Continental Drift

MIAMI, Feb. 12 (UPI) — Fifteen Haitians, mostly women and children, drowned this morning in choppy waters off Sunny Isles just north of here after being forced into rough seas by the captain of what Coast Guard officials said was probably an American fishing boat engaged in smuggling Haitians into Florida. The unidentified boat escaped into the darkness while crew members of the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Cape Current attempted to save the Haitians.

Immigration authorities said it was one of the worst such incidents recorded since the waves of immigrants from the impoverished Caribbean country began heading for the United States 10 years ago. Gov. Bob Graham called it “a human tragedy which has been waiting to happen,” and said he would press the Federal Government to work with Haiti to stop the flight to these shores.

In Miami, a Coast Guard spokesman said of the drownings, “It’s just such a tragedy,” adding, “It’s subhuman, what some of these smugglers will do for a few dollars.” When the fishing boat was first hailed by the Cape Current at 2:30 this morning, it was a half mile off the beach at Sunny Isles. According to the Coast Guard spokesman, the captain of the fishing boat frightened the Haitians off his boat by firing a gun into the air.

The Haitians, most of whom apparently could not swim, drowned in the six-foot chop almost immediately. It’s thought that several of them may have made it to the beach. Authorities are urging anyone who may have survived the tragedy to come forward and help identify the individuals who abandoned them to the sea.

The bodies of five men, six women and four children were taken to the Dade County morgue. A spokesman for the Medical Examiner’s office said that autopsies would be performed and that attempts would be made to identify them. “Then,” said the spokesman, “the bodies will have to be disposed of in some respectable and tasteful fashion. I don’t quite know how we’re going to do that yet.”

Bob’s chest tightened into a fist, then opened and emptied, and he wept, sitting in the shadows inside his car, surrounded by a milk-white fog, in a parking lot on an island in a sea, lifetimes and whole continents away from where none of this could have happened to him.

An hour later, he was sitting at the kitchen table, and he read the article again, studied the photograph accompanying it, read and studied as if decoding a secret message from an ally, while the girls ate breakfast in silence and gathered lunches in paper sacks and milk money for school, and Elaine in housecoat and slippers, without uttering a word, made breakfast for them all, served it and cleaned up afterwards, and the baby, on his belly in the playpen in the living room, watched.

Finally, the girls have left for school, Elaine has put Robbie back into his crib for his morning nap, and she stands at the sink, her hands in soapy water, and she looks up from the dishes every now and then at her husband bent over the newspaper.

“Awful, isn’t it?” she says, her flat, expressionless voice cracking the silence.

Bob’s face comes up as if from the bottom of the sea, white, bloated and whiskery, eyes like holes, mouth a bloodless slash, thin and drawn down, his long chin trembling.

“What is it, Bob?” she cries.

He shakes his head slowly from side to side, a sea beast shedding water in a fine spray, and opens his mouth to speak, but cannot.

“Oh, God, what’s the matter?” Elaine rushes over to him. She holds his cold face and says again, “Bob, what’s the matter?” She looks down at the newspaper, then back at his face. “I know, the poor Haitians. I read it when you first came in…. I was … I was looking for Ave. There wasn’t anything….” She makes her gaze drive down into her husband’s, and she sees through films, membranes, veils, curtains, doors, walls, all the way into the secret man at the center.

She knows now. She knows what he has done. She knows at last who he is. She pulls back in horror. Then an instant passes, and she comes quickly forward and cradles his head against her breast. “Oh, my God, Bob. My God.”

Suddenly, she pushes him violently away from her. His body flops back against the chair, and he says, “I … I don’t … I can’t …”

“Shut up! Just shut up! Don’t say anything!” Slowly, as if afraid she will break, she moves to the other side of the table and sits down opposite him. In silence, they sit there, staring at each other, husband and wife and the third person their marriage has made of them and who, at this moment, stands before them, a monster.

By noon, they have decided what to do. It comes out slowly, without argument or discussion, sentence by sentence, cell by cell, like a healing. First Bob quietly announces, “We should leave here.” Then, after several minutes, Elaine says they should go back to New Hampshire, where Bob has a trade and can find work.