at night, down in a cellar so the block warden wouldn’t come nosing around. And we set out to sea at night, too, with Yeya and your mother—and all we had was food and water and a compass and two outdoor café umbrellas we had to steal at night and rig up as sails. Café umbrellas!”
“I know, Dad—”
“Twelve days it took us! Twelve days of burning up all day and freezing all night and getting thrown this way”—he pantomimes the boat pitching up and down—“and that way”—pantomimes the boat rolling—“and this way”—yawing—“and that way”—climbing waves—“day and night—and bailing out water day and night, too. We couldn’t sleep. We couldn’t hardly eat. It took all four of us bailing out water around the clock just to keep the boat afloat. We coulda died a hundred times”—he snapped his fingers—“just like that! For the last four days we had no more food and one bottle of water for the four of us—”
“Dad—”
“We were four skeletons when we finally reached land! We were half out of our minds! Your mother was having hallucinations, and—”
“Dad! I know all that!”
He, Camilo Camacho, went silent. He took in a breath so deep and twisted his face into such a grimace, complete with bared upper teeth and popped veins, he was either going to bite someone or have a stroke—until at the last moment he found his voice and rasped out:
“All that you call it? All that? All that was life or death! We almost died! Twelve days on the ocean in an open boat! There wouldn’t be no Officer Nestor Camacho without all that! He wouldn’t exist! If some big cop had arrested us eighteen meters from shore and sent us back, that woulda been the end of all of us! You woulda never been nothin’! And you call it all that! Jesus Christ, Nestor, what kind a person are you? Or maybe you not a person! Maybe you got claws and a tail like a mapache!”
::::::A raccoon he calls me!::::::
“Listen, Dad—”
“No, you listen! You don’t know what it is to suffer! You arrest a guy eighteen metros de libertad! To you it don’t matter that the Camachos came to America in a homemade—”
“Dad, listen to me!”
Nestor said it so sharply, his father didn’t try to finish his sentence.
Nestor said, “This guy didn’t have to do”—he started to say “all that” but caught himself just in time—“do anything like what you and Yeyo had to do. This guy paid some smugglers three or four thousand dollars to take him straight to Miami in a cigarette boat. Goes seventy miles an hour on the water, a cigarette boat. Took him what—maybe two hours to get here? Three at the most? In an open boat? No, in a cabin with a roof. Starving? Probably didn’t have time to digest the big lunch he had before he left!”
“Well—that don’t matter. The principle’s the same—”
“What principle, Dad? The Sergeant gave me a direct order! I was carrying out a direct order!”
A derisive snort. “Carrying out a direct order.” Another snort. “So do Fidel’s people! They carry out direct orders, too—to beat people and torture people and ‘disappear’ people and take everything they have. You never heard of honor before? You don’t care about your family’s honor? I don’t wanna hear that pathetic excuse again!… Carrying out a direct order…”
“Come on, Dad! The guy’s up there screaming to the crowd on the bridge and throwing his arms around like this”—he demonstrates—“Guy’s lost it! He’s gonna fall and kill himself, and all six lanes of traffic are backed up on the causeway, Friday rush hour, the worst—”
“Oh ho! A traffic jam. Why didn’t you say so?! Whoa, a traffic jam! That’s different… So you’re trying to tell me a traffic jam is worse than torture and death in Fidel’s dungeons?”
“Dad, I didn’t even know who the guy was! I still don’t know! I didn’t know what he was yelling about! He was seventy feet up above me!”
In fact, he had known, more or less, but this was not the time for fine distinctions. Anything to bring an end to this tirade, this terrible judgment—by his own father!
But nothing was going to stop I, Camilo Camacho, Lord of This Domain. “You said he was gonna fall and kill himself. You were the one who nearly made him fall and kill himself! You were the one crazy to arrest him, no matter what!”
“Jesus Christ, Dad! I didn’t arrest him! We don’t arrest immig—”