Continental Drift

For an instant, he breaks contact with the Haitians, and he thinks, This is crazy, they don’t know anything about me that isn’t obvious to anyone willing to take a quick look at me. He insists to himself that he’s making it all up. It’s only because they’re so black, so African-looking, and because they don’t speak English and he doesn’t speak Creole, that he’s attributing awesome and mysterious powers to them. It’s their silence and passivity that frighten him and seem to create a vacuum that he feels compelled to fill, and what he’s filling it with is his own confusion about who he is and why he’s here at all, here on this boat in the middle of the ocean, carting sixteen Haitians illegally to Florida, when he should by all rights be someone else someplace else, should be old Bob Dubois, say, of Catamount, New Hampshire, a nice, easygoing guy who fixes people’s broken oil burners, and on a late afternoon in winter like this, he should be heading back to the shop at Abenaki Oil Company to punch his time card, walk across the already dark parking lot, get into his cold car, listen to the motor labor against the cold and finally turn over and start, and drive down Main Street to Depot, turn left and park across from Irwin’s and go in for a couple of beers with the boys and maybe a flirt or at least a beer with his girlfriend Doris, before he gets back into his car and drives home to his wife and children and eats supper around a table with them in the warm kitchen, and later a little TV in the living room while the snow falls outside and the children sleep peacefully upstairs, until finally he and his wife grow weary of watching TV and climb the stairs to their own bedroom, where they quietly, sweetly, even, make love to one another and afterwards fall into a deep sleep.

But that’s all gone from him now, as far away as childhood. There’s a difference, though, for childhood was taken from him, simply ripped away and devoured by time, whereas the rest, the life he believes he should be living now, Bob has given away. And he didn’t give it away bit by bit; he gave it away in chunks. What’s worse, he gave away Elaine’s life too — or at least he believes he did. She might say it differently, for she is, after all, a kind woman who, despite everything, loves him. Regardless, Bob believes that he gave away everything in exchange for nothing, for a fantasy, a dream, a wish, that he allowed to get embellished and manipulated by his brother, by his friend, by magazine articles and advertisements, by rumor, by images of men with graying hair in red sports cars driving under moonlight to meet a beautiful woman.

He looks into the darkness at the Haitians again, and he smiles. It’s a light, sympathetic smile.

The teenaged boy smiles back, startling Bob.

“How’re ya doing, kid?”

The boy looks shyly down at his lap and remains silent, but to Bob, it’s an answer, a response, and suddenly, through this boy, at least, the vacuum that the Haitians created for Bob to fill has been broken into and filled by them, for to Bob, one of them is all of them.

Bob says, “ ’Nother cigarette?” and holds out the package.

The boy shakes his head no. He’s seated cross-legged next to a pretty young woman with a small child in her lap, both of whom, she and the child, continue to stare at Bob, as do all the other Haitians. But their stares no longer threaten him.

“You understand English, kid?” Bob asks. “Comprendez English?”

The boy smiles, shrugs, nods yes, then no, then yes again.

“C’mon, kid, you want to ride up on the bridge?” Bob stands and puts his cap on and waves for the boy to follow. Claude slides forward and stands next to him, and when Bob climbs up to the bridge, he climbs up also.

Tyrone studies the pair for a second, shrugs and hands the wheel over to Bob and descends without a word. At the bottom, he turns and calls, “Gulf Stream coming up! Got to keep track or you’ll move north wid it!”

“I know, I know,” Bob says, and he peers out ahead, searching for the Stream, the green river that flows from Mexico to Newfoundland and east to Europe with the force and clarity of a great river draining half a continent. As you enter it, the color of the water changes abruptly from dark blue to deep green, and the current drags you north at up to ten knots an hour if you do not compensate for it.

Claude stands next to Bob, and pointing out across the bow, says, “America?”

Bob nods. He’s spotted the rich green streak ahead near the horizon, and he cuts the boat a few degrees to port so that she’ll enter the Stream at more of an angle, bringing them out, he expects, a half-dozen miles south of Key Biscayne sometime before midnight. “Yep, just over the next hill. Land of the free and home of the brave. You probably think the streets are paved with gold, right?”

The boy looks up, not understanding. “Monsieur?”