Russell Banks - Continental Drift

Tyrone, the Jamaican, greets them as they arrive at the beach, and he takes each of them off a few steps from the others to complete his business with them privately, for he has agreed with them separately on the cost of the journey. When he has obtained all the money, he divides it into two packets, one thicker than the other. The thicker packet he will turn over to Dubois, telling him that’s all he was able to extract from them. The other, smaller packet he will keep in a separate pocket for himself. He feels no guilt for this; without him, Dubois would have nothing to show for his trip from the Keys but a sunburn and a gasoline bill at the marina in Coral Harbour.

When the Haitians have assembled on the beach, Tyrone drags the dinghy out of the bushes and across the gray sand to the water. He jumps in, seats himself at the stern and points out the first six and waves them over toward the bow of the boat.

He hollers to the boy, Dorsinville, and instructs him to hold the bow and help the others into the boat, and the boy jumps to the task. First the old lady and the young woman with her two children come aboard, then an old man going to Florida to be with his son and daughter, and a woman whose husband went over four years ago, and a young man whose older brother is in New York.

Tyrone signals the boy to push the boat out, which he does, and then he starts the motor, brings the boat around toward the sandbar, and in seconds he has the boat slicing through the still, velvety-gray water of the bay toward the Belinda Blue .

It’s their faces that agitate him, Bob decides, and then he changes his mind: No, it’s the way they move, silent as sheep and careful not to touch what the act of climbing aboard does not require them to touch. They bunch together like gazelles, nervous but apparently not frightened, and too shy to reveal their curiosity, so that their eyes seem glazed slightly, as if they’ve been stunned by the sight of the Belinda Blue, the tall, bulky white man standing on the deck reaching out his hand to help them board from the dinghy, the spaciousness of the boat, its long afterdeck and the cabin forward, which they glance at but do not examine, and over the cabin, the bridge, where the wheel and other controls are located, a radio squawking static and a red scanner light dancing back and forth along a band of numbers.

They seem so fragile to Bob, so delicate and sensitive, that he’s suddenly frightened for them. Even the young men, with their hair cut close to the skull, seem fragile. He wants to reassure them somehow, to say that nothing will hurt them as long as they are under his care, nothing, not man or beast or act of God. But he knows he can’t even tell them where they are going, what time it is, what his name is, not with the half-dozen words and phrases of Québécois he learned by accident as a child, learned, despite his father’s prohibition against speaking French, from boys at school and old women at LeGrand’s grocery store on Moody Street and old men fishing from the bridge over the Catamount River. He suddenly pictures the huge green and white sign on Route 93 north at the state line between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, Bienvenu au New Hampshire, and he says to the Haitians, “Bienvenu au Belinda Blue!” They turn their coal-black faces toward him, as if wanting to hear more, and when Bob merely smiles, they look down.

The boat is crowded now, more like a ferry than a fishing boat, Bob thinks. Tyrone has come aboard and is tying the dinghy to the stern. “We got to get up a cover,” he says. He says it without looking at Bob, as if he thinks the two of them are alone on the boat.

“A cover?”

Tyrone stands, shakes out his stubby dreadlocks and comes forward to Bob, who’s poised at the foot of the ladder, about to climb to the bridge and start the engine. The sun will be up, it will soon be daylight, the Jamaican explains slowly, as if talking to a child. More worrisome than the sun and heat, if they don’t cover their cargo, they’ll be spotted by a plane or helicopter, especially later in the straits. The Bahamians won’t bother us; they’re relieved to see the Haitians go. It’s the Americans we have to worry about.

Bob nods somberly, though he resents the way the Jamaican speaks to him. In fact, he’s found it difficult to like Tyrone since he discovered the man’s connection with smuggling, first drugs with Ave and now Haitians with him. He’s not sure why this should be so, for after all, he and Ave are even more directly involved with the trade than he is, but he thinks it has something to do with Tyrone’s being black. It’s not natural, somehow. He felt the same odd judgment come over him one morning out on Florida Bay a few weeks ago, when Bob asked Tyrone about the dreadlocks, asked him why the Rastafarians grew their hair into tubes, something he’d been wondering about since the first day he saw them.

Tyrone smiled slyly and said that white girls liked it that way.

“Oh,” Bob said. “I thought it was … you know, religious.”

“For some, sure, mon. All dat Marcus Garvey song ’n’ dance. But de white gals, mon, dem don’t want to deal wid no skinhead, dem want to deal wid Natty Dread, mon. Got to have locks, got to have plenty spliff, got to say, ‘I and I,’ sometimes. Dat way dem know you a Jamaican black mon, not de udder kind. Den you got plenty beef,” he said laughing. “Too much beef! Oh, too much beef, mon!”

Together, Bob and Tyrone rig a tarpaulin cover over the deck, stretching it taut aft from the cabin and tying it at the corners, so that it’s head-high at the cabin and waist-high at the stern. When they’re satisfied with the job, Tyrone herds the Haitians under the tarp, forcing most of them to squat below the low end, warning them that if they don’t huddle together back there, they’ll be caught by the police and thrown in jail. They understand and follow his orders quickly and efficiently.

Tyrone scrambles forward to pull up the anchor, and Bob climbs up to the bridge and starts the engine. It gurgles and chuckles and then smooths out, and when Tyrone waves up to him, Bob hits the throttle, and the aft end of the loaded boat dips, the bow rises, and the Belinda Blue moves out of the bay, cuts northwest along the shore of New Providence past Clifton Point, where she edges back slightly to the west and heads into open sea. The sun is two hands above the horizon now, and the blue-green water glitters like a field of crinkled steel. Gulls dart across the wake, frigate birds drift past far overhead and a school of flying fish loops by on the starboard side.

It’s a beautiful day, Bob thinks, and he says it, calls it out to Tyrone, who’s perched out on the foredeck coiling the anchor line. “It’s a beautiful day!”

The Jamaican looks up at him, cups his ear and says, “What?”

“It’s a beautiful day!”

The Jamaican nods and goes back to work.

With the extra weight of the Haitians aboard, the Belinda Blue wallows a bit and sits somewhat low in the water, but the day is calm, and she rides the swells and small waves with ease. Far to the south, the northern tip of Andros Island lifts like a whale, passes slowly to the east and drops again. The sun is higher now, and Bob is hot up on the bridge. He calls down to Tyrone, who’s in the cabin stretched out on a bunk, and asks him to bring him a beer. A few seconds later, Tyrone, shirtless, hands up a can of Schlitz, frosty and wet from the ice.

“Whaddaya think, the Haitians, they thirsty?”