children drink before they themselves drink, and then the old man and the other men — and finally he drinks. It’s hot under the tarp, but not uncomfortably so, for there’s a light breeze that sneaks across the rails at the sides. It’s dark, however, and despite the breeze, it’s close, moist with bodies crammed this tightly against one another, and Bob wonders if he should allow them to come out from under the tarp and stretch and walk about.

He calls up to Tyrone. “Whaddaya think, be okay to let them stretch their legs a bit? Seems kinda crowded and stuffy under there.”

The Jamaican looks down at the white man, shakes his head no and goes back to scanning the western horizon.

Bob is sitting flat on the deck now, his legs stretched out in front of him, his can of Schlitz in one hand, a lighted cigarette in the other. He’s got himself far enough under the tarp to be wholly in the shade, so he takes off his cap and drops it onto the deck next to him. The motion of the boat is choppier than it was, and Bob can tell from the sound of the engine that it’s working harder, lugging a little. There’s been an east wind behind them all morning, and now they’ve changed course a few degrees west-southwest, and consequently the wind is hitting them slightly to port. He knocks his pack of Marlboros against his knee, extending several cigarettes from the pack, and holds the pack out to the Haitians, who still have not taken their eyes off his face.

“Cigarette?”

The Haitians look from his face to the pack of cigarettes, back to his face again, their expressions unchanged.

Bob puts down his can of Schlitz and digs into his pocket for his butane lighter and again holds out the Marlboros. “C’mon, have a cigarette if you want.”

It’s the teenaged boy who finally comes forward and takes the cigarettes from Bob’s hand. Bob passes him the lighter, and the boy draws out a cigarette for himself and passes the package around among the others, several of whom take out a single cigarette and put it between their lips. The boy lights his up and one by one lights the others. Then he turns back to Bob, passes the lighter and what’s left of the Marlboros to him, and while they smoke, resumes watching him.

They aren’t afraid of me, Bob thinks. They can’t be — they must know I’m their friend. Quickly he corrects himself: No, I’m not their friend, and they’re not foolish enough to think it. But I’m not their boss, either, and I’m not their jailer. Who am I to these people, he wonders, and why are they treating me this way? What do they know about me that I don’t know myself?

The question, once he’s phrased it to himself, locks into his mind and puts every other question instantly into a dependent relation, like a primary gear that drives every other lever, wheel and gear in the machine. That must be their mystery, he thinks — they all know something about me, and it’s something I don’t know myself, something crucial, something that basically defines me. And they all know it, every one of them, young and old. It’s almost as if they were born knowing it. He stares back into the eyes of the Haitians, and he can see that it’s not just knowledge of white men, and it’s not just knowledge of Americans; it’s knowledge of him, Robert Raymond Dubois, of his very center, which he imagines as a ball of red-hot liquid, like the molten core of the earth.