Cuba Libre

  She took it, but as she did her sad eyes looked past him and came to life Tyler half turned, looked over his shoulder to see a bearded man in a panama coming along the aisle, the bearded man raising his eyebrows as he said, "Fuentes, is that you?"

  Too much at ease, Tyler felt, for that look of surprise. Tyler glanced at Fuentes, whose back was to the man and had to turn all the way around. The look Fuentes showed was honest, more startled than just surprised, not liking what he saw; but gathered himself and said, "Osma, the slave hunter, how are you?" Then said in English, for Tyler, "You still kiss Tavalera's ass when he wants?"

  It was all Tyler had to hear. He pulled a.44 Russian and put it in the bearded face.

  "What do you want done with him?"

  "Shoot him," Fuentes said, "what do you think?"

  Tyler took a step toward the man and felt the train begin to roll, felt that jolt and heard couplings bang together. Two more steps, holding the man's gaze, Tyler pressed the muzzle of the.44 into the man's belly.

  "You're getting off," Tyler said.

  The man still seemed at ease. He gestured. "The train is moving."

  "Get off or get shot, partner."

  "What are you, a cowboy?""

  Tyler hit him across the jaw with his gun barrel. No warning whacked Osma to let him know there was nothing to talk about, and again put the muzzle against his belly. Now he reached into the man's coat and lifted his Colt revolver. It had an ivory grip. Tyler handed it behind him and Fuentes reached out to take it, Fuentes saying, "Why don't you shoot him?

  Then put him off?"

  Osma had a hand to his face, touching his jaw. He looked at the blood on his thick palm and then at Tyler.

  Tyler cocked the.44.

  Osma turned and walked down the aisle to the end of the car, Tyler a step behind him. Osma opened the door and the sound of the train picking up speed came in loud. Tyler gave him a shove, not hard, but it was enough to send him out the door. Osma grabbed the platform railing in one hand-couplings below him, between the cars--and came around to Tyler with a short-barrel pistol in his hand, firing as Tyler slashed the man's arm with his gun barrel, firing again as he went off the side of the platform, Tyler firing now, snapping two shots into the dusk, and knew he'd hit the man in midair before the man hit the ground.

  Tyler leaned out to see Osma lying back there in the cinders and weeds; he looked done.

  An oil lamp hung at the end of the car. Tyler brought it to where they were seated, hung it from a coat hook and used Amelia's matches to light it. He sat with her legs on his lap, his hand on a boot feeling her slender ankle in there. Tyler watched her, flushed and sick as she was, puffing on a Sweet Cap, the smoke rising to hang about the lamp that moved with the sway of the train. Fuentes was taking forever to undo the rope around the hammock.

  There was worry in his voice as he spoke about Osma. Was he dead? The man deserved to be. Tyler said if he wasn't dead he was likely on his way. Fuentes said he should have shot him as he stood there, through the heart and be sure. Saying he hoped to God never to see Osma again. Tyler thinking if Osma was dead, my God, that would be how many? Eight men dead by his gun and he wasn't even a shootist, had never sought a man to kill him and never would. Shooting men was not something to be known for, not even in the Wild West anymore. Though Tavalera would come to mind whenever he thought of Charlie Burke, killed by that firing squad. Be best to have all this over with and get back to raising stock.

  Maybe right here. It was something he thought about now and again, the idea of staying on after, wondering each time why this country seemed so familiar to him, like home.

  Fuentes kept talking about Osma, telling how he had hunted runaway slaves, until Amelia said to him, "Victor, can't you untie that thing and talk at the same time?"

  "I'm afraid of what we might find," Fuentes said, pulling the rope loose and laying the hammock on the seat next to him. "Or what we won't find." He let half the canvas unroll to the floor, felt in the part still on the seat and pulled out a pillowcase that had weight to it, irregular shapes inside, corners pressing against the cloth. He held up the pillowcase like a sack ofmwhat?

  "For God's sake, Victor, will you please open it?" Amelia's spunk letting her say this in her weakened condition, barely moving her mouth.

  Fuentes turned the pillowcase upside down and bank notes bound in money straps poured out to pile on the seat next to him. Fuentes grinning, and yet seemed surprised. "Count it," Amelia said.

  Tyler watched her eyes hold on Fuentes as he riffled through several of the packets, counted to himself as he stacked them on the seat and said, "What you ask for, forty thousand American dollars, all there."

  Tyler looked from the bank notes to Amelia, the flush of fever on her face, and saw her eyes shining.

  The mulatta he called Isabela Catelica worked on Tavalera's wound for two hours, first cutting and shaving hair matted with blood to see the wound clearly, then cleansing it with diluted carbolic acid. She closed the wound with needle and thread in twelve individual stitches as he lay facedown across her bed. She asked why the wound was in the back of his head if he had been facing the enemy. She could ask him that in his weakened state, but got no answer. She finished her sewing before discovering he had passed out sometime while she worked, from the pain or loss of blood. The bed looked as though a woman had given birth in it. She put ice in a towel and placed it against his wound while he slept through the day. In the evening, when he opened his eyes and knew the day was gone, he said, "I failed."

  She didn't know what he meant--failed at what?--but didn't ask. He wanted to know if Osma had returned and she shook her head. Now he was angry, wanting to blame her because Osma hadn't returned. She brought him whiskey. He sat up to drink it, but soon closed his eyes, telling her his head was spinning. She left him alone and he again fell asleep.

  Isabela sat in the front room, leaving him alone in the bed, and fell asleep with her head resting on her arms on the surface of the table. Sometime during the night she awoke to the sound of a horse outside, approaching the house. She waited, but now there were no sounds, nothing. Finally she went to the door and opened it.

  In the darka man was sitting his horse as though asleep, his back bent, head lowered, hands resting on the horn in front of him. She recognized the buckskin gelding and called in a low voice, "Osma?" She had to help him down and into the house. In the light of the lamp she saw his clothes, his face, his hands covered with blood. The sight lifted her spirit and she smiled.

  Now she helped him into the bedroom, bringing the lamp and placed it on a stand next to Tavalera sitting up in bed asleep. She blew her breath in his face and he opened his eyes.

  It took him several moments to recognize the man standing by the bed. He said, "Osma?"

  Osma's head came up. He said, "They went to Las Villas."

  They kept their voices low, barely above a whisper, while Amelia slept, lulled by the sound and sway of the train. Tyler had removed her boots and stockings and held her warm bare feet in his hands. He wanted to know if the quinine was working yet. Fuentes said it would take time. If she had yellow fever they would give her citrate of magnesia, castor oil in lime juice and the milk of green coconuts.

  He said, "Is strange, but where we going the people don't get yellow fever. Perhaps because the city is on higher land than along the coast, and the air and the soil are dry." He said, "They suffer, of course, from consumption, malaria, dysentery, as people everywhere do, but not yellow fever. Or is because the water is clean. So we lucky to be going there--if that's what she has." He said, "The province is name Santa Clara and the city is Santa Clara, but everyone calls it Villa Clara or Las Villas."

  Fuentes said this leaning toward Tyler in the seat across from him.

  "Have you heard it call that?"

  Tyler said, "Victor? Why don't you tell me where exactly we're going?"

  "I just told you, Las Villas."

  "We get off the trainmwhat if there're sold
iers around?" "We come there it's still dark. Nobody see us."

  "We're in Las Villas," Tyler said, "then where do we go?" "We take Amelia to see this doctor."

  Jesus Christ. "Why didn't you say so? He's a friend of yours?"

  "I don't know him, but I have an old friend there, a woman name Lourdes. She can take care of Amelia and make her better." He said then, "Listen, you know what Las Villas is known for? Two things especially: its wide streets for one, and its beautiful women. You may not have interest in that, but is true." He said, "Why do you think it happens, one place having more beautiful women than another?"

  "When we get there," Tyler said, "we leave the train, I get the horses--"

  "Yes, I'm sure we come to Las Villas before the sunrise. It's dark by the railroad station, nobody sees us. You bring the horses for us, we ride a short distance on the Imperial Road and we there."

  "You're sure," Tyler said, "this place'll be safe." Fuentes reached over to pat Tyler's knee. "I swear it."

  Approaching Las Villas they passed through an open gate in the barbed wire enclosing the city, a remnant of reconcentration, and rolle[ into the rail yard Tyler said to Fuentes, "Still dark, huh? I wonder what that is lighting up the sky over there."

  All Fuentes could do was act like it didn't matter, daylight about to expose them to a few hundred Spanish soldiers up there by the station, where troops and supplies were loading. But what all the activity did, it held up their train while tracks were cleared; it allowed them to get off a good distance from the station.

  "You have to trust me," Fuentes said, taking credit for the traffic.

  He was right about how far they would travel from here. No more than a mile up the road they came to an open gate with a decorative wood-carved arch over it. They entered and walked their horses along a lane that cut through acres of banana trees. The lane brought them to a wide one-story house made of stone, weathered and crumbling in places, with a porch across the front and a red tile roof with hardly any pitch to it. Cottonwoods shaded the house; the inside, through the windows, looked dark. They dismounted at the porch, no one around. Fuentes told Tyler to wait, keep an eye on the road, while he took Amelia inside.

  She seemed worse than she was yesterday, with barely the strength to move. From the porch she looked at Tyler with the saddest eyes he'd ever seen.

  "Will you stay here with me?"

  "You know I will."

  She said, "Guard the money with your life." Then, with a vague look: "No, not with your life. But guard it." She went inside with Fuentes.

  Tyler got one of her Sweet Caps from the saddlebag and stood smoking in the shade, looking at clusters of green bananas. He turned, hearing the screen door. A woman with a clean white apron over her shirtwaist and gray skirt, and a straw sun hat low on her head, stood facing him on the porch. She said, "You're with that darling girl?"

  The woman was American, at most only a few years older than Amelia, and very pretty. Tyler said yes, he was, thinking it strange to see a woman wearing an apron with a sun hat, just the edge of the straw brim turned up in front.

  The woman said, "Hello, I'm Mary Lou Janes. I assist Dr. Henriquez. He's with her now."

  "Amelia thinks she has yellow fever."

  The woman looked surprised. "She does?"

  "Or some kind of fever."

  "Why on earth did you bring her here? San Lfizaro is a home for lepers."

  Chapter Twenty-One.

  EARLY TWO WEEKS PASSED BEFORE Novis got up the nerve to report to Mr. Boudreau, expecting to be cursed up and down and fired before he opened his mouth.

  But that wasn't the man's way, was it? To act like a normal person. No, he was calm as could be, upstairs on the veranda in his starched white Cuban shirt, a guayabara he wore once in a while when he was in the country. A pistol that looked like a Mauser and a pair of binoculars lay on the porch railing. No doubt the man had watched him coming.

  What he did first was talk about himself, telling where he was at in this situation, how he didn't hear a word until one of his guerrillas rode up from Benavides and told him about the attack on the train.

  "He said three Guardias aboard at the time were killed. I said well, there must have been more than just three on the train. What happened to the others? He said he didn't know. I asked if he had seen my bodyguard."

  "I went back to Havana."

  Mr. Boudreaux stared and Novis stopped right there.

  "I asked if he had seen you. He said no, he had not. I asked if anything had been taken from the train. He said he didn't know. He said he believed the mambis destroyed the tracks to get money from the railroad, not to stop the train." Mr. Boudreaux paused. "My hunch, Novis--no, my conviction--is that a number of individuals know exactly what happened but are reluctant to come forth. Why is that?"

  "Sir, you want me to tell you what happened?"

  "Is there a conspiracy? All of you in cahoots to steal the ransom money?"

  "Sir, I went back to Havana 'cause I thought that's where you were at."

  "But I told you I'd be here."

  "You did?"

  "Do you think I'm lying?"

  Shit. Calm as swamp water.

  "No sir, I don't think that at all. I musta forgot your telling me. So I hung around waiting to see if you'd show up." "You're saying it was my fault I wasn't there?" Jesus Christ.

  "No sir, I'm not saying that. I got shot at coming here to tell you what happened on that train and you won't let me."

  Whether he liked it or not it seemed to satis him. Mr.

  Boudreaux nodded like he was giving his blessing.

  "All right, Novis, tell me what happened."

  He told about the dynamite going off, the mambis coming out of the trees shooting and the guards on the train shooting back, six of them.

  Mr. Boudreaux stared, not saying a word.

  Novis told about Fuentes being on the train, appearing nowhere and thought Mr. Boudreaux would jump on that. No, he just kept staring.

  He told how Fuentes put a gun on him and made him throw the hammock out the window. And how the cowboy, Tyler, was there to get it.

  The man kept on staring, Jesus, like he was casting a spell, hypnotizing him so he'd tell the truth. And he had, everything he said was the way it happened. But then hesitated about Amelia being with them--something Novis could hardly believe himself. He waited too long and Mr. Boudreaux finally spoke.

  "There's something you're not telling me."

  You bet, and the reason was that fucking pistol sitting there on the rail. Boudreaux blamed him anyway for Amelia being taken. If he told she was with them, either Boudreaux would say he was lying or it would set him off and Novis saw himself getting shot between the eyes. What he said was, "Fuentes shot one of the guards." Like that was the thing he didn't want to tell. "Him and Tyler rode off with the hammock. The guards stayed with the train and I spent the night at Benavides to get on the Havana train the next day." "You didn't want to tell me about this, did you?" "No sir, I wasn't anxious to."

  "So you wasted precious time in Havana. What did you do, visit your whores?"

  "Tell you the truth, I didn't see none around. People in Havana are going crazy, scared of the U.S. Army coming."

  Mr. Boudreaux waited now, giving Novis his famous stare. "During the attack on the train, did you fire your gun?"

  "I forgot to mention, Victor made me drop it out the window."

  "You say he and Tyler rode off."

  "Yes, sir, with some mambises coming behind."

  "You mean chasing them?"

  Novis had to stop and think. "My recollection, the mambises were bringing up the rear."

  Now he was getting the stare again. "Novis, are you part of this scheme?" "No, sir, I'll swear to it."

  Without a pause Mr. Boudreaux said, "Do you know where the Philippines are?"

  "Sir?"

  "I asked, Do you know where the Philippines are? That's a fairly simple question, isn't it?"

  "The Philip
pine Islands? When I was working on the docks in Newerleans there was some ships come from there with timber. I think it's over by China?"

  "Would you say the Philippines are at least ten thousand miles away?"

  "Yes, sir, I would imagine."

  "You're sure?"

  Novis thought of hitting Mr. Boudreaux right in his fucking mouth. Hit him and walk out. But he stood there and said, "Yes, sir, I'm fairly sure."

  Mr. Boudreaux said, "I've been sitting here in the dark, Novis, with bhrely a word from the outside world since the blockade. Then, lo and behold, a British acquaintance of mine sent over a number of New York papers he'd picked up in Jamaica. It seems that our Asiatic Fleet, under a Commodore George Dewey caught the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. You've heard of Manila, Novis?"

  "Yes sir, it's over in the Philippine Islands."

  "Which you tell me is at least ten thousand miles away. Dewey's flagship, the Olympia, led the fleet to within twelve hundred yards of the Spanish ships, a bold move, and at this point Dewey said to the Olympia's captain, a man named Charles Gridley, he said, "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley," and the American fleet launched its attack. They made five passes, swinging their turrets from port to starboard, starboard to port; they destroyed the entire Spanish fleet and not until then did they stop for breakfast. That, Novis, is determination. In this one battle the sinking of the Maine was avenged. There is no doubt in my mind we are going to win this war, and I don't think with much loss of life, no more than say five to ten thousand. That's inevitable, you can't fight a war and not expect casualties. But when it's over, Novis, we're going to see millions of acres of Cuban land, previously owned by the Spanish, up for sale." Boudreaux continued to stare at Novis. "So the future looks fairly promising."

  Boudreaux put on a smile--so Novis did too then turned it off.

  "Dewey went all the way to the Philippines, a distance you tell me of ten thousand miles, to protect our interests in the Far East and did a bang-up job, got it done in less than a day, a few hours' work. Think of it, Novis."