Blog 28-Breach

Breach
After we'd eaten Franz walked with me to the old Carretera Naval. "Te acompaño," he said. He insisted on walking me back to Palenque. I was always catching myself blurting my inner thoughts to Franz. "Machi thinks I don't do enough to find his father. But what does he think? That I can just walk into the Base and look? Franz looked at me. "Maybe you can." He stopped walking. "Yes, you can. You can.” Was I in a dream?
The sun was sinking toward the horizon. Franz stepped off the road and I followed him past the spring with a spigot where Anacaona and I had filled our water bottles, through dense brush, toward a wall of mangrove. He ducked, took my hand, and led me under and through the weave of branches into a narrow passage. We walked in darkness, still on solid ground for what felt like endless time, guided only by the beam from Franz' tiny flashlight. One foot in front of another I kept saying in my head. We came to a small canoe he eased into the dark waters from which the dark mangrove tunnel rose. I climbed in behind Franz. I don't know how I overcame my terror. I could hear my heartbeat and my breath.
Enough moonlight filtered through the mangrove dome surrounding us that I could sometimes make out branches and foliage and see through the shallow seawater to the silty sand. As the canoe moved in the water I noticed it left glowing streaks. Franz nodded. “We're in mangrove that borders one of the bio-luminescent ponds in Karaya. My abuelo told me the Tainos called it Moon Island because they believed there was moonlight inside the water.”
At last we emerged onto a beach. Even though I had no idea where we were going the beach gave me a sense of arriving, of destination. We hid the canoe in the mangrove and walked onto the sand, close to the dunes. We pressed our bodies against the seagrapes and seapines until we reached the seawater and waded into the shallows. We made streaks of light in the water as we moved. We were at the Base, right up to the high steel fence. Franz and I were doing our own stealth wade in! If only Machi could see me! Fierce adrenalin, unfamiliar euphoria, filled my body and my brain and I was no longer aware of being frightened. I noticed Franz was recording us on his phone. I prayed we were not somehow being live streamed and at the same time I wished that we were and my son could see me.
In the darkness Franz led us to where the fence was breached, cut. “We did a good job getting rid of the mines along this strip.” I managed to stop myself from screaming. I followed him to a v shaped, jagged break in the steel diamond weave of the fence, clearly here, unelectric. Franz took my hand and again, we ducked and entered. I was inside the Base. I forbade my mind to think of what might happen if I were caught in here. Franz was completely unfrightened and I let myself borrow some of his confidence. I thought only that Franz might be about to lead me to Ori.
We walked a few yards on packed sand, past a cluster of shacks, to a larger building. Inside was a slumbering Guardia sitting at a bank of monitors. He startled awake when Franz tapped him gently on the shoulder right on his rank insignia. What would an officer be doing here? Franz didn't introduce us. It was clearly not a problem to this officer that either of us appeared. He must be a guata. I hadn't imagined there were officers who were guatas. Franz led me to a monitor on the far right. It showed an image from above of three men huddled in a pen. He pointed to one of them, curled up on a cot. “Is that your husband?” I peered at the monitor and Franz spoke to the other man and the camera zoomed in close. The man's face was nestled into his arms so I couldn't see. He was bone thin. Could this be Ori? Ori breaths away from death? I leaned in and got my face as close as I could get. At the same time the man zoomed in so that I could see the man's shoulder. The t-shirt hung so loose on his thin frame that I could see the top of his shoulder blade where Ori had a lunar de sangre shaped like a snail. I was almost sure the birthmark was there. I was almost sure this was Ori. Although I could not touch him, I had found him. Franz spoke to the man again and I saw him shake his head. “It's not gonna happen." Had Franz asked if we, I, could go wherever it was Ori was being held?
We retraced our way back to the canoe, but now, nothing was the same. I told Franz about the birthmark I might have seen. We paddled in silence in the dark, inside the mangrove tunnel, hid the canoe, and made our way back through the brush to the road. We got back to our shelter from Hillside just as Machi was arriving from Beachside. It must have been close to seven in the morning because Julia and Taina were leaving as we got there, Julia for work at the Senoras' Comedor and Taina for La Escuelita.
Machi rushed over to Franz and hugged him. “I've been texting you and you've been disappeared." Franz clasped Machi to his chest. “I just got back yesterday morning from the Ventura border zone patrol (he rolled his eyes), by the Territorio Libre way up in El Pico where there's no signal.” We sat by the firepit and I told Machi the story of my tracking accomplishments as if they had been by intention, not that Patria dragged me away from my writing into Coral and then dumped me in the Plaza where Franz stumbled into me. Franz showed him the video on his phone, most of it barely visible shapes in near pitch darkness. “You did a stealth wade in!” He jumped up, lifted me, spun me. "You found Pa."
He took off with Franz and I was alone again. I recognized that spun around feeling, as if I had been shaken the way my mother used to shake me as a child, and my head had landed off-center back onto my neck.