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The Hemingway Maid

By: Adrian Leverkuhn



Even after the 'Cold War' ended, relations between The United States and Fidel Castro's Cuba remained - to put it mildly - strained. Well into the 1990s, when people fled Cuba - usually by boat or makeshift raft across the 90-mile wide Florida Straits - they either died trying to reach America or were taken into custody by the U.S. Coast Guard and then awaited a very uncertain fate.

My first encounter, personally, with this terrible exodus occurred in the summer of 1995. I was with my father on Sabrina, my dear old sailboat, and we were traveling from Naples, on the southwest coast of Florida, around through the Dry Tortugas and Keys to the Miami/Ft Lauderdale area on the east coast. There had been, apparently, a wave of repression in Cuba, and many hundreds of people had decided to make the illegal trip across the Straits from Cuba to Florida in some very unsuitable craft. Reports from news services and the Coast Guard were filled with unspeakable fates awaiting these refuges on the open ocean.

In the late afternoon of a rather unremarkable June day, barreling along under full main and double headsails, with the wind on our starb'rd beam and the Gulf Stream giving us a steady push, Dad and I were talking about life and women and the reasons why 12 year old Scotch is better than sex (yes, I know, but Dad was approaching 80 years old, so cut me some slack . . .). I was updating our progress on the paper chart in my lap with our speed and time, calculating distance over the ground and plotting our position on the chart (excuse me, this was before GPS). Navigating was a favorite past time with both my father and I; he had taught me how to fly when I was still in diapers, and how to get lost in a boat when I was still learning how to walk.

As I made some notes on the chart some obscure flash caught my eye, and I looked up and out over the deep blue water. The waves were perhaps five to seven feet high, and the wind was fresh enough to be blowing foam off the white-capped rollers that surrounded us. As Sabrina bounded up and over these rolling troughs I could see off into the near distance, and it was on one of these brief ascents that I caught sight, again, of something bright and very out of place. I alerted Dad and we came about, and headed in the direction I had last seen this, well, whatever it was. Soon we were approaching a raft, but please keep in mind that calling this collection of oil drums, plywood sheets, and rags a raft was a very forgiving term.

The Coast Guard had advised mariners against approaching these rafts, apparently fearing that starving, half-dead refuges would in desperation take-over or attack would-be rescuers. The problem here, as I saw it in those immediate circumstances, was that no one was moving on the raft. I could see several people laying out on the plywood surface of the derelict-craft, and people were being tossed about by the swells, but no one was up and about, no one appeared to be conscious.

As we closed on the little raft my father and I watched in absolute horror as a small body rolled from the raft and dropped into the sea. 

Dad altered course to try and reach the child, but we were still well over a hundred feet away. As we entered the approximate area where the little body had hit the water, Dad set up a search pattern. It was during times like these that my now very old father, a retired naval aviator and dive-bomber pilot during WWII, would suddenly come screaming back into the full rush of life. Where minutes before he had been grousing about arthritis and how all of his old friends had passed away, here he was at the wheel shouting instructions and back in complete command of the world around him.

Or so I hoped.

I caught a momentary flash of weathered brown skin bobbing on the surface as we passed it, and pointed it out to Dad; he swung the boat wildly around, giving no thought to the sails, and we were on the body in an instant. I hopped down on the boarding ladder as the body hove into the lee of the boat and just managed to grab the young boy by the arm, and pulled him up onto Sabrina's deck.

It took but an instant to determine that the little guy was gone, that he had probably been dead for hours. His sun-scorched skin felt like hot leather in my hands, even after it's brief rest in the relatively cool waters of the Gulf Stream. I will never forget that boys face as long as I live, and will spare you the details. I looked at Dad with helplessness in my heart, and saw his face streaked with tears.

I got on the radio and called the Coast Guard, gave them our estimated position, and that of the raft, as well as our situation on board. Within a half hour an orange-striped white USCG helicopter came screaming in over our head, and an orange-suited rescue diver jumped down into the churning water next to the raft. The helicopter moved off and went into a hover. 

Soon we heard the diver on the radio. All those poor souls on the raft were dead.

The helicopter pilot asked us to stay on station with the rescue diver as they had just received another rescue call; basically, we had to wait for a Cutter to arrive and take over operations. The chopper-jock thanked us and was gone. We motored over as close to the diver on the raft as we dared, and he grabbed the line we tossed over and made it fast, then we closed the distance a little bit more, tried to lend whatever assistance the guy needed. 

The diver told us this was his sixth such rescue that week, and that almost all found so far had been dead. He seemed hollow and care-worn, too numb to cry. He tossed down the orange juice we gave him with the dull ache in his soul apparent in his every move and gesture. Soon the Cutter arrived, and we helped with the transfer of bodies to the ship and the information needed for their reports, and they bid us a safe journey.

You just got to love the Coasties. Tough job. Real heroes, those guys.

Dad and I finished our trip around to the east coast in almost total silence, and we eventually tied off on the dock in front of his house shortly after midnight. Up until the day he passed away just a few months ago, the events of that afternoon tied us together in unexpected ways. I think his heart softened a bit; the reality of those desperate people and their hopeless flight really tore him up like nothing I could remember. As unsuccessful as we'd been trying to rescue those people, the effort to do something, anything, to help those poor souls must have resounded with the usually sour-faced response he had to newscasters and all the other second-guessers he'd run into during his long life. I guess from that day forward apathy was a perverse luxury he felt humanity could no longer afford.

God, I miss him.

+

A little over a year later I decided to visit Cuba, see firsthand the world those boat people had tried to flee from, with, apparently, so much despair in their hearts. 

And I decided to make the trip on Sabrina. 

Several Canadian sailors had told me of their warm welcome to Cuba, and voiced the opinion that my reception in Cuba would be no less hospitable. U.S. policy at the time appeared to be in a state of review, or at least ambivalence, as repeated requests for information - about making such a trip by boat - to the Coast Guard and State Department went unanswered.

I left Ft Lauderdale one February morning and wound down the ICW, the famous Intra-Coastal Waterway, to Miami, then went out Government Cut and into the heaving swells of the Gulf Stream. Sabrina took me into the teeth of this stream, straining toward the southwest against both current and prevailing wind, toward the Florida Straits and those deep blue waters of hope stilled. Sabrina took me across a seascape of nightmares and broken dreams, over blood worn and tumultuous waters toward the north shore of Cuba. I arrived off the coast of Havana late on the third day out from Florida, wet and cold to the core, beaten up by the trip against the current, and ready to just breath easily now that the Straits were behind me.

I was greeted almost immediately by a Cuban naval vessel. And I say greeted, because that was exactly what happened. Very nice, very professional naval officers in a smallish gray patrol boat came alongside and, noting that I was an American, asked if it was my intent to stage an invasion or create some other problem for Fidel Castro. Reassured with my reply that I was indeed the vanguard of a Marine Expeditionary Force and that George Washington and the Continental Army was right behind me, they laughed and pointed me in the general direction of the Marina Hemingway. I did note that there was an astonishing number of machine guns and larger deck guns on the Soviet-built boat, as well as some very menacing looking missiles and whirling radar arrays. Not exactly representatives of the Peace Corp . . .

The Marina Hemingway was named for, well, not William Faulkner or F Scott Fitzgerald. It seemed that, once upon a time, Papa Ernest had called Cuba his home away from home for a while. So, the marina that bore his name (in honor of his manly exploits on the sea, one assumes) could hardly have been anything other than a haven for macho-American sailors in search of rum and cigars and a right good time. I was not surprised to learn that the Marina Hemingway was also one of the big-time secrets of Yanquis-Yachties looking ever southward for new ways of living on the cheap.

And here I have to help you understand something. Marinas are full of boats, often sailboats. And many of these boats are not "yachts"; they are, rather, homes. With names like Second Wind, Scot Free, and yes, Sabrina, the casual observer easily makes the connection between these marina-bound vessels on the one hand and the recently obtained status of divorced-white-guy on the other. As many of these divorced-white-guys are recently retired, and living expenses over time become an ever more relevant issue, these anxious older men head south of the border, so to speak, in search of cheaper climes and a place to hang out with their memories. In recent years, Cuba had suddenly popped up on these guy's radar screens as a great place to live cheaply and nicely. And maybe the chance to live outrageously one last time, the chance to make a few more memories to take with them on the big sleep. 

So, little did I know I was motoring on into an out-of-control Leisure World for boaties.

But to be fair, I have to relate to you one other key fact about these communities; cue you in one of the most important elements of these "live aboard" communities. A huge percentage of the folks living on board their sailboats are, well, not timid sorts of people. Lots of retired CIA types, pilots, soldiers, and yes, truck drivers, oil patch workers, and cops. Not many florists and bankers make the leap to cruising distant shores. So, and this is important, these live-aboard communities in foreign waters are real tight on the loyalty thing. People look after one another. When these guys turn their back on conventional society and sail away, they do so knowing they won't ever have to be alone unless they really want to be. Because the community is so protective of it's own, it becomes an extended family. By and large, and I dislike generalizations, a lot of these guys also tend to be hard drinking, smoking, and fornicating horny bastards. 

Which was why, in the 1990s, the Marina Hemingway was such a dream come true for these guys. Cuba was a last frontier kind of thing, and these guys were cowboys headed off toward the sunset . . .

When you pull into a marina almost anywhere in the world, nattily dressed dock boys typically point you a slip to dock your boat in. More often than not, again, in most places, the process of placing a boat in a marina reflects the size of your boat, and more importantly, the apparent cost of it as well. To put it more succinctly, the biggest and the best tend to get the spot next to the yacht club or the fancy restaurant, while the run down little cruisers get shuttled over to the nice smelling slips by the tuna-canning factory.

Not so at Marina Hemingway.

What might have passed for a restaurant or a yacht club in the 90s anywhere else in the yachtie world - even within the diminished standards of Central American yachting - would not adequately characterize what greeted me as Sabrina swung into the Marina Hemingway. Quaint and charming are two euphemisms that come to mind as pertinent overstatements, but, well, it was clean, after a fashion. The marina was, after all, a remnant of Yanquis Imperialism from the pre-Castro era, and not a lot of Soviet money had gone into it's upkeep and repair since. Since tourism in Cuba from 1959 through 1989 was in keeping with the Soviet style of travel - let's just call it economy class and be done with it - the Marina had become totally irrelevant. Everyone knows yachting wasn't a real big deal with the Russians unless an Olympic medal was involved, so Marina Hemingway had devolved into a real trip down memory lane. As I approached the palm-lined slips filled with all manner of live aboard vessels, it became clear that Marina Hemingway wasn't gong to give Newport a run for its money. But it looked friendly in its way.

And so it was that I met Pedro Flores, a thirteen-year-old Cuban dock-boy who waved me toward a row of slips, and took a dock line as I drifted into the slip he had chosen. 

I found over the course of the next few weeks that Pedro - and others like him - worked hard to get jobs at the marina, and each was assigned his own turf to look after. They helped boats in and out of slips, arranged rides into Havana for tenants needing supplies, and would look after your boat when you were away. These kids lived on tips, made no hourly wage, and depended entirely on the goodwill of the marina tenants for their very existence. To say these kids were nice would be a grossly unjust understatement, but they were also smart as hell and worked like crazy to earn and keep their positions at the marina.

Pedro also introduced me to my new neighbor. Ron Fuller was living on a Westsail 32 in the slip next door to the one Pedro had just put me in. I had heard about Ron through the cruisers grapevine for years; his story was almost the stuff of legends. He had been some sort of contract spook in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam years, and had been loosely involved with the U.S. intelligence community ever since. He had, as rumor had it, an endless supply of cash, lived modestly, had no credit cards and no debt, and refused to return to America. He was reputed to do wet-work for any government who would meet his fee. If any Cuban official had known who he was, or what he'd done over the years, Ron probably wouldn't have hung around Cuba for too long. But he never worried about such stuff; I was pretty certain that if anyone had tried to burn him the poor snitch's body would have turned up in some dark alley with lots of new holes in the face. Like I said, a tight community.

When Pedro first introduced me to Ron, he was sitting in the shaded cockpit of his boat, named Blade Runner, sipping some whacked-out 200 octane rum drink in the late afternoon sun. He tipped Pedro for helping bring my boat in, which I thought a bit weird at the time, not knowing how these kids made a living. After these informalities had been seen too, Ron hopped over to Sabrina with two drinks in hand and plopped himself down in my shady cockpit. He put his feet up while I went about cleaning up the deck and stowing sails and navigation gear. He never said a word, just stared off toward some distant memory and confronted it with silence.

When I was done, which was well before the ice in Ron's drink melted, I sat down opposite Ron and got acquainted over five or six really stiff rum-based jet fueled cocktails. He filled me in on the Havana scene; mainly Brits and Canadians enjoying the Caribbean on the cheap, with a bunch of hard screwing Germans on hand just to keep things interesting. Food was cheap, rum even more so, while hot and cold running hookers were just about everywhere you cared to look after dark. G

Large grocery stores were not common anywhere in Cuba, but fresh produce, fish and meat were decent and plentiful if you could hit the various local towns on market day. Havana was to be avoided, as the costs were devilishly high and all the best stuff was found on the off-limits-to-Gringos black market. And that's where Pedro would come in handy, Ron said, because the kid could arrange for you to get just about anything, on the black market or in the town market.

There were a couple of laid-off/retired Pan Am pilots living in the marina on huge shiny Sea Rays, and together with Ron they constituted the evening variety show known as the Three Amigos. Known principally for their antics as they returned from Havana each evening, usually howling at the moon, they had become kind of like a town council. I guess Ron would have fancied himself mayor if he'd taken to caring about stuff like that.

As evening approached, Ron invited me to join the Amigos on their evening rounds, and I left Sabrina in Pedro's reputedly capable hands as we headed off for the car Pedro had arranged. I had no idea that I was headed for an evening in Havana with three of the craziest human beings on the planet.

I'll tell you about that night some other time. You might think it funny. 

Maybe. But there was a really foul taste in my mouth, and . . .

. . . Pedro was standing over me, shaking me awake. I had absolutely no idea where I was. For that matter, I was fairly certain I had no idea who I was, only that there were at least three elephants sitting on my head. Slowly the scene began to resolve: Sabrina seemed, well, OK; the hands and feet I was looking at looked vaguely familiar; and there was a weird thirteen year old standing over me, shaking me awake . . . oh, yeah, the Three Amigos! Memories flooded back of rowdy street scenes, rowdy women, rowdy bars, and rowdy car rides. Maybe driving the porcelain bus came into the scene, too. That taste in my mouth . . .

Well, you get the picture.

Pedro was soon shoving a plate of just fried plantains and fresh squeezed orange juice under my nose. I was lying in Sabrina's cockpit with a small blanket over me, and my body felt like it had been trampled by stampeding cattle all night long. I felt this was reasonable because my mouth tasted like pure dry bullshit. I was raised in Texas, so I know that taste very well. Pedro was talking, and sometimes the words coming out of his mouth made sense, but I really was in the weirdest fog, like lost, only worse . . .

"Your boat is a mess, senor, so I have hired a woman to clean it for you today," he said in his thick Cuban accent. "She is also a cook, and will have your breakfast ready in a few minutes. The hot water for your shower is ready. Please come now, Mr. Jim."

Sounded like a plan to me. My middle name is "Go with the flow".

Off to the shower it was, and the water was hot. Unless you've lived on a sailboat before that statement is meaningless. Trivial. But at that moment I was pretty sure that this Pedro fella was Jesus Christ come back to earth. God it felt great. Then it hit me . . . a woman was on my boat, cooking and cleaning. I started to get a little antsy, and called out to Pedro.

"Just who is this woman on my boat, Pedro?"

"It is my sister Elise, Mr. Adrian. Please not to worry, sir, she has done this kind of work for many years." Yeah, I had heard that one before. Like the little guy in Saigon who would claim that he was selling you his pure virgin sister . . . and wouldn't you just know she'd been a virgin seven times that week . . . right before he tossed a grenade in your jeep.

So, I held my head under the water until it simply - stopped. If I'd wanted a longer shower Pedro would have had to carry more to the rooftop tank. But no dice; he was gone. But fresh clothes and some toothpaste and a razor had magically appeared on a little stool outside the shower. 


The Hemingway Maid Ch. 02



When I look back on that first night with Elise from the perspective of almost ten years, the one thing that stands out most to me was the dreamlike quality of the time that passed between us in those warm, gentle breezes the drifted through the Marina Hemingway. We had passed from stranger to friend in the course of a days walk through the outskirts Havana; in the quiet of her forest home we grew comfortable in each others company as we explored the unfamiliar terrain of trust and redemption. In the afterglow of our first real dinner together on my sailboat Sabrina, we had tumbled little glasses of aromatic Port under our mouths and continued our imaginary day wandering through the cool rose-petaled air of Paris, reveling in the perfection of lunch at Le Grande Vefour, and the simple joy of breathing in the timeless beauty of Monet and Sisley at the Musee d'Orsay. We held each other's hands in the soft glow of evening; even now I remember feeling an almost adolescent sense of anticipation as we drew inward toward the union we could no longer deny.

It had started so simply. She had taken my hand to her face, placed one of my fingers in her mouth, and swirled her tongue around the tip as she sucked on it. The cascade of electro-erotic impulses that coursed up my spine as our eyes met sent me reeling down unforeseen byways of memory; my body left its space on earth and drifted inward on the currents of instinct. It was a gentle awakening.

We had found our way into the sheltering warmth of Sabrina and shed our sweat-soaked clothes in hurried little heaps, then had fallen into the depths of moon-dappled shadows as we made our way to bed. She had hopped up on the forepeak berth facing me, and I had dropped to my knees to worship on the altar of her need. As her thighs found their way over my shoulders, my mouth had found her vagina bathed in shimmery moonglow. As I gently kissed her lips I looked up over her small belly at the silvered form of her pure femininity. The lust I felt for her caressed the balance of eternity's gentle abeyance, of time's dominion over the hearts of mortals. The form of our lust so released gave way to the ancient dance of union.

I had buried my face in her warmth and felt the wetness of her release as she shuddered and bucked against the pressure of my tongue. Her fingers had entwined their searching grasp within my hair, and she pulled me deeper to her need. I ran my hands up her belly to her breasts and took the hard thrust of her nipples in my fingers. I drew feathery circles over each breast with the electricity that separated her skin from mine, and I felt the shivery response of her skin as she reacted in surprise to this gentle aural impulse.

Just as quickly, her hips and back had arced and she screamed in total release, and I slowly pulled back to ease off the pressure; she reacted by pulling my face back deeper into her spreading fire, bucking harder against my mouth. Elise had run into the rapids of almost perpetual orgasm, and as she bounced and swayed in her release she began to cry. I could not tell from where her tears had come; she had just barely managed to gasp out words of love and encouragement when an implosive jolt hit her, and she thrashed into fetal contortions.

I was a bit concerned. 

It wasn't that I had never taken a woman into such extreme terrain before, but her convulsed reactions seemed to echo with contradictions. I moved up to her side, held her face to mine and kissed her. She looked at me with unexpected tenderness; while I had feared the resurgence of her past into our space, I was met with a frank expression of wonder. She had not expected either my consumptive lust for her, or her need for total release. Perhaps it was that the warm little cocoon of Sabrina's intimate spaces afforded her a shield from prying eyes.

Her hands moved to my loins, and she stroked me oh so softly with just the tips of her fingernails. She looked at me with a temptress's eyes, daring me to resist the pleasures she offered with each gentle stroke. I was soon drifting to the rhythm of her skilled fingers, lost in the music of moonbeams and the gently dancing waves on Sabrina's hull. 

Oh, had I risen to the occasion! 

With a sudden rush, Elise dropped down between my legs and took me in her mouth. There was no gentle persuasion at work now; this was the frontal assault, and I was completely unprepared for the swiftness of her attack. Her head became a blinding blur of frenzied twisting motion, and my body went almost instantly into total sensory overload. Those first moments - when she first drew me into those immensely un-mortal portals of infinite space - define to me even now my memory of her on that night. 

At my age it is fair to say that she was not the first woman to go down on me. The list of women is, unfortunately, long and undistinguished. But she shot to the top of the list in about three heartbeats. She did things with her mouth and throat that felt positively inhuman, and followed these sorties with penetrating finger movements that left me shocked and breathless. My response built rapidly. I'm not normally so fast off the draw, but this was ridiculous. This wasn't even going to qualify as a fast one. 

And here I might be impertinent enough to interject that it had been some time since I had been with anyone (other than my right hand, and that a not too regular event), and I knew that what was coming (sorry!) was going to be monumentally explosive. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to warn her.

I truly doubt that any other mammal on earth - save perhaps an elephant or a sperm whale - has ever cut loose with as much cum as I did that first time with Elise. And I'm talking in all recorded here. Let's just get adjectives like explosive and cataclysmic out of the way; they simply don't apply. This 'little' orgasm I had was volcanic - it was the Mt Saint Helens of orgasms - so, here I was, first time ever with Elise, amd I start off by blowing about three gallons of cum into, well, her mouth for a start.

Hell, she was game enough to try - through about the first three or four eruptions! 

But, oh no, ole-volcano-dick wasn't through! He was going to his best imitation of Mt Vesuvius! 

Elise took the first bursts about as well as anyone could, I guess, then she sat up, her mouth a devastated landscape of pearlescent cum , her face coated with what appeared to be a quart of the stuff, and she looked very, very satisfied with herself. And was she finished? Oh, no. She jacked about four more huge ropey blasts out onto my stomach. I sat up and watched as she took a finger and scooped more of it onto her tongue and into her mouth, and when that wasn't enough for her, I looked on in open mouthed amazement as she licked puddles of the stuff off my belly and began rubbing her face from side-to-side through it. 

This was heaven. 

And Elise still wasn't through.

She worked her way back down to the offending beast and admonished it with a thorough tongue lashing, though I must say he stood up to her rather well. She licked and bit and jacked my cock back into full raging form, then slid up my body and positioned herself over me. With her knees on either side of me, I felt her feet slide to the insides of my thighs, and thus firmly braced, she lowered herself onto my cock and began to slowly slide up and down the length of it, the remnants of my first orgasm coating her way with silky smoothness.

With her face above mine, I looked on in awe as I watched the full moon rise behind her head, the pure light of creation pouring in through the open hatchway above her. Her form was backlighted - though flashes of moonlight danced between strands of her hair - and her body took on a deep lavender glow as the moon drew in to our space. Her long hair swept across my face as she danced in the light, and I remember catching strands in my mouth, marveling that even her hair tasted like the essence of eternity to me.

+

I woke to the now familiar smells and sounds of Elise working away in the galley. As I cleaned up I wondered just what the heck Pedro had done all night; I had completely forgotten about him and felt a little put off with myself for that bit of selfishness. Even though Sabrina had two separate 'bedrooms' there was no way that last nights activities could have gone unnoticed. Being old enough - almost - to be Pedro's grandfather gave me some room for maneuver, I suspect, but I hoped to avoid this kind of awkwardness in the future.

I made my way to the galley and kissed Elise hard on the mouth; she responded gently but gave a little 'ahem', and when I pulled back could see that she was guiding my attention to the company we had in the cockpit. Ron and Pedro - my, what a surprise! They were hunched over the little fold-down table by the wheel studying their pieces on the chess board they had set up. I made my way up into the brilliant sunlight with a handful of glasses filled with orange juice, and sat down next to Pedro. 

"Hey, Puddknocker," Ron merrily exclaimed, "how's it hangin'?"

Pedro kind of snorted out a giggle as he looked away. Oh, this was going to be a blast!

"Say, Ron," I retorted, "I heard you was a transvestite hooker once. Can I get some from ya'?"

"No thanks, Pudd, I'm tryin' to quit."

I shook my head. 

"Anyone up for a sail today?" Elise said from down below.

"That sounds like fun, y'all up for it?" I said, looking out at the fresh breeze blowing over the sea.

"Better check into that first, sport. Cuban Coasties don't take kindly to nationals out taking boat rides . . . they might get the idea you're making a break off the reservation. Bad news if they do."

I could see his point. "Anyway to do it? Permits or such?"

"Yeah, go to the security guys at the gate, I think they can arrange it."

"Doesn't anyone go sailing around here?"

"Sure, sport, just not with the locals. Hell, even if you go out alone you're going to be boarded by the navy and your boats going to get tossed. They really don't want folks sneaking off, and they're serious about it."

Like I didn't know that.

O.K., so that explained why no one was out sailing on a day like today.

Elise handed an especially gorgeous breakfast up the companionway. Fresh fruit and soft-boiled eggs in their shells stuffed with lump crabmeat and tiny bits of fiery-hot peppers and garlic were heaped on a platter surrounded by slender planks of buttered toast. She came up a minute later with a steaming pitcher of espresso and the little cups I kept on hand for such treats.

Pedro had never seen anything like this meal, and had absolutely no idea that his sister was capable of such artistry. I was only beginning to fathom the depths of her accomplishments myself, despite the almost ten pounds I'd put on in a week. I looked at the feast spread out before us and did not want to thank God for this food . . . I wanted to thank Him for Elise. 

When love comes to you, you'd better be ready to follow.

We ate, and Ron - God bless him - cleared up then cleaned the dishes down below. Pedro went off to take care of his marina duties. Elise laid herself down in morning sun with her head in my lap, and I stroked her hair, the memory of moonshadow still fresh in my mind.

"Jim, tell me what you're thinking right now," her gentle voice intoned.

I didn't know where to begin. My feelings were - to me, anyway - clear, but obviously not so to her. How could I make a life for us all in Cuba? 

Couldn't be done, could it, wise guy. Reality check. No diplomatic relations, so no consular official to consult for bad advice. So, no legal way out. Getting out illegally almost a certain path to ruin for all concerned. 

Then I was aware that Elise's gentle question still hung in the air.

"I was thinking about tomorrow," I said, putting it out there in the air apparent.

"Tomorrows are very complicated in Cuba, Jim. Perhaps we should concentrate on all of the todays we might have together."

"Yeah, well, that's the bargain this time, isn't it. Pay the price for tomorrow's wasteland in the currency of the moment; let it ride, boy-o!" I'm spoiled enough to let bitterness take hold of my emotions on even the best of days. I'm not sure Elise understood.

"Jim, I told you, you won't change the way things are in Cuba. This is Castro's game, and everybody plays by his rules. If you play the game you'll lose. That I will not allow to happen."

I heard footsteps coming up the companionway.

"Who says you gotta play by his rules," Ron Fuller the ex-CIA hot-shot said.

With that he jumped off Sabrina and walked off toward the shower. He didn't even bother to hide his grin. 

That shithead!

+

It turned out that getting clearance to take Pete, as I now called him, and Elise out on Sabrina wasn't all that difficult as long as we remained within three miles of shore. We were told we would be boarded as we left the marina and papers would be checked, and our position monitored by the navy to insure we remained within the stipulated distance from shore. And we were cautioned not to violate the three mile limit, or the consequences would be swift and deadly. No more need be said about that, the smiling military-police guard had said. 

So, about two that afternoon, off we went on Sabrina with the Three Amigos on board just for good measure. We motored out of the marina and I checked in by VHF with the patrol boat that always seemed to be on station off the approaches to Havana. They sounded bored and told us to have a nice sail. Ron and the Amigos shot each other quick glances at that bit of lassitude. As we cleared the breakwater, and with Ron on the wheel, we pointed into the wind and raised sail, then bore off heading directly away from shore under full sail. Ron looked at his watch, the other Amigos, both retired PanAm jet-jockies, hunched over their approach charts and started doing time/distance calculations. All of a sudden, the Three Amigos were acting like a covert operations team; they made little marks on the chart, made knowing glances and comments to each other as the time ticked by. 

Pete and Elise had picked up on the military demeanor quicker than I had, though Pete seemed to think things were going along pretty fine. The sea wasn't rough at all, and the sky was crisp and clear for as far as we could see. We were getting, after about twenty minutes, very close to three miles out from shore.

"Uh, Ron . . ."

"There he goes," Ron said, and the two Amigos hunched over their chart looked up and over at the patrol boat. "Mark the time as 1438 hours." The patrol boat was belching thick brownish-gray smoke from its single stack, and it was changing course to run parallel to Sabrina's heading away from the shore. "Oughta be anytime, now. Jim, go down and flip on the radar, would 'ya?"

The display up by the wheel flickered then jumped on; the range was set at five miles and the shoreline was now looking to be close to three miles away. One of the Amigos went over and flicked the range markers out to 24 miles. "Bingo, there he is," he said as looked at the radar. Then, "This oughta be real close. OK people, cover your ears . . ."

The roar was not simply deafening, it was palpable through to the very core of my body and penetrated some deep primal awareness that screamed "RUN!" Within milliseconds awareness to external stimuli kicked in and I was peripherally aware that a Cuban Air Force Mig29 had just cut across Sabrina's bow about thirty feet above the sea. I guessed it's speed was in the neighborhood of 500 knots.

Ron swung the wheel and took up a course taking us straight toward the patrol boat. The patrol boat throttled down, its bow wave dissipated into the surrounding sea as the boat changed to an intercept course toward us. The Mig had gone ballistic and had disappeared vertically into the sky. The Amigo working the radar picked him up: "There he is. Looks like he's going to come by for another look see. O.K., his speed is way down. What do you think of those reaction times, Ron?" 

"About what I expected."

I looked around and took note that Elise and Pete were gone, and I saw them down below. Elise looked pale and uncomfortable; Pedro looked up at me with happily excited eyes.

I felt like I needed to vomit.

The pale gray Mig flew drifted overhead like a shark with its flaps fully extended, its nose slightly high, and the two Amigos looked at the racks of missiles and bombs hanging under the wings and furiously scribbled notes on their chart.

I was now very, very interested about these clowns' activities.

They were calculating response times of Cuban naval and air forces and the weapons employed during that response. In short, they were conducting an espionage operation.

And on my fucking boat!

We closed on the patrol boat, and they contacted us by VHF, asking us to heave to and prepare for boarding.

Oh, I was a real happy camper right about then.

+

Life on Sabrina after our little excursion had taken on a nervous though somewhat happy routine. Pete worked during the day and generally hung out on Ron's boat playing chess at night. It seemed that Rosalita had a daughter about Pete's age who was now staying on board Blade Runner, and puberty being puberty everywhere in the world, things were merrily taking their course with or without my interference, thank you very much.

Ron and the Amigos had retired after our little excursion and sat around in the shadows with their slide rules and sat-phones calling the mother-ship. I had no clue, and didn't want one, either. The Amigos would retire to their boats, to their women, after these little clandestine meetings, and I noticed their boats were little family affairs too. Hell, as I looked around I began to notice lots of Cuban families living on boats with divorced-white-guys. Some girls had their parents living aboard with them, and one was rumored to have a grandparent on board in addition to the normal complement of mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters. If I found it difficult to imagine screwing Elise with even the thought of Pedro on board, I couldn't fathom what was going through these guys heads.

Just what the hell was going on in the Marina Hemingway?

Hadn't these guys ever heard of Islands In The Stream?

During dinner that night I voiced my opinion to Elise that the Three Amigos were planning on making a dash for Florida, and taking a whole bunch of Cubans with them. 

She dismissed the thought as worthy of a paranoid schizophrenic. She worked away on her curry and salads, not missing a beat. We ate dinner - as usual - in the cockpit, with the ever-present warm tradewinds blowing softly through the palms. We had some chilled Sangria; well, actually, I had a lot of chilled Sangria and Elise sipped at hers in amused silence. She cleared, I cleaned, we put things away together, all on the automatic pilot lovers develop as they slip into the dangerously comfortable shoals of domesticity.

As I cleaned dishes, in my thoughts I dismissed the idea that Elise could have had anything to do with such a wild-assed plot, that until recently she had been so far gone - according to Ron - that she had been incapable of making a cup of coffee, let alone be in on the planning of some hair-brained operation to slip a bunch of Cuban families out of the country in the dark of night!

Then I felt her hand. She was looking at me with those eyes, her hand was drifting down to the buckle on my belt while the other rubbed the front of my shorts. Did Mr Vesuvius want to come out and play? 

We both had our answer to that question in about three shakes of a, uh, well, you know.

She had my shorts down around my ankles before you could say 'men think with their dicks' three times. And I swear to God she took my dick in her hand and pulled me to the forepeak. It was almost humiliating. Fun in a way, though. I recommend it if you don't have anything else planned for a Sunday afternoon.




The Hemingway Maid Ch. 02



Anyway. We fucked ourselves silly for hours. Nothing takes your mind off paranoid fantasies faster than watching your girlfriend's cheeks distend around your cock as she tries not to gag when a half-liter of cum blows down her throat.

+

I guess after that night I figured to just drop the matter- let it ride. Life on Sabrina maintained the same comfortable level of domestic bliss that had characterized Elise's early days with me. Weeks went by, while Ron and the Amigos went about there daily chores of working on rigging or changing oil or injectors on an errant engine. Pete made money working his ass off, and I'm pretty sure he was proceeding nicely on his plans to marry Rosalita's daughter by the time he turned fifteen. I just hoped he wouldn't get her knocked up.

As summer approached all thought turned to the looming tropical storm season. While nobody took tropical storms for granted, hurricane was a dirty word no one wanted to hear. But it was that time of year, and if you live in the Caribbean or the Gulf you pay attention to those buggers. People began sorting through their storm gear, making sure equipment was up to snuff and storm sails ready to set. The Cubans living on board the various cruising boats seemed to disappear; they'd either left to go from whence they'd come or gone seriously to ground.

Like I said, nobody in Cuba took tropical storms for granted. A big one was rumored to be forming out past the Windward Islands, still many days away if it headed this way at all.

So, on this very hot and humid June afternoon, Ron came over to Sabrina.

"Hey, Puddknocker," he started in that particularly endearing way of his, "ready to go for a sail?"

All of my internal warning lights started going off. My gut spasmed, began to burn.

"Ron, you got to be kidding me. It's hot and there's hardly any wind. You wanna just head out and get fried in this Sun?"

"Sounds good, Sport. Leave in five, O.K.?" He walked off with that stupid grin of his flying in defiance of all good sense.

I went down to warn Elise, but she was gone, and everything on the boat had been stowed. Sabrina was ready for sea.

I called out her name. Nothing. I felt feet landing on Sabrina's deck.

"You ready to go, Sport?"

"Where's Elise?" I called up to Ron.

"With Pete and Lupe and Rosalita. Making dinner."

More feet hit the deck. I looked out and saw the other two Amigos; they had large duffel bags with them. My stomach did a double flip.

"Hey, Jim!" one of them said. "Flip the radar on to standby, would ya?"

'Yeah-no-problem,' I thought. You ever notice how you go on automatic pilot when unavoidable shit starts to head your way?

We backed out of the slip, then motored out toward the breakwater. Ron had the helm, of course, and the Amigos were hunkered down over their chart. 

The same chart they used the last time we went out. 

One of them pulled a very small hand held radio out of his duffel and plugged an earphone in. He fiddled with switches, slipped on the earphones, and listened intently.

We cleared the breakwater and immediately turned to the left, to the west, parallel to the coast. We ran along under power about 50 yards off the beach.

"Hey, Jimbo, take the to radar active and go to max range, O.K., buddy? Set the gain real high, too."

Say, there goes Jim the robot! See Jim comply! Watch Jim shit his pants!

"Ron, did they ever finalize the CAP setup?" That was not my question, by the way.

"Yeah, couple of 14s on CAP, screening the E2. The two queers are coming out of Key West. A couple of 16s outta Homestead will cover the Queers if we need 'em to."

"Queers? Out of Key West?" I asked. I knew that town had a pretty dicey reputation, but what would a couple of gays be doing coming over here?

"EA-6Bs, Jim. Electronic Countermeasures aircraft. Radar jammers. Called Queers."

"That's just fucking great, Ron! Wanna tell me what the fuck's going on?"

"Later. When we get back. I'll brief you in then, buddy. Just right now we're going to watch a little airshow. There's an AWACs up that's going to watch how the Gomers react."

"Great, Ron. Glad to be of service. You planning on invading this place, or just trying to get me killed?"

"Radar still looking nominal," one of the Amigos said. "Nope! There it goes!"

I looked at the radar screen: it was full of electronic noise all around the northern horizon. The screen showed normal activity to the south, along the shore, inside Cuba.

"O.K. boys, here come the Queers."

I wonder to this day if Ron had any idea of how fucking weird he sounded when he said that?

They sounded close, but I couldn't see them. The Amigos were checking watches, writing on the chart furiously. Ron watched me searching for the aircraft.

"Jim, down there," he said pointing off the right side of the boat.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Two of the weirdest looking jets were screaming along over the water, and I mean just barely over the water. I guessed their altitude was less than ten feet above the water! And they were scooting right along, too.

Air raid sirens start wailing. A rocket screamed right over our head. It had launched from land somewhere off to our left.

"Echo 2, Echo 2, SA-7 coming at you. Go active now!" That little bit of information came from the Amigo with the little radio.

The Queers went wild. They started changing altitude and heading every couple of seconds, huge flares belched from their bellies and shiny clouds of metallic stuff blew out behind them. The missile flew out over the sea, toward empty sky. The Queers disappeared into the gray haze and were gone just as quickly as they had come.

Ron swung Sabrina around and gunned the engine, headed right back toward the marina. That was it! What a great day for a sail. Whooppeeeee!

Soon the Amigos had Sabrina tied up at the dock, rum flamethrowers in hand, dinner, music, dancing on the dock. Everything cool here, dudes. 

We'd been gone a little less than an hour.

When Elise came down below looking for me, she found me in the head. I hadn't quite finished vomiting yet, and asked her to please leave me alone for a while.

+

But she didn't. She sat behind me on the floor, held a cool rag on the back of my neck. I was consumed by cold sweats and racking shakes. I'd never felt so physically sick in my life. But I finally had to ask the question.

"Elise, are you in on this?"

She looked down, then nodded her head yes, and my world caved in.

+

I slept in the next morning. There were no exotic aromas coming from the galley, no places set in the cockpit. There was no Pedro - and no Elise - on Sabrina, only me and my headache. I put some old shorts and a t-shirt on, and headed - barefoot - up on deck. My mouth had that old familiar West Texas bullshit taste lingering on my breath, and it felt like I had suitcases hanging in boggy sacks under my eyes. I saw Ron sitting over in Blade Runner's cockpit.

"Hey, Sport, how are . . ."

"Fuck You, Fuller!" I walked away from his little chuckles that hung in the air like an insinuation. I think they tried to follow me to the shower.

One of the other dock boys fetched water, started the little propane boiler that heated it to body temperature. I told him to keep the water coming and gave him a twenty dollar bill. His eyes went saucer-shaped wide and he ran off with empty buckets. I got under the warm water and stood there forever, letting the stream hit the back of my neck for what felt like hours.

At any rate, I think the waters running down my face hid the tears that seemed to come every time I thought of Elise. Which was only about every time I took a breath.

+

I was sitting in the cockpit later that morning; I had charts spread out on my little portable chart table and I was making some notes on the margins of my chart for the Florida Straits. My stomach was empty, and growling like a pissed off tiger. I had arranged to get the water and fuel tanks topped off later that morning, get some supplies from the market, maybe a bit of food if I could stand it, and pull out of the marina late this afternoon. I would anchor off Key West tomorrow morning, get some barnacles scraped off my shoulders by a dermatologist I'd heard of over there, and get some major provisions loaded on Sabrina. I thought I might head off toward the Bahamas, and on down to the British Virgin Islands. When I thought about Elise I wanted to get as far away as possible as fast as I could.

"Jim?"

Well, speak of the devil!

"Jim, please?"

"Sorry, he's not in. Why don't you try back next year." Did anyone say childish temper tantrum? She stepped on Sabrina, came and sat across from me in the cockpit. I watched her as she moved; lithe, sure steps, total self-assurance. I could see Ron in his cockpit, his back to Sabrina. My, what a tangled web those two had been at work on. This could be interesting, I thought.

"Have you had anything to eat?" 

That's right, go for the stomach. Worked before, didn't it? "No," I said. She got up, but I quickly told her "Don't bother." She sat back down.

"Jim, this is very complicated, so pay attention. When I was in Paris, you know, the Minister's mistress thing, I was recruited by the CIA. Recruited to go back to Cuba, report on things I might learn through him. Eventually, the link was discovered, and the Minister was killed. I was imprisoned, tortured, almost dead when they released me. They had killed my parents, Jim, and Miguel had only just managed to get Pedro out of Havana and into hiding in the countryside. Then Miguel got me after they had released me. It was so obvious, they wanted to release me, then follow me, find out who my contacts were. Miguel had gotten involved with people trying to get to Florida, and was making arrangements to get us, all of us, out of Cuba. He had gone on a boat with others in their group to try to find the best time to try to make the run, but they were discovered and ran. They succeeded, too. He made it . . . "

She looked away for a moment, then continued.

"So, Pedro and I came to the little forest and built our house. And I was being watched. All the time, Jim. So I started to act crazy, helpless, but Pedro knew what was going on, he always managed to keep us fed. He is an amazing, brave young man, Jim, and he loves you like a brother."

I sat listening to this with a dull ache spreading through me. A 13-year-old brother?

"After many months the watchers lost interest, and for a while they would only check on us from time to time. Then not at all. Pedro started working at the marina, and he met Ron. He found out who Ron is, what he used to do."

"Say, Sport. I'll take it from here," Ron "Captain America" Fuller interjected. "So, Jim, there are a lot of people in Cuba who've helped us over the years, and a lot of them are here, in the marina, tonight. They're vulnerable, their covers are shaky. And we're going to try to get them and their families out before they get taken out."

"Ron, you keep saying we. Is this a company operation?"

"So, sport, here's the plan. There's a pretty fair sized tropical depression building up, and it looks like it's coming this way. All the families here are going to off load over the next couple of hours, drift back into the trees, while the storm heads in. We're going to send a couple of boats out, watch the navy board 'em and toss 'em, and we're going to make like we're going to hunker down and sit it out here in the marina. As the weather gets bad, sometime that night we're going to get everyone back in the marina, on an assigned boat, and get the fuck outta Dodge."

"You're fucking crazy, Fuller. You ever been in a depression in the Straits, in a storm moving in against the Gulfstream. Pyramid waves thirty, thirty five feet tall. Shit, Ron, even supertankers don't try to run the Straits in a storm . . . it's one of the meanest stretches of water in the world. Why would y . . ."

"Well, Sport, we're only going to be using the really strong boats. And yours happens to be about the toughest one here, so you're invited to the party."

"Not me, Sport," I tossed the name back at him. "I'm off this afternoon, thought I'd go to Mexico or something."

Ron looked down at the charts I had spread out; of course the Bahamas charts were right there on top.

"Sure thing, Sport. I suggest you keep your tail right here. You don't want that kind of trouble. Hell, it'll be raining IRS agents everywhere you go for the next ten years." He sat there grinning, looking like he had the trump card and the game all sewn up.

"What are the jets and crap all about?" I asked.

"We're going to leave at night, hopefully when the storm has really moved in and the patrol boats have gone in to weather it out in the inner harbor. But they'll still have radar, and sailboats show up real good on radar. And they've got MIGs, as I'm sure you know by now. All-weather MIGs that could really rain on this parade. So, when we head out, the Queers are going to jam them, which they're going to think is pretty fishy anyway, but we're counting on a little indecision on their part. MIG 29s don't grow on trees, and they probably won't want to send 'em up in this kind of storm unless the threat's big. We're banking on them thinking it's just a bunch of gringo yachties bailing out and trying to run home before the storm gets rough."

"Ron, pardon me for asking, but have you considered that they might have someone inside here who knows what's going on, and is reporting all of this to the bad guys."

"It's a possibillity."

"So, jets jam radar. Then what. What if the MIGs come out to play."

"They get splashed . . . shot down," he said with absolutely no emotion. "You know, they run into trouble in the storm and lose control. Real tragedy. And, oh yeah, there'll be some of our guys in boats out there, too. Little ones like the Nimitz, that kinda crap."

"I take it there are some very important spooks in this group?"

"You've no idea, Sport."

All I could see in my mind's eye was a leathery-skinned young boy floating on the surface of Gulfstream tossed waters. A dead boy, and the helplessness I'd felt as I lifted his little lifeless form onto Sabrina's deck.

"O.K., Ron, if I'm in, I'm in 100%. No bullshit now, Ron. If you even think you've got the tiniest bit of information I might need, you get it to me. Deal?" I stood and held out my right hand to him.

"Deal." We shook on it.

Of course, Elise was in the galley. After Ron left I went down and sat at the salon table, and she produced yet another feast. I managed to choke a little down. Tough life.

+

Ron and the Amigos came around just before sunset, and asked (gasp, that was a first!) to come aboard. The amigos had a weather fax with them, and forecasts out of Norfolk for the Atlantic and the Caribbean. It looked like, they said, two nights from now will be optimal. They had some other things to pass on, as well.

"Jim, you're going to be the lead boat. We're going to pack all of the important assets in Sabrina; like I said, your boat is tougher than anyone else's here for dealing with this kind of blow, and may be a little faster, even in rough water. Also, I'm going to put a couple of Navy Seals on board."

I looked surprised. "Oh?"

"They'll get here tomorrow night. A sub will drop them off if all goes as planned. Someone is going to create a little diversion east of here tomorrow about midnight. Keep your swim ladder down after dark-thirty tomorrow night. And have some towels and coffee ready."

"Right." 

"I'll come over after I see 'em come aboard. They know how to navigate, Jim."

"O.K."

On of the Amigos spread out a chart on the table, and pointed to some positions marked on the chart. "This is where we're going to head. There will be a full carrier battle group eastbound outta the Gulf, and for some odd reason they'll be transiting the Straits about the time we make our run. Cubans have been advised to keep their distance. We're only going to have to make it about 15 miles offshore to get under their protective umbrella . . .make it two hours from the breakwater to the group . . . if any of the boats start to crap out, they'll have to make it at least this far. The Navy guys won't leave international waters, not for no one, no how."

"Where's Elise going to be?" I asked, not really wanting to hear the answer.

"With you, Sport. Pete will hang out with Lupe on Blade Runner."

Elise was sitting next to me, and she took my arm and leaned her head into my shoulder.

The Two Amigos stood, they in turn shook my hand, wished me luck, and said they'd see me in Key West. I wished them luck as well, and turned to Ron.

"Your cargo will get here about dark thirty night after tomorrow. A couple, late sixties. Rig up a couple of storm berths and strap 'em in. The Seal will give 'em something to help them sleep. Maybe another young girl, if we can get her out of Havana."

"We?"

"You bet, Sport. We're going to go drinking tomorrow night with the Seals, maybe bring some girls out to the boat with us, ya know, have some fun."

"You really are too fucking much, Fuller."

"Yeah, ain't it great?" He bounced up the companionway steps and was gone. You can bet he was grinning like a fool, too.

+

"So, assuming we get you across, then what?" I asked Elise.

"I guess we'll go to Washington. The rest of us, I mean. I don't really know."

"I hate to sound so self-interested, but what about me . . . about us?"

"I don't really know, Jim. A few hours ago you hated me, remember?"

"I've never hated you, Elise. I was kinda disappointed, ya know? Nobody likes to be made a fool, especially by someone they love."

"Do you love me, Jim?" She was blushing. No shit!

"Yes."

"That's good." She sat quietly for a minute. "I would hate to love you as much as I do and watch you sail away, hating me."

I got up and walked to the galley, got a couple of glasses and put some ice in them. I went to me secret hiding place and got out my last bottle of Grand Marnier, and poured a couple of drinks. I handed her the drink, then sat across from her, increased my distance from her.

"So, I guess I get to sail away by myself. Is that a pretty good read on things?"

"Jim, I don't know how this story ends. It hasn't been written yet . . . we haven't written it yet . . . but the story doesn't have to end that way." She held her glass up to mine. "Here's to happy endings."

"To happy endings . . ."

Part III should conclude the story. Stay tuned.



The Hemingway Maid Ch. 03



Elise and I lay next to each other in the forepeak, watching the Moon peek out from behind backlighted clouds that scudded away to the south. We were both on our backs, just listening to each other ramble on, looking at the clouds and talking about what they portended. I had told her - in unmistakable terms - what crossing the Straits would be like under the kinds of conditions being forecast. I'd never been caught in the Straits before in a major storm, but had ridden out my share of storms in other seas, many on Sabrina, and most had been far, far away from land. Which was good. Boats and land, by and large, are not a good mix. I told her a small boat at sea in a storm was a lonely, frightening place to be. When I look back on events with the perspective of so many years, I often wonder if I had made the situation clear to her. 

But it wouldn't have mattered. Not in the least.

She had tuned to me, and in the moonlight her silvered-lavender form seemed to hover in the air before. I had shuddered as a spectral premonition tingled lightly through some deep recess in the back of my mind.

"Are you cold?" she asked, concern evident in her voice.

"No."

"What is it?"

I tried to shake the feeling away. "Baby, I don't think it'd do any good to talk about it right now. When this is all behind us, then we'll talk."

"Jim, you can't hold everything in. Most especially your fears. They'll eat you from the inside out, leave nothing but a bitter shell."

I looked at her floating there in the infinite space that despair has hollowed out in the universe for lost souls to wander in, and I knew she was going to die. I was certain. "I just had a bad feeling about things, Baby. You know, just kind of a cold finger tapped me on the shoulder and went 'Boo!'" With my little expletive, I dove over and tickled her mercilessly until she was begging for mercy. Then I kissed her. Gently at first. Then I kissed her with a passion born of total love for her, for the many things she had done in her life - and with her life on Sabrina. 

And just as suddenly I was crying. And no little trickle of tears here, either. I was consumed by my fear for her life. When I had thought about loving her, then to suddenly face the very high probability of life without her . . . It had overwhelmed me completely.

I felt her holding me, stroking the back of my head. She didn't say a word.

Ghosts seldom do.

+

I could feel the sun on my face, and I woke with a start. I felt the reassuring presence of Sabrina's mass all around me, but not the warmth of Elise's breath on my neck, or her legs and feet by mine. Had she gone already?

No sounds in the galley. No footsteps on the deck. I felt totally panicked at the thought of her not being here beside me. I got out of the bunk and dressed hurriedly. I made my way to the cockpit, and there she was, talking with Pedro in that gentle reassuring voice of hers. I kept to the shadows, didn't want to interrupt them, and slipped back to the forepeak. A few minutes later and she was coming back down below. I waited in the berth for her, and watched her walk toward me, looking me in the eye as she approached. She slipped out of her clothing as she came to me, and never did she utter a word.

She came to me in the berth, then pushed me down. I lay there - face up - and watched in fascinated wonder as she sat astride my face and lowered herself onto my mouth. I reached up and held her hips as she kissed my face with her loins, and I drove my tongue into the musky recesses of her womb. The hatch over her head was open, and she placed her hands there, hanging by her arms over my mouth, driving away the spirits I had felt last night by the sheer force of her will. I had raked my fingers up her belly, found my way to her breasts as she rediscovered her secret rhythm; as she moaned and wailed she gave way to the forces of her need. She came so deeply I was sure she would combust in the air above me, and so released, her spirit would flee from the winds I was so convinced were coming to claim her.

+

I spent the rest of the day going over Sabrina's many systems: her electrical components I methodically went over, checking for signs of corrosion or loose connection; I cleaned the fuel filters and changed the engine oil; went up the mast to check the rigging for signs of damaged stays and fittings. I fitted the storm trysail to the mast, and took down the sails up forward from their roller furling mechanisms and put Sabrina's storm sail on with their heavily reinforced hanks. The tanks were full, batteries charged, steering cables lubricated, packing glands checked, and on and on and on. Elise worked down below, wrapping loose belongings with any kind of fabric we had on board, dish towels, underwear, spare socks, you name it, then stuffing them into drawers and under berths in storage compartments. We stopped to eat every now and then, just quick sandwiches, and continued working.

The Sun gave up the fight and disappeared behind thick dark clouds; the wind began to pick up. When I had every possible loose item on Sabrina's deck stowed - each a potential deadly missile in the ragged winds of a tropical storm - I looked around the boat and relaxed. The Sun - such as it was - would set in about an hour; around a quarter till ten. I went down below and set blankets and towels out, started the stove and put some coffee on. I had no idea when Ron's Navy Seals were going to show up, or when we were going to head off into town looking for this wayward girl that he had decided was going to come along. Elise was in the forepeak, and apparently wanted to keep out of sight. I couldn't blame her.

I heard a tapping on the hull and looked up. It was barely dark, too early, I thought, for the Navy guys to be here already. I went up on deck and looked over the side, and there they were! Two guys in black neoprene wetsuits, black makeup all over their faces, right outta the movies.

"Sorry we're early. You Jim?"

"Yeah. You guys want to come on up? I think its still too light out."

"Where's Fuller's boat?"

I pointed to Blade Runner in the slip across the walkway from Sabrina. The other diver slipped noiselessly away toward Ron's boat.

"What are you going to do with that gear?" I asked about the scuba equipment hanging on his back.

"Stayin' here , except for a couple of gear bags. I guess I'll go hang under the dock." He disappeared under the water. I looked around at all the crap floating there, and remembered some of the less than friendly animals that hung out in these waters and shuddered. 'Better you than me, Buddy,' I thought.

There was nothing to do bit wait. I puttered around the deck, checking this fitting and that fastener, just generally looked busy. It grew dark; mysteriously, all of the dock lights on our side of the marina were out. Imagine that! I dropped the boarding ladder and listened to it as it splashed into the water. Seal number 1, who I later learned went by the name of Buzz, silently levitated up out of the water and climbed into Sabrina's cockpit. He was now wearing some real natty Nautica swim trunks, and looked for all intents and purposes like a swimsuit model. He reached down and lifted some black rubber duffels into the cockpit. Seal 2 followed seconds later, looking like a model from a Polo shoot. This ugly mother-fucker's name was Scoop. I kid you not. I hadn't known people to do that to their kids since the 50s . . . name like that would scar anyone for life . . . But he looked normal enough. Never can tell, though.

The two Seals dropped down below and dried off, pulled some dry shirts out of their duffels. They slung shoulder holsters under their windbreakers, and tucked little automatic pistols in them. I heard Ron talking up on the dock, then hop on Sabrina's deck.

"Y'all ready to roll?" came the question I'd been dreading and his inevitable grin.

I slipped up to the forepeak. Elise was curled up, inert. I kissed her on the forehead and told her that I loved her. I heard a faint whispered 'I love you too' drift out from her withdrawn form. Then, 'Please be careful . . .' floated out into the air.

Scoop and Buzz weren't the only two Seals to have come into the marina that night. My two were joined by four others, plus the Three Amigos, and of course, me. I think I was there for decoration. I doubt there was a less intimidating person in the marina, so I was perfect cover to counter for all of the mega-he-men that had shown up. We did the drunk party-hardy gringo two-step though the gate, and no one looked up at us as we waltzed on out and jumped into a couple of forty year old Chevies, and off we bounded down the road into good 'old town' Havana.

The two Amigos and I went on into the fun zone of bars and hookers; the streets teemed with Brits and Canadians who obviously weren't too concerned about the looming tropical storm. We ducked into a couple of old-time roosts and tossed down a couple of rum somethings. You couldn't see across the room the cigar smoke was so thick.

Ron came in and spoke to the Amigos, they nodded and checked the time. Ron took off as quickly as he'd come. We sat around for about another half hour. We each hailed a taxi, not an easy thing to do I Havana, and took off toward the marina in separate cars. We puttered along the road back to the marina, and suddenly, about a hundred yards ahead of the lead taxi, Ron and the Seals and two women appeared. Our little caravan stopped and everybody got in, and off we went again, total time stopped less than 30 seconds. As we got to the marina and stopped we all piled out playing the drunken revelers. Ron got out and went to each taxi and said a few words to each, then patted the one nearest to me on the shoulder and told him "Good luck."

Thorough. That much was for certain.

I took up the rear of our little band and straggled in behind them, stopped to joke with the guard at the gate, give him a half full bottle of 151 rum and wished him Good luck, then tottered on my way after the group. Buzz and Scoop were just ahead of me, and Buzz was holding his partner up with great effort. Good acting, I thought, and jogged up to them.

"Give me a hand, would ya'?" Buzz said.

"Sure thing."

I got up on the other side of Scoop and put my arm around his waist; it was warm and moist, and I could smell that hemoglobin aroma that marks the presence of a lot of blood over all the rum and cheap cologne that was trailing behind the main part of the group about 10 yards ahead of us. We got him to Sabrina and helped him down below. I got down right after them, and lowered the salon table, made a big triple-wide berth to lay Scoop down on. Elise came aft and looked down at Scoop's belly; it was awash in blood and she gave a little gasp and asked what was needed.

Ron and another Seal, one that hadn't been on our little excursion, hopped on Sabrina and jumped down the companionway.

"Cover the windows, get some air circulating," Ron said. "Jim, why don't you go forward. This is Taylor, he's a Seal and a doc. We'll take it from here."

I was beginning to feel pretty damned useless.

Elise came back a few minutes later, and sat with me on the bunk. 

"Not exactly how I wanted to spend our last night alone," I said. We sat together in silence and listened to the carefully orchestrated ballet that was unfolding just behind the stateroom door. Buzz must have been a paramedic, or whatever they called them in the military. They were quiet, but we could tell they were working fast, working against time.

I must have fallen asleep. I became aware of Ron shaking my shoulder, telling me to wake up. I must have bolted up because he told me to settle down, be quiet, and to come with him. 

Elise was out in the galley, making coffee. Scoop was in the aft stateroom; there was an IV bottle hanging above his head. Buzz was stuffing blood soaked sterile paper surgical shields and wad after wad of bloody gauze pads into a trash bag.

"You got any ideas how to dispose of this stuff, Jimmy?"

I looked at the clock. About three in the morning.

"Small fire on the marina's private beach, take a girl and go down and burn the stuff, act like they're making out."

"You should have been a spook, Jimbo! Can you and Elise take care of that?"

I got some things to start a fire, a couple of blankets, and my last bottle of 151 rum to help the fire get going. Elise and I went up with the huge trashbag and slipped through the shadows down to the beach. The winds were really kicking up, and the waves were pounding the shore in endless procession, but it wasn't raining yet. There were a couple of mortar and stone fireplaces that had been built who knows when, and I got a small fire going in one of them.

"Tell me if you see the guards coming." I thought a fire on the beach in the middle of the night might be enough to get one of the notoriously lazy night watchmen off his can and come down to check it out. I started to toss some of the soiled papers into the fire, and the fire took off with gusto. Unfortunately, the smoke took on a sickly sweet smell, like some kind of weird BBQ was cooking away. Sure enough, the little jeep-like truck by the guard shack came to life.

"Here they come," Elise said.

I tied off the trash bag, thankful that it was black, and carried it over and put it under some heavy branches that lay on the sand near a stand of trees. . . the little jeep-thing had to cross about a quarter of a mile to get to us . . .

. . . I tossed some more wood on the fire, and anything that looked like it would burn, and stoked up the fire . . .

I'm sure the view the guards had was satisfying, something they'd tell their grandchildren about years from now. There in the firelight, glowing like some berserk orangutan in heat, my bare ass must have looked like an out of control oil well pumping away on top of Elise. I was between her bare vertically outstretched legs thrashing away like there was no tomorrow, and Elise, God bless her, was wailing away like she was being fucked to death by all of the linebackers from the Green Bay Packers. Anally. I mean I've never heard such filth as what was coming out of that girl's mouth

And I was lovin' it!

Pretty soon old Vesuvius was ready to roll, and Elise looked up at me knowingly, the fire reflecting off her face and dancing in her eyes, and our desire built like that fire. She took my cock and placed it on the opening of her vagina and without any preamble I drove it all the way in. I felt possessed, and exploded into a frenzy of pumping. Elise's legs wrapped around my thighs, and I felt her almost instantly shuddering through her first orgasm. Her back arched, sand flying everywhere, and her outstretched hands started slamming into the sand.

The verbal barrage started again, this time in earnest. Elise was streaming a non-stop river of extraordinarily vile incantations from her mouth; she bucked and twisted underneath me like a striking serpent, periodically kicking the backs of my thighs with her heels. I kept growing inside of her. It had been years since my penis had felt like this . . . it kept getting harder and thicker, then harder still, so hard that it hurt on the inside. I was going to explode!

All of a sudden Elise tossed me over on my back and climbed on top. She rode me harder still, her language became rougher, she came and screamed in ragged gasping breaths, and often screaming out in Spanish and French and English - simultaneously! In the fire she looked like some kind of sexually charged erotic demon . . . totally possessed. 

I was totally in love with her.

I could feel the head of my cock inside of her running in to the end of her womb, and the sensation was driving us both wild. She took these impossibly long up-strokes, the walls of her vagina milking my cock as she climbed above me, rising over and through me, and then she slammed down as hard as she could, repeatedly, over and over, impaling herself, driving my cock deeper and deeper.

Then I held her hips down and pumped in furious staccato bursts; I felt my cockhead swelling like a cobras before it strikes, twitching and dancing - hoping for release. Elise could feel it, too. She watched my breathing, watched my eyes close, and as the moment drew near she hopped off of me, down between my legs, and jacked my cock savagely with both hands. She held her head about a foot above my cock as she jacked, he mouth wide open, her tongue searching the air for the scent of it's prey.

Then Mr Mt Saint Helens did his thing. All I could see were thunderstorms and howling winds in the mists that shot through my orgasm, lightning bolts of lust lighting up the insides of my eyes. I looked down in time to see big ropey blasts arcing up into her mouth. Her eyes and mouth were consumed with greedy lust, she darted to and fro nabbing little globules that shot up in the air in random bursts. Watching her only served to increase the strength of my contractions, and the last few bursts flew up with what felt like tremendous velocity.

She tilted her head back. In the firelight I could see her playing with the cum in her mouth with her tongue, swirling it, making little bubbles with it, reveling in it, in her total mastery of the essence within me.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the two security guards crouched behind a tree; I think they had enjoyed the show very much. Indeed, I'm pretty sure one of them had been playing a solo on the skin flute.

+

After the guards left, we burned off the rest of the medical waste and sat around in the blankets watching distant thunderstorms growing in the pre-dawn sky. I guessed the winds to be coming out of the northeast at about thirty knots. The center of the depression was drawing near. This storm was beginning to feel like a beast out there hunting me. I knew the feeling.

I wondered if the pressure was going to go lower, if this little beast was going to turn into a monster, turn into a hurricane.

+

As Elise and I returned to Sabrina several guys on boats started applauding - quietly. Whoa. Like burning medical waste by the beach made me some kind of hero! We jumped onto Sabrina, and Ron met us in the companionway.

"Way to go, sport! Wish I'd had a video of that. I could have made some real money selling that performance to some porn outfit."

I looked blankly at him. "What?"

Jeez, Sport, you were right there," he said pointing to a spot about 50 yards away where smoke rose from the little fireplace. "Everybody in the fuckin' marina was watching you two go at it, and those security guards. One of those pricks, you know, that fat one, hell, he musta jerked off five times!"

Poor Elise! I had no idea a human being could turn into a beet so quickly. She rolled her eyes and walked forward into the forepeak and shut the door.

"Fuckin-a, Sport, I've never seen anyone cum so much in my life. That ain't normal!"

"You could see that from here?!"

"Well, Sport. Binoculars helped!"

"And the horse you rode in on, Fuller," I said as I walked forward, following Elise's smoking vapor trail.

+

We slept until almost noon. In the raging humidity it felt like we were glued together, and I could hear a fairly strong wind whistling through the rigging. Sabrina was rocking noticeably now, as well.

I felt her hand reach over my waist, slip to my cock, and she rubbed it slowly. I turned to face her, but she pushed me back down on my back and slid up over my groin and placed my cock into her smooth, moist slit, and sat down on it slowly. She let it stand there in the warmth for a moment, then she started gripping it with her vaginal muscles. It was very smooth, very rhythmic, and very unmistakable: she was jacking my cock off with her vagina, and not moving her body at all! I was shocked! Never in my life had I heard of anyone doing this, except, of course, in Paris. She looked down in silent majesty, her eyes closed, a sly grin on her face; she was lost in her control of my desire.




The Hemingway Maid Ch. 03



She continued to do this, maintaining a steady pace, for several minutes. 

I felt every nerve in my body firing simultaneously, building with an incredible blinding intensity. Her body remained still - totally silent - yet her inner muscles kept their steady gripping impulses streaming upward, ever locked to my cock. I could feel every molecule, every atom inside my cock blazing with unexpected sensitivity. There was no motion to interfere with the pure form of sensation; the gripping motion started at the base of my cock and slowly moved up to the tip, then released, and started again. Relentlessly.

I could feel the burning intensity of orgasm start in my balls, the muscles in my anus contracting in almost painful spasm, the boiling eruption ran up the vein in the bottom of my cock and exploded into her vagina, and then my cock began pulsing with a will of its own. I could feel my semen coating the walls of her vagina, coalescing with her juices, forming a new matrix that could only stand to define our love for one another. Stand together for all time, I think you could safely say.

I was so lost in the world she had just created for me, for us, that I was almost completely unaware of the shuddering ripples that coursed through Elise. Her outstretched arms rested on my chest, and I could feel her trembling in my heart. I fought to remain still, not to breech the sanctity of this moment, willed it to become my eternity.

I felt her tears on my chest, then on my face as she lowered her face to mine. 

Oh, thank you my love. Thank you for the eternity you gave me . . .

She seemed to flow onto me, melt into the very essence of reality. I held her closely to my heart, but in truth I could not tell where her body separated from mine . . . I swear to God we had fused in those precious moments, fused in some aboriginal coalescence of being.

+

By late afternoon word had filtered through the marina. Our little depression was only a few knots away from hurricane force, and the barometer was falling, rapidly. Ron and the Amigos were huddled with me in Sabrina's salon; we were going over weather fax charts and listening to single side band weather broadcasts out of Norfolk and Miami. Winds tonight were forecast at 90 to 100 miles per hour, wave heights of up to 25 feet.

I just shook my head.

"No way, Ron. Everyone will die out there if we go."

"Well, odds are, Sport, that everyone will be caught here and killed or imprisoned if we stay. We drilled a couple of their security people in order to get these girls. I'm afraid the trail will lead them here before too long."

"The only way to do anything like what you've got in mind would be to get outside and run down the coast. Run to the west. Watch the storm, and cut north or south after we clear western Cuba."

"Won't work, Sport. They could keep us on radar all the way, then hit us when the weather calmed down. We won't have indefinite air support, and we wouldn't have the carrier group to hide in. Like I said, we just need to get about 15 to 20 miles offshore. Then we're home free."

"Well, then, it'll depend on the axis of rotation, where the eye is," Buzz said. 

I nodded my head in agreement. "If the northern radius of the eye wall is over the Straits, I'd say we won't make it five miles out before we're swamped. Not going beam to the seas."

Ron nodded his head in agreement with our analysis. "Jim, I can't force you to go, I won't. But if you stay, Elise will be dead before the week's out, and you probably will be, too."

I nodded my head in understanding. "Between the rock and the fucked place, I'd say. We can't use radar, right?"

"No, that'll cue them in on us immediately. Navy pukes only want to go active jamming if the MIGs come up. Once that happens, the bad guys won't be able to see shit on their radar. Besides, with these wave heights I doubt radar will do any good anyway."

"So how do we find the Battle Group?"

"Jim, all you need to do is get out there. Those guys have got enough juice to get to you and get people on board."

"You mean, abandon ship, right? I can't do that, Ron."

"After you drop people, if you drop people off and decide to make for Key West, that's your choice. It's your vessel, Captain. Once your mission is accomplished you can take off or join your group on a navy boat, your choice. Clear enough?"

"Yeah, clear enough, Ron."

+

After a light dinner, Elise and I made up storm berths for our elderly guests, and we got the wounded Seal strapped into the aft berth. He was pale and clammy, but his vitals were good. The Seal Doc was going to stay on Sabrina now, as well. 

It was going to get crowded.

I got Buzz and the doc briefed on how to set the storm sails, how to strap into the safety harnesses and attach the harness to the jack lines. These would keep people attached to the boat if a wave washed them overboard, and hopefully someone would be able to get them back on board.

As darkness fell an elderly couple appeared out of nowhere with Ron at their side; he took them below and with Elise got them strapped in. He came back up a few minutes later, and pulled me aside.

"It's a worse case deal now, Jim. Winds are 65 here, but 104 in the Strait. The eye wall will transit the Strait, as well, westbound."

"O.K., Ron. When do you want me to start off?"

"I'd like you to head out in about 30 minutes; I'll be last out, in about an hour. You'll have the best shot at it . . . you might beat the worst of it."

I held out my hand again to Ron. He took it and pulled himself into me and gave me a quick hug, then said good bye and was gone. 

That was the last time I ever saw Ron Fuller.

+

The wind gauge in Sabrina's instrument pedestal showed a steady 90 knots - with frequent gusts over 100 - as we motored out of the marina. We had the storm trysail and storm staysail set as we cleared the breakwater. I had a sea anchor and storm drogue set and ready to deploy as well.

As we cleared the breakwater the full force of the wind slammed into Sabrina's right side, her starboard beam, and drove her port beam down into the water. I fell away from the wind a bit and she stood back up. The little storm sails bit into the wind and began to pull us back up to a due north heading.

Buzz pulled out a portable GPS receiver and we began a plot. That was an act of will. The waves were getting vicious after only a couple of hundred yards out. I hoped they would settle down as we made deeper water.

But they didn't. The full force of the winds and the waves ran smack into the Gulfstream, which was headed directly into them. In that perfectly dreadful set of circumstances, the waves instantly built to pyramid shaped rolling mountains that I guesstimated were at least 30 feet high. That was about half of Sabrina's mast height. I'd never done anything like this before, anywhere, in any type of vessel, and my confidence level dropped like a rock. 

I had to fight the wheel with all of my strength just to keep Sabrina on course; as we came to the top of a mountain the full force of the wind would hit us like a freight train, then Sabrina would slice down the backside of the rolling wall in a hissing barely controlled fall. The bow would dive into the next wave, and Sabrina would claw her way up the face of the next mountain. On the tops the wind shrieked and howled through the rigging, in the troughs Sabrina was awash in a momentary silence.

At the end of 15 minutes we'd clawed our way across two miles.

That's when I heard a different kind of roaring sound.

That's when I heard the MIGs.

+

I turned in time to see a fireball erupt on the surface of the sea several hundred yards behind us. Something had been hit, and was burning. I felt the roar of the jets as they thundered overhead, but they were lost in the storm, I couldn't see them, but I guessed they were turning to the west, to our left, and getting ready to come in again. 

I never thought I'd live to be happy to see a Queer, but when that great gray whale of a jet thundered across Sabrina's bow I was yelling like crazy. So was Buzz. The doc was below, and all the hatches were sealed shut. Which was a good thing . . .

. . . Because as I'd watched the Queer streak past I lost my concentration, and Sabrina wandered up the face of a rolling mountain, and began to stall. This would lead to an interesting maneuver called 'pitch-poling' . . . kinda of like running down your front yard and doing a somersault. Only a lot worse. Forty ton sailboats aren't real graceful when the pitch-pole. Point of fact, few people have lived to describe the phenomenon.

The only way out was to surf down the front of the mountain and hope to get out of it's way before it turned into a breaker, and swamped the boat. This I did, and I even managed to find the groove I had been in.

I felt a concussive boom, and seconds later was aware that a MIG had just gone thundering by right behind us, billowing flares out its belly. It had gone super-sonic, in a hurricane, just meters off the surface of the sea.

That guy had brass balls.

Then a double boom, and I was knocked off my feet. So was Buzz.

Two Navy F14s had just flown directly over our mast, also super-sonic, and had disappeared into the rain. Those were the last airplanes we saw that night. Then I noticed something odd . . . I couldn't hear . . . not a thing. I saw blood running out of Buzz's ear canal, and reached up to feel the same coming out of mine.

Almost an hour gone, and approaching nine miles from shore. And I'm deaf as a post.

What the hell. I flipped on the radar. About three to four miles ahead there was an armada, and I felt this rush of joy like you wouldn't believe. I steered what looked to me like an intercept course to the biggest thing out there, surely the carrier, and pointed to Buzz. I pantomimed radio and pointed at the radar. He nodded his head and went to the companionway hatch. I guess the doc figured out we were deaf pretty quick.

+

We were driving well across the rolling mountains, and I sensed they were diminishing, slightly but noticeably. I could feel the wind falling, and saw it drop into the seventies, then the fifties, and then there were stars overhead. We had hit the eye, and strung out in front of us was the United States Navy. Well, at least some of it.

+

The waves had softened their impact a bit as well. I could steer with little effort now.

The hulking carrier was oriented north south, beam to the wind, and the doc indicated that they wanted me to maneuver into the dead spot in the wind and waves created by the mass of the huge ship. She was only a few hundred yards away; piece of cake.

But as we got closer I saw that the waves there were still a good twenty plus feet high. Not a piece of cake, at all. The doc indicated a platform on the side of the ship, one of the huge elevators used to take aircraft to and from the hanger deck to the fight deck, and pointed to the mass of people there waving at us. There were hoists rigged, and men in rescue-diving gear were waiting to be lowered onto Sabrina's deck.

We slipped behind the carrier and fell into a windless island of near sane sea conditions. Lines were thrown, men were lowered. Medics dropped down, then lowered a litter to hoist up their wounded comrade. The elderly Cubans were hoisted up. Then the doc. And Buzz. Elsie was there, standing next to me, pushing me to the hoists, pointing up.

I shook my head, and pointed at Sabrina, and shook my head again.

Elise nodded, kissed me lightly on the lips, then was gone. I watched as she lifted off Sabrina's deck, was carried aloft into the arms of waiting men. The last Navy man was there before me.

"What about the rest?"

He shook his head.

"Anyone?"

He shook his head again. 

I felt cold inside. I pulled up my chart, told the man I was going to head for Key West.

He shook his head, pointed up to the carrier.

I shook my head, said Good Bye. He hooked himself into the hoist, then the wildest thing. He saluted me. 

So, what the heck, I saluted him right back.

Sabrina was free of the ship, and I engaged the motor and we headed off to the north. The big carrier silently slipped away to the south, and in an instant Sabrina and I were back in the belly of the beast. I turned one last time to look at the ship, hoping to see Elise.

But she was gone.

The wind slammed home, the waves rose up in earnest anger, perhaps mad at having been cheated out of more victims from Sabrina. Buzz had left his little GPS, and it was giving a heading to Key West. I put Sabrina's nose on 12 degrees magnetic, and we took off, heading slightly into the wind. We had about seventy five miles to go.

I kept the radar on, thinking there was no need to run around blind out here with all those navy ships running steaming through. 

It was peaceful in an odd kind of way, not hearing the wind, relying on sight and touch to feel my way through the storm. I'd never had any real idea just how much hearing played a role in sailing, or anything else, for that matter. You take things for granted until they're gone.

Had I taken Elise for granted?

I could just make out the carrier on radar - they was already more than ten miles between us. I could see her in my mind's eye lifting up toward that huge elevator, disappearing over the edge, then standing there looking down at me, waving her - what? Good byes?

Had we said Good Bye.

No. She had asked me to go with her, abandon Sabrina, just go with her.

Where?

Sabrina was not just a boat. Not to me, anyway. She was my home, and in an odd way, she was my life. I took care of her, and in her way she took care of me.

What had we just done together? Crossed on of the most foul storm-tossed bodies of water under the most horrid circumstances imaginable? Then it hit me like a body-blow. Ron and the Amigos.

Gone? 

All of them gone? What? The Storm, the MIGs, what had claimed those poor souls? Were they looking for survivors?

And then, softly, I could hear the wind. It was very distant and hollow sounding, but the sounds of the sea and the ship were returning to my consciousness.

Then I could make out the mass of Key West on the radar, adjusted my heading to keep far to the west. The wind remained constant now, in the mid-forties, and I could make out the looming gray of dawn to the east. Sabrina was like a horse headed for the barn; hungry, thirsty, and wanting very badly to be done with this ride. I reached down and rubbed her teak coaming, thanking her for the sheltering grasp she kept on her passengers through this wildly malicious night.

The Sun was rising, winds were abating, and soon the island resolved through the mist and waves. I sailed through XXX and anchored on the north side of the town, sheltered Sabrina from the remnants of the winds as best I could. I set as many anchors as I dared, shut down the engine, and reeling with exhaustion, made my way forward and curled up on the forepeak berth.

+

In my dream, I heard Ron's voice calling out to me.

"Hey Sport, c'mon Puddknocker, wake up!"

I hate dreams like that, you know . . . the ones that feel like real life, almost cinematic in their vibrant intensity. But there was Ron, shaking my shoulders, imploring me to get my ass outta the sack.

It wouldn't stop. I wanted it to go away. I opened my eyes, knew that would make the dream go away, but there he was, shaking me.

"You're dead. Go away." I shut my eyes again.

"PUDDKNOCKER! GET UP! NOW!"

I shot bolt upright.

"You're dead. What are you doing here."

"Man, Sport, they told me you was deaf now, but I didn't believe 'em."

"What are you doing here." I was deep in the fogs of not enough sleep, and desperately wanted to get back there. "Go away."

"Puddknocker, can you hear me?"

Whatever it was, it wasn't going away. Oh, what the hell, I needed to take a leak anyway. 

"Jim, can you hear me?"

"Yeah, Ron, I hear you. You're dead. Go away."

"Get some clothes on, man, You've been asleep for about thirty hours!"

"No shit, Ron. You're dead. Some Navy guy told me so."

I was sitting on the edge of the berth, Ron just shook his head in apparent disgust and walked into the salon. He left the door open, and I could see several men standing around in the salon and in the galley. Some wore uniforms, some were in suits.

This was going to turn into one of those really shitty hyper-realistic nightmares. But I smelled coffee. And cheeseburgers. My idea of the nightmare from hell! I was still in my foul-weather gear, and I became acutely aware that I smelled like a goat, that my skin was covered in greasy sweat, and that I was in dire need of the head. I slipped out of my clothes and hopped in the shower. I knew the hot-water system was shut down, but turned on the sump pump and flipped the water on. 

Hot water streamed out of the showerhead. I looked out the portlight in the shower compartment and saw that I was tied up to a pier. I started to blink my eyes really rapidly then, trying to clear away the foggy remnants of my dreams. All of a sudden I realized that Ron was alive, and there were a bunch of official looking types in the salon.

I soaped up, rinsed, brushed my teeth, shaved, and cut loose with a really big fart.

Ah, now I was awake!

It's always amazed me that I can't truly wake up until I float an air muffin. So shoot me!

I pulled on some shorts and a t-shirt over my still damp frame, ran a brush through the hairs that hadn't jumped ship yet - all eight of them - and stepped out into the salon. 

Some navy type shoved some coffee my way, and Ron asked me to take a seat

They had all sorts of questions. The operation had been a success, but one boat, one of the Amigo's, had been hit by the MIG and sunk. Ron had fished them out of the water, the Amigo was hurt but hurt but O.K. The MIG had been shot down by Navy F14s, and there was a very serious clusterfuck in progress between Washington and Havana, but the Navy had picked up the downed airman, and some ruffled feathers had been smoothed.

All of the refuges had been spirited away to somewhere in Virginia and would be out of touch for a long, long time. The Cubans could never learn what had happened, who had been smuggled out, or lives here and in Cuba would be put at risk.

A suit from the Justice Department slid a document to me across the salon table. Sign this, he said, indicating that I had been informed about ultra-top-secret information and I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement, or else.

I signed the paper and slid it back to him.

"Will I ever see Elise again?"

"Jim, I can say with total certainty that you will never see or speak to Elise Flores again," Ron said. But here's the problem. Bunch of reporters were down here covering the storm, saw your boat come in, and a couple of others, like mine and Jeff's, then Cuba started screaming about a bunch of boats leaving the country illegally, then the MIG crap came out, and the press boys are screaming to anyone involved. Get the picture?"

"Yeah. What do you want me to do?"

All of the men in the salon save Ron relaxed visibly. I guess they had been afraid I'd try to capitalize on the situation, maybe go for a movie of the week deal, hell, I don't know. But Ron knew.

"Well, Mr Madison," an Admiral I assumed by the number of stars visible on his white jacket, "I just wanted to thank you. Your country thanks you. On that, sir, you have my word. Oh, by the way, there's a rumor you are related to President James Madison. Would that be true, sir?"

"I've heard that rumor, too, sir."

The admiral shook my hand then left. Ron and a casually dressed man remained. 

"Well, Puddknocker, I will be dipped in cowshit! You a famous mother fucker?!"

I just sat there, deflated at the news that I would never see Elise again.




The Hemingway Maid Ch. 03



"Jim, this puke over here is from the Agency. He's got a check with your name on it. No amount filled in. Name a figure, or let him do it, but we owe you big time for what you did."

"I don't want anything, Ron. Never have. God Damn! Ron! I'm fucking sick. Elise! Never again?"

"Yeah, Sport. Sorry."

The agency bean counter sat there, pen in hand poised over his check.

I just waved my hand at him. "Put that away, would you?"

The man wrote an amount on the check, then turned it over and slid it to me.

It sat there like an insinuation, glowing with tainted evil.

There were some men in the cockpit, working on something by the wheel.

"What are they doing up there?" I asked Ron.

"They're putting in some stuff for you. A GPS chartplotter and a satellite phone. We want you to know where you are, and how to call us if you need us. Anytime, anywhere," the bean counter said.

"Sounds like there are some heavy strings attached, Ron."

"Not at all, Sport. But just in case somebody finds out what happened, who was involved, and they want to toss a little revenge your way. No big deal, Sport, really."

"I don't suppose there's a device in that stuff that'll tell you where I am, huh?"

"Puddknocker! I'm appalled! You think we'd do that?"

Did I ever tell you how irritating that grin of his was? No? Sure I did . . .

+

Sabrina sat at anchor off Nassau, in the Bahamas, on a late September day. It had been almost four months since the flight from the Marina Hemingway, since I'd seen Elise. Not a day went by that I hadn't thought of her.

I had left Key West almost immediately. Ron had helped me get Sabrina ready for sea again, and I'd replaced a few items in her rigging that had been stressed in the storm, but I had wanted to get all of this behind me. I had gone to Ft Lauderdale and visited Mom and Dad, and told Dad the whole story over drinks.

Dear old Dad, ever the realist. What's his first comment?

"What did you do with check?"

Like I said. A realist. "Nothing, yet, Dad."

"Want me to set something up with it? I can talk to my broker over at . . ."

"Dad, I was thinking of giving it to the Salvation Army, or maybe the Communist Party of Central Iowa. Or maybe a fund for knocked-up nuns."

Big frown. "How much did they make it out for?"

"I never looked, Dad."

Even deeper frown. "You got it?"

I nodded.

Look of total disgust. "Let me see it."

I never argued with Dad. Futile. Very futile. I took the folded check and slid it over to him. He opened it up and whistled.

It took a lot to get Dad to whistle. Now I was curious. 

"If I were you, I think I'd get on the next flight down to Cayman and do something with that. It's drawn on a Cayman bank, by the way, just in case you wondered." He was spreading the sarcasm a little thickly, I thought, as he slid it back to me.

O.K., I'm weak. I turned it over and looked at the numbers.

I whistled.

+

Dad had sailed over to the Bahamas with me; it was our last trip together on Sabrina. He stayed with me for three weeks, even got in the water and went snorkeling. He reminisced and groused about his arthritis. We talked, we listened, we got to know one another again. One of the rare things a boat does well . . . they bring people together.

"I guess that Hemingway thing kinda made up for those poor people on the raft," he said one evening as the Sun was setting. "God, I'll never forget that day."

"Neither will I, Dad, never."

I watched Dad moving around the boat, the now awkward way he moved about, the joints in his feet and fingers that were swollen with arthritis, the labored breathing as he worked the sails. I hated to watch him endure the humiliation aging - men as full of life as he'd been must be so keenly affected, I thought. I thought of him and Mom, together since the end of the second World War. How love, true love, comes to so few people. The American landscape was littered with the flaming remains of divorced and shattered families in this, the closing years of the American Century. The Golden Age of the Divorce Lawyer, I thought. Disposable values, disposable families.

But how valuable, how dear true love is. How common loneliness has become.

There were no Elise's on my horizons. Only empty sky, endless ocean.

A few days later I put Dad on the plane for Lauderdale.

Life is so short.

+

I wandered through the Bahamas, stopping every now and then to take in a sunset or catch some food at a local market. I'm one of those people, I try to fish, I throw a line in the water, and I can hear the fish start laughing. Give me a market or I'll starve.

I met new people along the way, made a friend here and there. Couples and single men. Lonely single men and couples that bickered at one another. What a scene. What a choice. 

Why are we so intent on carrying our problems with us everywhere we go?

Every now and then I'd meet a couple so very happily in love that it was a joy to watch. They would come to me like a painting . . . a stylized tableau of hope idealized and eternity reconciled. Too, every now and then I'd run into a man or woman very happy with their solo wanderings, not lonely at all, just in love with exploring the world around them. Meeting people so very different from themselves. Happy in themselves, though.

I envied them. 

I felt I'd never find that kind of peace. 

I had touched the contours of happiness when I held Elise in my arms, but the thought came to me, I would never be happy with Elise or anyone else until I could find happiness within myself.

Where would my wanderings take me?

+

Toward Christmas I headed toward the British Virgin Islands, toward the Bitter End Yacht Club, a hotel, restaurant, and watering hole famous throughout the eastern Caribbean as a good place to pass the time in good company. Hurricane season was over, the waters as I approached the Virgins so unbelievably blue, the sky so clear, it would bring a smile to any heart.

After six months away from Cuba, I was reconciled to my life of solo explorations. I spend days photographing people and their homes and lives, walking the towns and villages of small islands by day, reading about their culture at night, and taking care of Sabrina. I was, however, after more than a week at sea looking forward to lavishing some TLC on both of us.

Navigating the approaches to the Virgins during the morning, we looked to make our way to the Bitter End by late afternoon. The day remained clear and beautiful, the sea became startlingly blue the closer to land we came. The islands, once so far away, now surrounded us.

As the late afternoon Sun hit my back, I dropped sail and squared away the deck, made ready dock lines. I approached the local fuel dock, and cut power, drifted toward the dock, and backed down to a soft landing. I tossed the dock lines to Pedro, and went to shut down the diesel.

Pedro? Pete?

"Hey Puddknocker! Look who I found!"

I turned toward Ron, and dared not to hope that . . .

Elise was standing there in the palest pink little sun-dress, the deep gold afternoon Sun turning her visage into a misty ghostlike shadow that stood before me in the beauty of eternal creation. Suddenly I couldn't see her my eyes were so full of tears; I was laughing and crying as she flew from the dock to Sabrina's welcoming arms. 

And mine.

I held her to me with all the force of a hurricane as her mouth found mine. She wrapped a leg behind my thighs as we fused in the fiery sunlight. Through the shimmering waterborn world of my eyes, it looked as though the world had turned to flame.

"Well, there they go again Ron," Pedro said with that little snort laugh of his.

"Shit, I forgot to bring a video camera again!"

Elise was pulling my swim suit down, reached for me with the desperation of a dire passion long suppressed. She pushed me down onto the cockpit seats when she had freed my passion, and moved her body over mine. 

"C'mon kid, we better get outta here," I heard Ron saying as that scuttled up the white stone steps that led through trees to the hotel. "Say, Pudd, we'll be up by the pool. We gotta talk! I heard about this new marina . . ."

Sure thing, Ron. Be right there.

Eternity is a road; the way glows in the light of creation.

I held that gentle light in my arms, and caressed her.



The Hemingway Maid



I wondered if the kid took dollars.

I walked back to Sabrina in bare feet, and learned to quickstep around the rusty nail heads that popped up as you walked on the rough old planks of the docks. As I approached my home I saw piles of my clothes on the dock, odds and ends stacked in the cockpit, and I was just about convinced that I was being had, big time. But there was Ron, semi-conscious in his own way, holding a cup of coffee in one hand, his eyes half open with only the whites showing, talking with Pedro. 

I guess I looked confused. Go figure.

So, let's recap here. I'm in the wasteland, holding on to my head, hoping I've stopped puking for good. Pedro is in animated discussion with Ron. My clothes are all over the dock, and Sabrina's cockpit looks like a garage sale is in progress. Ah, and as I get closer, I note that Sabrina is smoking down below, and that she smells like a West Texas BBQ joint. 

The day was looking interesting.

The table was set up in Sabrina's cockpit and ready to serve three. Alright. I hopped on and Ron followed a split second behind me; Pedro walked off muttering expletives. I sat down on the far side, and Ron plopped down, firing off a string of instructions in Spanish down the companionway (that's the main hatch and ladder down into the boat. . .). Thin arms stuck up out of the companionway, holding plates of eggs and bacon and more fried plantains, and Ron took it from the slim arms and puts it in front of me. Another plate appears, and Ron took that one, too. Then the arms came up the companionway, attached to a body, and holding a third plate.

That was the first time I saw Elise.

I'd love to go on about how drop-dead gorgeous she was, how it was love at first sight, and that it was an enchanted moment. But that wasn't the case. My eyes were locked onto this plate of food in front of me that looked like it had just been flown down from the Culinary Institute of America. So shoot me, I'm an American. I guess it dawned on me after a minute that there was another person eating with us, and I looked up.

Elise was a nice looking woman, maybe thirty years old. Kind of long black hair, cute swooping bangs flanking her deep brown eyes, and light blemish-free ivory hued skin around a lean face. She wore eyeglasses that might have been stylish when Eisenhower was in office, you know the kind, the black horned-rimmed jobs. White cotton blouse, knee length light blue skirt (on a boat!), white socks and old navy blue Keds. She was trim, almost flat chested, but appeared very well groomed; just clean wouldn't quite describe Elise. Not that day, and probably not ever. 

And it was apparent that she was reserved, maybe even shy. Almost Catholic. 

But in Cuba, a godless communist state? Well, Fidel went to a Jesuit school. 

Who knew the depths of human hypocrisy better than a Jesuit?

Ron introduced us. He told me that Elise was one of the "good girls" who worked on boats. Did cleaning and cooking, and nothing else. I met that comment with a blank stare.

Ron explained that outside the locked gates of the marina there was - on almost any given day or night - a queue of women who wanted to be engaged to clean and cook, and, uh, well be engaged in just about any other domestic chores the skipper wanted. All for less than a buck US a day.He also explained that Elise wasn't that kind of girl. If I was interested she would come by and clean on whatever basis I wanted, or cook, or any combination thereof. All I could think of, and I know this is really sick, was this plate of food in front of me. 

Elise was, I felt certain, the Cuban goddess of culinary excellence.

I asked how much for her to cook all three meals a day, keep the boat clean and do my laundry. And I know what you're thinking . . . here comes another ugly American flaunting his wealth (Me? You got to be kidding . . .), and exploiting this poor woman. Maybe you're right, but you weren't there, you weren't looking at this Renoir of a meal in front of you. Nor had you been living on a boat for over a year by yourself, and tired of your own cooking. And you can probably clean up after yourself better than I do after myself, even on one of your bad days. And I hate, I mean really hate, doing laundry.

At any rate, Elise perked up at that. I didn't know it at the time, but I had just mentioned full time employment, under the table hard currency for someone struggling to survive in a black-market economy. I had just offered her a short-term ticket to security, Cuban style. She wasn't frowning, either. She'd just been dealt a pretty good hand, and she'd played it safe, hadn't had to debase herself by offering a devils bargain. 

A good meal will do the trick every time, I always say.

She didn't speak English too well, and my Spanish reeked, so Ron consummated the deal. Elise cleared the table, made the v-berth, and did the laundry . . . all before lunch. Now I knew why all the boats around the Marina Hemingway were spotless, and why all they divorced-white-guys were sporting hefty paunches. Hell, for divorced-white-guys fleeing women's lib and the IRS, this place was fucking heaven.

So, I got to work changing the oil in the generator under the cockpit (you know, oil, grease, kind of a guy thing) and sewing a new piece of hardware on a sail (sewing? Oh, well . . .). This marina gig was going to be all right with me.

Pedro returned before lunch with a small cart full of groceries, and passed them down to his sister. He told me Ron had given him money to get supplies for his boat and mine, and he gave me a receipt. I paid my half, about five bucks for a weeks worth of food. A quick run through the numbers and I was shocked at the results. It was going to cost less than a hundred bucks a month for a cook, cleaning service, laundress, groceries, and rent at the marina.

I looked over at Blade Runner; the boat was bobbing up and down and there was a fair amount of moaning coming from down below.

I guess Ron had one of those full service models. Oh, well, lunch anyone?

+

After about a week I noticed that I was getting, well, a little full around the middle. I didn't have anything to do anymore. Elise did everything. She always had a smile on her face, too. Occasionally she even had a song to sing as she worked away inside the boat. She was always done by mid-morning, and would take off for a while, return to cook lunch, then be off again until evening. After she had finished cleaning up after dinner she would pack up her things in a little black net bag and say adios and be gone. Until the next gastronomic blowout the following day. She really seemed to enjoy cooking.

Ron had pretty much the same deal going on, but like I said, his girl was obviously on a different meal plan, because Ron wasn't gaining weight like I was. I decided to ask Ron what the score was. He did, in his roundabout way. He told me about all the different girls who worked in the marina, who was screwing whom, which girls didn't do that sort of thing, which situations were turning into Peyton Place dramas, and which ones were getting serious romantically. Quite a tale itself. Suburbia had come to the workers paradise.

Ron's girl, Rosalita, was acknowledged by all I'd talked to as the finest looking girl in the marina, and while not the best cook, she could hold her own. She didn't have to clean all that much because Ron was an obsessive neat freak, and from what I could tell they were screwing just about all the time anyway. And, Ron said, it wasn't a money thing, these girls weren't in it for the bucks. 

They kind of chose you, would offer to move in full time if you wanted them to.

Oh.

Maybe it was a ticket out. Maybe it was better than taking their chances on a raft.

I couldn't get that little kid floating in the water out of my head after Ron clued me in on the Rosalita deal. Wasn't I just taking advantage of another person's misery, fucking this poor soul in a figurative sense? What if I got pangs of social conscience and booted Elise off the boat; would she be better off with her return to poverty? What would happen to Pedro?

In the end, I felt that by screwing Elise I was at least not turning a socially awkward and perhaps ethically neutral situation into a morally repugnant one. Such was, at any rate, the course of my rationalizations. I'd always heard, thanks Dad, that a stiff dick has no conscience, but what did I know about empty bellies and the ethics of starvation?

Well, I was about to get my first real lesson in Third World ethics.

+

Ron finally gave me the real scoop on Elise. She had been the Minister of Something-or-other's mistress from the time she was a teenager. He related that she had been some kind of cute back then. Like any good communist, Comrade Minister had sent his main girl to Paris, to school at the Sorbonne, then on to the Cordon Bleu to learn how to whip up a soufflé. Thus educated, she had returned to Havana to take up life as Sugar Daddy's little secret on the side. Ron explained that she had been one of the privileged elite, or at least, one of their playthings, until Comrade Minister had fallen into disfavor. In case you've forgotten about what life was like in a Soviet client state, that meant Comrade Minister disappeared. Or was killed, if you just want the basics, and that had been accomplished with Elise looking on. Elise had found herself a persona-non-grata in the aftermath, exiled into homeless oblivion, her parents murdered in retribution and the rest of her family ruined in consequence. Elise became a shell, she had been murdered - if not in a literal sense, then in a figuratively spiritual way.

Elise's older brother Miguel had managed to flee to Florida in the days that followed, and had been working in Miami ever since. He soon co-owned two successful Cuban restaurants there, as well as one in Naples. He had managed to get rich the good old fashioned American Way in less than two years, but the rest of his family had been left behind in Cuba, and there was no way to get them out. He couldn't even get money to them. 

Word of their brother's success finally filtered through to Elise and Pedro, and this only served to drive them into complete despair. Pedro and Elise were starving to death, living in total misery on a beach outside the western fringes of Havana. They could see the lights of American towns looming over the horizon at night, taste forbidden opportunities through their hunger, dream sweet dreams of families that would never be.

Then, about a year ago, Pedro had managed to get a job at the marina washing boats, and found that he was good at dealing with the itinerant boaties that came and went. He was promoted to dock-boy, soon made friends with various gringos, and became a fixture around the docks. He also made some hard cash, and at thirteen years old was taking care of his almost catatonic older sister. In a country with free medical care, Pedro could not get her help; as a persona-non-grata, Elise was refused all government services and assistance. 

One of the first long time residents of the marina Pedro had befriended was Ron, and through Ron's efforts Elise had begun to make a modest comeback. But it had been rough, she was really damaged goods, Ron said. He had brought her to the marina to cook for him, and she had tried to cook for others, but she just hadn't been able to adjust to being around other people, especially men. A lot of the guys in the marina were pretty rough, not the sort to take in or care for a shattered soul, and Elise had just drifted in and out of the potential opportunities found there.

And then Sabrina had come to the Marina Hemingway. Ron had apparently been sizing me up that first day (and, I assume, that abominable night) and thought Elise might find me tolerable. So . . . 

. . . Elise had been spirited into the marina and onto my little boat while I had slept in the cockpit that first night. Probably not the best first impression I ever made. At any rate, now I had a pretty fair grasp of what Elise had been through, and I felt even worse about my performance as an Ugly American. Ron tried to set me straight, tried to convince me that I was doing her a favor.But that just didn't ring true.

One thing was certain, however. I was sure the next time I saw her I would try to find out more about her feelings; not just about her past, but about her working for me on Sabrina.

+

It was cool the next morning when Elise came walking down the dock toward Sabrina. I guess she was attuned enough to her environment to figure out something was off. Maybe the smell of cooking coming from below as she stepped on board, or that the table in the salon was set for breakfast as she came down the companionway. Hell, just the fact that I was awake before ten in the morning must have come as a physical blow to the poor girl. Any way, she was on guard, looked wary, but not quite suspicious. I asked her to sit, then passed over plates of pancakes, eggs, bacon, and some juice. Not up to her standards, I'm sure, but it was the best I could do.

We ate in silence, passed the pitcher of juice a couple of times, but otherwise the tension must have been unpleasant, if the way I felt was any indication. I cleared the plates, washed the dishes, and just asked her to sit there until I finished cleaning up. Then . . . 

I sat across from her in the salon. I thought I would start simply. You know, like tactfully.

"Elise, would you tell me the story of your life," I asked. "Please?"

"I haven't the heart left for that story, Mr. Jim, and I doubt very much if you would have the stomach for it, either." Elise now spoke with almost no trace of an accent, and her English vocabulary was obviously much more extensive than she had let on. So, the mystery was going to go a lot deeper today. "What is it you want to know?" she asked me with almost no trace of emotion in her voice. Perhaps she heard the wings of poverty and hunger beating the air around her lost soul as she braced herself for the uncertainty of my questioning. But I could feel her pain in the air around me, no doubt about that.

"Elise, it's more what I want you to know, about me. O.k.?" She just looked at me and made not one comment or motion. "There's a part of me, Elise, that feels very bad about having you here on Sabrina. You do a very good job here, and if I keep eating your cooking I'm going to explode; hell, I'm getting so fat so fast I can't believe it. But that's not the problem. The problem, Ellsie, is all of the people on the other side of the fence who are starving to death . . ."

"Mr. Jim," she interjected.

"Just Jim, please, Elise."

"Jim," she paused, rolling the name around in her mind's eye, "Jim, you aren't going to fix the things in Cuba that are wrong. So . . ."

"But neither am I going to take advantage of other people's misery and misfortune."

"Jim, all people are to some degree well grounded in hypocrisy. Yours is a gentle hypocrisy, you must understand that. You can not blame yourself for being an American, for the blessings of your American material prosperity. If you were not here my brother would have less money to buy food. And there are many children that work here who are like Pedro, Jim. Desperate, nowhere to go. And they are the fortunate ones. The government disenfranchises many families, dissidents whose actions the government disapproves of are systematically exiled from whatever benefits that might normally accrue to them in a communist state. So, in a land where homelessness and starvation are simply not allowed to exist, where medical care is a basic right, there are thousands of families that starve to death in the streets, die of diseases so easy to cure that it is simply a crime that it is allowed to occur. But these people, people like Pedro and myself, do not exist, we have been erased. We must find our own way to survival, and it is through your blessings that we might survive. So, Jim, I can appreciate your concern for Pedro and myself. But you must know, I mean really know, that without you our lives would be almost unendurable."

"Where do you live, Elise?"

With this question, Elise looked down to the floor. She was silent.

"I want to see where you live, Elise. Now. Let's go."

"No, Jim, that I cannot allow."

I was headed up the companionway, then turned to look at her. How could I do this without even implicitly threatening her. "Elise, please, come with me. I need to talk to you, tell you a story, please come and keep me company." I held out my hand, I reached out to help her make the leap to trusting another human being.

She took my hand, came with me into the cool morning air.

We walked out of the marina, turned to the west as we exited the secured gates. I ignored the looks of the security people as we passed, and though I could feel Ron and Pedro and a host of other gringos looking our way, I kept Elise's hand in mine. I told her of my trip through the Straits not so long ago, of the boy falling in the water, of the helplessness my father and I felt as we confronted so much unmourned misery. I talked of my father's life, encouraged her to talk about hers. I listened when she spoke, but in truth, I think I talked the whole time as we walked to the west.

We walked a long way from the marina, through a small suburb of modest beachfront houses and stores. We walked though the dusty, poor neighborhoods that lay further to the west. After more than an hour we came to the end of the outlying homes, and walked into a jungle of exposed mangroves and palm trees and fairly heavy undergrowth. The way was sandy, full of mosquitoes and, I assumed, other less friendly creatures. Here and there were scattered little houses. Houses made of remnants of boxes, scraps of wood, walls made of tarpaper, roofs of thatched palm leaves or rusty sheets of galvanized steel. We walked past starving children, their bellies bloated and their faces an open wound of insect bites. We walked to Pedro and Elise's home.

I stooped to enter the juxtaposed construct of shipping crates and tarpaper, and walked into a bare little space that was a little larger than a king-sized bed, the ceiling height a little shy of five feet. There were two little beds made of burlap sacks stuffed with palm fronds laying on the sandy floor, and a small stove that had obviously come from someone's boat was sitting on a flat wooden box top in one corner. A half-burned candle in an old Campbell's Soup can provided the light that might keep the night at bey. If, I assumed, they had a match.

The space was clean, however, and did not smell of filth or decay. I entered and sat on the sand floor. Elise followed me in; she sat across from me on the warm-shaded earth. Her little black net sack hung on the wall from a nail; there was another shirt in the sack. That was, I presumed, the extent of her wardrobe. She looked at me with all of the dignity humanity lacked on her care-worn face. She was not ashamed, was not asking for pity. And while I was appalled at my total unawareness of her circumstances, I too was amazed at the complete serenity I found in Elise's eyes. She had seen the depths of hell that man all too often visits on his fellow man, and made her way to peace with that knowledge. That had been, I thought, one remarkable journey.

We had no food with us, and there was none in the little house. Yet we talked through the morning, and into the afternoon. We talked about her experiences in Paris in that other lifetime, and we found that we had places and restaurants in common that we had loved. We had wandered the same corridors in the Louvre and D'Orsay, strolled , perhaps, under the same trees in the Tuilleries. It was a small world we discovered that day, and in the sharing of those distant memories we came to know each other in a new, completely unexpected way. 




The Hemingway Maid



I listened to her tale of teenaged submission to the Cuban Minister with a mixture of revulsion and admiration, attentively cringed as she described her seduction by power and material greed. She recounted tales of debauchery that, frankly, scared me silly with the combination of erotic excess and moral depravity. She told me of her ambivalence to these activities, how she no longer viewed them as something she was ashamed of, yet she felt little desire to wander those byways of excess again. She told me that she would never have children, described in nauseating detail how the Minister had forcibly had her surgically sterilized. 

As afternoon gave way to evening, as our trust built in the shadow of her experience, I learned of her desire to join Miguel in America, her frustration at her inability to help Pedro, and her gratitude for her job on Sabrina. 

I expressed my desire to help her, and her brother, in any way I could; I offered them food and shelter on Sabrina, money, and clothing; Elise with her hard won wisdom simply extrapolated the eventual outcome of such a move. I would leave eventually, Elise and her brother would return to the mangroves no better off than they were right now. It was a grave calculus, the mathematics of uncertainty proving safer than the hollow certainties of incremental compassion.

Compassion was, I learned that day, not something you doled out when and if it was morally convenient. Compassion was a choice no different than the choice to love. It must consume the soul to the same degree, or it is hollow.

As the sun set, the feelings we shared for each other as a result of our wanderings that day gave way to the tiredness we felt, to say nothing of the hunger I now felt acutely. Elise explained that this emptiness had been, for Pedro and herself, their daily bread before he had found his way to the Marina Hemingway. Now that she had worked on Sabrina for a while, become re-accustomed to a regular diet, she feared more than anything else a return to exile, to their poverty, and to the naked starvation of chance.

Elise laid her body down onto the rough surface of her burlap bed, and motioned me to her side. She had me lay beside her, my head in her lap, and I felt her fingers as they gently wound their way through my hair. She felt the contours of my heart through her fingers as I listened to her breathing. Our heartbeats seemed to mingle and join in evensong, our hunger and uncertainty giving way to the gentle arms of sleep. 

+

I got up in the middle of the night with some urgent business to take care of, and stepped outside of the little shack and into the cool night air. I made my way through the shantytown to the beach and saw Ron and Pedro lying on either side of a small fire, apparently asleep. I walked away from them down the surf line, and looked up at the Dipper glowing in the deep night sky. As I gave my water back to the earth, grateful for the sharing, I heard another stream join mine, and turned to see Ron grinning like a ghost. 

"So, Pudd-knocker, how stands the union," he said. 

"Who's got the boats?" I replied, never one for sentimental chit-chat.

"Left the Two Amigo there. Gave 'em the keys to your liquor cabinet, some really dirty magazines, and a quart of Vaseline. When you get back, watch your step, and don't say I didn't warn you."

"Thanks. Helluva day, Ron."

"Yeah, relativity bites. Here we are in this world, comfortable, full bellies, money for rum, and all around us people are lying in the sewer. I used to keep telling myself I'd fought my war, paid my dues; but how do you look another human being in the eye while they're starving to death." 

We stood, looking to the north, across the Straits. I could just barely, away from the lights of Havana, make out the distant glow of Key West in the still night. 

So close. An irresistible force. 

Moths to the flame.

"She's a helluva woman, Ron."

"Don't I know it. A might too high class for my taste, though. Thought you might enjoy her company."

"Wasn't like that, Ron. We talked. All goddamn day long. Fucking remarkable."

"Yeah, well, Pete and I brought you two some grub. I was gonna get you up before first light; I wanna get back to the reservation before the gomers start their rounds."

"Jeez, Ron, are you ever gonna leave Vietnam behind?"

"Hey, listen, bro, this is Cuba, not fucking Puerto Rico. Technically we ain't supposed to be outta the marina after midnight. Just because some of us have decided to float the local economy by drinking ourselves to death, well, ya'know, they cut us some slack. But this is the People's Paradise, bro, and they don't like it when we find things that don't mesh with the Propaganda Ministry's version of Marx. O.K.? Man, you liberal pukes can be so fuckin' naive sometimes."

"What time is it?"

"See Arcturus?

"Yeah, so?"

"Four-thirty. 'Bout an hour and a half 'till sunup." Ron seemed to enjoy these games.

"Smart ass!"

"Puke-face!" Ah, ethology!

The evening's moral philosophy lecture finished, Ron sent Pedro to wake his sister. I tried to chew down some sort of jerky and gave up, and tossed down a Coke instead. Pedro came back a few minutes later; Elise followed after a few more. Pedro unwrapped some fruit and gave it to her, and we all started the long walk back to the marina. If Ron and Pedro noticed Elise and I falling behind, they didn't make any remarks about it. Who knows, maybe they didn't notice when Elise took my hand in hers. Or the smile on my face when she did.

+

When the sun set that afternoon, the rhythm of life in the marina seemed to pause. As the outrageous aromas of Elise's cooking spread out over the surrounding boats, eyes took in the scene. Pedro sat in Sabrina's cockpit, drinking a soda long after the time he and his sister usually left the marina for their long walk home. I was up on the foredeck, sanding a couple of boards on the teak decks that needed some touching up. All appeared simply, unjustifiably, clandestinely normal. 

The very picture of domesticity. 

I guess the wandering eyes took in the three of us sitting in the cockpit a bit later, eating dinner together, trying our best to conceal the awkward butterflies that seemed to be hovering all around us. Maybe as it got darker they gave up trying to look toward Sabrina, and didn't see Elise and I sitting in the cockpit, talking at first across from one another, then moving closer together, closer, but not touching. Maybe they listened to the tone of our voices as they drifted through the cool evening air. Could they have discerned that moment when casual conversation moved to the beat of distant times and ancient music and fell into the chromatic chords of intimacy?

Even I would have to admit that later, as night took us in her gentle embrace, it would have been hard to ignore the primal sounds that growled and sighed from deep within Sabrina's amber-glowing belly. Even I was surprised by Elise's gentle fury as years of horror and despair gave way to the simple honesty of one soul's need basking in the warmth of acceptance. But there could have been little doubt, as still waterborne airs were pierced by the arrows of need, that in the womb of this night love found new hearts in which to dwell.

+

As the night wore on, Ron, Rosalita, and Pedro sat in Blade Runner's cozy little interior playing cards, trying to stifle laughs as moans and cries from the boat next door ripped through the air. In time, as quiet returned to the marina, Ron and Pedro took up their glasses and tipped them together, and in conspiratorial shadows made a quiet toast to their success.



I'm feeling my way toward a second part to this story. Let me know what you think.