Bob thinks, I’m glad. It’s over and done with now, and no matter what happens, I’m glad. He fights a sudden impulse to drop his hands to his sides, to turn and face the silent men behind him and say, “Thank you,” but he knows he must not move, he must stand here on the edge of the pier, a prisoner with his hands crossed over the top of his head, or he will be shot dead. He must act the part of a man who, if given the chance, would flee, even though he feels half in love with these grim, dough-faced men, deeply grateful to them, as if they are members of a search party that, long after he gave up hope of ever being found again, has located him at last. It’s as if, by holding guns on him and arresting him and searching his boat, they have brought him back into the community of man, and he is so profoundly grateful to them for it that if he did drop his hands and turned and stepped
forward, hands extended, to thank them, and if, to stop him, they fired their shotguns into his chest, it would not be a terrible thing.
But this is not to be. For no sooner have the policemen welcomed Bob Dubois back into the community than they have rejected him again, sent home in his car, with his awful secret undetected, leaving him his stinging visions of black children and women and old and young men, helpless, history-weakened people battered and driven down to death by the waves, human faces with mouths begging for what’s an absolute right, pleading for help, eyes bulging in horror as they realize what has happened to them and suddenly discover their terrible fate, to be drowned at sea, to be cast into deep, storm-torn waters at night by a white man claiming to act as their friend and savior and a black man claiming to help him at it. This is an ordinary variation of an ancient story on this part of the planet, so ordinary that even Bob Dubois knows it, and now it’s his story as well, and he knows that too.
The police finally conclude that, because of the half ounce of grass wrapped in brown paper and the unexplained thirty-two hundred dollars in cash at the bottom of Tyrone’s blue Eastern Airlines flight bag, they can charge Tyrone with possession of a controlled substance and make arrangements to charge him with intent to sell it. But shortly afterwards, in Marathon, while booking him, they discover that he is a Jamaican national with no visa, so they simply take away his money and turn him over to Immigration and Naturalization in Miami for deportation.
As for Bob, they do not believe that he is as his friend and business partner Avery Boone insists, that is, innocent of the charges they have placed against Boone himself, which charges result from Ave’s attempt the night before to deliver three-quarters of a pound of uncut cocaine to a man employed by the Federal Narcotics Commission. They do not believe that anyone, especially a man with a boat, can rub as closely to Ave’s business as Bob has and not also be profiting from it. There is no clean evidence that links Bob to Ave’s drug smuggling and sales, however, just as there is nothing and no one to tie the
girl who calls herself Honduras to the trade, so both Bob and Honduras are let go. With Ave’s van, like both his boats, now impounded and his condominium instantly repossessed by the bank, Honduras packs her duffel and hitches down Route 1 to Key West, where by the following sunset she has moved into a beach house owned by a screenwriter who spends his winters on the Keys bonefishing and phoning his wife up in Michigan every few days to report on his loneliness. Unable to make bail, Ave mopes in jail in Marathon. Bob, reluctantly, goes home.
Bob lays the newspaper down on the kitchen table. There is a photograph above the article, and he studies it for a moment as if trying to memorize every element of the picture, as if preparing to draw a copy for himself. With his fingertip he traces the dark line between the white beach and the gray sea, from the upper right corner diagonally across to the lower left. Then he traces the outline of the black body lying face down on the beach, a woman, her arms folded under her chest, the soles of her bare feet facing the camera.
“Awful, isn’t it?” Elaine says, looking over his shoulder from the sink, where she stands, eggy plate in hand, cleaning the breakfast dishes while Robbie takes his morning nap. The girls have left for school. Bob has been home for a day and a night now, since being released by the police, but he has not slept. He’s reading this morning’s newspaper for the fifth or sixth time, smoking his third pack of cigarettes since walking in the door yesterday at ten, bleary-eyed, limp-limbed and, for the most part, silent.
He didn’t have to tell her about Ave. She’d already been informed by the police the previous evening, when, after arresting him in a bar in Key Largo, they’d raided Ave’s apartment, detained Honduras, impounded the
Angel Blue
and gone looking for Bob, Tyrone and the
Belinda Blue
. Confident that Bob was in no way involved in Ave’s smuggling and drug selling, Elaine nonetheless was terrified for him. She repeated to the police what Bob had told her, that he’d gone to New Providence in the Bahamas to take a large
party of French Canadians out tarpon fishing and would return the next morning. When the police had finally seemed to believe her and had driven off, she got down on her knees right there in the living room and prayed straight out that Bob had not unknowingly allowed the
Belinda Blue
to carry drugs for Ave. Bob was capable of that, she knew. He’s not stupid, she thought, and he’s not naive about Ave’s business, not anymore, but even so, she knew that his capacity to behave as if he were both was great. His arrival home, then, relieved her, as if a terrible and likely disaster had been barely but wholly avoided.
His behavior afterwards confused her, however, and then it began to frighten her. He went out around noon and bought copies of all the newspapers he could find, the
Miami Herald,
the
Marathon Keynoter,
the
Key West Citizen,
examined each one carefully, and apparently not finding what he was searching for, tossed them all into the trash can under the sink. Elaine assumed he was looking for accounts of Ave’s arrest.
“It won’t be in the papers till tomorrow,” she told him. “Or tonight at the earliest. If then. They don’t write about those things anymore, they’re so common.”
“What things?” he snapped. He had turned on the radio and was spinning the dial rapidly past music, stopping for a few seconds whenever he found a news broadcast, then, when it turned out to be a weather or sports report, moving impatiently on.
“You know. Drugs. Except when it’s millions of dollars’ worth. Ave’s not one of those big-time drug dealers, I’m sure. Which means he’ll probably have to go to jail. It’s always the big guys who get off, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s awful, though,” she said, her voice going tender. “I know how you must feel. I feel it too.”
“About what?”
“Ave. Him going to jail.”
“Yeah. He’ll do okay, though. A couple of years, maybe.”
“But then he’ll have to start all over again,” she said. “With nothing.” She stood behind him, her hands lightly kneading his taut shoulders, while he went on fiddling with the radio. “Why don’t you try to sleep? You must be exhausted after all this. Otherwise, you won’t be able to stay awake tonight when I’m at work….”
“I’ll stay awake,” he said, cutting her off.
And, indeed, he did stay awake. He lay down in the kids’ room and tried to nap while Elaine ironed in the living room, but in five minutes he was back in the kitchen, flipping the dial of the radio back and forth, then drinking beer and smoking cigarettes, pacing from room to room in the trailer and outside in the cluttered yard, walking to the sea, where, lost in a reverie, he’d stand a moment, then quickly step away, as if discovering he’d walked to the edge of a cliff.
He was shuffling back toward the trailer when he saw his daughters coming toward him along the sandy lane from the school bus stop. Emma waved and walked faster toward him, but Ruthie showed no sign of recognition and fell behind her younger sister.
Bob scooped Emma into his arms, lifted her up and leaned his weight against the front fender of the car. “Hi, baby. How’d it go? Good day at school? You like kindergarten?”
“Yeah,” she said, and shoving a fistful of crumpled paper in his face, she said, “Look! I got a star for drawing.” Then she wrinkled up her face and pulled away. “Yuck, Daddy! Whiskers!”
Bob put her down, spread out the sheet of paper and studied her drawing for a moment, lollipop people in front of a rectangle that, despite the absence of windows and doors, was clearly meant to represent their trailer. The broad crayon strokes against tan, pulpy paper had caught with precision the faded shade of flaking yellow. In the foreground, there were five stick figures of various sizes with large, disk-like heads, all but one of the five, the tiniest, wearing grim faces, mouths that were straight lines, eyebrows pointing down in scowls.
“Who’s the happy one here?” Bob asked. “The little guy.”
“Robbie. That’s Robbie.”
“How come he’s the only one who’s happy?” Ruthie had come
up to them and stood silently behind Emma and peered anxiously back over her shoulder at the trailer, as if expecting someone to come out the door and scold her.
“Hi, Roots,” Bob said. “How’s it going?”
She turned and faced him, her dark head a heavy blossom on a thin stalk.
“You okay?” Bob said too quickly.
She nodded.
“Good day?”
Emma looked at the ground, as if embarrassed by her older sister, who nodded again, silent and withdrawn.
“Did you see Emma’s drawing?” Bob asked. “Isn’t it terrific? Look, here’s Robbie, smiling to beat the band.” He held the sheet of paper out before her and pointed with his finger at the figure that was Robbie. Ruthie raised her eyes and glanced at the drawing.
“Which one’s Ruthie?” Bob asked, turning to Emma. “It’s hard to tell.” Indeed, of the five figures, the three in the center were as alike as triplets, all with sour expressions and masses of dark curls on their heads. The tiny, bald, grinning figure on the left was the baby, of course, and the large, bald, frowning figure on the right, though the same size as the triplets, was clearly Bob. The three females in the center, as grim and harsh-looking as Furies, were drawn exactly alike.
“That’s Mama,” Emma said, pointing at the Fury standing next to Bob. “And that’s Ruthie. I’m next.”
Ruthie’s interest in the picture suddenly flared, and she edged closer and seemed about to smile.
“How come only Robbie’s little? All the rest of us are the same size,” Bob said. He could see them now, all five of them, exactly as Emma had. The Dubois Family—an angry male out on the right and, despite his proximity to the others, a solitary, who’s either in command of the others or their surly slave; then three angry females at the center; and last, as solitary as the first, a male, but half the size of the others and wearing a silly grin on his face.
“Well … Robbie’s a baby,” Emma said.
“He doesn’t know anything yet,” Ruthie added in a low voice.
To Bob, the three females seemed to be glancing toward the man, as if angry at him, whereas the man, like the baby, seemed to be looking straight out at the world. “Who’re you guys mad at?” Bob asked. “You all look so mad.”
“I don’t know,” Emma said slowly. “I think … I think everybody’s worried. That’s why Robbie’s smiling. He’s not worried yet. He’s only a baby.”
“Well, what’re we worried about?” Bob asked. “The way all you guys are looking at me, you must think
I’m
the one who made you worry or something.” He laughed, but it was thin.
“No. We’re just worried, that’s all. About things. School and stuff, and supper. Stuff like that …”
“You’re not mad at
me,
then?”
“No,” Ruthie pronounced.
“I’ll make another picture later,” Emma said, and grabbing the sheet of paper, she started for the trailer. “One that shows us happy. Like Robbie.” Ruthie turned and followed, her sweater, held by one sleeve, dragging the ground behind her.
“That’s all right,” Bob said. “This one’s fine. I like this one fine.”
Then he, too, entered the trailer. He told Elaine he was going up to Islamorada for the evening papers, grabbed a beer from the refrigerator and went out again.
“Take the girls with you!” Elaine called through the screened door.
“They don’t want to go,” he said, and kept moving.
Elaine turned to her daughters, both already in front of the TV, watching a soap opera. “Don’t you want to go to the store with Daddy?”
“No,” Ruthie said without turning.
“Emma?”
“Nope.”
Robbie was crying loudly now from the bedroom. “Ruthie, go change your brother’s diapers and bring him out here.”
Ruthie didn’t respond.
“Ruth! You heard me!”
In silence, the girl got up, her eyes fixed on the TV screen, and edged backwards from the room.
“For God’s sake,
move!
The baby’s crying and wet!” She slammed the iron back and forth over the wrinkled blouse, muttering to herself as she worked, “This family … this damned family. The way we ignore everyone around here …”
Ruthie returned carrying Robbie and deposited him like a teddy bear in the plastic playpen in the center of the room. Unable to sit yet, he immediately collapsed into a reddening heap. By the time Ruthie had returned to her seat on the floor in front of the TV, the baby was howling.
Elaine stood at the ironing board and watched him. Ruthie sucked her thumb and stared at the doctor and nurse making love on leather upholstered furniture in the doctor’s paneled, book-lined office. Emma leaned forward and turned up the volume.
At the Whale Harbor Tackle Shop, Bob went down the row of newspaper-dispensing racks and bought the two Miami papers and the Marathon paper, and standing outside the store, leafed quickly through all three. There was nothing about the Haitians in any of them.
Maybe it never happened, he let himself think. Maybe it was a nightmare, some kind of hallucination, a craziness worse than anything I’ve ever experienced before. Is that possible? he wondered. Nothing else seemed real to him now. And for a moment at least, the split made it easy for him to believe that the part of his life which now seemed most vivid and clear to him—the trip over to New Providence, the long wait in the bay and then the arrival of the Haitians in the dinghy with Tyrone, the trip back across the straits, the sudden storm off Sunny Isles, the arrival of the coast guard cutter, and finally that
awful moment when the Haitians leaped into the sea—all that might well have been experienced by Bob on a different plane of reality than the plane where everything else was taking place: Elaine and the children, home, groceries, laundry, television, a can of Schlitz from the refrigerator, work, the
Belinda Blue
, Ave, Ave’s arrest, Tyrone’s arrest, Honduras’s disappearance, the seizure of the boats. These things made sense. They weren’t all happy things, but they could be lived with somehow. Even the particular terrible consequences of Ave’s arrest, that is, Bob’s sudden unemployment, seemed likely, bland, vague and conditional to him, of a piece somehow with Elaine’s familiar complaints about money, his irritation and embarrassment at his wife’s having to work nights as a waitress, his anxiety over Ruthie’s deepening strangeness, his ongoing disappointment and bewildered surprise at his own inadequacy.