The Human Tide
   by Garth Buckner


People-smuggling is his trade, and he waits at anchor under the warm-hued waxen sky at sunset for his cargo to come. The Trader watches the yellow air and the steel-blue mat of the sea, watches between the disquieting harmony of these surfaces. He looks out at the sky and at the horizon, the clarity and balance of color, broken by the too-bright, unmitigated frontality of the setting sun, and studies this world for a sign. He watches for the appearance of a mast, or of windshield glass glinting in the last light.

He waits long after the sun has gone, after the pale sky of twilight has gone, long after the dusk becomes black.

The black is disturbed only by the moon and by the dark hypotenuse of a sail across the moon at the horizon's shallow end. A Haitian sloop, unlit and unmarked, her practiced sailors tacking her through the shallow banks, crosses his path to starboard. The Trader just makes out the ragged, homespun cut of the sail in the moonlight, assembled, seemingly, from what was at hand: from strips of multihued canvas, from towels and sheets, from unraveled and rough-woven sugarcane sacks.

The sailors tack again, show the Trader the sloop's port bow, and pass closer, and on this occasion, with the moonshine blue upon them, he can make out the outline of the migrants' heads. He hears the sounds of the floorboards creaking and of the ropes resisting the ocean's force, and he can make out the smell of them. They stink.

He is preoccupied by the scent and so is taken wholly by surprise by the rope uncoiling anticlockwise through the air that thuds to the deck of his boat and quickly begins to vanish in snake fashion from the deck to the sea. He hears the shouts from the migrants and springs to action, grabbing the hawser's frayed tail. It is thick coir rope, made from the coarse fibers of coconut shells. He pulls the length of it to a cleat and ties it off.

The Haitians lower their sail and bring their craft to a halt alongside his own. In the still that follows he hears them murmuring what he calls their boobaly-boo and he hears the rib of their rope as the deckhands haul the slack of it across their gunwale to bring the sloops side by side. Tires tied to nylon are placed over the edges to protect against bumping. The Trader takes the safety off his gaff and rubs his thumb along the sharp nib of it, his club at the ready.

By the moonlight he studies the peasant faces assembled before him and he is certain they have come from a place that lies behind God's back. The fat and the thin press thickly together upon the deck, grasping packages and bundles and tied stacks of sugarcane. The children cling to their mothers' necks, one in a sling and another gripped by a fat arm, barely wearing a colorful shirt, its legs dangling freely and the shirt risen up on the fat arm displaying the little penis and the stubby belly button. The women have prodigious breasts, the space in between which glistens with sweat, and buttocks proportionally heavy. Yet they are colorful in dirty print dresses of orange and yellow and with handkerchiefs around their heads, their picky hair sticking out. Some boast fanciful headgear and veils of strange female concoction, of church-going fashion and straw, of plastic beads, of dyed feathers; one wears fishnet stockings.

The men are small in build and round faced, of a uniform and deep purple-black complexion with high-riding cheekbones. They wear beige baggy pants, plaid or striped shirts, and no shoes, though some have flip-flops. A gangly one wears an ill-fitted suit that hangs limp from his frame and a tie with a Windsor knot. Another stands in his white underpants.

Some among them smoke cigarettes, the coals glowing cherry in their mouths, then carouseling, the Trader thinks, like fireflies in their hands. One man lacks an arm and another is quite mad.

There is a donkey among them, which the Trader will not take, and there are cocks tied by their yellow-brown feet and hanging from the boom. They are fighting cocks or cocks for ritual slaughter.

One among the crew is an albino.

A plank is thrown across the space between the boats and the migrants surge forward. The Trader grabs his club and brandishes it.

He shouts. "Yinna Hyshuns ain't gat no money, yinna ain't gat no passage. I'z only sayin' dis one time."

Crumpled and dirty notes are immediately produced. The migrants traverse the plank with their money in hand, or between their teeth; one woman carries it rolled and tucked into her brassiere. A group of men come bearing roosters by the feet. Others stumble and almost fall. One woman manages halfway and refuses to go further and grips to the wood and wails. Those stuck behind shout at her in a language that is meaningless to the Trader. They shout fiercely and without patience. The fat leg of the one unmoving on the plank falls and the Trader thinks that perhaps the weight of it will cause the entire body to follow, but it does not. An old and squalid woman with yellowed and disfigured teeth takes off her shoe and begins to beat the backside of the frozen form. She begins to chant loudly.

"Voodoo," the Trader mutters.

He counts their money as they come and turns those with too little away. They stand forlorn upon the opposing deck and they insult him. One tries to cross again and the Trader beats the man's hands with his club. For a moment the man remains where he is, crouched upon the plank, and he stares at the Trader. Perhaps he thinks the power of his stare might prove something, demonstrate that he is a man.

"If dat's what he want," says the Trader, and he beats the man harder. The Trader is not having any foolishness.

The beating is greeted by howls of nervous laughter and chattering from those already aboard. The transgressor's eyes slowly melt from defiance to dismay. He retreats with tears down his face.

And now the Trader sees a strange contraption of ropes and harnesses being thrown together on the deck of the Haitian sloop. The donkey is lifted into the air and it brays in protest. Once the animal is clear of the deck the Haitian sailors loosen their boom and swing it out toward the Trader's deck. The package swings toward the Trader's boat, the animal's legs running in the air. He knows already that he is not taking the donkey.

"What yinna doin' wid dat dare horse, hey?"

They look at him and grin and laugh.

"I ain't takin' no horse."

Their grins are halftoothless.

"Don't look so or I ga tell you about your ass."

"Oh no, no, no, boss," they say, but they continue to bring the donkey. They continue to haul on the rope to the boom.

"You ain't hear what I sayin', hey? I tellin' you! No stink horse on m'ship. So yinna bitches ca' swing dat straight back."

The crewmen look at one another and they blankly shrug. The albino takes out a machete and swings it down upon the rope. His blow severs its length in two. The donkey, once held elevated over the water between the two craft, falls into the sea and disappears beneath the dark of the night ocean. They all rush to the side to watch the creature emerge. The Trader says to himself, "Day ain't have to do dat. I ain't mean for dem to have to do dat."

The terror in its eyes, its half-horsish lips pulled back, the yellowed and extending teeth exposed, its hoofs thrash the surface in an attempt to climb upon it, perhaps. The Trader sucks his teeth.

He decides that the money is enough and that the trouble is enough and he loosens the highwayman's hitch that ties the two ships together. Then the Trader pulls the stern anchor so that his craft takes the current and swings on the bow anchor away from the Haitian sloop.

He shows his cargo into the hold and they descend full of their excitement. The cockcarriers quickly tie their birds to the boom. The Trader ushers them down; he hefts his club, ready to demand respect. They smile at the Trader half-toothless smiles and he hates their smell. When the hold is full he closes the hatch and he padlocks it.

But for the roosters the Trader has the deck and the night to himself once more and he looks back to the departing Haitian sloop. Its crew move as dark apparitions in the night, but for the albino, who alone stands out. They have the sail back up but the wind is shallow and the canvas does not fill so they make little speed and no wake.

He hears the other boat strain at its task and bear itself away. He does not hear the donkey anymore. So the boat passes, back to blackness and to the dark of the far-gone century from which he might suppose they had come.

The night is still and clear with the moon and the clean light of the pinpoint stars reflected in skating swirls upon the flat ebony sea.

"No wind," he says.

He sits on his box and leans his weight against the tiller. The ship shudders to the rhythm of the diesel engine. He is pleased for the smell of the fuel, which overcomes the smell of his cargo, and for the sound of the engine. A sound that rises above everything else so that he thinks he is alone and that whatever is below deck is below consideration.

He gets a fire going in his cook box and takes down a dried snapper for his dinner. He prepares the fish on the sideboard while he waits for the coals to get good and hot.

They go on all that night, a lone sloop progressing under the spangle-arched turn of the heavens, the forms of the zodiac mounting the sky, then descending and only Polaris steady and firm.

He studies no charts and his ship carries no navigational equipment; he follows the stars, which are sure enough, and after these he follows his instinct.

The Haitians had been slow in arriving and now he knows he will miss the tides he needs. Already it has turned and he can feel the current push against his port side as the expanse of the shallow banks empties into the fathoms-deep bowl of the sound. The current will soon rip through the cuts between the cays that lie off his starboard.

As the waters lower about him the sandbanks surface. The moon has mounted the arch of the world and it sparkles multiformed and splintered in the India ink sea. The banks empty themselves about him, exposing the soft floor. The bar emerges as the humps of a sea creature. The humps join to a ribbon and the ribbon becomes a new land. It grows from the waters naked and clean, without life and without corruption. It spreads out pristine and haloed in the moonlight across his passage. The Trader admires its quicksilver glint and he curses it too.

He throttles the diesel engine back and he stands upon his box for a clear vantage over the rising shallows. The problem with the moon is the way its light sparkles upon the surface and blinds him in part to the bottoms. He bites his lower lip; he makes out some forms and he veers from these and he guesses at other forms. He knows he is guessing more than knowing. The forms are sandbanks, shoals and reefs. He strains on his toe tips, grasps the boom, and half hauls himself up; he stares ahead and he does not even blink.

He sees the sands rise in the waters in soft hillocks, inches from the surface. He throws the engine throttle into reverse and the propeller blades churn the other way. He watches his wake and he can just see sand rising in billowed clouds from the too-near sea floor. Charting another course he places the engine back into gear and the craft jolts forward. Forward into the bar.

There is no sound at impact, the grains moving aside for the ship and mutely re-forming around her hull. But the Trader feels it, he knows his ship. And he curses.

"Mudda-fuck!" He throws the throttle into reverse. The ship complains and the stern digs itself down into the water. "Bitch!" He shouts. "You 'tink you bad, hey? You 'tink you bad? Bitch! You ain't bad! I ga show you man now!" He presses down on the throttle and the reverse engines howl. But she goes nowhere. She is aground. He rubs the spittle from his lips with the back of his hand. Mumbles, "Well mudda-fuck!" And he cuts the engine into neutral and then he cuts it off and sits there in odd silence upon his box and stares toward a middle distance where nothing lies in focus, where shapes run motley and liquid and uncontained.

"Now don't mess!" he shouts to no one in particular. He jumps up from his box, his key chain a-jangle in his palm and he strides to the hatch. He unlocks it and draws the chain aside, the links clicking rhythmically upon the deck. He swings back the hatch. The smell of them is thick and he turns aside to breathe. Then he squats, rubs his half-beard, and addresses them.

"Okay! I got somethin' ta say, right. Yinna listen up an' e'ryt'ing cool!" he says. "Safe. Dis da 'ting, we dun buck up into one sandbar an' shit, lone sandbar, an' bitch got we tight, lucky we ain't all mash up and kabunkle up like so, all high and dry and so on an' so forth. So, yinna bes' get off and inta da water so she ca' float free. E'ryt'ing straight?"

They look up at him from the stagnant darkness. He knows the tide will drop lower and that a ship aground will draw attention. It is vital he get afloat and fast.

"E'rybody out!" he shouts, curling his fist to a hitcher's stance and thumbing it over his shoulder. "Out! Out! Out!"

The first of them brings his head above the rim of the hold and surveys the world. He tenses. He is an animal testing the wind. He speaks down to the others and there is a general murmur from below, and then he grins up at the Trader. They come up one by one. Soon they are all on deck, assembled in delight before the view.

"Get off dis boat!" says the Trader.

They are gawking now and one among them has taken up a song and it is clear that they have not even the first inkling that they are aground. He takes one of them by the arm and leads him to the gunwale and his captive is most reluctant to go. The Trader points into the sea and the Haitian hesitantly peers over.

"See, I tellin' you, we's aground."

"Okay sah!"

"All yinna need ta get in da water so she ca' float free."

"Okay!"

And he is holding the man above the elbow and the rest of the man's arm is hanging limp and there is the appearance about him of a man awaiting an injection.

"Okay?" Asks the Trader.

"Okay!" Says the Haitian.

They stand there and they look at each other and then the Haitian smiles, turns, and goes back to stand with the others.

"Get in da water!" the Trader shouts. "Get in!" He grabs one and he brings her to the side. He throws her off. Others gather at the edge to see what has come of her. There are too many at the side and the boat begins to tip. He gets them in the backsides, a swift kick and they are over. There falls upon them a sense of dread, an understanding that the boss man has done lost his mind, that they are all to be sent to the watery demons. They howl as they scramble over the masts and the crawfish cages, over his cook box, which they send a-tumbling, causing the coals to run and roll across the aft deck. They climb the mast as nimbly as they might climb a coconut tree. They crouch up in the rigging and stare wide-eyed down at him.

The Trader catches them by the arm, the leg, by trailing clothing, and he sends them over. He is a berserker now, his face all a-drip with sweat. Many of them, without shoes, are dancing upon the spilled coals. Small fires start and the boat becomes a wake boat decorated with flame.

"Mudda-fuck!" he shouts.

He grabs a bucket and ties a length of rope to it and throws it overboard and hauls it, water filled, aboard again and begins dousing the flames. The charred wood spits and hisses and steams. He hauls the bucket up and he flushes the flames down. The fires go out. The cocks that hang from the boom, their feathers all a-ruffle and half shed, gaze at him with alarm from the one-eyed sides of their heads. Part of the sail hangs in ruined and loony tatters.

The Trader picks up his feet and walks over to the side of the boat and stares down. By the light of the solitary moon he sees them gathered together in silent assembly, standing to their knees in water in the shallows of the bank. The women have their skirts hoisted up around their thighs. The Trader retrieves a rope ladder from a cubbyhole, secures an end, and casts the other down the planked side of his craft. He swings himself down into the warm waters.

He turns and finds where the bow is embedded and sees that it is not too, too bad and that with any luck they might make it. He looks back at them and then at his task. He places his shoulder against the bow and first shores up his stance, then leans his weight into it and finally begins to work at it with all his strength. It does not move. He pauses, gathers himself, his breath, and he heaves once again. And once again it remains as before.

It is now that the Haitian men begin to gather around him and to lend their shoulders to it. There are many hands and many backs and they all seek a hold upon the rough-honed surface. They gather together and they push with him. A man begins a chant between the heaves. He chants and then they push.

The boat budges and then it shifts.

"Le's go, sweetness!" shouts the Trader to the hulk of it.

The women take up a great chorus of tongue clacking to encourage the men. The men push out and up, they heave. They are rewarded. The boat is pushed free and they all stagger or fall forward into the water with the momentum. A shout of thanksgiving rises from all and there follows a great deal of backslapping and praising. They stop to give thanks to the Lord and to His mercy and deliverance.

There is still the matter of navigating the sandbar. The Trader finds for the young boys sticks from the sloop's ballast so they can probe the depths. He measures the sticks to the required mark and ties cotton strips off upon them. He sends the boys off ahead to probe and to chart a course. He then finds his longest rope, feeds it through the deadeye at the bow, and ties knots at intervals down the line. He takes up the end of one rope and men take up other places at each knot and following the children's stakes they set about crossing the bar, hauling the sloop behind.

Even in the nighttime the waters they cross are gin-clear, with the moonlight filigreed upon the sand and small shells, and they can make out the large disks of spent sand dollars crunching beneath their feet, the starfish lying in the ribbed sand red and orange, and the clear-skinned jacks darting between their feet.

The men lay the ropes across their backs and heave. The women hold the stern to keep the length of her straight. Their feet tread in tandem and kick up the sands. The sands cloud the clear night waters. So much so that their feet fall upon the current-sharpened edges of dog tooth rocks. The men wince and shift their weight to their other foot and stand as flamingos with the damaged foot held entirely above the water, then they gather their manhood and return to their task. One treads upon a sleeping ray and is lucky indeed to escape without being stung. The ray ascends from the bottom in rippled flight to the surface until only the meniscus streams over its opal back. The men drop the ropes in surprise at its appearance, but soon they calm and return to their task.

They skirt the banks near the black edge of a storm backlit by the moon. The thunderhead hangs immobile in the summer night air, moist and still. The lightning comes in pulses, not in forks or blankets; it glows pumpkin-eyed and jack-o'-lantern in orange and fuchsia; it beats at the center of the thunderhead. The rains cut a dark and impenetrable slant toward the ocean just beyond the sloop and the thunder rolls low across the surface, taking moments to reach them after the light show passes.

They find the deeper water and a way around the storm. The Trader lets the people linger about the deck. The work in the water has washed them and they no longer smell quite so badly.

The Trader sits worn out upon his box at the tiller with the engine beating its heartbeat. He watches his course. The stars and the moon tell him which way to go.

The people fall asleep and soon the Trader falls asleep too.

He wakes. The night is still and shining metal black with the moon gone now. He wakes to a quiet panic deep in himself, to the sight of a warship anchored to his starboard and lit up dazzlingly with spotlights. It is awesome and dreadful before him. The severity of the angle of its bow, the mounted machine gun, the killing machinery, the view of it drives the air from him and he is overwhelmed with desperation. The Trader prepares for the lights to swing upon him, certain that he is caught. Looking at his cargo asleep across the deck he knows there is no excuse. This is it, he thinks. This must be the end. He holds his breath as if holding his breath would make the difference. The Trader's craft slips on toward the looming warship and the two craft close and then begin to pass.

Slowly the distance between the boats widens. As they slip by and into the shroud of night beyond the brilliance of the spotlights the Trader thinks, they never saw me, they never did.

Late in the night the sloop enters the heavy traffic of the sea-lanes. The Trader keeps a sharp eye out. He is running without lights in the hope of avoiding detection. He tries to move the Haitians below deck. But they will not go below and now he lacks the strength to make them. He is too tired. The Haitians crouch behind the gunwale to keep themselves hidden while they peer out.

There are many boats and they are tremendous. They are glowing in bright halos from beyond the horizon, always several of them at once and in every direction.

The Trader steers clear of them, afraid of being sighted. The Haitians are frightened and some do go below. They pop their heads back out of the hatch and beckon in whispers and hand gestures that the others should follow. But the others remain on deck, clearly fearful of the brilliant ships, but perhaps unwilling to abandon their first glimpse of the world they have risked so much for.

Some way out offshore the Trader stops the engine and they take the mast down to avoid detection. They lay it down the length of the craft and the Trader lashes it tightly down with sheer lashing knots. The boat sits there a moment in the darkness with only the black sea around it and no sign of land or light but for the lights of other ships. The Haitians stare out over the blackness ahead of them and the Trader thinks he can feel their anticipation, their want for the land ahead.

In the silence the boat rocks lightly in the swells. The Haitians laugh nervously and with growing anticipation.

"Hush yinna mouth," the Trader quietly tells them.

Then he goes below and starts the diesel engine up once more. It thuds rhythmically in the bowels of the boat. The Trader throws the gears and they are moving again, on toward the unseen country.

The people huddle together at the bow, their backs to the Trader; they stare always ahead. They stare toward where the land will appear. The earth seems unearthly, the curve of it more profound, the dip in the horizon deeper tonight, the sky going further.

Out of the middle darkness there comes a yellow glow across the border of the sea and the sky. Lights emerge slowly as the hours pass. First the beacons and the towers and then the brilliant blue-and-white neon necklace of the city itself. As they come closer there are flashing lights, red and white, lights in neon and halogen.

Finally there are the high beams of the cars and the searchlights advertising a sale probing the dark, the lights of skyscrapers, their tops blinking with red warning lights, the running lights of uncounted craft, ships, freighters, liners, and the lights of the circling planes such that his boat goes unobserved among a host of comings and goings.

When he decides he has gone close enough and will go no further the Trader puts the engine in neutral. He sells them his skiff and makes a good profit. They bring the small boat to the side and lower it into the water and tie it to the sloop with rope. He hurries them along, eager to get them going and turn back. They get in with difficulty and stow their few things without thought or experience.

The last to get in, an old woman, holds on to the Trader's gunwale with an iron grip. The others call to her to let go but she does not. The Trader unties the rope that holds the dinghy to the sloop from its cleat and casts the line down on their little deck. Still the old woman hangs on. She is all that is connecting the two craft now. A single swell could separate the two boats and drop the woman in the water. The Trader looks down on her hand clenched tightly onto the wood. Then he looks at her face and sees that she is crying.

The Haitians pry her fingers off and place the old woman at the center of the dinghy where they wrap her in a cloak. Then they turn and row toward the yellow string of spangled lights. Most of the people huddle together in the middle of the small craft, keeping their centers of gravity low, a few pulling on the oars as best they can.

The Trader watches the small white transom of the little boat, heart-shaped and alone, and when the sea is empty of it he watches the lights, strung out throbbing and endless and thick upon the horizon, laid clean and still upon the heart of night.

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