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The Port Pilot
- University of Pittsburgh Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
39 The Port Pilot Before I knew him as a butcher coming home with bloodstains on his cuffs that Mamá could never wash out in the kitchen sink, before I learned he’d spend all day in the sky in loafers and a necktie, counting other people’s money in a tower with a view he couldn’t afford, years before he started gambling with me on cockfights at Tío Burili’s farm every Saturday night, teaching me how to bet on death, long before he was diagnosed and staying alive became his full-time job, his agenda filled with appointments to kill whatever was killing him, a lifetime before I had to cradle him in and out of bed, he carried me on his shoulders over the jetty at the port, minutes after I’m called to the hospital, I remember that day: sitting together on a rock watching the ships glide past us, when he told me that years before he was my father, he was a port pilot in Havana 40 steering ships safely into harbor, then guiding them out to sea again, never to see them again, seconds before I hear his last breath, told to leave the room. ...