A Story for The Day of the Dead

I wrote a short story a few years ago about the spirits that are active on The Day of the Dead, which is today. I’m running two excerpts from the story. Fernando runs a tour boat out of Miami’s Biscayne Bay. He lives in a high-rise there with his wife, Doris, who’s a self-centered bully. She tricks Fernando into smuggling a load of Cubans into Florida, under the guise that one of them is her cousin Ana, who’s in her seventh month of  a high-risk pregnancy. At this point in the story, Fernando realizes that Doris had negotiated with the corrupt Tony to swindle the people on the boat of all their money and to use Fernando to do it. Despite his rancor, he is determined to bring the people on board his boat safely into harbor in Miami. Suddenly, a storm blows in…

Storm over Biscayne Bay.

THE BALANCE OF POWER

Fernando watched Jaime lower the front of his body over the side to reach the anchor. Suddenly, he arched his back so that his arms flailed up and away from the side of the boat and his legs slipped forward, nearly pitching him headlong into the sea. “Madre, mío,” he screamed.

Fernando ran forward to grab Jaime’s feet. He pulled the boy back into the boat by the waist of his pants. “What is it, boy?”

“Hay, una mujer!” Hay, una mujer en el mar!” he yelled, pointing over the side.

“A woman in the sea?” Fernando peered over the side and felt a spasm of fear cross his chest that he might see a pale figure face down in the water. He saw only dark waves. “Was she floating?”

“No, no, she was alive. She jumped up to me and reached out her hand from the water. She called my name.”  The boy began to sob.

Jaime’s crying woke Tony, who growled, “What’s going on?”

“Jaime thinks he saw something in the water,” Fernando answered.

Tony glanced over the side of the boat. “There’s nothing there.”

Jaime was crying and reciting in Spanish, “A woman, a woman was there.”

“It’s okay, kid,” Tony said. “Hey, now, don’t let your friends hear you. You were still half asleep when you reached into the big scary ocean.”

Tony turned to Fernando, “How much longer?”

“It’s taking longer that I thought because of the excess weight,” Fernando replied. “We still have a couple of hours.”

“Damn, it’ll be daylight.”  Tony lit a cigarette, took a drag, and threw it into the ocean.

“And that’s if we’re lucky,” Fernando added, heading back to the wheel. “I don’t like the feel of this wind. It’s much brisker in the last half hour. And the waves are kicking up.”

Tony stood with his feet wide apart to balance himself against the swaying of the boat. “Hey, don’t go soft on me now. Just drive this baby home. A little rough water is to be expected.”

Jaime had returned to his seat on the bench and sat curled up, hugging his knees. He wiped at the tears on his face. Some of the other passengers had begun to awaken, whispering to each other in urgent tones. Fernando looked up at the stars. A dark shroud was stretched across the sky, blocking any glimmer. The wind began to play music upon his ears. It whistled and sighed, shifting tone with the angle of his head. Fernando imagined he could make out strange words on the air. The wind swirled around him, rushing like the chant of a mystical language. Waves crashed against the stern, creating tall fountains that splashed sea water onto the passengers sitting at the sides of the boat. They moved quickly to the floor of the boat.

“Jesus, this is blowing up quickly.”  Tony zipped his windbreaker up to his neck.

“It’s a squall, Tony. That’s what they do.”  Fernando gripped the wheel to keep the boat on a straight course.

“I’m going back to calm them down,” Tony said. He grabbed the edges of the cabin as he moved to the back. The deck was wet with spray from the waves. The sole of Tony’s shoe slipped from under him and sent his left leg up into the air as his torso fell back to the deck. His head banged against the compartment that held the life jackets. Tony landed unconscious on the deck.

“Dios!” Jaime yelled. He jumped up and ran to Tony. Three men from the stern ran forward. Fernando struggled with the wheel. To let go would be to lose control of the boat. He called to Jaime, “Get the others to help you bring him in here, out of the water. There’s a first-aid kit in the cabinet.”

The men half carried, half dragged Tony into the cabin and lay him out on the padded bench.

“Jaime, check to see if his head is bleeding,” Fernando yelled over the wind. A scream from the stern pierced the heavy mist that now cloaked the boat. Fernando could barely see the figures huddled on the deck. The men looked at him, fear in their faces. No one moved.

“Aqui,” Fernando grabbed the arm of the largest man and pulled him to the wheel. “Hold this steady, just as it is,” Fernando shouted to him in Spanish. He pulled on a life jacket that hung next to the wheel and moved to the stern. He tripped against a woman who was crawling toward the cabin. Another followed her, on hands and knees, gripping the tail of the first woman’s shirt.

Fernando grabbed the woman’s shirt and leaned over, “Who screamed?” The wind howled and the clanging at the bow had begun again. The woman stayed down and pointed to the bow. They scampered into the safety of the cabin.

Fernando stood straight. He felt something brush against his cheek. Jerking his head to the left, he saw that the glimmers that earlier appeared to be stars had dropped level with the boat and were flickering in and out with the wind across the boat. He ducked his head involuntarily as one flashed toward his face. It whistled a low treble in his ear.

Another scream shrilled against the wind. Fernando stood among the remaining passengers. He turned to the sound. The wind and sea spray buffeted him. Most of the people crouched low against the starboard side of the boat. One man stood and was trying to move quickly from the port side. Fernando screamed into the wind, “What’s wrong?”

The man struggled to move forward. The boat pitched him back against the railing. Fernando reached for his arm, but was knocked to the deck. He heard the man yelling, “Mujeres! Hay unas mujeres allá!  They call to me!”  And seeming to leap forward, the man disappeared over the side. Fernando threw himself against the railing and held fast while he gaped horrified into the dark churning water. He could not see the man. He rushed, trembling, to the compartment with the life preservers, grabbed one and stumbled back to the railing.

“Hola! Hola! Can you hear me?” Fernando called frantically to the water. He glimpsed a pale arm rising from the water at the rear of the boat. He tossed the preserver into the water. It jostled uselessly on the surface. The pale figure leapt up next to the preserver, splashing water into Fernando’s face. The visage of a woman stared back at him for a brief instant. He heard a whisper on the wind, “Nando.”

Fernando fell back from the railing, breathing heavily. The air was alive with sea spray and murmurs. Several of the passengers were whimpering or crying. He heard the hushed cadences of The Lord’s Prayer being recited. The silver sparks in the air fluttered about the boat, almost playfully, rising and falling on the gusts of wind. Fernando covered his head. The prayers of his mother pushed forward in his memory. His own lips moved in silent intonation. “Padre nuestro, que estas en el cielo, sanctification sea tu nombre…”

Fernando’s eyes strained into the darkness. A silver flash that rushed by his shoulder glistened with wings; the small figure of a translucent, fluttering, almost human, being. Fernando fell back to the deck. He struggled to control his fear. He reasoned soundlessly with himself; this was just a storm, made supernatural by the superstition of his culture. But he also knew, as a fisherman, that there was power in the wind and there was little resistance one could offer in the face of its fury.

A woman yelled out, “Aiyeee! Jimaniños!”

The wailing voices of several other people joined the cacophony. Fernando crawled back to the cabin. Tony remained unconscious. Fernando took hold of the wheel and slowed the engine. The clanging at the bow had now reduced to a slow tolling. The men’s faces were drawn and strained with unspoken fear. One man whispered to his companion, “Jimaniños.”

Fernando glanced sharply at the man. Jimaniños were the ancestors of Central American superstition. He did not accept them in his world. But the knowledge of what they were gripped tightly at his chest. Jimaniños were ‘little children.’  Little children, winged and tiny, who turned the Wheel of the Year. Elements of the air, the ‘little children’ were said to be the souls of human children, mischievous spirits who danced on the wind throughout the year but who celebrated most ferociously on the Day of the Dead in November. This was only April, but it was also the cusp of a change in season. The dawning of spring brought new life for nature and heightened activity from the elements. Fernando’s mother would have explained to him that the elements of a storm, of the air itself, were carried on the wings of these tiny fonts of energy.

Fernando’s mind flashed to the image of a woman in the water; an aquatic temptress who had called him to the sea. At least two other men had seen her, and one of them was now lost. Who was she? This mistress of the sea had shown fury in her beauty and vengeance in her whisper. The spirit of the ocean was alive this night.

Fernando tried to concentrate on the position of the bow. The wind was subsiding. He wiped the salt water from his eyes. He couldn’t be sure of what he had seen. The fear and the wind and the night had united them all in a frantic hysteria. But a man had fallen overboard. Fernando turned the boat in a circle where the man had gone over. As the waves rolled to a slow rhythm, the first hazy glow of sunrise illuminated the water. The orange preserver floated impotently. There was no body.

Fernando knew that they would never file a report with the Coast Guard. This trip was an illegal excursion; it didn’t technically exist. By forfeiting society’s power out here, they all had placed their fate on the wind. And fate had exacted a fee.

Tony awoke from his stupor with a headache and a slap for Jaime when he tried to recount his tale in a frantic rush. “Shut up, will you. It was a storm. You Cubanos and your superstition. I don’t want to hear it.”  He rubbed a lump on the crown of his head.

“A man went overboard. He.….jumped in,” Fernando said.

“Yeah, that’s too bad. But these aren’t a seafaring bunch and it sounds like they went berserk when the wind picked up. At least he paid.”

Fernando stared fury into the man’s eyes.

“I’ll get word to his family,” said Tony with a wink and turned away.

Fernando knew there was nothing he could do without incriminating himself. He drove the boat in silence to a small harbor on Key West.

….SEVEN MONTHS LATER

Fernando has been plagued by images of the night the storm swept his passengers overboard. Although he resents his wife for her bullying, she is the one who decides to leave him. It is November 2nd, El Dia de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. She is packing her bag in their high-rise apartment overlooking Biscayne Bay and waiting for Tony to pick her up.

Fernando stepped out onto the balcony of his condominium 17 stories high in the Miami sky. The clanging somewhere on the marina became more insistent. Blackened storm clouds were building to a cone in the south. Fernando watched in fascination as the sky swept up a whirlwind of clouds from all directions. Far below him, cars zipped along the three causeways that connected Miami to Miami Beach. Gusts of wind tousled the surface of Biscayne Bay. Boats heaved and fell in their moorings.

Fernando glanced one last time at the water below. His own boat was there in the marina, tied for the weekend. He would not sail until he heard that the ill-conceived trip he had chosen not to captain was aborted, captured, or missing. Each possibility held great anxiety for him. He knew now what he and Doris had defied. They had presumed a crossing on the ocean for their own gain with no acknowledgement of the ocean itself, of the wind that was needed to bring them safely back. They had trespassed against the invisible divider that kept their world from the unseen one. Doris would never understand that; she was too much in the world, too anxious to profit from it. And Fernando had let it happen.  He would never do it again, even if it meant losing his wife.

Fernando stepped through the sliding glass doors from the balcony into the apartment. He heard the clip-clop of Doris’ sandals on the kitchen floor. The tender feelings Fernando had felt toward his wife faded in the seven months since he made the trip to Cuba. He had drawn inward, seeking repose and forgiveness for his neglect of the ways his mother had taught him.

The growing cloud cover in the sky dimmed the light in the living room. The air inside the apartment seemed gray and misty. Although the days remained warm, the late fall sky darkened early in the evening. Today was November 2nd: It was El Dia de Muerte, the Day of the Dead. Fernando switched on the brass floor lamp. A dark yellow cone of light fell in a circle on the blue and red hook rug.

Doris stamped into the living room and went to the phone. She dialed the airline to confirm the departure of her flight and waited on hold, tapping her fingers on the veneer of the cream-colored end table. The trip had been planned for a clear sky. The sea charts and the forecasts had not predicted stormy weather.

Fernando walked to the window. The sky was cobalt blue. Great tufts of angry gray clouds rushed across it. The wind raised three-foot waves on the surface of the bay below. Somewhere, a loose yardarm on a sailboat clanged incessantly against the mast. That same sound had portended doom the night seven months ago when Fernando did his wife’s bidding and encountered the specter of fate.

Doris slammed down the phone. “Delayed. No planes are leaving. I have to wait until this friggin’ storm passes.”  She paced around the living room, drawing a newly lit cigarette to her lips. “I’ll be late getting to Key West.”

“There may not be a boat arriving there anyway,” Fernando said without looking at her. “There’s a storm in the Caribbean tonight.”

“Who asked you?” Doris nearly shrieked.

Some tether snapped in Fernando. His fists were clenched as he stepped toward her. “Do you even know what’s happening?  You loaded a boat with people who are made stupid by their desperation and you, stupid with your greed, know and care nothing for the waters that you float them in. You play with their lives. And you don’t even think about it.”  Doris took a step backward. She lowered her cigarette to her side. For a moment, surprise lit upon her face. Then her lips curled and her face set again.

“Oh, bleeding heart. You have a corazon de sangria, no?  Don’t tell me your woes. They don’t involve me anymore.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Fernando whispered.

“Are you threatening me?,” Doris yelled.  Fernando didn’t answer. At that moment, a heavy gust of wind clattered against the pane. Doris walked to the window and looked out. She saw a gray cyclone of wind and clouds building and rotating, moving its way up the bay.

“My God,” she uttered. “It’s a hurricane.”

“Yes,” Fernando said, rooted to where he stood. He didn’t need to look out the window. He knew what he would see. “Today is El Dia de Muerte. It’s when they dance best of all.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”  Doris kept her back to him, fixated by the momentum of the air along the bay.

“There are some things that can only be explained by our superstitions,” Fernando said. He sat in the wicker chair pushed against the wall. He mouthed a silent prayer. It was a prayer that came easily to him now. He had said it many times in the past seven months. He prayed at night and in the day when he rode the waves into the ocean. He prayed for the people on the boat somewhere off the coast of Cuba. Perhaps if they prayed, no man would be lost on this trip.

Doris had never seen a storm grow this way. Blasts of wind carried debris in its charcoal folds. She saw silver sparks at the perimeter of the cone. The cone pushed a swath through the water, knocking waves sidelong into both sides of the bay.

“It’s incredible,” she said, mesmerized. “Come, look at this.”  Fernando stayed seated. Doris pressed her face against the glass to see the hurricane as it moved up from the mouth of the bay. Unblinking, she saw the sparks flash close to her building and then blow wildly toward the hurricane. A series of sparks crackled out of thin air and lit against the window. Doris was knocked back by the shock. She stepped forward. A curve of oily, wet smears colored the glass as if a sponge had been wiped along the outside. Sparks materialized again. This time, Doris saw tiny pudgy faces gleaming in at her, their tiny fists pounding briefly against the glass. With a scream, she fell back onto her behind, her arms stretched behind her. “No, que esta pasando?  What the hell is it!”

Fernando’s lips formed the word. “Jimaniños.”  He rose from the chair. A powerful crack and thunder split the window. A thousand splinters of glass fell to the floor and then rose in the spiral of the wind.

Doris screamed. A gray pelting mist swept into the apartment, whirled and then deserted. He watched unmoving as Doris was dragged by the force of the wind through the open window. Fernando was knocked back into the chair. His head banged against the wall and everything went black.

The sound of distant sirens and a vague pounding noise roused Fernando. He staggered from the chair. It seemed to be raining inside the apartment. The air was wet and misty. A damp breeze filled the room. The pounding was someone banging on the door.

“Is there anyone in there?  Open up, if you hear us.”  The door popped forward into the room and onto the floor. A group of firefighters in yellow rain gear burst into the room.

“Sir, sir, are you alright?”  One of the men rushed toward Fernando.

Fernando stood dazed in front of the broken window. “My wife.”

“Where is your wife, sir?  We have to evacuate the building.”

He pointed into the air outside. “She was taken there.”

The firefighter looked at his two colleagues who had followed him into the apartment. “Taken, sir?”

“The wind. She fell.”

“Okay, guys,” said the firefighter, “let’s take him down. He’s in shock. We’ll get a description later.”

Two of the firefighters gently took Fernando by the arms and moved him toward the door. The first firefighter spoke into his radio. “Seventeenth floor secured. Possible fatality.”

Fernando felt the warm air brush the back of his neck as he walked into the hallway. A pact fulfilled.

Best Wishes,

Kellyann

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