Free Children of Paradise: A Novel by Fred D'Aguiar Page A

he met few of them on his boat but encountered some in the city, and they were all bossy know-it-alls and seemed cross-eyed when they talked to him, as if looking down their noses at something unsightly hanging from the end of their vision.
    —What makes you think I’m white?
    —Your skin is a dead giveaway, though your jet-black hair is something of a puzzle. Do you have something mixed with your European blood?
    She says she has yet to meet someone who is not tainted with some mixture or other. Her father came from Spain to Florida on business and met her mother, a Miccosukee, in an illegal casino at West Palm Beach. Her mother thought he was an awful gambler, but he stayed at her table just to be dealt cards from her hand with her smile.
    —He lost a lot of money that night, but she slipped him her phone number by dealing seven cards to him in a sequence that she said was an awful-looking hand but a number of some import to him if he cared to remember it. And the rest was history, as they say.
    The captain smiles at this beautiful answer.
    —That explains your hair and your ways.
    —And what exactly do you mean by that, Captain?
    —Well, you seem more open to me as a human being. You don’t see me as black first and human second.
    He wonders if she feels an affinity to nature. He says everyone knows that the tribes in this forest have lived here for thousands of years without interfering with the place, while the Europeans with their enslaved Africans and indentured Indians from South Asia ruined the place in just four hundred years. Right on cue, a barge floats by with a red flag warning them that logs would follow, and they pull to the side as a half mile of felled trees floats past them with hired indigenous tribesmen running acrobatically across the logs to keep them together and hopping back into small motorboats that zip up and down alongside the flotilla of felled trees.
    The captain says he has one more thing to ask her, and ordinarily he would wait a little longer, but the dock for the commune is coming up around the next bend in the river.
    —Trina’s father?
    This makes Joyce laugh. She calls Trina and asks if she would kindly tell the captain about her father. Trina set down her sketchpad.
    —Oh, show me that.
    Trina holds up the double page for the captain, who sees an S for their river filled with logs. Instead of trees, lines of bulldozers are parked along the river’s banks, and instead of flocks in the air, just airplanes.
    —You have a gift, Trina.
    Trina says her mother met her father at college.
    —He was a football star, and he abandoned us for a life of women and drink.
    —Trina!
    —But Mom, that’s what you say about him.
    —I know, but you’re not allowed to repeat it.
    They are smiling, and the captain takes off his hat and raises his eyebrows at the first mate who seems equally amused and mildly shocked. Trina sees none of this and blithely carries on.
    —He looked like you, but you seem a lot nicer.
    This surprises the captain.
    —Like me?
    —Yes, Captain.
    Joyce adds that Trina’s father always maintained that his ancestors were never enslaved.
    —They arrived in Florida as free people from Haiti. He played for a few years and a knee injury ended his career and he got locked up for tax evasion and that was that. He’s back there somewhere, wheeling and dealing and, mercifully, out of our lives.
    —Any regrets?
    —Not a one.
    Joyce hugs Trina. A natural lull follows with some searching out of objects in the river. A log floats like an alligator, just submerged in the water. The current billows and mimics shape-shifting cloud. They pass herons nesting in the mangroves, pure white splotches against bright green and the green rising out of the mineral-stained water.
    A watch repairman who sells clocks and watches and peddles his wares in a cart ignores the No Trespassing sign and tries to sneak around the commune gates. The guards fire at his cart, alarmed by the noise