Free The Boat by Nam Le Page B

of light in the distance.
    El Padre makes a quick gesture with one hand. I spin around: another guard holding a submachine gun is jogging toward me. I fumble against the leathery skin of the grenade in my pocket and maneuver it between my fingers: the pin.
    Better than basuco , says El Padre. He continues to look out over the hill. It is only when the guard is next to me that I realize he is holding out a spliff. El Padre takes it from him, takes a long drag, then holds it out to me.
    I nod – I am unable to speak – and unclench my fingers from the pin of the grenade. When I draw in the smoke it rushes deeper and deeper, without seeming to stop, into the cavities of my body.
    Much cleaner, no?
    He smiles now: a charming host. In the deflected light, I notice for the first time a fiabbiness in his cheeks. His braided hair looks wet. We stand on the balcony and look out over the blacked-out barrio. There are valleys out there, and swells, and rises, all unseen by our eyes. The night air gives off traces of wood smoke, sewage. In the immediate candlelight, the glass on top of the walls glimmers hints of every color, and it is beautiful. For a moment I imagine the house is a ship floating on the silent ocean, high in the wind. This thought calms me, which is strange, for I have never seen the ocean – and I am reminded of evenings when I have stood in the cobbled yard outside my mother's back window, watching her asleep with her makeup on, or taking her medicine with aguardiente when she thinks no one sees, or coming out of the glowing bathroom with her hands in her hair, a towel and a quick unthinking motion. It calms me, watching her like this.
    El Padre says something. His words splinter endlessly down the dark well of my thoughts. Vamonos , he is saying. Vamonos , I need something to warm my stomach.
    I look at his smiling face, the black moons of his eyes.
    Come on, he says. I have a special room for drinking. We will wait for your friend there.
    The two guards on the balcony do not move.
    We will toast your farewell, says El Padre. I hear you like to drink. He begins to walk indoors. Where will you go? Have you decided?
    I don't know, I say. Maybe Cartagena .
    Cartagena , he repeats. Then he beckons, and the two guards fall into line behind me. Cartagena , I think, where Hernando waits for me. Even now, at the last, we are connected. I can feel Claudia's teeth, her dry lips against my mouth. I rotate the grenade in my pocket – Hail Mary, I think – my palms slippery with sweat – and finally, when my thumb finds traction on the safety lever, I thread my middle finger through the pin and pull it out, hard. It falls free. El Padre looks back at me and smiles.
    So, he asks, have you ever been there?
    Gripping the lever tightly, I follow my benefactor into the house. A third guard opens a door from the main office and goes in ahead. No candlelight shines from inside. El Padre goes next and I go after him, as though deep into the throat of a cave, the two guards unfailingly behind me. The smell of Damita's perfume is strong in the darkness. Somewhere in front of me, El Padre's voice asks again about Cartagena , and this time I say, No, and as I say it, my thumb wet and unsteady on the lever, the memory returns to me, the picture as I have imagined it so many times in the past. Luis is sitting on the old colonial wall and looking out toward the ocean. As the sun rises, he says, you can see ten black lines leading into the steel gray water, each line maybe twenty meters apart, and as the water turns orange, then red, you can see that each line is made up of small black shapes and that they are moving away from the water, together, all in harmony, and then as the sun rises higher on your right you can see that each black shape is a man, there are hundreds of them, and they are hauling one enormous fishing net in from the ocean, slowly, step by step.

Meeting Elise
     

    SHE'S COMING TODAY. It's 11:40 a.m. and I can feel my