The Passage

1

THE gull gray hull towered up suddenly a mile from the sea, its main deck rising two stories above the sluggish eddies of the East Pascagoula. The squared-off, high-volume superstructure went up another fifty feet, topped by two rectangular stacks with screened intakes and cooling baffles. An echelon of pelicans slanted past the forward mast tip, 140 feet above the river.

It looked like a warship, but it wasn’t — not yet.

Alone on the bridge, a thin, bearded man with gray eyes glanced at his watch, then at a walkie-talkie. He wore service dress whites, with choker collar, sword, and gloves.

Propping a shoe on a cable run, Lieutenant Daniel V. Lenson, U.S. Navy, looked down at the paved area inboard of the quay.

Half an hour to go, and the bunting-draped grandstands were filling. Above them, the flags of the United States, the U. S. Navy, the state of Mississippi, and Ingalls Shipbuilding stirred in a warm wind. On a raised dais, a technician chanted, “Testing, testing.” Below her, men in work clothes pushed brooms past TV vans, sending welding grit and paint chips sifting down into the muddy water.

Aft of the stands, the white-hatted mass of USS Barrett’s prospective crew was shuffling itself into order like a pack of new cards. Dan didn’t envy them, broiling down there on the asphalt. It would be a long ceremony. Politicians and flag officers loved commissionings. No better way to get your name in the papers.

He stretched, rubbing his shoulder, and glanced at the radio again. Then he strolled forward and looked down at the ship.

Barrett was at attention for her first day in the Navy, launchers and guns aligned fore and aft, brightwork polished to a jeweler’s glitter. Every flag she owned, a two-hundred-yard display of fluttering color, stretched from the bullnose aloft to the masts, then aft to the stern.

With a teeth-rattling crash, the band swung into Sousa, selections from El Capitan. Dan picked up a set of binoculars and undogged the starboard door. The thud … thud … thud of the drums echoed back seconds later from across the river, out of joint, out of step, as if two bands were playing, one real and true and the other false, counterfeit, always somehow lacking or lagging behind.

As he stepped out on the river side, the wind snatched his hat off. He lunged and caught it at the deck edge, just before the long drop to oily water, where anhingas bobbed like dirty bath toys. He jammed the cap viciously onto sandy brown hair, set the glasses to his eyes, and searched up and down the channel.

The shipyard surrounded him, lining both sides of the torpid estuary with an industrial ghetto of docks and plate yards and construction sheds. On the east bank, steel towers rose like rusty castles: jack-up rigs being built for offshore drilling. They’d delivered one last week. Without much ceremony, Dan thought. Just flood the dock and off it went downriver behind a tug.

The Navy did things differently.

The channel was clear except for a barge anchored upriver, where the Pascagoula moseyed east before wheeling south, oozing past the yard and surrendering to the Gulf of Mexico. He swung the round magnified field of the glasses past welding generators, stacks of steel plate, coils of cable, and mobile test equipment and steadied on Port Road.

The radio babbled into speech. “Bridge, XO.”

“Bridge aye.”

“Dan, keep a sharp eye now. Just got a call from the ship supe’s office. The official party’s en route.”

“Yes, sir, I have my glasses on the gate. Stand by — here they come.”

The sedans and limos rolled in like a funeral cortege, headlights on. Marines snapped to present arms as aides and chauffeurs opened doors. A saluting battery detonated dully across flat water. Amid handshakes and salutes, gold braid and gray suits searched for their seats. A frail woman with bouffant blue hair teetered at the edge of the dais and was hauled back by an usher.

The band crashed to a halt. The crowd quieted for the invocation. Dan stepped back inside the pilothouse. He didn’t bend his head or close his eyes. He stared out at the river, then beyond it at the milled-steel edge of the open sea.

Dan had joined Barrett two days before, his third duty assignment. His first tour out of Annapolis had been aboard USS Reynolds Ryan. After the court of inquiry following her loss in the North Atlantic, he’d finished his division officer tour aboard Bowen, a Knox-class frigate, then reported to Commander, Amphibious Squadron Ten, for deployment to the Mediterranean.

With his fitness reports from Commodore Isaac Sundstrom added to the letter of admonition for Ryan’s loss, he’d been surprised to make lieutenant. But he knew why. After Vietnam, the officer corps had decimated itself in a mad rush to leave a shrinking Navy. Now that the fleet was building up again, there were billets galore, but not many bodies to fill them.

Not that he was due anything wonderful. His detailer had explained that he could forget the good jobs — cruisers, destroyers, and the flag aide billets and postgraduate schools the golden few were picking up. He was headed for a tender or an oiler, the bottom of the surface Navy’s pecking order.

He’d thought about whether it might not be better just to get out. But the trouble was, there wasn’t anything else he wanted to do.

He decided to give it his best shot and see what happened. After his wife left him, he’d sold the furniture, hauled the leftovers to the dump, and moved into the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters. Transient personnel got a twelve-by-twelve room with a dresser, desk, and bed. He didn’t feel like dating. So he stayed in nights and weekends and plunged into his textbooks like a man leaping into the sea from a burning ship.

Department-head school was six months long. First came administration, then antisubmarine, antiair, and antisurface warfare, then tactical action officer training — four weeks of high-pressure memorization and drill in handling a ship in combat.

But halfway through, a funny thing happened. His midcourse grade put him in the top 10 percent of the class. The day after that, the school’s commanding officer called him in. They talked for a while about what kind of ship he really wanted. Then Captain Chandler had pointed to his phone. “Call your detailer, Lieutenant. I believe he has something to discuss with you.”

Lieutenant Commander Veeder had the clipped glibness of a man who spent eight hours a day on the phone talking people into things. He said he had an unexpected opening aboard a Kidd-class destroyer. Dan said, buying time, “That’s one of the Iranian Spruances, right?”

“Same hull as a Spruance-class, but the Shah wanted more bang for his buck. The beauty is, it has cruiser weapons, but you don’t have to deal with the fucking nukies. With that weapons suite, it’s a second-tour department-head job.”

Dan stroked his beard as he tried to figure out whether this was a good deal or a trap. Lieutenants did two eighteen-month tours as department heads. The first was on a simple, technically less demanding ship, a frigate or auxiliary. The second tour you fleeted up to a bigger ship, with more complex weapons and systems.

He said cautiously, “You’re considering me for a Kidd? What job?”

“Weapons officer. Combat systems, they call it now. I know we were talking a gator freighter or oiler, but when this opened up and I called Chandler for a recommendation, you were the highestranking guy with the lowest-ranking expectations.”

“Where is it?”

“USS Barrett, DDG nine-ninety-eight. Commission in Pascagoula, home port in Charleston. Beautiful city. Sue’ll love it.”

“Sue?”

“Isn’t that your wife’s name?”

“She goes by Betts. Anyway, we’re divorced. What happened to the regularly scheduled guy?”

“Divorced? Sorry …. What happened was, he fell off the brow. The ship was in dry dock, fixing seals on the sonar dome, and he went sixty feet down and splattered himself over the concrete …. Before you answer, uh, downside: Trying to learn all the systems while they’re in predeployment work-up, it’s gonna be easy to fall on your sword. Hear what I’m saying? You don’t wanna sweat blood, work thirty hours a day, say no and I’ll send you to an oiler.”

“I hear you, sir.”

“Be make or break careerwise, but I figured you might go for a gamble …. We’ll cut you two-week orders to Weapons Direction System school. That’ll get you to Pascagoula for the commissioning. Okay, you talk now. Want it or not?”

Dan remembered how he’d gone quiet inside. He looked across the desk at Chandler. The old man was watching him, eyes narrowed.

“Yes, sir,” he’d told Veeder. “Thanks for the chance. I want it, and I’ll give it everything I’ve got.”

The wind changed, carrying the public-address system up to him more clearly, and he came back to the present. One of the suits from the shipyard was speaking.

“We are here today to deliver the last of five ships built under a contract awarded six years ago. Originally, these were not intended as U.S. Navy ships at all. Under the military sales program, the Kouroosh-class destroyers were to be built to U.S. standards, equipped with U.S. weaponry and sensors, and sold to the Imperial Iranian Navy. Ironically enough, all the Spruance-class destroyers were originally intended to be armed as heavily as these ships are. Due to cost considerations, however, the U.S. units were cut back to one short-range missile launcher apiece, and many other items were deleted.

“But events supervened. The lead ship was nearing delivery when revolution broke out in Iran. Following the new government’s demonstrated hostility to America, Congress and the President authorized purchase of all five destroyers to fulfill the Navy’s requirement for increased general-warfare capability.

“The basic Spruance-class hull and propulsion, already proven in fleet service, will provide Barrett with speed, maneuverability, and extremely quiet mobility. She is powered by four General Electric gas turbines, the same engines used in commercial airliners. Their eighty thousand horsepower can drive the ship in excess of thirty knots. Her weapons include five-inch guns, triple-barrel torpedo launchers, Harpoon surface-to-surface missile launchers, Phalanx close-in guns, and fore and aft twin launchers capable of firing surface-to-air and antisubmarine missiles. The ship is equipped with highly capable sonar, radar, and a remarkable new weapons-control suite ….”

Dan stared down at the audience — at the female guests, at the wives and girlfriends and mothers. Wind rippled their dresses, contrasting with suits and uniforms.

His white-gloved hand struck steel.

Betts and Nan had been taken hostage when he was in the Med. She’d done what she’d thought she had to to protect their daughter. After her release, they’d seen a chaplain; talked it out; cried over it. And for a while, he’d thought it was over and that their marriage was stronger for it.

He’d only slowly realized something else was wrong. She subscribed to feminist magazines, then joined a group. The more meetings she went to, the angrier she got. It seemed to him they were designed to make women unhappy with men and marriage. He’d tried to explain that to her, but she’d turned on him, angrier than he’d ever seen her.

He’d fought to keep her, tried to become what her magazines said a man should be like. He didn’t object when she went out or ask where she’d been. But it didn’t seem to work. Somewhere in there, the sex had stopped, too. Then one day, she gave him a choice. He was gone too often; it wasn’t what she’d had in mind when she married him; either he left the Navy or she was leaving him.

It hadn’t been an easy decision. But if it was that kind of choice, he’d lost her already. They’d had five years — not long by civilian terms, but a good run for a Navy marriage.

He’d come back from a two-week underway period to find the apartment empty. The note said she and Nan were going back to her parents till she decided where to live. She’d left his things, half the furniture, and the new vacuum was still in the hall closet.

He’d gone out and gotten a fifth of scotch, then sat on the floor, holding an old pair of her jeans and an old, outgrown set of Nan’s jumpers, and cried. He drank till it didn’t hurt anymore, till he felt nothing at all.

That had been months ago. He didn’t miss his ex-wife now. In fact, he felt angry whenever he thought of her. But he missed his daughter, missed the little stocky body cuddled against his chest; the way her skin smelled, like sugar and butter; the way she saw the world new and fresh and told you about it, all excited, in ways that made you laugh and at the same time see it new again, too. When he thought about her, he had to stop or go somewhere so the men around him couldn’t see. He missed feeding her and even changing her diapers, though she was long out of them now. He called every Sunday to talk to her, sent things on her birthday and at Christmas, but already he could hear forgetting in her voice. Who could blame her? She had so much to think about, school, new friends ….

Yeah. He’d drunk himself into oblivion that first night, and a lot of nights after, too.

He couldn’t understand, even now, how anyone could stop loving someone else. But apparently women could. Women … No matter what you did, they wanted more. They wanted you to devote your life to them, change for them. But if you did, they turned away in disgust; you were weak.

Since the divorce, he’d decided he didn’t need anything from women he couldn’t get in one night.

All is for the best. Wasn’t that what Alan Evlin had told him as Reynolds Ryan fought thirty-foot Arctic seas, the old destroyer foredoomed to a fiery death, and Evlin doomed with her?

Fucking Ay, Dan thought bitterly. Like Seaman Recruit Slick Lassard used to say on the old Ryan.

Fucking Ay, it is.

An admiral was speaking now. Which one, he didn’t know, or care.

“The commissioning ceremony marks the acceptance of a ship as a unit of the operating forces of the United States Navy. At the moment of breaking the commissioning pennant, USS Barrett, DDG nine-ninety-eight, becomes the responsibility of her commanding officer. Together with the wardroom and crew, he has the duty of making and keeping her ready for any service required by our nation in peace or war.

“The first USS Barrett was a response to the worldwide catastrophe of World War Two. Named for one of the first Navy men to fall at Pearl Harbor, she fought throughout the war in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and in the closing campaigns in the Pacific. We are delighted to welcome several of her old crew here today.

“These, too, are dark years. We stand guard against a determined enemy around the world. Just as we stand guard against another, more ancient enemy: the sea itself. No matter how advanced our technology, going to sea is an inherently dangerous venture. Today, in the North Pacific, Navy units are searching for another ship — USS Threadfin, a nuclear submarine overdue and presumed lost on a routine training cruise. Let us pause for a moment, thinking of them, and pray that the news will be good.

“The newest Barrett, built to face and outlast any sea and any enemy, is a symbol of the resurgence of America, of her return to the world scene after years of withdrawal.

“Not long ago, the Navy was in trouble. The mood of discontent was reflected in the fleet’s decline to a low of two hundred and eighty-nine ships. By wide agreement, this number was inadequate to fulfill our commitments in two oceans. And with recent events in the Persian Gulf, the Indian Ocean has been added to our responsibilities.

“Today the Navy is coming back strong. We now number five hundred and forty total ships in the operating forces, and the fleet will stabilize at six hundred, centered around a powerful striking force of fourteen carriers. Barrett, with her ability to counter enemy attacks in every dimension, will be a stout shield to the battle group she is designed to defend.

“The ship we are commissioning today is the most formidable warship of her size ever to patrol the oceans. She blends the hull of a destroyer with the combat systems of a nuclear cruiser. The result is unique: a ship so quiet, she can operate offensively against submarines; the most sophisticated antiaircraft systems in the fleet, quick-reacting and highly accurate; and a deadly antiship weapons capability, as well. Able to deal simultaneously with air, surface, and subsurface attacks, she is designed to go in harm’s way — and win.

“But even that does not completely describe her. Barrett is the first ship to incorporate a new automated combat direction system. So new that even its capabilities must be classified, it is truly a tremendous step toward the warship of the twenty-first century.”

Dan’s gaze moved to the faces in ranks below — his new shipmates: his division officers; the other department heads, his peers aboard Barrett; the chiefs and senior enlisted; the sailors, rank on rank. At parade rest in front stood the exec, Lieutenant Commander Vysotsky. Weird, he thought, having an XO with a Russian name.

He shifted his eyes to the dais. Behind the admiral, legs crossed, hands folded on the pommel of his sword, sat the slight, relaxed figure of Commander Thomas R. Leighty, USN, Barrett’s prospective commanding officer. Dan had met him only once so far, not long enough to form much of an impression.

He crossed to the starboard wing and swept his glasses up and down the channel again. The barge was still anchored. A crew boat was coming in, hugging the east bank. Satisfied, he looked into the sun, welcoming its warmth after a bitter Rhode Island winter. It seemed like a pleasant place, the Gulf Coast, but they’d be leaving right after the commissioning.

That was one thing you could count on in the Navy: You never served with anyone or went ashore anywhere for the last time. How many of the wizened geezers down there on the dais had figured they’d be back forty years after the big WW II, commissioning another USS Barrett?

When he went back to the port wing, the senator was speaking, his tones booming out over the audience even when he turned away from the mike. He was saying something about how the Navy, and the nation, faced a critical time in world history. Dan watched the crew flexing their knees surreptitiously. Now the senator was off on how they stood at a crossroads of world events; how if America could stand up to this last pulse of Soviet expansionism, it might be the last gasp of the Evil Empire; but how the last innings were always the most dangerous, and the other team might still come from behind and win.

There was a stir in the ranks as someone toppled, buddies on either side catching and easing him down, corpsmen carrying him off to the ambulance.

At last, with a scattering of polite applause, the speeches ended. Everyone on the platform stood. The officers and men came to attention.

The supervisor of shipbuilding read the orders for the delivery. The dry official words bounced off steel and reverberated in expectant silence. The shipbuilder, in sentences just as arid, turned her over to the Navy.

The admiral turned to Leighty, and said quietly, “Commission USS Barrett.”

The bugler sounded attention. Eyes swung as flags broke snapping against the sky: the national ensign, the red-and-white whip of the commissioning pennant, and, on the bow, the white stars on dark blue field of the jack.

Leighty strolled to the dais. He slowly unfolded his orders and read them. Finally, he faced the admiral. “I assume command of USS Barrett, sir.”

A salute, a handshake, then Leighty barked, “Commander Vysotsky, set the watch.”

A dozen boatswains’ pipes keened and, simultaneously, the whiteuniformed ranks broke into a run. Boots clattered on steel. As each sailor reached the main deck, he broke left or right. The chiefs followed, slower, heavier of foot, and then the officers. When the thunder finally subsided, 350 men stood at parade rest along the main deck, the flight deck, the 03 level, the bridge wing. Leighty paused at the microphone, running an eye along them, before he announced, spacing the words dramatically, “USS Barrett—come alive!”

And together, all the train warning bells began to ring, the horn droned out a deep note, the radars began to rotate. Missile mounts elevated, signal flags leapt up their halyards, and every light came on from the stern to the man overboard and task lights high on the pole mast. The audience broke into applause.

That was the high point. After the benediction, the stands emptied; the limousines swung in again, embarking the guests for the reception. Dan wiped out his hatband with a glove. “Okay, that’s it,” he told the enlisted. “You guys want to go over to the tent, punch and cake yourselves, make your bird. You can knock off from there, unless you’re in the duty section. See you tomorrow.”

“Not coming, sir?”

“Think I’ll stay aboard, get some reading in on the combat systems doctrine.”

A kid who looked about eighteen lingered shyly. He said, “Guess we got us a ship now, Lieutenant, huh?”

“Yeah, Sanderling. A brand-new one.”

He watched the technician look around proudly. Being part of a ship’s first crew, a “plank owner,” was a title a sailor carried all his life — like the old men who’d put the first Barrett in commission when the skies were dark with war. Funny how he kept thinking of them. Had they ever been as young as Sanderling, as trusting, as thrilled, as dumb?

He grinned to himself, amused but also bitter. He’d been like that once himself.

The buzz of the A-phone brought him back. “Bridge, Lieutenant Lenson,” he said into it.

“Dan, this is the XO. I’ve been looking over this inventory, what you came up with versus what Sipple signed off for before his accident. Are you sure these figures are right?”

“The chief warrant and I counted everything twice, sir.”

“Well, I got some questions. Can you come down to my stateroom?”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ll be right down.”

2

The land sprawled like a sleeping child under the blanket of night, a vast plain unbroken by hill or mountain or city — only the land, naked to the wind. Across its black expanse, no cars, no vehicles moved in the last hour before dawn. Only at a huddle of concrete and tin buildings, at an intersection of the roads that led through the great plain, were a few lights coming on.

The woman woke drenched with sweat, a distant whistle still sounding in her ears. She lay unmoving on her pallet, looking up into the darkness as if listening to a voice only she could hear. Then she swung her bare feet out and set them gingerly on the floor.

The bed was pushed against the wall of a one-room house of unpainted palm boards, uninsulated and with one shuttered glassless window on the south. A colored picture of the Virgin, the kind that had been for sale everywhere before the revolution, was pinned up beside it. The floor was bare, swept concrete. Faint rustlings and scratchings came from the peaked darkness. Thatch from the palma real made a tight, waterproof roof, but it hosted mice and scorpions. For this reason, she slipped her feet into a pair of rubber-soled sandals, then got up. Moving quietly about the room, she lighted a small charcoal fire, poured water from a jar in the corner, and put a pan of it on to heat.

The woman was very thin. Her dark legs were scarred with a pale map of old cuts. She had wide shoulders and a short muscular neck. The arm she stretched up to screw in a dangling bulb was long and sinewy, the hand calloused. As harsh light stabbed into the corners of the hut, it cut the planes of her face from darkness. Her angular cheekbones and long eyes she owed to a Chinese grandfather. The rest of her features were a blend of African and European, mixed for centuries on an island without barriers between races. Her narrow lips were set, her expression sad, as if she’d been waiting for something too long and now despaired of ever seeing it.

The water was warm now, heating quickly above the blue and yellow flames dancing on the charcoal, and she dipped a little out and set the rest back till it should boil. She washed her face carefully, then under her arms, her neck. Crossing the room to a row of nails, she took down a work shirt and cotton trousers. Then, easing a door open, she went outside, under the stars.

When she came back, the water was hissing and bubbling. She measured out a little ground coffee into a sieve, poured the water carefully into it, and set it aside to steep. She flicked a metal box open and set the bread on the table, which was, aside from the pallet and an old rawhide-and-hardwood chair, the only furniture. Then she took out a mirror. In the quiet, broken only by the steady drip of the coffee and the chirp of an awakened cricket, she brushed her hair back and tied it in place with a strip of red ribbon.

She sat at the table and ate the bread and drank the strong black coffee, stirred thick with two spoonfuls of coarse raw sugar. She didn’t speak or look about, just stared in front of her as she ate.

When she was done, she washed the mug in the remains of the water and hung it on a nail. She put the other things back, the sugar, the remaining coffee, and scooped the crumbs off the table and tossed them into the fire. Sitting on the pallet again, she pulled on a heavy pair of black military boots with worn-down heels and tears in the sides sewn up with twine.

Getting up again, she took down from the thatch a two-foot-long, slightly curved blade of spring steel. Its cutting edge was wavy, concave and then convex, nicked and scarred with long use. From a handmade wooden haft dangled a loop of green cord.

She sat again at the table, poured water out on a small flat stone, and set to work sharpening the machete. Each stroke began with a grinding rasp and ended with a faint musical singing. From time to time, she tried the edge with her thumb. Finally, satisfied, she fitted a slit-open length of rubber hose over it, thrust it into her belt, and opened the door.

The hot dark wind came out of the night and fanned her sweating face. It brought with it the smells of smoke and dust and drying urine, but above all of the soil — a crisp checkerboard of cracks at the end of the dry season, la seca. The sky was gray to the east, over the next house, the door of which opened, and two shadows stepped out, as she just had.

“Buenos dias, Augustín, Xiomara.”

“Graciela. You’re working today? Feeling better, then?”

“Better, yes, thank you.”

A woman’s voice, concerned: “Are you sure? If you don’t, we’ll let the comrade brigadier know—”

“I’m well enough to work,” she said again, sharply now, and they said nothing more.

As they spoke, more shadows emerged from other huts. They did not linger in the open area in front of the batey, the cluster of workers’ dwellings, but turned up onto an unpaved dusty road that led away between the still-dark fields. She moved with them, unspeaking. Bare feet and shoes and boots scuffed along as a faint light began to diffuse downward from the eastern stars, gradually bringing out the silvery surface of the road. Gradually bringing into view the nothingness that surrounded them, great expanses of flat earth stretching off till they met the sky. A month before, she remembered, the cane had hemmed in the road like two black walls. Now the fields were stripped bare, shorn, littered with the detritus of harvest; the cane leaves were like discarded corn husks, crackling-dry on the parched ground, rustling like a million insects as the predawn wind scuttled over them. She moved with the other shadows at a steady pace, not brisk, not slow, following the deep powdery dust as it wound left and then right and then came out in a wide plaza lighted by bare bulbs on high poles. Beneath their light, huge shapes grumbled and chattered in the saurian speech of diesels. Wordlessly, the workers queued at the tailgates, the men climbing up first, then hauling the girls and boys, old people and women up by their arms.

“Listos. Vamos,” someone shouted outside, and, jolting and grunting, the trucks jerked into motion.

Cooperative Cane Production Facility Number 176, Alcorcón, covered seventy-five square miles of fertile flatland that had been divided among fifteen small cattle ranches before the second agrarian reform law. Number 176 produced almost a hundred thousand tons of raw sugar a year, although this year it was running behind schedule. Cane did not sweeten fully till it dried, and an unseasonally wet January had extended the harvest a month beyond its usual termination. The central had its own worker housing, offices, machine station, railroad station, warehouses, store, staff housing, garage, and barracks for the army units, school groups, and urban workers who rotated through on “voluntary” work assignments during the cutting season. At the height of the zafra, the harvest, a thousand human beings rode out to the fields each morning before dawn.

One of them this dark morning, sitting silently on a wooden bench in the back of a swaying Soviet-made two-and-a-half-ton truck, was Graciela Gutiérrez.

The trucks stopped at the edge of one of the last still-standing fields. The tailboards slammed down and the macheteros spilled off. Not speaking, they ranged themselves out across the road, facing the cane like soldiers staring down an enemy. Drawing on a pair of worn gloves, lacing on leather shin protectors, Graciela looked down at it from the road; a vast, slowly tossing green sea half a mile across. Her expression was hard, but she did not feel as determined as she looked. She felt a heaviness in her stomach, a steady pressure. It was unpleasant, but she didn’t ask to be taken back to the batey. It was a heaviness; that was all.

The jefe de brigada, the overseer, glanced at his watch, then shouted, “Time to go to work, compañeros.” And in a ragged wave the workers moved forward, stepping down off the road and into the cane.

As she let herself down the slope, Graciela picked out the place she would begin. The cane, seven feet high and brownish green, came up from the dry soil in clumps of five or six stalks. Two feet away was another clump, then another. She took a deep breath and bent, folding herself awkwardly.

Stooped, she seized a two-inch-thick stalk in her left hand and slashed it through half an inch from the soil with a quick stroke of the razor-sharp blade. Then, lifting it, she quickly trimmed the leaves off. She lopped off the leafy top, laid the cane aside, took a step forward, and reached for the next stem.

Gradually, sweat broke under her clothing. Above her head even when she stood, the tops of the cane danced in the wind, but it was as if they absorbed the breeze. The air between them was dense and hot and filled with mosquitoes. They found her mouth and face. But the tender parts, the ankles and the back of the hands, she had covered. And she ignored the rest even as they settled and stung. Only occasionally did she pause long enough to blot the sweat from her eyes with the frayed cuff of her shirt.

When she had eight or ten trimmed stalks laid aside, enough that it was heavy to carry, she began a pile. As she cut on, moving slowly deeper into the field, the initial stiffness ebbed away. The machete hissed as it sliced through the cane, and drops of pale sugar milk bubbled at the cut roots. Such a useful tool, she thought. You could saw through the tough stalk, like the volunteers from the city did at first. Or, if you had a sharp-enough blade, you could slice through with a sudden, nearly invisible wrist flick that clipped through the tough fiber like a razor blade through a stalk of celery.

And gradually, her tight lips relaxed. She forgot what was past and what might come and swung the flat blade, dust-streaked now, again and again. She merged with the work and the dry heat, the smoke and dust that drifted in golden sparkling, itching clouds between the stalks; with the endless stoop-slash-trim-toss, the steady progress across the fields, hearing and sometimes glimpsing at the edge of one’s own gradually lengthening clearing the knotted kerchief or the plaited straw hat of a neighbor, the quick grin or averted eyes of another worker. Till all that existed in the world was the swaying, waiting cane, darker green at the base, then lighter, and finally a withered brown at the leaf tips. Each stalk shuddered as she grasped it, as if it sensed the moment had come when it would lose its grip on the earth and become raw material for the mills. She worked in silence, without joining in the shouts and encouragements of the other workers, or the songs. Although she listened, and sometimes her lips moved with the refrain.

After an hour, a boy made his way through the stalks, carrying galvanized buckets carefully balanced, one to each hand. When he came to her, she paused and lifted her head to the bright blue sky, put her hands to her back, wiped her face, and only then bent to the dipper of cool water that she drank a few swallows of, a few swallows only. She smiled at the thin, shy youth with the gaptoothed smile and big dark eyes that searched the ground as she spoke.

“Miguelito, this water is fresh? You didn’t let the men piss in it?”

“No, Tia Graciela. How are you feeling?”

“I’ll get through the day. Go on, along with you.” She gave him a playful tap with the back of the blade, then reached for the next stand of cane.

When she saw the shadow stretching forward from behind her, she thought at first that it was the boy again. She was thirsty, and she said sharply, not pausing, “Miguelito, bring it up here. I don’t want to take one step backward today.”

“Spoken, at least, like a daughter of the revolution,” said an unfamiliar voice. Her hand went tight on the stalk it had already grasped, then released it.

He stood with the sun behind him, so she couldn’t see his face. She could see that he was a large man, though. And what they called a gallego—light-skinned. He wore boots but not a uniform. His clothes didn’t look ragged, though, as hers and all the other workers’ did.

Suddenly, she shivered. A cold wind seemed to blow over her, like the icy breath from the heart of the approaching storm.

“Are you speaking to me, compañero? I’m working now.”

“I’ve been watching. You’re a good worker.”

“Who are you? What do you want with me? I have a meta to meet.”

“I have a question for you, mulata—a question about certain worms.”

“What worms?”

“The question is: ‘The guitars, why do they sing to me of your tears, O Cuba?’”

She blinked sweat out of her eyes, staring into the sun and in front of it this blackness, this shadow, and suddenly she was so frightened, it was hard to breathe. He wasn’t in uniform, so he wasn’t from the army or the police. He carried a machete, but his boots were new and his clothes fit him and were not torn or patched, and he was muscular and well fed. So there was really only one thing he could be.

“Graciela Gutiérrez?”

“You’re speaking to me. But who are you?”

“What do you say to my question?”

“I don’t know anything about guitars. I don’t have a guitar.” He came a step nearer, and she caught his face as the shadow of the cane brushed it. “You’re not stupid. You have no education, but you’re shrewd. Then why do you act stupid, like a hija boba?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, guitars,” she said stubbornly, flicking her machete over the stub of a stalk. The flies started up at the motion, circled, settled again, feeding on the sweet ooze. Their buzzing seemed very loud. In the distance, men began a décima, a folk song.

“You are Graciela Lopez Gutiérrez. Born on a sugar estate near Esmeralda. Your father was a tercedario—”

“Yes. He was a sharecropper.”

“You began living with Armando Guzman Diéguez, a son of a mill engineer, when you were fourteen. You have never been married. You have borne him three children, of whom one is still living. Diéguez has been convicted as an enemy of the revolution—”

“Not so—”

“He is an enemy of the people and of the revolution. In 1967, he was condemned by a tribunal and sentenced to five years in prison for setting fire to standing crops, an act of CIA-inspired sabotage. He pretended to reform and in good faith we released him and assigned him to productive labor at Central Number One seventy-six, with his family, just as he wanted. Then last year, he was caught stealing state property and sent again to prison for a further term of seven years.” The man waited, then added, “Is all this correct?”

“It’s correct. But it’s not all.”

“What do you mean, ‘it’s not all’?”

“I mean that yes, he stole, but this is not a just act, to condemn a man for stealing a bag of corn for his family.”

“You are also a worm, the woman of a worm.”

“You know nothing about my husband. His brother was killed by the Batistianos. Beaten, his legs broken, driven over with a jeep—”

“His brother would be disappointed in him.”

“No, he would be proud. Armando fought against them, too. He took up a gun and fought.”

“I find that hard to believe. All you worms are good for is talk.”

“I have never spoken against the revolution.”

“Someone is lying, then? All your neighbors are lying to us?”

“A measure of sand for a measure of lime.”

“What does that mean?”

“That if you pay people for lies, you will get lies for your pay.”

The man said harshly, “A woman with a tongue like yours should keep it firmly in her mouth. What were your people before the revolution? Sharecroppers. Now you have a free house and food. Your daughter’s books, food, classes, everything paid for. Would she have gone to school before Fidel? Would she not be cutting cane like you or bearing bastards for the pleasure of some fat latifundista?”

She said reluctantly, looking at the dusty ground, “No, compañero. She would not have gone to school; that is certain.”

“Yet still you people continue to speak against us, carry out thefts and sabotage …. I warn you, our patience is at an end. You can tell that to your fellow counterrevolutionaries.”

“I know no other—”

“Be quiet. The revolution cannot be opposed. It moves from victory to victory, marching toward a future we only glimpse. Well, perhaps it will have one final gift for you.” He laughed, a muted snort of contempt. “For you and the rest of the blind worms.”

She glanced up in sudden fear, but where he had stood was only the sun now, shining so brilliantly between the swaying tassels of the cane that she could not look into it.

The confrontation left her feeling ill and dizzy. So when she bent again, the water sprang into her mouth and she swayed to one side and vomited. She wiped bitter acid from her lips with her sleeve, staring at the ground with open, unseeing eyes.

Then her gloved hand reached out for the next stalk of cane.

She worked through the morning and when the sun was high had sheared eighty yards of field twelve feet wide and left eight huge square stacks of stalks behind her along the rows of what were now stubbled fields. Each stalk was sheared off close to the ground so that next year it would grow again.

A distant whistle signaled the end of the morning. She carefully put the hose back on her blade, took off her gloves, and turned and trudged back to the road. Other figures came out of the fields with her, most in ragged cotton work dresses or trousers, a few in army fatigues. They gathered by the road, squatting and exchanging a few words, and presently the trucks came into sight.

They rolled into the buildings at the crossroads and eased themselves down. No one could work now, at the peak of the day. Those who were too hungry to wait joined the line in front of the dining hall. The others found shade and huddled in it, waiting their turn to eat. Graciela looked at the line, then headed for the shade. When she had settled in it, a man joined her.

“Tomás.”

“Feeling better today, Cousin?”

“I’m well, but …” She examined her cousin’s familiar swarthy face. She wanted to tell him about the man in the cane field, but something held her back. What was it he’d said … “Someone is lying”? He meant the informers, the chivatos. Now she feared to speak her mind even to her relatives.

“They say this is the end of the harvest — the last day of cutting.”

“I thought there were some fields left over by Alcorcón.”

“They moved in an army unit and cut those yesterday. No, this is the last field, the one you’re working.”

“What are you doing today?”

“Work assignment. Cleaning out the hog pens.”

“So that’s why you smell like a pig.”

She liked his quick grin. “I don’t care. As long as they pay me, I’m happy. If that makes me a pig, I’ve been called worse. Any letters from Armando yet?”

“No.”

“He hasn’t written once since they took him.”

“No,” she said, wiping sweat from her hair. “I worry, Tomás. He wasn’t well when they came for him. The first time he nearly died, and now he’s not a young man.”

“He’ll return,” said Tomás fiercely in a low voice. “If the Batistianos couldn’t kill him, the Fidelistas never will. Are you eating? There’s no line now …. What are they giving us today, chico?” he called to a passing boy.

“Rice, beans, a shred of pork, coffee, Comrade Tomás.”

“Shall we go in?” Tomás said, offering his arm like a gentleman to a great lady. She smiled sarcastically and struggled up, grateful for his strong arm under hers.

“Thank you, Señor Guzman. Let us go in to dine.”

The afternoon was like the morning, only hotter, as if the whole earth itself was baking and nearly done. A group of older workers grew in the shade of the trucks, those who’d fainted or cut themselves, or couldn’t finish for whatever reason. Graciela worked on, though her hands had gone numb and her shoulders felt like lead. Now she no longer thought about the man in the cane or about her missing husband, but only about the next stalk to be grasped and when the water would come around again. She finished her quota but kept on without slackening. The men and women sitting glumly by the trucks would not be paid today, though they’d labored through the morning. They hadn’t made the meta. But once you had, you didn’t stop. You had to keep cutting, for the revolution.

When at last the whistle sounded, she staggered back, straightening with a great effort. Her back was iron, twisted with pain. Her clothes were soaked dark and her hands shook as she fitted the hose back on the pitted, dulled blade.

She sat outside that evening on the rawhide taburete, which she’d taken out in front of the hut to escape the closed-in air that lingered from the day. And truly it was pleasant now, with the night coming, the breeze no longer a breath from hell, laden instead with the green perfume of spring flowers. She sat exhausted, not speaking as the children ran past her barefoot, only staring across the cropped dry fields that surrounded the batey. Her hands clutched her stomach, feeling, or perhaps imagining, a fluttering within.

She sat hunched, mind a hollow bowl, watching the coming of darkness. It was almost undetectable, the way evening came in the tropics; presaged only by an almost-imperceptible shadowiness, then, in seconds, the sudden descent of night.

Just then, she noticed something white off across the bare cut fields, out on the road. It was eclipsed by some ragged trees, then emerged again, closer. It was a person. No, two, one taller, one shorter.

Something about the tall one seemed familiar. She frowned but couldn’t make it out. The darkness was falling swiftly now, like a black machete blade, and she was getting nearsighted; she’d noticed that.

But it did look like him ….

The two left the road where it cut away across the fields and they crossed toward her along a bare path.

She slowly put her fist to her mouth. The next moment, the chair tilted and fell, and she was on her feet, stumbling as her tired muscles gave way, but recovering and running, running toward the man who approached over the barren field. She screamed hoarsely as she stumbled over the cutoff stalks on the littered, hard-baked ground. Thought surfaced in her mind, then vanished in the manic tumbling of joy. It was him. They’d let him go. But why didn’t he wave? Why did he stand waiting; why didn’t he run to meet her?

Then she saw the boy.

Miguelito, looking sad and frightened, supported him under one arm; he was leading him.

Before she understood it, she had reached them, thrown her arms around him, screaming and sobbing in joy. She felt his arms come up around her, hesitantly at first, as if they could not believe what they held, as if her sturdy body were delicate as blown glass. He was so thin beneath the old white shirt. She thought, I must feed him. They didn’t feed well at the prison. Those who had been there did not like to talk about it, but they always mentioned that. There were yuca and beans in the patch back of the house, but they weren’t ready yet …. She’d fry plantains for him. He was really here, home! Oh Lord, she thought, you have delivered him.

“Graciela,” Armando said then, in a strange voice. It was his, but thick, strained, saddened as she’d never heard it, even at Victoria’s death. And when she looked up, she saw why the boy had been leading him, saw that his eyes were open, yet could not perceive her, or the open fields, or the curious children who came running; could perceive none of it; could see nothing at all of the world of light.

3

The light leapt out at them long before they reached the grounds, wheeling and dipping and blazing with vibrating electric brilliance; and the music, too, loud ludicrous hurdy-gurdy amplified through buzzing speakers till it boomed out across the cars and pickup trucks and the rapt open faces of the children and the wary suspicious faces of the adults, closed and defensive, as if they feared and grudged themselves any part of wonder or joy. The circus had set up on a plot of empty land, an old pasture or cornfield somehow left unbuilt on while all around it suburbs had crept out. Now, as they neared, the boy tugged at the man’s hand. “Let me go, Dad.”

“No, buddy, better hold on. There’s a crowd; I want you to stay close to me.”

“The Ferris wheel! A Tilt-A-Whirl! Keen!” The boy tugged again, and the man smiled, looking down at the top of his head. “Dad, let go of my hand. Please!”

“Okay, but stay in sight. We’ll need tickets to get on those, anyway.”

Released, the youngster darted ahead, looking back only when he’d wedged himself into line for the first ride. He waved wildly to his father, who waved back. Touching his wallet lightly through his slacks, he looked around for a ticket booth.

He was standing in front of it, smelling the roasting peanuts and the caramel coating of the apples and the sulfur reek of gunpowder that drifted from the shooting gallery, when he saw them.

Suddenly, a dry feeling came in his throat, a faint falling away behind his chest as he stared out.

They stood on the open field beyond the last row of stalls. The glaring garish electric lights on the wheeling rides, the strings of incandescent bulbs that lighted keno and bingo and the games of chance and skill made the evening out there even darker. As he watched, money clenched in his damp hand, he saw two of them merge, melt, and then slowly dissolve into the darkness, till he could no longer make them out at all.

“How many, Mac?”

“What?”

“How many tickets you want, Mac?”

“Oh. Let’s start with five dollars’ worth.”

Tearing his eyes from the dark, he said, “Thanks,” then turned back toward the music, toward his son, hands clenching and unclenching as he looked openmouthed up at the Rocket to Mars.

Later he watched as the boy rotated high above him, fists white on the safety bar as the make-believe rocket twisted and rolled. Just watching it made him feel sick. But he was glad they’d come. This would be their last time together for a while. When he returned, the boy would be older; he’d have missed part of his life, and he regretted this even as he knew that he couldn’t stop it, and wouldn’t if he could. He had to grow up. Nothing could change that. But tonight they were together at the circus, and they were going to have fun.

When the ride was over and the attendant clanged up the safety bar, the boy struggled out. “That was great!”

“You liked that?”

“Hell yes. Why don’t you go on it, Dad?”

“You’re not getting me in one of those things. Maybe the Ferris wheel, though.”

They went on a couple of the easier rides together and had withered greasy hot dogs. They pitched pennies and the boy won. At last the man glanced at his watch. “Ten o’clock,” he said.

“Aw, Dad, we just got here. Can’t we stay longer?”

“School day tomorrow, big guy. C’mon, Mom’ll be waiting up for us. You remember where we left the car?”

When he dropped the boy off, his wife was at the door, smiling at them both, and he winked as he turned away, calling, “I’ll be back in a little while, okay?”

“Where are you going?”

“We need some milk. I’ll pick up a quart at the Piggly Wiggly. Anything else we need?”

“We’re out of your cereal,” she said.

He stopped at the corner and got milk and cereal, then sat in the car with the engine running, there in the lot. His hands felt numb, gripping and releasing the padded plastic of the wheel.

You shouldn’t do this, he told himself.

But he knew even as he thought this that he was going to. It had been too long and he would not be able to resist. He had tried not to want to; he had even, once, prayed not to want to. But it was something inside him that was different and unalterable — not something that he did, but something he was and would always be.

The fairway was almost empty, dying back now toward night. Darkness trickled like black blood between the naked transparent bulbs. His loafers scuffed up dry dust that smelled of cotton candy and stale popcorn and old cowshit and oil from the engines that powered the wheels and rides and the sharp scared smell of his own body. The barkers and roustabouts and sharp-voiced stall keepers glanced incuriously past him as he strolled, sleeves rolled up in the lingering heat of the summer night. The grinning and crying masks leered down from the carousel; the painted horses nodded knowingly as they swept round in endless circles, the music jangling and bleating out into the night with forced desperate joy.

The shadows waited — out there, beyond where the last parents tugged the last whining kids toward the cars, past where the last teens threw baseballs at cascades of milk bottles.

He stood under the light and bought a Coke he didn’t want. He drank it with a dry mouth, tossing the ice cubes back and crunching them as he looked blankly at the grinning faces of stuffed dinosaurs, rag clowns, cheap stuffed dolls. If they found out, he would lose everything. He’d seen it happen to others, men he knew and respected. Decades of work, sacrifice, achievement, none of that mattered. They’d been cast into the outer darkness, and there was no way back.

And his family — he did love them; he loved his wife, his son, his daughter. It was not their fault that love was, somehow, not enough. He could lose them, too. No, this was madness, idiocy. It wasn’t too late to turn back. He tossed the empty cup toward a trash barrel and touched his slacks lightly. Wallet, car keys … he had only to get into his car, return to his wife, his home, his family.

Touching his lips lightly with the back of his hand, he walked slowly out from the circle of light. His chest was tight with mingled fear and yearning. Fear, because you never knew exactly what or whom you would encounter. He moistened his lips, eyes flicking around in the growing darkness around him. Avoid groups. Look for cover. Sometimes he thought it might be wise to carry a knife. But he never had, and up till now, he’d been lucky.

And yearning, because if just once in a long time you could take off the mask and breathe … then you could stand it. You could stand all the rest.

He walked slowly on, back rigid, as his shadow grew longer out in front of him and the field grew dark and the music faded to a whisper, a jangling discordant rumble — until he heard the whisper, so close and intimate, it seemed to come from within some secret chamber of his own divided heart.