Cuba Libre

  "A last desperate act in the name of freedom," Amelia said, sounding sad. "I hope you're wrong."

  The cafe where Tavalera and Osma waited was on a corner, on the opposite side of the street from the drug shop halfway down the block. They sat outside beneath the portico, behind the rows of Greek columns that extended along the curb. This was the third day of observing the drug shop, most of the time Osma standing watch, dedicated to the task, anxious to meet that cowboy again face-to-face. Tavalera would send Guardias to relieve him and stop by himself from time to time, Tavalera as anxious as Osma, wanting with all his heart the old man who came in to buy the Lydia Pinkham and quinine would turn out to be Victor Fuentes.

  "Once," Osma said, "the old man bought a third medicine, but the clerk couldn't remember what it was. I could go ask, see if it returned to his memory." "Do you think it matters?" "I doubt it."

  They watched the drug shop hoping to see the clerk come out to lower the awning over the front windows, the signal that would tell them the old man had returned and was inside. This morning they were distracted by the noise of people cheering, illegal guns going off all over the citymthough not on this street with Guardias waiting in doorways, horses tethered on the side street around the corner from the cafe Tavalera took a sip of his cold coffee. "This is my last day." "You said that yesterday."

  "Now it's true. I can't stay here." "You like Santiago? That's where you'll go."

  "Now my orders are return to Havana."

  "So you can protect the captain-general. Btanco must be shitting his pants by now."

  "Mariel is still believed to be an invasion point. Land there and take Havana."

  They sat in silence for several minutes, staring.

  "When you were on the train," Tavalera said, "you don't know if they had opened the hammock. But what about their faces? Did they express a particular kind of feeling to you? Their attitude, their state of mind?"

  "You want to know," Osma said, "were they joyous or were they depressed, their faces hanging? This cowboy has a gun in my belly. You think I'm making a study of their faces?"

  Tavalera said nothing and they were silent again, Osma staring at the drug shop. Now Tavalera closed his eyes.

  He sat without moving, hands folded in his lap. He heard in his mind the words: Oh God... Listen, if You let this man be Victor Fuentes and he takes me to the hammock and inside is forty thousand dollars, American funds... if in Your divine generosity You make this happen, I will give to the Church that portion of the money I was going to give Osma, who is an atheist with the manners of a fucking goat and is unworthy.

  Though he had not yet decided how much he'd give Osma, he realized the amount wouldn't seem enough to pledge to Holy Mother Church. No, he would have to give something else. Perhaps offer an act of mortification. He thought about it and when he continued to pray said:

  Oh God, grant my petition and whenever I go to Mass, I promise to fall on my knees at the Consecration and remain there until after the Communion, which I will receive, after I go to Confession.

  He saw himself at Mass, perhaps the only man on his knees in the entire Havana cathedral, his head bowed in supplication.

  0sma turned to look at him.

  "What are you doing, sleeping?"

  Tyler decided against riding the dun. He saddled Amelia's sorrel and brought it through the grove of broad green leaves to the yard behind the main house.

  Miss Janes in her sun hat was there, and Amelia, at a wooden table where the twelve lepers who lived here stood in line and Miss Janes, from Gretna, Louisiana, would speak to each one in turn, touching them, applying medication, passing them on to Amelia, who bandaged the ones with open sores. The lepers with missing toes hobbled off. The man with elephantiasis moved past on his enormous legs and Tyler saw Amelia looking at him. She said something to Miss Janes, rose from the table and came over.

  "You've made up your mind."

  "He's been gone too long."

  "You said yourself he was up to something. Whatever it is, there's nothing we can do about it. Is there?"

  "You can tell me whatever you want to say and I'll listen,"

  Tyler said, "but I'm going. I'll ask at the drug shop if he was there. Victor told me how to find it. I'll look around, stick my head in a cafe--he's got friends here, you knowmand if I don't see him I'll come right back."

  She said, "I don't want to lose you."

  Looking up at him with her sad, moist eyes, this adorable girl. He said, "I want so bad to pick up and take you in the house."

  "Why don't you?"

  It made him smile because he believed she meant it. "When you get your strength. I don't want you going around with bruises all over you."

  "You promise?"

  "I'm yours, girl, from now on."

  She said, "I've never wanted anybody so bad in my whole life. You promise you'll always love me?"

  "Wherever we are."

  She said, "That's something we'll have to talk about, huh?" Beginning to sound her normal self again. "You want to stay here?" ""Here?" "In Cuba." "And do what?"

  "Run a cow outfit, a horse ranch. It's all I know how to do."

  He watched the tip of her tongue play against her upper lip, back and forth, Amelia picturing things. He said, "Think about it while I'm gone. I won't be long."

  He saw the woman in the sun hat watching them. She called out, "Amelia?"

  Amelia glanced over her shoulder and then looked up at Tyler. "I almost forgotmwe need chaulmoogra oil. Should I write it down?"

  There was a sameness about these city streets in Cuba, lined with one- and two-story buildings, stone and concrete, weathered facades wearing away, big windows with wood shutters open. Tyler found the street he wanted and came to the drug shop in the middle of the block. He heard people some distance away yelling, and gunfire that sounded more in celebration than serious. He wondered if today was some kind of national holiday.

  Spotting a pair of Guardias in a doorway didn't seem cause for alarm; that's what they did, they stood around.

  The drug shop was dim inside, rows of drawers on the wall behind the counter. The druggist, an elderly man in a white doctor's smock, asked to help him. Tyler gestured toward the street. "What's all the yelling and shooting about?"

  The druggist's eyes came open behind his pinch-nose glasses on a black ribbon. "You don't hear? The Americans have come with their army. Two days ago in Oriente. You don't know about it?"

  "Where did they land?"

  "Two places, Siboney and Daiquiri, to march on Santiago de Cuba. Also I think Guantfinamo. You know where those places are?"

  "I don't care," Tyler said, wanting to hug the man, "long as they're in Cuba. Have you heard they've had a battle?"

  "I only know the American army is here, thousands of soldiers, thank God, finally."

  "How did you hear?"

  "It came to the train station, on the telegraph."

  All kinds of questions were popping in Tyler's head, but now he was anxious to get back and let Amelia know. He told the druggist he needed a bottle of quinine, then brought a note out of his coat pocket and glanced at it. "And chaulmoogra oil, if you have any." He looked up to see a younger man in a white doctor's smock appear through a doorway from the back of the shop.

  Right away this one, this clerk, staring hard at Tyler, said, "chaulmoogra--that was it, what the old man wanted I couldn't think of. Are you with the old man?"

  "I might know him," Tyler said. "Have you seen him today?"

  "You are with him, yes?"

  "What old man you talking about?"

  "You buy quinine and chaulmoogra as he did. Yes, you're with him, I know you are."

  "Just tell me, was he here today?"

  The druggist, looking confused, began speaking to his clerk in Spanish, Tyler not able to catch any of it except qud pasa, the druggist wanting to know what was going on. His clerk didn't even look at him. He said to Tyler, "Not today, yesterday. And you know where I saw him?" This
young know-it-all looking down his nose at Tyler. "On the road talking to another old one like him, on the road by the banana trees. You one of the Americans they looking for, and you live at the leper house don't you?"

  He didn't stay for an answer or even hesitate as the druggist was questioning him, excited now, raising his voice. By now the clerk was around the end of the counter and running out to the street yelling, "'iEstd aquit. iEstd aquf.r'" Telling anyone who could hear him, "He's here!" as he yanked on a rope and an awning came down across the front of the shop.

  Tyler got his horse from under it, slapped its rump and swung up on the saddle as the horse bolted, stretching its head to run. Behind him he could hear the clerk yelling, ""Chaulmoogra por los lazarinos!""

  "I thought I'd die once Dr. Henriquez was gone. I said, "How can they take you? You're not even Spanish." It didn't seem to matter. When I think about it, it was only four months ago, during Mardi Gras when we met. Luis had been visiting the hospital at Carville? It's up above New Orleans--I'd heard of it, but of course I've never been there. Dr. Henriquez told me about his work here and I said, "Oh, Luis, please take me with you." I was prepared that moment to dedicate the rest of my life to these people."

  They sat at the table in the yard cutting up squash and yucca for soup, both in sun hats and aprons, Miss Janes' hands in white gloves. She spoke in quiet tones, unhurried by her anguish. "Do you think I was foolish? My mother does. She can't believe I'm here. At least I keep busy--thank God for small blessings. I keep hoping I'll hear from Luis. I don't even know what I'd do. I can't just leave. Until you came I had no one at all to talk to. While you were ill Victor provided some company. You're so fortunate to have Ben. Do I envy you. I think, my Lord, just a few months ago my only concern, would my carnival gown be ready in time. This country, it's so primitive. I don't think I can stay much longer." "I love it," Amelia said. "It is pretty."

  "It's beautiful," Amelia said.

  "You're so lucky. How long, if I may ask, have you known Ben?"

  It was the first time the woman had asked Amelia anything about herself.

  "I've known him all my life," Amelia said.

  It was a few minutes later the woman straightened, cocking her head in the sun hat, listening.

  "What was that?"

  Amelia was up from the table. She said, "Gunshots," running to the house where she stayed.

  Chapter Twenty-Four.

  THEY SAW HIM. THEY RAN OUT to the street and saw the awning down and saw him swinging up on the horse and riding away from them. Tavalera looked toward the side street, waving for the horses.

  Osma, his gaze holding on the horseman in white, was shaking his head.

  "It's not the old one."

  Now Tavalera was studying the figure becoming smaller up the street.

  "Not Fuentes, no. It's the cowboy."

  "That one rides a dun."

  "It's the cowboy," Tavalera said. "Believe me."

  Four Guardias came running with the horses and now Tavalera was deliberate in the way he mounted, careful not to appear eager. His troop behind him, he rode to the drug shop, where the clerk was in the street with his arms raised calling for them to stop. It slowed them to a dogtrot and now the clerk ran along close to the riders, pointing, telling them to go to San Lfizaro, the home of the lepers on the Imperial Road, two kilometers past the bridge, the clerk calling, repeating, "San Lfizaro!" as they rode away from him, Tavalera raising his voice to Osma: "What did I tell you. Under our nose."

  So they would go to the leper home, not have to waste time looking up and down streets. They kept to a good pace and were coming onto the stone bridge when they saw him, the cowboy not more than a few blocks ahead of them. Osma pulled his pistol, a Broomhandle Mauser, extended it as he rode and began firing at the cowboy. He had little chance of hitting him, but it satisfied Osma to pull the trigger and hear the reports. Now they appeared to be gaining on him; he was looking back.

  Saying follow me, Tavalera thought. Follow me and don't go to the leper home.

  Now the cowboy was running hard again, continuing up the road past the grove of banana trees. Tavalera brought his troop to a halt at the entrance to the property, the leper home in there at the end of the lane.

  He said to Osma, "You see what he's doing? He wants us to follow him, not go in this place. They're in there because no one searched it. Isn't that true?"

  "I didn't sech it," Osma said. "Did you?"

  "If I had knc/wn it was here," Tavalera said. "What is it, you're afraid to go in there?"

  "It's not that I'm afraid," Osma said, "it's because I know better than to be among lepers. You have enough men, you can go in without me."

  "Or I bring them out," Tavalera said, already knowing what he would do, certain the cowboy was close by and would try to come to the house. He might run away leaving Fuentes--what was Fuentes to him?--but he wouldn't leave Amelia and that hammock they risked their lives to steal. He said to Osma, "The cowboy will find a way to come around behind the property and approach the house from back there. I give you two men, you go in the banana trees and wait for him."

  "I can shoot him?"

  "Of course, shoot him. Go on, while I speak to someone at the house. Negotiate," Tavalera said. "Offer them a way to remain alive."

  Amelia, holding a carbine, watched from a front window of the main house, her view: through the shaded porch to the lane that reached some fifty meters to the road. Miss Janes, behind Amelia and across the room, stood at the dining table where they had gathered the lepers.

  Now Tavalera appeared in the lane, two Guardias with Mausers behind him. He came halfway to the house, stopped and called in English, "Send the lepers out!"

  Amelia turned her head. "Did you hear him?"

  Miss Janes said, "But why?" with that tone of anguish in her voice again.

  "I suppose he'd like them out of the way."

  "But what does he want?"

  "The." Amelia's voice trailing off as she said, "And Ben and Victor... wherever they are."

  She heard the woman ask, "How does he know you're here?"

  And then Tavalera again: "Are they coming or not?" Amelia turned to Mary Lou. "We have to do it," and said to the frail black woman who had fed and nursed her, "Lourdes, take everyone outside."

  For the twelve to get up from the table and file through the door took several minutes: Lourdes with a hand on her husband's arm leading them, her husband lifting his tree-trunk legs one and then the other, the lepers creeping along behind them, across the porch.

  Amelia watched Tavalera wave at them to come on, hurry up. She raised the carbine and put the front sight on his chest, Tavalera standing in full view, hands now on his hips. She hesitated and now the twelve were in the lane, coming between Tavalera and the front sight. She could see him gesturing again, separating the lepers, some of them to one side of the lane, the rest to the other side, getting them out of the way mall but Lourdes's husband. Tavalera took him by the arm, pushing Lourdes away, and turned him to face the house.

  Now the front sight was on Tavalera again as he called to the house in English, "Amelia? Come out now, dear, or I begin to shoot these poor people."

  She kept the carbine steady as she aimed, the oiled-wood smell of the stock against her cheek, and his voice called out again:

  "Do you believe me? If you don't, I show you." Tavalera drew his pistol and, still holding the man with elephantiasis ly the arm, shot him through the head. Amelia saw the man fall and saw Lourdes, crying out, try to throw herself on his body, but Tavalera caught her by the arm, pulled her over to him and placed his pistol at her head. This time there was a singsong air to his voice as he called:

  "Amelia, dear, I don't see you."

  She stepped out to the porch, unarmed. Tavalera released the black woman and came toward the house.

  "Let them go," Amelia said.

  Tavalera gestured with his hands. "Of course."

  Tyler was back in the cottonwoods, at the hay b
arn they used for a stable. He was putting Amelia's saddle on the dun when he heard the pistol shot, that hard thin pop coming from the direction of the leper house. Tyler stood listening. He saw Amelia pull a gun out of her skirt and one of them shoot her. But then thought, No, she did that they'd all let go at her. Or she would've got one before they got her and that still would're been more than one shot.

  He had recognized Lionel and the one called Osma, looking back to see the little drug clerk son of a bitch running along by their horses. Then on the road he was able to count six of them. Now some were at the leper house and some would've followed him.... Unless Lionel looked at it, couldn't see him leaving Amelia and Victor, and all that money, and knew he'd come sneaking back. So Lionelwouldn't he put some of his men in the grove to wait?

  He might already have Victor.

  But that little clerk son of a bitch said he saw Victor yesterday talking to another old man. It could're been some fella from the old days, up on what was going on. Tyler wondered if Victor might not've found out then the American army was in Cuba. But if he did, and that's why he acted like this business was about over... Yeah? Why didn't he mention it?

  Tyler told himself that was enough thinking for one day. He slipped a sixth cartridge into each of his.44 Russians. He had two horses ready. But should he bring both of them? No, not with what he had to do. There'd be horses, all kinds of horses, if he did this right and didn't get shot first. This time heed his cutting horse, the dun, out of the shelter and mounted.

  Amelia waited on the porch, the carbine inside the house. Tavalera came up, seemed to study her and said, "I understand you've been ill. I believe it, you don't look so good. But, I have to say, you don't look so bad either. Where is Victor?"

  It caught Amelia by surprise. He had to notice it, the change in her expression.

  "You don't know where he is?" "He left this morning." "To go where?" "He didn't say."

  "You such good friends---he rides off, he doesn't tell you where he's going?"

  Amelia didn't answer.

  Tavalera stepped closer to the window to look in the house. "Who is that woman?"