PUBLISHED 11/13/2007
With the help of gestures and my junior high Spanish, I managed to grasp that they needed transportation to the island's main city. I gave them walking directions to where I was staying, perhaps two miles way, where they could call for a taxi.
The rest of the group eyed me suspiciously, except for a stocky, athletic older man with a shock of white hair and a brushy, white mustache, who stood close. He looked a bit like the actor Cesar Romero--a more working-class, proletariat Cesar Romero--but with the same handsome confidence. This was a man sure of himself, clearly a leader. He thrust his chin forward, planted his hands on his hips, and pointed to his chest. "I am Cuban," he said, as if staking a claim.
Now I got it. They were refugees. Or had been, because according to the "wet-foot, dry-foot" Cuban immigration policy of the United States government, by making it to shore they had gained the right to remain in the States. Had they been discovered even while wading ashore in ankle-deep surf, they would have been returned to Cuba, 650 miles away, and likely been imprisoned. The margin between here and there was both infinitesimal and huge, a single step and all the difference in the world.
I looked at the old man, and said the only thing that came to mind. "Welcome!" By instinct, I thrust out my hand.
"Ahh!" he roared in response, his white teeth showing as he smiled. "Ahh!" Beaming, he stuck out his hand and began to laugh as we shook hands, a great laugh that shook his body from his head to his feet, and then the young man began to laugh and so did the others. I laughed, too, thinking how strange it was to be running this morning, not away from anything or toward anything but just running, down a road in a distant corner of my country and to find this group of people. Welcome.
We all stood for a moment just smiling at one another. Then, slowly, I began to run as they walked toward a new and very different life.
Now I had to run back up the same steep hill that a few miles before had made me feel as if I were flying. Head down, I looked to the ground, stopped running for a moment, took one, two, three short steps, and then looked up. Blue skies ahead, the sun at my back, I started running again, going uphill, hard. Heart pounding, I didn't stop the rest of the way, not once.
I knew exactly why I was running.
