You never really forget the smell of a person who has been pickling in the ocean for more than a week. They smell of live rotting flesh and feces. I had smelled that smell numerous times as we plucked Cuban nationals out of the Gulf Stream time and time again. They would depart Cuba on whatever would float in hopes of making it the 90 miles to the Florida Keys. We pulled them from truck tire inner tubes tied together, tiny leaking fishing boats and shipping pallets tied to 55 gal drums. The Gulf Stream flows at around 4 knots northward so often they ended up in the Bahamas as they were spun off on a side current.

In 1969 Kris Kristofferson wrote the lyric, Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. Janis Joplin made the line famous singing Me and Bobby Mcgee. I was never a fan of Joplin but in 1994 I was asked to write an essay explaining that line to get into the honors program at the college I was attending. I never did finish college much like the subject of my essay who never did finish his journey. I have lost that essay over all the years and moves so I can’t share it but it was along these lines.

We got a call that there was a sick man on a boat just off the Bahamas close to where we were patrolling. We picked him up off of a Bahamian fishing boat some miles west of the Bahamas in shallow waters. I drove the RHIB across the crystal clear chop and came alongside the small trawler. The paramedic boarded and went below to find two Cuban nationals one of which was very ill. The fisherman had given them tea and some crackers when he found them. They said they had been floating for eight days. We loaded them up, one under his own power, and the other on the back board. Once on board our ship the mobile man sat on the mess deck while the paramedic and others tried to help the ill man in the athwartship passageway. The passageway was the only place inside he could lay down and be looked after. I went on watch and helped navigate our ship back to Key West. As the ill man slowly died on our ship the smell of death permeated every molecule of air on board. He lost control of all his internal organs and his body flushed. Being an E-3 at the time I had to clean it up. I was ok with that. That man may have not gotten where he wanted to be on that risky venture, but he understood freedom a hell of a lot more than I did because he had not one thing left to lose other than his life. I am content with bitching. I am weak and pathetic. I have not the balls to get on a raft and push away from a beach under nothing but moonlight. But then again where would I go? I remain angry yet comfortable. Freedom has moved from natural to subjective. Governments grow and grow and grow and all steal from the citizenry the world over. I hope for change but know it won’t. I want to visit Cuba someday.

RIP unknown Cuban man.